The ‘Mechanism’ Behind Intelligent Design

[czgibson]

Greetings,

The “successful” watchmaker argument is a rehash of the argument from design put forth by William Paley. This was refuted by David Hume who pointed out the flaws of the argument, and this was all done before Darwin and before natural selection was combined with evolution to form the theory known in his day.

Just to clarify: David Hume did indeed write a convincing refutation of the argument from design, but he did it before Paley's "watchmaker" argument appeared. Paley included it in his 1802 work Natural Theology, over 25 years after Hume's death.

Peace

 

[Trumble]

Probability for winning a lottery depends on number of tickets in the lottery. If there are 1 billion tickets then there is 1 to billion. If a winner wins a lottery in 1/billion probability then the winner would be considered lucky. I guess we are lucky ones.:statisfie

Nope. Because there are no 'unlucky' ones... in this lottery only the winner gets to play (retrospectively), because the only 'prize' is existence itself.

But there is another issue. In lottery even if there is 1/billion probability, somebody has to be a winner, because that what lottery is meant for. And that is why there is 1/billion probability. So looking at this as analogy, life meant to emerge in this Universe? just a thought.

Exactly my point, although just as with the lottery (where players pick what they hope will be winning numbers), there would also have been a possibility of there being no winner. The only relevant probability is of life emerging somewhere. It is nonsensical to consider the probability of it arising in a particular solar system rather than another as, until it does arise, there is absolutely nothing to distininguish one solar system from another, at least in this context.

 

[Chuck]

Nope. Because there are no 'unlucky' ones... in this lottery only the winner gets to play (retrospectively), because the only 'prize' is existence itself.

You are not making sense, you need to explain more.

 

[Trumble]

You are not making sense, you need to explain more.

I'll try, but I'm probably just repeating myself.

The mistake is in considering the odds of the emergence of life in a particular solar system. That simply is of no relevance at all as there is no reason to distinguish one solar system from another until life happens to emerge in one or more of them. The relevant probability, therefore, is not that of the future emergence of life in the Sol system (before it actually did emerge) as there is no reason to prefer the Sol system to any other, but of the emergence of life in any solar system anywhere. It makes no sense to talk of 'us' being lucky or unlucky.. the most you can do is apply those terms in some sort of anthropomophic way to stars or planets. It's only in the 'lucky' systems where intelligence can exist to have this debate.

To think about it another way, let's look into our future and imagine we are exploring the nearest star systems to our own. We would need to be extraordinarily lucky (or maybe unlucky!) to find life in, say, Epsilon Eridani or Delta Pavonis. But they are two drops in a very large ocean, one of maybe 400 billion billion stars with planets. If, in some way, we could search all of those for life, how 'lucky' would we need to be to find it somewhere?

 

[Afg]

For all who don't believe, please watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4C-jgnrBGs&feature=player_embedded

 

[tetsujin]

Greetings,


Just to clarify: David Hume did indeed write a convincing refutation of the argument from design, but he did it before Paley's "watchmaker" argument appeared. Paley included it in his 1802 work Natural Theology, over 25 years after Hume's death.

Peace

Thank you for the correction, you are right .

For all who don't believe, please watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4C-jgnrBGs&feature=player_embedded

The points raised in that video have been discussed elsewhere and are not relevant to this thread.

All the best,


Faysal

 

[JaffaCake]

The problem I have with evolution without God is that this thought process relies on ridiculously low percentage chances of occuring (the exact number is something like 0.0000001 to the power of i forgot because it's so bloody long).

Salaam, a question for you aamirsaab.
Where did you find such a number and what leads you to believe it is accurate? It seems very unlikely to me that anyone could accurately quantify such an occurrence, especially when nobody knows what actually happened.

Secondly, are we talking about the probabilities of creating life exactly as it is, or are there other possible solutions? For example, if we assume that life started off with a self-replicating peptide, how many possible sequences of amino acids are there that will be self-replicating? I don't think that anyone would even pretend to know the answer to that question.

Evolution cannot explain the proximity of earth in relation to the sun that ALLOWS for evolution to occur on xyz planet (in this case, Earth). The only answer to that (without using God) is a percentage chance ergo life is a statistical insignificance.

This isn't as useful as it might appear. Yes, there is a relatively narrow habitable zone around stars where life such as ours could emerge. The problem with that is it doesn't take into account any other possible forms of life that might be possible. If we found that life could emerge in liquid ammonia or almost boiling sulphuric acid (these have been considered feasible), then the habitable zone would suddenly be very large.

 

[Raphael]

JaffaCake - Were aamirsaab not to use the word 'God', and replace it with some unknown, undiscovered process for guided mutation - would this seem more feasible? I have always though that showing some kind of guiding process - some unknown law as a reasonable conclusion, is much more practical than trying to prove God's will and nature.

Gravity was "discovered" in the sense that we are able to describe a process, without fully understanding why it occurs. It is nice to think of gravity as the bending of space-time, but since general relativity and quantum physics are both strong explanations, and yet incompatible we have to just wait until a grand unifying theory comes along.

If I rejected faith, I would find it hard to reject an unseen force whose effects I can clearly see around me.


cogito ergo sum

René Descartes

 

[Trumble]

JaffaCake - Were aamirsaab not to use the word 'God', and replace it with some unknown, undiscovered process for guided mutation - would this seem more feasible?

It might if you remove the word 'guided', but including it just begs the question. Nobody describes gravity as a force that 'guides' the movement of objects.

 

[aamirsaab]

Salaam, a question for you aamirsaab.
Where did you find such a number and what leads you to believe it is accurate? It seems very unlikely to me that anyone could accurately quantify such an occurrence, especially when nobody knows what actually happened.

The percentage chance of the first genetic material capable of successfully adapting to an environment and reproducing and then repeating this for several hundred cycles, factoring adaptation to adverse weather, viruses, mutations and so on and so forth.

Secondly, are we talking about the probabilities of creating life exactly as it is, or are there other possible solutions? For example, if we assume that life started off with a self-replicating peptide, how many possible sequences of amino acids are there that will be self-replicating? I don't think that anyone would even pretend to know the answer to that question.

Go with what we know, that way we can quantify and gauge and have a meaningful discussion.

This isn't as useful as it might appear. Yes, there is a relatively narrow habitable zone around stars where life such as ours could emerge. The problem with that is it doesn't take into account any other possible forms of life that might be possible. If we found that life could emerge in liquid ammonia or almost boiling sulphuric acid (these have been considered feasible), then the habitable zone would suddenly be very large.

To date, no life forms exist on any other planet in our solar system. Earth by sheer and utter luck landed in the right spacial zone allowing for an environment that didn't change TOO quickly, so that a species COULD adapt thus ultimately evolve into what we are today. I consider that to be a very slim chance of happening. 9 planets, all but one uninhabitable DUE to its proximity to the Sun.

Edit: I'm not talking about guiding the evolution process, I'm talking about the initial environment that was adaptable. If the environment is too extreme, a species (especially the very FIRST in line) cannot adapt quick enough (even if it was capable of doing so, this again raises the issue of probability and luck). Earth is the only planet in our solar system that can sustain life and the only ''reason'' for this is (without using God card) a probability or statistic that it landed in the exact perfect spot (i.e proximity to sun was pinpoint). So we're either an extremely lucky species or there's someone behind the scenes.

EDIT 2: Again, I'm not discounting evolution by any means.

 

[Raphael]

It might if you remove the word 'guided', but including it just begs the question. Nobody describes gravity as a force that 'guides' the movement of objects.

You missed my point. Gravity has an effect which we can observe. No one says objects with sufficient mass attracts other objects by a random process, similar to say - positive mutation - which is a random process according to the present model.

We simply do not understand gravity, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. I'm not quite saying God is dipping his hands in the creation process. I'm just arguing for some similar law which "attracts" positive mutation....

 

[tetsujin]

You missed my point. Gravity has an effect which we can observe. No one says objects with sufficient mass attracts other objects by a random process, similar to say - positive mutation - which is a random process according to the present model.

We simply do not understand gravity, but that does not mean it doesn't exist. I'm not quite saying God is dipping his hands in the creation process. I'm just arguing for some similar law which "attracts" positive mutation....

Was my explanation helpful? Do you agree that mutations are random and that evidence for its randomness can be found?

Natural Selection

There are no particular "positive" mutations. We have to dissociate the concept of agency from this process. The law which you are asking for is natural selection itself.

The history of this planet is within each organism that has 'lived' here. Those of us that were able to pass on our genes are the only ones here to asses anything in retrospect.

The process of evolution doesn't guarantee anything to anyone. Most people know that many hundreds* of species are now extinct, or on the verge, and that can only be credited to their failure to adapt to the environment.

In retrospect, it would be nice if we still had a great sense of smell, and if we could still produce vitamin C within our body, if our laryngeal nerve was not looped around our heart for a ridiculous detour, and if our ribcage and backbone was designed for upright walking as well. The adaptations which gave us the attributes we have today are a result of mutations whether positive or negative. It is the environment with pushes the organisms least capable of reproducing towards death. What you have left are the successful candidates for the next round. What would be a positive attribute long ago may not be one later on, that itself is the mark left by the lack of an agency.

If there were an agency to guide evolution, it's done a remarkably poor job.


All the best,


Faysal


*many millions probably, but the average person can usually only name about a dozen.

 

[جوري]

what mutations have caused evolution? do you have a name for them and a mechanism of action? mutations are identified we have loads of molecular biology and genetic books about them, you may google some of them 'frameshift, missense, nonsense' to name a few, can you show me how one or any have caused speciation?

how does natural selection explain Trinucleotide repeat expansion why do you collectively peddle the same crap over in an attempt to sound intelligent, but mum at best when it comes to mechanism of action? I mean isn't that what is missing from the 'God of the Gaps' story, why don't you fill the gaps with sound science? as well explain the motive and end result?

 

[جوري]

BTW just as an addendum though I don't have the time to labor over anatomy and physiology with alleged 20 year olds..

there are two laryngeal nerves, the recurrent and superior, both branch off the vagus nerve along with 11 other branches, in its path as a (large highway) that branches into byways, it is responsible for varied tasks as heart rate, gastrointestinal peristalsis, sweating, muscle movements in the mouth, speech and breathing just to name a handful of functions.. perhaps in your mind no thought went into that up one day 'adaptation' or 'nature' decided I need to speak, let's innervate this part, I need to breathe let's innervate that part, I need to control my heart rate let's innervate this part, who knows.. but if I am going to complain, I'd like a few clarifications.

1- How did 'nature' do it? which part happened first or did it all happen at once? did it one day decide hmm without control over my heart rate, I'll die so let me take care of that first, and then woops I forgot about mean arterial pressure, woops today I forgot about vascular resistance, let me take care of that, woops, I need to breathe let me take care of my tidal volume today, woops, what about my total lung capacity and residual volume.. etc etc etc etc etc
2- How would you do it better?
3- can you in fact by said 'magical' mutations manipulate it now to do it better I mean hey you've survived without god and 'nature' ain't perfect, so why don't you perfect it?


all the best!

 

[czgibson]

Greetings,

how does natural selection explain Trinucleotide repeat expansion

You bring this up a lot. Can you explain (or do you have a link that explains) why this is seen as such a big problem for evolution?

Peace

 

[جوري]

Greetings,


You bring this up a lot. Can you explain (or do you have a link that explains) why this is seen as such a big problem for evolution?

Peace

as many times as you've asked I have gone ahead and explained it (use the search feature).. question remains why the lot of you keep speaking of 'mutations' and 'Natural selection' with utmost generalities and fail to touch upon mechanism of action? Isn't that what it all comes down to to combat the ignorance of the 'God of the gaps?'..
the basic tenets of your religion aren't scientifically reproducible nor stable.. until such a time you cross your T's and dot your I's, I too don't understand why you bring this (mutations/natural selection) 'alot' can you rectify how it is the solution for evolution?

all the best!

 

[Alphadude]

what mutations have caused evolution? do you have a name for them and a mechanism of action? mutations are identified we have loads of molecular biology and genetic books about them, you may google some of them 'frameshift, missense, nonsense' to name a few, can you show me how one or any have caused speciation?

how does natural selection explain Trinucleotide repeat expansion why do you collectively peddle the same crap over in an attempt to sound intelligent, but mum at best when it comes to mechanism of action? I mean isn't that what is missing from the 'God of the Gaps' story, why don't you fill the gaps with sound science? as well explain the motive and end result?

im sure they cant and btw i never tought the thread will get this many comments lol

 

[czgibson]

Greetings,

as many times as you've asked I have gone ahead and explained it (use the search feature)..

If you type the word 'trinucleotide' into the search engine, only one thread comes up - this one. If you search for posts, you get the two posts on this page where it's mentioned.

Are you sure there isn't a link you could provide that explains why this phenomenon is such a problem for evolution? I've never seen you explain it, and everything I can find about it on the internet seems to be in conformity with evolution.

Peace

 

[جوري]

im sure they cant and btw i never tought the thread will get this many comments lol

people are often fervent when their religion is being attacked at its very core..try as they may atheists too are subject to the human condition!

the question shall always remain though.. how does evolution (if it were the proper unraveling of events) explain the origin of life?


:wa:

 

[Raphael]

Abiogenesis is a different topic...

Evolution is simply a lie invented by Satan and the Zionists to control us all. I read that somewhere, and the guy sounded very intelligent, and thoroughly convincing.