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God Is Theoretically Possible


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#451 Connor MacLeod

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Posted 18 December 2011 - 10:54 PM

There is perhaps no other theory as well supported as evolution. I suspect that General Relatively falls before the Theory of Evolution--evolution is a more solid theory. It is so completely rock solid and backed by evidence (in various fields and forms) that there's not even a realistic competing hypothesis.


It doesn't seem to me that you're really going out on a limb there since I doubt there's any competent physicist who today believes that the theory of general relativity is exactly correct. I doubt even Einstein believed that. It is a decent approximation (from a human perspective), but it is an approximation nonetheless.

As far as your comparison between general relativity and evolution goes, I don't believe it is very apt. Why? Because the theory of general relativity is a quantitative theory which provides numerical predictions of measurable and replicable experiments; while the theory of evolution, on the other hand, has an advantage in the fact that its predictions are much more qualitative in nature. I'm pretty certain that any hypothetical system of PDEs purporting to capture how life has evolved on the earth (perhaps in a probabilistic or distributional sense) would be laughably easy to falsify.
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#452 shadowhawk

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Posted 19 December 2011 - 09:42 PM

Next post 2
.....................................................................................
FOLLOWUP OF POST #444
http://www.longecity...post__p__491476

WAS DARWIN RIGHT OR WRONG?
No takers on answering this so I will.
Darwin was half right.

And Darwin was half wrong.

Darwin was definitely right about natural selection. The weaklings die and the strong
survive. Seriously, natural selection does not have any kind of
creative power at all
. All it does is kill of the runts. Nothing profound about this.

The secret to evolution, has to be in the "random variation" part.

Darwin, in his time, believed that random variation in heredity produced all manner of species. He said: most of the time it's harmful, but occasionally it's helpful and from these variations come all kinds of beautiful forms that appear to be designed.

What is meant by "random variation"?

Thousands of biology books say it's accidental copying errors in DNA. Cause ‘random variation.”
They say, essentially, that it's corrupted data that occasionally turns out to be beneficial instead of harmful.

Nowhere is corrupted data helpful instead of harmful." It's ALWAYS harmful. Always. Copying errors and data transmission errors never help the signal. They only hurt it.

Now please do not misunderstand me:

I AM *NOT* SAYING EVOLUTION DID NOT OR DOES NOT HAPPEN.

Evolution just happens a different way than Darwin said. Way different than you were told.

First randomness only destroys information. Let me illustrate by using a simple sentence.

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

Then randomly mutate the letters, we get sentences that look like this:

The 6uHck brown fox jukped over the lazyHdog
Tze quick bro0n foL juXped over the lazy doF
Tae quick browY fox jumped oGer tgePlazy dog
The iuick brown fox jumped lver the lazy dog
The quiikQbKowSwfox .umped oveh the lazy dog


You can apply all the natural selection to this in the world and you'll never accomplish anything besides destroying a perfectly good sentence. You can go to www.RandomMutation.com and try for yourself. (Perry Marshall’s “random mutation calculator”) FUN!

Why doesn't this work?

Because it's impossible to evolve a sentence one letter at a time - even if you deliberately TRY.

Technically, this is because random mutation is noise and noise *always* destroys a signal. Claude Shannon called it information entropy. Entropy is not reversible. Noise never improves a signal. It only mucks it up.

The only way for this to work is: Evolution has to follow the rules of language.

So.... successful evolution for this short sentence would look something like this:

The fast brown fox jumped over the slothful dog.
The dark brown fox jumped over the light brown dog.
The big brown fox leaped over the lazy dog.
The quick black fox sped past the sleeping dog.
The hot blonde fox sauntered past the sunbathing man.


In English, successful evolution requires precise substitution of verbs and nouns and following the rules of speech.

DNA is no different. DNA has its own language. In fact thousands of linguists have made huge contributions to the Human Genome project by helping to decode the layers of the genetic code. Dozens of linguistic books describe the eerie similarity between DNA and human language.

Resources:
Newsweek Magazine: "Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103

"Darwin: Brilliantly Half Right, Tragically Half Wrong"
http://www.cosmicfin...win-half-right/

"A 3rd Way" - James Shapiro's 21st century view of evolution
http://shapiro.bsd.u...97.ThirdWay.pdf

#453 platypus

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 12:12 AM

Lame cretinist anti-scientific bullshit. So how did the nylon-eating bacteria evolve the required new enzymes? Jahve did it for them? LOL

#454 shadowhawk

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 12:46 AM

Lame cretinist anti-scientific bullshit. So how did the nylon-eating bacteria evolve the required new enzymes? Jahve did it for them? LOL

Nice argument. I am so impressed! You don't get it do you? :|o

Edited by shadowhawk, 20 December 2011 - 01:02 AM.


#455 shadowhawk

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 12:57 AM

Do your own Darwinian Evolution experiments with the Random Mutation Generator - :)

http://www.randommutation.com/

#456 platypus

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 07:58 AM

Genetic & evolutionary algorithms work really well. Is it Jehova there in the softwares? LOL :-D

#457 nupi

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 08:11 AM

First randomness only destroys information. Let me illustrate by using a simple sentence.


You clearly do not understand randomness.Randomness per se neither destroys nor creates information, HOWEVER it can do both (if someone is watching, said someone is "survival of the fittest" in the case of evolution), in particular for creation of information https://en.wikipedia..._monkey_theorem

And then there's Monte Carlo simulation, which by your logic destroys information, of course. I am sure all the quants pricing derivatives think coming up with prices is destroying information.

Edited by nupi, 20 December 2011 - 08:16 AM.


#458 mikeinnaples

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 01:25 PM

Lame cretinist anti-scientific bullshit. So how did the nylon-eating bacteria evolve the required new enzymes? Jahve did it for them? LOL

Nice argument. I am so impressed! You don't get it do you? :|o


I think he gets it just fine. In fact, he is thinking for himself instead of posting videos, link, and cutting and pasting somebody else's thoughts repeatedly. You should learn to think for yourself. Perhaps then you will be able to put aside your silly little superstitions.

#459 shadowhawk

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 07:35 PM

First randomness only destroys information. Let me illustrate by using a simple sentence.


You clearly do not understand randomness.Randomness per se neither destroys nor creates information, HOWEVER it can do both (if someone is watching, said someone is "survival of the fittest" in the case of evolution), in particular for creation of information https://en.wikipedia..._monkey_theorem

And then there's Monte Carlo simulation, which by your logic destroys information, of course. I am sure all the quants pricing derivatives think coming up with prices is destroying information.


I have already said runts die. The fittest live. Something has to bring intelligent new information into the picture. Rules. Random mutation? What randomness destroys is order.

#460 DeadMeat

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 07:50 PM

First randomness only destroys information. Let me illustrate by using a simple sentence.

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

Then randomly mutate the letters, we get sentences that look like this:

The 6uHck brown fox jukped over the lazyHdog
Tze quick bro0n foL juXped over the lazy doF
Tae quick browY fox jumped oGer tgePlazy dog
The iuick brown fox jumped lver the lazy dog
The quiikQbKowSwfox .umped oveh the lazy dog


You can apply all the natural selection to this in the world and you'll never accomplish anything besides destroying a perfectly good sentence. You can go to www.RandomMutation.com and try for yourself. (Perry Marshall’s “random mutation calculator”) FUN!


That natural language mutation experiment, is very different from what happens with a self replicating system. In your experiment you just send that poor sentence out in the world where it mutates and reproduces(and where the mutations have no effect on the reproduction). And after a while you look and decide if it’s bad or good based on the rules of English language. While it was mutating and reproducing, the fact whether a sentence was considered good or bad had no effect or basis whatsoever in the ability of the sentence to survive and reproduce.

While for DNA the only thing that matters(what makes it good or bad) is that it codes for useful or at least not terribly harmful proteins for the survival or reproduction of that DNA. Any mutation that for example causes a protein to have a different amino acid in a certain spot, alters that protein and thereby the chances of survival and reproduction of that DNA sentence. This causes useful and non harmful mutations to survive and build up in the DNA and harmful mutations to disappear. In other words, the type of sentence that you get a lot of at the end of your experiment is automatically a good sentence. Just because it survived really well and the rest didn’t so much.

DNA is different from a signal or message between two intelligent minds, because such a signal can not be improved upon(because well, that would change the message). While a self replicating system(which DNA is a part of) can obviously be improved/adapted to circumstances.

#461 shadowhawk

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 08:47 PM

3rd POST - Last Post (452) #2 http://www.longecity...post__p__491932

If true, I suggest the mechanism of Evolution is:

There is a mutation algorithm in DNA that makes *INTELLIGENT* (not random noise)
substitutions when species need to adapt to their environment.


Last time http://www.longecity...post__p__491932 I showed you an example where

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"

evolves into

"The hot blonde fox sauntered past the sunbathing man."

This sentence evolves through INTELLIGENT substitution of
nouns and verbs.

DNA generates new adaptations the exact same way. It obeys the rules of grammar. It actually re-arranges itself like a computer program that rewrites itself on the fly.

This is not new. And it's not even theory. It's fact.

It's actually more than 60 years old. It's only new to those who are hearing it for the first time.

It was discovered by biologist Barbara McClintock in 1944.
She was decades ahead of her time and she received the
Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1983. Her picture is now
on a U.S. Postage Stamp and she's one of the greatest
scientists in the history of biology.

Her discoveries were so radical, so contrary to Darwin,
that for 20 years she mostly kept this to herself. Some
historians think that she was afraid of being cast out by
the existing orthodoxy of the time.
http://en.wikipedia....bara_McClintock

When I was taking Biology they never bothered to teach me this How about you?

And it's also not because the "random mutation" model works. It actually doesn't. I challenge anyone to show me a link, book or source which says, "Here is the actual experiment that proves random mutations drive evolution." So much for science.

The random mutation theory, sadly, is an urban legend.

INTERESTING FACTOID: This same process of intelligent evolution is how your immune system learns to fight off germs it's never seen before: It systematically tries different combinations and once it's 'cracked the code' on the invading disease, it passes those changes onto daughter cells.

Your own immune system is a miniature model for evolutionary biology.

A leading scientist in this field is Dr. James A. Shapiro of the University of Chicago discovered.

***A protozoa under stress will splice its own DNA into over 100,000 pieces. Then a program senses hundreds of variables in its environment and re-arranges those pieces to produce a new, better, evolved protozoa.***

Re-read that short paragraph and really consider the significance of it. The protozoa re-programs its own DNA and evolves intelligently.

This has HUGE implications for the future discoveries of biology.

Sources:
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/
http://www.discovery.org/

Newsweek Magazine: "Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103

"Darwin: Brilliantly Half Right, Tragically Half Wrong"
http://www.cosmicfin...win-half-right/

"A 3rd Way" - James Shapiro's 21st century view of evolution
http://shapiro.bsd.u...97.ThirdWay.pdf

Do your own Darwinian Evolution experiments with the Random Mutation Generator -
http://www.randommutation.com/

Edited by shadowhawk, 20 December 2011 - 08:56 PM.


#462 platypus

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Posted 20 December 2011 - 11:37 PM

Shadowhawk do you seriously think that copy pasting some websites is going to debunk evolutionary science?

#463 shadowhawk

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 01:24 AM

Shadowhawk do you seriously think that copy pasting some websites is going to debunk evolutionary science?

It depends on the issues which you never deal with. I am not trying to debunk "evolutionary science," which does not have one simple monolithic view. That is your construct, not mine The issue here is how information is passed on in the code. I will deal with this more later.

#464 nupi

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 07:14 AM

DNA generates new adaptations the exact same way. It obeys the rules of grammar. It actually re-arranges itself like a computer program that rewrites itself on the fly.

Even if true (which I am admittedly not sure after reading the linked Wiki article quickly, it did sound more like gene expression/modulation to me though), that still does not require any designer anywhere. It may also very well be coincidental because random mutations that result in garbage data would never actually result in a living organism so an observer could well assume all mutations follow whatever rules there might be for the organism to be viable.

I have already said runts die. The fittest live. Something has to bring intelligent new information into the picture. Rules. Random mutation? What randomness destroys is order.

Clearly you did not bother to read and understand the provided infinite monkey theorem explanation, did you?

Edited by nupi, 21 December 2011 - 07:16 AM.


#465 platypus

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 07:32 AM

God has absolutely no role in evolutionary biology. Don't debate cretinists on non-issues like "information" which in reality is not a problem at all. The science here is settled and evolution is "monolithic" in this respect, even if cretinists try to muddle the issue with their propaganda (since they've lost the scientific argument 100+ years ago).

#466 nupi

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 09:19 AM

Of course he has no rule - would be hard for an imaginary entity to play a role in natural processes....

#467 mikeinnaples

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 01:34 PM

Clearly you did not bother to read and understand the provided infinite monkey theorem explanation, did you?


No. Nor that of anything else he has cut/pasted, linked videos, or hyperlinked in.

At this point I have to assume the guy is simply a very good troll. He has yet to think for himself or make his own arguments. He is simply regurgitating google search results over and over.

#468 nupi

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 02:26 PM

I don't think I agree. If he is a troll, he is clearly not among the better ones I have seen... As for the videos and the links, yeah nobody looks at those. If you cannot summarize your argument in one paragraph you probably do not have one.

#469 Connor MacLeod

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 05:06 PM

God has absolutely no role in evolutionary biology.


That is a statement of faith. It is really impossible to say; certainly, it is not a question that can be addressed one way or the other by science.

#470 shadowhawk

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 10:30 PM

POST 4 following post 461 http://www.longecity...post__p__492066

Last time I mentioned research that shows how DNA under stress can splice itself into over 100,000 pieces and re-arrange itself to produce a new, evolved, better-adapted organism.

This is amazing. When Barbara McClintock discovered this in 1944, nobody believed her. She mostly kept her findings to herself for 20 years.

Now: What if your computer were able to do that???

Did you ever use a computer from the 1980's? If you did, remember Microsoft MS-DOS? Remember turning on your computer and seeing

C:\\>

Now imagine for a moment that DOS 1.0 was never modified by any Microsoft intelligent programmers. Imagine that after 1981 the programers never touched DOS again. No intelligent minds involved at all.

Instead by analyzing the programs it ran, by sensing changes in hardware, DOS "grew" new parts, all by itself. Imagine that it added icons and a mouse, automatically, and after a process of evolution, Windows emerged. It just happened without any intelligent mind. Miracles?

Imagine that after a time, Windows developed Internet Explorer - all by itself - just by adapting to the changing environment of the computer. By re-writing and re-arranging its own lines of code.

Imagine that it then developed networking features. Imagine that, sensing that it needed an email client, evolved Outlook Express. One day the Outlook icon was suddenly there on your desktop. You clicked on it and as you began to use it, it added and subtracted features to suit you.

Imagine that, sensing that it needed virus protection, that it adaptively developed defenses for those viruses. Sometimes the viruses would take out some computers, but the computers that survived were even more resistant.

Imagine that the viruses also self-adapted and continued to try to worm their way in, in a never-ending competition of dueling codes.

Imagine that ALL of this adaptation happened during the last 30 years without a single software engineer ever touching it.

Imagine that the very latest version of Windows still fit on a single 750 megabyte CD-ROM. Mindless, non intelligent, chance...a miracle of natural laws alone. We have no need for an intelligent designer.

An intelligent educated person would conclude:
That accidental file copying errors, culled by natural selection, were responsible for these evolutionary changes?

(Have you ever seen a computer program or virus that accidentally evolved new features through accidental copying errors?)

OR PERHAPS

Would you say that the original engineer (He doesn’t exist remember) who wrote DOS 1.0 was so incredibly skilled that he actually wrote a program that could self-adapt? That it could upgrade itself without downloading another Service Pack?
,
Also...

If you met the engineer (doesn’t exist, atheists view) who wrote this, wouldn't you want to ask him how he pulled off this amazing feat?

Well, that seems to be exactly what DNA has done over the last 4 billion years. Instead of degrading and crashing like computer programs and hard drives, it has adapted and evolved from a single cell to occupy every ecological niche imaginable.

We are asked to BELIEVE this happened through accidental random mutation by some atheists..

If life evolved from a single cell, this happened through an ingenious algorithm that engineers its own beneficial mutations. This is an engineering feat of the most amazing proportions imaginable.

Consider this....

If evolution is true, then God is an even more ingenious programmer than the old-school creationists ever imagined Him to be.

My next post will be on the issue of “mind.Evolution can reasonably involve God as is the topic.

Sources:
Perry Marshall
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/

http://www.discovery.org/

Newsweek Magazine: "Was Darwin Wrong About Evolution?"
http://www.newsweek.com/id/180103

"Darwin: Brilliantly Half Right, Tragically Half Wrong"
http://www.cosmicfin...win-half-right/

"A 3rd Way" - James Shapiro's 21st century view of evolution
http://shapiro.bsd.u...97.ThirdWay.pdf

#471 shadowhawk

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Posted 21 December 2011 - 10:48 PM

And it's also not because the "random mutation" model works. It actually doesn't. I challenge anyone to show me a link, book or source which says, "Here is the actual experiment that proves random mutations drive evolution." So much for science.

The random mutation theory, sadly, is an urban legend.

#472 nupi

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Posted 22 December 2011 - 08:24 AM

Since you love to provide links, how about you read that one https://en.wikipedia...onary_algorithm In short, yes, one could conceivably have a self adapting OS (that could end up being one of the holy grails in AI but there is no obvious reason why something like that could not exist. Already now there are genetic algorithms that create, among others, neural networks way more complex than what designers come up with on their own time).

I am starting to think you are just too daft to actually understand any of this - certainly none of your long winded posts actually give any reason why random mutation could not be driving evolution. If you can provide a link to a peer reviewed article in a *reputable scientific journal* (think tier 1 or tier 2) that debunks the theory, be my guest. Random links to propaganda websites? Not so much.

Edited by nupi, 22 December 2011 - 08:26 AM.


#473 shadowhawk

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Posted 22 December 2011 - 06:46 PM

Since you love to provide links, how about you read that one https://en.wikipedia...onary_algorithm In short, yes, one could conceivably have a self adapting OS (that could end up being one of the holy grails in AI but there is no obvious reason why something like that could not exist. Already now there are genetic algorithms that create, among others, neural networks way more complex than what designers come up with on their own time).

I am starting to think you are just too daft to actually understand any of this - certainly none of your long winded posts actually give any reason why random mutation could not be driving evolution. If you can provide a link to a peer reviewed article in a *reputable scientific journal* (think tier 1 or tier 2) that debunks the theory, be my guest. Random links to propaganda websites? Not so much.

Should I be offended because you provided a link? Thanks. :) As for the rest of your post, I have no problem with it and “algorithms,” so I won’t bother to argue the faith and small points you made. The real issue is “mind,” “information theory,” and whether God is possible if you believe in evolution. You argue “mind” is definitely a necessary part of the process. You have a designer and make intelligent evaluations of whether the intelligent outcome is correct. Good job.

As for the name calling, ho hum. You think to much off topic. Again, you are the one making the claim, show me any “scientific evidence,” that random mutations drive evolution. Second and again, You are making the claim. Where is the scientific evidence? :|?

#474 platypus

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Posted 22 December 2011 - 06:57 PM

Please don't ever debate evolution with cretinists, it's completely pointless. The science is settled and anyone interested in finding out more can start with Wikipedia and checking the references. A university-level biology-book is anothere good starting point for people who are too clueless to "find the scientific evidence" without hand-holding.
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#475 shadowhawk

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Posted 22 December 2011 - 08:26 PM

Please don't ever debate evolution with cretinists, it's completely pointless. The science is settled and anyone interested in finding out more can start with Wikipedia and checking the references. A university-level biology-book is anothere good starting point for people who are too clueless to "find the scientific evidence" without hand-holding.

By simply making an announcement! So much for science. Science is a process not a position. What bull to say it is settled. Nonsense. I asked for a scientific source on random mutations being the driver of evolution and as is typical from you, name calling What a weak argument! Run..

#476 shadowhawk

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Posted 22 December 2011 - 08:51 PM

POST 5 following #470 http://www.longecity...post__p__492250

Christians, Jews, Muslims and other creationists start out with the first five words of Genesis: "In the beginning, God created..." If you need more words to get your teeth into, go to John 1:1-3: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." "Word" is a translation of the Greek term Logos, from which we get the word logic. Logos is equivalent to what scientists like Stephen Hawking mean when they talk about "knowing the Mind of God". The belief that Logos came first, that Mind created Matter, is the fundamental theistic claim about creation. It is basic for the relationship between Creation and Evolution.

It's important to keep in mind the distinction between the doctrine of Creation, which is something all Christians hold in common, and different pictures of creation that Christians hold because they have different interpretations of Genesis. That is why I presented one view of thestic evolution, to show it could be done despite what some atheists were claiming.

The essential point of creation has nothing to do with the timing or the mechanism the Creator chose to employ, but with the element of design or purpose. In the broadest sense, a "creationist" is simply a person who believes that the world (and especially mankind) was designed, and exists for a purpose.

Plato in an early version of the Kalam argument for the existence of god, noted that "all things do become, have become and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance" (The Laws, book X), and he argued that either Mind comes before matter (and the world is basically a work of art), or matter comes before mind (and the world is purely the result of chance and natural regularities).Evolution is not so much the result of an objective assessment of the evidence as it is a necessary assumption brought to its interpretation.The doctrine of Creation says that Mind came before matter - the cosmos is a creation, a work of art. To be an atheist, on the other hand, means being committed to a "matter first" view of things - the cosmos is not a work of art, and everything must, therefore, be the result of nothing but natural regularities and chance. Darwin's theory (even though he believed in God) of evolution is an explanation of biological reality in terms of a finely balanced combination of natural regularities and chance working over long periods of time. You can see that for atheism, evolution is not so much the result of an objective assessment of the evidence as it is a necessary assumption brought to its interpretation.

Edited by shadowhawk, 22 December 2011 - 08:57 PM.


#477 Link

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Posted 23 December 2011 - 12:00 PM

Again, you are the one making the claim, show me any “scientific evidence,” that random mutations drive evolution. Second and again, You are making the claim. Where is the scientific evidence? :|?


http://www.newscient...in-the-lab.html

Bacteria make major evolutionary shift in the lab

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.
And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.
The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.
Profound change

Mostly, the patterns Lenski saw were similar in each separate population. All 12 evolved larger cells, for example, as well as faster growth rates on the glucose they were fed, and lower peak population densities.
But sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations - the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.
Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.
"It's the most profound change we have seen during the experiment. This was clearly something quite different for them, and it's outside what was normally considered the bounds of E. coli as a species, which makes it especially interesting," says Lenski.
Rare mutation?

By this time, Lenski calculated, enough bacterial cells had lived and died that all simple mutations must already have occurred several times over.
That meant the "citrate-plus" trait must have been something special - either it was a single mutation of an unusually improbable sort, a rare chromosome inversion, say, or else gaining the ability to use citrate required the accumulation of several mutations in sequence.
To find out which, Lenski turned to his freezer, where he had saved samples of each population every 500 generations. These allowed him to replay history from any starting point he chose, by reviving the bacteria and letting evolution "replay" again.
Would the same population evolve Cit+ again, he wondered, or would any of the 12 be equally likely to hit the jackpot?
Evidence of evolution

The replays showed that even when he looked at trillions of cells, only the original population re-evolved Cit+ - and only when he started the replay from generation 20,000 or greater. Something, he concluded, must have happened around generation 20,000 that laid the groundwork for Cit+ to later evolve.
Lenski and his colleagues are now working to identify just what that earlier change was, and how it made the Cit+ mutation possible more than 10,000 generations later.
In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome. Instead, a chance event can sometimes open evolutionary doors for one population that remain forever closed to other populations with different histories.
Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803151105)

#478 platypus

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Posted 23 December 2011 - 01:26 PM

That debunks God, then :-D

#479 Tet Omeg

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Posted 23 December 2011 - 08:16 PM

This may perhaps be a strange idea, but I have several sources to refer to. I will not provide an anothology of my thinking on the subject in this post, but rather through subsequent replies.

Holographic Paradigm

Digital Reality Theory

Physics Presentation

Simple summary: The idea is that 'god', not quite in the classical sense, is the sum of all the information contained within the multi-verse, which is an ever-expanding hologram (whose thermodynamic entropy is increasing, and informational entropy decreasing). This information is not physically and readily available to our observation, so it can be referred to as non-physical, digital information. In order to observe, an informational entropy reduction system, or a consciousness, must decode separate bits of data in the environment (perceived as wavelengths and common sense understandings of matter) and break the data into computable and useful information. Time, as we perceive it, is the product of relative informational changes within a given reality, and there exists a rather linear progression of events. This suggests a historical past and a probabilistic future. (Imagine the trunk of the tree to be the main 'flow' of time, and the subordinate branches as the different historical probabilities that never truly occurred.)

In theory, we would never be able to create 'god'(AKA super-hologram, non-physical information super-system, whatever you want to call the concept..) as he will always be the sum of 'gods' we ever create and all other probabilistic pasts, futures, and infinite other universes.

Please, feel free to discuss and/or pick apart what I put forth.


The existence of God is actually proven by the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics). For the details on that, see my following article (available via a web-search):

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), December 22, 2011 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp.; 2,375,597 bytes, MD5: 24ffbb18de793699141ac9ad34f56498 .

Below is the abstract to my above article:

""
ABSTRACT: Analysis is given of the Omega Point cosmology, an extensively peer-reviewed proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) published in leading physics journals by professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler, which demonstrates that in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent, the universe must diverge to infinite computational power as it collapses into a final cosmological singularity, termed the Omega Point. The theorem is an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which itself is also required by the known physical laws. With infinite computational resources, the dead can be resurrected--never to die again--via perfect computer emulation of the multiverse from its start at the Big Bang. Miracles are also physically allowed via electroweak quantum tunneling controlled by the Omega Point cosmological singularity. The Omega Point is a different aspect of the Big Bang cosmological singularity--the first cause--and the Omega Point has all the haecceities claimed for God in the traditional religions.

From this analysis, conclusions are drawn regarding the social, ethical, economic and political implications of the Omega Point cosmology.
""
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#480 Tet Omeg

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Posted 23 December 2011 - 08:18 PM

This may perhaps be a strange idea, but I have several sources to refer to. I will not provide an anothology of my thinking on the subject in this post, but rather through subsequent replies.

...

Simple summary: The idea is that 'god', not quite in the classical sense, is the sum of all the information contained within the multi-verse, which is an ever-expanding hologram (whose thermodynamic entropy is increasing, and informational entropy decreasing). This information is not physically and readily available to our observation, so it can be referred to as non-physical, digital information. In order to observe, an informational entropy reduction system, or a consciousness, must decode separate bits of data in the environment (perceived as wavelengths and common sense understandings of matter) and break the data into computable and useful information. Time, as we perceive it, is the product of relative informational changes within a given reality, and there exists a rather linear progression of events. This suggests a historical past and a probabilistic future. (Imagine the trunk of the tree to be the main 'flow' of time, and the subordinate branches as the different historical probabilities that never truly occurred.)

In theory, we would never be able to create 'god'(AKA super-hologram, non-physical information super-system, whatever you want to call the concept..) as he will always be the sum of 'gods' we ever create and all other probabilistic pasts, futures, and infinite other universes.

Please, feel free to discuss and/or pick apart what I put forth.


The existence of God is actually proven by the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics). For the details on that, see my following article (available via a web-search):

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), December 22, 2011 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp.; 2,375,597 bytes, MD5: 24ffbb18de793699141ac9ad34f56498 .

Below is the abstract to my above article:

""
ABSTRACT: Analysis is given of the Omega Point cosmology, an extensively peer-reviewed proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) published in leading physics journals by professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler, which demonstrates that in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent, the universe must diverge to infinite computational power as it collapses into a final cosmological singularity, termed the Omega Point. The theorem is an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which itself is also required by the known physical laws. With infinite computational resources, the dead can be resurrected--never to die again--via perfect computer emulation of the multiverse from its start at the Big Bang. Miracles are also physically allowed via electroweak quantum tunneling controlled by the Omega Point cosmological singularity. The Omega Point is a different aspect of the Big Bang cosmological singularity--the first cause--and the Omega Point has all the haecceities claimed for God in the traditional religions.

From this analysis, conclusions are drawn regarding the social, ethical, economic and political implications of the Omega Point cosmology.
""
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