Evolution offshoot

chuck.drake said:
He always says confine yourself to the CD forum when banning someone. I don't know where the list of forums came from that you have in your thread.
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It came from this post, approved by Alex:

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/suspensions-bannings-and-post-deletions.358/

In fact, stunningly enough, Alex asked me to post suspensions and bannings in that thread. I started to do so, but the Great Forum Apocalypse wiped them out. I don't bother now, since it's virtually impossible to learn what the suspensions and bannings are.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
It came from this post, approved by Alex:

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/suspensions-bannings-and-post-deletions.358/

In fact, stunningly enough, Alex asked me to post suspensions and bannings in that thread. I started to do so, but the Great Forum Apocalypse wiped them out. I don't bother now, since it's virtually impossible to learn what the suspensions and bannings are.

~~ Paul
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I am aware of the post, but it contradicts what Alex himself has posted on several occasions. And the mods gladly delete any of your posts not confined to CD. In my view, you are simply trying to creep out of the space you have been given.
 
chuck.drake said:
I am aware of the post, but it contradicts what Alex himself has posted on several occasions. And the mods gladly delete any of your posts not confined to CD. In my view, you are simply trying to creep out of the space you have been given.
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But what would be the point in banning me from G&I and OS, especially since they contain policy threads and such? Plus, it would be difficult to post suspensions and bannings if I can't post in G&I. I think you might be taking Alex too literally.

I've sent a PM to Alex.

~~ Paul
 
radicalpolitik said:
This is prejudice on my part, but extremely wary of someone who advocates ID.
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Meyer's book is extremely informative, and Christianity is hardly mentioned. If you have some knowledge of DNA and protein synthesis, this is the book for you.

Think of it as a book that tells you that evolution by natural selection cannot be the real explanation for how we got here regardless of what replaces it. I used to dismiss ID as well, but just one of the problems concerns the evolution of early life. A protein is very little use until it is almost completely 'correct' - which means that natural selection can't pick organisms that express incremental improvements in their sequence - the whole process drops back to blind combinatorial search.

Meyer describes experiments in which people have studied the fitness landscape of various enzymes - in other words the chances of the protein remaining useful with one substitution or with two substitutions etc. It is clear from these that there is very little scope for natural selection to operate on slightly malformed versions of a gene.

Remember that in most (maybe all, I am not sure) cases of antibiotic resistance, resistance is conferred by a single DNA base mutation, so that combinatorics don't come into the picture.

Furthermore a new protein gene - say a protease - can't just be expressed without some control mechanism round it - otherwise it would endanger the whole cell! In other words even if the new gene did appear it would be strongly selected against!

See this:


David
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
But what would be the point in banning me from G&I and OS, especially since they contain policy threads and such? Plus, it would be difficult to post suspensions and bannings if I can't post in G&I. I think you might be taking Alex too literally.

I've sent a PM to Alex.
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He replies that it is okay for the Banned of Seven to post in G&I and OS.

~~ Paul
 
There is a saying, I forget who coined it but it was used in reference to Singularity and digital immortality supporters: Don't assume that problems go away by just saying "well in a hundred years we'll have an answer."

I don't see why evolution gets a free pass in that regard.

I believe even the web comic XKCD has commented that there is a certain time limit on Terra itself, where its impossible to go behind due to the shifting of plates / soil upturning and a number of factors. I'd say the evidence for the evolution of living things is good, and I'd also say that what happens in that massive free timespan allotted sounds like question begging at the moment. (e.g. I could say that Star Wars occurred two billion years ago, and there is no way to actually verify that.) It gets worse when factoring in the idea of physics being relative, and the universe's form changing over that time, because the rules two billion years ago could have been so different that our back projections are completely wrong.
 
JCearley said:
There is a saying, I forget who coined it but it was used in reference to Singularity and digital immortality supporters: Don't assume that problems go away by just saying "well in a hundred years we'll have an answer."

I don't see why evolution gets a free pass in that regard.
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It doesn't. I think the free pass award goes to the IDers.

~~ Paul
 
I like the biologist Kauffman's argument that there is a natural magic at work here, worthy of some veneration or at least appreciation.

The End Of A Physics Worldview: Heraclitus And The Watershed Of Life

...This post summarizes points from previous posts, but goes beyond them in several important ways to make the strongest case possible for our living with "natural magic."

First, evolution itself defies both the completeness of quantum mechanics and the completeness of classical mechanics and unites them both. Mutations are often quantum random and indeterminate events, yielding Darwin's heritable variation. Yet evolution itself is not random, seen in convergent evolution. For example, the stunning near identity of the octopus and vertebrate camera eye evolved independently. More examples are found in convergent evolution of marsupials and mammals.

Thus, in blunt terms, biological evolution is neither quantum indeterminate random, nor deterministic classical mechanics. The living world really is "new." Quantum mechanics alone and classical physics alone seem each to be incomplete. The prior posted hypotheses of ontologically real Res potentia and Res extensa truly linked by quantum measurement, based on Feynman's "sum over all possible histories" framing of quantum mechanics, seem, in fact, to be a consistent interpretations of quantum mechanics and to unite quantum mechanics and classical physics, including general relativity, at the price of an ontologically real Res potentia for unmeasured quantum processes...
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
It doesn't. I think the free pass award goes to the IDers.
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I would disagree. Both rely on an initial creation even which boils down to plot convenience as an answer. I don't see how "a wizard did it" for ID and "nothing just happened to become enough to become something to evolve over an extremely long period of time in conditions that seem almost entirely suited for death and not life" are extremely different positions.

It seems very strange how the math does not play out (X * 0 = 0 for all X), but this isn't a concern because we can come up with a really complicated way of saying a wizard did it.
 
JCearley said:
I would disagree. Both rely on an initial creation even which boils down to plot convenience as an answer. I don't see how "a wizard did it" for ID and "nothing just happened to become enough to become something to evolve over an extremely long period of time in conditions that seem almost entirely suited for death and not life" are extremely different positions.
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I will tell you how they are different:
  • Scientists aren't satisifed with "nothing just happened ...," while IDers have no interest in investigating "a wizard did it." In fact, even stating who the wizard is blows the politically motivated project.
  • IDers claim that the wizard has intervened since initial creation, but have no interest or ability in pointing out where those interventions occurred.
  • All the IDers really do is dump on the biologists.
The two scenarios only look similar when you don't peek behind the curtain.

It seems very strange how the math does not play out (X * 0 = 0 for all X), but this isn't a concern because we can come up with a really complicated way of saying a wizard did it.
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Do you actually know biologists for whom it is not a concern?

~~ Paul
 
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Nagel actually has a sympathetic ear for ID though he doesn't believe in it. I kinda share the sentiments, though probably not to the extent he does:

...To a Christian, the possibility of divine intervention in the natural order is not ruled out in advance. Therefore the fact that such intervention would render certain observed facts probable is evidence in its favor, and it becomes one of the possible explanations of facts that might also be explained naturalistically, but that are by no means rendered more probable by the assumption of pure mechanism than they would be by purposive intervention. Perhaps on Christian assumptions it is a question left open by the available evidence, but it will certainly not be reasonable to think, as atheists naturally do, that there must be a purely mechanistic explanation of the origin and development of life.

To claim that that is the only reasonable conclusion for anyone to draw from the empirical data, the defender of evolutionary theory would have to claim that the belief in a god who can intervene in the world, like the be lief in witchcraft, is itself irrational, and that it has been refuted by science. I am sure there are atheists who believe this, even if many of them would be reluctant to say so – for reasons of tact if not of political prudence. But I believe they are mistaken: Neither belief nor disbelief in God is irrational, and the consequence is that two diametrically opposed attitudes toward the natural order are both reasonable.

I don’t think it is easy to figure out how to reflect this awkward fact in the design of public scientific education for a society that takes no stance on religious questions. Perhaps it is politically necessary to avoid addressing the question of what religious beliefs are and are not compatible with contemporary scientific knowledge. But if the question were to be taken up, I believe young-Earth creationism and the denial of evolution would go on one side of the line and the existence of God and some forms of intelligent design would go on the other side...
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Nagel said:
To claim that that is the only reasonable conclusion for anyone to draw from the empirical data, the defender of evolutionary theory would have to claim that the belief in a god who can intervene in the world, like the be lief in witchcraft, is itself irrational, and that it has been refuted by science. I am sure there are atheists who believe this, even if many of them would be reluctant to say so – for reasons of tact if not of political prudence. But I believe they are mistaken: Neither belief nor disbelief in God is irrational, and the consequence is that two diametrically opposed attitudes toward the natural order are both reasonable.
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If belief in god is rational in spite of the lack of evidence, then belief in anything without evidence is rational. I think that is arguable.

But ignoring that issue, there is no evidence that god has intervened in the world. So why would scientists bother with the idea? The intervening god doesn't have to be refuted by science in order to be ignored by science.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
If belief in god is rational in spite of the lack of evidence, then belief in anything without evidence is rational. I think that is arguable.

But ignoring that issue, there is no evidence that god has intervened in the world. So why would scientists bother with the idea? The intervening god doesn't have to be refuted by science in order to be ignored by science.

~~ Paul
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As C. Hitchen's would say. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
If belief in god is rational in spite of the lack of evidence, then belief in anything without evidence is rational. I think that is arguable.

But ignoring that issue, there is no evidence that god has intervened in the world. So why would scientists bother with the idea? The intervening god doesn't have to be refuted by science in order to be ignored by science.

~~ Paul
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I don't think Nagel would suggest tacking God on to scientific theories. It's more his interest in teleology. Also, it's this paper. (edited prior post to include link)
 
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There is excellent evidence for design. Digital semantic code. Systems controls. Algorithmic processing. Irreducible communication systems and organization. Information storage and processing dwarfing in complexity anything conceivable by human engineers. And that is just biology.

Arise unguided through blind physics? That extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Meanwhile nothing but stories posing as science is lapped up by those with a religious like belief in the illusion of design. Design is so clearly apparent, only a blind fool can say otherwise, they are forced to call it just an illusion. An illusion that has never been shown to be so.

The lab evidence is not too kind to standard assumptions and the wild extrapolations. Only loss of function, negative epistasis, genetic entropy and extreme limits to standard theories can be shown. Contadictions are the norm. We don't truly understand evolution at the molecular level or the large scale morphological level. Phylogenetic trees don't match up, the fossil record doesn't fit expectations. The modern synthesis is dead, and we have at the moment several theories/concepts ideas are attempting to address the honest truth that we really do not have it worked out at all. But you would not know this if you did not follow the debate. It is presented as if everything is just all roses, nothing to see here!

The normal response is that evolution did it to everything, like that actually carries some sort of weight. They often claim there is no debate, there is a mountain of evidence, (in the form of this looks like that) scientist have it all worked out long ago!. Never mind the origin of life, that is a different subject. ID is not science, so let us not address the scientific argumments, stop dumping on biologist! No lets turn it into a religious, theological and political argument instead! Blaa, blaa... it is all very boring and transparent. It is what happens when they can't deal with the challenges.

Has the illusion of design truly been shown to be an illusion? Not by a long shot, not even close. That is the honest truth, except the ideologues have so much baggage invested in certain claims they cannot budge, they will not tolerate any debate, they attack, censor, threaten and yep they complain on political and theological grounds while hypocritically screaming "it is not science!". Burning books and threatening carreers and legal action. Some people have their heads in the sand, that is for f'king sure.

Yeah some honesty would be very welcome. Nagel certainly is a breath of fresh air in the honesty department.
 
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