Evolution offshoot

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

I would say the question to be answered is whether there are teleological principles at work. (Syntropy, as a force of backward causation, would be an example of this)

It may turn out these principles, as Nagel believes, explain life (and possibly consciousness) without any definitive deity. Though I do admit it's hard to see how teleology of any kind works without some kind of goal in mind. At minimum it strikes me that you'd need some cosmic consciousness pulling things toward something - Teilhard*'s Omega Point might be a possible solution if such principles could be discovered.

Two works on the last point:

Syntropy, Teleology and Theology

The heresy of Fantappié and Teilhard and the converging evolution

*Perhaps most famous for predicting the Internet.

 

[Devane]

As C. Hitchen's would say. "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

That statement holds no weight considering it is asserted with no evidence offered for its veracity.

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

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

I think Nagel's point is that there's enough open questions that a Designer - or Designers - could be involved. Thus the shaming tactic of presenting ID as the past time of fools misunderstanding science is unwarranted.

(Note that Nagel himself doesn't think God is involved, but some teleological principles are at work.)

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think Nagel's point is that there's enough open questions that a Designer - or Designers - could be involved. Thus the shaming tactic of presenting ID as the past time of fools misunderstanding science is unwarranted.

But that's literally just a god-of-the-gaps argument. The invisible pink hamster orbiting Neptune could be involved, too. That same argument has been proven incorrect many times in the past: God has nothing to do with all sorts of things that were unexplained centuries or millennia ago.

Again, why should scientists care?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

That statement holds no weight considering it is asserted with no evidence offered for its veracity.

What is the antecedent of "its"? The statement "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."?

The evidence is quite simple: If you make an assertion without evidence, it is equally valid for me to deny the assertion without evidence. After all, it is an evidence-free hypothesis. It's possible you are correct and I am wrong to deny it, but that has nothing to do with it.

~~ Paul

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

But that's literally just a god-of-the-gaps argument. The invisible pink hamster orbiting Neptune could be involved, too. That same argument has been proven incorrect many times in the past: God has nothing to do with all sorts of things that were unexplained centuries or millennia ago.

Again, why should scientists care?

~~ Paul

I think there's a difference between saying something is possible yet unproven and saying something is already disproven by science. Nagel's point is that ID fits into the former. Really thinking that ultimately God will be involved isn't that different than promissory materialism's hope that everything can be brought explained within a reductionist/mechanistic paradigm.

AFACITell Nagel isn't demanding science find a place for God, though he does seem to think ideas like Platonic Realms and Teleology deserve more respect and consideration.

 

[Devane]

What is the antecedent of "its"? The statement "That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."?

The evidence is quite simple: If you make an assertion without evidence, it is equally valid for me to deny the assertion without evidence. After all, it is an evidence-free hypothesis. It's possible you are correct and I am wrong to deny it, but that has nothing to do with it.

~~ Paul

I know. I was just being a smart-ass... pardon my insolence. I was supposed to be golfing right now, but the weather screwed us again; it's the middle of April and we haven't even hit a bucket of balls yet. After the worst winter in 50 years, I am dying for some sun.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think there's a difference between saying something is possible yet unproven and saying something is already disproven by science. Nagel's point is that ID fits into the former. Really thinking that ultimately God will be involved isn't that different than promissory materialism's hope that everything can be brought explained within a reductionist/mechanistic paradigm.

But how can we possibly disprove god? As long as there are gaps in our knowledge, someone can toss god in there.

God is a matter of faith, not a matter of science.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I know. I was just being a smart-ass... pardon my insolence. I was supposed to be golfing right now, but the weather screwed us again; it's the middle of April and we haven't even hit a bucket of balls yet. After the worst winter in 50 years, I am dying for some sun.

Uh oh, I missed the implied smiley. Sorry about that.

No golf at all so far? Sheesh, that is annoying. Here hoping you have a good golfing day soon!

~~ Paul

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

But how can we possibly disprove god? As long as there are gaps in our knowledge, someone can toss god in there.

God is a matter of faith, not a matter of science.

~~ Paul

In the same way science might somehow find a way to explain how the emergence of consciousness works, it might find a way toward a deity of some sort.

It's possible that there's a way we'll find this mysterious ground of Being. Who knows what'll happen a million years from now?

 

[LoneShaman]

Wow. Occasionally IDers do admit that they were wrong. I'm impressed. This is the first such admission I've seen, but credit where credit is due.

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/when-im-wrong/

~~ Paul

The paper in question was one I linked in the Darwins Doubt thread. I have read it. Torley is mistaken, the problem is not fixation, it is the origin. Kozulic sets it straight in the link below. While I am sure your credit is apeciated it is not due. Torley misrepresents Kozulic in this case, a simple mistake nothing to get excited about. We can instead chock this up to a IDer being wrong. Even better don't you think? ;)

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/branko-kozulic-responds/

 

[David Bailey]

It doesn't. I think the free pass award goes to the IDers.

~~ Paul

The problem with that, is that often anyone who points out the serious problems with evolution by natural selection is labelled as an IDer. The basic difficulty with evolution by NS, is that vast parts of the space of DNA changes has no fitness gradient - so NS degenerates into combinatorial search. There is no point scoffing at IDers, without dealing with the real problems in Darwinian evolution that we discussed at length on the old forum.

David

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The paper in question was one I linked in the Darwins Doubt thread. I have read it. Torley is mistaken, the problem is not fixation, it is the origin. Kozulic sets it straight in the link below. While I am sure your credit is apeciated it is not due. Torley misrepresents Kozulic in this case, a simple mistake nothing to get excited about. We can instead chock this up to a IDer being wrong. Even better don't you think? ;)

I don't know what you mean by the bolded part. Oh wait, that statement is from the article you linked.

Very interesting debate with the ID community. I don't see Torley retracting his retraction, but perhaps he will.

Moran posts further:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/branko-kozulic-has-questions-about.html

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The problem with that, is that often anyone who points out the serious problems with evolution by natural selection is labelled as an IDer.

I don't think so. After all, modern evolutionary theory involves many things other than natural selection. Larry Moran, for example, believes that drift is more important.

The basic difficulty with evolution by NS, is that vast parts of the space of DNA changes has no fitness gradient - so NS degenerates into combinatorial search.

Why do you think there is no fitness gradient near the current fitness points? And how much smaller was the space, say, 2 billion years ago?

~~ Paul

 

[billw]

God is a matter of faith, not a matter of science.

I wonder if Einstein would agree with that?

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

To my mind "manifestations of the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty" certainly implies more than random bits of matter and energy doing stuff by pure chance. Studying those manifestations definitely is in the realm of science.

Cheers,
Bill

 

[David Bailey]

I don't think so. After all, modern evolutionary theory involves many things other than natural selection. Larry Moran, for example, believes that drift is more important.

Drift is subject to combinatorial explosion!

Why do you think there is no fitness gradient near the current fitness points? And how much smaller was the space, say, 2 billion years ago?

~~ Paul

Do you remember the experiments that Meyer discussed - the ones showed mutations in 2 codons were enough to completely kill the viability of a protein?

David

 

[LoneShaman]

The problem with that, is that often anyone who points out the serious problems with evolution by natural selection is labelled as an IDer. The basic difficulty with evolution by NS, is that vast parts of the space of DNA changes has no fitness gradient - so NS degenerates into combinatorial search. There is no point scoffing at IDers, without dealing with the real problems in Darwinian evolution that we discussed at length on the old forum.

David

Yes, and to make it worse...

The people pushing the neutral mutation theory as Paul is unwittingly doing here are effectively eliminating natural selection all together! Neutral mutations are unseen by natural selection. Meaning they effectively shoot themselves selves in the foot.

Richard Dawkins makes this statement...

"You often find people who say, well, evolution is a theory of chance, in the absence of a designer. If it really were a theory of chance, of course they would be right to dismiss it as nonsense. No chance process could give rise to the prodigy of organized complexity that is the living world. But it’s not random chance. Natural selection is the exact opposite of a chance process."

And as the majority of mutations are neutral that means the majority is blind to NS, leaving only chance, and as Dawkins says we would be right to reject that as nonsense.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I wonder if Einstein would agree with that?

Did he say something about it?

To my mind "manifestations of the profoundest reason and most radiant beauty" certainly implies more than random bits of matter and energy doing stuff by pure chance. Studying those manifestations definitely is in the realm of science.

I'm not sure what that has to do with god. Einstein didn't seem to believe in chance events, but was a determinist.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Drift is subject to combinatorial explosion!

Except that it wanders in areas of the space that are close to the current working areas.

Do you remember the experiments that Meyer discussed - the ones showed mutations in 2 codons were enough to completely kill the viability of a protein?

No, I don't remember. Did he say it was true for all double-codon mutations? Does he suggest, then, that similar proteins cannot have evolved by gene duplication and evolution?

If he truly believes that selection and drift aren't enough, he should look for an example of god poking some genome. That would really get evolutionary biologists worked up!

~~ Paul

 

[Devane]

Did he say something about it?
~~ Paul

IIRC, Einstein believed in a god, just not a personal god: Spinoza's God. He once said something along the lines of "There are no laws without a lawmaker."