Summary Against Modern Thought: The Human Soul Is Created By God, Part III

@ Oldavid,

[von Braun quote]

Science isn’t “forcing” anyone to believe anything. There simply isn’t any objective evidence for design (or a designer). If von Braun knew of some, he should have mentioned what it was – it’s not rocket science. 😛

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh to study medicine, but found the lectures boring and the sight of blood repulsed him. […]”

Jesus trained as a carpenter but found putting up shelves boring.

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Darwin thought [natural selection is just about ‘malthus’].”

No, he didn’t.

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“[…] new developments in genetics have not been fully incorporated.”

New developments are incorporated into science if the evidence supports them. Epigenetics (if that’s what you’re on about?) doesn’t significantly challenge natural selection as epigenetic changes are only transmitted through a few generations. I note also that creationists often criticise evolution *because* the theory has incorporated new ideas. Also, the proper place for any debate about new developments is in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, not in a book. Or here.

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Now to Jerry Coyne’s list of Darwin’s central ideas from OoS.

1. “No one says otherwise.”

Young Earth Creationists do, so millions of Americans and possibly billions wordwide, thanks mainly to religion, but not helped by people like you spreading disinformation.

2. “And yet wall lizards changed from insectivores to herbivores complete with a new disgestive organ within a mere 20 years of being transported from one island to another.”

Back to the “it happens too fast” trope. Evolution can move more rapidly in small isolated populations, such as those on islands, and obviously in smaller creatures which reproduce more rapidly. It’s also likely that the genetic information for both ‘herbivore’ and ‘carnivore’ have evolved already and are just switched on or off in response to environmental change. Also, if I cited this as an example of “major change”, you’d probably claim it was only a minor (microevolution?) change.

3. [one species can divide (“speciate”) into two or more] “Not a problem. In fact, Aquinas cited it with approval.”

Fine, but Aquinas’s opinion is irrelevant as he appears to have made correct statements less often than you’d expect by chance alone.

4. Again, [common ancestry] not a problem.

Fine.

5. “Even Darwin allowed other motors, like sexual selection. But certainly selection by nature [the environment] is reasonably one of them […]”

Sexual selection is a type of natural selection, or are you saying that sex is unnatural? Nice that you finally (albeit grudgingly) agree that natural selection is a thing though. Of these central Darwinian ideas, you seem to agree with all of them, but complain evolution happens too fast and/or (in a previous comment) too slowly.

“Heck, geocentrism was standing tall and firm after a couple thousand years.”

A misleading analogy as scientific knowledge has advanced far more in the last 158 years than the previous 2,000.

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To dispute the No True Scotsman, you provide examples of the NTS. maybe it would be easier for you to edit RationalWiki instead?

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“And on what basis is murder against the law?”

Because almost everyone agrees that it is wrong. (Next, you’ll say “on what basis do people know it is wrong?”, so to save time, we know it’s wrong because our instinct to preserve our own lives is our strongest instinct and because we grieve. No holy books needed.)

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[List of Bible quotations condoning slavery] “It’s unclear which of them are supposed to condone slavery and which are simply regulations of an existing civil institution.”

If something is being regulated, then it is being condoned when carried out in accordance with the regulations, by definition.

Funny how all the hundreds of examples of appalling cruelty, torture, slavery, murder, genocide and rape in the Bible are all “unclear”, but the few nice bits are all to be taken literally, even though we don’t even have any credible non-Biblical evidence that Jesus even existed.

“It’s unclear to me whether you believe Jews understood their scriptures in that manner. Christians did not, since they specifically abrogated most of these regulations and rules of engagement at the Council of Jerusalem.”

So is the Bible the Word of God or not?

“Darwin enrolled at Edinburgh to study medicine, but found the lectures boring and the sight of blood repulsed him. […]”
Jesus trained as a carpenter but found putting up shelves boring.

There is no evidence for the latter. For the former, we have Darwin’s own testimony and that of his family and friends. The main point is that calling Einstein a “patent clerk” does not mean that he was not already recognized as a brilliant physicist. Calling Darwin a country squire recognizes both that his main passions were riding, shooting, and other pursuits of the gentry, but also that in his day there was no university major in biology. Naturalists (as they were then called) were basically self-taught amateurs or had, like Darwin, held extensive discussions with already well-known naturalists. He also had an extensive beetle collection, meticulously described.

Darwin thought [natural selection is just about ‘malthus’].”
No, he didn’t.

Let’s ask Darwin, shall we?

“In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species.” — Darwin, Autobiography

“…I saw, on reading Malthus on Population, that natural selection was the inevitable result of the rapid increase of all organic beings…” — Darwin, “The Variations Of Animals and Plants under Domestication”

“Civilised populations have been known under favourable conditions, as in the United States, to double their numbers in twenty-five years; and, according to a calculation, by Euler, this might occur in a little over twelve years. (57. See the ever memorable ‘Essay on the Principle of Population,’ by the Rev. T. Malthus, vol. i. 1826. pp. 6, 517.)” — Darwin, Descent of Man

“With savages the difficulty of obtaining subsistence occasionally limits their number in a much more direct manner than with civilised people, for all tribes periodically suffer from severe famines. At such times savages are forced to devour much bad food, and their health can hardly fail to be injured… They are then, also, compelled to wander much, and, as I was assured in Australia, their infants perish in large numbers… Savages, when hard pressed, encroach on each other’s territories, and war is the result; but they are indeed almost always at war with their neighbours. They are liable to many accidents on land and water in their search for food; and in some countries they suffer much from the larger beasts of prey. Even in India, districts have been depopulated by the ravages of tigers.” — Darwin, Descent of Man, listing the various checks on population given by Malthus.

“Malthus has discussed these several checks, but he does not lay stress enough on what is probably the most important of all, namely infanticide, especially of female infants, and the habit of procuring abortion.” — Darwin, Descent of Man

“In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.” — Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 67

“You are right, that I came to the conclusion that selection was the principle of change from the study of domesticated productions; and then, reading Malthus, I saw at once how to apply this principle.” — Darwin, Letter 71, to A.R. Wallace, 6th April, 1859

He also accused those who pooh-poohed Malthus as being deficient in common reason.

“The article is a curiosity of unfairness and arrogance; but, as he [Haughton] sneers at Malthus, I am content, for it is clear he cannot reason.” — Darwin, “Letter 104, to Asa Gray, 8 June 1860

etc., etc. In several of his letters he compares what he calls “unfair” misunderstandings of his theory to the criticisms of Malthus and says that anyone who misunderstands or criticizes Malthus is “deficient in reasoning.”

There were of course other influences:

“…if an organised body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be the most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organised bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.” — James Hutton, Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge Volume 2, 1794

and later:

“… as man, by removing species from the appropriate haunts, superinduces changes on their physical constitution and adaptations, to what extent may not the same take place in wild nature, so that, in a few generations, distinctive characters may be acquired, such as are recognized as indicative of specific diversity … May not, then, a large proportion of what are considered species have descended from a common parentage?” — Edward Blyth, Magazine of Natural History, Volume 1, 1837

Until Wallace and Darwin read their joint paper in 1858, twenty-one years later.

So, Darwin was wrong on just about everything… speculative ontology as well as the most rudimentary method of science. And yet “Evolution” is still proclaimed to be: “the general condition to which all theories, all hypothesis, all systems should kneel; a condition to which they must refer to, from now on, in order for them to be taken in account and to be right”.(TEILHARD de CHARDIN, The human phenomenon, p. 245).

Which is a sophist’s way of saying if it agrees with the “Evolution” paradigm it is “true” and if it disagrees it is “false”… or, effectively, “science” is anything that agrees with the ideology!!

# noisyfish
[von Braun quote]
Science isn’t “forcing” anyone to believe anything. There simply isn’t any objective evidence for design (or a designer). If von Braun knew of some, he should have mentioned what it was – it’s not rocket science. ?””
If you had even moderate skills in reading and comprehension you would realise that Von Broun was not offering any apologetics for anything. He was simply stating that to arbitrarily proscribe a possibility is inimical to the very essence of science.

I suppose that noisyfish is achieving his objective by just making any rational discussion impossible.

@ Oldavid,

“He [von Braun] was simply stating that to arbitrarily proscribe a possibility is inimical to the very essence of science.”

As I’ve already said, science isn’t doing that, it’s just following the evidence. There are multiple lines of evidence for evolution but no evidence at all for design. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for evidence from people who are disputing well-established scientific theories.

Also, do you realise that lots of Christians (including the Catholic Church?) accept evolution and lots of Atheists don’t accept it?

New developments are incorporated into science if the evidence supports them.

That’s the storybook version, anyway. Sometimes, as Max Planck noted, you just have to wait for the old scientists to die.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck

I note also that creationists often criticise evolution *because* the theory has incorporated new ideas.

That’s their problem. They do not know what creation is, so they confuse it with material transformations.

Also, the proper place for any debate about new developments is in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, not in a book. Or here.

Ah, the Shut Up argument.
But Darwin published his theory in a book, not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Newton also, we might add. And even Einstein’s seminal papers were published by the journal’s editor without sending them out for peer-review. There is nothing about peer-reviewed journals to signify anything but enforcement of orthodoxy. In fact, scientists have lately taken to posting their papers on line in ArXiv (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv), bypassing the journals. The proof of the paper is in the reading; i.e., in the number of citations, rather than in prior restraint.

Young Earth Creationists blah-blah-blah.

So tell them about it, not me. Tell them to read the poem correctly.

not helped by people like you spreading disinformation.

Ah, the obligatory personal attack. How scientific.

(cf. wall lizards) Evolution can move more rapidly in small isolated populations, such as those on islands, and obviously in smaller creatures which reproduce more rapidly.

Sure and it’s a wonderful theory that can accommodate any facts and never be falsified. So when Darwinians tell us that evolution proceeds only in small incremental and fortuitous mutations over the course of millions of years, they need to add, “except when it doesn’t.” Of course, that “small, isolated population” trope and the consequent rapidity of an evolution (20 years?) was Eldrege and Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, which was heartily resisted and denounced by the orthodoxy because it gave aid and comfort to the “creationists.” Now it is a bulwark of orthodoxy.

It’s also likely that the genetic information for both ‘herbivore’ and ‘carnivore’ have evolved already and are just switched on or off in response to environmental change.

So now we are citing Aristotelian concepts of potency and act? I thought you didn’t buy into that.
Of course, if a collective moves from A to B, then A must possessed the potential to be a B; and something must have moved it.
There is simply no room at the inn for genes to contain all the detailed blueprints. Information theory and mathematical “chaos” theory: there is only so much room on the substrate for the information to be actualized. Instead, what probably goes on is that the genetics provide “rules for assembly,” like the “flocking” rules for birds. As someone once wrote, perhaps what is selected for is simply the ability to adapt. See Barnsely’s fern for an example: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/BarnsleysFern.html The functions have the remarkable property that even if you enter random numbers for the starting point, recursive iteration will produce the same fern every time. So all the genetics has to do is code for the function set, not the actual shape of the fern itself.

if I cited this as an example of “major change”, you’d probably claim it was only a minor (microevolution?) change.

I don’t know what that means, except maybe the magnitude of the change.

Aquinas’s opinion is irrelevant as he appears to have made correct statements less often than you’d expect by chance alone.

Really? How was this calculated? What was the prior model? Or are you just using mathematical language to garb your opinion in pseudo-scientific words.

Sexual selection is a type of natural selection, or are you saying that sex is unnatural?

Darwin did not so regard it. But it shows that you are using “natural” in a different sense than Darwin and the other pioneers. It does not mean “selection that occurs without divine intervention” but that “the struggle for existence” in the face of exponential population growth and limited food resources will cull the less fit, leaving the better fit in possession. That’s why Darwin resisted the term “natural selection” for so long before throwing in the towel. (He almost never used the term “evolution,” because of its association with the Terror.) His preferred term in the Origin was “descent with modification.”
It is the sloppy use of terminology like “natural” that threatens to reduce a precise scientific theory to a vague metaphor. If all you mean by “natural” is that the selection does not demand divine intervention, then you have turned “natural selection” into a tautology.

Also, sex is unnatural with respect to fungi, many plants, and a host of unicellular organisms.

Nice that you finally (albeit grudgingly) agree that natural selection is a thing though.

Technically, it is not a “thing” but rather a “doing.” But I have never denied that the lesser fit are more likely to die under natural conditions. It’s quite obviously true. What I wonder about is the doctrine that millions of years are required and something called a “random” mutation, in the face of the fossil record and observed evolutions. Mutations that do not kill the organism are surpassingly rare, and intracellular mechanisms that repair such damage make them still more rare. In the fossil record, species maintain their forms for ages. New species appear in the blink of a geological eye. So a theory that takes the “quantum leaps” of evolutions seriously and does not sweep them under the rug with vague allusions to “missing links,” seems a better fit to the data. It wipes out a host of creationist objections. There is no god-of-the-gaps because there are no gaps. There has been plenty of time for evolutions to have produced the present array of species because mutations are not random and are not baby steps. There is no “mousetrap” problem because a complex assembly does not evolve piece by piece, but holisitcally.

“Heck, geocentrism was standing tall and firm after a couple thousand years.”
A misleading analogy as scientific knowledge has advanced far more in the last 158 years than the previous 2,000.

Certainly, there have been big changes in gravitational theory and in electromagnetism, particle theory, chemistry in the past 158 years. But we’re still defending a 19th century vision of evolution driven by population pressure on resources.

To dispute the No True Scotsman, you provide examples of the NTS.

A: All fish breath through gills.
B: But whales are fish and they do not breath through gills.
A: Whales are not true fish.
B: Aha! The No True Fish fallacy.
This simply demonstates the foolishness of invocations of the Scotsman represent. Especially when invoked by people who seem unaware of the difference between a formal fallacy, a material fallacy, and a true argument.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

[Planck quote]

Yes, we’ve all heard that one. So what? Evolution has accepted new evidence and ideas numerous times so this is inapplicable.

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“That’s their [creationists] problem. They do not know what creation is, so they confuse it with material transformations.”

I’m not sure why this is relevant, but why is a god creating the universe via the big bang different to ‘him’ creating it fully-furnished, so-to-speak? Both are the same from my atheist perspective – lacking any supporting evidence.

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“Ah, the Shut Up argument.”

You should take heed of it.

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“But Darwin published his theory in a book, not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.”

But, but, but. Obviously irrelevant, as there was no peer-review system at the time.

“There is nothing about peer-reviewed journals to signify anything but enforcement of orthodoxy.”

This from a Catholic? The irony, it burns!

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“So tell them [young Earth creationists] about it, not me.”

You say the same things they do and use the same arguments, just in a (sometimes) slightly more sophisticated form. For example, replace the often-repeated “It’s just a theory!” with your “Evolution is a fact, natural selection a theory”. It’s just the same old rubbish.

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“Ah, the obligatory personal attack. How scientific.”

Haha, if you think that’s a personal attack, you should see the parts of these replies I deleted before posting! Also, you DO spread misinformation, and I’m not a scientist.

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“Sure and it’s a wonderful theory that can accommodate any facts and never be falsified.”

ID/creationism #351 “not falsifiable = not science”.

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“So now we are citing Aristotelian concepts of potency and act?”

No, this is 2017.

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“There is simply no room at the inn for genes to contain all the detailed blueprints.”

ID/creationism #352 “not enough room in DNA” Do you have peer-reviewed sources for this assertion?

“See Barnsely’s fern for an example: [link] The functions have the remarkable property that even if you enter random numbers for the starting point, recursive iteration will produce the same fern every time. So all the genetics has to do is code for the function set, not the actual shape of the fern itself.”

I’m well aware of this sort of stuff. The fact that a recursive formula can produce a shape like a fern doesn’t mean that an actual fern uses a recursive formula to arrive at the same result, but it wouldn’t disprove evolution if it did.

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“Or are you just using mathematical language to garb your opinion [of Aquinas] in pseudo-scientific words.”

No, I’m being sarcastic. As far as I can tell from reading it on this blog, “SCG” has almost nothing to do with reality at all.

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“But it shows that you are using “natural” in a different sense than Darwin and the other pioneers. […] It is the sloppy use of terminology like “natural” that threatens to reduce a precise scientific theory to a vague metaphor.”

I’m not sure about that. The “divine” isn’t a thing to me so I didn’t contrast “natural” with “divine”. These sorts of arguments over terminology are irrelevant anyway. Natural selection is part of the name for a theory which includes a series of distinct but linked processes, which include population pressure and sexual selection. You are the one who’s always bringing up irrelevant distinctions-without-a-difference, like what name to call something by. Call it whatever you want.

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“Mutations that do not kill the organism are surpassingly rare, and intracellular mechanisms that repair such damage make them still more rare.”

I thought you were arguing that mutations are non-random and directed by something called “natural genetic engineering” – how can that be if they’re mostly harmful? If your assertion about mutations were true, most organisms couldn’t live, and there are many mutations which occur in human beings which do not affect reproduction, even including “harmful” ones. Also, whether a mutation is harmful or not depends on circumstances, and it could be both harmful and beneficial at the same time, like Sickle-Cell Anemia. Also, ID/creationism #353, “most mutations are harmful”.

“New species appear in the blink of a geological eye.”

Which is probably still millions of years – the Earth is more than 6,000 years old, you know. Also, ID/creationism #355, “it happened too fast”.

“So a theory that takes the “quantum leaps” of evolutions seriously and does not sweep them under the rug with vague allusions to “missing links,” seems a better fit to the data.”

You’re completely ignoring the effect of environmental changes as a main driver of evolution. Also missing links jibe is ID/creationism #356 and what is “vague” about the idea – it is crystal clear.

“It wipes out a host of creationist objections.”

There are no valid creationist objections to be wiped out.

“There is no god-of-the-gaps because there are no gaps.”

Correct, there are no gaps. Also no god.

“mutations are not random and are not baby steps.”

So, as I asked earlier, how can most of them be harmful? Also, read some proper research. This stuff is known about and studiied in detail down to the molecular level.

“There is no “mousetrap” problem because a complex assembly does not evolve piece by piece, but holisitcally.”

ID/creationism #357, “irreducible complexity”. Absolute total rubbish. There is no moustrap problem full stop. How would all the parts of a human eye “holistically” appear togather? Also, wouldn’t the eye be useless without the rest of the body and brain? Did the entire human body get “naturally genetic engineered” in one step?

“But we’re still defending a 19th century vision of evolution driven by population pressure on resources.”

The main objection to evolution is ideological and stems from religion, not any actual problem with the theory, as anyone can discern by reading your comments on here, for example.

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[No True Scotsman] can be invoked incorrectly, that’s not what I did. I’m willing to agree that the invocation of fallacies in online arguments is largely counter-productive as almost any argument falls foul of one or another of them.

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“Certainly, there have been big changes in gravitational theory and in electromagnetism, particle theory, chemistry in the past 158 years.”

You missed a few out:

Germ theory, the Greenhouse Effect, Theory of electromagnetism, Mendel’s laws of inheritance, Definition of Entropy, the Periodic table, Rayleigh scattering, the van der Waals force, thermionic emission, photoconductivity, the Crookes tube, the phase rule, Statistical definition of entropy, Piezoelectricity, the laws of chemical dynamics, lack of evidence for the aether, liquid crystals, the first virus, x-rays, radioactivity, the basic principles of the greenhouse effect, the electron, the Plum pudding model of an atom, the term “radioactivity”, Planck’s law of black body radiation, stellar classification, theory of special relativity, explanation of Brownian motion, and photoelectric effect, Third law of thermodynamics, Arsphenamine, the first modern chemotherapeutic agent, Haber Process, the charge on an electron, the first white dwarf star, the Atomic nucleus, Superconductivity, Continental drift, x-ray diffraction, galactic redshifts, Cepheid variables, atomic number, Model of the atom, general relativity, black holes, Noether’s theorem, Stellar nucleosynthesis, insulin, Pauli exclusion principle, the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies, Schrödinger equation, the composition of the Sun, Uncertainty principle, the Big Bang, Dirac equation, the expanding universe, Penicillin, fourth law of thermodynamics, the Chandrasekhar limit, the neutron, Sagittarius A, Calorie restriction extends the maximum lifespan of another species, Nuclear fission, Nuclear magnetic resonance, DNA, Mass production of penicillin, the transistor, Information theory, Quantum electrodynamics, polio vaccine, proteins are sequences of amino acids, helical structure of DNA, the first cosmic x-ray source, Scorpius X-1, evidence of plate tectonics, quarks, detection of CMBR, the Hayflick limit, the first pulsar, the first gamma-ray burst, Place cells, gravitational wave radiation in the Hulse–Taylor binary, the first DNA sequencing, the first millisecond pulsar, the polymerase chain reaction, High-temperature superconductivity, the first pulsar planets, Andrew Wiles proves Fermat’s Last Theorem, the first extrasolar planet around a main sequence star, the first Bose-Einstein Condensate, Dolly the sheep was cloned, the Top quark, discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe / Dark Energy, the Tau neutrino, the first draft of the Human Genome Project, proof of the Poincaré Conjecture, Grid cells in the brain, the first induced pluripotent stem cells, first fast radio burst, the first synthetic genome, Neanderthal admixture is present in modern populations, Higgs boson, Photonic molecules, Exotic hadrons, Traces of liquid water discovered on Mars, gravitational waves, An Earth-like planet located just 21 Light-year away, that may host liquid water on its surface.

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Finally, it’s good to see you’ve dropped your defence of Slavery in the Bible. Baby steps.

[creationists] do not know what creation is, so they confuse it with material transformations.
I’m not sure why this is relevant

Because you keep throwing creationist arguments into the mix — as was done against Eldrege and Gould.

“There is nothing about peer-reviewed journals to signify anything but enforcement of orthodoxy.”
This from a Catholic? The irony, it burns!

Irony, schmirony. Who do you think invented peer-review? It was a medieval process to ensure orthodoxy in the wrirings of priests, monks, and others preparing theological treatises. William of Ockham resented it so much that he dropped out of school and never received a doctorate. Like natural selection, it does weed out gross errors. But it is not a system that promotes evolution of ideas.

You say the same things [young Earth creationists] do and use the same arguments, just in a (sometimes) slightly more sophisticated form.

And this makes them wrong, how? The same accusations were laid against Eldrege and Gould. It’s a form of the genetic fallacy much like Bulverism. Consider how “Hitler was a vegetarian” addresses arguments in favor of vegitarianism; i.e., not at all. Punctuated equilibrium was either correct or incorrect on its own merits, not because it gave aid and comfort to creationists.

For example, replace the often-repeated “It’s just a theory!” with your “Evolution is a fact, natural selection a theory”. It’s just the same old rubbish.

Not the same, because the positivist distinction between facts and theories is the heart and soul of the scientific method. It’s just a matter of properly identifying which is which. Besides, a theory is never “just a theory.” In Science, a theory is not a wild-assed guess, but a carefully thought out narrative in terms of which the facts and laws “make sense.” The whole point of natural science is to develop theories to explain the facts. (Or a propter quid to explain the quia.) See Galileo’s discussion of what he called “the demonstrative regress” for further information.

Feynman points out that a physicist always has more than one theory in mind, each of them predicting the same body of facts, but differing in their ability to inspire new ideas. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJfjRoxCbk) Apparently, biologists aren’t quite up to the physicists.

“Sure and it’s a wonderful theory that can accommodate any facts and never be falsified.”
ID/creationism #351 “not falsifiable = not science”.

It was Popper who equated “not falsifiable” with “not scientific.”
“Neither Darwin nor any Darwinist has yet provided an adequate causal explanation, that is, a scientific explanation of the adaptive evolution of a single organism or organ. They have only shown that evolution is theoretically possible.”
— Karl Popper, “Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach”
For this heresy, Popper was severely criticized and (of course) compared to creationists. The shaming was effective and he later recanted.

However, when challenged to give an example of something that would falsify natural selection, one usually gets a response like “a pre-Cambrian rabbit.” That is, an example that is so outre it reveals the speaker’s belief that it cannot really be falsified.

It is way too easy to spin “an adaptationist just-so story” to account for any extant feature or attribute of an organism — without the need that hard scientists have to actually provide confirmatory data that the story is not merely plausible but factual. Gould used to complain about this. Orr, too, IIRC.

“So now we are citing Aristotelian concepts of potency and act?”
No, this is 2017.

And yet, you wrote earlier that

It’s also likely that the genetic information for both ‘herbivore’ and ‘carnivore’ have evolved already and are just switched on or off in response to environmental change.

And what is this statement but a call upon the potency of the organism to be one or the other, with the actualization to one of them effected by the environment?

“There is simply no room at the inn for genes to contain all the detailed blueprints.”
ID/creationism #352 “not enough room in DNA”

More like “information theory,” where I ran across it in pre-Internet days. See also mathematical complexity theory.

The fact that a recursive formula can produce a shape like a fern doesn’t mean that an actual fern uses a recursive formula to arrive at the same result, but it wouldn’t disprove evolution if it did.

Why is it that you denounce every tidbit that makes evolution more explicable as trying to “disprove” evolution? Why would you expect information theory to disprove “evolution.” (Although, as repeatedly mentioned, evolutions are the explanandum, not the explanation.)

Natural selection is part of the name for a theory which includes a series of distinct but linked processes, which include population pressure and sexual selection.

That’s how you debase the theory into a tautology. Darwin regarded sexual selection as a distinct causal mechanism from natural selection. Slovenly usage by Late Moderns merely muddies the waters. The whole point of the discussion is that there may be (and certainly are) more than one way for an evolution to proceed. What reason do you have for rejecting the theory of natural genetic engineering? In your terms, it could very well be one of these “distinct processes.”

“Mutations that do not kill the organism are surpassingly rare, and intracellular mechanisms that repair such damage make them still more rare.”
ID/creationism #353, “most mutations are harmful”. I thought you were arguing that mutations are non-random and directed by something called “natural genetic engineering” – how can that be if they’re mostly harmful?

Take a sentence; then randomly change one letter. The alteration is far more likely to produce an unintelligible sentence than a different intelligible sentence. The deleterious effects of “random mutation” due to copying errors or damage of various sorts is well known.

there are many mutations which occur in human beings which do not affect reproduction, even including “harmful” ones.

Exactly. Hence, phenotype changes cannot plausibly be due to small, random mutations.

Don’t forget the doctrine of random mutations was developed from physics-envy. The sexy research topic at the time was thermodynamics, which used random variation for the motions of gas particles and the like. This was a deliberate a priori choice, not a conclusion from the data. No one realized at the time that biological organisms were not the same kind of thing as volumes of gas. See Hayek’s Nobel laureate speech, “The Pretence of Knowledge.”

whether a mutation is harmful or not depends on circumstances

Exactly, but I thought you didn’t believe in final causes.

“So a theory that takes the “quantum leaps” of evolutions seriously and does not sweep them under the rug with vague allusions to “missing links,” seems a better fit to the data.”
You’re completely ignoring the effect of environmental changes as a main driver of evolution. Also missing links jibe is ID/creationism #356 and what is “vague” about the idea – it is crystal clear.

Actually, I do consider epigenetic factors as playing a major role. It’s behind a lot of Shapiro’s writings.
You miss the point about Darwin’s “missing link” problem. Darwin knew the links were missing but predicted that future fossils would find them. A theory of punctuated equilibrium such as is implicit in Shapiro’s genetics, simply eliminates the gaps entirely. So there is no need to “fill them in.”

“It wipes out a host of creationist objections.”
There are no valid creationist objections to be wiped out.

Oh, some of them are valid. Biologists ask the same questions. Creationists sometimes pick them up and misunderstand them. Apparently, so do some fanboys. If only they weren’t adopted by creationists, biology would be free to act more like a science; i.e., question established theory, consider alternatives, and so on.
But valid or not, they might persuade; so better they be eliminated.

So, as I asked earlier, how can most [mutations] be harmful?

Because the cellular mechanisms that repair and replace mitigate the harm.

“There is no “mousetrap” problem because a complex assembly does not evolve piece by piece, but holisitcally.”
ID/creationism #357, “irreducible complexity”.

Only an atheist, terrified that if Darwinian theory fell only a theokinetic God could replace it, could take a theory that eliminates the possibility of “irreducible complexity” to be an irreducible complexity argument. Dude, take a breath. If Darwin had to be replaced, it would be replaced by another natural theory, not by God.

The main objection to evolution is ideological and stems from religion, not any actual problem with the theory

Who is objecting to evolution?

“Certainly, there have been big changes in gravitational theory and in electromagnetism, particle theory, chemistry in the past 158 years.”
You missed a few out: Germ theory, the Greenhouse Effect, …

I wasn’t trying to list every scientific discovery. I mentioned a few revolutionary upheavals in the paradigms. The transformation to the New Physics was revolutionary. Milikin’s oil-drop experiment was simply a measurement made within the paradigm. Not even suited up in the same game.

http://tofspot.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/post-darwinian-evolution.html

Very late to this thread, but just to offer up grateful thanks to YoS for his detailed and erudite contributions, which go a long way towards helping me better understand those areas of evolutionary theory that are more – or less – contentious both scientifically and ideologically. And to the other contributors who have presented positions that I might also not otherwise have considered.

@ Jonathan S,

“just to offer up grateful thanks to YoS for his detailed and erudite contributions, which go a long way towards helping me better understand those areas of evolutionary theory”

You’ve allowed yourself to be misled. YOS isn’t an evolutionary biologist, has no expertise in the field, and appears to base his myriad criticisms not on peer-reviewed research but on a few contarian books. I agree that he appears ‘erudite’, but that is because he quotes ‘erudite’ but irrelevant sources such as philosophers. Try looking up the facts about one of his scientific references, such as Peppered Moths, and a quite different picture emerges:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/iconob.html#moths

I can’t speak for YOS, only for my understanding and interpretation of what has been written above. Which is as follows: evolution in its broadest sense is pretty much self-evident. Darwinism, however, does not enjoy this privilege in that other, scientific, theories compete and in some cases are more persuasive (this is not controversial).

If someone attempts to dismiss an alternative, science-based theory on the basis that the proponent must be a creationist or an advocate for “intelligent design” in order to advance such a theory, then what I see is an attempt to discredit the proponent rather than the theory. I get no sense from YOS’s contributions that he is interested in anything other than the advancement of scientific understanding, and I see no ID or creationist advocacy whatsoever.

I have no problem with atheism per se – what an individual believes belongs to that individual. Where I do have a problem is with the contention that a person with religious beliefs can not be scientific. Faith and science are as distinct from each other as humour differs from a tetrahedron – the creationist confuses this distinction as much as the fundamentalist atheist, and I see no confusion in this regard on the part of YOS.

Faith and science cannot be contradictory, or mutually exclusive, or even ultimately conflicting, because in any rational theistic sense science is entirely impossible without some consistent, intelligible order to be examined and understood. Order does not, cannot, create itself out of disorder with no mechanism and for no purpose. For there to be any order there must be an orderer with means and purpose… just as a builder cannot build something without the means and purpose.

There are a great number of humanoids who wish to “construct” a reality to their own aggrandisement that assumes that “reality” is “becoming” according to their whims and fancies. The “Evolution” paradigm is indispensable to this arrogance and hubris.

To that end they wish to torture and twist the well thought considerations of great thinkers to conform to their prejudice and they appear to have not the slightest compunction in selectively misquoting said sages to further their myopic ambitions.

Please find a very practical introduction to the problem in this link:
http://kolbecenter.org/a-philosophical-critique-of-darwins-the-origin-of-species/

“Faith and science cannot be contradictory, or mutually exclusive, or even ultimately conflicting, because in any rational theistic sense science is entirely impossible….”

The faith science false dichotomy isn’t relevant to the evolution argument whichever way it’s sliced.

For the Theist who is a scientist of whichever flavour or calibre, they are working within the realm of the already existent material world. In such a world view rationality comes first then mass energy and life. The sequence isn’t affected which ever view of evolution or not a person takes.

Rationality comes in when discussing the automatic inevitability of evolution ending with rationality on the one hand,

OR evolution with rationality at it’s root and possibly, for some, elsewhere in the chain.

The Atheist says the former, the theist says the latter.
Don’t pretend people are being stupid. They are just expressing their world view.

Intelligence is not what separates people on this matter. It’s a side issue and a completely separate matter.

@ Joyous
“Don’t pretend people are being stupid. They are just expressing their world view. ”

Of course, relativistically speaking, any “world view” can’t be stupid because it’s someone’s “world view”.

I rest my case!

@YOS,

That’s exactly what the DNA/RNA do. They encode the function set, including the functions that do the assembly. Some of the functions encoded do error correction, some of the functions are ‘robust’ to the vagaries of wet chemistry such that ‘errors’ don’t destroy the function. Some of the functions modify other functions. Some of the functions do self-modification. [NB, in computer programming, self modifying code is among the most difficult to be sure it works correctly.] Still, DNA/RNA by themselves can’t, in a manner of speaking, compile themselves into a functional system. There are other bits that are physically necessary as well as logically necessary for the system to propagate itself. This is the part where the designer comes in.

Again, can any thing be if there is no thing? /rhetorical

Oh, another one @YOS, ‘natural selection’ is a tautology, particularly as it is used so often today. I have taken published articles in scientific journals and substituted “God” for “Evolution” and/or “natural selection” and found that the meaning didn’t change. Also, very often, the “God” being straw-manned isn’t the God of Christianity. That God Is, has said that I AM and that all of the contingent existence that has, is now, and will exist ALL exist due to Him.

Actually, YOS, mutations that do kill are the ones that are rare. These are the ones we become aware of readily. Most mutations don’t kill at all. Most are neutral. Some give a current disadvantage that was an advantage in the past. Some give a current advantage that will not necessarily be so in the future. Some give a current disadvantage is some circumstances that when present in others, isn’t a disadvantage at all.

I thought they had given up on the black/white moth thingie, just like on the Eohippus-Mesohippus-Equus thingie. I’m pretty sure that each generation of moths produces the same spectrum of black and white moths, no matter which ones get picked off by the birdies. IOW, no actual evolution [motion] has taken place, since the trait in question is not actually heritable. White wingers give birth to black wingers as easily as black wingers to white wingers. (Otherwise you’re back to the ol’ ‘too fast for Darwin’ problem.)
+++
If you replace “evolution” with “God,” it would read as easily as if you replaced “evolution” with “dumtiddly.”
+++
How can you tell if a “mutation” is “advantageous”? Do they come with labels? Isn’t this too teleological? Here’s a theory. “Mutations” are not advantageous or disadvantageous. They just happen. If the species prospers, then they are labeled post hoc as “advantageous.” But any organism strives to preserve itself (“Life” is an animate version of “inertia”) so it will try this or try that and perhaps find a way to use whatever the mutation resulted in. This may involve inter alia changing its behavior in a way that incorporates the alteration.
+++
The way “natural selection” is bandied about, it is as meaningless as “intelligent design.” Both phrases were cooked up as a shorthand way of naming a particular theory and both seem to survive any undermining of the particulars. Thus, “intelligent design,” to take the latter, survives as a term even when referring to notions that do not incorporate the concept of “irreducible complexity.” Taking the word “intelligent” in isolation to mean only “not-random-chance,” any theory whatsoever can be described that way.

(Had Behe’s followers not tacked “…and therefore God” on the end, he would have had only the standard hassles of any heretic, as Eldrege and Gould discovered. Given the notion that evolution must proceed by small, incremental steps, it would seem a valid criticism. But the conclusion should have been, “…and therefore, evolution cannot always proceed by small, incremental steps.”)

Similarly, the term “natural selection,” a term that Darwin detested, and avoided as much as he could, gets employed to cover all sorts of theories that do not invoke the two-stroke Malthusian engine of over-reproduction-plus-struggle-for-resources. Taking the word “natural” to mean only “not-supernatural,” any theory whatsoever can be described that way. Had his fanboys not tacked “…and therefore, no-God” on the end, it would have been no more controversial than the theory of electromagnetism. If we recall Aquinas’ Fifth Way, it is the very lawfulness of the world that substantiates the existence of God, not bizarre and inexplicable exceptions. To the extent that Darwin’s “descent with modification” (his preferred term throughout) could be considered a scientific law, Thomas would have regarded it as one more minor evidence in support of God’s existence.

Tom’s fifth way is summarised here by Dr. Jeffrey Bond and it, in no way, implies, excuses, or rationalises the “Evolution” paradigm.
” St. Thomas’ fifth proof of the existence of God reads as follows:

The fifth way is taken from the governance of things. We see that things which lack knowledge, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that they achieve their end not by chance, but by design. Now whatever lacks knowledge cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence, as the arrow is directed by the archer. Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are ordered to their end; and this being we call God.”

Quoted from: http://kolbecenter.org/a-philosophical-critique-of-darwins-the-origin-of-species/

Name-dropping and specious insinuations are characteristic of sophistry.

There’s something about the name cdquarles that reminds me of PDQBach… something that seems entirely serious but is ,in fact, a send-up of the “serious”.

Being somewhat autistic I don’t smile or laugh much but when I first heard PDQBach I almost suffocated because I was laughing too much to get a breath in.
Creation and its inhabitants are curiously both similar and diverse; something that “Evolutionists” cannot comprehend and that eugenicists seek to eradicate.

Bugger! That came out all wrong to what I had in my remote mind.
cdquarles is sensible, and practically intelligible… no “a priori” presumptions implied.

No guarantees offered or implied as to how my understanding translates into words or how your understanding translates out of words.

“Oldavid rests his case’
Relativism does not apply here at all.
Obviously Theism or Atheism is correct.
The truth of this is not relative according to perspective as your stated case implies.

Intelligence is not what divides opinion on God’s existence.
Einstein did not believe God and I don’t think he could be described as a relativist!

That the many atheists use this tactic is just provocation which is rather tired by now.
Something which should be taken on broad shoulders because people shouldn’t be embarrassed about what they believe.

Mind/rationality then mass/energy, and rationality
Or
Mass/energy, then rationality/mind

Those are the choices. Mind is either reducible to material or not.

Evolution fits well within the realm of science as it deals with the already created and is therefore not in conflict with Theism. It never was and pretending it was until just now or when the Pope said it was okay is necessary clambering to appear to be on the side of the intellectual majority. There have always been and will always be people who do not hold to evolution being a reality.

Those pretending to extra cleverness because they have God’s creation working with the least possible acts are just using a version of the same tactic as the atheist who mocks because ‘magic’ is invoked or YOS’s “woowoo” some other ‘gratuitous’ necessary addition….and all because they’re too dumb to know the truth…or something equally cheeky.

To be exercised about one idea or another on the topic is only exacerbating and adding heat and confusion to what is rather a simple argument even if the mechanisms may be complex.

Relativism is an irrational assumption that can be applied to just about anything. Essentially, it says that something is only “true” according to the circumstance, convenience, knowledge, preference, perception, ideology, etc. etc., of the subject or observer.
[quote] Something which should be taken on broad shoulders because people shouldn’t be embarrassed about what they believe. [/quote]
unless they pertinaciously believe some superstition that is clearly impossible, absurd, or just plain silly or perverse. To wilfully “believe” such without embarrassment is to have a protective skin of Relativism about a foot thick.

Einstein got to be famous for his efforts in trying to insinuate ideological relativism into the physical arena… which is universally relied on by “Evolutionists” who ideologically insist that even the hard sciences, like physics and logic, are only “true” if they support a Materialist ideology. As such, “science” is implicitly re-defined to being that which supports the (religious) ideology of Materialism and Naturalism without any deference to ubiquitously observed reality.

Relativism not only applies but is a fundamental prerequisite to what you’re selling, Joy

That is insistence without appreciation or reflection as to the point made.
You don’t seem to know relativism when you see it.

I think you are speaking of moral relativism. That a lack of faith in God results in a change in morals. That’s another matter about which there’s much to say but not relevant here.

When someone ignores self evident truth of a lesser importance, such as Einstein’s intellect or the facts which are self evident in evolution, then this, I would say, really does constitute an individual who is not dealing in truth but is himself regarding the world in a ‘relative’ way. Where the world is as he insists it is and everybody else is wrong.

Now you are entitled to an opinion on anything of course but the truth is incontrovertible.

On the matter of God’s existence you are mixing what IS ultimately and what is believed to exist. This is not the definition of relativism. Although it is indeed a convenient insult to throw about.

A truth is not absolute in the real, rational, sense until it cannot be denied except by a madman and they are not considered for obvious reasons.

If God’s existence did not require ‘belief’ then the Jesus in the bible in who I presume you still believe spent much of his time saying,

“if you believe on me’
“if you believe on him.”

What you insist on is the non existence of doubt and or Faith which in a sense would disappear in your world. There would be no puzzle, no freedom, no mystery; It would be as a world where there were no good, no evil, no right/wrong. A clockwork world of automatons…

So you are insisting that the world is like you say it is. Let’s ignore that you think Einstein and Hawking are idiots, that’s a much smaller fib.

You might think another’s belief is silly or worthy of mocking or anything else you fancy but this is a separate matter to the one at hand and to the points I made. There’s also no need, as I stated, for anybody holding a view on a matter based on their own level of information, their experience and their God given right to make up their own mind. That is not relative truth. It is opinion.

‘Critical realism’ would be a more accurate way to describe what I was at. In order to have some kind of common route from which people can agree to start with! see where their views differ or diverge?
…and here are some quotes I thought might soothe the Oldavid, not thee Oldavid, The Oldavid.
~~~
Darwin’s doubt:
“but then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals are of any value or are at all trustworthy. Would anybody trust the convictions of a monkey’s mind? If there were any convictions in such a mind?”

C.S Lewis:
“Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true.
It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory that explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid would be out of court.

For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking and if thinking I s not valid then that theory would itself be of course demolished.
It would have destroyed it’s own credentials, it would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound; a proof that there is not such thing as proof which is nonsense. “

Thomas Nagal:
Mind and cosmos
“Why the materialist Neo-darwinian conception of the world are almost certainly false. “

“Consciousness is the most conspicuous obstacle to our comprehensive naturalism that relies only upon the resources of physical science. If we take this problem seriously and follow out it’s implications it threatens to unravel the entire naturalistic world view.
If the mental is not itself merely physical it cannot be fully explained by physical science. Evolutionary naturalism implies that we shouldn’t take any of our convictions seriously including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism itself depends.

(There’s honesty for you.)
So no more talk of relativism.

Both your feet must be chock full of holes, Joy.
I’ve found an opportunity for you to make some “big bucks”. I suppose that if you have the necessary qualifications you could nominate yourself to claim the prize.

What Is the Written Debate Offer?
The following is intended to provide the public with a balanced, fair, and understandable comparison of the two main explanations for how everything began. The debate topic will be:

Does the Scientific Evidence Favor Creation or Evolution?

A $10,000 finder’s fee, held by an escrow agent, will be given to the first person who finds an evolutionist with an earned doctoral degree in an applied or basic science who

•signs the italicized agreement below.
•submits his or her strictly scientific case for evolution.
•rebuts my case for creation, and
•completes the written debate.

Full details of the offer can be found at:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ427.html

@ Oldavid,

The site you link to is worthless from a scientific perspective. Try following any of the numbered links and they go back to the same site, are just quotes taken out of context, or assume “we don’t know” to mean “god dunnit”.

I read through some of the section on asteroids, which are apparently supposed to have come from Earth after being thrown into space by plumes of water (moving at more than 25,000 mph?!) at the start of the biblical flood, a laughably absurd hypothesis – I wonder how Noah’s fragile ark managed to avoid the onslaught of asteroids being thrown up into space from the deep?

Example huge error or lie from 44. Earth: The Water Planet.

“The amount of water on Earth greatly exceeds that known to be on or within any other planet in the solar system.”

https://io9.gizmodo.com/theres-more-water-on-jupiters-moon-europa-than-there-5913104

Incidentally, I’ve emailed them to point this out – it’ll be interesting to see if I get a reply.

@ cdquarles,

“Still, DNA/RNA by themselves can’t, in a manner of speaking, compile themselves into a functional system. There are other bits that are physically necessary as well as logically necessary for the system to propagate itself. This is the part where the designer comes in.”

Got any evidence for this?

“Again, can any thing be if there is no thing? /rhetorical”

Got any evidence that a “no thing” state ever existed?

“Oh, another one @YOS, ‘natural selection’ is a tautology, particularly as it is used so often today. I have taken published articles in scientific journals and substituted “God” for “Evolution” and/or “natural selection” and found that the meaning didn’t change.”

You appear to be arguing that god is a tautology. Evolution is not:

http://www.talkorigins.org/sandbox/Keith/kwork/Ver5_tautology.html

Perhaps blaring pointynoseyfish and ALL of his ideological cronies would like to pool their resources and take up the challenge? Big money is offered.

So far the best you can offer is specious, sophistical, rhetorical “questions” that you do not even attempt to answer. I think it’s called wilful obfuscation.

Lift your game, buster, your credibility is already in the negative.

Just by-the-way, I don’t necessarily subscribe to all Brown’s hypotheses… but, just for now, I can’t refute them either. If you can you stand to gain 10 grand.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

(I wasn’t going to bother posting this comment, but I’d already typed it out, so thought I would. I’ve trimmed it down to avoid too much irrelevant nonsense about philosophy.)

“Because you keep throwing creationist arguments into the mix”

I’m fairly sure it’s you that’s doing that, for instance “missing links” and “irreducible complexity” are two of the most common creationist talking points. You can go to talkorigins or similar online sources and find refutations of them. There just isn’t any need for a new theory to explain them.

*

“However, when challenged to give an example of something that would falsify natural selection, one usually gets a response like “a pre-Cambrian rabbit.””

What would falsify ‘natural genetic engineering’ or, for that matter, ‘final causes’? By the way, how many evolutionary biologists have you personally asked?

*

“It is way too easy to spin “an adaptationist just-so story” to account for any extant feature or attribute of an organism”

So easy that it took the whole of human history until 158 years ago for someone to do it. Also, so what?

*

[not enough room in DNA] “More like “information theory,” where I ran across it in pre-Internet days. See also mathematical complexity theory.”

I asked for a reference to a paper, you don’t have one.

“Why is it that you denounce every tidbit that makes evolution more explicable as trying to “disprove” evolution? Why would you expect information theory to disprove “evolution.””

I thought you were claiming exactly that, in regard to the “not enough room in DNA trope? But I’m not claiming that the ‘recursive fomula’ idea is wrong, as far as I’m aware, it’s entirely plausible. It’s just that AFAIK, such a mechanism would be the result of natural selection working on random mutations.

*

“Darwin regarded sexual selection as a distinct causal mechanism from natural selection. Slovenly usage by Late Moderns merely muddies the waters.”

So what? How many times do I have to agree that Darwin didn’t get everything right? (And while we’re on the subject, what’s with this stupid “late moderns” thing? If I’m a “late modern”, what are you – an “ancient”?)

*

“What reason do you have for rejecting the theory of natural genetic engineering?”

Because most evolutionary biologists do. I’m not an expert so accept the consensus of opinion. Also, it doesn’t make sense to me. What reason do you have for accepting it?

Also, you’re so busy attacking every aspect of evolutionary theory, that you’ve forgotten to explain your favoured NGE hypothesis. Can you do so, in a few lines, as a list of steps, like 1, 2, 3?

*

[I thought you were arguing that mutations are non-random and directed by something called “natural genetic engineering” – how can that be if they’re mostly harmful?]

“Take a sentence; then randomly change one letter. The alteration is far more likely to produce an unintelligible sentence than a different intelligible sentence. The deleterious effects of “random mutation” due to copying errors or damage of various sorts is well known.”

1. You didn’t answer my question.
2. DNA isn’t a language.

I need to ask for a third time: How can there be something acting to direct evolution in a positive way if most mutations are harmful? (Which they aren’t by the way.)

[whether a mutation is harmful or not depends on circumstances] “Exactly, but I thought you didn’t believe in final causes.”

I don’t. Also, you didn’t answer my main points here. We’re all walking around with mutations like different hair colour, which are neither good nor bad, so your whole ‘most mutations are bad’ claim is wrong anyway.

*

“Actually, I do consider epigenetic factors as playing a major role. It’s behind a lot of Shapiro’s writings.”

I *know* you favour epigenetic factors. AFAIK, they aren’t significant because they can’t be passed on through multiple generations, as I said. You didn’t respond to that point either.

*

“You miss the point about Darwin’s “missing link” problem. Darwin knew the links were missing but predicted that future fossils would find them. A theory of punctuated equilibrium such as is implicit in Shapiro’s genetics, simply eliminates the gaps entirely. So there is no need to “fill them in.””

I didn’t miss the point, you did. Darwin was right, scientists *have* found many ‘missing link’ fossils, and more are being found all the time. There’s no need for a new theory to fill in gaps which are being continually filled in anyway by physical discoveries.

*

“If only they weren’t adopted by creationists, biology would be free to act more like a science; i.e., question established theory, consider alternatives, and so on.”

FFS! Biology is one of the areas of science most heavily involved in debate and argument and by quoting biologists like Shapiro who dispute aspects of it, you’re refuting your own claim.

*

[So, as I asked earlier, how can most [mutations] be harmful?]

“Because the cellular mechanisms that repair and replace mitigate the harm.”

So they’re not harmful then? You need to get your story straight here. If mutations are mostly harmfull (they’re not, BTW) then how do they provide evidence for NGE?

*

“Only an atheist, terrified that if Darwinian theory fell only a theokinetic God could replace it, could take a theory that eliminates the possibility of “irreducible complexity” to be an irreducible complexity argument. Dude, take a breath. If Darwin had to be replaced, it would be replaced by another natural theory, not by God.”

How many times?! There *IS* no ‘irreducible complexity’ problem outside of ID/creationism and your (entirely coincidentally identical) claims.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ICsilly.html

@ Oldavid,

“Perhaps blaring pointynoseyfish and ALL of his ideological cronies would like to pool their resources and take up the challenge? Big money is offered”

The money would be nice, but it’s obvious that this Dr. Brown person (who, I note, has a Ph.D in the irrelevant field of mechanical engineering) would never pay out on his phoney challenge. In any case, who has the time to write out a refutation of 400+ pages of rubbish? If Dr. Brown actually has scientific evidence for his claims, why doesn’t he submit it ‘Nature’ and collect his Nobel prize?

I’ll update you if he replies to my email about the amount of water on the Earth.

“Lift your game, buster, your credibility is already in the negative.”

Coming from you, I take that as a compliment. Have a nice day!

Let’s examine your credibility, fishy.

It has been shown that “Evolution” is physically and logically impossible.
All the so-called “evidence” for “Evolution” is firmly based on entirely unscientific “circular reasoning” where the desired result is assumed and used to interpret some carefully selected (and often completely fraudulent) factoids to “prove” the original assumption.

All of your “argument” so far has been parroting the well known fashionable ideology and scoffing at a straw man of your own invention. In short, you don’t have a logical or scientific leg to stand on. Your ideology is a chimera produced and sustained by sophistry, glib deceptive rhetoric, and relentless repetition.

I’ve trimmed it down to avoid too much irrelevant nonsense

Oh, good.

I’m fairly sure it’s you that’s [throwing creationist arguments into the mix], for instance “missing links” and “irreducible complexity” are two of the most common creationist talking points.

But I mentioned them only to dismiss them. Rapid, massive, and specific evolutions totally negate their relevance.

What would falsify ‘natural genetic engineering’ or, for that matter, ‘final causes’?

a) I don’t totally buy into Popper and irrationalism, but he seems to be very popular among the Science!™ crowd.
b) Evolution by natural [Malthusian] sorting could be falsified by an example of an evolution that could not be effected by a gradual series of slow point variations; but all one ever sees are just-so stories. Spinning a tale about how such an evolution came about is no replacement for demonstrating that that was how it did come about.
c) In fact, we all know what the discovery of a pre-Cambrian rabbit would result in; starting with “redeposition” and ending in “hoax.”
d) Natural genetic engineering could be falsified by demonstrating that the various mechanisms included, such as cell-repair, horizontal transfers of plasmids, et al. do not have the effects they are said to have.
e) Final causation is not a scientific hypothesis and is no more subject to modus tollens than is modus tollens itself. Perhaps if one day a scientific law is discovered that does not consistently effect anything in particular; but it is difficult from a logical perspective to see how it then would qualify as a law in the first place.

So easy [to spin “an adaptationist just-so story”] that it took the whole of human history until 158 years ago for someone to do it. Also, so what?

Empedocles first suggested it back in ancient Greece, and Aesop was doing it a very long time ago. The so-what part is where we admit that you could not get away with circular reasoning in physics or chemistry.

I thought you were claiming exactly that [information theory to disprove “evolution], in regard to the “not enough room in DNA trope? … AFAIK, such a mechanism would be the result of natural selection working on random mutations.

Information theory does not disprove evolution. Evolution is a fact, not a theory. You can only disprove theories. What it illustrates is that the old-time imagery of the genome as “blueprint” cannot possibly be true. And that only means that something like recursiveness would be needed.

So what? How many times do I have to agree that Darwin didn’t get everything right?

Except about gradual evolution by small, incremental changes? You seem to be pushing back a great deal on that one. But gradualism was a methodological choice, not a scientific discovery. There is no reason to cling to it so tightly.

And while we’re on the subject, what’s with this stupid “late moderns” thing?

The Late Modern era began in the early 1890s (about 10 years earlier in the arts) when the Modern consensus began to fall apart. Inter alia it was the end of the Age of the Book, and the written word began to give way to the less reflective visual image in the primary imagination of Western man. Consequently, words began to be used less precisely than in the High Modern Ages. By the 1950s, people began saying “I feel that…” instead of “I think that…”

“What reason do you have for rejecting the theory of natural genetic engineering?” Because most evolutionary biologists do. I’m not an expert so accept the consensus of opinion.

The consensus of physicists in the early 1600s clung to the stationary earth model and rejected the geomobile theories of mere mathematicians like Copernicus and Galileo. There were apparently insuperable objections, such as the lack of Coriolis effects and the lack of stellar parallax, that seemed to falsify the models. So, consensus is a shaky reed to rely on. Historically, people who are taught a theory tend to cling to it more than those who invented the theory. I cannot help but wonder whether Darwin would have been delighted with the discoveries of modern microbiology, even if they showed his Malthusian theory was only a part of the picture.

DNA isn’t a language.

And charged particles are not planets, yet Coulomb’s law works. cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

[whether a mutation is harmful or not depends on circumstances] “Exactly, but I thought you didn’t believe in final causes.”
I don’t.

But a mutation is neither harmful nor beneficial, except in the context of what a critter is trying to do. Final causes are the that-toward-which a cause is pointing. Even if we allow reification of “natural selection” as if it were a physical force like electromagetism or gravity, it is a stretch to write about natural selection acting on a species.

scientists *have* found many ‘missing link’ fossils

Sure. No one says that evolutions never proceed slowly. But as Niles Eldrege pointed out, it is hardly likely that nearly all of them occur only off-stage. However, it takes more than a story — “Gosh, this looks like something partway between A and B”. One really ought to show empirically that it was in fact an intermediate form. I’m old enough to remember when Mesohippus was touted as a missing link between Eohippus and Equus.

Biology is one of the areas of science most heavily involved in debate and argument and by quoting biologists like Shapiro who dispute aspects of it, you’re refuting your own claim.

Except for the parts where he [and Gould before him] was accused of creationist tendencies, and where he is disbelieved simply because he is not with the consensus. Of all the theories in science, the theory of natural selection is one of the few that is defended with the zealous fervor of religious believers. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar? Nobody mans the barricades over the theory of electromagnetism. Makes one wonder whether there are other cards that are not on the table.

So [because the cellular mechanisms that repair and replace mitigate the harm, the mutations] are not harmful then?

So because modern EMT and medical advances manage to save lives, the auto accident was not harmful?

There *IS* no ‘irreducible complexity’ problem outside of ID/creationism

Not as long as we can make up stories about bridges and not have to show that it actually did happen that way. But to show that “If we assume X, then we can explain A” does not mean that X is actually the case, as I once illustrated here:

But now Nicole sees that Buridan has not pressed his argument far enough! Consider the arrow at rest. If the earth turns, the arrow is already moving toward the east! It has a horizontal impetus imparted by the earth, as well as its own natural downward motion. He stares at a loose stone resting in the dusty lane. It could be moving, he thinks, toward the east at many leagues every hour. Like the air, like the people, like the great Ocean Sea. Like me. It is a heady thought, and it nearly makes him as dizzy as Aristotle once supposed a turning earth ought, until he realizes that he has assumed the earth’s diurnal motion, not demonstrated it. He has merely completed his master’s demonstration that the appearances would be saved whether the earth turned or the heavens.
“Quaestiones super caelo et mundo,” — M. F. Flynn

It might be; but you can’t simply assume it. My objections to “irreducible complexity” is that it is bad philosophy: It assumes the same Newtonian vision of dead matter forced into motion that has enthralled the Modern Ages. But an organism is not a mousetrap. Its parts are not pre-existing components that have to be forced together; rather, they grow by nature out of the organism itself.

The idea that a new trait is at first merely helpful [or even neutral!] and later [somehow] becomes essential, is attractive. In fact, it is much like my own private theory: 1) mutations happen. If they don’t kill the organism, 2) organism learns or happens upon a way to use it. 3) Presto! a “beneficial” mutation. Animals especially can be fairly plastic in their behaviors and a beak that would have been useless for sucking nectar may be found though trial and error [driven by the desperate struggle to survive] an excellent tool for cracking nuts.

The linked article did not mention the other oft-deployed objection to “irreducible complexity”: viz., that intermediate forms, while useless for the modern function, might have performed some previous function. The usual example is the eye, which in its earlierst phases may have been able to sense only light and dark. This would still have conferred an edge over conspecifics who were unable to do so. An eye that produces a blurry image is still better than no eye at all, even if it is not as good as one that can sharply focus. I used this once in my story, “From the Corner of the Eye.” (Analog, Nov 1993)

Now the example of the bridge that was used at the link you provided is subtly subversive, since a bridge is intelligently designed. (Real-world bridges are. The one given at the site has no evident load-bearing capabilities and the three rocks seem to be hanging in the air.) However, let us suppose that gradualism is one of the stones, and natural genetic engineering is the slab that is laid across them. With the slab in place, the stone can be removed. So the example also illustrates how an [intelligently designed] scientific theory may evolve by adopting ideas that ultimately make superfluous earlier ideas thought to be foundational.

Just as there is no need for gradualism, no any need to model genes after thermodynamics.

Ho ho! The old resort to magic trick again!
Tell us, YOS, if magical incantations wrapped in gallons of specious rhetoric can make “Evolution” work why can’t similar blather by the likes of Sungenis and co make geocentrism work? Clearly, they’re convinced that it can!

There is no evidence for “Evolution” that will stand any reasonable scrutiny or test. What is claimed as evidence is a very few carefully selected, heavily edited observations that have been tortuously interpreted to conform to the ideological assumption that is relentlessly rammed down everyone’s throat by a very successful propaganda and censorship machine.

Any science, logic, ordinary common sense observation, or Revelation that conflicts the “supreme ideology” is summarily derided, dismissed and ignored.

Above we have two “ideology engineers” arguing about what sort of packaging should be used to sell this impossible nonsense nonscience.

This is either genuine lack of comprehension or there’s some other weird thing going on. I suppose you assumed what I think?

My criticism, as always, of this debate, is unchanged.
Critical realism is a good starting point when arguing with an atheist in my view. Yet again it is the professed Christians who have difficulty with this. There’s no need to resort to uncivil language.

There is every reason to appeal to reason. Insulting people is an appeal to anger or hurt or some other thing. It gives you pleasure perhaps but you have altered nothing. If you take up the sword in the name of Christianity you are disobeying Jesus and therefore God.
You cannot enforce truth by the sword. The same goes for argument. Only a bad, cheap salesman of the snake oil type would appeal to negative emotion. It IS the very essence of bad sales pitch. Every individual has been given a choice by God and that is final. Had he wanted it to be self evident he would have made it so. Hence the word Faith and Belief.

My comment remains unchanged. I’m not interested in the challenge.

The only person selling around here is Briggs.
If I were selling I’d do a brilliant job, you can be sure of it.
There’s nothing wrong with selling, either, by the way.

In case it is unclear:
Darwin’s doubt which is very famous, illustrates the important point which has to do with mind versus material. The consequent problem which is rendered by the notion of unguided mechanical, material, physical chaotic processes resulting in the human being with it’s mind.

This is supported by CS Lewis who explained why this would reduce the idea of truth as being non existent and which he reminds us is nonsense.

The third, Thomas Nagel, is an Atheist, a hard Atheist as he is described who does not want there to be a God and so forth.
Yet he makes the honest admission regarding the consequences of a materialist or naturalist’s world view.

These points are not in any way unclear or unreasonable.
….
The following illustrates the problem of methodological reductionist approach to some necessary scientific methods which simply exist within a separate realm to that of information, language, understanding, reason or philosophy. Ultimate Truth is in a separate domain to physical matter.

Any cell is at least an information processor.

Leon Breuren (my spelling, sorry). Expert in information theory.
“A machine cannot generate any new information but it performs a very valuable transformation of known information.” Which is obvious to anyone in particular who has ever written computer programmes, baby ones, or who understands what a computer or a calculator or any tool actually is. So an information machine is a processor with a way in and a way out. It is always designed. Just like a cake mixer or a dish washer.

Gregory Chesson at Bell labs:
“Any computational device whatsoever past present or future can be simulated by an abstract thing called a Turing machine.”

“No Turing machine can generate any information that does not either belong to it’s input or it’s own informational structure. “
Which implies that

no molecular device is capable of generating any information that was not programmed into it or part of it’s informational structure since size doesn’t alter anything.

So at which stage was the information fed into the machine is where the argument lies. At only one point? At the very beginning? Or at more than one point in time? The latter proposition need only concern or irritate the Atheist. That is quite understandable. Why does it irritate anybody else? That’s the curious thing and has to do with pride and a perceived loss of face by association with less acceptable ideas. Who cares?

Whichever way turns out to be true, the problem of this transcendent mind still persists and CS Lewis was correct, as was Darwin, to doubt.

Lewis and Darwin seem to have proposed a similar quandary from different perspectives. The upshot, though, implied by Lewis and ignored by Darwin, is that any knowledge is preceded by the ability to comprehend.

Again I contend that the soul of Man is not an accident of chemistry.

Nobody that I know of is claiming that the soul is an accident of chemistry. That is your misreading.
The saying, “The soul is the substantial form f the body’. whatever that means does not claim this either. It’s vague enough to allow for almost anything.

@ Joy,

“Nobody that I know of is claiming that the soul is an accident of chemistry.”

I’ll claim that, if you want. Our thoughts are just electro-chemical reactions in our entirely physical brains. The “soul” isn’t even a thing. It’s just a silly fantasy idea thought up by theists to try and lend weight to other silly fantasy ideas like resurrection. There isn’t a atom of evidence for the existence of a soul, but there’s lots of evidence that it doesn’t exist, for example that our thought process are affected by physical damage to the brain, and about a million other examples too obvious to mention.

@ Oldavid,

“It has been shown that “Evolution” is physically and logically impossible.”

Not by you, it hasn’t. Bearing in mind that you’ve made this claim dozens of times now, am I being unreasonable in asking you to actually back it up with something? A reason. Some evidence. A link to a scientific paper. Anything at all?

Oldavid, you’d be correct. The soul is the difference between a dead sack of otherwise functional electrochemical fuel cells and a live one. Both presuppose existence qua existence.

Our thoughts are just electro-chemical reactions in our entirely physical brains.

Just like our journeys are just footprints left in the entirely physical dirt.
But here’s a notion: The electro-chemical reactions in our physical brains are the footprints left by our thoughts.

The “soul” isn’t even a thing.

Of course not. It is the form of a thing. To wit, as the Greek and Latins words indicate, it is whatever it is that a living body has that a dead body does not. If this is “brain patterns” then brain patterns are the soul. (The Latin word for soul that was in general use — anima — simply means “life” or “animated.”)

It’s just a silly fantasy idea thought up by theists to try and lend weight to other silly fantasy ideas like resurrection.

Aristotle did not believe in the resurrection, having died long before it became an issue. (Nor Plato.) It was Descartes and the Scientific Revolutionaries that messed everything up with his res cogitans and res extensa

There isn’t a atom of evidence for the existence of a soul

Since anima means ‘life,’ ‘alive,’ ‘animated,’ a simple empirical evidence for soul is: Is this body alive? The result is similar starting with the Greek word, energeia.

our thought process are affected by physical damage to the brain

My TV shows “are affected by” physical damage to my TV set. My ability to play music “is affected by” damage to my tin whistle or clarinet. If the soul is the substantial form that animates the body, then it is obvious that damage to the body can inhibit the operations of the soul. Heck, strong drink will do the trick, as the ancients were well aware. But it is also true that the soul can affect the physical body — e.g., “psychosomatic” illness is not imaginary, but produces real bodily effects; similarly, the placebo effect. Doctors tell us that the patient’s attitude can inform his reaction to treatments.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“The electro-chemical reactions in our physical brains are the footprints left by our thoughts.”

It’s irrational to assume that electro-chemical changes are being caused by a magical soul. Would you assume that motion is caused by magical pixies pushing things?

“it is whatever it is that a living body has that a dead body does not”

So ‘soul’ is another word for ‘alive’. This is what aristotelian ‘thinking’ leads to: lots of extra labels for things in place of any increase in understanding.

“a simple empirical evidence for soul is: Is this body alive?”

No, that’s evidence that something is alive. There’s no fundamantal difference between living and non-living things, it’s all just chemistry.

“My TV shows “are affected by” physical damage to my TV set. […]”

A stupid set of analogies which assume what they’re trying to prove.

By the way, how do you think the soul evolved – by means of natural genetic engineering, perhaps?

@ Mr blaring pointy nose,
What you claim is “irrational” is only irrational according to your irrational premises… that is, that life spontaneously arises out of chemical activity that does not occur according to the natural (outside of life) operations of chemistry. You need to demonstrate that inorganic chemistry can (does/did) transform itself into the wonderful complexity of a live organism.

Neither you nor your ideological mates can do that. And you know it. Your entire “case” is the relentless repetition that it does, without the slightest evidence for it, and a ridiculous scoffing at a straw man of your own invention.

At very least, you should demonstrate that the wonderful complexity of organic chemical processes, in a recently dead organism, should give rise to a new “improved” organism much more readily than the “random” process of inorganic chemistry.

However, I don’t expect that either you, or your ideological mates, could ever do that because you’re entirely detached from reality. You imagine that reality is whatever you want it to be. “You shall be as gods” in your own imagination, at least.

life spontaneously arises out of chemical activity that does not occur according to the natural (outside of life) operations of chemistry.

All this time, I thought you were talking about evolution by natural selection! For natural selection to work, one needs already a species that ‘strives to the utmost’ to sustain itself in being and reproduces a range of ‘variation in its offspring.’

You are talking about something entirely different, as if a man could be molded from red clay.

What are your objections to evolution?

According to the natural operations of chemistry, you can’t get helium out of hydrogen. You need physics to do that.

Not quite, YOS. Nuclear reactions are chemistry as well. Nuclear reactions are not valence electron chemistry, though nuclear reactions will change the valence electron chemistry for that particular atom. Still, I’d not object to this: God -> mathematics ;p -> physical material universe -> physics and chemistry within the physical material universe (not the same thing as the whole universe) -> biology.

Well, mathematics does not cause the universe (if I interpret –> correctly). Mathematics is causally inert. It simply describes the universe. (Some of it: Where are the Darwin Equations?)

I was using chemistry as normally understood.

It’s irrational to assume that electro-chemical changes are being caused by a magical soul.

There is nothing magical about it.

Would you assume that motion is caused by magical pixies pushing things?

Not the same thing. I believe you are imagining a soul as a kind of invisible magical thing. But the anima is not a thing; it is a doing. Or more precisely, the substantial form of a thing (as long as you remember that form is not solely shape).

“it is whatever it is that a living body has that a dead body does not”
So ‘soul’ is another word for ‘alive’. This is what aristotelian ‘thinking’ leads to: lots of extra labels for things in place of any increase in understanding.

Or in your case, a decrease in understanding. ‘Life’ is another word for ‘alive’ and ‘evolution’ is another word for ‘development.’

Do you suppose that a “ghost in the machine” is somehow a better term? You keep talking as if the soul were some kind of thing.

There’s no fundamantal difference between living and non-living things, it’s all just chemistry.

LOL. So biology is a fraud? Why not insist that “it’s all just physics”? I always wondered who bought those Pet Rocks back in the day. Had to be someone who couldn’t tell the difference between animate and inanimate.

A living creature is a bag of chemicals, surely, but it is not only a bag of chemicals. Why do you think that sharing similar foundations means two buildings are the same kind of thing?

The generic model of an inanimate form looks like this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20050320234915if_/http://home.comcast.net:80/~icuweb/WAW0013.GIF

while for an animal form, like this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140306192052if_/http://home.comcast.net/%7Eicuweb/WAW0019.GIF
(could not find a copy of the plant form)

“My TV shows “are affected by” physical damage to my TV set. […]”
A stupid set of analogies which assume what they’re trying to prove.

Your contention that because damage to the hardware impacts the software, the software is “nothing else” but the hardware is itself an assumption.

By the way, how do you think the soul evolved – by means of natural genetic engineering, perhaps?

Evolution only affects material species that “struggle to survive” and which produce offspring that vary in their qualities. It does not address mathematical or metaphysical bodies. Do we ask how 3 evolved?

-> does not mean cause ;p.

Okay, I read it as a mathematical symbol. What did you intend –> to mean?

YOS, your inconsistency, lack of comprehension and retention would be astonishing if it weren’t so consistent. Like our friend needlenose, you simply refuse to let any observations of physical reality or reason interfere with the cherished ideology.

Natural selection has just as much chance of turning mud (or whatever combination of elements your fancy desires) into a microbe as it has of turning a microbe into a man.

Your contention that “one needs already a species that ‘strives to the utmost’ to sustain itself in being and reproduces a range of ‘variation in its offspring.’ ” makes no philosophical sense at all if it is taken in its contemporary litteral sense. As Tom and Harry (Stottle) before him observed a “thing” (being or system) that does not have intellect and will has no capacity to direct itself (strive) toward an end that is not given it by the artisan (intellect and will) that produced it.

However much you might like to ascribe marvelous creative powers to natural selection it is entirely destructive (in keeping with entropy) in that it can only eliminate some types from a population; not create new ones.

You are simply trying to sell this monstrous, impossible superstition dressed up in some rags that are supposed to resemble Thomism. Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees!

If you would like a more wordy and detailed exposition, have a go at reading this:
http://kolbecenter.org/thomistic-evolution-development-doctrine-diabolical-deception/

You also need to do some learning about the physics of nuclear fusion… it’s not as simple as you would like us to believe.

Natural selection has just as much chance of turning mud (or whatever combination of elements your fancy desires) into a microbe as it has of turning a microbe into a man.

I just said that. Natural selection has nothing to do with the transition from inanimate to animate. It requires that you already have a species with heritable variation in its offspring (the material cause of evolution) and a tendency to reproduce itself (formal cause). Mud does not have either ability.

Natural selection (a/k/a “an interesting side-effect of death”) is the simple observation that those variants that are less apt in the game of life will perish in greater proportion than those that are more apt; and so (provided the variation is heritable) the species will grow more apt over time. Sometimes the bodily changes are such that humans will give the population a new species name.

As Tom and Harry (Stottle) before him observed a “thing” (being or system) that does not have intellect and will has no capacity to direct itself (strive) toward an end that is not given it by the artisan (intellect and will) that produced it.

Oh, dear. You are reading “strive” a bit too literally. Intention is not the only kind of telos. As Aristotle and Thomas both observed, the good is what all strive for. And the basic material good of living things is to go on living. So an animal caught in a leg trap will strive mightily to escape, even to the point of gnawing off its leg. A plant in an arid region will drill its tap-root down as deeply as it can in the search for water. But even inanimate objects tend toward an end: sodium and chlorine will combine to form salt, and not pepper. We recognize this when we speak of the “equilibrium states” of the system or the “attractor basin” of a potential function.

That’s why Thomas’ Fifth Way reasons from the regularity of nature and not from “improbable” exceptions to it. Modern science strives mightily to understand the knife, but has not tools to discover the whittler.

Thomas wrote:

Nature is nothing but the plan of some art, namely a divine one, put into things themselves, by which those things move towards a concrete end: as if the man who builds up a ship could give to the pieces of wood that they could move by themselves to produce the form of the ship.
— Commentary on Physics II.8, lecture 14, no. 268

He also wrote that if any new species ever did appear, it would be through these natural powers that have been planted in creation from the beginning.

You may be objecting to the way in which atheists have hijacked the theory of natural selection with the claim that it gets rid of the need for God. But that is not a scientific conclusion. It is a prior commitment. Natural selection is no more independent of God’s will than are Maxwell’s equations.

Natural selection has nothing to do with the transition from inanimate to animate. It requires that you already have a species with heritable variation in its offspring (the material cause of evolution)

What about fortuitous mutations?

Do we really know all of the capabilities of DNA/RNA ? Is it possible that some substrand describing a feature could have developed over time through a series of mutations that suddenly becomes active after a one of the mutations?

Surprises sometimes happen with software genetic algorithms (usually with evolving programs, aka genetic programming, though). Why couldn’t they happen in the physical world?

and a tendency to reproduce itself (formal cause). Mud does not have either ability.

Wouldn’t that depend on the mud? What if it was a slurry of generic material? Do we know the minimum size of a reproducible genetic strand?

What about fortuitous mutations?

If we had to depend on those, there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge — and do so at least twice. “Fortuitous” is right up there with “random” as a buzz word in this field. (Recall that when the modern synthesis was formed, top o’the line physics was thermodynamics. Since this involved “random” molecular motion, the early geneticists borrowed mojo from physics; just as the first Darwinians borrowed from laizzes faire capitalism. Sometimes a paradigm is just “in the air.”

IMHO a mutation is made fortuitous by what the critter does with it in its struggle for existence, or “inertia for the living.”

Do we really know all of the capabilities of DNA/RNA ?

I doubt it.

Is it possible that some substrand describing a feature could have developed over time through a series of mutations that suddenly becomes active after a one of the mutations?

Sort of like recessive genes. Boo-yah! Possible. But Darwin taught that evolution “ruthlessly destroys” excess baggage. Back when we believed in “junk genes,” we could imagine all sorts of extra traits lurking in the junk. But it turned out that these introns did a whole lot of heavy lifting in the editing, correction, splicing, transposing, and other actions called by some “natural genetic engineering.” There is no wasted space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noncoding_DNA#Junk_DNA

Surprises sometimes happen with software genetic algorithms (usually with evolving programs, aka genetic programming, though). Why couldn’t they happen in the physical world?

Sure, why not?

“…and a tendency to reproduce itself (formal cause). Mud does not have either ability.”

Wouldn’t that depend on the mud?

You mean the Cairns-Smith hypothesis? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Cairns-Smith#Clay_hypothesis) It struck some people as too reminiscent of Gen.2.

What if it was a slurry of generic material?

Do you mean the hule prote? (??? ?????)

@YOS, ”->” means a logical relationship. Of course, mathematics includes such. Relationships do not have to be causal, except when they are ;).

On the other hand, ‘natural selection’ does not have to mean that ‘aptness’ will always increase. Unless directed by intelligence, ‘natural selection’ will be a blind trend follower that will lead one into ‘box canyons’ that can’t be overcome at times. (Consider what blind ‘natural selection’ must deal with when a global catastrophe occurs.) Life on Earth appears to be much more robust than that. That, to me, suggests that 1. the inbuilt variation is orders of magnitude larger than generally recognized and 2. that genetic coded segments are shuffled at a very high rate such that ‘no information’ is lost to the whole system. Individuals come and go; but like the internet ;), nothing is forgotten.

‘natural selection’ does not have to mean that ‘aptness’ will always increase.

It’s hard to see how weeding out the inept would have any other effect on the population. Remember the trait must be heritable and we are talking about the relative frequency of the genetic material.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“Had to be someone who couldn’t tell the difference between animate and inanimate.”

Yes, it’s obvious they’re different, just as it’s obvious that heavy objects fall faster and people aren’t related to ants. Most of what science has revealed to us is decidedly non-obvious. Try and find an obvious way in which a flame isn’t alive but a virus is.

“You keep talking as if the soul were some kind of thing.”

I’m happy to agree that it’s nothing, if you’d prefer.

Yes, it’s obvious [the animate and inanimate] ’re different

If you mean by “different” that they have no point of contact, that’s not true. Animate bodies like petunias are made up of inanimate matter. If the petunia dies, it becomes a bag of chemicals, a “carcass” in the strict sense. But being alive is the essence of being animate, so it amounts to saying that an animate thing is different from an inanimate one insofar as it is animate.

An inanimate thing possesses four powers: the gravitational, the electromagnetic, the radiative, and the nuclear. A petunia, to stick with the example, possesses four additional powers: the digestive, the metabolic, the reproductive, and the homeostatic. That does not mean that it fails to possess the powers of unanimate matter, but those powers are now subordinated to the higher ones. If you throw a petunia off the roof, it will still be subject to wind and gravity.

An animal possesses in addition four further powers: the sensitive, the perceptive, the emotive, and the motive. If you throw a dog off the roof it will still fall at the same rate as a sack of potatoes; but it is more likely to object than the potatoes. (If you throw a bird off the roof, it will usually fly away.)

A human possesses two final powers. While perception still leads to emotion, it also can lead to conception, which further evokes its own appetite, volition, which then entails the sensitive appetites (emotions). That is, humans are animals, but they are not only animals.

just as it’s obvious that heavy objects fall faster

Actually, they do. Air resistance makes a difference; but the atmosphere is thin enough that in most cases it is negligible. But if you drop a stone and a petunia from the roof, the stone will fall faster; and if you drop them in a swimming pool, it makes even more difference.

and people aren’t related to ants.

Of course, they are. Not only are both groups animate, but both are animals. But they belong to different phyla. Both ants and humans appear in the fossil record long, long after the phylae split. The ancestor of the insects seems to be Siluruan while the mammal-like reptiles appear in the Pennsylvanian. Rather more distant relations than the fifth cousin who shows up to claim your inheritance.

Most of what science has revealed to us is decidedly non-obvious.

I never said “obvious.” Most of what science has revealed is rather obvious, though maybe the details were not known. We knew that heavy bodies fell with uniform difform motion long before Riccioli measured the acceleration due to gravity.

We might say that science is in the business of noticing the importance of very small differences. For example, the difference in light speed between the infinite and the value known today is negligible. The difference between Platonic circles and Keplerian ellipses is negligible. The number of voluntary actions taken by a human is negligible compared to the number of all actions taken by a human, let alone the number of actions in the world at large. And yet, these minute differences can be of great importance, not only in relativity, astronomy, and free will, but in other areas as well.

Try and find an obvious way in which a flame isn’t alive but a virus is.

I wouldn’t say either one is. But it is obvious that a flame is not a stand-alone entity. It is something more like a shadow.

“You keep talking as if the soul were some kind of thing.”
I’m happy to agree that it’s nothing, if you’d prefer.

Would you rather I had said ousia? Energy is not a thing, either; nor motion nor red.

A famous sculptor once remarked: “the statue is in the block… it’s my job to get it out”. Only an “Evolutionist” would say that it can be “got out” by repeatedly smashing the stone with a wrecking ball.

No, the sculptor chips with his chisels and scrapes with his scrapers all the while with his design in mind until his statue “emerges”. That’s how things go where time is a succession of events and space is a separation of points.

But if the sculptor was omnipotent and not bound by time and space the statue would exist by desire, not by time and effort, and still less by a series of trials and errors and chances and competition.

“Theistic Evolution” is a deceitful attempt to write some sort of deity (Grand Archetect of the Universe) into a myopic Materialism that assumes that everything is a state of “becoming” where dialectical materialism (the struggle for existence via natural selection) is the “driving force”… the main tenet of Modernism, both secular and “theological”.

I can only guess that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin got his prophetic insights in dreams in the darkened recessess of Masonic Lodges somewhere. Anyhow, true devotees of the “synthesis of all heresies” are determined to sacrifice reality, reason and Revelation on this altar of “Evolution” dedicated to the Great Deity of Inevitable Progress toward a Gnostic Universal Consciousness. As such, everything is undergoing “improvement” by dialectical competition between the “old” and the “new”.

For those not familiar with the dialectic it goes like this: the way things are, the old, the thesis spontaneously generates its anti-thesis and competition between the two results in a synthesis which becomes the thesis, and the process continues ad infinitum.

A moment of reflection will reveal that this is diametrically opposed to Christianity. But Modernists are notorious chamelions. For them truth and reality itself are “becoming” by competition so that anyone who insists on any absolutes is just an “obstacle” to “progress” and destined to fade or be forced into extinction.

Hence the gnostic wisdom: you may privately believe whatever makes you comfortable but everyone’s beliefs are equal except the gnostics who are always right because their beliefs are always tailored to circumstance and convenience.

There is no absolute except that there are no absolutes.

Nice sidestepping.

“Fortuitous” is right up there with “random” as a buzz word in this field.

Yeah. Random=Unpredictable. Why is that a problem?
“Fortuitous” also implies in a good or constructive manner vs. destructive (the more likely outcome). One of its synonyms: advantageous.

If we had to depend on those, there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge — and do so at least twice.

You know this how?
Sounds like an Intelligent Design argument.

If the petunia dies, it becomes a bag of chemicals, a “carcass” in the strict sense. But being alive is the essence of being animate, so it amounts to saying that an animate thing is different from an inanimate one

Which only means we don’t yet know what is missing. You can speculate on a “soul” but you are just giving it a name and not actually saying anything. You can conjecture that this “soul” is some metaphysical thing but it is merely a guess.

Surprises sometimes happen with software … [so, why not in the physical]?
“sure why not”?

Glad you agree.

Wouldn’t that depend on the mud?
“You mean the Cairns-Smith hypothesis? “

Not specifically although it appears to be a guess at some possible mud. In any case, you didn’t answer the question.

—

Sorry to hear about JMJ.

No-one can resist the great Ohm.
ROFLOL

Good one!

Oh, yeah:

Is it possible that some substrand describing a feature could have developed over time through a series of mutations that suddenly becomes active after a one of the mutations?

“Sort of like recessive genes. Boo-yah! Possible. But Darwin taught that evolution ‘ruthlessly destroys’ excess baggage. Back when we believed in ‘junk genes'”

Who said anything about “junk genes” and such? Like in the software versions, a small change in structure can result in large change of interpretation — even with localized error correction. Similar to what may happen with some sentences with differing punctuation. The new interpretation sudden “activates”. That doesn’t mean the old interpretation was meaningless “junk”.

Also:
Darwin taught that evolution ‘ruthlessly destroys’ excess baggage. Back when we believed in ‘junk genes’”

I only note that, in software evolutionary algorithms, junk (currently meaningless) sequences can and do exist. For example, a coded “STOP PROCESSING” instruction results in all following coding as junk. Not the only way, of course. Doesn’t mean that similar things happen in biology though.

I feel like I’m in a lunatic asylum where everyone thinks that reality is just a convenience product of their imagination.

There are many things in physics that cannot be poked, prodded, dissected, seen etc. but we can know with great certainty that they exist because we can “see” what they do. Examples such as gravity, electric charge, electromagnetic radiation etc. etc. Likewise in metaphysics… life, intellect, will, knowledge, understanding… even the very essence of being… and logic; something that all you bods seem to despise with your unsubstantiable glib assertions and circuitous evasions.

You can’t have logic or any kind of real science without some certainly known premises such as the law of non-contradiction; and there are others. However, it seems that such pedestrian considerations are entirely dispensable in the great “becoming”.

“Our thoughts are just electro-chemical reactions in our entirely physical brains. “

With respect to the soul being caused by random unguided evolution if it doesn’t exist then there is also not a an argument there either, which was the point aimed at Oldavid.

A reductionist approach to looking for meaning and Truth will not find it. Like the challenge to explain the meaning of a word on paper in terms of physics and chemistry of paper and ink. Mind and intellect are the explanation.

The “soul” isn’t even a thing.“
As far as I understand the soul you are right.
It is immaterial in the same way that mind is. It acts on or interacts with material and is part of living material. The saying ‘substantial form’ is just a clumsy way of describing fundamental purpose but it’s problematic because of the ordinary meaning of the word substance. Which to ordinary people means something very tangible and solid. Shame really because it’s trivial to insist on special words at the expense of explanation of important things. Thomas would have explained himself better. This is the kind of hijinks of the people who think they are brilliant. They are brilliant echoes. There is also the unfortunate problem that the word transubstantiate lends weight back and forth to the argument. This is not an argument, here, for or aginst it, just in case of tantrums.

If it were material it could be measured! Some think it can be and they are mistaken. It’s not a great help in the argument for the souls’ existence, either. Looking for mechanical reductionist explanations and structural order in an entity which as far as is apparent, has none of those material features to begin with. A human can’t be reverse engineered to discover a soul. A brain cannot be broken down to show intellect. The approach taken by Thomas’s argument and which is repeated by some is little different from the argument from naturalists who are really saying the same thing but more clearly and honestly.
They keep going until they can only think of intellect and will and nothing more. Not that brilliant, really.

“It’s just a silly fantasy idea thought up by theists to try and lend weight to other silly fantasy ideas like resurrection. “
Among other things;
It makes sense in a created universe that ‘purpose’ and meaning, truth, beauty, good and evil, values, all are explained and justified in a coherent way that address harder questions.
It is a very effective, not, coincidental, way into understanding some of those areas in which science cannot operate.

In the purely naturalist sense there can be no justification at all for those things. Evolution does not explain the richness of the universe, or conversely the suffering.

Neural tissue, including the brain, is not on it’s own without the rest of the body. The body is not on it’s own without the rest of the working universe, which in my view is not a closed system . Not the same as ‘God did it’ because the evidence is there which points towards God’s existence. Proof does not exist.

In a naturalist world there Is purpose provided for all sorts of features except purpose itself. At that point the naturalist insists there is no purpose except in a local thing.
It just is. So they must assert that it started for no reason and continues without purpose!

What a wonderful ride to have been allowed to join in for just a few years, in meaningless chaos.

Naturalism is a hopeless philosophy really.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“Back when we believed in “junk genes,” we could imagine all sorts of extra traits lurking in the junk. But it turned out that these introns did a whole lot of heavy lifting in the editing, correction, splicing, transposing, and other actions called by some “natural genetic engineering.” There is no wasted space.”

Wrong. “Human genome is over 90% ‘junk’ DNA – study”

https://www.rt.com/news/175844-human-genome-junk-dna/

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

Why is it that for every one of my words, you use ten?

“An inanimate thing posesses four powers…”

A quaint “folk science” list, which shows that dividing things up into “obvious” categories and labelling them is useless from a scientific perspective.

[heavy objects fall faster] “Actually, they do.”

Not in 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe they don’t.

“Most of what science has revealed is rather obvious, though maybe the details were not known.”

Really? So the fact that continents move, that matter is mostly empty space, or that the universe is expanding are “rather obvious”?

Random=Unpredictable. Why is that a problem?

But “random” only means “we don’t know the cause” or in quality control, “there are many causes but it is impractical or impossible to determine which.” Of the two classes of variation, random and assignable, the random variation is predictable and the assignable is not. Variation classified as random will generally produce a distribution of results and we can predict within which limits the results will occur and roughly how often. That is why when a manufacturing process shows only random variation, it is said to be “in control.” Assignable variation otoh means that a cause has entered the system from the outside and upset it in some way. For example, a tool has broken. This is unpredictable, but it can be assigned to a particular cause: viz., the tool broke.

All we need do is ask whether casinos and insurance companies are profitable to realize that random is not the same as unpredictable.

“Fortuitous” also implies in a good or constructive manner vs. destructive (the more likely outcome). One of its synonyms: advantageous.

Whether or not a change is advantageous depends on the purposes of the changee. Sometimes, by altering its behavior, the one changed may make a handicap into an advantage. IOW, “fortuitous” is in the eye of the beholder. (The goddess Fortuna brought ill-fortune, too.)

“If we had to depend on [haphazard changes] there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge — and do so at least twice.”

Sounds like an Intelligent Design argument.

Sounds like a mathematical one. Somebody recently noted that destructive change was “the more likely outcome.” But if point mutations are rare — due to the cell regulatory mechanisms in what were once thought of by Dawkins as “junk genes” — and beneficial changes more rare still; then given the mutation rate it’s a long march to get even one such “fortuitous” outcome, let alone the vast number required for the diversity seen in the Permian, Cretaceous, and today. Multiply the probabilities if you like.

This is not Intelligent Design, at least in the sense intended by the ID people. It’s more like the failure to observe what ought to have been evident stellar parallax predicted by the Copernican model. It meant there was something wrong with the observations and/or something wrong with the theory. We no more need to demote God from the ground of all existence to the status of a kobold hammering in a workshop that was needed in astronomy back in the 16th century. Either mutation rates are variable, organisms are not helpless recipients of mutation, the outcomes of mutations are more complex that previously believed, or they are not random. Or all of these things. But it does not mean that a Primary Mover must be reduced to a Supreme Secondary Mover.

“If the petunia dies, it becomes a bag of chemicals, a ‘carcass’ in the strict sense. But being alive is the essence of being animate, so it amounts to saying that an animate thing is different from an inanimate one.”

Which only means we don’t yet know what is missing.

We do know what is missing: its life. In Latin: anima; in Greek energeia. Remember Mr. Trombomne’s contention was that there is no obvious difference between living and not-living.

You can speculate on a “soul” but you are just giving it a name and not actually saying anything.

To give something a name is the essence of saying something. You can’t say anything about something that doesn’t have a name. If you are complaining that it is not a “scientific hypothesis,” well it’s not supposed to be. Modern natural science is the study of the abstracted metrical properties of physical bodies.

You can conjecture that this “soul” is some metaphysical thing but it is merely a guess.

I don’t suppose that it is a “thing” at all. A thing is a union of matter and form, but anima is substantial form. It is a part of what makes up a thing, but is not itself a thing.

Metaphysical concepts include Being/Existence, Motion, Energy, and sundry other concepts that cannot be observed directly, but without which a science of physics cannot happen. Few are those who question these concepts or chide them for being “only names” that do not in themselves “say anything.” Bodies fall toward the center of earth because of “gravity.” How do you know there is a gravity? Simple: bodies fall toward the center of earth.

****

The saying ‘substantial form’ is just a clumsy way of describing fundamental purpose but it’s problematic because of the ordinary meaning of the word substance.

‘Substance,’ like ‘soul,’ is one of those terms that have been hijacked by the Moderns and given a new, more narrow meaning, similar to, but skewed off, the original meaning. Substantia is a Latin translation of the Greek word ousia and means that which stands (stans</i) under (sub-). It is the first of the Categories because it is (in modern formulation) the “property bearer.” The other categories (quantity, number, quality, etc.) are called Accidencts. The ousia of the apple “stands under” and bears the accidental properies of red, round, half-eaten, etc. In that sense, it can be thought of as a “fundamental property,” rather than “fundamental purpose.” Whereas “red” cannot exist in itself, “apple” can exist even if it is not red. IOW, “red” can be predicated of an apple, but “apple” cannot be predicated of redness.

Because the root meaning of ousia denotes existence, substance theory is bound up with existence theory. (Esse = “to be.” Hence, “essence” = “being,” a quo, “essential” v. “accidental.”)

“An inanimate thing posesses four powers…”
A quaint “folk science” list, which shows that dividing things up into “obvious” categories and labelling them is useless from a scientific perspective.

It’s what is called a “model” and models always simplify to some extent. William Wallace, who elucidated the model, was himself a physicist as well as a natural philosopher, so we must suppose he was not unaware of these forces. I believe modern physics still recognizes these four forces, and even supposes that there is not a fifth one. (My cosmologist friend informs me, as of a couple years ago, that attempts to postulate a fifth force have come to naught.)
The weak force (or radiation) is required to explain decay and why negatively-charged particles (elelctrons) are not pulled into the positively-charged nucleus. The strong force (or nuclear) is required to explain why positively charged particles (protons) do not repel one another and scatter the nucleus. I’ve always figured the four-forces theory had proven highly useful in physics.

[heavy objects fall faster] “Actually, they do.”
Not in 99.999999999999999999999999999999999% of the universe they don’t.

That’s because in 99.9…..% of the universe, the plenum is even more rareified than the Earth’s atmosphere. Hence, no resistance to the falling. (And “falling” requires a different meaning than that in which the original statement was formulated: i.e., the real world of life on earth v. the ideal world of a vacuum.)

So the fact that continents move, that matter is mostly empty space, or that the universe is expanding are “rather obvious”?

Well, that’s three things. But I said that “most of what science has revealed…” And of course, with a great deal of the obvious already handled, we are getting more and more into the unobvious: such as that relativity theory and quantum theory are fundamentally incompatible.

Why is it that for every one of my words, you use ten?

I know more words than you?

No, seriously: it’s because any substantive answer will nearly always use more words than the question.

YOS: But it turned out that these introns did a whole lot of heavy lifting in the editing, correction, splicing, transposing, and other actions called by some “natural genetic engineering.” There is no wasted space.”

SFT: Wrong. “Human genome is over 90% ‘junk’ DNA – study”

I followed the link to RT (Russia Television) and found this statement in the article:

“That is, what fraction of the human genome has actual function, if 99 percent of it does not encode proteins?”

But of course that was just the point: the rest of it does not “encode proteins.” It operates the mechanisms for policing the genome itself: the various functions that provide for “natural genetic engineering.”

(BTW, by referencing RT, you have enmeshed yourself in the Great Russian Conspiracy, since your comment can now be characterized as “connected to Russia.” [LOL! See how easy it is?])

Many words and convolutions is a very useful tool in sophistry for making circular arguments appear valid.

Y: “Fortuitous” is right up there with “random” as a buzz word in this field.
D: Random=Unpredictable. Why is that a problem?
Y: But “random” only means “we don’t know the cause”

You can’t help digressing I see. Again, why is the word “random” a problem?

D: “You can conjecture that this “soul” is some metaphysical thing but it is merely a guess..
Y: “I don’t suppose that it is a “thing” at all. .

A pointless distinction here. “Thing” is a placeholder in English. More of your meandering. You also sidestepped the important part where you merely gave a name to what is missing which adds nothing to the conversation.

Y: “If the petunia dies, it becomes a bag of chemicals, …”
D: Which only means we don’t yet know what is missing.
Y: We do know what is missing: its life.

Well then, you call it “life”. Cute. Just because you give it a name doesn’t mean you actually have said anything beyond “that which differs between living and non-living” convering no deeper understanding.

Y: “If we had to depend on [haphazard changes] there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge — and do so at least twice.”

You skipped right over my question: You know this how?
Instead you mumbled something about rarity and multiplication of probabilities.

S: “YOS, why is it that for every one of my words, you use ten?

A good question. My guess is distraction and obfuscation. See all of the needless jabber about “thing” vs. whatever.

We call life a “thing” or “stuff” to try to make it more acceptable and intelligible to the likes of you. Life is that “thing” or “stuff” that is present in a live organism and absent in a dead one. It is the “thing” or “stuff” that makes physics and chemistry do what it never does outside of a live organism.

Poor YOS is tearing his gonads out trying to run along the barbed wire fence that separates reality and Materialism trying to keep one foot either side.

As far as distraction and obfuscation goes, you and your mates are superlative; offering no intelligible justification for your superstition you run along your side of the fence scoffing at your straw man and making well known, trite, glib assertions of what your irrational religion relentlessly proclaims in every arena of the popular media.

You’ve taught me nothing. In fact, according to your ridiculous obfuscations, I will contend that I know vastly more about your superstitious ideology than you do.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“I followed the link to RT (Russia Television) and found this statement in the article”

You mean you cherry picked one line which you think supports your false claim, then complain about my source for spurious reasons. (genetic fallacy!)

Try this from molecular biologist Laurence A. Moran, “Most of our DNA is still junk. It turns out that evolution really isn’t so smart after all.”

http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/junk-dna-scientific-american-gets-it.html

Life is that “thing” or “stuff” that is present in a live organism and absent in a dead one.

Yes. it’s the unknown ingredient/factor/thing/stuff/whatever. Giving it a name explains nothing. Your point?

offering no intelligible justification for your superstition …
glib assertions of what your irrational religion …
I know vastly more about your superstitious ideology than you do.

Religion? Superstition? Ideology?
Huh? Wherever did all that come from?
Is this like the Left calling everyone who disagrees a racist just to shut down what they have to say?

As for knowing more about superstitious ideology than I do: apparently.

You’ve taught me nothing.

Should I be surprised?

“There isn’t a atom of evidence for the existence of a soul,“
This is atom in the metaphorical sense, like shred?

“…our thought process are affected by physical damage to the brain,”
Why is the fact that a material brain can be damaged, proof that the soul doesn’t exist? The premise is that the soul is immaterial so it’s not unreasonable that the evidence would be non material.
Thought process is not understood despite claims otherwise. It is known that functional areas can be pinpointed, but that is anatomy, tiny Geography.
The meaning of a word is not just a physiological event.
Your physical brain is different from the one ten years ago, for example. What happens to you while the matter is being replaced? Some kind of electron juggling?

Damaging a part of the body does not in any way show that soul is absent. The observed injured person still possesses a soul (and probably, in my view, knows it more profoundly than they did before.). To me it always makes the soul more tangible, not less, but then I’m female and have worked with and conversed with severely damaged bodies and people with all sorts of brain damage to higher and lower areas. Humans possess a dignity which is manifest in their weakest physical moments.

Evidence does exist but of course this is not the physical kind. It is not evidence which people crave but proof and that’s not about to happen.

In an Earthly respect, Faith in something more is a drive for science and is one of the reasons medical ethics is going bad. Switching people ‘off’ by all sorts of methods including neglect of the elderly when they are no longer pleasant to look at or talk to. No cures or treatment can come from such a hopeless defeatist disposable, philosophy.
Mind and thought have no atoms yet they explain and discover truth that is universally consistent. Which exists in the material and is true trillions of miles away. How about that for evidence?

Proving metaphysical, supernatural is against the law, evidently, but saying It doesn’t exist is also against the law.

The search for truth and the humility to know where the domain is different requires a balance of Grace and Truth.

My first question regarding the RT article you originally linked was “What do they mean by “junk DNA”? The quotation I gave you provides that definition: it is DNA that does not code for protein formation; that’s all.

Your second link, in which one biologist-blogger trashes an article in SciAm by another biologist actually makes the same point:
“…nobody today would argue that all noncoding DNA is junk…”
and goes on to add:
Researchers have been exploring noncoding DNA intensely for the past 40 years. That’s why we know so much about regulatory sequences. Regulatory sequences are noncoding DNA that control gene expression.

which is what I had said originally.
But he cautions us
This does not mean that all junk DNA has a function. And it certainly doesn’t mean that all DNA has now been shown to be “important, integral components of eukaryotic genomes.” Most of our DNA is still junk.

at least as of 2007 when he put up the blog post. It might could be that more is known now, ten years later. But it would not be shocking if there were still some pencil shavings left over in the genome. It’s just that pop-sci like “Humans don’t use 90% of their brain” or “90% of the genome is junk” tend to be way too simplistic and raises the question of how those proportions were actually measured.

@YOS “It’s hard to see how weeding out the inept would have any other effect on the population. Remember the trait must be heritable and we are talking about the relative frequency of the genetic material.”

That’s because ineptness is a non material value statement. In the real world ‘apt’ organisms get weeded out along with the ‘inapt’. All biological organisms have to do is be fruitful and multiply, aided by altering their local environments; which means just be good enough to survive today. Tomorrow is not promised to mutable material beings.

D: “You can conjecture that this “soul” is some metaphysical thing but it is merely a guess..
Y: “I don’t suppose that it is a “thing” at all. .
D: A pointless distinction here. “Thing” is a placeholder in English.

It is also a translation of the Greek word “ousia.” If I used the Greek (or the Latin) you would complain about that.

You complain that applying a name does not explain anything. I agree. No one expects the name for a concept to be a complete treatise on the subject. However, it does make it easier to talk about. Which is easier to use in a sentence: “energy/anima/soul” or “that which differs between living and non-living”?

I have been stressing the distinction between a thing and its form because ever since Descartes and the Scientific Revolution messed things up, people have been confusing “soul” with some sort of thing that sits in your head, watching through the eyeballs: the infamous “ghost in the machine.” (Recall Descartes terms: res extensa, lit. “extended thing” for the body; res cogitans lit. “knowing thing” for the soul.) But this would be like mistaking the sphere as a separate thing from the basketball. The sphere is the substantive form of the basketball; the anima is the substantive form of the living body. “If triangles were alive,” it has been said, “three-sidedness would be its soul.”

@ DAV
“Yes. it’s the unknown ingredient/factor/thing/stuff/whatever. Giving it a name explains nothing. Your point?”

The point is that your amorphous, irrational, specious obfuscations have more heads than Hydra and the structure of a blob of ink in a whirlpool.
As your mate Pinocchio Fish recently asserted: “There’s no fundamantal difference between living and non-living things, it’s all just chemistry.” which is now miraculously transformed into “the unknown ingredient” which can be dismissed because it’s a non-empirical substance with a name… “unknown ingredient”.

You’ll be having a riot of fun when you get round to demoting all sorts of other non-physical things with names; like science, logic, consciousness, thought, knowledge, understanding……… you might even get an egotistical kick out of demoting all sorts of other non-empirical “things-with-names” like gravity, inertia, electric charge; the names of which “explain nothing” but which we know that they’re there because we can see what they do.

There are many more even more abstract “things” that it would be a waste of my finger movements to mention because you cannot (will not) grasp even the most in-your-face basics.

“If triangles were alive,” it has been said, “three-sidedness would be its soul.”

This is an explanation of fundamental characteristics or properties of a real thing. The essence word. Which is now cheesy beyond belief thanks to pop philosophers Who don’t know when they’ve had enough…not speaking of anybody here but when it’s on TV you ought to realise it’s time to think of another word.
Vanilla essence is also the essence of vanilla but it is only one dimension of that vanilla…and vanilla is alive.
So this mechanical way of ‘proving’ human soul’s existence doesn’t help whatsoever. Stupid talk of dogginess and such.
I wonder what the essence of ‘Yossiness’ is?
I wonder what oldavidicity is left after the fact?

Horrid creepy talk…
Stop it at once.

which is now miraculously transformed into “the unknown ingredient” which can be dismissed because it’s a non-empirical substance with a name… “unknown ingredient”. … all sorts of other things-with-names” like gravity, inertia, electric charge; the names of which “explain nothing”

Yes. “Life”is am unknown — we don’t know what it is. One thing it is not is an explanation in itself. Yet claiming it is metaphysical means we can never explain it; it will forever be a descriptive term — so why bother trying?. At least with gravity, inertia and electric charge there is some hope that we will reach explanation because there is no assumption of them being metaphysical properties beyond human understanding.

The point is that your amorphous, irrational, specious obfuscations have more heads than Hydra and the structure of a blob of ink in a whirlpool.

??? Like what for example?

Why do you object — vehemently it seems — to “life” being a physical property with physical causes? I see similar objections when it comes to attempting to understanding the mind (from your list including consciousness, thought, knowledge and understanding). Do these attempts assail some deeply held beliefs of yours? Do they somehow result in the collapsing your world view? If you think they truly are metaphysical please explain why instead of ranting at discussion to the contrary.

The balance of evidence or whether the evidence is good enough or not is subjective.

If a thing needs a bunch of bully boys it isn’t about truth it’s about power.

YOS,

Do your last posts imply you are not going to answer my question: You know [there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge] how?

Your objection to using the English noun placeholder (“thing” — an item that one need not, cannot, or does not wish to give a specific name to) is tangential adding nothing to the discussion. It does appear to be a trigger word for you, though. You’ve done this before.

I have been stressing the distinction between a thing and its form … because people have been confusing “soul” with some sort of thing that sits in your head

OK but you tend to read way too much into the use of certain common words while missing the intended point(s). In fact, you go on and on about them. As Freud once said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Please stop looking for deeper meanings until it is evident they are intended. Sidebars can be nice but you seem to get lost in them.

The scientific description of electricity is not an explanation of what it is. This is one of the primary reasons why girls have problems with physics. They are expecting, as I always was, to get to what a the thing is and when the explanation doesn’t come, glazing over happens.

So it seems this is a well known problem and one which naturalistic science takes for granted. Things like gravity and electricity and magnetism can be described and predicted and measured to a level which enables engineering. While people still can’t explain it.

The descriptions or laws of science do not rule out other complimentary explanations.
Reason and mechanism are always present. Random isn’t a reason, or a mechanism any more than time is a mechanism without a reason.

So metaphysical things like mind or soul are part of the realm of reason which in my way of thinking deals with the agency as it is called which always exist with the mechanical scientific description. Whether it’s a brain, a planet’, a car or evolution there’s always both, types of explanation at least.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

[Most of our DNA is still junk.]

“at least as of 2007 when he put up the blog post. It might could be that more is known now, ten years later. But it would not be shocking if there were still some pencil shavings left over in the genome. […].”

Your comment is 90% junk. A working molecular biologist provides a detailed list of the contents of our genome and points out that up to 90% ot it is junk, which you then try and discredit as “pop-sci” in a “blog” without any justification whatsoever. You ask “how these proportions were actually measured” without bothering to find out, (do you think they just made the numbers up?) and complain that the post is from 2007 but you quote sources that are upwards of 700 years old, and the article is regularly updated anyway.

Incidentally, I also would like to know the answer to DAV’s question:

“You know [there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge] how?”

Your objection to using the English noun placeholder (“thing”) is tangential adding nothing to the discussion.

I do not object to its being used in that way. I am only cautious of its being used with a commonplace meaning in a technical discussion where it may have a specialized meaning and especially where it may indicate the other party is working from a different definition. What it adds to the discussion is that it helps avoid cross-purposes. It’s rather like physicists one of whom is using “pressure” in the sense of Laplace and the other in the sense of Lagrange: the identical data will prove an hypothesis to the one and disprove it to the other.

OK but you tend to read way too much into the use of certain common words while missing the intended point(s).

Does that mean you will acknowledge the nature of anima rather than ask for physical evidence?
+++
I thought I had already mentioned that the rarity of “beneficial” “random” mutations, coupled with the number of mutations necessary to provide the diversity of life we see around us does not allow enough time for them all to have occurred if the metaphysical prior assumptions of the modern synthesis are correct. You seem to react to this as if it were an argument for theokinetics rather than a re-examination of the metaphysics of modern Darwinism.

Sometimes the alternative to a deficient physical theory is an improved physical theory, not the introduction of God or angels. When Newtonian mechanics was revised into Einsteinian mechanics, they did not re-introduce angels to shove the planets around.

A working molecular biologist provides a detailed list of the contents of our genome and points out that up to 90% ot it is junk

Actually, he was arguing that another biologist was wrong, so perhaps it is the battle of the biologists. What Larry Moran did state was that much of what was once called “junk” genes — those parts of the genome that do not code for proteins — is now known to have uses. It doesn’t code for proteins, but it does produce the internal “policing” functions within the genome. He concludes by noting that not all non-coding segments have yielded up a function. This might mean that they are indeed junk (though it must be less than the 90% originally mooted) but it might only mean there are further functions that have not yet been determined.

I noticed that his bloggees gleefully joined in the trashing of Scientific American as pop-sci. Why is this acceptable?

@ YOS [quote] I noticed that his bloggees gleefully joined in the trashing of Scientific American as pop-sci. Why is this acceptable? [/quote]

Perhaps because your “scientific american” is a propaganda campaign to push a particular ideology. Why (by implication) would it be not acceptable to “trash” a ridiculous proposition?

@ Joy
“The scientific description of electricity is not an explanation of what it is. This is one of the primary reasons why girls have problems with physics. They are expecting, as I always was, to get to what a the thing is and when the explanation doesn’t come, glazing over happens.”

Nah! Girls don’t have a problem with physics… they have a problem with things that don’t make sense according to their sensible, emotional world. And blardy good that is too! Almost everyone loves mothers for their sensitivity, empathy and pragmatism. It’s the stuff of “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”.

That places an enormous responsibility on women (mothers) to form children in the physical and conceptual reality. It’s no accident that “early” communist strategists directed their assault on civilisation to “corrupt the women”.

Perhaps some weirdos think that women are demeaned as being just an appendage of a man… no, women are integral in humanity. Men and women have their functions according to their nature.

Perhaps because your “scientific american” is a propaganda campaign to push a particular ideology.

That is as may be; but why would Larry Moran and his devotees join in? And why would the interlocutor here not mention it while mentioning the alleged dismissal of Moran’s blog? Gandersauce!

NOT:
“Random isn’t a reason, or a mechanism any more than time is a mechanism without a reason.”

I meant,:
“Random isn’t a reason, or a mechanism any more than time is a mechanism on it’s own.” Even in chemistry because ‘random’ is an adjective and they do not have power on their own.

Really there are two types of cause necessarily to completely understand the universe and ultimate reality. Hard science doesn’t require consideration of purpose so clever people claim there is no such thing as why. (I do realise others are listed.)

Explanation which involves mechanics but ignores agency is a practical pragmatic expedient engineering approach. The Why and what question doesn’t go away just because the how is answered. The how has more immediate value and more earthly power. Why was my first word.

Why and what are of eternal value but people are utterly indifferent about it because rightly they intuitively learn to be ambivalent.

Well I wouldn’t argue that the nature of men and women are different but elementary explanations of electricity are surely not beyond the understanding of either sex. Yet there is. was never, an explanation until it occurred what the problem was. Several years later I learn that this is known but was not admitted because those involved in science don’t ask such silly basic questions. The point I was making was that these things DO matter. Just not in engineering or A-level physics. I recall at junior school a new science toy box which included simple electric circuit with a battery and watching the boys use the thing and wondering where I was when they learnt how to do such complex things! I thought they understood it. Then I learn that a first in QM will not enable you to understand either.

Sir Isaac Newton, I learn recently, says it would be foolish to give up on the idea of God since it is irrational to think that the universe is held together without God sustaining it in being.
He did not believe in a ‘God of the gaps’ which is the modern scientistic claim.

@ Ye Olde Statistician,

“You know [there has not been enough time in the universe for the observable variety to emerge] how?”

Still waiting for an answer to this.