Author Topic: Searching for GOD...  (Read 3894545 times)

torridon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10209
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20750 on: August 02, 2017, 06:28:20 AM »
I would say that any evolutionary process relying entirely on random events to drive it has absolute zero probability of producing anything as intelligent as an earthworm.

So something so highly successful as leprosy could not possibly have evolved by random events, therefore God must have had a hand in designing it.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20751 on: August 02, 2017, 09:01:16 AM »
Then contrary to your prior assertions you don't understand evolution by natural selection after all.
I understand it perfectly well, which is why I come to the conclusion that if evolution relies on random mutations rather than purposefully guided ones, it can never be more than a fine tuning process.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

floo

  • Guest
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20752 on: August 02, 2017, 09:02:19 AM »
I would say that any evolutionary process relying entirely on random events to drive it has absolute zero probability of producing anything as intelligent as an earthworm.

Even if that were to be the case, it doesn't mean your version of god is in the frame.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20753 on: August 02, 2017, 09:06:06 AM »
So something so highly successful as leprosy could not possibly have evolved by random events, therefore God must have had a hand in designing it.
A virus does not have the complexity of a human
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Shaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15639
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20754 on: August 02, 2017, 09:15:47 AM »
I understand it perfectly well
Patently false since you keep wibbling on about randomness - true at the genetic level - with nary a mention of natural selection, which is the non-random element that for some reason you continually omit.
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Nearly Sane

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 64341
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20755 on: August 02, 2017, 09:18:58 AM »
A virus does not have the complexity of a human
But your god still chose for children to get hereditary disease and die in excruciating pain, because it likes the pain, it bathes in it, glorying in the screams and as they die spunking away.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 09:30:00 AM by Nearly Sane »

Maeght

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5680
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20756 on: August 02, 2017, 09:20:21 AM »
I understand it perfectly well, which is why I come to the conclusion that if evolution relies on random mutations rather than purposefully guided ones, it can never be more than a fine tuning process.

Why do you think you know better than the people who work in the field of evolutionarily biology?

Sebastian Toe

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7719
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20757 on: August 02, 2017, 09:22:08 AM »
A virus does not have the complexity of a human
Complexity?
"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends.'
Albert Einstein

Shaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15639
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20758 on: August 02, 2017, 09:26:27 AM »
It's a long passage but worth reading - somebody who actually understands the role of chance in evolution:

http://tinyurl.com/y8uzyd6j
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20759 on: August 02, 2017, 09:32:12 AM »
Patently false since you keep wibbling on about randomness - true at the genetic level - with nary a mention of natural selection, which is the non-random element that for some reason you continually omit.
The natural selection will not work if it does not have a virtually unlimited supply of beneficial mutations to select from when developing something as complex as a human organ.  Even then, having to give each incremental step in the process a significant survival advantage is an onerous task.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Shaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15639
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20760 on: August 02, 2017, 09:33:52 AM »
The natural selection will not work if it does not have a virtually unlimited supply of beneficial mutations

For all intents and purposes it does - "virtually unlimited" here meaning "a finite but for all that staggeringly huge number". And remove the word 'beneficial' because in using it you're putting the cart before the horse. We say a mutation is beneficial after the fact, not before. What you need is lots and lots and lots of lovely random genetic shuffling - which happily the planet provides - and then a sieve or filter that catches some variations and lets others fall through.

Quote
to select from when developing something as complex as a human organ.
Any creature's organ - or is it only the human ones you're interested in?

Quote
Even then, having to give each incremental step in the process a significant survival advantage is an onerous task.
Yes. That's how the shit goes down, though.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 09:41:24 AM by Shaker »
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20761 on: August 02, 2017, 09:44:34 AM »
Clearly it is not usually a case of one single mutation producing entire new features singlehandedly. Mutations are happening constantly, I've suffered several dozen whilst writing these two sentences, the vast majority will not result in major evolutionary change. But it is inevitable that some mutations will produce modification in the germ line, and some of these modifications will put the descendants at a competitive advantage whilst others will be disadvantaged.  All this is inevitable and derivable from mere probability.  Can you explain how a line of organisms that benefits from a survival advantage would not be more likely to prosper than those without it ?
I may be missing something here, but I understood that genetic mutations get passed on through DNA.  So are you saying that your DNA is constantly mutating? 
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20762 on: August 02, 2017, 10:19:51 AM »
It's a long passage but worth reading - somebody who actually understands the role of chance in evolution:

http://tinyurl.com/y8uzyd6j
But in this passage, there is the implication that there is a constant incentive to take each incremental step towards a specific goal.  I know the TOE claims the incentive is survival, but the implicit nature of this universe as a whole is indifferent to the survival of life.  There is nothing in our material universe to nurture the complexity of life as we know it into existence.
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19470
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20763 on: August 02, 2017, 10:23:22 AM »
Crashes and…

Quote
But evolution can't be a bottom up process if it was intelligently guided.

And apples can’t fall because of gravity if it’s pixies with very thin strings that do it. Congrats – you’ve now gone completely circular: you started with a deep misunderstanding of evolutionary theory to create a (false) gap in order to insert “God”, and now you posit the same god a priori.

Even by your standards that’s a pretty epic fail.

Quote
And precisely how can a random copying error in a DNA molecule facilitate the prioritisation of information flow from sense organs?

Two problems there. First, it’s yet another argument from personal incredulity – whether or not the “precise how” is known doesn’t change the fact that the evidence tells us that it does. (Precisely how would this soul conjecture of yours interact with brains by the way?)

Second, the how in any case is simple enough – if you thrown enough mud at a wall, some of it will stick. Billions of mutations are highly likely to produce a small number that enable the host better to engage with and adapt to its environment. And because that host’s survival and breeding chances thereby increase, so over time those mutations become embedded and heritable.     

Quote
I would say that any evolutionary process relying entirely on random events to drive it has absolute zero probability of producing anything as intelligent as an earthworm.

But as you’ve been told many times now that evolution is precisely not random, why would you say that? You vastly underestimate scale here too – billions of events and billions of years for them to occur will create countless incremental changes that collectively observably produce all sorts of species.

Quote
I understand it perfectly well, which is why I come to the conclusion that if evolution relies on random mutations rather than purposefully guided ones, it can never be more than a fine tuning process.

No you don’t, and your “if evolution relies on random mutations” betrays the fact that you don’t. The mutations are random, but the interactions with environment and ensuing adaptations are precisely not random.   

Quote
A virus does not have the complexity of a human

But a fern for example is in some ways more complex than a human. We have 23 chromosome pairs, ferns have about 630 chromosome pairs – which is just as you’d expect given the much older age of ferns. And before you ask, “yes, but why can’t ferns ride a unicycle then?” the answer is that they are sufficiently well adapted to their environment and so there’d be no advantage to it. 

Quote
The natural selection will not work if it does not have a virtually unlimited supply of beneficial mutations to select from when developing something as complex as a human organ.  Even then, having to give each incremental step in the process a significant survival advantage is an onerous task.

And yet again you repeat your basic mistake of the reference point error. It’s not that that there are a virtually unlimited number of “beneficial” mutations – just mutations. Whether they turn out to be advantageous or not in terms of enhancing survivability is a judgment after the fact. This is well-trodden ground by the way – if you look at the evolution of the eye for example (which has evolved separately several times incidentally) you can trace all the way from light sensitive cells to dips and hollows to capture light and shadow to colour awareness to... etc.     

A few posts back I said:

Look, you have a long history here of evasion and avoidance but could you at least try to engage head on just this once with the arguments that undo you? Can you now see for example that attempted analogies with car factories and the like fail because they start with an intended, top down outcome (the car) and ask “what are the chances eh?” whereas evolution is bottom up and purposeless – it cannot know what its outcomes will be because there’s nothing to do the “knowing” and because those outcomes occur as the result of countless interactions with the environments the genomes occupy?

Surely you can now see this much at least can’t you?

Can’t you?


Should I take your silence to mean that your answer is “no” and that your continued ignorance on the subject is now wilful?     
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 10:32:53 AM by bluehillside »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

SusanDoris

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8265
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20764 on: August 02, 2017, 10:29:01 AM »
Not for the first time, your idea of 'feasible' is your own.
And there we go - gather round, everyone. The "totally random" demonstrates that you haven't a Scooby as to what you're prattling about.

I don't at all mind that you embarrass yourself - that's daily comedy gold - but I object when you make me embarrassed for you.
I sit here and cringe!! I don't know how much more of AB's smug/complacent/arrogant? stuff or just drivel?!!! I can stand. But I read all  because I don't want to miss anything of the answers ... well almost all of them, I tend to skip past Vlad's.
The Most Honourable Sister of Titular Indecision.

Alan Burns

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10211
  • I lay it down of my own free will. John 10:18
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20765 on: August 02, 2017, 10:40:46 AM »
Should I take your silence to mean that your answer is “no” and that your continued ignorance on the subject is now wilful?     
I am not ignorant of the subject.  I do understand the points you are making, and I have to say that I do not agree with your conclusions and deductions.

Sometimes the wording of my thoughts and ideas does not come across in the way I intend, so I am sorry for any confusion.

It all boils down to the question of realistic probabilities. 
The truth will set you free  - John 8:32
Truth is not an abstraction, but a person - Edith Stein
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. - CS Lewis
Joy is the Gigantic Secret of Christians - GK Chesterton

torridon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10209
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20766 on: August 02, 2017, 10:44:15 AM »
I may be missing something here, but I understood that genetic mutations get passed on through DNA.  So are you saying that your DNA is constantly mutating?
As far as evolution is concerned it is only mutations affecting DNA in germ line cells that are significant, but these are a vanishingly tiny proportion of all mutations.  We make for instance something like 20 million new red blood cells every second; not every single one will be a perfect copy but these mutations will not affect subsequent generations.

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19470
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20767 on: August 02, 2017, 10:48:37 AM »
Crashes and...

Quote
I am not ignorant of the subject.

Yes you are. Your references to "totally random" betray the fact.

Quote
I do understand the points you are making, and I have to say that I do not agree with your conclusions and deductions.

It's not about "conclusions and deductions" - it's about trying to get you to grasp what evolutionary theory actually says so you will stop dismissing your own misunderstanding of it.

Quote
Sometimes the wording of my thoughts and ideas does not come across in the way I intend, so I am sorry for any confusion.

It's not the wording of your posts that's the problem, it's the content you intend that's the problem.

Quote
It all boils down to the question of realistic probabilities.

Well yes, but all you have to say about that is assertions of your personal incredulity. A lot of work has been done on the maths of evolutionary theory that show it to be robust - what calculations exactly have you done to falsify that?

Surely, "yes, but it all looks really, you know, complex to me so - um - designer!" isn't all you've got is it?

Is it?
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 10:58:23 AM by bluehillside »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

torridon

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10209
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20768 on: August 02, 2017, 10:52:22 AM »
A virus does not have the complexity of a human

True, complexity admits of degrees, so complex life like us took billions of years to evolve; not so for simpler forms of life like bacteria and viruses.  But I was taking issue with the principle you were expounding, that evolution results from divine fiddling to get a desired result in which case to be consistent you should also recognise that the zika virus or leprosy or Spina Bifida are ultimately also products of divine will. It comes back to the same problem you have with the devil, a god that can eliminate evil but chooses not to is evil; a god that can eliminate gratuitous suffering but chooses not to is inflicting gratuitous suffering.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 10:55:34 AM by torridon »

Shaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15639
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20769 on: August 02, 2017, 10:56:52 AM »
But in this passage, there is the implication that there is a constant incentive to take each incremental step towards a specific goal.

No there isn't. Evolution doesn't have a goal.

In some ways evolution can be considered a historical science, in the sense that we find ourselves faced with living things (snakes/oranges/humans) and we want to know how they came to be how they are, which entails tracing an evolutionary history back in time. The way things are now however doesn't mean that that is what evolution was 'aiming' at - that's the reference point error that bluehillside mentioned. Somebody tracing such a history a million years from today (for example) will see a wholly different picture again.
Quote
I know the TOE claims the incentive is survival
Sort of. Survival only as far as reproduction, at any rate.
Quote
but the implicit nature of this universe as a whole is indifferent to the survival of life.
Fallacy of composition - what obtains as a whole doesn't obtain for a part of that whole. The Earth is, you may have noticed, rather hospitable to life - that's life as we know it, adapted to fit around the conditions of the planet. You don't have to go very far outside of those conditions to find other conditions inhospitable to life though - most climbers need supplemental oxygen to reach the summit of Everest. And then there's water, of course.
Quote
There is nothing in our material universe
Or 'the universe' as it's also known.
Quote
to nurture the complexity of life as we know it into existence.
Yes there is - we're discussing it right now. Or at least, I am.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 11:26:15 AM by Shaker »
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

Maeght

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5680
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20770 on: August 02, 2017, 11:00:11 AM »
But in this passage, there is the implication that there is a constant incentive to take each incremental step towards a specific goal.  I know the TOE claims the incentive is survival, but the implicit nature of this universe as a whole is indifferent to the survival of life.  There is nothing in our material universe to nurture the complexity of life as we know it into existence.

And you claim to understand TOE by natural selection!

I asl again, what makes you think you know better than evolutionary biologists?

floo

  • Guest
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20771 on: August 02, 2017, 11:08:56 AM »
I am not ignorant of the subject.  I do understand the points you are making, and I have to say that I do not agree with your conclusions and deductions.

Sometimes the wording of my thoughts and ideas does not come across in the way I intend, so I am sorry for any confusion.

It all boils down to the question of realistic probabilities.

But yours aren't realistic. ::)

bluehillside Retd.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 19470
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20772 on: August 02, 2017, 11:09:03 AM »
Maeght,

Quote
And you claim to understand TOE by natural selection!

I asl again, what makes you think you know better than evolutionary biologists?

If only his ambitions were so limited! He actually think he knows more than all of science which he asserts can't see the "bigger picture" whereas, armed only with his trusty book of ancient stories and an ego the size of all outdoors, in some unexplained way old "Crashes and" apparently can.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2017, 11:19:24 AM by bluehillside »
"Don't make me come down there."

God

Shaker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15639
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20773 on: August 02, 2017, 11:10:51 AM »
It's tiresome and depressing in the extreme that this exact same conversation was being played out nine months ago: http://tinyurl.com/y9a55f9a
Pain, or damage, don't end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man, and give some back. - Al Swearengen, Deadwood.

SusanDoris

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 8265
Re: Searching for GOD...
« Reply #20774 on: August 02, 2017, 11:17:45 AM »
I wonder if the mods could create a new rule which says that a direct question must be answered within, say, two days, or the person not answering will have to pay a forfeit?
The Most Honourable Sister of Titular Indecision.