Searching for GOD...

[ProfessorDavey]

The evidence for irreducible complexity can be found in every living creature - even in the first primitive cells.

No it doesn't - quite the reverse. In fact looking at the evolutionary development of species and complexity we can very clearly see how complexity develops from simpler elements.

[Stranger]

The argument for irreducible complexity still stands as a valid argument.
I am fully aware of the highly convoluted attempts to discredit it by those in the scientific community who are determined to cling on to their belief in unguided evolution.  The evidence for irreducible complexity can be found in every living creature - even in the first primitive cells.

Unmitigated drivel. It's even been tested in court. And you're still ignoring both the scientific evidence and the utter absurdity, cruelty, and breathtaking incompetence of any god that did things that way.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

I make no such presumption.  It is the onus of those who believe in the capabilities of unguided evolutionary processes to develop complex organs to presume that the required mutations needed to achieve functionality were generated from random, unguided forces.

Yes you do, and the “onus” is met by the exhaustively-tested, vastly evidenced theory of evolution that you resolutely refuse to learn about and that you try to traduce with the continued use of the pejorative "presume".

I fully understand that there are far more neutral or harmful mutations than ones which provide tangible benefit, which makes the incremental evolution of complex organs by unguided forces yet more unlikely.

No, it’s exactly the opposite of that. If you throw one dart at a dartboard the chance of hitting treble 20 is relatively low. If you throw a 1,000 darts though, the chance of doing that rises hugely.

This shouldn’t be hard to grasp Alan, it really shouldn’t.
 

I do not doubt that God had a guiding hand in all these different pathways.

We know you don’t however utterly misguided you are about that. What’s curious about this claim though is that you now assert your “god” to have “had a guiding hand in all these different pathways” as he supposedly did with people, but then “He” stopped short of the thinking part (what with animals being unthinking automata according to you). Seems a bit arbitrary don’t you think: “Yeah, I’ll do all their hearts and eyes and stuff, but then for the thinking piece I’ll just clock off”? 

And He must have done a brilliant job in synchronising the parallel incremental development of heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, arteries and veins - all of which are inter dependant on each other to achieve their functionality.

Leaving aside now the idiocy of “a brilliant job” given how many lousy decision features there are, you’re completely lost here in a mix of the reference point error and circular reasoning. I’ve offered to explain this to you (again), and merely asked in return that you don’t just run away when when I do. As you’ve just ignored the offer though, I must conclude that you remain resolutely uninterested in learning something.

Why is that?     

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

The argument for irreducible complexity still stands as a valid argument.

Your ignorance of the subject is showing again here. The claim of irreducible complexity has long-since been falsified. As I understand it, even some creationists gave up on it when they saw that the game was up.

I am fully aware of the highly convoluted attempts to discredit it...

Your attempt at poisoning of the well with unqualified pejoratives is a very nasty habit Alan, and it's doing you no credit here.

...by those in the scientific community who are determined to cling on to their belief in unguided evolution.

No, what people with knowledge in the field want to "cling on to" (oh the irony here) is the conclusions that the evidence leads to.   

The evidence for irreducible complexity can be found in every living creature - even in the first primitive cells.

No it can't. If you had even a rudimentary knowledge of the literature you would know that this assertion has been discredited multiple times.   

[Alan Burns]

No it can't. If you had even a rudimentary knowledge of the literature you would know that this assertion has been discredited multiple times.   

So how many untestable incremental steps does it take for amino acids to transform into a functional living cell?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So how many untestable incremental steps does it take for amino acids to transform into a functional living cell?

How many darts thrown at a dart board does it take to hit the treble 20? Or ten treble 20s in a row? Your question betrays various mistakes in reasoning, but one of them is that the “number of steps” is the wrong question: what you should be asking about is the number of opportunities for those “steps” to have occurred to produce a given outcome.

Throwing a 6 on a die 100 times in a row is a very unlikely event. Given enough opportunities though, it would be even more unlikely if it didn’t happen.

Why is this so hard for you to grasp? 

[Stranger]

So how many untestable incremental steps does it take for amino acids to transform into a functional living cell?

Do you need help doing an internet search?   

First couple of results:-
The Origin and Evolution of Cells
How life evolved: 10 steps to the first cells

[bluehillside Retd.]

By the way Alan, your reasoning failure here isn't just the base rate fallacy. You're also lost in a world of reference point error and circular reasoning.

I could explain all three to you, but there's little point if you just continue to ignore the explanations you're given. Suffice it to say then that these are the primary fallacies you're falling in to (I'm leaving aside here the minor ones like poisoning the well by the way).   

[Alan Burns]

Do you need help doing an internet search?   

First couple of results:-
The Origin and Evolution of Cells
How life evolved: 10 steps to the first cells

Argument from authority is a fundamental fallacy, because authorities are proven to be fallible, especially those you consciously select to justify your own standpoint.  You need to provide your own justification.

[Alan Burns]

Throwing a 6 on a die 100 times in a row is a very unlikely event. Given enough opportunities though, it would be even more unlikely if it didn’t happen.

if it happens once, it is an unlikely event.
if it happens twice, it is an amazing phenomenon.
if it keeps on happening again and again - it is undoubtedly an intended sequence of events.

The history of evolution is populated with countless such events.

[torridon]

if it happens once, it is an unlikely event.
if it happens twice, it is an amazing phenomenon.
if it keeps on happening again and again - it is undoubtedly an intended sequence of events.

The history of evolution is populated with countless such events.

So if mutations are intentional that means that the alpha, beta, gamma and omicron variants of sars-cov-2 were planned all along.

Still haven't thought this through have you ?

[Stranger]

Argument from authority is a fundamental fallacy, because authorities are proven to be fallible, especially those you consciously select to justify your own standpoint.

Firstly, an argument from authority is about just believing somebody based on their authority, science has ways to check its results and the evidence that supports them. Secondly, I didn't do much selecting, I just searched on the subject and picked a picked a couple of interesting articles from credible sources that appeared in the first few results.

Thirdly, and most importantly, you are trying to tell us that science has got evolution all wrong and that you know better despite all the evidence and the fact that the idea of irreducible complexity was even thrown out of court, so this is a blatant case of attempting to shift the burden of proof.

You need to provide your own justification.

Matthew 7:5.

[Stranger]

if it happens once, it is an unlikely event.
if it happens twice, it is an amazing phenomenon.
if it keeps on happening again and again - it is undoubtedly an intended sequence of events.

The history of evolution is populated with countless such events.

You still don't seem to understand the basics of natural selection. It's dead easy to throw a 100 or a 1000 or 10000 6s if you ignore any result that isn't a 6.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Argument from authority is a fundamental fallacy, because authorities are proven to be fallible, especially those you consciously select to justify your own standpoint.  You need to provide your own justification.

You seem to have invented a new fallacy here – the fallacy of accusing someone of committing a fallacy because you don’t understand what that fallacy entails. An argument from authority would be something like, “Nigel Lawson thinks Brexit is a good idea and he’s really clever, so Brexit must be a good idea”. On the other hand, referencing the well-evidenced, peer-reviewed etc work of people with specialist knowledge in the field isn’t an argument from authority at all.

You’ve also committed a shifting of the burden of proof fallacy here by the way – no-one says that science isn’t fallible. Your assertion though is that it’s not only fallible but also wrong, so it’s entirely your job to justify your claim.   

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

if it happens once, it is an unlikely event.
if it happens twice, it is an amazing phenomenon.
if it keeps on happening again and again - it is undoubtedly an intended sequence of …events.

The history of evolution is populated with countless such events.

Your ignorance of the base rate fallacy is letting you down here. If we stick with the analogy…

…do you know the odds of rolling a die ten times and getting ten sixes? They’re 1: 60,466,176. Pretty high right? So high in fact that it’s hard to imagine such a thing happening by chance don’t you think?

What would happen though if you ran the same trial ten times? Well, the odds would reduce accordingly – ie, to 1: 6,046,617.6.

How about running the trial 100 times? Yep, they reduce again to 1: 604,661.76.

Can you see where this is going? If you run the trial often enough, at some point scoring ten sixes in a row becomes more likely than it is unlikely.

This is your base rate error. You’re looklng at information pertaining only to a specific event (eg, a cell occurring with just one “trial”), and ignoring the (much more important) background information pertaining to general prevalence (ie, the number of opportunities for a cell to occur given the number of “trials”). What you should be doing instead is integrating the two data sets so the resulting data becomes meaningful. 

And when you do, what does biology teach us about this? Yep, that the number of “trials” – ie, random mutations involved – is very large, not only as an absolute number but happening concurrently wherever those mutations occurred.

Do you understand the base rate error now, and more to the point where you went wrong by committing it? 

In the (probably unlikely, but hey-ho – I live in hope) event that you do understand it, I’ll move on next to the other invalid reasoning in which you’ve wrapped yourself. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Nope, all that means is it exists,

And how does that help the case for 'it doesn't exist'? Not only that it is the sufficient answer or reason to how come there is something rather than nothing.

So it is the necessary entity for something since it has to be creative and capable of actualising.

 And it is independent ontologically of anything for it's existence.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

And how does that help the case for 'it doesn't exist'?

Straw man fallacy. How is it that after all this time and all the countless times it’s been explained to you you still can’t grasp the difference between “it doesn’t exist” and “I have no reason to think it does exist”?

Not only that it is the sufficient answer or reason to how come there is something rather than nothing.

So it is the necessary entity for something since it has to be creative and capable of actualising.

And it is independent ontologically of anything for it's existence.

Special pleading fallacy. You can’t just magic up “independent ontologically of anything for it's existence” (sic) as if that’s an explanation. Yet again: answering a “don’t know” with an “it’s magic innit” is epistemically worthless.   

[Walt Zingmatilder]

And indistinguishable from a brute fact,

So we have moved past the question of existence (it does) to the question of it's nature. Is it a brute fact or does it have sufficient reason. In either case it's existence seems to have been established. There is a logical reason given for it since it is the answer to the question why something and not nothing and that is the sufficient reason which has been given rather than a brute fact i.e. it just is and there's an end to it.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

There is nothing that the space-time manifold is obviously contingent on,

But there is the question why the space-time manifold and not nothing? The space time manifold is therefore dependent or contingent on the reason.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

So we have moved past the question of existence (it does) to the question of it's nature. Is it a brute fact or does it have sufficient reason. In either case it's existence seems to have been established.

No it hasn’t. What was explained to you was that, if you don’t like the only thing we can say with certainty about the universe being that it’s a brute fact, the same would apply if ever you were to demonstrate a god sitting behind it. That doesn’t though imply for one moment that you actually have demonstrated any such thing.

There is a logical reason given for it since it is the answer to the question why something and not nothing and that is the sufficient reason which has been given rather than a brute fact i.e. it just is and there's an end to it.

Yet again, no it isn’t. If you want to posit an answer to “why something and not nothing” by inserting a causal deity then you just relocate exactly the same question to your (supposed) deity: ie, why god and not no god?

How many times does this have to be explained to you?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

But there is the question why the space-time manifold and not nothing? The space time manifold is therefore dependent or contingent on the reason.

Just as, if ever you could justify your claim "god", there would then be the same question: "why god and not no god?".

So?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Back into your old problem with time. For something to 'come into being' implies it wasn't there at one point in time and then it is there at another point in time.

If an element of time has crept in you have my utmost apology. By come into being I perhaps should have said something like ''actualized''

Likewise always has been presumes a temporal element.

Again you have my apologies. I should have perhaps talked about eternal existence independent of time. the question why something rather than nothing has no temporal component which perhaps you should have noticed and it can apply whether the universe has a beginning or not. It is a question of being and being actual or realised.

you have a very simplistic view of time, don't you Vlad.

If you mean not as sophisticated as your offering:

A depends on B
B depends on C
C depends on D
D depends on E
E depends on A?

I think you will see this leads to the absurd situation where each element is totally dependent on itself and totally dependent on every other component.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Vlad,

Just as, if ever you could justify your claim "god", there would then be the same question "why god and not no god?".

So?

At the end of his cosmological argument, not his restatement of the Kalam but the other one from contingency Aquinus outlines what the necessary entity must be and ends, pointing to it, and THAT is what we call God.

So God is identified with the reason for why there is something rather than nothing because that must be the reason why there is something etc, the creative and actualizing agency for everything, independent from what it has created, self directing etc,

[Stranger]

So we have moved past the question of existence (it does) to the question of it's nature.

No.

There is a logical reason given for it since it is the answer to the question why something and not nothing and that is the sufficient reason which has been given rather than a brute fact i.e. it just is and there's an end to it.

This is just mindless circularity. Silly word games. There is no sufficient reason as to why there is something rather than nothing. Why was nothing existing impossible?

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

At the end of his cosmological argument, not his restatement of the Kalam but the other one from contingency Aquinus outlines what the necessary entity must be and ends, pointing to it, and THAT is what we call God.

So God is identified with the reason for why there is something rather than nothing because that must be the reason why there is something etc, the creative and actualizing agency for everything, independent from what it has created, self directing etc,

Again: if you want to assert “god” to be a necessary causal agency for the universe because it’s the answer to “why a universe rather than not a universe?” then you just relocate exactly the same question to this god: “why god rather than not god?”.

No amount of special pleading, “it’s magic innit” etc gets you off that hook. “God” doesn’t answer the question, it just relocates it.

Now write that down so it doesn’t have to be explained to you again.