The Greater Fool
Illuminator
Daniel, which came first: The chicken or the egg?
Creationist argument about DNA and information
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Except that almost no-one here has a belief system. Most of us don't do acceptance-without-evidence, which is what belief amounts to. So, I have no belief system for which I can show support. You theists, with everything dependent on acceptance-without-evidence, just assign belief to us because it is your natural state, but this is projecting, and entirely mis-represents the mindset of non-theists. In asking this question, therefore, you are doing a classic fallacy: begging the question. See if you can avoid making the same mistake again.
WTF is a
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I presume you are familiar with eating? Metabolism? Where babies come from?
You said earlier in the thread that DNA wasn't alive.
We could use the bible as a reference here. At one point, there were fewer people around than there are now - many millions of times fewer. Those people who are around now were created somehow, either by an act of special creation with each birth, or by incorporating non-living matter to make more humans.
So that part doesn't trouble me at all. I've even seen pictures of when I was a baby, and here I am at a hundred pounds more. I'm pretty sure I managed to grow by eating non-living matter and converting it into me.
But this is not required for my belief system. No more than fondling the wounds of Jesus is required for a believer's belief system. All that's required for my belief system is accepting that some things (any things at all) arise without agency attached. From there, we are just trying to narrow down which things.
I guess I am then. Science can take it. It handles disagreements quite well.
I snipped your quotes to save space, but which of them do you think is correct, since they are different descriptions of the same thing?
Not the hard claim "that's all there is" but the softer claim "this is the part I can usefully describe and work with."
You have a problem. In order to make your arguments, you must draw on science and natural laws. But at some point, you wish to reject those very laws when they produce results which disagree with you. That's a problem - deciding where to cut the fabric without leaving too many loose ends which might unravel.
If you think the idea that DNA has information (of the style you require) then I fear you have not found a good seam to cut. There's no dividing line where you wish it to be. No separation between DNA and everything else going on in a cell. Backing off and pointing at "life" as a good spot to cleave doesn't work either, since evolution is a theory about life. Trying to cut at the transition between living organisms and non-living seems the best bet, but we don't yet have an accepted model to argue about, do we? And that line doesn't work anyhow because there's so much "nature did it" further along the chain of cause and effect.
It seems the location of your seam forces you to either reject too much or accept too much. You'll never find a place which shows us God's hand in the act of creation without also allowing God to use the very natural laws you'd like to reject.
Indeed, and it would be rather odd for physicists to say this when the two most accurate theories for large and for small dimensions do not agree.
All the physicists that I know think this is cool, because it means there is still a lot to be discovered.
It is also worth pointing out that this doesn't invalidate the utility of the theories - one enabled the transistor, the other, nuclear power.
It's blinder than that - Daniel can't see the relevance of asking about other deities - there is an unstated assumption that the choice is between Biblical Literalism and Science.
Perpetual Student
Illuminator
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Good point! Unfortunately, this fundamental difference between science and paranormal belief systems is not comprehended by Daniel's ilk. The scientific community rejects models that are in conflict with evidence and they embrace new models that observationally or experimentally demonstrate superior fidelity. Evidence rules -- not belief! Paranormal belief systems like Daniel's religion ignore evidence and cling to sacred texts regardless of how blatant the conflict with evidence may be.
I'll leave you, Daniel, to name the logical fallacies in your statement (they may be just one, but I doubt it).
You may wish to - carefully - define each of your terms; that may reduce the number of logical fallacies (though perhaps not eliminate them).
In the absence of any such careful clarification of the EXACT meaning of each of your terms, here are some other Choices (there are many, many more):
Nature (Guided)
GOD/Unintelligent Design (Guided)
GOD/Intelligent non-Design (Guided)
GOD/Intelligent Design (Unguided)
FSM/Intelligent Design (Guided)
Both "Nature (Unguided)" AND "GOD/Intelligent Design (Guided)" (kinda like both "wave" and "particle")
Extinct aliens/accidental Design (partially Guided)
Over to you ...
Minoosh
Penultimate Amazing
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I do assume the presence of a painter, but even if I assume a creator for the heavens and Earth, there are many versions to choose from. Your arguments have not tilted me toward the only one that can possibly be right, the God of Noah et al.
Refuted or convincingly rebutted here more times than I care to count.
In your opinion.
I would if I could. In the absence of one I do not discount observation, such testing as is possible and reasoning as valid tools for expanding knowledge.
Context: I believe you are saying widespread delusion of self-described theistic evolutionists must be attributable to a trick from Satan, not a trick from God. Why?
Glad to see you have a sense of humor.
I was watching the door. No neighbors.
Wait, what? I can test with historical documentation?
Because he's pulling our legs. He's not serious. He's doing this for laughs and/or to direct Web traffic.
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The staggering thing about that is that we can say with virtual certainty that Danielscience's father would have thought the same thing. Religion is highly, highly inherited. Extremely few people decide to change from one god to another, although millions every year have the sense to give up gods altogether. Take away parental inculcation, and ask any adult to start on theism from scratch, choosing from any of the thousands of gods on offer around the world, and things would be very different indeed. That they don't see this as brainwashing is strong evidence that there's none so blind as those who won't see.
Indeed. Which makes it all the more baffling that theists don't come along here and attempt to persuade us with what they see as actual evidence. Give us testable, repeatable, falsifiable evidence of the existence of your god, or any other god, Daniel, and I'll change my world view immediately. It really is as simple as that. Until then, I have seen no evidence of any god/s, and therefore hold it to be self-evident that there is some other explanation for life, DNA, and the universe.
Ah, it was Annnoid who said that explicitly - Daniel's proclaiming of the bible as evidence of anything other than the existence of a claim is simply an implicit statement of this
AdamSK
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The issue is that some phenomena may not give itself over to "testable, repeatable, falsifiable evidence." If God shows Himself when and where He chooses, and does not do so reliably, then there's no "testable, repeatable" way to demonstrate His existence. We have to rely on documented occurrences.
The analogy I've used before is living in Gotham City and trying to prove the existence of the Batman (specifically a version of the Batman, as in many of the comics, that stealthily captures criminals but works to leave no concrete evidence of his existence). A person who has seen Batman may have good reason to believe he exists, while for a person who has not himself seen Batman, there may not be sufficient documentary evidence to prove his existence. Nor is there any reliable experiment that you can do to confirm his existence, because Batman won't show up on cue (he shows up only sometimes and only if he thinks he can get away unseen).
It is not unreasonable that the universe might work in such a way that those with direct experience of a phenomenon are justified believing it, while those without such direct experience are justified in not believing it.
ComfySlippers
Banned
Easter is annoying. So is God now a crime fighter in Gotham City, and Jesus is Robin?
Holy BatBible!
Holy BatBible!
Good to see that, despite what you posted earlier, you do seem to have accepted at least part of what I wrote.
As others have already noted, you 'fail' at the first step. For several different reasons (each enough on its own).
I'll add a few more:
* can you provide evidence - objective, independently verifiable evidence - that "all" the physicists say X? That you have a complete and pure (i.e. no "not physicist") list of "the physicists"? That each and every one said X?
* what is this "the laws of physics"? If I took the temperature of physicists (not "all" of them) in, say, 1900, would these "laws of physics" be different from those a poll of physicists in 2000 would show? How about 1500?
* what does "can be" mean? Does it, for example, mean a complete and thorough listing of every aspect of reality - in detail - and a rigorous demonstration of the veracity of "description and prediction"?
Hope this helps. Am looking forward to a post by you, clarifying what you mean by just this one statement.
Nonsense! Evidence of creation should be everywhere if god did it. You wouldn't need to see god to see evidence of god's handiwork.
This is true, and might explain some disagreements, but the vast majority of information would overlap, and our hypothetical inquisitors would agree overwhelmingly with each other.
Indeed, this is why a Young Earth Creationist is such an interesting specimen. Not for their common, banal belief in God, but for all the other stuff they have to reject to uphold their particular brand of deity. The existence of Batman is one thing, the existence of Batman who also provides tasty breakfast cereals for all the starving kids on Easter morning, is quite another.
We are always allowed to add what we know and fight against Occam (because the what-we-know adds to the explanatory burden), but we are not always allowed to throw out what other people know when we cannot align it well with our bit of the puzzle. After all, science still works in a world with miracles - it just doesn't work quite as well. If miracles were predictable, they'd be part of science, if they stay rare enough not to be testable, then they don't matter much at all to the method.
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Border Reiver
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Daniel, are you ever going to get around to letting us know which of the thousands of deities are responsible for creation?
And why that diety should be preferred over the others?
I mean the Christian ones contradict each other on the order of the acts of creation, and then try and explain how the entire genetic diversity of humanity arises from one rather incestuous individual. That one would fail on internal consistency alone.
And why that diety should be preferred over the others?
I mean the Christian ones contradict each other on the order of the acts of creation, and then try and explain how the entire genetic diversity of humanity arises from one rather incestuous individual. That one would fail on internal consistency alone.
Jodie
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As evidenced by the content of your posts. Theology is not a subject limited to just the Christian religion.
Ahhh, where'd you get the Krebs Cycle?
We're talking about how you got the First "Functional" DNA/RNA/Proteins, You skipped pages 1 - 2875.
Not really, the Kreb's cycle, or some earlier version of it, refers to a process for the formation of amino acids that subsequently leads to the formation of proteins that acted as a pre-cursor form of RNA. It was there before we were, or to place it in a concept that you can more easily understand, it was "God's recipe". You asked , I delivered, and it's not theory, it's concrete reality.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22340/
"It is most likely that the citric acid cycle was assembled from preexisting reaction pathways. As noted earlier, many of the intermediates formed in the citric acid cycle are used in biosynthetic pathways to generate amino acids and porphyrins. Thus, compounds such as pyruvate, α-ketoglutarate, and oxaloacetate were likely present early in evolution for biosynthetic purposes. The oxidative decarboxylation of these α-ketoacids is quite favorable thermodynamically. The elegant modular structures of the pyruvate and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complexes reveal how three reactions (decarboxylation, oxidation, and thioester formation) can be linked to harness the free energy associated with decarboxylation to drive the synthesis of both acyl CoA derivatives and NADH. These reactions almost certainly formed the core of processes that preceded the citric acid cycle evolutionarily. Interestingly, α-ketoglutarate can be directly converted into oxaloacetate by transamination of the respective amino acids by aspartate aminotransferase, another key biosynthetic enzyme. Thus, cycles comprising smaller numbers of intermediates could have existed before the present form evolved to harvest the electrons from pyruvate or other compounds more efficiently."
You need to go back to school, or at least keep up with the latest research. This experiment was done about 75-80 years ago.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53am.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26876/
"From our knowledge of present-day organisms and the molecules they contain, it seems likely that the development of the directly autocatalytic mechanisms fundamental to living systems began with the evolution of families of molecules that could catalyze their own replication. With time, a family of cooperating RNA catalysts probably developed the ability to direct synthesis of polypeptides. DNA is likely to have been a late addition: as the accumulation of additional protein catalysts allowed more efficient and complex cells to evolve, the DNA double helix replaced RNA as a more stable molecule for storing the increased amounts of genetic information required by such cells."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK6360/
" As we have seen in this chapter, there is no lack of alternative, and sometimes contradictory, hypotheses. We have emphasized the importance that viruses could have played in the story since their role is usually ignored or underestimated. In any case, viral replication systems should not be only considered as simple model system, giving possible clue to more complex cellular ones, but as mechanisms interesting to study on their own, as witnesses of critical aspects of early life evolution. The availability of many more replication protein sequences from viruses of the three domains of life and new methods to analyze viral protein phylogenies will possibly help to critically test some of the hypotheses we propose. Their comparison with other replication systems will certainly be productive at the end, if done with an evolutionary oriented mind."
The key phrase in your quote is " presently known" and your citation is about 20 years old.
That's a stupid question. The formation of amino acids isn't comparable to paper and glue turning into a manual.
I believe based on what you have posted so far that my attempt to dumb it down probably wasn't dumb enough.
See my above and previous posts but also let me quote the bible here for you:
Romans 11:18
"God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, to this very day."
Projection on your part.
Neither is the bible.
If you discount what I've posted thus far based on that diatribe of a post then it equally applies to your perspective. The " Life is but a Dream" argument dressed up in quantum mechanics, although I don't disagree with it in principle, isn't reliant on some form of prior knowledge or plan. That is simply how we perceive it, which is why we are having this debate.
Refer back to your linked post where you discuss reality as a collapsed wave form. With that in mind, the process of evolution is a perceptual issue. If viewed outside of the limits of time and space it would appear to be something very different from the way I see it or how you see it. In other words, ultimately " The How" is totality, or the " IS", of the object being observed. If you look at this from a biblical perspective, spirituality is a state of being that permeates everything you do across time and space, and is what is meant when someone speaks of being in a state of grace. To me the natural world is that state of grace, which we are only a part of, making it objectively difficult to observe ourselves with any true accuracy.
Wha ha ha ha, If you only knew.And how do you know?? Post the "Method" used to reach your conclusion here??
regards
Discernment of Spirit
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