But I cannot veto all candidates if I feel that none of them are suitable for office, such as in the last Presidential election. In the end you have to vote for either bigger government @10% per year (Republican) or bigger government @ 20% per year (Democrat). What if I want smaller government?
Not voting is the same as validating the choice of the remaining voters. I have been a juror many times, and am facing more selections this fall. Congress is also governed rigorously by laws and an authority; the constitution. It seems like almost any question congress faces has a set of lobbies that serve as defenders/accusers the same as any court room. My point is that we could hardly do worse than the political parties, even selecting at random.
What I want to see is "None of the above" added to any elected office. If "None of the above" is selected the office is filled by selecting at random from the pool of qualified jurors already maintained by every jurisdiction in the US. The principal is the same: someone drafted at random to a public service. I am sure that we would occasionally be represented by a person who was an idiot, poorly informed, or an unconvicted criminal. Oh. Wait. We already are.
244 steps seems like way too few. Oh. This is not software development quality assurance, just students playing. Wait until they see the Rube Goldberg processes out here in the real world. They will probably retreat back into MBA school in horror.
Around here they grow chilli to turn into paint. It turns out that it makes an excellent anti-fouling marine paint, since marine animals do not seem to have developed a taste for hot. the hotter the chilli the more paint/acre they can make.
Thanks for a well-reasoned post. I appreciate the amount of work you put into this. Well-reasoned conversation is hard to find.
Thanks for the Palin post. That does indeed change my perception of her.
I am thankful that we agree on the question of politics and science. My post was to show that the GOP has no monopoly on manipulation. I suspect that the real observation here should be about the corrosive effects of OPM (Other People's Money).
I must be a pretty severe noob. I had never heard of Godwin's Law. Thanks for the reference. I would say that for your bible examples, the bible does not paint a rosy picture about the lives of the patriarchs, which is actually one of things that separate it from most mythology. It either is an incredibly sophisticated ruse to make the bible more believable, or an indication that these events really happened.
I have indeed thought about the instructions given to 'kill all that breathes' in the OT as one of the most difficult of all passages in the bible, and a good reason to shun many of the christian cosmologies that include a god who is only love, or who is disconnected from his creation. God is also holy, a concept that most modern Americans (even Christians) reject. In 1 Sam 15:3 Saul is told to kill everything pertaining to Amelek. This bothered me until I realized that God is the source of life, and has committed to resurrect all of it at a point in the future. The guilty (me, for instance) are judged, and penalized for sin, the innocent exonerated. This is one of the reasons why none of the old testament makes sense until you light it up with the new testament. In Revelation 20 God answers every criticism, every hidden scheme, every thought is brought out where everyone can see it, and the consensus will be that God is just.
Your example from Job misses the point. Satan gets his moment to make his case, and does all the damage you attribute to God, then human philosophy gets a crack, and even Satan gets his chapters, but in the end Job is exonerated of false accusations, and is restored to health, wealth and family, of course he had to wait a while to return to his older children, but I bet Job was better at waiting at the end of the story than he was at the beginning.
See, if you don't understand eternity as the end state of man, then there is a lot in the bible that makes no sense.
Not only wrong, but non sequitur. Genetic mutation is indeed a largley nondeterministic process in individuals, but natural selection in a population is anything but.
On the subject of evolution representing a random input, you object on the grounds that the evolution takes the random inputs and uses selection to get a better organism. That does not solve the problem, it just moves it out to the environment, where you are the result of a random set of environmental conditions that favored your mum and dad. Unless you attribute some non-random (design) characteristic to the environment, you have just swapped one set of random inputs for another.
There is one other observation that I might make: Not everyone who believes the bible does so because it is the easy thing to do. Many believers have thought very carefully about the question of origins and destinies. Some of the most difficult thinking I do is to sort out errors in logic and reasoning related to evolution. I do not, however hold an opinion just because some else holds a similar one, even if I have a lot of respect for that person. I am enchanted by some of the science that is done in the name of evolution, just because it is so dang good, but agreeing with a method, or admiring an elegant experiment design does not mean that I have to accept an author's invalid assumptions, or erroneous conclusions.
Why would I say such a thing? You know can tell that I am no evolutionist, so why would I admire the work? Because most of the time I can as easily support Genesis from the factspresented.
I would caution you that what you read in SciAm is pre-sel
The laser would allows to drill a little, innocent hole in the Iranian's boat that would leave it disabled. The host nation could then save em or not as they see fit. I imagine our navy would be happy to give them a lift, after they prove they do not have a bomb in their undies.
If you want to transmit information, you must deal with noise. Life uses information in the form of DNA to create proteins that have a less entropic state than their beginning state. Hence, information transfer from generation to generation is required for life. Without the information, life ceases. Hence life is subject to entropy as is everything else we have measured. The introduction of noise into the system can overwhelm the signal, resulting in fatal mutation. or sterile offspring (which are the same from an evolution standpoint: the line dies out.) Hence, the proposal treats with entropy, which is the subject of the second law of thermodynamics, in this case expressed as the information used by an organism.
Either evolution proposes an increase in information, or all information for all species is contained in the common ancestor. Since the second is clearly not the case, evolution requires information to appear.
In information theory the second law of thermodynamics is expressed as the loss of information due to noise during transmission. Entropy destroys information during transmission. We deal with this all the time with error detection and correction techniques, and we regularly test bit syncs and data detectors.
So, information entropy is a specific case of the second law of thermodynamics.
So how does that work in life? When sufficient information is lost, the organism no longer functions. Hence good information indicates low entropy, poor information represents high entropy. According to evolutionary theory, later organism such as you or I have more information than archaic organisms, hence information has appeared between them and us.
It is not hard for information to enter a system, if you have a designer: That is what each of us does anytime we clean up a mess. what is problematic is when information enters a system without a designer. Information without a designer is something we do not see in nature. This does not surprise us. No one expects a room to clean itself, yet you accept an equivalent proposition in evolution. Why?
I don't really care what other creationists have done. You asked for proof. I proposed a proof. My request is that you tell me if it will suffice to purpose. The general statement about entropy and evolution implies some things that might be testable in proof form, and this can be done. I would also refer you to talkorigins.org (http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html) talks about this same subject, and presents some very devious illogic. (You are welcome to it, I already know what they did wrong.)
It is not that biologists missed this, it is that it does not matter to useful research. The question of origins is interesting, but biology is about what is, not what was. ID or Evo are equally irrelevant to the question. In every bit of biology that I have seen (except evolution) there is a tacit understanding and acceptance of the second law of thermodynamics.
The other observation that I would add is that there is pervasive bias in publication to select articles that pay homage to evolution, so if you want to be published, put a para in the front about evolution, then get on with your science. I have seen this several times where there is a pastiche paragraph that has nothing to do with the actual research, but is added to satisfy the priestly class at the journal, like the pinch of incense required at the altar of Caesar in the first three centuries AD.
Evolution is about the information contained in life, and should be subject to the same rules as information in a transmission media in the presence of noise. Do you agree that information must be preserved in transmission?
Maybe you misunderstand the purpose of creation. If God's intent is to create people with freewill, who love him in response to his love, then that freewill opens the possibility that people will choose sin rather than love, and that opens up a whole world of less than optimal results. You judge God's methods to be worse than what you would choose, but your information may not be as good as his.
It seems to me that if God can choose all of space/time for his events, he probably chose the time and place that suited his purposes best. The idea that a lack of technological sophistication equates to a lack of philosophical sophistication is rather ethnocentric of you.
I am only interested in the account in Genesis and the current SOFTA for evolution. I am not even terribly interested in Christian attempts to make Genesis fit in with evolution ideas, since such attempts tend to denigrate both sides of the debate.
What I see is a God of contradictions, who is perfect yet wants fellowship with imperfect people like me. He is omnipotent, but restrains his power to allow me to choose good or evil. He knows all, yet loves me anyway.
I will need to get your concurrence that a given mathematical proof is both applicable and convincing. I know for sure that I can prove the question in radio frequency communication links, but the problem with that is the question of applicability: Can I apply principles of signal noise injection vs. error detection and correction circuitry to evolution? I can see the analogy, but if you do not than I am wasting my time and yours.
Fact: Most secondary cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface are muons, with an average intensity of about 100 per m2 per second.
This gives us a noise source. The transmission of genetic information through multiple generations provides us a conduit for information. The natural error correction processes of DNA replication during reproduction give us an error detection and correction mechanism. My question to you is this: Do you consider this a close enough analog to provide a meaningful comparison? My analytic intent here is to estimate the expected mutation rate over appropriate intervals (assuming current conditions ) vs. the observed natural mutation rate.
Is this sufficient to your purpose, or am I wasting my time?
It is a little harder than this. You have to increase the effective compression ratio, which is easily done on turbo models by adjusting the waste gate settings. Saab Turbo 9000s could do this. Everyone else is SOL.
If "typical creationist bullshit" is to point out invalid assumptions, inappropriate methodology or unsupported conclusions, then I am guilty as charged. That is not the same thing as misunderstanding. This is understanding and disagreement on a sound basis. I make the assumption that you are interested enough in the topic to dig a little to see if there may be a good reason to doubt evolutionary doctrine.
The linkage for life to the second law is that life imposes order at the cost of energy, and while the local order increases to the benefit of life, the global order decreases. Life can do this by dint of containing information in the form of DNA. That information imposes local order. I propose that the information is there as a part of the definition of life, which is exactly what talkorigins.org says, but where did the information come from?
Creationism proposes that the information was placed in life as a part of the original definition, and that it has been running down ever since, in agreement with the 2nd law. Evolution proposes that information appear by random process
This does not happen in any other field. In every other case we see information loss into entropy, but never appear from entropy.
If I sold you a pile of wreckage from a 747 and told you if you wait, a 747 would emerge, you would (I hope) know that no amount of time will suffice for that to happen. Evolutionists ask me to believe that something far more complex than a 747 (You, for instance.) will emerge if given enough time.
Why not just be honest and say you don't like creationism because it implies a creator, and the creator has a claim on you as a part of creation. What you do not like has nothing to do with science and everything to do with God.
God has created a universe the demonstrates his glory, and invites us to learn more about him. He even provides payment for our mistakes, if we accept it, and a path forward to know perfection. Every individual has an inestimable value.
Evolution, on the other hand, declares that only the fittest survive, and mass death is good for the species. Pol Pot was the best thing that ever happened to Cambodia (according to evolution),because he forced the evolution of a better species. The same must be said for Stalin, Mao and Hitler, since they killed millions to make room for 'the master race'.
My point is that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Genesis explains how the universe came to be the way it is, and explains that there was a process outside the physics we see today that occurred at the beginning. This also violates the 2nd law, but it confines that breach to a specific time and prevents me from wasting my time waiting for a pile of wreckage to spontaneously reassemble into a 747.
I prefer established physics to the meandering speculations and off-screen hand-waving of evolutionists.
My point here is that this can be subjected to analysis of internal evidence as well as external evidence. Jesus lived and died and resurrected. According to the bible he did that to pay the penalty for my sins. (yours too, if you like.) I know I need the help, since I have screwed up a bunch in my life. I neither know nor care about Aztek or Chinese mythology, I have read all of classical greek mythology (I think: There may have been some that I missed), and those gods leave me cold, since none of them can answer the mail on my own imperfections. On the question of phonetics, all one has to do is render both names in ancient Hebrew to notice that they are the same.
My point is that there is a place for science, and things that can and should be investigated. If I make a claim that something will happen in millions of years how do you design the experiment to test that? It is outside the realm of the possible as far as science is concerned to run such an experiment, so I must propose an experiment that can be run in a reasonable period of time that allows me to extrapolate data to millions of years, such as a simulation, but if I do that I have to defend the extrapolation as a valid analysis technique, which may or may not be true.
The fact that there is a place for science does not obviate the need to treat anecdotal evidence as well, since it may well play an important role in determining what experiment to run.
The fact that I have never seen something is not proof that it does not exist, just proof that I have not seen it. Who is to say that God does not invite us to investigate by the apparent contradictions he presents? If something appears contradictory it might be that we have an understanding of part of the lemma that is incorrect, we may be applying the principles incorrectly.
Every bit of science we use was 'supernatural' before someone rolled up their sleeves and did the work to figure it out. Once that is done, we no longer call it supernatural, but natural. God by his nature invites us to know him better, and has created a universe where that is possible. That is not to say that there will ever be an end to transendence (Godel makes this argument), but that understanding the universe is by no means opposition to God.
I have been to both sites, and have examined talkorigins.org in detail. It is from those that I draw the explanations for evolution that appear to be the most acceptable to evolutionists. I would not want to speak to a theory that was different from what is presented.
I think it is also safe to say these represent current thinking on evolution, since they can be updated the instant anything changes.
There are not 'infinite theories' to explain anything. In this case there are just two: Creation as presented in the bible, and evolution. It is obfuscatory to bring in other religions, since I have not been discussing them. To do so implies an equivalence with which I disagree
I also care little for the attempts to reconcile evolution and scripture. They typically do disservice to both scripture and evolution.
Evolution, at the core, is the operation of a random process. The reason for needing billions of years is that we do not see a similar process in any environment we can access.
In order to support that idea that MRSA proves evolution you would need to state that the original bacteria did not already contain the information needed to express this trait.
You imply by your final statement that to disagree with the dogma of evolution is intellectually lazy. I would say just the opposite is true. To understand the fallacy in each of talkorigins.org's 23 proofs requires a good deal of thought, and a willingness to investigate each proof in it's own context. I will not shut up. If talkorigins.org is the best you can do than it is safe to say Genesis has won the day.
If you let me arrange samples in any order I want, I can get you all kinds of transitional forms, and that is precisely what evos do: arrange things in some order and then declare they have discovered order.
In the first statement you condemn me for adding an unneeded variable, yet in your last you accept the same adding in of a variable, and you also accept the same in the discussion of genetic algorithms. You also are implying that something called evolution provides design input in your argument on genetic algorithm, so when you say 'evolution' you are not talking about random mutation, you are talking about some un-God design source. You do not have a scientific definition here, you have a religion.
There is a difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Saying that micro leads to macro is a statement of faith on your part, particularly when you have to close the curtain on what is happening and say 'millions of years' Since we cannot design an experiment to test this because the time frame is too long, it becomes a statement of faith that this will indeed happen.
So in the end you have replaced a simple statement in Genesis "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" With a statement of equal provability, from a scientific perspective. You have gained nothing, and you lose the possibility of knowledge from the creator's perspective. If I want to know what some code does, I am far better off to go the programmer that wrote the code than I am to go to a third party.
My central point here is that there is good scientific reasons to question evolution as a theory of origin. There is also no particular reason to abandon Genesis just because someone is uncomfortable with the idea that they are created by God with a purpose.
So it is not hypocrisy, but arrogance. You suggested a course of action for me you would not take yourself, because you are better than me, I suppose.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. How so? Usable energy is inevitably used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy. Thus, usable energy is irretrievably lost in the form of unusable energy.
"Entropy" is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (the universe for example). As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, "entropy" increases. Entropy is also a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system. As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.
Entropy applies with equal force to information theory
Evolution proposes that disorganization, randomness and chaos decrease.
So I do understand it, and the application is appropriate.
Maybe you should ask yourself why you feel the need to resort to personal attacks. There is more to science than the question of origins, which is all you have allowed me to discuss.
Based on your posts so far, I'd be hard pressed to find any science you really understand. That's not intended as an insult,
Bulls**t. The intent of your statement is an insult.
but your ability to absorb established fact + theory seems to be utterly blocked by your prior commitment to creationism.
It would be more accurate to say that I refuse to accept assumptions or conclusions without examining the facts, and in the case of most evolution arguments, examining the facts reveal errors of assumption, methodology or conclusion. Why should I have to accept errors? Are you making the claim that evolutionists don't make mistakes?
Genesis predicts that life will reproduce, each after their own kind. We might share large portions of our DNA with other organisms because we have the same designer. (and we do). Genesis depicts a world in which many creatures died in a world-wide flood, so we will find fossils. Since God is more creative than we are, we should not be surprised to find creatures we did not think of. Since we are not what we were before sin entered the world, you would expect to find organs that we do not understand. We can demonstrate the ability to remove information from the Genome. We can demonstrate the ability to select a set of traits. That does not tell us where the information originated. Micro-evolution is not the same as Macro-evolution. Genetic algorithms (I assume you are referring to software here) require design input in the selection of rules for genetic selection, so while the manipulation of variables may be random, the selection is not. Your support of evolution here is just a design argument with 'God' replaced with 'the environment'.
Do you have a reference for Sarah Palin's position on fruit fly research? I would be fascinated to see that. GOP energy policy, on the other hand is based on exploitation of available resources while continuing research into alternatives:
Here is a quote from the GOP itself, rather than a Daily Kos Obamista screed:
It is clear America needs a comprehensive national energy plan, not a debilitating energy tax under the guise of ‘cap-and-trade.’ An ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to our energy policy – one which includes offshore oil and gas production as well as the advancement of technologies to develop alternative sources of energy such as biofuels – needs to be on the table.
My definition of tangible science is this: Testing a hypothesis using valid methodologies, under stated assumptions, to draw valid conclusions about the world we live in. The testing should be repeatable, the experiment design should minimize confounding variable, and cause/effect correlation should be determinate. Further, the assumption made in the experiment design should be stated and defensible, and the conclusions reached should be supported by the data.
An example of this would be an aluminum fatigue study designed to figure out why an airplane fuselage cracked in flight. Another example would be a study to determine the DNA 'address' related to a particular protein production, or the exact folding sequence involved in a protein production.
One of the things I have noticed is that in order to get published in Scientific American an author has to place an homage to evolution into the piece, regardless of the topic. Once you get past that, you can get to the actual science.
"Since we can't explain every last detail of evolution, it must be false and all the scientific disciplines that support it, including anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics, are wrong too." Please refer to my statement about improving science literacy and critical thinking skills.
That is not what I said, or even implied. Anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics all have plenty of research that has nothing to do with evolution, and which meets every criteria of scientific thinking. Where your reasoning falls down is when you conclude that evolution is the only explanation for what is observed. That is a leap that I will not make with you. The Genesis record also may explains what is observed. The original article points out that folks accept science on the same basis that they accept religious tenants, because someone told them.
This has some very practical results: In Genesis we are shown a creation that is 'Good'(Gen 1:4) or 'Very Good' (Gen 1:20) If we see things that are not good, such as disease, we might interpret that as a descent from a previous better state, and look for the means to restore that better state.
Evolution ultimately stultifies investigation, because the core assumption is random process, so the researcher is also ultimately random as well.
Evolution also encourages a destructive world view as well, since survival of the fittest is the ultimate virtue in evolution, it encourages thinking like Hitler's to destroy the 'lesser races' to make room for the 'master race'
Contrast that with Genesis, where man is declared at creation to be 'very good', and where God makes a way for every person to approach him by God's own means.
I am well aware that you are equating Christians with Islamists, even though Christians are instructed to love their enemies (Mat 5:43), while Islamists are instructed to kill their enemies (Quran, Sura 9:5). I have also been subjected to the wrath of 'scientists' and it felt no different from any other wrath. The difference here is that Christians kill to protect the lives of the innocent when no other option is presented. There are also folks who claim to be Christians and then do not do what is taught in the bible, but that is a different matter.
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Sorry to have offended you. Contribute to the political party of your choice, and be content with the results.
But I cannot veto all candidates if I feel that none of them are suitable for office, such as in the last Presidential election. In the end you have to vote for either bigger government @10% per year (Republican) or bigger government @ 20% per year (Democrat). What if I want smaller government?
Not voting is the same as validating the choice of the remaining voters. I have been a juror many times, and am facing more selections this fall. Congress is also governed rigorously by laws and an authority; the constitution. It seems like almost any question congress faces has a set of lobbies that serve as defenders/accusers the same as any court room. My point is that we could hardly do worse than the political parties, even selecting at random.
What I want to see is "None of the above" added to any elected office. If "None of the above" is selected the office is filled by selecting at random from the pool of qualified jurors already maintained by every jurisdiction in the US. The principal is the same: someone drafted at random to a public service. I am sure that we would occasionally be represented by a person who was an idiot, poorly informed, or an unconvicted criminal. Oh. Wait. We already are.
244 steps seems like way too few. Oh. This is not software development quality assurance, just students playing. Wait until they see the Rube Goldberg processes out here in the real world. They will probably retreat back into MBA school in horror.
Maybe they can get it running on X86, instead of being the poster child for the three finger salute.
Around here they grow chilli to turn into paint. It turns out that it makes an excellent anti-fouling marine paint, since marine animals do not seem to have developed a taste for hot. the hotter the chilli the more paint/acre they can make.
Thanks for the Palin post. That does indeed change my perception of her.
I am thankful that we agree on the question of politics and science. My post was to show that the GOP has no monopoly on manipulation. I suspect that the real observation here should be about the corrosive effects of OPM (Other People's Money).
I must be a pretty severe noob. I had never heard of Godwin's Law. Thanks for the reference. I would say that for your bible examples, the bible does not paint a rosy picture about the lives of the patriarchs, which is actually one of things that separate it from most mythology. It either is an incredibly sophisticated ruse to make the bible more believable, or an indication that these events really happened.
I have indeed thought about the instructions given to 'kill all that breathes' in the OT as one of the most difficult of all passages in the bible, and a good reason to shun many of the christian cosmologies that include a god who is only love, or who is disconnected from his creation. God is also holy, a concept that most modern Americans (even Christians) reject. In 1 Sam 15:3 Saul is told to kill everything pertaining to Amelek. This bothered me until I realized that God is the source of life, and has committed to resurrect all of it at a point in the future. The guilty (me, for instance) are judged, and penalized for sin, the innocent exonerated. This is one of the reasons why none of the old testament makes sense until you light it up with the new testament. In Revelation 20 God answers every criticism, every hidden scheme, every thought is brought out where everyone can see it, and the consensus will be that God is just.
Your example from Job misses the point. Satan gets his moment to make his case, and does all the damage you attribute to God, then human philosophy gets a crack, and even Satan gets his chapters, but in the end Job is exonerated of false accusations, and is restored to health, wealth and family, of course he had to wait a while to return to his older children, but I bet Job was better at waiting at the end of the story than he was at the beginning.
See, if you don't understand eternity as the end state of man, then there is a lot in the bible that makes no sense.
Not only wrong, but non sequitur. Genetic mutation is indeed a largley nondeterministic process in individuals, but natural selection in a population is anything but.
On the subject of evolution representing a random input, you object on the grounds that the evolution takes the random inputs and uses selection to get a better organism. That does not solve the problem, it just moves it out to the environment, where you are the result of a random set of environmental conditions that favored your mum and dad. Unless you attribute some non-random (design) characteristic to the environment, you have just swapped one set of random inputs for another.
There is one other observation that I might make: Not everyone who believes the bible does so because it is the easy thing to do. Many believers have thought very carefully about the question of origins and destinies. Some of the most difficult thinking I do is to sort out errors in logic and reasoning related to evolution. I do not, however hold an opinion just because some else holds a similar one, even if I have a lot of respect for that person. I am enchanted by some of the science that is done in the name of evolution, just because it is so dang good, but agreeing with a method, or admiring an elegant experiment design does not mean that I have to accept an author's invalid assumptions, or erroneous conclusions.
Why would I say such a thing? You know can tell that I am no evolutionist, so why would I admire the work? Because most of the time I can as easily support Genesis from the factspresented.
I would caution you that what you read in SciAm is pre-sel
The laser would allows to drill a little, innocent hole in the Iranian's boat that would leave it disabled. The host nation could then save em or not as they see fit. I imagine our navy would be happy to give them a lift, after they prove they do not have a bomb in their undies.
If you want to transmit information, you must deal with noise. Life uses information in the form of DNA to create proteins that have a less entropic state than their beginning state. Hence, information transfer from generation to generation is required for life. Without the information, life ceases. Hence life is subject to entropy as is everything else we have measured. The introduction of noise into the system can overwhelm the signal, resulting in fatal mutation. or sterile offspring (which are the same from an evolution standpoint: the line dies out.) Hence, the proposal treats with entropy, which is the subject of the second law of thermodynamics, in this case expressed as the information used by an organism.
Either evolution proposes an increase in information, or all information for all species is contained in the common ancestor. Since the second is clearly not the case, evolution requires information to appear.
In information theory the second law of thermodynamics is expressed as the loss of information due to noise during transmission. Entropy destroys information during transmission. We deal with this all the time with error detection and correction techniques, and we regularly test bit syncs and data detectors.
So, information entropy is a specific case of the second law of thermodynamics.
So how does that work in life? When sufficient information is lost, the organism no longer functions. Hence good information indicates low entropy, poor information represents high entropy. According to evolutionary theory, later organism such as you or I have more information than archaic organisms, hence information has appeared between them and us.
It is not hard for information to enter a system, if you have a designer: That is what each of us does anytime we clean up a mess. what is problematic is when information enters a system without a designer. Information without a designer is something we do not see in nature. This does not surprise us. No one expects a room to clean itself, yet you accept an equivalent proposition in evolution. Why?
I don't really care what other creationists have done. You asked for proof. I proposed a proof. My request is that you tell me if it will suffice to purpose. The general statement about entropy and evolution implies some things that might be testable in proof form, and this can be done. I would also refer you to talkorigins.org (http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html) talks about this same subject, and presents some very devious illogic. (You are welcome to it, I already know what they did wrong.)
It is not that biologists missed this, it is that it does not matter to useful research. The question of origins is interesting, but biology is about what is, not what was. ID or Evo are equally irrelevant to the question. In every bit of biology that I have seen (except evolution) there is a tacit understanding and acceptance of the second law of thermodynamics.
The other observation that I would add is that there is pervasive bias in publication to select articles that pay homage to evolution, so if you want to be published, put a para in the front about evolution, then get on with your science. I have seen this several times where there is a pastiche paragraph that has nothing to do with the actual research, but is added to satisfy the priestly class at the journal, like the pinch of incense required at the altar of Caesar in the first three centuries AD.
Evolution is about the information contained in life, and should be subject to the same rules as information in a transmission media in the presence of noise. Do you agree that information must be preserved in transmission?
Maybe you misunderstand the purpose of creation. If God's intent is to create people with freewill, who love him in response to his love, then that freewill opens the possibility that people will choose sin rather than love, and that opens up a whole world of less than optimal results. You judge God's methods to be worse than what you would choose, but your information may not be as good as his.
It seems to me that if God can choose all of space/time for his events, he probably chose the time and place that suited his purposes best. The idea that a lack of technological sophistication equates to a lack of philosophical sophistication is rather ethnocentric of you.
I am only interested in the account in Genesis and the current SOFTA for evolution. I am not even terribly interested in Christian attempts to make Genesis fit in with evolution ideas, since such attempts tend to denigrate both sides of the debate.
What I see is a God of contradictions, who is perfect yet wants fellowship with imperfect people like me. He is omnipotent, but restrains his power to allow me to choose good or evil. He knows all, yet loves me anyway.
Fact: Most secondary cosmic rays reaching the Earth's surface are muons, with an average intensity of about 100 per m2 per second.
http://www.srl.caltech.edu/personnel/dick/cos_encyc.html
This gives us a noise source. The transmission of genetic information through multiple generations provides us a conduit for information. The natural error correction processes of DNA replication during reproduction give us an error detection and correction mechanism. My question to you is this: Do you consider this a close enough analog to provide a meaningful comparison? My analytic intent here is to estimate the expected mutation rate over appropriate intervals (assuming current conditions ) vs. the observed natural mutation rate.
Is this sufficient to your purpose, or am I wasting my time?
I have asked Ford to import the diesel Fiesta that they sell by the thousands in the EU. No answer yet.
It is a little harder than this. You have to increase the effective compression ratio, which is easily done on turbo models by adjusting the waste gate settings. Saab Turbo 9000s could do this. Everyone else is SOL.
If "typical creationist bullshit" is to point out invalid assumptions, inappropriate methodology or unsupported conclusions, then I am guilty as charged. That is not the same thing as misunderstanding. This is understanding and disagreement on a sound basis. I make the assumption that you are interested enough in the topic to dig a little to see if there may be a good reason to doubt evolutionary doctrine.
The linkage for life to the second law is that life imposes order at the cost of energy, and while the local order increases to the benefit of life, the global order decreases. Life can do this by dint of containing information in the form of DNA. That information imposes local order. I propose that the information is there as a part of the definition of life, which is exactly what talkorigins.org says, but where did the information come from?
Creationism proposes that the information was placed in life as a part of the original definition, and that it has been running down ever since, in agreement with the 2nd law. Evolution proposes that information appear by random process
This does not happen in any other field. In every other case we see information loss into entropy, but never appear from entropy.
If I sold you a pile of wreckage from a 747 and told you if you wait, a 747 would emerge, you would (I hope) know that no amount of time will suffice for that to happen. Evolutionists ask me to believe that something far more complex than a 747 (You, for instance.) will emerge if given enough time.
Why not just be honest and say you don't like creationism because it implies a creator, and the creator has a claim on you as a part of creation. What you do not like has nothing to do with science and everything to do with God.
God has created a universe the demonstrates his glory, and invites us to learn more about him. He even provides payment for our mistakes, if we accept it, and a path forward to know perfection. Every individual has an inestimable value.
Evolution, on the other hand, declares that only the fittest survive, and mass death is good for the species. Pol Pot was the best thing that ever happened to Cambodia (according to evolution) ,because he forced the evolution of a better species. The same must be said for Stalin, Mao and Hitler, since they killed millions to make room for 'the master race'.
My point is that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Genesis explains how the universe came to be the way it is, and explains that there was a process outside the physics we see today that occurred at the beginning. This also violates the 2nd law, but it confines that breach to a specific time and prevents me from wasting my time waiting for a pile of wreckage to spontaneously reassemble into a 747.
I prefer established physics to the meandering speculations and off-screen hand-waving of evolutionists.
My point here is that this can be subjected to analysis of internal evidence as well as external evidence. Jesus lived and died and resurrected. According to the bible he did that to pay the penalty for my sins. (yours too, if you like.) I know I need the help, since I have screwed up a bunch in my life. I neither know nor care about Aztek or Chinese mythology, I have read all of classical greek mythology (I think: There may have been some that I missed), and those gods leave me cold, since none of them can answer the mail on my own imperfections. On the question of phonetics, all one has to do is render both names in ancient Hebrew to notice that they are the same.
My point is that there is a place for science, and things that can and should be investigated. If I make a claim that something will happen in millions of years how do you design the experiment to test that? It is outside the realm of the possible as far as science is concerned to run such an experiment, so I must propose an experiment that can be run in a reasonable period of time that allows me to extrapolate data to millions of years, such as a simulation, but if I do that I have to defend the extrapolation as a valid analysis technique, which may or may not be true.
The fact that there is a place for science does not obviate the need to treat anecdotal evidence as well, since it may well play an important role in determining what experiment to run.
The fact that I have never seen something is not proof that it does not exist, just proof that I have not seen it. Who is to say that God does not invite us to investigate by the apparent contradictions he presents? If something appears contradictory it might be that we have an understanding of part of the lemma that is incorrect, we may be applying the principles incorrectly.
Every bit of science we use was 'supernatural' before someone rolled up their sleeves and did the work to figure it out. Once that is done, we no longer call it supernatural, but natural. God by his nature invites us to know him better, and has created a universe where that is possible. That is not to say that there will ever be an end to transendence (Godel makes this argument), but that understanding the universe is by no means opposition to God.
I have been to both sites, and have examined talkorigins.org in detail. It is from those that I draw the explanations for evolution that appear to be the most acceptable to evolutionists. I would not want to speak to a theory that was different from what is presented.
I think it is also safe to say these represent current thinking on evolution, since they can be updated the instant anything changes.
There are not 'infinite theories' to explain anything. In this case there are just two: Creation as presented in the bible, and evolution. It is obfuscatory to bring in other religions, since I have not been discussing them. To do so implies an equivalence with which I disagree
I also care little for the attempts to reconcile evolution and scripture. They typically do disservice to both scripture and evolution.
Evolution, at the core, is the operation of a random process. The reason for needing billions of years is that we do not see a similar process in any environment we can access.
In order to support that idea that MRSA proves evolution you would need to state that the original bacteria did not already contain the information needed to express this trait.
You imply by your final statement that to disagree with the dogma of evolution is intellectually lazy. I would say just the opposite is true. To understand the fallacy in each of talkorigins.org's 23 proofs requires a good deal of thought, and a willingness to investigate each proof in it's own context. I will not shut up. If talkorigins.org is the best you can do than it is safe to say Genesis has won the day.
If you let me arrange samples in any order I want, I can get you all kinds of transitional forms, and that is precisely what evos do: arrange things in some order and then declare they have discovered order.
In the first statement you condemn me for adding an unneeded variable, yet in your last you accept the same adding in of a variable, and you also accept the same in the discussion of genetic algorithms. You also are implying that something called evolution provides design input in your argument on genetic algorithm, so when you say 'evolution' you are not talking about random mutation, you are talking about some un-God design source. You do not have a scientific definition here, you have a religion.
There is a difference between micro-evolution and macro-evolution. Saying that micro leads to macro is a statement of faith on your part, particularly when you have to close the curtain on what is happening and say 'millions of years' Since we cannot design an experiment to test this because the time frame is too long, it becomes a statement of faith that this will indeed happen.
So in the end you have replaced a simple statement in Genesis "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" With a statement of equal provability, from a scientific perspective. You have gained nothing, and you lose the possibility of knowledge from the creator's perspective. If I want to know what some code does, I am far better off to go the programmer that wrote the code than I am to go to a third party.
My central point here is that there is good scientific reasons to question evolution as a theory of origin. There is also no particular reason to abandon Genesis just because someone is uncomfortable with the idea that they are created by God with a purpose.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is commonly known as the Law of Increased Entropy. While quantity remains the same (First Law), the quality of matter/energy deteriorates gradually over time. How so? Usable energy is inevitably used for productivity, growth and repair. In the process, usable energy is converted into unusable energy. Thus, usable energy is irretrievably lost in the form of unusable energy. "Entropy" is defined as a measure of unusable energy within a closed or isolated system (the universe for example). As usable energy decreases and unusable energy increases, "entropy" increases. Entropy is also a gauge of randomness or chaos within a closed system. As usable energy is irretrievably lost, disorganization, randomness and chaos increase.
This is from:
http://www.allaboutscience.org/second-law-of-thermodynamics.htm
Entropy applies with equal force to information theory
Evolution proposes that disorganization, randomness and chaos decrease.
So I do understand it, and the application is appropriate.
Maybe you should ask yourself why you feel the need to resort to personal attacks. There is more to science than the question of origins, which is all you have allowed me to discuss.
Based on your posts so far, I'd be hard pressed to find any science you really understand. That's not intended as an insult,
Bulls**t. The intent of your statement is an insult.
but your ability to absorb established fact + theory seems to be utterly blocked by your prior commitment to creationism.
It would be more accurate to say that I refuse to accept assumptions or conclusions without examining the facts, and in the case of most evolution arguments, examining the facts reveal errors of assumption, methodology or conclusion. Why should I have to accept errors? Are you making the claim that evolutionists don't make mistakes?
Genesis predicts that life will reproduce, each after their own kind. We might share large portions of our DNA with other organisms because we have the same designer. (and we do). Genesis depicts a world in which many creatures died in a world-wide flood, so we will find fossils. Since God is more creative than we are, we should not be surprised to find creatures we did not think of. Since we are not what we were before sin entered the world, you would expect to find organs that we do not understand. We can demonstrate the ability to remove information from the Genome. We can demonstrate the ability to select a set of traits. That does not tell us where the information originated. Micro-evolution is not the same as Macro-evolution. Genetic algorithms (I assume you are referring to software here) require design input in the selection of rules for genetic selection, so while the manipulation of variables may be random, the selection is not. Your support of evolution here is just a design argument with 'God' replaced with 'the environment'.
Here is a quote from the GOP itself, rather than a Daily Kos Obamista screed:
It is clear America needs a comprehensive national energy plan, not a debilitating energy tax under the guise of ‘cap-and-trade.’ An ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to our energy policy – one which includes offshore oil and gas production as well as the advancement of technologies to develop alternative sources of energy such as biofuels – needs to be on the table.
(Quote from Rep. Adrian Smith downloaded 8-Apr-11 from http://www.gop.gov/blog/09/07/07/rep-adrian-smith-the)
Yes, let's talk about politicizing science:
Supporting your views I found:
http://rightwingnuthouse.com/archives/2007/03/21/politicizing-science/
Indeed, your entire argument appears to presented there.
The left does it even more egregiously:
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/08/is-there-no-limit-to-obama-epas-politicization-of-science/
My definition of tangible science is this: Testing a hypothesis using valid methodologies, under stated assumptions, to draw valid conclusions about the world we live in. The testing should be repeatable, the experiment design should minimize confounding variable, and cause/effect correlation should be determinate. Further, the assumption made in the experiment design should be stated and defensible, and the conclusions reached should be supported by the data.
An example of this would be an aluminum fatigue study designed to figure out why an airplane fuselage cracked in flight. Another example would be a study to determine the DNA 'address' related to a particular protein production, or the exact folding sequence involved in a protein production.
One of the things I have noticed is that in order to get published in Scientific American an author has to place an homage to evolution into the piece, regardless of the topic. Once you get past that, you can get to the actual science.
"Since we can't explain every last detail of evolution, it must be false and all the scientific disciplines that support it, including anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics, are wrong too." Please refer to my statement about improving science literacy and critical thinking skills.
That is not what I said, or even implied. Anthropology, paleontology, genetics, geology, chemistry and physics all have plenty of research that has nothing to do with evolution, and which meets every criteria of scientific thinking. Where your reasoning falls down is when you conclude that evolution is the only explanation for what is observed. That is a leap that I will not make with you. The Genesis record also may explains what is observed. The original article points out that folks accept science on the same basis that they accept religious tenants, because someone told them.
This has some very practical results: In Genesis we are shown a creation that is 'Good'(Gen 1:4) or 'Very Good' (Gen 1:20) If we see things that are not good, such as disease, we might interpret that as a descent from a previous better state, and look for the means to restore that better state.
Evolution ultimately stultifies investigation, because the core assumption is random process, so the researcher is also ultimately random as well.
Evolution also encourages a destructive world view as well, since survival of the fittest is the ultimate virtue in evolution, it encourages thinking like Hitler's to destroy the 'lesser races' to make room for the 'master race'
Contrast that with Genesis, where man is declared at creation to be 'very good', and where God makes a way for every person to approach him by God's own means.
I am well aware that you are equating Christians with Islamists, even though Christians are instructed to love their enemies (Mat 5:43), while Islamists are instructed to kill their enemies (Quran, Sura 9:5). I have also been subjected to the wrath of 'scientists' and it felt no different from any other wrath. The difference here is that Christians kill to protect the lives of the innocent when no other option is presented. There are also folks who claim to be Christians and then do not do what is taught in the bible, but that is a different matter.