---it's also possible that this supports the genesis account of creation.---
I'm not sure what you mean. It, by itself, doesn't support or contradict it. If it can be said to "support the genesis account," it is much the same way that the existence of the sun supports the claim in genesis that there is a sun, or the existence of Egpyt supports the Bible's idea that Egypt existed. It supports ANY account which includes sexual reproduction coupled with death of linages. However, just so you know, our current calculations on MEve put her squarely in the midst of existing human populations, not at the start of any. Human beings existed before her for a long long time.
---There is no mathematical certainty at all actually, math won't tell you with any certainty that a family tree of 'unrelated' people will eventually reach a universal mother.---
I'm afraid you're wrong. The claim "Eveolutionary theory general predicts this to not happen, period." is just wrong. As I noted, MEve is not in any way important from the perspective of evolution: she's simply an interesting definitional oddity. Consider A, the set of all human beings alive today. Each human alive today has precisely one mother. Consider B, the set of all mothers of A. B is necessarily smaller than A, because no one has more than one mother, and some mothers have more than one child. Likewise, set C is smaller still, set D is smaller still, and so on, all the way back to MEve. Note that only set A includes a full set of a population alive at any given period. During the time set C lived, for instance, there were many mothers who did not reproduce, or their female linage did not.
--- That one individual in an entire species would be the only one who's offspring survived is as improbable as those offspring flourishing as mankind has.---
Far from being improbable, it is LOGICALLY NECESSARY. That you could think something that is logically necessary would be "improbable" is a good sign that your calculations of probability are heavily suspect: and hence so is your critique of evolution on the grounds of what is or is not probable (not to mention that you seem confused as to what role probability plays in evolution). To re-iterate: MEve is only designated in HINDSIGHT. There is nothing necessarily significant about her, except that such a person must necessarily exist.
---The pure fact of the matter is that any significant mutation from a common maternal ancestor would be very improbable to reach the level of dominance that mankind has.---
There is no reason at all to think that MEve must have had any sort of "mutation" that made her substantively different from other women of her day. Again, she is distinguished ONLY IN HINDSIGHT. If certain people alive today do no reproduce, then there would be a new MEve crowned in the future.
---Even some scientists who don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve have posited the existence of a single mother to all currently living humans, through the tracing of mitochondrial DNA (which inherit genetic infomation only through the mother.)---
I think you're a little confused as to what they mean by this. "Mitochondrial Eve" was not, in her lifetime, significant in any way. She's only so in retrospect: in the hindsight that all other lineages from her generation eventually happened to die out. As other lines perhaps die out, a new "Mitochondrial Eve" could be, conceptually, crowned. That there must be such an individual at any given time is a mathematical certainty (you can reason it strickly from logic alone), but its not always the same individual, and it isn't the case that this individual's children only bred with each other. Not at all! It's simply that only lineages that include this particular female in them at some point, survive. The exact same thing is true for a "Y chromosome Adam." But again, you're thinking about it the wrong way if you think that he has anything to do with "Mitochondrial Eve," especially timewise. And, like ME, the designation could change to a different, more recent individual if certain lineages happen to die out.
Perhaps you could read a book on astrophysics, most of which discuss this very fact? Or do you really think there is a huge conspiracy to cover up this supposedly "obvious" evidence for the falsity of the dust cloud formation (and I suppose we faked all those telescope pics of similar star systems forming exactly the same way too, right?)
---Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.---
Before we get into provability, we should note that only one of those options actually "explains" anything, unfortunately. The first option uses passive voice about the very sorts of actions that we want explained in the first place. You can't compare evolution (a theory of how) to creation (a theory of who). At least abiogenesis provides us with some testable hypothesises for its plausibility.
Well, it sure isn't trying to win over the people who don't even read the article: they might discover that there's more to it than just the title! Gasp!
---Why is America clearly a Christian country despite its constition?---
I don't understand what you mean. Our Constitution protects religion and government from each other, with the idea that this will benefit both. And for all intents and purposes, that seems to be the case. When the government doesn't regulate belief, people are free to honestly pursue their own religious convictions. It's not surprising at all that the most vibrant private religious convictions and organizations can exist in a publically secular society.
Yes, but not necessarily over theories. Theories and laws are not even the same sorts of things to compare. Laws are consistent regularities in the behavior of the universe. Theories, on the other hand, are large bodies of explanation. Laws don't explain things: theories explain (often by using laws as references). So, saying that "laws win out over theories" is a bit like saying "words win out over sentances." In other words, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, as I'm sure everyone's already told you, the Second Law is not in any sense in contradiction with evolutionary theory. Indeed, few creationists make this argument anymore, because it's pretty universally understood as lousy argument.
---in the case for the theory that believes in God's non-existence, the ones who say, "God doesn't exist" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.---
True... but very few people need to bother with claiming that "God does not exist" when "I don't believe God exists" does just as well, and incurrs no burden of proof. I don't have any reason to run around thinking "God doesn't exist!": I just don't have any good reason to run around thinking that God exists either. That means that if you demand I authenticate a proposition that relies upon God's existence, I cannot do it, and the burden of proof lies squarely on you.
---I find that belief in God is as reasonable as believing in the existence of other minds. Alvin Plantinga, _God and Other Minds_.---
How so? I can't say I was convinced by Plantinga's argument, because the argument for god requires several more layers of abstraction and interpretation than does the assumption that other people have minds (in part because "mind" can be operationalized in regards to other human minds, while "god" cannot). Can you explain why you found Plantinga's argument convincing, or even why the existence of god is obvious.
---Most scientists today have as a basic proposition "God does not exist."---
That's simply slanderous. Basic logic here: lacking the proposition "God exists" is NOT the same thing as holding the proposition "God does not exist." Besides, scientists operate under no such proposition. What they try to do is explain things by reference to things we can actually understand and demonstrate.
It's true. I've read them a million times. Unfortunately, there's a REASON that they are in the appendices: they don't belong in the main story, and are nowhere near as interesting. Tolkien himself was clear on this point: he can't do romance, and didn't really want to.
You left out the easter egg at the end where it's revealed that he's the king of the vampires. His followers drink his body and blood to take on his undying powers and spread out through the world looking to turn others to their master's will.
---I think he is on to something, and I hope he is vindicated---
I think you're mistaken as to the nature of the criticism the book has taken. It's not a matter of him being wrong, it's a matter of him doing an exceedinly sloppy and wordy job of describing theories that plenty of other people have already been discussing for some time. That he makes grand, unqualified conclusions where others were much more careful doesn't set him up for "vindication" even if he is right.
---I have long held the belief that EVERYTHING in nature has an underlying mathematical basis.---
I think it would a be a little more humble to say that nature can be described very completely using math. Nature isn't "based" on math: rather, math is a system we abstracted from our experience with nature.
The question, especially as it is formed here, is largely meaningless. I understand how it would be nice for the layman if certain things could be boiled down into simple essentialisms, but essentialism stands on dubious ground to begin with. You're going to have to do better than asking "what is life?" you're now going to have to explain what sort of answer you're looking for, and give "life" an operational definition instead of a nigh mystical one.
---I hope you will agree that it has not been proven that life can be created out of chemistry.---
I'll agree, if only because that formulation is nonsense. Chemistry is not a thing out of which objects can be created: it is a field of knowledge. The question of life's origins is not whether chemistry was involved: it was even if God did it: life works BY whatever mechanisms chemical reactions are. The question is whether it a) could and b) did begin without a designing intelligence.
---He argues consciousness is a quantum mechanical process, but does not go so far as to describe the specific process by which consciousness arises.---
The problem is that describing a specific process, regardless of it being a quantum effect, would lead to exactly what Penrose doesn't want: reducing consciousness down to an alogrythm. The problem with his argument is that it boils down to gapism: there are conceptual problems with consciousness that he doesn't think can be solved given what we know about how matter works. Unfortunately, there are just too many places where this sort of argument breaks down: where it argues from incomplete information about the (non-quatum) natural world, where it relies upon definitions of consciousness which may or may not be valid in the first place. Penrose gives it a very good go in a field that's probably way beyond anyone's current death.
My position: you CAN put a value on human life, indeed you cannot avoid doing so at least implicitly almost every day, with every action you take that involves some risk to yourself and others (for instance: driving). Economists do it all the time: the price commonly ranges anywhere from 3 to 24 million.
Can you really justify not murdering one innocent person when it would save thousands of lives? You can call the person that chooses to do it a mass murderer all you want. Perhaps they're even be condemned to hell for it. But from their perspective, it was all worth it, because in doing so they saved thousands. And I'm not sure it's so easy to refute their perspective.
I'd say that sabotage is the major concern. Sure, stealing is always a problem: but it sounds like these things are a pain in the ass to get working without the right key to activate the computer. I could see people figuring out how to hack it, but not your average theif. But imagine some jerk with a bat: boom. 5000 down the drain.
Well, it can actually handle rain and groceries: umbrella and side bag attachments. The passenger thing is sort of silly anyway: duh. It's the length of the charge (and the price) that are the real stickers.
---OK, so you believe that man was "randomized" into existance, doesn't sound any more plausable in my book.---
How many times must this be covered? The process of evolution isn't "random": it's a mechanism, not a lottery. That it includes elements of randomization (to produce variation) is not enough to characterize it as random, and selection is the driving force without which adaptation would not happen. Evolution is more plausible precisely because it explains an actual step-by-step process that can be understood. "Poof" explains nothing. It is simple only in the sense that nothing (no descriptive explanation) is simpler than something (an actual explanation).
---He is also kind enough to let us do what we want to do, because He wanted us to learn by our own experience.---
This doesn't make any sense of "free will" unfortunately. "What we want to do" and how we "learn by our experience" is pre-determined also, whether we are "spiritual" or not. Simply calling something "spiritual" doesn't solve the problem that choices cannot preceed the nature of the chooser, and it was either god or random chance that determined that nature.
---I personally believe that Creationism and Evolution are pretty much the same thing, but one theory leaves God completely out of it.---
How so: one requires an intelligence to work, the other gets along fine without one. They're very different sorts of explanations, and the latter doesn't have the problem of circular explanation (i.e., to explain the origin of intellient beings, you must first posit the existence of an intelligent being)
Regardless of how likely or realistic YOU think the potential bad effects of the leak are, it was id's decision as to whether to take those risks. You have a right to scoff at what they want: but that doesn't change the fact that it was supposed to be their decision.
Does this guy have an automatic +5 bonus, or did actualy human beings really mod this up as "informative?" A one line post that says exactly nothing of any interest to anyone other than anthropologists interested in the video-game opinions of the ancient Aztec peoples?
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---it's also possible that this supports the genesis account of creation.---
I'm not sure what you mean. It, by itself, doesn't support or contradict it. If it can be said to "support the genesis account," it is much the same way that the existence of the sun supports the claim in genesis that there is a sun, or the existence of Egpyt supports the Bible's idea that Egypt existed. It supports ANY account which includes sexual reproduction coupled with death of linages. However, just so you know, our current calculations on MEve put her squarely in the midst of existing human populations, not at the start of any. Human beings existed before her for a long long time.
---There is no mathematical certainty at all actually, math won't tell you with any certainty that a family tree of 'unrelated' people will eventually reach a universal mother.---
I'm afraid you're wrong. The claim "Eveolutionary theory general predicts this to not happen, period." is just wrong. As I noted, MEve is not in any way important from the perspective of evolution: she's simply an interesting definitional oddity.
Consider A, the set of all human beings alive today. Each human alive today has precisely one mother. Consider B, the set of all mothers of A. B is necessarily smaller than A, because no one has more than one mother, and some mothers have more than one child. Likewise, set C is smaller still, set D is smaller still, and so on, all the way back to MEve. Note that only set A includes a full set of a population alive at any given period. During the time set C lived, for instance, there were many mothers who did not reproduce, or their female linage did not.
--- That one individual in an entire species would be the only one who's offspring survived is as improbable as those offspring flourishing as mankind has.---
Far from being improbable, it is LOGICALLY NECESSARY. That you could think something that is logically necessary would be "improbable" is a good sign that your calculations of probability are heavily suspect: and hence so is your critique of evolution on the grounds of what is or is not probable (not to mention that you seem confused as to what role probability plays in evolution). To re-iterate: MEve is only designated in HINDSIGHT. There is nothing necessarily significant about her, except that such a person must necessarily exist.
---The pure fact of the matter is that any significant mutation from a common maternal ancestor would be very improbable to reach the level of dominance that mankind has.---
There is no reason at all to think that MEve must have had any sort of "mutation" that made her substantively different from other women of her day. Again, she is distinguished ONLY IN HINDSIGHT. If certain people alive today do no reproduce, then there would be a new MEve crowned in the future.
---Even some scientists who don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve have posited the existence of a single mother to all currently living humans, through the tracing of mitochondrial DNA (which inherit genetic infomation only through the mother.)---
I think you're a little confused as to what they mean by this. "Mitochondrial Eve" was not, in her lifetime, significant in any way. She's only so in retrospect: in the hindsight that all other lineages from her generation eventually happened to die out. As other lines perhaps die out, a new "Mitochondrial Eve" could be, conceptually, crowned. That there must be such an individual at any given time is a mathematical certainty (you can reason it strickly from logic alone), but its not always the same individual, and it isn't the case that this individual's children only bred with each other. Not at all! It's simply that only lineages that include this particular female in them at some point, survive. The exact same thing is true for a "Y chromosome Adam." But again, you're thinking about it the wrong way if you think that he has anything to do with "Mitochondrial Eve," especially timewise. And, like ME, the designation could change to a different, more recent individual if certain lineages happen to die out.
Perhaps you could read a book on astrophysics, most of which discuss this very fact? Or do you really think there is a huge conspiracy to cover up this supposedly "obvious" evidence for the falsity of the dust cloud formation (and I suppose we faked all those telescope pics of similar star systems forming exactly the same way too, right?)
---Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.---
Before we get into provability, we should note that only one of those options actually "explains" anything, unfortunately. The first option uses passive voice about the very sorts of actions that we want explained in the first place. You can't compare evolution (a theory of how) to creation (a theory of who). At least abiogenesis provides us with some testable hypothesises for its plausibility.
Well, it sure isn't trying to win over the people who don't even read the article: they might discover that there's more to it than just the title! Gasp!
---Why is America clearly a Christian country despite its constition?---
I don't understand what you mean. Our Constitution protects religion and government from each other, with the idea that this will benefit both. And for all intents and purposes, that seems to be the case. When the government doesn't regulate belief, people are free to honestly pursue their own religious convictions. It's not surprising at all that the most vibrant private religious convictions and organizations can exist in a publically secular society.
---laws win out over theorys.---
Yes, but not necessarily over theories. Theories and laws are not even the same sorts of things to compare. Laws are consistent regularities in the behavior of the universe. Theories, on the other hand, are large bodies of explanation. Laws don't explain things: theories explain (often by using laws as references). So, saying that "laws win out over theories" is a bit like saying "words win out over sentances." In other words, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Anyway, as I'm sure everyone's already told you, the Second Law is not in any sense in contradiction with evolutionary theory. Indeed, few creationists make this argument anymore, because it's pretty universally understood as lousy argument.
---in the case for the theory that believes in God's non-existence, the ones who say, "God doesn't exist" are the ones that have taken on 100% of the burden of proof.---
True... but very few people need to bother with claiming that "God does not exist" when "I don't believe God exists" does just as well, and incurrs no burden of proof. I don't have any reason to run around thinking "God doesn't exist!": I just don't have any good reason to run around thinking that God exists either. That means that if you demand I authenticate a proposition that relies upon God's existence, I cannot do it, and the burden of proof lies squarely on you.
---I find that belief in God is as reasonable as believing in the existence of other minds. Alvin Plantinga, _God and Other Minds_.---
How so? I can't say I was convinced by Plantinga's argument, because the argument for god requires several more layers of abstraction and interpretation than does the assumption that other people have minds (in part because "mind" can be operationalized in regards to other human minds, while "god" cannot). Can you explain why you found Plantinga's argument convincing, or even why the existence of god is obvious.
---Most scientists today have as a basic proposition "God does not exist."---
That's simply slanderous. Basic logic here: lacking the proposition "God exists" is NOT the same thing as holding the proposition "God does not exist."
Besides, scientists operate under no such proposition. What they try to do is explain things by reference to things we can actually understand and demonstrate.
It's true. I've read them a million times. Unfortunately, there's a REASON that they are in the appendices: they don't belong in the main story, and are nowhere near as interesting. Tolkien himself was clear on this point: he can't do romance, and didn't really want to.
You left out the easter egg at the end where it's revealed that he's the king of the vampires. His followers drink his body and blood to take on his undying powers and spread out through the world looking to turn others to their master's will.
---I think he is on to something, and I hope he is vindicated---
I think you're mistaken as to the nature of the criticism the book has taken. It's not a matter of him being wrong, it's a matter of him doing an exceedinly sloppy and wordy job of describing theories that plenty of other people have already been discussing for some time. That he makes grand, unqualified conclusions where others were much more careful doesn't set him up for "vindication" even if he is right.
---I have long held the belief that EVERYTHING in nature has an underlying mathematical basis.---
I think it would a be a little more humble to say that nature can be described very completely using math. Nature isn't "based" on math: rather, math is a system we abstracted from our experience with nature.
---Again, what's life?---
The question, especially as it is formed here, is largely meaningless. I understand how it would be nice for the layman if certain things could be boiled down into simple essentialisms, but essentialism stands on dubious ground to begin with. You're going to have to do better than asking "what is life?" you're now going to have to explain what sort of answer you're looking for, and give "life" an operational definition instead of a nigh mystical one.
---I hope you will agree that it has not been proven that life can be created out of chemistry.---
I'll agree, if only because that formulation is nonsense. Chemistry is not a thing out of which objects can be created: it is a field of knowledge. The question of life's origins is not whether chemistry was involved: it was even if God did it: life works BY whatever mechanisms chemical reactions are. The question is whether it a) could and b) did begin without a designing intelligence.
---He argues consciousness is a quantum mechanical process, but does not go so far as to describe the specific process by which consciousness arises.---
The problem is that describing a specific process, regardless of it being a quantum effect, would lead to exactly what Penrose doesn't want: reducing consciousness down to an alogrythm. The problem with his argument is that it boils down to gapism: there are conceptual problems with consciousness that he doesn't think can be solved given what we know about how matter works. Unfortunately, there are just too many places where this sort of argument breaks down: where it argues from incomplete information about the (non-quatum) natural world, where it relies upon definitions of consciousness which may or may not be valid in the first place. Penrose gives it a very good go in a field that's probably way beyond anyone's current death.
My position: you CAN put a value on human life, indeed you cannot avoid doing so at least implicitly almost every day, with every action you take that involves some risk to yourself and others (for instance: driving). Economists do it all the time: the price commonly ranges anywhere from 3 to 24 million.
Can you really justify not murdering one innocent person when it would save thousands of lives? You can call the person that chooses to do it a mass murderer all you want. Perhaps they're even be condemned to hell for it. But from their perspective, it was all worth it, because in doing so they saved thousands. And I'm not sure it's so easy to refute their perspective.
Who ARE you?
I'd say that sabotage is the major concern. Sure, stealing is always a problem: but it sounds like these things are a pain in the ass to get working without the right key to activate the computer. I could see people figuring out how to hack it, but not your average theif. But imagine some jerk with a bat: boom. 5000 down the drain.
Well, it can actually handle rain and groceries: umbrella and side bag attachments. The passenger thing is sort of silly anyway: duh. It's the length of the charge (and the price) that are the real stickers.
---OK, so you believe that man was "randomized" into existance, doesn't sound any more plausable in my book.---
How many times must this be covered? The process of evolution isn't "random": it's a mechanism, not a lottery. That it includes elements of randomization (to produce variation) is not enough to characterize it as random, and selection is the driving force without which adaptation would not happen. Evolution is more plausible precisely because it explains an actual step-by-step process that can be understood. "Poof" explains nothing. It is simple only in the sense that nothing (no descriptive explanation) is simpler than something (an actual explanation).
---He is also kind enough to let us do what we want to do, because He wanted us to learn by our own experience.---
This doesn't make any sense of "free will" unfortunately. "What we want to do" and how we "learn by our experience" is pre-determined also, whether we are "spiritual" or not. Simply calling something "spiritual" doesn't solve the problem that choices cannot preceed the nature of the chooser, and it was either god or random chance that determined that nature.
---I personally believe that Creationism and Evolution are pretty much the same thing, but one theory leaves God completely out of it.---
How so: one requires an intelligence to work, the other gets along fine without one. They're very different sorts of explanations, and the latter doesn't have the problem of circular explanation (i.e., to explain the origin of intellient beings, you must first posit the existence of an intelligent being)
Regardless of how likely or realistic YOU think the potential bad effects of the leak are, it was id's decision as to whether to take those risks. You have a right to scoff at what they want: but that doesn't change the fact that it was supposed to be their decision.
Does this guy have an automatic +5 bonus, or did actualy human beings really mod this up as "informative?" A one line post that says exactly nothing of any interest to anyone other than anthropologists interested in the video-game opinions of the ancient Aztec peoples?