The real problem is that we can't possibly know how it feels to feel in another species. Here's another question. Can we possibly know how it 'feels' to 'feel' in another human being? If you are going to argue it's because we are both human beings, and therefore we have the same physiology, then I would respond that technically, we don't. We are not clones or carbon copies of one another. If you then say we aren't identical, but we are close enough that the assumption is okay, then I would tell you that we share a lot of physiological structure, including the structure of the brain, with chimpanzees, even dogs -- plants and jellyfish, not so much.
This is one of the oldest questions in philosophy. How do I know that my experience of 'red' is the same as yours? There are various answers on both sides of the argument. But, if we assume or justify by reason that I know what your experience is because we are both 'human', then why can't we do the same for animals? After all, Chimpanzees have somewhere between 95%-99% simliar DNA to us; they have more or less the same brain with the same structures, minus maybe the language areas. We know that chimps don't have the language facility that humans do, but is it an anthropomorphism to say that they experience fear or anger?
For example, the limbic system in our brain somehow generates emotional experience. We don't know how it happens, nor do we have a electro-chemical definition of emotion, but we know that it's happening in the limbic system. The limbic system is structurally pretty similar in all of the great apes. So if you can say to me that you and I have the same 'kinds' of emotional experiences because we have the same limbic system, then I would tell you that you and I share our limbic structure with a chimpanzee. So then, couldn't we conclude that the chimpanzee has the same 'kinds' of emotional experiences that you and I do?
If you're claiming that 'we can't possibly know how it feels to feel in another species', I'm curious to know how you arrived at this conclusion. And how do you then know that you know how it 'feels' to 'feel' like another human being?
I'm not saying I have the answers, one way or the other. I'm saying that we need to make a more objective scientific criteria for claims of attributes of *any* animal, human or otherwise, and a methodology for comparing the attributes of different animals. One way to go about this is with objective measurements, like brain scans and comparative morphology of nervous systems. Comparative behavior is another method.
Well, there is a subtle question lurking in here. If the definition of anthropomorphic means having human form or attributes, how do we know that any particularly attribute is solely human?
In other words, if I say the cat is 'afraid', in a scientific context, and you say to me, "Don't anthropomorphise that cat", how do we know that particular attribute ( the feeling of fear ) belongs solely to humans? Is it not possible that the cat has the same electro-chemical process happening in their brains that humans do when humans experience fear? Could a careless critic mistake a shared attributes between two animals species, such as both cats and human feeling fear, as a case of anthropomorphism? How are we to tell the difference between anthropomorphic reasoning and the correct identification of a characteristic between humans and another animal.
How did humans first 'own' the attribute of fearfulness that it might be considered and anthropomorphism to say that an animal is afraid? Doesn't such understanding of 'what it means to be human' actually come from our pre-scientific understanding of the world both culturally, ( as in what people believed about humans and animals in the middle ages ) and personally ( what an individual believed about humans and animals before they were exposed to scientific knowledge )?
In other words, have we scientifically validated every supposedly human attribute, so we know when we are anthropomorphising or not? I argue the answer is no. It's just an ad-hoc system that you can throw around at any time, almost entirely without guidelines, rules, or criteria. At various times we have said that animals do have emotions like humans, don't have emotions like humans, etc. None of it is really scientifically valid, because we don't have brain scans of wild animals running for their life through the jungle. Nor do we really have an electro-chemical definition of emotion, for that matter -- we know *where* in the brain it takes place, but we don't have an exact definition for the physical process of 'fear' or 'anger'. So we're not really sure if even *humans* have emotions like humans!
Interesting points. Several questions:
Don't anthropomorphise species which are not human, especially not within a scientific context like this. Is it a valid move to anthropomorphise humans, which are animals? If humans share a characteristic with another animal species, is describing that characteristic anthropomorphizing? Or, to put it another way, if an animal species and Homo sapiens share a characteristic, is it an anthropomorphism to describe that characteristic? What are the criteria for determining which descriptions are anthropomorphic?
I can understand a plant root not being able to tell the difference between another root of the same organism, and another root of a sibling plant, but are you really saying that, for example, dogs think that a sibling is actually themselves? Or that they can't distinguish between themself and a sibling? That anything that smells identical or close enough to self *is* self? Or that I confuse myself with my sister?
Hey, maybe there aren't Men in Black who have a team of guys devotedly specifically to 'getting' this guy, but do you think it's possible that he's just a casualty in the machinations of the various laws, rules, and regulations of the state bureaucracy? That things don't always work out fairly in the world? Not because of conspiracy, but because of chance an unintended consequences?
And by the way, have you ever heard of the Total Information Awareness program? In the olden days, it was too expensive to have one secret police officer for every citizen. Nowadays, we have computers do to the busywork. The columnist William Saffire described it thusly:
Every purchase you make with a credit card,
Every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill,
Every Web site you visit and
e-mail you send or receive,
Every academic grade you receive,
Every bank deposit you make,
Every trip you book and
every event you attend ---
All these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' [Emphasis Mine] Supposedly the program itself has been disbanded, but it looks like it's functionality has just be split to various sub-programs. Wikipedia says that "An unknown number of TIA's functions have been merged under the codename 'Topsail'." MS NBC says "[T]oday, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of Topsail (minus the futures market), two officials privy to the intelligence tell NEWSWEEK.... "It is truly Poindexter's brainchild. " So with all of this electronic data from different programs, what's to keep them from conglomerating it all into a giant virtual database, to get the functionality they couldn't get under the original program? Didn't the DoD describe it as a 'virtual database' in the first place, according to Saffire?
I think what they are getting him on is that it is illegal to surreptitiously do an audio recording of *anybody*. That sort of makes a gray area between audio and video recordings; you can video the police, but you can't 'audio; the police. If you are doing both, you might be breaking the law. It's a problem if you're running a camera with both video and audio recording capabilities, which is what most hand-held cameras do. But notice that fixture-mounted security cameras don't also record sound. That's not because business owners are cheap; it's because they aren't allowed to tape your conversation without your permission. Sound would be helpful in prosecuting armed robberies of convenience stores, but they don't have it.
There was a story a while back, either on Digg or Slashdot, where a guy got busted for taping the cops at his doorstep. He had mounted an audio/video camera on his porch ( or had the video-only security camera, and was also recording the call box on his door), and I believe what he was charged with was the voice recording aspect. The cops didn't know they were being audio recorded, so that was the illegal part.
I also think there might be a law against 'following' cops. Of course, you can do a video recording of the cops in public doing their public duty. But you can't follow a police officer around all day to see what he's up to. If you're an organized drug dealer, you aren't allowed to do your own counter-surveillance program of the police department so you get advanced notice of their plan to bust you, above and beyond what any citizen is able to find out about what the police are up to. They need some level of privacy in order to do a sting operation.
I may be wrong about the law, perhaps someone who knows more can chime in.
Oh really? I had heard that the government was putting mercury in the vaccinations to make your whole body more metallic, and thus a better receiver of the mind control rays.
You have to add all the civil engineers who are insisting that the alleged interior explosives were entirely unnecessary to cause the fall of the WTC towers. I don't think they have to be "in" on it. They just have to believe in the official story, just like most everyone else in the country. That, and anyone seriously questioning the collapse of the tower looks like a conspiracy nut and gets fired from their job.
And all the security in those buildings that should have stopped such demolitions, I think this can be a case for social engineering. If you have Bush's brother in charge of security for the towers, and you have '''construction'' going on at the various floors, who is going to think twice about construction buys carrying equipment in? Not the security guards at the desks, who got the word from their boss that there would be construction at various floors.
and all the people involved in hiring and finding those 40 people, and... They would be existing military demolitions black-ops people, who have no problem assassinating people or blowing things up. Read about how
G. Gordon Liddy had plotted to kill journalist Jack Anderson when Nixon told him "we need to get rid of this Anderson guy".
I mean, if it were that easy, wouldn't Al Qaeda have just sent the demolitions people themselves rather than mucking about with airplanes? I'm not saying it would be easy to blow the towers and WTC7 up with explosives. I'm just saying you could do it with a small number of people. It's much easier to fly planes into buildings. But if the buildings collapse in a terrorist attack, rather than just suffer minor damange, you can get the patriot act passed, go to war to re-shape the middle east and carve up the oil reserves for the multinational oil conglomerates, and collect millions of dollars of insurance money.
Ok, the moon landing would be a giant conspiracy, but how many people would it take to conspire to kill JFK? Five? How about taking down the WTC towers and WTC7 with explosive after Bin Laden's planes hit them? In other words, how big is a buildings demolition team? Forty people?
Why would he be afraid of his own creation? " I don't know, it really doesn't make sense to me. Why would God be jealous? Elsewhere in the Bible, we find out that God is jealous. "You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" Exodus 20:5. "Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." Exodus 34:14. Why would he be jealous of his own creation? If he can be jealous, why can't he be afraid, also? Isn't jealousy, after all, a fear of someone being better than you, or having something you don't?
In any case, I meant "afraid" as in "concerned". God really does seem jealous, or afraid, that Adam and Eve might be like him. He doesn't want them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, because that would make them "like God". Then, after they eat the fruit and become like God, God seems afraid, jealous, or concerned that they might live forever (despite what he said about them dying after they ate the fruit of Knowledge): Gen 3:22 "'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'"
Serpahim, I too am glad we have been able to have a rational discussion. I was raised Christian, and was half-hearted about it. At some point it decided to pee or get off the pot, so I started reading the Bible. As you can see, I didn't get very far before I had serious questions about the story that the organized churches were giving us. I decided to leave Christianity and stop calling myself a Christian.
Then, I found out about Gnostic Christianity. The Gnostics believe that there is sort of an evil, impostor God, who really the believes that he is God, and presents himself as such. The Evil One exists throughout the entire universe, including within scripture, always trying to trick us. However, as human beings, we can see that he is not God, because he does evil things. A lot of times, the God of the old Testament is actually the impostor, passing himself off as the real God. However, the True God is utterly transcendent, does no evil, and has no human form or attributes -- i.e. He isn't jealous and he doesn't wipe out cities. The True God does show up in the Old Testament, too -- we know it's Him because he does good, loving things, isn't angry or jealous, and identifies Himself in transcendent ways ( "I am that I am" or "I am the Alpha and the Omega") rather than in human ways ( "I am a jealous God"). Fortunately for us human beings, we are visited from time to time by Emissaries of the True God, who help us to understand his nature by giving us wisdom. The serpent was one of them; Christ was another.
But if you're going to argue the other way, that there is no causation implied by the 'if', then It also means that you will *not* die if you *don't* walk out that door. We which know not to be true -- avoiding some fatally booby-trapped door will not allow you to live forever. Not at all, I say nothing about your doom, one way or another, I only predict what will happen if you walk out that door. Your two statements are mutually contradictory. You *do* say something about my doom; specifically that it will happen *if* I walk out the door.
When you say "If you walk out that door, you will die", you are specifically saying that the act of walking out the door will cause your death. You are not saying "If you walk out the door, you will die some day in the future" because that means that if you avoid walking out the door, you could avoid death altogether!
"I can go along with that, but why can't God be more upfront?" Yes - it would have been nice. But He wasn't. So why should we trust the character who can't be upfront and honest? His riddles only make sense after the fact, as was apparent in the story. He told Adam and Eve that they would die when they ate the fruit. What he meant was that they would die sometime down the road after they ate the fruit. So why should we listen to what he says? We'll only be confused and misguided. Shouldn't we expect more from a Jealous God who claims to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving? That doesn't sound very loving to me.
The snake didn't? "Don't worry, you wont die" yet because she eats of the tree she does indeed die. You can argue the snake was ignorant, that might be true. But he was certainly wrong, and God still comes out as a truth teller. If you want to find out whether or not the snake lied, simply read Genesis. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit of Knowledge, God was afraid that they would become immortal by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Gen 3:22 "'And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'" Now, why would God be concerned that Adam and Eve might live forever if they ate from the Tree of Life? He had already told them that they would die from eating the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil! Is it possible that A&E can get around God's pronouncement of death by eating from the Tree of Life? That would mean that either God is not all-powerful, or else he is a liar. God said they would "surely die" when they ate the fruit. How can that be, when God was clearly afraid of them eating the fruit of the Tree of Life and living forever? Clearly it was not "sure" or certain that they would die after eating the fruit of Knowledge -- they might have eaten the fruit of Life afterwards and lived for ever. And who told them "you will not surely die" ? Not God, but the serpent! So, the serpent told the truth. He said that it was not certain that they would die from eating the fruit of Knowledge. We know this is true because God was worried that A&E might eat the fruit of Life and live forever.
Either that, or God was lying to his angels ( or whoever the royal 'We' are ) when he told them that Adam and Eve might life forever after eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Either way, he's told a lie.
"If you walk out the door tomorrow you will surely die." is a true statement, for we all die at some time.
In logic terms, I don't think that's correct. The 'if' implies causation; your statement says that the act of walking out of the door is what will cause your death.
But if you're going to argue the other way, that there is no causation implied by the 'if', then
It also means that you will *not* die if you *don't* walk out that door. We which know not to be true -- avoiding some fatally booby-trapped door will not allow you to live forever.
To be more specific though, God perhaps knew what his punishment for eating from the tree would be, denial from the other tree, and thus their ultimate deaths.
I can go along with that, but why can't God be more upfront? Instead of saying "for when you eat of it you will surely die," why can't he just say "I'll make sure you die at some time in the future if you eat it?" In other words, if we take God at his word, that we will die when we eat the fruit, it seems like God tricked us. Sure, we will eventually die, if we don't get our hands on the fruit of the Tree of Life in the meantime. But we didn't actually die from eating the fruit, which is the simplest interpretation of what God said. Instead, we kind of have to take what he says as a riddle, with encoded or unclear meanings -- "Perhaps God meant this..." Well, any other time someone says, "If you eat this, you will surely die" it means that the thing you might it is poisonous, and it will kill you. In other words, "If you eat strychnine, you will surely die" -- the plain meaning of that is that the strychnine will kill you if you eat it, not that somebody is going to kill you at some point in the future for having drank strychnine.
Ever heard someone say as someone eats cheesecake or lits up a smoke "You know, that's going to kill you?" They don't mean that second.
Yes, but that's not what God said, so it's not really relevant. If somebody lights up a smoke, and you say "You will die when you smoke that", they would tell you that you are crazy, because "when you smoke that" means you are going to die, directly from that cigarette. If you point a loaded gun at your head, and someone says to you "You will die when you pull that trigger", you don't think "Oh, they mean that Russian Roulette is bad for your health, and if I triggers 5 times a day, I might get brain cancer 30 years from now". No, "when you pull that trigger" means you will die as a a direct result from pulling the trigger, when it happens. Likewise, "You will die when you eat that fruit" means that you will die, right then and there, when you pop it in your mouth and swallow.
God didn't say "That Fruit of Knowledge will kill you one day if you eat it" or "You know, if you eat that Fruit of Knowledge, that would make me so mad that I would probably just kill you." Instead he said, "for when you eat of it you will surely die". Again, we can't take God at his word -- we have to find alternate meanings or create 'new interpretations' to make his words jive with the actual events.
We have no idea how long they were in the garden. Adam lived 930 years after they were expelled, if they had been there for millennia before hand perhaps 930 years is a blink of the eye.
Again, we have to ignore the plain, simply meanings of what God says, and examine his sayings as a kind of riddle. That seems dishonest to me. The plain meaning of "you will die when you eat it" means that the stuff is fatal for you. You'll die right then when you eat it. Why can't God be more clear or direct? Why do we have to wonder about how long they were in the garden, when "when you eat it" means "at the time you eat it"?
You say "So, the serpent is honest and straightforward to Eve. He doesn't lie or mislead."
Eve certainly thought he did - "3:13. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why hast thou d
That's a pretty big stretch to have God coming out as not having lied. How do you expect someone to have figured out from your hint that there were two trees?
For instance, what if they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and then ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Would they have been immortal and then died?
One thing we do know, for instance, is that they could have become immortal if they ate of the Tree of Life after they had already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
After they ate from the Tree of Life, "And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Gen 3:22. So apparently, God was afraid that they could still become immortal after he *already said* that they would be killed if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Doesn't that mean that God lied to them still? He said if they ate the fruit, they would surely die. But, they wouldn't have died if they had managed to get hold of some of that Tree of Life fruit.
The serpent however *did* lie, it knew what would happen to them. What makes you think that the serpent knew what would happen to them? Do you have any evidence in the Bible for that? In fact, we do have some evidence -- the serpent says that they will have knowledge of good and evil, that they would be like God, and that it was not certain that they would die. According to the Bible, their eyes were opened, they gained knowledge of good and evil, they became like God, importantly, they didn't die when they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and most relevant to this discussion, God was concerned that Adam and Eve would gain eternal life by eating from the Tree of Life, even after they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So, the serpent is honest and straightforward to Eve. He doesn't lie or mislead. God told them they were surely die when they ate the fruit, but after they had eaten the fruit, God was worried that they would live forever by eating from the Tree of Life. So, Genesis tells us that it was not at all certain that they would die when they ate the fruit.
Gen. 3:4-5 "'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" And then later we find out that God is worried that A&E would become immortal by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life. So it wasn't certain that they would die. God clearly admitted to being concerned about A&E becoming immortal -- unless he was lying *that* time. It was not certain or "sure" that they would die, like God said.
I've read Genesis, thank you. Have you? I don't understand what you're trying to hint at.
So what about the second tree?
Gen 2:9 "And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Gen 2:16-17 "And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"
Ok, so we have two trees in the middle of the Garden. God tells the man, they will die as a direct result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one of the two trees in the middle of the garden. So far, the second tree, the tree of life, is irrelevant.
Gen 3:1-6 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'? The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' 'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
OK, now we have A&E eating from a tree in the middle of the Garden. It's not said directly that they ate from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", but we do have some clues. First, the serpent tells Eve if she eats from the tree they are talking about, they will "be like God, knowing good and evil." Okay, which tree gives knowledge of good and evil? Is it the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Then God finds out what happens and flips his lid.
Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.'"
Now God says that Adam ate from the tree which he commanded him not to. Which tree was that? In Gen 2:16, it says'you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. So we can conclude that Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Still, so far, the tree of life is irrelevant.
Then after God clothes them and kicks them out of the Garden, he says this:
( Gen. 3:22 ) "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' "
So God says that the man became like one of them ( Hey! Who are they, anyway? ), knowing the difference between good an evil. Was it because they ate from the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? We still might not be 100% certain at this point. But then, God clears it all up for us: "He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So God lets us know that Adam *hasn't* eaten from the Tree of Life. Furthermore, we know that he hasn't eaten from the Tree of Life, because if he had, he would be immortal. That's quite a bit different than what God said would happen about either trees in the center of the Garden. So Adam has only eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
So what's the hint about the second tree? Nobody eats from it. It's clearly not the tree God forbid Adam from eating. And, let's say for the sake of ar
- The likelihood of getting pollinated by terminator pollen is probably linked with other traits, you are also introducing selection on other traits by introducing terminator pollen into the wild.
Ok if the pollen carries terminator genes then the seeds that are produced are infertile. Traits are eliminated or at least slowed down. That would not happen without t-genes. Yes, but what you are missing is that were are also selecting out *other traits*, besides terminator genes, from the population that we do want.
Imagine that there are GM apple trees with terminator genes. Imagine that these GM apple trees are cross-pollinated with wild apple trees by wind or honey bees. Now, imagine that there are two types of wild apples: crappy apples and good apples. By chance, the good apples are more likely to be fertilized by GM pollen -- either the bees like their flowers better or they are more exposed to the wind. So, this generation of good apple trees gets fertilized with a bunch of GM pollen, and the good apples have infertile seeds. Meanwhile, the crappy apple trees are *less* exposed to the GM pollen, so most of their seeds are fertile.
So in the next generation, not only are there no wild terminator genes, there are also a lot less wild good apple trees! That's the kind of unwanted, unintended selection I'm talking about. We know that the terminator phenotype is not reproducing, but we are causing a lot of *other* traits not to reproduce.
OK, worms can't jump to random ips, but are IPV6 addresses going to be assigned randomly, or in serial blocks? Won't service providers only get a range of ips? Then doesn't the worm only have to randomly select ips that are likely to be in the netblock of its host?
Actually, there was a gun and silver bullets in the coffin in the covered wagon. You had to get them piece by piece, so if the werewolf showed up, you would have to flee and come back. A real PITA!
Actually the whole plot smells of a setup if you ask me: I agree. Here's another angle:
God told A&E that eating the fruit would cause them to die that day. The serpent told Eve that eating the fruit would give them knowledge of good and evil, and make them like the gods. A&E ate the fruit, and guess who told them the truth? The serpent! they didn't die from eating the fruit; instead they became like gods just as the serpent told them would happen. Then, when God finds out what happens, he decides to make them mortal and kick them out of the garden.
Seems like the serpent was really on their side more than God. The serpent was honest with them, and didn't pull any tricks. God misled then about what exactly would happen if they ate the fruit, and then arranged to have them killed afterwards.
How about Transylvania -- it was for the AppleII and another platform I believe. It was a screen by screen role-play game. You were a guy with amnesia and you had to resuce a princess. You meet all the traditional gothic monsters, such as Dracula, a goblin, a werewolf. I played it in middle school but could never beat it.
Finally in the past couple years I found a cheat, and downloaded and emulator and played it. Apparently there was a step where you needed to get an item from a creature that descends in a UFO! Unexpected, to say the least.
The actual process or event existed before we described it in math or language This is what I have been saying. Now what formed the pattern that these processes follow? Well, if you are looking for a natural description for the mechanism behind any given natural mechanism, the next obvious question will be "ok, what is the mechanism behind *that* mechanism?" And then you get turtles all the way down. Which might be an accurate description of reality. I don't know how you would prove is disprove that.
Or, if you want to assume that law or math or The_Matrix.exe was ontologically prior to physical existence, you've already answered your own question. The physical processes we observer cam from immaterial processes. If the next question you are going to ask is where did the immaterial processes come from, my question would be, isn't existence and origin a property of matter? Things come from places, but a 'thing' with no physical existence -- does it need to 'come' 'from' a 'place'? If it's not physical , there's no reason to assume it has a place or any kind of locale property, nor can we assume it has 'lifecycle' properties, such as origin, existence, or non-existence.
To pretend that we only model, is to ignore the questions of existence, and thus a model alone does not explain existence. I don't think that people are 'pretending' that they are 'only' modeling. If you ask most physicists or chemists, I think they would tell you that they are not 'uncovering the secrets of the universe', they are simply trying to create an accurate model of observed phenomena. they don't claim to be explaining existence. In other words, the 'ultimate' questions you are asking are outside the purview of science. Scientists are not pretending to ignore these big questions; most just aren't interested. The actual field where they study these questions is either philosophy or metaphysics.
Did energy and mass, for example in the fusion reactions in the sun, obey this exchange ratio prior to someone writing down this law? If yes, then that rule existed before someone said it. If you claim that, then you've already committed yourself to the idea that rules, or laws, or math, or *some* immaterial abstraction existed before the universe, and most importantly that abstraction is what created it. What you're saying is that the actual processes or events we observe are essentially immaterial (i.e. they are laws, at the basis of their existence) rather than material processes.
The view that I'm trying to explain is that the 'rule', the mathematical formulation, is just a description, a model, nothing more. It's like describing to someone how the Earth goes around the sun in English, and then that person asks "Why would the universe be based on English?" You tell them you're confused, and they ask why the force that moves the Earth around the sun is in English. Well, of course it's not in English, all you've done is given them a description of the process, which happens to be in English. The description first came into existence when you uttered it, and did not exist in some timeless, ethereal realm; it has no force upon the planet Earth and does not make the system work.
The actual process or event existed before we described it in math or language, but we can't assume that to mean that the actual physical process is based on math somewhere deep down inside.
If you think no, then you have a fairly non-standard view of existence. The idea you espouse is a variety of platonism, which holds that mathematics, or laws, or 'perfect forms' exist in some ethereal realm, and they are what actually generate the world that we see. I don't think it's a very popular idea amongst physicists these days; see Hawking's _A Brief History of Time_ for a better description of platonism vs. mathematical models.
If you look around the world at creation myths, you have a lot of materialistic account of creation -- creation from water, creation from nothing, creation from a formless mass, creation from slain gods. In Genesis, we find creation from words. God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. I think probably influences a lot of people's basic understanding of physics in the western world.
I think the problem you might be over looking is that genes aren't single function entities. Genes are multi-functional, and have effects all throughout an organisms' body. In this way, genes are totally different from words or program commands
Remember, all genes do is encode proteins. One protein from fish DNA inhibits the formation of ice crystals. That fish evolved in nature to handle that protein in its' system throughout it's entire life. Now that protein is suddenly present in a plant organism. Now the question becomes, what *else* does that ice-inhibiting protein do with all of the other chemicals and proteins present in the plant? It might be totally neutral or benevolent. It might react violently with the plant's system, killing the plant in its seed phase. Or, it might have some totally weird effect, that's not beneficial, but also doesn't kill the plant immediately. That's what everyone is concerned about, because it's almost impossible to predict.
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This is one of the oldest questions in philosophy. How do I know that my experience of 'red' is the same as yours? There are various answers on both sides of the argument. But, if we assume or justify by reason that I know what your experience is because we are both 'human', then why can't we do the same for animals? After all, Chimpanzees have somewhere between 95%-99% simliar DNA to us; they have more or less the same brain with the same structures, minus maybe the language areas. We know that chimps don't have the language facility that humans do, but is it an anthropomorphism to say that they experience fear or anger?
For example, the limbic system in our brain somehow generates emotional experience. We don't know how it happens, nor do we have a electro-chemical definition of emotion, but we know that it's happening in the limbic system. The limbic system is structurally pretty similar in all of the great apes. So if you can say to me that you and I have the same 'kinds' of emotional experiences because we have the same limbic system, then I would tell you that you and I share our limbic structure with a chimpanzee. So then, couldn't we conclude that the chimpanzee has the same 'kinds' of emotional experiences that you and I do?
If you're claiming that 'we can't possibly know how it feels to feel in another species', I'm curious to know how you arrived at this conclusion. And how do you then know that you know how it 'feels' to 'feel' like another human being?
I'm not saying I have the answers, one way or the other. I'm saying that we need to make a more objective scientific criteria for claims of attributes of *any* animal, human or otherwise, and a methodology for comparing the attributes of different animals. One way to go about this is with objective measurements, like brain scans and comparative morphology of nervous systems. Comparative behavior is another method.
Well, there is a subtle question lurking in here. If the definition of anthropomorphic means having human form or attributes, how do we know that any particularly attribute is solely human?
In other words, if I say the cat is 'afraid', in a scientific context, and you say to me, "Don't anthropomorphise that cat", how do we know that particular attribute ( the feeling of fear ) belongs solely to humans? Is it not possible that the cat has the same electro-chemical process happening in their brains that humans do when humans experience fear? Could a careless critic mistake a shared attributes between two animals species, such as both cats and human feeling fear, as a case of anthropomorphism? How are we to tell the difference between anthropomorphic reasoning and the correct identification of a characteristic between humans and another animal.
How did humans first 'own' the attribute of fearfulness that it might be considered and anthropomorphism to say that an animal is afraid? Doesn't such understanding of 'what it means to be human' actually come from our pre-scientific understanding of the world both culturally, ( as in what people believed about humans and animals in the middle ages ) and personally ( what an individual believed about humans and animals before they were exposed to scientific knowledge )?
In other words, have we scientifically validated every supposedly human attribute, so we know when we are anthropomorphising or not? I argue the answer is no. It's just an ad-hoc system that you can throw around at any time, almost entirely without guidelines, rules, or criteria. At various times we have said that animals do have emotions like humans, don't have emotions like humans, etc. None of it is really scientifically valid, because we don't have brain scans of wild animals running for their life through the jungle. Nor do we really have an electro-chemical definition of emotion, for that matter -- we know *where* in the brain it takes place, but we don't have an exact definition for the physical process of 'fear' or 'anger'. So we're not really sure if even *humans* have emotions like humans!
I can understand a plant root not being able to tell the difference between another root of the same organism, and another root of a sibling plant, but are you really saying that, for example, dogs think that a sibling is actually themselves? Or that they can't distinguish between themself and a sibling? That anything that smells identical or close enough to self *is* self? Or that I confuse myself with my sister?
And by the way, have you ever heard of the Total Information Awareness program? In the olden days, it was too expensive to have one secret police officer for every citizen. Nowadays, we have computers do to the busywork. The columnist William Saffire described it thusly: Every purchase you make with a credit card, Every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, Every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, Every academic grade you receive, Every bank deposit you make, Every trip you book and every event you attend --- All these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as 'a virtual, centralized grand database.' [Emphasis Mine] Supposedly the program itself has been disbanded, but it looks like it's functionality has just be split to various sub-programs. Wikipedia says that "An unknown number of TIA's functions have been merged under the codename 'Topsail'." MS NBC says "[T]oday, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of Topsail (minus the futures market), two officials privy to the intelligence tell NEWSWEEK.
I think what they are getting him on is that it is illegal to surreptitiously do an audio recording of *anybody*. That sort of makes a gray area between audio and video recordings; you can video the police, but you can't 'audio; the police. If you are doing both, you might be breaking the law. It's a problem if you're running a camera with both video and audio recording capabilities, which is what most hand-held cameras do. But notice that fixture-mounted security cameras don't also record sound. That's not because business owners are cheap; it's because they aren't allowed to tape your conversation without your permission. Sound would be helpful in prosecuting armed robberies of convenience stores, but they don't have it.
There was a story a while back, either on Digg or Slashdot, where a guy got busted for taping the cops at his doorstep. He had mounted an audio/video camera on his porch ( or had the video-only security camera, and was also recording the call box on his door), and I believe what he was charged with was the voice recording aspect. The cops didn't know they were being audio recorded, so that was the illegal part.
I also think there might be a law against 'following' cops. Of course, you can do a video recording of the cops in public doing their public duty. But you can't follow a police officer around all day to see what he's up to. If you're an organized drug dealer, you aren't allowed to do your own counter-surveillance program of the police department so you get advanced notice of their plan to bust you, above and beyond what any citizen is able to find out about what the police are up to. They need some level of privacy in order to do a sting operation.
I may be wrong about the law, perhaps someone who knows more can chime in.
Oh really? I had heard that the government was putting mercury in the vaccinations to make your whole body more metallic, and thus a better receiver of the mind control rays.
Let the battle of the conspiracies begin!
Yes, remember that you need a tin-foil hat. Only tin foil blocks the rays. Aluminum foil actually focuses them, right into your brain!
Now isn't it suspicious that you can only find aluminum foil in the stores these days? Hm!
Ok, the moon landing would be a giant conspiracy, but how many people would it take to conspire to kill JFK? Five? How about taking down the WTC towers and WTC7 with explosive after Bin Laden's planes hit them? In other words, how big is a buildings demolition team? Forty people?
Serpahim, I too am glad we have been able to have a rational discussion. I was raised Christian, and was half-hearted about it. At some point it decided to pee or get off the pot, so I started reading the Bible. As you can see, I didn't get very far before I had serious questions about the story that the organized churches were giving us. I decided to leave Christianity and stop calling myself a Christian.
Then, I found out about Gnostic Christianity. The Gnostics believe that there is sort of an evil, impostor God, who really the believes that he is God, and presents himself as such. The Evil One exists throughout the entire universe, including within scripture, always trying to trick us. However, as human beings, we can see that he is not God, because he does evil things. A lot of times, the God of the old Testament is actually the impostor, passing himself off as the real God. However, the True God is utterly transcendent, does no evil, and has no human form or attributes -- i.e. He isn't jealous and he doesn't wipe out cities. The True God does show up in the Old Testament, too -- we know it's Him because he does good, loving things, isn't angry or jealous, and identifies Himself in transcendent ways ( "I am that I am" or "I am the Alpha and the Omega") rather than in human ways ( "I am a jealous God"). Fortunately for us human beings, we are visited from time to time by Emissaries of the True God, who help us to understand his nature by giving us wisdom. The serpent was one of them; Christ was another.
When you say "If you walk out that door, you will die", you are specifically saying that the act of walking out the door will cause your death. You are not saying "If you walk out the door, you will die some day in the future" because that means that if you avoid walking out the door, you could avoid death altogether! "I can go along with that, but why can't God be more upfront?" Yes - it would have been nice. But He wasn't. So why should we trust the character who can't be upfront and honest? His riddles only make sense after the fact, as was apparent in the story. He told Adam and Eve that they would die when they ate the fruit. What he meant was that they would die sometime down the road after they ate the fruit. So why should we listen to what he says? We'll only be confused and misguided. Shouldn't we expect more from a Jealous God who claims to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving? That doesn't sound very loving to me. The snake didn't? "Don't worry, you wont die" yet because she eats of the tree she does indeed die. You can argue the snake was ignorant, that might be true. But he was certainly wrong, and God still comes out as a truth teller. If you want to find out whether or not the snake lied, simply read Genesis. After Adam and Eve ate the fruit of Knowledge, God was afraid that they would become immortal by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Gen 3:22 "'And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'" Now, why would God be concerned that Adam and Eve might live forever if they ate from the Tree of Life? He had already told them that they would die from eating the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil! Is it possible that A&E can get around God's pronouncement of death by eating from the Tree of Life? That would mean that either God is not all-powerful, or else he is a liar. God said they would "surely die" when they ate the fruit. How can that be, when God was clearly afraid of them eating the fruit of the Tree of Life and living forever? Clearly it was not "sure" or certain that they would die after eating the fruit of Knowledge -- they might have eaten the fruit of Life afterwards and lived for ever. And who told them "you will not surely die" ? Not God, but the serpent! So, the serpent told the truth. He said that it was not certain that they would die from eating the fruit of Knowledge. We know this is true because God was worried that A&E might eat the fruit of Life and live forever.
Either that, or God was lying to his angels ( or whoever the royal 'We' are ) when he told them that Adam and Eve might life forever after eating the fruit of the Tree of Life. Either way, he's told a lie.
"If you walk out the door tomorrow you will surely die." is a true statement, for we all die at some time.
In logic terms, I don't think that's correct. The 'if' implies causation; your statement says that the act of walking out of the door is what will cause your death.
But if you're going to argue the other way, that there is no causation implied by the 'if', then It also means that you will *not* die if you *don't* walk out that door. We which know not to be true -- avoiding some fatally booby-trapped door will not allow you to live forever.
To be more specific though, God perhaps knew what his punishment for eating from the tree would be, denial from the other tree, and thus their ultimate deaths.
I can go along with that, but why can't God be more upfront? Instead of saying "for when you eat of it you will surely die," why can't he just say "I'll make sure you die at some time in the future if you eat it?" In other words, if we take God at his word, that we will die when we eat the fruit, it seems like God tricked us. Sure, we will eventually die, if we don't get our hands on the fruit of the Tree of Life in the meantime. But we didn't actually die from eating the fruit, which is the simplest interpretation of what God said. Instead, we kind of have to take what he says as a riddle, with encoded or unclear meanings -- "Perhaps God meant this..." Well, any other time someone says, "If you eat this, you will surely die" it means that the thing you might it is poisonous, and it will kill you. In other words, "If you eat strychnine, you will surely die" -- the plain meaning of that is that the strychnine will kill you if you eat it, not that somebody is going to kill you at some point in the future for having drank strychnine.
Ever heard someone say as someone eats cheesecake or lits up a smoke "You know, that's going to kill you?" They don't mean that second.
Yes, but that's not what God said, so it's not really relevant. If somebody lights up a smoke, and you say "You will die when you smoke that", they would tell you that you are crazy, because "when you smoke that" means you are going to die, directly from that cigarette. If you point a loaded gun at your head, and someone says to you "You will die when you pull that trigger", you don't think "Oh, they mean that Russian Roulette is bad for your health, and if I triggers 5 times a day, I might get brain cancer 30 years from now". No, "when you pull that trigger" means you will die as a a direct result from pulling the trigger, when it happens. Likewise, "You will die when you eat that fruit" means that you will die, right then and there, when you pop it in your mouth and swallow.
God didn't say "That Fruit of Knowledge will kill you one day if you eat it" or "You know, if you eat that Fruit of Knowledge, that would make me so mad that I would probably just kill you." Instead he said, "for when you eat of it you will surely die". Again, we can't take God at his word -- we have to find alternate meanings or create 'new interpretations' to make his words jive with the actual events.
We have no idea how long they were in the garden. Adam lived 930 years after they were expelled, if they had been there for millennia before hand perhaps 930 years is a blink of the eye.
Again, we have to ignore the plain, simply meanings of what God says, and examine his sayings as a kind of riddle. That seems dishonest to me. The plain meaning of "you will die when you eat it" means that the stuff is fatal for you. You'll die right then when you eat it. Why can't God be more clear or direct? Why do we have to wonder about how long they were in the garden, when "when you eat it" means "at the time you eat it"?
You say "So, the serpent is honest and straightforward to Eve. He doesn't lie or mislead."
Eve certainly thought he did - "3:13. And the Lord God said to the woman: Why hast thou d
For instance, what if they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Life, and then ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? Would they have been immortal and then died?
One thing we do know, for instance, is that they could have become immortal if they ate of the Tree of Life after they had already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After they ate from the Tree of Life, "And the LORD God said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." Gen 3:22. So apparently, God was afraid that they could still become immortal after he *already said* that they would be killed if they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Doesn't that mean that God lied to them still? He said if they ate the fruit, they would surely die. But, they wouldn't have died if they had managed to get hold of some of that Tree of Life fruit. The serpent however *did* lie, it knew what would happen to them. What makes you think that the serpent knew what would happen to them? Do you have any evidence in the Bible for that? In fact, we do have some evidence -- the serpent says that they will have knowledge of good and evil, that they would be like God, and that it was not certain that they would die. According to the Bible, their eyes were opened, they gained knowledge of good and evil, they became like God, importantly, they didn't die when they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and most relevant to this discussion, God was concerned that Adam and Eve would gain eternal life by eating from the Tree of Life, even after they had eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So, the serpent is honest and straightforward to Eve. He doesn't lie or mislead. God told them they were surely die when they ate the fruit, but after they had eaten the fruit, God was worried that they would live forever by eating from the Tree of Life. So, Genesis tells us that it was not at all certain that they would die when they ate the fruit. Gen. 3:4-5 "'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" And then later we find out that God is worried that A&E would become immortal by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Life. So it wasn't certain that they would die. God clearly admitted to being concerned about A&E becoming immortal -- unless he was lying *that* time. It was not certain or "sure" that they would die, like God said.
So what about the second tree?
Gen 2:9 "And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground--trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Gen 2:16-17 "And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.'"
Ok, so we have two trees in the middle of the Garden. God tells the man, they will die as a direct result of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one of the two trees in the middle of the garden. So far, the second tree, the tree of life, is irrelevant.
Gen 3:1-6 "Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'? The woman said to the serpent, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' 'You will not surely die,' the serpent said to the woman. 'For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."
OK, now we have A&E eating from a tree in the middle of the Garden. It's not said directly that they ate from "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil", but we do have some clues. First, the serpent tells Eve if she eats from the tree they are talking about, they will "be like God, knowing good and evil." Okay, which tree gives knowledge of good and evil? Is it the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?
Then God finds out what happens and flips his lid.
Gen 3:17 "To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,'
'Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life.'"
Now God says that Adam ate from the tree which he commanded him not to. Which tree was that? In Gen 2:16, it says'you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. So we can conclude that Adam ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Still, so far, the tree of life is irrelevant.
Then after God clothes them and kicks them out of the Garden, he says this:
( Gen. 3:22 ) "And the LORD God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.' "
So God says that the man became like one of them ( Hey! Who are they, anyway? ), knowing the difference between good an evil. Was it because they ate from the Tree of Life, or the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil? We still might not be 100% certain at this point. But then, God clears it all up for us: "He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." So God lets us know that Adam *hasn't* eaten from the Tree of Life. Furthermore, we know that he hasn't eaten from the Tree of Life, because if he had, he would be immortal. That's quite a bit different than what God said would happen about either trees in the center of the Garden. So Adam has only eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
So what's the hint about the second tree? Nobody eats from it. It's clearly not the tree God forbid Adam from eating. And, let's say for the sake of ar
Ok if the pollen carries terminator genes then the seeds that are produced are infertile. Traits are eliminated or at least slowed down. That would not happen without t-genes. Yes, but what you are missing is that were are also selecting out *other traits*, besides terminator genes, from the population that we do want.
Imagine that there are GM apple trees with terminator genes. Imagine that these GM apple trees are cross-pollinated with wild apple trees by wind or honey bees. Now, imagine that there are two types of wild apples: crappy apples and good apples. By chance, the good apples are more likely to be fertilized by GM pollen -- either the bees like their flowers better or they are more exposed to the wind. So, this generation of good apple trees gets fertilized with a bunch of GM pollen, and the good apples have infertile seeds. Meanwhile, the crappy apple trees are *less* exposed to the GM pollen, so most of their seeds are fertile.
So in the next generation, not only are there no wild terminator genes, there are also a lot less wild good apple trees! That's the kind of unwanted, unintended selection I'm talking about. We know that the terminator phenotype is not reproducing, but we are causing a lot of *other* traits not to reproduce.
OK, worms can't jump to random ips, but are IPV6 addresses going to be assigned randomly, or in serial blocks? Won't service providers only get a range of ips? Then doesn't the worm only have to randomly select ips that are likely to be in the netblock of its host?
Actually, there was a gun and silver bullets in the coffin in the covered wagon. You had to get them piece by piece, so if the werewolf showed up, you would have to flee and come back. A real PITA!
God told A&E that eating the fruit would cause them to die that day. The serpent told Eve that eating the fruit would give them knowledge of good and evil, and make them like the gods. A&E ate the fruit, and guess who told them the truth? The serpent! they didn't die from eating the fruit; instead they became like gods just as the serpent told them would happen. Then, when God finds out what happens, he decides to make them mortal and kick them out of the garden.
Seems like the serpent was really on their side more than God. The serpent was honest with them, and didn't pull any tricks. God misled then about what exactly would happen if they ate the fruit, and then arranged to have them killed afterwards.
So they were running around with their eyes closed, before they ate from the fruit?
How about Transylvania -- it was for the AppleII and another platform I believe. It was a screen by screen role-play game. You were a guy with amnesia and you had to resuce a princess. You meet all the traditional gothic monsters, such as Dracula, a goblin, a werewolf. I played it in middle school but could never beat it.
Finally in the past couple years I found a cheat, and downloaded and emulator and played it. Apparently there was a step where you needed to get an item from a creature that descends in a UFO! Unexpected, to say the least.
Don't get your hopes up just yet; it's only sound.
Or, if you want to assume that law or math or The_Matrix.exe was ontologically prior to physical existence, you've already answered your own question. The physical processes we observer cam from immaterial processes. If the next question you are going to ask is where did the immaterial processes come from, my question would be, isn't existence and origin a property of matter? Things come from places, but a 'thing' with no physical existence -- does it need to 'come' 'from' a 'place'? If it's not physical , there's no reason to assume it has a place or any kind of locale property, nor can we assume it has 'lifecycle' properties, such as origin, existence, or non-existence.
To pretend that we only model, is to ignore the questions of existence, and thus a model alone does not explain existence. I don't think that people are 'pretending' that they are 'only' modeling. If you ask most physicists or chemists, I think they would tell you that they are not 'uncovering the secrets of the universe', they are simply trying to create an accurate model of observed phenomena. they don't claim to be explaining existence. In other words, the 'ultimate' questions you are asking are outside the purview of science. Scientists are not pretending to ignore these big questions; most just aren't interested. The actual field where they study these questions is either philosophy or metaphysics.
The view that I'm trying to explain is that the 'rule', the mathematical formulation, is just a description, a model, nothing more. It's like describing to someone how the Earth goes around the sun in English, and then that person asks "Why would the universe be based on English?" You tell them you're confused, and they ask why the force that moves the Earth around the sun is in English. Well, of course it's not in English, all you've done is given them a description of the process, which happens to be in English. The description first came into existence when you uttered it, and did not exist in some timeless, ethereal realm; it has no force upon the planet Earth and does not make the system work.
The actual process or event existed before we described it in math or language, but we can't assume that to mean that the actual physical process is based on math somewhere deep down inside. If you think no, then you have a fairly non-standard view of existence. The idea you espouse is a variety of platonism, which holds that mathematics, or laws, or 'perfect forms' exist in some ethereal realm, and they are what actually generate the world that we see. I don't think it's a very popular idea amongst physicists these days; see Hawking's _A Brief History of Time_ for a better description of platonism vs. mathematical models.
If you look around the world at creation myths, you have a lot of materialistic account of creation -- creation from water, creation from nothing, creation from a formless mass, creation from slain gods. In Genesis, we find creation from words. God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. I think probably influences a lot of people's basic understanding of physics in the western world.
I think the problem you might be over looking is that genes aren't single function entities. Genes are multi-functional, and have effects all throughout an organisms' body. In this way, genes are totally different from words or program commands
Remember, all genes do is encode proteins. One protein from fish DNA inhibits the formation of ice crystals. That fish evolved in nature to handle that protein in its' system throughout it's entire life. Now that protein is suddenly present in a plant organism. Now the question becomes, what *else* does that ice-inhibiting protein do with all of the other chemicals and proteins present in the plant? It might be totally neutral or benevolent. It might react violently with the plant's system, killing the plant in its seed phase. Or, it might have some totally weird effect, that's not beneficial, but also doesn't kill the plant immediately. That's what everyone is concerned about, because it's almost impossible to predict.