And in addition, evolution is materialistic philosophy dressed up as science.
Consider the science called Astronomy. This community surrounding this science entertains many fantastic hypotheses of how the universe works, including multiple universes, N-dimensional universes, electrons moving backward in time, dark matter, and many other fantastic ideas. When new evidence about the universe is discovered, this often stimulates many more fantastic hypotheses. And this scientific community gives them all due consideration. They are checked against the known facts to see how well they stand up. And if they stand up well, then adjustments are made to currently accepted theories to incorporate those ideas. Many questions about the universe are still considered unsolved and worthy of open-ended discussion.
Now consider this other science called evolution. I will not get into the history of bias and politics in science here, but somehow this scientific community behaves radically differently than the other one. It has decided that all the important questions about evolution have already been answered. There is exactly one theory which is the acceptable description of how evolution occurred. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a persona non grata. There is no room for any open-ended discussion of the weaknesses of this particular theory and certainly not of any possible alternative hypotheses.
The difference in these communities is striking. My problem is that the second community seems to have a really hard time remaining... scientific.
second
fallacy, the claim that living systems are too complex to arise from a
random process
ID does not assert that organisms are too complex to have arrisen from
evolution. It asserts that they exhibit irreducible
complexity. There is a big difference.
Irreducible complexity means that a system is comprised of subsystems
which are useless on their own but without which the system will not function.
Irreducible complexity cannot arise from the process of evolution,
virtually by definition.
Evolution asserts that complex systems arose through the gradual
accumulation of tiny random changes through the mechanism of natural
selection. In order for an irreducibly complex system to
evolve, all of its component subsystems must have first
evolved. But these systems have no value in and of
themselves, so there would be no advantage present for them to be "selected".
A cell is a good example of an irreducible complex system.
Even the simplest cell must have a number of subsystems: cell membrane, cytoplasm,
nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA/RNA, etc.
Now, a cell wall hanging out by itself doesn't do anyone much
good. Neither does cytoplasm by itself. Neither does any of a
number of other components of a cell, by themselves. Even if
any one of these were to arise spontaneously, there is no reason for
it, on its own, to be "selected".
It is only when all the components exist together, at the same time, in
the same place, in proper relation with each other, will you have a
functioning cell.
But the hypothesis of natural selection does not even suggest that this
could happen. It only suggests that evolution occurs through
the accumulation of tiny random changes. And this is not
enough to explain how an irreducibly complex system would arise.
Evolution
is not random at all, as its progress is determined by natural selection
Natural Selection is the process whereby characteristics of an organism
which are not suitable or compatible with the organism's environment
will have a deleterious effect on the organisms ability to
survive. An organism with fins is not likely to survive in a
desert. An organism with wings is not likely to survive in
the sea.
Natural selection is a mechanism whereby variety is reduced: organisms
with certain characteristics are eliminated in a certain environment.
Even people who do not believe in evolution can easily accept natural
selection.
But natural selection is not a "force" which can "guide"
evolution.
It is a mechanism by which variety is eliminated, not introduced.
The notion of intelligent
design is based on the observation that living systems exhibit irreducible complexity.
This means that complex systems critically depend on variety of
subsystems in order for the system as a whole to function.
The problem is, these subsystems are generally useless in and of
themselves and have no "selective" value. It is only when
they are combined in a precise collection with the needed other
subsystems will the system as a whole function properly.
To falsify ID, all you would have to do is show why there would be
"selective force" for these subsystems to exist at all and come
together. But this is a tough cookie to crack because these
subsystems are useless on their own. Their only usefulness is
when the all exist together and work in concert.
There are so many examples of this that its hard to even mention a
single complex biological system that does not exhibit irreducible
complexity. Here's one example out of many of irreducible complexity: the blood clotting
system.
The blood clotting system only works because there dozens of complex
enzymes which interact in a precisely coordinated fashion.
You certainly don't want your blood to start clotting when it doesn't
need to clot (this is fatal). And you certainly want your
blood to clot when it does need to (blood not clotting when it needs
to is also fatal). When you get a cut, you want a scab to
form just
around the cut, but not every
where else (which would also be fatal). Its hard for
something to have "selective value" when a partial implementation will
kill you.
In order for this functionality to occur, a certain collection
of enzymes must exist. If even one enzyme is missing, then
blood clotting will fail in one way or another and probably be fatal.
The question is, how did all of these enzymes evolve? How did
they all come to exist together? Each enzyme, in and of
itself is useless. It has no value alone to the organism.
But, according to Darwin, evolution occurs by the natural selection and
accumulation of tiny random changes.
However, if one of these enzymes should "randomly" come into being, it
has no usefulness. There is no benefit to the
organism. There is no reason it should be selected.
Useless mutations are just as easily selected out
of a population as useful ones are selected in.
So how is it that if there is no reason for a single one of these
enzymes to be "selected" on their own, that more than a dozen of them
can come into existence and suddenly produce blood clotting
functionality?
If you believe this can happen by random chance, I have plenty of other
science fiction books for you to read.
I
can guarantee that anything you try to do I can just say "well, the
Wizard made it look like that".
I can say the same thing about Darwin's hypothesis of
evolution. Now, which experiment was it that proved that
Darwin was correct?
Intelligent Design is not just unproven, it is inherently unprovable.
Everything in science is INHERENTLY UNPROVABLE.
Have you ever heard of deductive reasoning? This is reasoning from the general to the particular. You start with general premises which you know (or assume) to be true, and work toward specific consequences which you can therefore also know (or assume) to be true. This is logically air tight reasoning.
Simplified example: First, we start with a general premise: "White pixels have value 0xffffff". Then we add a specific case: "I see a white pixel". Using deductive logic, we can deductively conclude that the value of the pixel is 0xffffff. Using deductive logic, if the general premis is true, then the deductive consequence will also be true.
Then there is inductive reasoning. This is also known as generalization. This goes in the opposite direction. It goes from a specific case to a general case. And guess what? You can never make a sweeping generalization that will always be true based on a limited number of data points.
Simplified example: I just flipped this coin three times and got heads. Therefore, the next time I flip this coin, it will also be heads.
Science is based on generalization: it takes a limited number of data samples and attempts to make sweeping generalizations about them. The fact that it works at all is quite astounding!
Science may, in fact, be useful in making more or less reliable conjectures about the world around us.
Well, the html version of bittorent could probably decrease these latencies by prepackaging this info and sending it along with the torrent file. The info would be HOT at the time it was sent. The browser just needs to latch on immediately.
The new Opera 8.02 has bittorent support built in. However, that is only for.torrent files, proper. But its only a step away from having web pages torrentable (?). All we need is some apache support. Volunteers?
I'm happy to see that RMS can remain optimistic about the future. I'm starting to dispair of the power grabs of the major corporate interests.
I remember when, during the Seattle WTO meeting of a few years back, there were so many demonstrations and even violent disruptions. At the time I thought, "What a bunch of radical extremists."
My kids just rented a DVD for the animated Batman TV series. Mark Hamill plays the Joker. He actually did quite a good voice over. I would never have guessed it was him.
He also did voice for a character in 'Castle in the Sky'. I originally guessed wrong which character he was voicing. His vocal range seems to have grown substantially since his "this R2 unit has a bad motivator!" days.
It's a hard one to explain. More research is needed.
It's possible that the designer could be an alien. But that only begs the question: How did the alien come to be? I think the universe is certainly a place which is "conducive" to life. And life has built upon life. However, the Darwinian hypothesis leaves many unanswered questions. So I support the ID folks to the extent that they are forcing some of these issues out into the open.
The problem of the very first cell is also similar. Many pieces (cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA) have to exist at the same time in the same place for a cell to kick in. If any piece is missing (such as the cell wall) you don't have much of a cell. And any of the pieces by themselves (such as a cell wall) is not good for much without the other pieces being present as well.
Do I think that God personally created the first cell? I don't know. But I am sure that the Darwinians are getting off a little too easy.
Precisely. This is the "irreducible complexity" problem. That first cell was quite a trick. A very large number of things have to be perfectly in place before that first cell can kick in and start working as a cell.
So here's the corrected parable of Monkeys and Shakespeare. Not as compelling but I guess its closer to "reallity". (I thought evolution had something to do with randomness, big numbers and long time periods. I must be thinking of something else.)
English prose uses 26 lower-case letters and 26 upper case letters.
Throw in
10 digits, and some common punctuation marks:
.!?,;:'"$#%&()/-+*
and we get roughly 80 characters that we can say are used in common
English prose. This is conservative considering that most modern
keyboards have 100+ keys.
For our purposes, we will say that one monkey pressing one key will
therefore
have a chance of 1 in 80 of typing any particular letter, say T.
One monkey pressing two keys will have a chance of 1/80 times 1/80
of
typing any two particular letters, say Th. That is, a monkey has a
chance of 1 in 6400 of randomly typing "Th".
To type the word "The", the chances are 1 in 512000 (1/80^3).
In general, for N characters, the probability would be 1/80^N.
Now let's examine one sentence from one work of Shakespeare:
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"
This sentence has 51 characters. So the probability of monkey typing
this in randomly is 1/80^51. Or, 1 chance in:
AGES OF THE UNIVERSE. That's a lot of ages of the universe for that
little monkey to be working all by himself. So let's give him some
helpers.
Now, there are about 10^67 atoms in the galaxy. If there were one
monkey
typing away for every atom in the galaxy, then we would cut this time
span substantially. Now we're only talking:
2640978114968
AGES OF THE UNIVERSE. Hmm, That's still a pretty long time. Well,
maybe the
monkeys could work faster than one character per second. Maybe they
could work
as fast (or faster than) today's modern desktop CPU. Let's be generous
and
say 10 GHz. Naw, let's allow for a few more years of Moore's law to
kick
in and say 1 TeraHz (a trillion operations per second).
Yes, folks, now it's confirmed. If there were one monkey for every
atom
in the galaxy, and each monkey was pressing a trillion keys per second,
then given the current age of the universe, it would just be possible
somewhere in all that output, that the text:
"But, soft! What light through yonder
window breaks?"
would occur. Once.
Now, about the rest of those works of Shakespeare...
In the absence of proof to the contrary, I think it is entirely reasonable to assume that there may be other scenarios which would lead to self-sustaining interlocking series of chemical reactions..... in other words, life. Whether that means multicellular organisms capable of locomotion and intelligent thought, a primordial soup in a constant state of chemical reaction, or something in between, depends.
I am all for letting our imaginations run free. I certainly have no intention in denying that there are many things that could exist in the universe that we have no inkling about. But this does not help us come to scientific conclusions resulting from the scientific observation of the world around us. "In the absence of proof to the contrary" is usually not good enough for science.
Most of that information is not encoded in DNA, but encoded in the behaviour of the chemical elements themselves.
This is what everybody gets wrong. A DNA strand is like a blank sheet of paper. Nothing is written on it. This blank sheet of paper in itself is not very useful in helping me build my house. However, if I draw a blueprint on the paper, then it will contain the exact instructions that I need to follow to build my house.
Taking an extremely simple example from chemistry, when you add an acid to an alcohol you get an ester. That much is fixed; it depends upon the properties of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The chemical reactions of DNA are already set in stone. Simplifying it a bit, if you add DNA to the correct mix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a few others, under the right conditions, you get more of the same DNA. It's a bit more impressive than hydrochloric acid + sodium hydroxide -> sodium chloride + water, but the ingredients have no more choice in the matter: what comes out in the end is dependent only on what went in.
What you're telling me is that the universe knows how to create paper. Fine. What you're not telling me is how that blueprint got on that paper.
The data which encode three-dimensional protein structures are inherent properties of the elements which make up proteins.
No. DNA is merely an alphabet. The Encyclopaedia Britannica could be encoded in DNA. That's part of the amazing thing about DNA: it is merely a blank slate on which ANY ARBITRARY DATA could be encoded. The problem is that there is nothing to "favor" one thing being encoded in DNA versus another. This makes it more amazing and exceedingly more difficult to explain how the exact sequence of proteins got encoded in a flat serialized form which happen to represent a three-dimensional structure which happens to have a particular catalytic effect when it exists in presence of a certain collection of other proteins whose three-dimensional structures interact in specific way to produce specific effects -- and oh, by the way, their three-dimension forms have also been serialized and encoded into that same DNA strand.
The thing that makes this beyond coincidence is that it is an irreducibly complex system. Having DNA which happened to produce one protein is difficult enough (impossible?) to explain. But then explain how this strand of DNA produces a collection of proteins, each of which, in and of itself is nothing special, but when all of these proteins are put together they create functionality which is not present in any of them alone (like a cell or whatever you want to call "life").
Lots of different strands were formed around the same time.
Yes, there was white paper, brown paper, pink paper, papyrus, all kinds of paper.
Most of them simply did not work.
Very likely. White paper is so much better than papyrus.
A tiny few of them did work, and worked so well that they went on to bigger and better things.
Now we have paper. You forgot to explain how that blueprint got written to the paper.
It would be very easy -- almost trivial -- to have {
the amount of complexity respresented in your examples is nothing in comparison to a single exhale of smoke. Quadrazillionillions of random processes are going on every planck length tick of time.
I think you must have missed my point.
There are 10^78 ATOMS IN THE UNIVERSE.
If each atom produced a character at 10 GHz (that's 10,000,000,000 randomly generated characters per second), then the AGE OF THE UNIVERSE (13.7 billion years) is still not long enough for those atoms to randomly generate the sentence:
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back."
using an 80-character alphabet.
In fact, it would take 10^31 UNIVERSES (that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 UNIVERSES) in order to be able to generate that sentence sometime in 13.7 billion years.
I have no doubt that there is plenty of complexity in "a single exhale of smoke". But "quadrazillionillions of random processes" don't come any where near the complexity of ALL THE ATOMS IN 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 UNIVERSES running at 10 GHz for 13.7 billion years.
If there is some problem with my math, please show me.
But in this instance, our random monkeys with their random typewriters don't have to produce a particular, specific sentence;
The problem is that it DOES matter. If you are encoding DNA and need to produce a particular protein for a particular purpose (for example, blood clotting) then then every last letter counts. That is why some people are born with von Willebrand's disease (VWD because one letter got transcribed incorrectly and they are not able to produce the correct protein that is needed for blood clotting to work.
but merely something that makes enough sense in some language to be understood.
Like a cell which is more or less alive. Sorry, but a cell is either alive or it is not. That first cell, whenever and wherever it was, had to get a LOT of things EXACTLY right: cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA/RNA. And all of these depend on the correct DNA/RNA. And what most people miss is that even if you can come up with a scenario about how a DNA strand might have emerged spontaneously, you still need to explain how that DNA got encoded with information about three-dimensional protein structures which then create the cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, etc.
And guess what? Every letter counts. And guess what else? All this is MUCH HARDER than the "quick brown fox" scenario that I described.
{There are plenty of life-forms that would be viable; just watch a few bad sci-fi movies.
I'm just talking about a cell. Any cell. Any extremely simple cell, whether from a sci-fi flick or not.
Also, these typewriters {or maybe the monkeys} are designed in such a way that, following any keystroke, the probability matrix is modified so that letters which would make more sense become more likely.
This may be useful in describing how that first DNA strand came into being. But it does not explain how the data which encode three-dimensional protein structures got written to that strand.
Without your artificially-imposed restrictions, the probability swings back to something manageable. Life exactly like this is pretty improbable, but any kind of life at all is pretty probable.
Although my example was artificial (I admit, I should have used Shakespeare), the probabilities and time constraints are not. In "real life" the problem is MUCH HARDER.
As a software developer myself, that article reminds me of one software developer looking at someone else's code. Why did he do this? That was stupid. Why did he do that? I would never have done that. This must be the worst code I have ever seen.
Just because you don't like someone else's design, or think it is faulty in many ways, or think you could do better, does not in any way eliminate the fact that it was a design.
And many of the problems he points out are just as much problems for evolutionary theory as well.
The human eye has six muscles instead of the minimally required three? What is the evolutionary explanation for that? If so many mutations were occurring which produced all of these amazing facilities, why didn't the three-muscle configuration win out over the six-muscle configuration?
The problem with evolution is that it does not explain the selection of non-functional mutations. Since the three-muscle configuration is more efficient, why didn't evolution select for that? Or is it that maybe there is some advantage to the six-muscle design.
Since a "better" eye was apparently selected-for in mollusks and squid, why didn't the same thing happen in primates? Did "selection" fail to work? Did "selection" fail to work? The existence of mammalian wolves (in North America) and marsupial wolves (in Australia) certainly shows that "evolution" can do the same thing in disparate locations. Why didn't this happen with the eye?
On the other hand, I love the mole rat example. It proves one frequently overlooked point. Natural selection is the observation that certain biological characteristics are more useful in some environments than in others. An animal with fins and gills is not likely to survive in the desert. An animal with wings and feathers is not likely to survive in the ocean. Natural selection, therefore, is a process that eliminates characteristics which are not useful. It is a process that reduces variety. It is not a process which increases variety. The mole rat is a perfect example of the reduction of variety. I have no problem with natural selection. It eliminates unused or useless functionality within a given environment. The problem is when the term "natural selection" is used in a way in which it seems to have the power to introduce new variety. It doesn't.
And neither can random events produce form of variety containing irreducible complexity.
He talks about "contrivances without contrivers". He suggests that "trial-and-error tinkering" could have produced the observed results. What he doesn't point out is that trial and error can never produce a system with irreducible complexity. He doesn't even mention irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity exists when the functionality of the system as a whole crucially depends on subsystems -- each subsystem having no useful functionality of its own. Irreducible complexity is so pervasive that it is hard to find any system (living or otherwise) of any complexity which does not exhibit irreducible complexity.
The problem is that irreducible complexity cannot be achieve through tiny random incremental changes accompanied by natural selection. That contradicts the whole notion in evolution that each incremental change gets selected for or not. If an intermediate stage (a "subsystem") has no direct use to the organism as a whole, there is nothing there whereby it would get "selected". And if you need a number of subsystems (photo receptors, optic nerve, retina, lens, pupil, muscles, eye sockets, eye ball having internal air pressure, brain capable of synthesizing stereoscopic vision, etc), then each of these independent subsystems would be competing for selection against the others. And since none of these subsystems have any use on their own (what good are eye sockets without eyes balls) there is no reason for any of them to get selected, let alone all at the
[[Science starts from the standpoint that everything that can be observed can be explained.]]
[And who pronounced that everything that can be observed can be explained? Where did this idea come from? Has it been scientifically proven that everything that can be observed can be explained? I must have missed that scientific experiment. Which one was that again?]
And who pronounced that some things that can be observed can't be explained? Where did this idea come from? Has it been philosophically or theologically proven that such explanation is impossible? I must have missed that explanation.
[It's funny how scientists don't even know where their own unproven dogma begins. But they are quick to make accusations of others.]
Its funny how some non-scientists don't want to go beyond where their limited understanding reaches, and are quick to ridicule those who try to understand more.
Come on, you're not being serious, right?
Just in case you are, let me state that I only asked a question. I never asserted that "some things that can be observed can't be explained". You are making accusations of something that I, certainly, did not assert.
I for one believe that the universe is to a large extent comprehensible. But this notion is a scientific axiom, not a scientific "fact".
My point is that everyone (including "scientists") have their own assumptions, and most people don't recognize when they are holding them or using them. And some people assert them as if they were facts, when, in fact, they are not.
The question is HOW did it happen. Those who accept creationism/intelligent design often seem to use circular logic: it happened and we don't yet know how, therefore it must have been designed, involving a designer who in turn has to be explained by yet more design. Quite unscientific thinking.
I reject creationism. So don't even bother me with that. And since I can't tell if you know what ID proposes, I will attempt to enlighten you.
The Intelligent Design hypothesis is based on the observation that living systems exhibit irreducible complexity. Simply put, that means that the sub-components of a system are useless except in the context of the system as a whole. In other words, the system as a whole produces some functionality which critically depends upon the subcomponents, and yet those sub-components by themselves have no useful functionality.
There are so many examples of this that it is hard to know where to start. Pick any system and you will find that it has dependent subsystems which have no value on their own.
For example, take the blood clotting system. This works through the precise interaction of a number of special-purpose enzymes. If any of these enzymes are missing, blood clotting will fail. And as we should know, this is fatal. An animal without a blood clotting system will bleed to death with the slightest cut. But each enzyme on its own is useless. It serves no purpose outside of the blood clotting system. But you must have the complete set of enzymes for blood clotting to work.
So, why would there be any "selective pressure" for enzymes which serve no purpose? Why would a specific set of enzymes have evolved if there was not selective benefit to them? The blood clotting system is a problem for evolutionists because they cannot show how stepwise random changes could result in a complete functioning system who's "whole is more than the sum of its parts".
Evolutionists usually try to come up with scenarios which can "explain" these problems. These explanations are usually unconvincing because they are vague, there is little or no direct supporting evidence for them, and they sound too much like rationalizations to support a pet theory instead of scientific arguments which uphold the facts. Even many "neutral" scientists find these explanations hard to swallow.
You are completely misunderstanding evolution. It is not random - it merely uses randomness. It involves selection.
Selection is merely the observation that certain forms and functions are more fit for certain environments than others. A creature with fins will probably not survive in a desert. A creature with legs will probably not survive in a sea. Selection is a way to eliminate variety, not create it. Although it is obvious that selection occurs, you lose me when you start assigning powers to it, such as "pressure".
It has no goals.
On this, I can completely agree with you. With evolution, there are no goals, there are no favored outcomes. There is just randomness, which starts with homogeneity and ends with homogeneity.
A better example is if you has asked for random typing producing something vaguely like a sentence. That cuts down the odds fantastically!
For example, something vaguely alive. Say, a cell. Say, a very simple cell. Even the simplest cell must have the following components:
The requirements for just the cell membrane goes far beyond the "quick brown fox" example. It must be able to control what flows in and out of a cell, which, among other things, also maintains a potential difference across the cell membrane. The cell membrane itself is made up of highly specialized proteins. Any one of these would go beyond the "quick brown fox" example. And where did these come from? Well, their structure is encoded in quaternary-coded string which is "written" onto a DNA molecule. So this brings up two additional (independent) problems (aside from the circular dependency of DNA and cell membrane): 1. how was a DNA molecule first formed? 2. how was information about 3D protein structures encoded into that molecule using a quaternary code? Even if you can somehow fudge an answer to the first question (how a physical DNA strand may have come into existence, Miller, et al), there is no way you can come up with any kind of believable answer to the second question (how unrelated 3-dimensional protein-structure information got encoded onto that strand).
Evolution does not start from scratch each time.
Well, it must have started from scratch at some point. What do you propose existed at that point when it had to start from scratch?
It uses what has gone before.
And where did "what has gone before" come from? Where did those initial ingredients come from?
If complexity is needed for better survival that can arise very slowly and gradually.
Nonsense. Complexity arises from intelligence. Pure and simple. No intelligence, no complexity. Homogeneity and chaos arises from non-intelligent randomness.
Here's a little experiment you can do at home. Take a box. Put black sand on the left and white sand on the right. Now shake well. Keep on shaking. You will know you are done when you have a homogeneous mixture that looks like gray sand. (This should take substantially less time than the age of the universe.)
Now, in a separate experiment, take a box of thoroughly mixed black and white sand. Now shake well. Keep on shaking. You know you are done when you have black sand on the left and white sand on the right. (Hint: the universe will come to and end before you are done shaking.)
Finally, there is selection. Assume that there is some pressure for sentence structure and words.
Hmm, there is that word, "pressure" again. Who (excuse me, What) creates that pressure? Why on earth would there be some "pressure" for sentence structure and words? Why would there be any "pressure" for the first cell to exist?
For a minute, imagine a universe where there was no "pressure for sentence structure and words". I can easily image this. Pure nothingness. Now, explain to me how, out of this nothingness, a "
Slashdot Mirror
Consider the science called Astronomy. This community surrounding this science entertains many fantastic hypotheses of how the universe works, including multiple universes, N-dimensional universes, electrons moving backward in time, dark matter, and many other fantastic ideas. When new evidence about the universe is discovered, this often stimulates many more fantastic hypotheses. And this scientific community gives them all due consideration. They are checked against the known facts to see how well they stand up. And if they stand up well, then adjustments are made to currently accepted theories to incorporate those ideas. Many questions about the universe are still considered unsolved and worthy of open-ended discussion.
Now consider this other science called evolution. I will not get into the history of bias and politics in science here, but somehow this scientific community behaves radically differently than the other one. It has decided that all the important questions about evolution have already been answered. There is exactly one theory which is the acceptable description of how evolution occurred. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a persona non grata. There is no room for any open-ended discussion of the weaknesses of this particular theory and certainly not of any possible alternative hypotheses.
The difference in these communities is striking. My problem is that the second community seems to have a really hard time remaining ... scientific.
second fallacy, the claim that living systems are too complex to arise from a random process
ID does not assert that organisms are too complex to have arrisen from evolution. It asserts that they exhibit irreducible complexity. There is a big difference.
Irreducible complexity means that a system is comprised of subsystems which are useless on their own but without which the system will not function.
Irreducible complexity cannot arise from the process of evolution, virtually by definition.
Evolution asserts that complex systems arose through the gradual accumulation of tiny random changes through the mechanism of natural selection. In order for an irreducibly complex system to evolve, all of its component subsystems must have first evolved. But these systems have no value in and of themselves, so there would be no advantage present for them to be "selected".
A cell is a good example of an irreducible complex system. Even the simplest cell must have a number of subsystems: cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA/RNA, etc.
Now, a cell wall hanging out by itself doesn't do anyone much good. Neither does cytoplasm by itself. Neither does any of a number of other components of a cell, by themselves. Even if any one of these were to arise spontaneously, there is no reason for it, on its own, to be "selected".
It is only when all the components exist together, at the same time, in the same place, in proper relation with each other, will you have a functioning cell.
But the hypothesis of natural selection does not even suggest that this could happen. It only suggests that evolution occurs through the accumulation of tiny random changes. And this is not enough to explain how an irreducibly complex system would arise.
Evolution is not random at all, as its progress is determined by natural selection
Natural Selection is the process whereby characteristics of an organism which are not suitable or compatible with the organism's environment will have a deleterious effect on the organisms ability to survive. An organism with fins is not likely to survive in a desert. An organism with wings is not likely to survive in the sea.
Natural selection is a mechanism whereby variety is reduced: organisms with certain characteristics are eliminated in a certain environment.
Even people who do not believe in evolution can easily accept natural selection.
But natural selection is not a "force" which can "guide" evolution.
It is a mechanism by which variety is eliminated, not introduced.
The notion of intelligent design is based on the observation that living systems exhibit irreducible complexity. This means that complex systems critically depend on variety of subsystems in order for the system as a whole to function. The problem is, these subsystems are generally useless in and of themselves and have no "selective" value. It is only when they are combined in a precise collection with the needed other subsystems will the system as a whole function properly.
To falsify ID, all you would have to do is show why there would be "selective force" for these subsystems to exist at all and come together. But this is a tough cookie to crack because these subsystems are useless on their own. Their only usefulness is when the all exist together and work in concert.
There are so many examples of this that its hard to even mention a single complex biological system that does not exhibit irreducible complexity. Here's one example out of many of irreducible complexity: the blood clotting system.
The blood clotting system only works because there dozens of complex enzymes which interact in a precisely coordinated fashion. You certainly don't want your blood to start clotting when it doesn't need to clot (this is fatal). And you certainly want your blood to clot when it does need to (blood not clotting when it needs to is also fatal). When you get a cut, you want a scab to form just around the cut, but not every where else (which would also be fatal). Its hard for something to have "selective value" when a partial implementation will kill you.
In order for this functionality to occur, a certain collection of enzymes must exist. If even one enzyme is missing, then blood clotting will fail in one way or another and probably be fatal.
The question is, how did all of these enzymes evolve? How did they all come to exist together? Each enzyme, in and of itself is useless. It has no value alone to the organism.
But, according to Darwin, evolution occurs by the natural selection and accumulation of tiny random changes.
However, if one of these enzymes should "randomly" come into being, it has no usefulness. There is no benefit to the organism. There is no reason it should be selected. Useless mutations are just as easily selected out of a population as useful ones are selected in.
So how is it that if there is no reason for a single one of these enzymes to be "selected" on their own, that more than a dozen of them can come into existence and suddenly produce blood clotting functionality?
If you believe this can happen by random chance, I have plenty of other science fiction books for you to read.
I can guarantee that anything you try to do I can just say "well, the Wizard made it look like that".
I can say the same thing about Darwin's hypothesis of evolution. Now, which experiment was it that proved that Darwin was correct?
Everything in science is INHERENTLY UNPROVABLE.
Have you ever heard of deductive reasoning? This is reasoning from the general to the particular. You start with general premises which you know (or assume) to be true, and work toward specific consequences which you can therefore also know (or assume) to be true. This is logically air tight reasoning.
Simplified example: First, we start with a general premise: "White pixels have value 0xffffff". Then we add a specific case: "I see a white pixel". Using deductive logic, we can deductively conclude that the value of the pixel is 0xffffff. Using deductive logic, if the general premis is true, then the deductive consequence will also be true.
Then there is inductive reasoning. This is also known as generalization. This goes in the opposite direction. It goes from a specific case to a general case. And guess what? You can never make a sweeping generalization that will always be true based on a limited number of data points.
Simplified example: I just flipped this coin three times and got heads. Therefore, the next time I flip this coin, it will also be heads.
Science is based on generalization: it takes a limited number of data samples and attempts to make sweeping generalizations about them. The fact that it works at all is quite astounding!
Science may, in fact, be useful in making more or less reliable conjectures about the world around us.
But science never PROVES anything.
How can there be FREQUENTLY asked questions if it was just announced TODAY??
The word "verb" is, well, a noun. The word "verbing" is, well, an abomination!! I certainly hope angels can't be slashdotted. Oh, the horror!
Well, the html version of bittorent could probably decrease these latencies by prepackaging this info and sending it along with the torrent file. The info would be HOT at the time it was sent. The browser just needs to latch on immediately.
The new Opera 8.02 has bittorent support built in. However, that is only for .torrent files, proper. But its only a step away from having web pages torrentable (?). All we need is some apache support. Volunteers?
I wonder if these very same ISPs would be interested in knowing that their precious bandwidth is being stolen by stealth-torrents.
If the user hasn't given permission to use their bandwidth, wouldn't that be stealing?
I remember when, during the Seattle WTO meeting of a few years back, there were so many demonstrations and even violent disruptions. At the time I thought, "What a bunch of radical extremists."
Now I'm not so sure.
During installation, the Xandros installer will automatically resize your NTFS partition for you to make room for Xandros. A very nice touch.
My 78-year-old Dad has been using Xandros for a couple of years without any of the problems you mention.
Many windows apps will run in crossover.
He also did voice for a character in 'Castle in the Sky'. I originally guessed wrong which character he was voicing. His vocal range seems to have grown substantially since his "this R2 unit has a bad motivator!" days.
It's possible that the designer could be an alien. But that only begs the question: How did the alien come to be? I think the universe is certainly a place which is "conducive" to life. And life has built upon life. However, the Darwinian hypothesis leaves many unanswered questions. So I support the ID folks to the extent that they are forcing some of these issues out into the open.
The problem of the very first cell is also similar. Many pieces (cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA) have to exist at the same time in the same place for a cell to kick in. If any piece is missing (such as the cell wall) you don't have much of a cell. And any of the pieces by themselves (such as a cell wall) is not good for much without the other pieces being present as well.
Do I think that God personally created the first cell? I don't know. But I am sure that the Darwinians are getting off a little too easy.
Precisely. This is the "irreducible complexity" problem. That first cell was quite a trick. A very large number of things have to be perfectly in place before that first cell can kick in and start working as a cell.
Boy, that took the wind out of my sails.
So here's the corrected parable of Monkeys and Shakespeare. Not as compelling but I guess its closer to "reallity". (I thought evolution had something to do with randomness, big numbers and long time periods. I must be thinking of something else.)
English prose uses 26 lower-case letters and 26 upper case letters. Throw in 10 digits, and some common punctuation marks:
and we get roughly 80 characters that we can say are used in common English prose. This is conservative considering that most modern keyboards have 100+ keys.
For our purposes, we will say that one monkey pressing one key will therefore have a chance of 1 in 80 of typing any particular letter, say T.
One monkey pressing two keys will have a chance of 1/80 times 1/80 of typing any two particular letters, say Th. That is, a monkey has a chance of 1 in 6400 of randomly typing "Th".
To type the word "The", the chances are 1 in 512000 (1/80^3).
In general, for N characters, the probability would be 1/80^N.
Now let's examine one sentence from one work of Shakespeare:
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"
This sentence has 51 characters. So the probability of monkey typing this in randomly is 1/80^51. Or, 1 chance in:
114179815416476790484662877555959610910619729920 00000000000000000000\
000000000000000000000000000000
That looks like a pretty big number. That's 98 digits. Or in scientific notation, about 1 x 10^97.
Let's say our monkey could type one character per second (he's very coordinated and very disciplined). How long would it take to type
114179815416476790484662877555959610910619729920 00000000000000000000\
000000000000000000000000000000
characters?
Well, there are 60 seconds per minute, so this would be:
190299692360794650807771462593266018184366216533 33333333333333333333\
3333333333333333333333333333
minutes. Or, with 60 minutes per hour:
317166153934657751346285770988776696973943694222 22222222222222222222\
22222222222222222222222222
hours. Or, with 24 hours per day:
132152564139440729727619071245323623739143205925 92592592592592592592\
5925925925925925925925925
days. Ok, there are 365.25 days per year, so that's:
361814001750693305209087121821556806951795224985 42347960554668289096\
7627449489188024437853
years, or about 2 x 10^89 years.
The universe is about 13.7 billion years old (13,700,000,000 years). That would make this time span
264097811496856427159917607169019567118098704368 92224788726035247515\
885215291181
AGES OF THE UNIVERSE. That's a lot of ages of the universe for that little monkey to be working all by himself. So let's give him some helpers.
Now, there are about 10^67 atoms in the galaxy. If there were one monkey typing away for every atom in the galaxy, then we would cut this time span substantially. Now we're only talking:
2640978114968
AGES OF THE UNIVERSE. Hmm, That's still a pretty long time. Well, maybe the monkeys could work faster than one character per second. Maybe they could work as fast (or faster than) today's modern desktop CPU. Let's be generous and say 10 GHz. Naw, let's allow for a few more years of Moore's law to kick in and say 1 TeraHz (a trillion operations per second).
Yes, folks, now it's confirmed. If there were one monkey for every atom in the galaxy, and each monkey was pressing a trillion keys per second, then given the current age of the universe, it would just be possible somewhere in all that output, that the text:
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"
would occur. Once.
Now, about the rest of those works of Shakespeare...
I am all for letting our imaginations run free. I certainly have no intention in denying that there are many things that could exist in the universe that we have no inkling about. But this does not help us come to scientific conclusions resulting from the scientific observation of the world around us. "In the absence of proof to the contrary" is usually not good enough for science.
Most of that information is not encoded in DNA, but encoded in the behaviour of the chemical elements themselves.
This is what everybody gets wrong. A DNA strand is like a blank sheet of paper. Nothing is written on it. This blank sheet of paper in itself is not very useful in helping me build my house. However, if I draw a blueprint on the paper, then it will contain the exact instructions that I need to follow to build my house.
Taking an extremely simple example from chemistry, when you add an acid to an alcohol you get an ester. That much is fixed; it depends upon the properties of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The chemical reactions of DNA are already set in stone. Simplifying it a bit, if you add DNA to the correct mix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and a few others, under the right conditions, you get more of the same DNA. It's a bit more impressive than hydrochloric acid + sodium hydroxide -> sodium chloride + water, but the ingredients have no more choice in the matter: what comes out in the end is dependent only on what went in.
What you're telling me is that the universe knows how to create paper. Fine. What you're not telling me is how that blueprint got on that paper.
The data which encode three-dimensional protein structures are inherent properties of the elements which make up proteins.
No. DNA is merely an alphabet. The Encyclopaedia Britannica could be encoded in DNA. That's part of the amazing thing about DNA: it is merely a blank slate on which ANY ARBITRARY DATA could be encoded. The problem is that there is nothing to "favor" one thing being encoded in DNA versus another. This makes it more amazing and exceedingly more difficult to explain how the exact sequence of proteins got encoded in a flat serialized form which happen to represent a three-dimensional structure which happens to have a particular catalytic effect when it exists in presence of a certain collection of other proteins whose three-dimensional structures interact in specific way to produce specific effects -- and oh, by the way, their three-dimension forms have also been serialized and encoded into that same DNA strand.
The thing that makes this beyond coincidence is that it is an irreducibly complex system. Having DNA which happened to produce one protein is difficult enough (impossible?) to explain. But then explain how this strand of DNA produces a collection of proteins, each of which, in and of itself is nothing special, but when all of these proteins are put together they create functionality which is not present in any of them alone (like a cell or whatever you want to call "life").
Lots of different strands were formed around the same time.
Yes, there was white paper, brown paper, pink paper, papyrus, all kinds of paper.
Most of them simply did not work.
Very likely. White paper is so much better than papyrus.
A tiny few of them did work, and worked so well that they went on to bigger and better things.
Now we have paper. You forgot to explain how that blueprint got written to the paper.
It would be very easy -- almost trivial -- to have {
I think you must have missed my point.
There are 10^78 ATOMS IN THE UNIVERSE.
If each atom produced a character at 10 GHz (that's 10,000,000,000 randomly generated characters per second), then the AGE OF THE UNIVERSE (13.7 billion years) is still not long enough for those atoms to randomly generate the sentence:
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back."
using an 80-character alphabet.
In fact, it would take 10^31 UNIVERSES (that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 UNIVERSES) in order to be able to generate that sentence sometime in 13.7 billion years.
I have no doubt that there is plenty of complexity in "a single exhale of smoke". But "quadrazillionillions of random processes" don't come any where near the complexity of ALL THE ATOMS IN 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 UNIVERSES running at 10 GHz for 13.7 billion years.
If there is some problem with my math, please show me.
But in this instance, our random monkeys with their random typewriters don't have to produce a particular, specific sentence;
The problem is that it DOES matter. If you are encoding DNA and need to produce a particular protein for a particular purpose (for example, blood clotting) then then every last letter counts. That is why some people are born with von Willebrand's disease (VWD because one letter got transcribed incorrectly and they are not able to produce the correct protein that is needed for blood clotting to work.
but merely something that makes enough sense in some language to be understood.
Like a cell which is more or less alive. Sorry, but a cell is either alive or it is not. That first cell, whenever and wherever it was, had to get a LOT of things EXACTLY right: cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, DNA/RNA. And all of these depend on the correct DNA/RNA. And what most people miss is that even if you can come up with a scenario about how a DNA strand might have emerged spontaneously, you still need to explain how that DNA got encoded with information about three-dimensional protein structures which then create the cell membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus/nucleoid, nucleoplasm, etc.
And guess what? Every letter counts. And guess what else? All this is MUCH HARDER than the "quick brown fox" scenario that I described.
{There are plenty of life-forms that would be viable; just watch a few bad sci-fi movies.
I'm just talking about a cell. Any cell. Any extremely simple cell, whether from a sci-fi flick or not.
Also, these typewriters {or maybe the monkeys} are designed in such a way that, following any keystroke, the probability matrix is modified so that letters which would make more sense become more likely.
This may be useful in describing how that first DNA strand came into being. But it does not explain how the data which encode three-dimensional protein structures got written to that strand.
Without your artificially-imposed restrictions, the probability swings back to something manageable. Life exactly like this is pretty improbable, but any kind of life at all is pretty probable.
Although my example was artificial (I admit, I should have used Shakespeare), the probabilities and time constraints are not. In "real life" the problem is MUCH HARDER.
As a software developer myself, that article reminds me of one software developer looking at someone else's code. Why did he do this? That was stupid. Why did he do that? I would never have done that. This must be the worst code I have ever seen.
Just because you don't like someone else's design, or think it is faulty in many ways, or think you could do better, does not in any way eliminate the fact that it was a design.
And many of the problems he points out are just as much problems for evolutionary theory as well.
The human eye has six muscles instead of the minimally required three? What is the evolutionary explanation for that? If so many mutations were occurring which produced all of these amazing facilities, why didn't the three-muscle configuration win out over the six-muscle configuration?
The problem with evolution is that it does not explain the selection of non-functional mutations. Since the three-muscle configuration is more efficient, why didn't evolution select for that? Or is it that maybe there is some advantage to the six-muscle design.
Since a "better" eye was apparently selected-for in mollusks and squid, why didn't the same thing happen in primates? Did "selection" fail to work? Did "selection" fail to work? The existence of mammalian wolves (in North America) and marsupial wolves (in Australia) certainly shows that "evolution" can do the same thing in disparate locations. Why didn't this happen with the eye?
On the other hand, I love the mole rat example. It proves one frequently overlooked point. Natural selection is the observation that certain biological characteristics are more useful in some environments than in others. An animal with fins and gills is not likely to survive in the desert. An animal with wings and feathers is not likely to survive in the ocean. Natural selection, therefore, is a process that eliminates characteristics which are not useful. It is a process that reduces variety. It is not a process which increases variety. The mole rat is a perfect example of the reduction of variety. I have no problem with natural selection. It eliminates unused or useless functionality within a given environment. The problem is when the term "natural selection" is used in a way in which it seems to have the power to introduce new variety. It doesn't.
And neither can random events produce form of variety containing irreducible complexity.
He talks about "contrivances without contrivers". He suggests that "trial-and-error tinkering" could have produced the observed results. What he doesn't point out is that trial and error can never produce a system with irreducible complexity. He doesn't even mention irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity exists when the functionality of the system as a whole crucially depends on subsystems -- each subsystem having no useful functionality of its own. Irreducible complexity is so pervasive that it is hard to find any system (living or otherwise) of any complexity which does not exhibit irreducible complexity.
The problem is that irreducible complexity cannot be achieve through tiny random incremental changes accompanied by natural selection. That contradicts the whole notion in evolution that each incremental change gets selected for or not. If an intermediate stage (a "subsystem") has no direct use to the organism as a whole, there is nothing there whereby it would get "selected". And if you need a number of subsystems (photo receptors, optic nerve, retina, lens, pupil, muscles, eye sockets, eye ball having internal air pressure, brain capable of synthesizing stereoscopic vision, etc), then each of these independent subsystems would be competing for selection against the others. And since none of these subsystems have any use on their own (what good are eye sockets without eyes balls) there is no reason for any of them to get selected, let alone all at the
[And who pronounced that everything that can be observed can be explained? Where did this idea come from? Has it been scientifically proven that everything that can be observed can be explained? I must have missed that scientific experiment. Which one was that again?]
And who pronounced that some things that can be observed can't be explained? Where did this idea come from? Has it been philosophically or theologically proven that such explanation is impossible? I must have missed that explanation.
[It's funny how scientists don't even know where their own unproven dogma begins. But they are quick to make accusations of others.]
Its funny how some non-scientists don't want to go beyond where their limited understanding reaches, and are quick to ridicule those who try to understand more.
Come on, you're not being serious, right?
Just in case you are, let me state that I only asked a question. I never asserted that "some things that can be observed can't be explained". You are making accusations of something that I, certainly, did not assert.
I for one believe that the universe is to a large extent comprehensible. But this notion is a scientific axiom, not a scientific "fact".
My point is that everyone (including "scientists") have their own assumptions, and most people don't recognize when they are holding them or using them. And some people assert them as if they were facts, when, in fact, they are not.
I reject creationism. So don't even bother me with that. And since I can't tell if you know what ID proposes, I will attempt to enlighten you.
The Intelligent Design hypothesis is based on the observation that living systems exhibit irreducible complexity. Simply put, that means that the sub-components of a system are useless except in the context of the system as a whole. In other words, the system as a whole produces some functionality which critically depends upon the subcomponents, and yet those sub-components by themselves have no useful functionality.
There are so many examples of this that it is hard to know where to start. Pick any system and you will find that it has dependent subsystems which have no value on their own.
For example, take the blood clotting system. This works through the precise interaction of a number of special-purpose enzymes. If any of these enzymes are missing, blood clotting will fail. And as we should know, this is fatal. An animal without a blood clotting system will bleed to death with the slightest cut. But each enzyme on its own is useless. It serves no purpose outside of the blood clotting system. But you must have the complete set of enzymes for blood clotting to work.
So, why would there be any "selective pressure" for enzymes which serve no purpose? Why would a specific set of enzymes have evolved if there was not selective benefit to them? The blood clotting system is a problem for evolutionists because they cannot show how stepwise random changes could result in a complete functioning system who's "whole is more than the sum of its parts".
Evolutionists usually try to come up with scenarios which can "explain" these problems. These explanations are usually unconvincing because they are vague, there is little or no direct supporting evidence for them, and they sound too much like rationalizations to support a pet theory instead of scientific arguments which uphold the facts. Even many "neutral" scientists find these explanations hard to swallow.
Selection is merely the observation that certain forms and functions are more fit for certain environments than others. A creature with fins will probably not survive in a desert. A creature with legs will probably not survive in a sea. Selection is a way to eliminate variety, not create it. Although it is obvious that selection occurs, you lose me when you start assigning powers to it, such as "pressure".
It has no goals.
On this, I can completely agree with you. With evolution, there are no goals, there are no favored outcomes. There is just randomness, which starts with homogeneity and ends with homogeneity.
A better example is if you has asked for random typing producing something vaguely like a sentence. That cuts down the odds fantastically!
For example, something vaguely alive. Say, a cell. Say, a very simple cell. Even the simplest cell must have the following components:
* cell membrane * cytoplasm * nucleus/nucleoid * nucleoplasm * DNA/RNA (as an overly simplified list).
The requirements for just the cell membrane goes far beyond the "quick brown fox" example. It must be able to control what flows in and out of a cell, which, among other things, also maintains a potential difference across the cell membrane. The cell membrane itself is made up of highly specialized proteins. Any one of these would go beyond the "quick brown fox" example. And where did these come from? Well, their structure is encoded in quaternary-coded string which is "written" onto a DNA molecule. So this brings up two additional (independent) problems (aside from the circular dependency of DNA and cell membrane): 1. how was a DNA molecule first formed? 2. how was information about 3D protein structures encoded into that molecule using a quaternary code? Even if you can somehow fudge an answer to the first question (how a physical DNA strand may have come into existence, Miller, et al), there is no way you can come up with any kind of believable answer to the second question (how unrelated 3-dimensional protein-structure information got encoded onto that strand).
Evolution does not start from scratch each time.
Well, it must have started from scratch at some point. What do you propose existed at that point when it had to start from scratch?
It uses what has gone before.
And where did "what has gone before" come from? Where did those initial ingredients come from?
If complexity is needed for better survival that can arise very slowly and gradually.
Nonsense. Complexity arises from intelligence. Pure and simple. No intelligence, no complexity. Homogeneity and chaos arises from non-intelligent randomness.
Here's a little experiment you can do at home. Take a box. Put black sand on the left and white sand on the right. Now shake well. Keep on shaking. You will know you are done when you have a homogeneous mixture that looks like gray sand. (This should take substantially less time than the age of the universe.)
Now, in a separate experiment, take a box of thoroughly mixed black and white sand. Now shake well. Keep on shaking. You know you are done when you have black sand on the left and white sand on the right. (Hint: the universe will come to and end before you are done shaking.)
Finally, there is selection. Assume that there is some pressure for sentence structure and words.
Hmm, there is that word, "pressure" again. Who (excuse me, What) creates that pressure? Why on earth would there be some "pressure" for sentence structure and words? Why would there be any "pressure" for the first cell to exist?
For a minute, imagine a universe where there was no "pressure for sentence structure and words". I can easily image this. Pure nothingness. Now, explain to me how, out of this nothingness, a "