If you want to monitor your CPU activity, install medibuntu and sudo apt-get install hot-babe. Just like in real life, she takes up all your system resources...
Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief. But, see, this is something I did quite frequently during my de-conversion. Many times. I figured if there really was an omnipotent God and he truly wanted me to believe in him, then he knew exactly what it would take to convince me. So I did what some nonbelievers do not: I "tested the spirits" so to speak. And despite that, my unbelief has grown. Everything I experience has started to fall into place with a naturalistic explanation.
I know that you and other well-meaning Christians want to tell me that door is there and it's my job to walk through it, but after so many prayers met with silence I can't help but question whether there's even a door there to begin with. But I'll tell you what I tell other people: maybe someday something unmistakable will change my mind and I will come to belief. Maybe not; I just don't know. So far nothing has.
Again, that there is a non-mind when you walk up the stack doesn't change the fact that this it is a non-mind producing this information. That should read: "Again, that there is a mind when you walk up the production stack doesn't change the fact that it is a non-mind producing this information."
it is not immaterial because your "master" program...specifically instructs the computer to produce whatever output you specified.
Please show how my original argument supporting that claim is an insufficient defense rather than attacking it directly. Again the point there is a totally mechanical, uninsightful process can discover a new program that I myself could not. It cannot be said that the output programs are a direct product of my mind, because I may not even know how they work! It could be said that, since every number can be seen as its binary representation, converted to ASCII, and compiled and run as a computer program, that every number has a property of being a computer program or not, and that therefore in some sense the set [all computer programs that satisfy requirements R] must in some sense already exist, independent of any mind to discover it! I realize this is very high level stuff but I recommend this book for more information on the subject.
All I provided it was a certain group of inputs and outputs, and all it does is compare the outputs of the computed programs to the given inputs. A simple equality comparison. A totally mechanical process that, given enough time and memory resources, produces computer programs I can't even fathom.
So what we have here is an example of a mind, creating a non-mind, producing novel information. Again, that there is a non-mind when you walk up the stack doesn't change the fact that this it is a non-mind producing this information. In fact, I could create an arbitrarily long series of non-minds creating non-minds that finally produced novel, useful information.
In other words, the most cohesive version of your argument is that from what we can observe, information appears to always be *eventually* traceable back to a mind. That being the case, though, your argument cannot distinguish between Deism, Theistic Evolution, or Creationism, because all three eventually trace back to a mind.
And as I said before, the idea of chemical self-replicators eventually making a mistake which causes them to take advantage of chemical isomorphisms to increase their self-replicating efficiency, if proven true, puts your argument in jeopardy.
But i fear we have hit "agree to disagree" territory here. I just hope I can convince you that my views are not without thought.
A printed page with a given number of letters on it will always weigh the same, no matter how you arrange those letters.
Well, this is just a nitpick, but each of those individual letters would have some weight and the printer won't exactly output the same weight for the same letter every time. More importantly though, the ink or toner is a physical entity and does not support your claim.
Software/information can be shown by experiment to be an immaterial massless entity.
Assuming light is not considered a material carrier just because it is massless. Even so, even in that case it has a carrier bound by physical laws. If I were to modulate my entire mind onto a light beam, it would have to stop "running" until someone demodulated it somewhere else capable of "running" my mind. But again, it all seems to require a physical carrier to run.
Because we are presently confined our physical senses, this is true, but is not a requirement for information to exist. Again, think of the tree falling in the forest. A caterpillar has within it, all information needed to become a butterfly or moth.
Again, that is a description of a physical carrier. DNA is a physical object, and the resulting proteins generated from that DNA are a more generalized physical object, still containing all that data in a different form, its
Christianity is a huge emotional stronghold for me. If I saw one good, compelling piece of evidence, I would believe again. So far you have presented me with nothing but tired, poorly presented apologetics and logical fallacies and failed to offer a shred of useful evidence supporting my believing in your God.
Why do you have to resort to profanity over established historical publication of this flip-flopping masquerading as science? Because (1) profanity is not immoral. Not even your Bible condemns it explicitly. It's an arbitrary "social sin" and only has any usefulness because people don't (2) most Creationists use global warming to try and cast doubt on evolution, when it's just a stupid red herring. (3) Conservatives consistently vote for the most un-environmental candidate possible. Repeatedly.
So no, you are not obeying your God's commandment to be good stewards of the Earth because in voting for the un-environmental candidate you are not promoting environmental change. These tactics are EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING, hence the swearing, to underly the more important subtext of the matter.
In any case, science is not set in stone. In the 1800s we did not have *nearly* the same meteorological equipment we do now. We can observe things must faster and draw conclusions where before we were not able. As new evidence comes to light, scientific theory is sometimes challenged and sometimes altered. This is true of every branch of science. It's not "ignorant flipflopping" as you so poetically put it.
Besides, if there is no debate among the peer reviewed scientific community that there is a danger of anthropogenic global warming, don't you think it wise to listen to them and take their advice, even if they're wrong?
Sceintists have demonstrated "micro" evolution in a lab, where novel information is developed independently. Mathematical extrapolation and archaeological data indicate VERY STRONGLY that macroevolution is simply an extension of this. The barrier between macro and micro is an artificial barrier and the burden of proof is on the one who asserts it exists.
Four things I ask of you.
1) Read my WHOLE COMMENT and my justification for the statements I make before blindly quoting me out of context. 2) Post your comments on our "main thread" lest I miss some of them. 3) Quit arguing all over the fracking place. Stick to one or two topics at a time. 4) Quit using God as justification for God. That's circular logic no matter what your pastor tells you.
If you can't adhere to these don't bother debating me anymore.
Agh. Again with the unfinished thoughts.
which means you've expended some of the mental energy forming a model for Forming a model for a clean room in your brain, requiring that you expend less mental energy cleaning up your room each time.
But again, if evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics then so does intelligence.
So how much of this metabolic "disorder" is added when you do finally get around to cleaning up? Brain scans show someone participating actively in an activity that requires thought has higher metabolism rates than someone relaxing.
Those sugars get metabolized even when you're asleep. You also dream when you're asleep, which means mental energy is getting expended and entropy is increasing as sugars are metabolizing while the "order" of your dreams is created.
Your body has to keep up a baseline metabolism (increased entropy) to keep your body from shutting down completely (decreased entropy).
The whole point is that undirected energy alone doesn't result in a clean room or a 747 airliner. The point is, the result of the second law of thermodynamics is that expended energy and thus increased disorder elsewhere are necessary for increased order. That is what is meant by a closed system -- that the overall entropy increases, yes, even when you clean your room. Compare the mental energy required to clean up your room to the mental energy required to clean up the wreckage of the World Trade Center post-9/11. It's safe to say a LOT more glucose molecules got converted into CO2 and H2O to clean up THAT mess than to tidy up your room, especially if you know ahead of time what goes where, which means you've expended some of the mental energy forming a model for
No, intelligence does not somehow "escape" the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't mean expended energy yields increased order, otherwise your brain could not exist at all, chemical reactions could not occur, and the computer that you are typing on could not exist.
Consider that a frozen puddle fits a depression in the road perfectly, because in addition to an expenditure of energy on the part of the water, there was a directing force (gravity) and physical constraints (the sides of the puddle). You can pick it up and it will keep the shape of the puddle. Some uneducated people might marvel in awe at the skill of the designer who shaped the ice so perfectly to match the depression.
Or consider that a train, running on a track, is forced into a single direction and will reach its destination without any intervention. Again, there are guiding forces (the energy from the engine) and physical constraints (the track).
Or consider as I have indicated before, that two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule will recombine spontaneously with enough energy input to create two water molecules (please, without the whole design tangent this time). Note that in addition to increased entropy (heating of the molecules), and the energy expended when the three molecules recombine (due to the exothermic reaction), there were additional guiding forces (electromagnetism) and physical constraints (in an abundance of H2 and O2 the likelihood of the three molecules colliding appropriately becomes very slim).
Nobody had to intelligently shape the ice to fit the form of the pit. Nobody had to intelligently bring hydrogen and oxygen together. Nobody had to keep correcting the train to stay on course, and yet order arose from disorder without intelligent intervention in the midst of the process. But this is part of the premise I'm arguing with you in the other thread, that these "guiding forces" and "physical constraints" are not necessarily the result of intelligence.
So when you apply your mind AND energy into ordering the mess in your room, in what or where is there a decrease of order? In the attic or garbage can? I know we're involved in some pretty heavy discussion in another branch of this thread, but when you apply your mind in converting disorder into order, you are creating disorder by metabolizing simple sugars in order to power both your brain and your muscles. Ever try to think after a day or so without eating? The delirium you feel is your body temporarily shutting down higher-level neural functions to lower brain metabolism and conserve energy.
I see that when you are in your element, you begin to dialog a bit more like you know what you're talking about. Thank you. Let's please continue this trend. Also, just FYI, you can use <quote>quote tags</quote> to have Slashdot highlight your quotations for you so you don't have to use ellipses, which are slightly distracting. But moving along.
For your first two answers, I take it then that you simply assume they are false because you have never experienced "information" coming from a "non-mind". But if the two are are assumed to be true, then under that assumption, your premise, "information cannot come from a non-mind" is false, because chemical isomorphisms are a form of translating, reliably, back and forth between two chemical structures (remember I am using an IF here so please do me the courtesy of not taking this statement as a whole out of context; this is your only warning). It is the second structure, the sum total of amino acid chains, that forms the building blocks of all non-DNA life. Thus the burden of proof is on the one who insists that "information cannot come from a non-mind" to show, at the very least, how at least one of these first two propositions is impossible. If science does eventually demonstrate those two premises true beyond a shadow of a doubt, your assertion is invalid; however, if science eventually demonstrates either premise impossible, your assertion still certainly stands as an open question, but is not proven true, because those two premises are but one specific counterclaim to your generalized assertion.
However it can be shown that software, analogous to the mind is independent of a particular hardware.
Not quite. Software is totally incapable of being "run" without the right mechanisms available to run it. On a Mac PPC, there must be a virtual machine emulating the hardware of an Intel chip for windows software to be runnable. Ever try to run windows software natively on a Linux machine? There's a compatibility layer called WINE that runs some windows software on Linux, but there are a lot of Windows programs that simply don't work, or don't work well, within WINE, because the compatibility layer is incomplete due to the software of Windows being closed-source. The important thing to note here is that on the right hardware, most software still needs supporting software (the operating system) to keep it "hardware-independent", and on the wrong hardware, it needs not only the supporting software but a compatibility layer (a VM or an emulator) to run at all!
And, perhaps more importantly, software pretty much cannot run at all--to be sure, it can exist (and in some sense all software exists at all times, as I will show below), but it cannot run--without some hardware in the first place. So, while from a high-level perspective software is not hardware specific, that by no means makes it hardware independent; i.e., this has not shown that software can run without hardware to run it (which, as you have already asserted quite bluntly, must be true for there to be a god-mind external to our concepts of spacetime).
Admittedly, I can look at some programs and try and read them, line by line, and sort of "run" them in my mind. However, I have not seen sufficient evidence to show that I am doing this in something "external" to my brain, so again, this appears to be a case of software running on hardware.
Computer software is created in a human mind
I clearly demonstrated above a dumb, insightless process that can produce any computer program a human can through brute force, given enough time and memory requirements. Just because I created the master program in my mind is immaterial -- the important point is that I have demonstrated a brute force process that knows nothing about the symbols it is manipulating but nevertheless "figures out" useful computer programs.
It is quite easy to see that given enough time and resources, every comp
On second thought, I will continue this discussion if you do the following things for me, for they are the crux points of my previous argument, and your "information/mind" argument depends on them being true:
1. Prove that it is physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously through random chemical reactions. 2. Prove that randomly changing self-replicators cannot stumble upon chemical isomorphisms. 3. Prove that there is anything that can be called "mind" that is not a function of real, physical hardware.
Please do this without reference to God, your "information/mind" argument, or the Bible, which is circular reasoning.
If you cannot do that, your "information/mind" construct is no more than an argument from personal incredulity, and nobody will ever prove you wrong to your own satisfaction because you are in utter denial.
Yes I come as a Christian to the table but that does 2 things, it makes me ashamed of my ignorant loud brethren, and does not excuse me from seeing scientific enlightenment or the pursuit of it. And I quite admire you for it, since my experience with Christianity is that your type is not well tolerated in many circles.
I guess I try to promote scientific understanding. I just hope onlookers who are undecided will see the validity in my arguments and the ignorant tactics of my opponent, and that in so doing I will do my small part to help the evolution side of the debate among the undecided and laypeople, and possibly help nudge some of the former, ignorant types more towards where people like you are. It's just hard to have a fair fight with an opponent who insists upon repeating the same claims over and over again and refusing to study and understand your point of view.
*sigh* I see no reason to continue on with you. You consistently ignore my arguments and twist my words out of context to fit your agenda. You are not willing to learn from others and are only interested in screaming your "good news" like the Bible says in the hopes that someone will convert.
entropy and evolution seem to be at odds with each other on a cosmic scale.... However, this would require very very rare stable circumstances to sustain. The thing is, to say that complexity arising from simplicity is at odds with the second law of thermodynamics is to completely misunderstand the issue. I see you try to resolve it with the micro- and macro- distinctions, but let me see if I can put it to you a different way.
Imagine a completely flat plane, infinitely wide. Now imagine that there are a bunch of steel balls on that plane. Without any external forces, the balls stay put and never move.
Now instead imagine an extremely chaotic plane, also infinitely wide. It has lots and lots of bumps and dents in it, but at both very small and very large scales, there are clear patterns: plateaus, craters, hills, ridges, and paths. Some of these paths are infinitely branching, some are not. If you place a bunch of steel balls on this plane, they will all tend toward the lowest point they can reach. If you then shake the plane around a bit, some of them may jump around and wind up in a different "lowest point" than they started.
Imagine that each nucleotide on a DNA strand is a location on a "multidimensional" plane (if you need help thinking multi-dimensionally, check out Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace"). Imagine that lower points are "more adapted" and higher points are "less adapted" (by adapted I mean suited to continue reproducing with respect to their environment). The reality is much more complex as in the real world, the environment is constantly changing. Now think of the steel balls as actual manifestations of DNA. Every mutation is a "shake". Just as the steel ball will, most of the time, return to the lowest point possible, so too, will most mutations from a well-adapted organism die out quickly and the most adapted organism will continue on. This is that stability you are looking for.
However, from time to time, the chaotic randomness may carve out a new path, and the jostling may force the steel ball out of its pit and into a new path (obviously the stable life form would continue to exist -- think of it as, there may be multiple balls in this particular pit) eventually leading to a deeper pit. Unless you are videotaping the entire experience, you could easily miss that event, and indeed, the status of life on earth during any one organism's life time is more or less a snapshot.
What people who make the micro/macro distinction basically say, is that there are only pits, and no paths, and the pits are so far away from one another that random jostlings cannot possibly catapult one ball into another, or that the likelihood of that happening is so small as to be negligible. Most supporters of macroevolution simply say that this is an unnecessary constraint put on evolution that there is no evidence.
In essence, macroevolution is just microevolution over a long enough period time.
I don't have much trouble with theistic evolution, although many people who support theistic evolution would make the claim that while God allowed life to evolve, they also claim that he intervened at specific points to "nudge" life into new evolutionary lineages, and/or created humankind specially from how he allowed other forms to evolve. What the science of evolution indicates, however, is that the micro/macro distinction is only one of degree and not of semantics, and that time, not divine intervention, is necessary for the macro parts to happen.
...DNA is simply code... OK that is a blatant example of removing my comments from their original contexts. Please try to comprehend my entire post and not take out little snippets here and there. The relationship between DNA and amino acids is a simple chemical isomorphism: there is a one-to-one relationship between nucleotide triplets and amino acids. The isomorphism can be realized using a purely mechanical process.
Instead, you seem intent on tripping me up with my language usage rather than argue any actual points.
If you mine data or recover encrypted text with the right password, you are not creating information, but merely making that already existing information useable. But by that definition of information, everything in the universe (the force between two electrons, the distance between Earth and the Sun) can be called as information! All information automatically exists at all times! So your clever formulation of "information must come from a mind" is exposed for what it really is -- a simple assertion that "nothing can exist without being created."
And even so, you still have a machine that found the information where a human could not.
Has any useful computer program ever come about outside of the activity of thought arising in a mind? Again you seem to be persistently and deliberately dull.
I can create a mathematically one-to-one mapping between numbers and strings of letters, such that every finite string of ASCII characters is represented. If I just create a computer program to walk through those numbers and attempt to run the corresponding programs, and spit out a "1" every time a program that solves some specific problem or another is found, I can "create" useful computer programs using a purely mechanical process. No "mind" was involved in the actual search for these functions. It is just brute force scanning of properties of natural numbers.
Considering that there is massive documented research indicating that: 1. The emergent qualities of thought, emotion, and reason commonly called "mind" are fully contained within the physiology of the brain, and 2. A "mind" is no more powerful than a computer program with enough RAM and CPU cycles at its disposal,
You run up against two problems. First of all, your implicit assertion that minds are supernatural requires loads of evidence, of which you have none. Second, if minds require hardware, what "hardware" is running God's mind, and how did it "get there"? You now have a problem of infinite regress.
Both the information on the blueprint and the DNA code originated in a mind. Evolution makes three important points: that self-replicating molecules have a certain "efficiency" with respect to their environment, that self-replicating molecules sometimes "make mistakes", and that sometimes mistakes make these molecules more efficient. Once an abundance of self-replicating molecules is available, you simply have increasingly sophisticated self-replicating molecules as a result of mistakes in replication conferring increasingly greater efficiency.
That chemical isomorphisms between DNA and amino acids via mRNA exists in nature is true and indisputable, regardless of whether these molecules exist anywhere in the universe or not. Given enough generations, a self-replicating molecule may make a mistake in replication that causes it to cooperate with non-self-replicating molecules in order to take advantage of an as-yet-undiscovered chemical isomorphism, thereby gaining an edge in its self-replicating efficiency.
In other words, it has to at least be physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously; otherwise, symbolic isomorphisms, something you cannot deny is a type of information, can indeed arise from a non-mind. Again, I ask you only the following: prove to me that it is physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously through random chemical reactions and I will take your claim of "information cannot come from a non-mind" seriously.
No, you can say that the DESIGN of hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms and the force that governs them is such I'm beginning to think you're being intentionally ignorant here. It is the nature of hydrogen and oxygen atoms (in fact, atoms and molecules in general) that they combine to form more complex molecules spontaneously. First you deny that "simple => complex" actually happens in nature, then you turn right back around and insist that "simple => complex" happens in nature when it has been designed to do so. So, by your own reasoning, you completely undo your first argument, because by your assertion, all nature is designed!
At best you have a flimsy argument for theistic evolution.
the only natural substance that expands when transitioning from a liquid state into a solid form Again, this is clearly understood as the chemical nature of water and a function of its strongly polar covalent bonds and its geometric form. It's fully explainable within accepted physical laws. It is not some cosmic hack God wrote into the universe to support life. If water for some reason defied all natural explanations, which it doesn't, you might have some footing on trying to use water to somehow dismantle evolution.
Simple things NEVER, EVER become more complex without the activity of mind, involving thoughtful planning as well as energy.
Wow, you've convinced me! We have to tell everyone that H2 + 2O2 + Energy => 2H2O is a lie and should be written thus: H2 + 2O2 + Energy + Jebus => 2H2O!!!
Is climate change based on science, that is KNOWLEDGE or is it based of assumptions (beliefs), guesswork and political control agendas? It is an inconvenient truth: Climate has for eons and is still cycling up and down and we humans can't do a damn thing about it. Jesus tap-dancing Christ. (don't ask for an apology, you won't get one)
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, whether or not global warming exists don't you think it's a wise idea to stop fucking polluting the fucking planet?
Instead, you and every other conservative use your church-appointed hatred of science to justify anti-environmental conservative policy.
Dude, I hope you realize how EXTREMELY offensive you're being here.
In high school, I believed in the resurrected Jesus Christ as the son of the one and only God and somehow simultaneously fully God and fully human. I trusted in Jesus as my personal savior. I confessed my sins to him regularly. I debated with non-Christians and tried to win converts to the Lord. Every aspect of my life was dedicated to honoring Him in every single way. Not a soul who knew me back then would have said that if I were hit by a truck back then and died, that I would end up in hell.
And yet you, sir, have the gall to tell me that very thing, that were I hit by a truck and killed, back in high school, I would have gone straight to hell. Based solely on the fact that I no longer believe now what I did then. If that isn't flat-out denial I don't know what
Can you pry open my head and read my thoughts and tell me with 100% certainty that I am lying to you? Or are you simply going to resort to calling me a liar for no reason other than your holy text apparently tell you that it must be so?
I mean, certainly you won't win many souls that way...
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
If you want to monitor your CPU activity, install medibuntu and sudo apt-get install hot-babe. Just like in real life, she takes up all your system resources...
Erm, hopefully not their own source. That's called a daughter.
Please, have a seat over there...
Is it possible to die from negative mods?
I know that you and other well-meaning Christians want to tell me that door is there and it's my job to walk through it, but after so many prayers met with silence I can't help but question whether there's even a door there to begin with. But I'll tell you what I tell other people: maybe someday something unmistakable will change my mind and I will come to belief. Maybe not; I just don't know. So far nothing has.
...at least, by default?
it is not immaterial because your "master" program...specifically instructs the computer to produce whatever output you specified.
Please show how my original argument supporting that claim is an insufficient defense rather than attacking it directly. Again the point there is a totally mechanical, uninsightful process can discover a new program that I myself could not. It cannot be said that the output programs are a direct product of my mind, because I may not even know how they work! It could be said that, since every number can be seen as its binary representation, converted to ASCII, and compiled and run as a computer program, that every number has a property of being a computer program or not, and that therefore in some sense the set [all computer programs that satisfy requirements R] must in some sense already exist, independent of any mind to discover it! I realize this is very high level stuff but I recommend this book for more information on the subject.
All I provided it was a certain group of inputs and outputs, and all it does is compare the outputs of the computed programs to the given inputs. A simple equality comparison. A totally mechanical process that, given enough time and memory resources, produces computer programs I can't even fathom.
So what we have here is an example of a mind, creating a non-mind, producing novel information. Again, that there is a non-mind when you walk up the stack doesn't change the fact that this it is a non-mind producing this information. In fact, I could create an arbitrarily long series of non-minds creating non-minds that finally produced novel, useful information.
In other words, the most cohesive version of your argument is that from what we can observe, information appears to always be *eventually* traceable back to a mind. That being the case, though, your argument cannot distinguish between Deism, Theistic Evolution, or Creationism, because all three eventually trace back to a mind.
And as I said before, the idea of chemical self-replicators eventually making a mistake which causes them to take advantage of chemical isomorphisms to increase their self-replicating efficiency, if proven true, puts your argument in jeopardy.
But i fear we have hit "agree to disagree" territory here. I just hope I can convince you that my views are not without thought.
A printed page with a given number of letters on it will always weigh the same, no matter how you arrange those letters.
Well, this is just a nitpick, but each of those individual letters would have some weight and the printer won't exactly output the same weight for the same letter every time. More importantly though, the ink or toner is a physical entity and does not support your claim.
Software/information can be shown by experiment to be an immaterial massless entity.
Assuming light is not considered a material carrier just because it is massless. Even so, even in that case it has a carrier bound by physical laws. If I were to modulate my entire mind onto a light beam, it would have to stop "running" until someone demodulated it somewhere else capable of "running" my mind. But again, it all seems to require a physical carrier to run.
Because we are presently confined our physical senses, this is true, but is not a requirement for information to exist. Again, think of the tree falling in the forest. A caterpillar has within it, all information needed to become a butterfly or moth.
Again, that is a description of a physical carrier. DNA is a physical object, and the resulting proteins generated from that DNA are a more generalized physical object, still containing all that data in a different form, its
Are you implying I don't want to believe? That if I wanted to believe, I would?
I suggest you read up on whether belief is actually a choice.
http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismquestions/a/beliefchoice.htm
Christianity is a huge emotional stronghold for me. If I saw one good, compelling piece of evidence, I would believe again. So far you have presented me with nothing but tired, poorly presented apologetics and logical fallacies and failed to offer a shred of useful evidence supporting my believing in your God.
So no, you are not obeying your God's commandment to be good stewards of the Earth because in voting for the un-environmental candidate you are not promoting environmental change. These tactics are EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING, hence the swearing, to underly the more important subtext of the matter.
In any case, science is not set in stone. In the 1800s we did not have *nearly* the same meteorological equipment we do now. We can observe things must faster and draw conclusions where before we were not able. As new evidence comes to light, scientific theory is sometimes challenged and sometimes altered. This is true of every branch of science. It's not "ignorant flipflopping" as you so poetically put it.
Besides, if there is no debate among the peer reviewed scientific community that there is a danger of anthropogenic global warming, don't you think it wise to listen to them and take their advice, even if they're wrong?
Sceintists have demonstrated "micro" evolution in a lab, where novel information is developed independently. Mathematical extrapolation and archaeological data indicate VERY STRONGLY that macroevolution is simply an extension of this. The barrier between macro and micro is an artificial barrier and the burden of proof is on the one who asserts it exists.
Four things I ask of you.
1) Read my WHOLE COMMENT and my justification for the statements I make before blindly quoting me out of context.
2) Post your comments on our "main thread" lest I miss some of them.
3) Quit arguing all over the fracking place. Stick to one or two topics at a time.
4) Quit using God as justification for God. That's circular logic no matter what your pastor tells you.
If you can't adhere to these don't bother debating me anymore.
But again, if evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics then so does intelligence.
Your body has to keep up a baseline metabolism (increased entropy) to keep your body from shutting down completely (decreased entropy). The whole point is that undirected energy alone doesn't result in a clean room or a 747 airliner. The point is, the result of the second law of thermodynamics is that expended energy and thus increased disorder elsewhere are necessary for increased order. That is what is meant by a closed system -- that the overall entropy increases, yes, even when you clean your room. Compare the mental energy required to clean up your room to the mental energy required to clean up the wreckage of the World Trade Center post-9/11. It's safe to say a LOT more glucose molecules got converted into CO2 and H2O to clean up THAT mess than to tidy up your room, especially if you know ahead of time what goes where, which means you've expended some of the mental energy forming a model for
No, intelligence does not somehow "escape" the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't mean expended energy yields increased order, otherwise your brain could not exist at all, chemical reactions could not occur, and the computer that you are typing on could not exist.
Consider that a frozen puddle fits a depression in the road perfectly, because in addition to an expenditure of energy on the part of the water, there was a directing force (gravity) and physical constraints (the sides of the puddle). You can pick it up and it will keep the shape of the puddle. Some uneducated people might marvel in awe at the skill of the designer who shaped the ice so perfectly to match the depression.
Or consider that a train, running on a track, is forced into a single direction and will reach its destination without any intervention. Again, there are guiding forces (the energy from the engine) and physical constraints (the track).
Or consider as I have indicated before, that two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule will recombine spontaneously with enough energy input to create two water molecules (please, without the whole design tangent this time). Note that in addition to increased entropy (heating of the molecules), and the energy expended when the three molecules recombine (due to the exothermic reaction), there were additional guiding forces (electromagnetism) and physical constraints (in an abundance of H2 and O2 the likelihood of the three molecules colliding appropriately becomes very slim).
Nobody had to intelligently shape the ice to fit the form of the pit. Nobody had to intelligently bring hydrogen and oxygen together. Nobody had to keep correcting the train to stay on course, and yet order arose from disorder without intelligent intervention in the midst of the process. But this is part of the premise I'm arguing with you in the other thread, that these "guiding forces" and "physical constraints" are not necessarily the result of intelligence.
For your first two answers, I take it then that you simply assume they are false because you have never experienced "information" coming from a "non-mind". But if the two are are assumed to be true, then under that assumption, your premise, "information cannot come from a non-mind" is false, because chemical isomorphisms are a form of translating, reliably, back and forth between two chemical structures (remember I am using an IF here so please do me the courtesy of not taking this statement as a whole out of context; this is your only warning). It is the second structure, the sum total of amino acid chains, that forms the building blocks of all non-DNA life. Thus the burden of proof is on the one who insists that "information cannot come from a non-mind" to show, at the very least, how at least one of these first two propositions is impossible. If science does eventually demonstrate those two premises true beyond a shadow of a doubt, your assertion is invalid; however, if science eventually demonstrates either premise impossible, your assertion still certainly stands as an open question, but is not proven true, because those two premises are but one specific counterclaim to your generalized assertion.
However it can be shown that software, analogous to the mind is independent of a particular hardware.
Not quite. Software is totally incapable of being "run" without the right mechanisms available to run it. On a Mac PPC, there must be a virtual machine emulating the hardware of an Intel chip for windows software to be runnable. Ever try to run windows software natively on a Linux machine? There's a compatibility layer called WINE that runs some windows software on Linux, but there are a lot of Windows programs that simply don't work, or don't work well, within WINE, because the compatibility layer is incomplete due to the software of Windows being closed-source. The important thing to note here is that on the right hardware, most software still needs supporting software (the operating system) to keep it "hardware-independent", and on the wrong hardware, it needs not only the supporting software but a compatibility layer (a VM or an emulator) to run at all!
And, perhaps more importantly, software pretty much cannot run at all--to be sure, it can exist (and in some sense all software exists at all times, as I will show below), but it cannot run--without some hardware in the first place. So, while from a high-level perspective software is not hardware specific, that by no means makes it hardware independent; i.e., this has not shown that software can run without hardware to run it (which, as you have already asserted quite bluntly, must be true for there to be a god-mind external to our concepts of spacetime).
Admittedly, I can look at some programs and try and read them, line by line, and sort of "run" them in my mind. However, I have not seen sufficient evidence to show that I am doing this in something "external" to my brain, so again, this appears to be a case of software running on hardware.
Computer software is created in a human mind
I clearly demonstrated above a dumb, insightless process that can produce any computer program a human can through brute force, given enough time and memory requirements. Just because I created the master program in my mind is immaterial -- the important point is that I have demonstrated a brute force process that knows nothing about the symbols it is manipulating but nevertheless "figures out" useful computer programs.
It is quite easy to see that given enough time and resources, every comp
On second thought, I will continue this discussion if you do the following things for me, for they are the crux points of my previous argument, and your "information/mind" argument depends on them being true:
1. Prove that it is physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously through random chemical reactions.
2. Prove that randomly changing self-replicators cannot stumble upon chemical isomorphisms.
3. Prove that there is anything that can be called "mind" that is not a function of real, physical hardware.
Please do this without reference to God, your "information/mind" argument, or the Bible, which is circular reasoning.
If you cannot do that, your "information/mind" construct is no more than an argument from personal incredulity, and nobody will ever prove you wrong to your own satisfaction because you are in utter denial.
I guess I try to promote scientific understanding. I just hope onlookers who are undecided will see the validity in my arguments and the ignorant tactics of my opponent, and that in so doing I will do my small part to help the evolution side of the debate among the undecided and laypeople, and possibly help nudge some of the former, ignorant types more towards where people like you are. It's just hard to have a fair fight with an opponent who insists upon repeating the same claims over and over again and refusing to study and understand your point of view.
*sigh* I see no reason to continue on with you. You consistently ignore my arguments and twist my words out of context to fit your agenda. You are not willing to learn from others and are only interested in screaming your "good news" like the Bible says in the hopes that someone will convert.
Have a nice life.
Imagine a completely flat plane, infinitely wide. Now imagine that there are a bunch of steel balls on that plane. Without any external forces, the balls stay put and never move.
Now instead imagine an extremely chaotic plane, also infinitely wide. It has lots and lots of bumps and dents in it, but at both very small and very large scales, there are clear patterns: plateaus, craters, hills, ridges, and paths. Some of these paths are infinitely branching, some are not. If you place a bunch of steel balls on this plane, they will all tend toward the lowest point they can reach. If you then shake the plane around a bit, some of them may jump around and wind up in a different "lowest point" than they started.
Imagine that each nucleotide on a DNA strand is a location on a "multidimensional" plane (if you need help thinking multi-dimensionally, check out Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace"). Imagine that lower points are "more adapted" and higher points are "less adapted" (by adapted I mean suited to continue reproducing with respect to their environment). The reality is much more complex as in the real world, the environment is constantly changing. Now think of the steel balls as actual manifestations of DNA. Every mutation is a "shake". Just as the steel ball will, most of the time, return to the lowest point possible, so too, will most mutations from a well-adapted organism die out quickly and the most adapted organism will continue on. This is that stability you are looking for.
However, from time to time, the chaotic randomness may carve out a new path, and the jostling may force the steel ball out of its pit and into a new path (obviously the stable life form would continue to exist -- think of it as, there may be multiple balls in this particular pit) eventually leading to a deeper pit. Unless you are videotaping the entire experience, you could easily miss that event, and indeed, the status of life on earth during any one organism's life time is more or less a snapshot.
What people who make the micro/macro distinction basically say, is that there are only pits, and no paths, and the pits are so far away from one another that random jostlings cannot possibly catapult one ball into another, or that the likelihood of that happening is so small as to be negligible. Most supporters of macroevolution simply say that this is an unnecessary constraint put on evolution that there is no evidence.
In essence, macroevolution is just microevolution over a long enough period time.
I don't have much trouble with theistic evolution, although many people who support theistic evolution would make the claim that while God allowed life to evolve, they also claim that he intervened at specific points to "nudge" life into new evolutionary lineages, and/or created humankind specially from how he allowed other forms to evolve. What the science of evolution indicates, however, is that the micro/macro distinction is only one of degree and not of semantics, and that time, not divine intervention, is necessary for the macro parts to happen.
...DNA is simply code... OK that is a blatant example of removing my comments from their original contexts. Please try to comprehend my entire post and not take out little snippets here and there. The relationship between DNA and amino acids is a simple chemical isomorphism: there is a one-to-one relationship between nucleotide triplets and amino acids. The isomorphism can be realized using a purely mechanical process.Instead, you seem intent on tripping me up with my language usage rather than argue any actual points. If you mine data or recover encrypted text with the right password, you are not creating information, but merely making that already existing information useable. But by that definition of information, everything in the universe (the force between two electrons, the distance between Earth and the Sun) can be called as information! All information automatically exists at all times! So your clever formulation of "information must come from a mind" is exposed for what it really is -- a simple assertion that "nothing can exist without being created."
And even so, you still have a machine that found the information where a human could not. Has any useful computer program ever come about outside of the activity of thought arising in a mind? Again you seem to be persistently and deliberately dull.
I can create a mathematically one-to-one mapping between numbers and strings of letters, such that every finite string of ASCII characters is represented. If I just create a computer program to walk through those numbers and attempt to run the corresponding programs, and spit out a "1" every time a program that solves some specific problem or another is found, I can "create" useful computer programs using a purely mechanical process. No "mind" was involved in the actual search for these functions. It is just brute force scanning of properties of natural numbers.
Considering that there is massive documented research indicating that:
1. The emergent qualities of thought, emotion, and reason commonly called "mind" are fully contained within the physiology of the brain, and
2. A "mind" is no more powerful than a computer program with enough RAM and CPU cycles at its disposal,
You run up against two problems. First of all, your implicit assertion that minds are supernatural requires loads of evidence, of which you have none. Second, if minds require hardware, what "hardware" is running God's mind, and how did it "get there"? You now have a problem of infinite regress. Both the information on the blueprint and the DNA code originated in a mind. Evolution makes three important points: that self-replicating molecules have a certain "efficiency" with respect to their environment, that self-replicating molecules sometimes "make mistakes", and that sometimes mistakes make these molecules more efficient. Once an abundance of self-replicating molecules is available, you simply have increasingly sophisticated self-replicating molecules as a result of mistakes in replication conferring increasingly greater efficiency.
That chemical isomorphisms between DNA and amino acids via mRNA exists in nature is true and indisputable, regardless of whether these molecules exist anywhere in the universe or not. Given enough generations, a self-replicating molecule may make a mistake in replication that causes it to cooperate with non-self-replicating molecules in order to take advantage of an as-yet-undiscovered chemical isomorphism, thereby gaining an edge in its self-replicating efficiency.
In other words, it has to at least be physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously; otherwise, symbolic isomorphisms, something you cannot deny is a type of information, can indeed arise from a non-mind. Again, I ask you only the following: prove to me that it is physically impossible for self-replicating molecules to arise spontaneously through random chemical reactions and I will take your claim of "information cannot come from a non-mind" seriously.
At best you have a flimsy argument for theistic evolution. the only natural substance that expands when transitioning from a liquid state into a solid form Again, this is clearly understood as the chemical nature of water and a function of its strongly polar covalent bonds and its geometric form. It's fully explainable within accepted physical laws. It is not some cosmic hack God wrote into the universe to support life. If water for some reason defied all natural explanations, which it doesn't, you might have some footing on trying to use water to somehow dismantle evolution.
Wow, you've convinced me! We have to tell everyone that H2 + 2O2 + Energy => 2H2O is a lie and should be written thus: H2 + 2O2 + Energy + Jebus => 2H2O!!!
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, whether or not global warming exists don't you think it's a wise idea to stop fucking polluting the fucking planet?
Instead, you and every other conservative use your church-appointed hatred of science to justify anti-environmental conservative policy.
Dude, I hope you realize how EXTREMELY offensive you're being here.
In high school, I believed in the resurrected Jesus Christ as the son of the one and only God and somehow simultaneously fully God and fully human. I trusted in Jesus as my personal savior. I confessed my sins to him regularly. I debated with non-Christians and tried to win converts to the Lord. Every aspect of my life was dedicated to honoring Him in every single way. Not a soul who knew me back then would have said that if I were hit by a truck back then and died, that I would end up in hell.
And yet you, sir, have the gall to tell me that very thing, that were I hit by a truck and killed, back in high school, I would have gone straight to hell. Based solely on the fact that I no longer believe now what I did then. If that isn't flat-out denial I don't know what
Can you pry open my head and read my thoughts and tell me with 100% certainty that I am lying to you? Or are you simply going to resort to calling me a liar for no reason other than your holy text apparently tell you that it must be so?
I mean, certainly you won't win many souls that way...