Why I lost my faith

[_Jersey Girl]

Although, you would think that just by common experience you would have to know what you're saying here is wrong. Why do you think you need to get a new flu shot every year if evolution is so slow you can't see it?

A flu bug turns into a flu bug. I am so impressed. You can get more change by selective breeding of dogs.

This isn't a flu bug, Franktalk, but would you mind viewing the video in this link and tell me what you think about it?

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/stunning-videos-of-evolution-in-action/499136/

[_Chap]

This isn't a flu bug, Franktalk, but would you mind viewing the video in this link and tell me what you think about it?

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/arch ... on/499136/

I think you will find that Franktalk will shrug that off: the only thing that would make him agree that he had seen evolution in action would be if (for example) the bacteria grew wings and flew out of the petri dish to get away from the antibiotics. It's not enough for him to see the useful mutations in an organism's genes being selected by changing environmental challenges before his very eyes in real time.

The problem is, I think, that people like Franktalk think in terms that belong to the time before modern genetics. For them, there are more or less fixed varieties of living creatures, each one 'after their kind' as in Genesis - influenza viruses, frogs, horses, whales, human beings - and evolution only occurs when one 'kind' of creature somehow turns into another 'kind' (remember Ceeboo and the 'raccoon changes into whale' stuff?).

The bacteria are of course a very special example of a situation where significant evolution can happen at a timescale where a human being can watch it happening: there are a huge number of them present in the experiment, they are relatively simple in structure, and they produce new bacteria (each one potentially with a mutation in its genes) very rapidly. And the environmental challenge is immense - it is simple life or death for each bacterium when they meet the antibiotic. As a result, adaptive mutations get selected very quickly.

Large complex organisms that have much smaller populations than the bacteria, reproduce at intervals of years rather than seconds and face environmental challenges that are often quite subtle will show evolutionary change much, much more slowly. But the geological record shows that such change can and did occur, and in many types of creature.

[_Physics Guy]

Newton said angels swoop in and fix things along the way.

I don't doubt that he said something like that, but do you happen to know where to find the quote? It would be an interesting thing to add to talk slides sometimes. Newton was a smart enough guy that he might have said that for some intelligent reason, but he was also pretty sarcastic. His opinions don't affect the nature of differential equations, however, and the two-faced nature of natural law, with strict causality but arbitrary boundary conditions, is a fact that Newton discovered.

Suppose initial conditions are set that determine all order. If it's logically possible that ANY world with trees and bugs arose from a set of initial conditions ... then even if OUR world were designed, there is a possible world atom-for-atom exactly as our world that wasn't designed and CSI detects false positives there.

I'm not sure whether I understand your reasoning here. Are you perhaps somehow assuming that design, and causal development from initial conditions, are mutually exclusive alternatives? I've been figuring that this discussion is not about miracles, and so rigid causality under natural law is assumed on all sides. The question of design is then not about any alternative to initial conditions, as a causal explanation for why things are as they are, but about whether the initial conditions incorporate design, or not.

I figure that both sides agree, at least tentatively, that everything is the way it is because of the particular initial conditions at the start of the universe. ID people are arguing that those conditions must be due to design; their opponents deny that this follows necessarily, but are otherwise not obliged to provide an alternative explanation for the initial conditions, or even to be sure that there was no design.

Science has nothing to say about how the initial conditions were fixed. It does seem to me that the ID argument is nonetheless in basic trouble here. Generalizations from wristwatches hardly apply to the time before time, and the only way I can see for ID to avoid degenerating into arbitrary fantasies about old men in clouds is to collapse into tautology, by in effect defining design to be CSI encoded in special initial conditions. Perhaps this is just the point you were making.

Science may still have an attack to make, moreover, by showing that CSI would develop, under causal determinism, from practically any initial conditions. It's not yet known whether this is true, but it very well may be, and if it is, then it would seem that setting the initial conditions in order to achieve complex life is actually such an easy task that one would hesitate to give the "designer" title to whomever did it. An angel intern could handle it, and then bring the coffee.

Theists could still consider that CSI develops so readily under natural laws, because the natural laws were carefully designed to work like that. By way of disclosure, I'm a theist of that sort myself. In no way is this an anti-scientific perspective, but neither is it in any way scientific, since if science has nothing to say about initial conditions under existing laws, it certainly has nothing to say about alternative sets of natural law.

[_DrW]

Theists could still consider that CSI develops so readily under natural laws, because the natural laws were carefully designed to work like that. By way of disclosure, I'm a theist of that sort myself. In no way is this an anti-scientific perspective, but neither is it in any way scientific, since if science has nothing to say about initial conditions under existing laws, it certainly has nothing to say about alternative sets of natural law.

Just curious: how would the theistic worldview you described here be different from that of a deist?

Such a distinction, at times and in some contexts, seems to be significant around here.

[_DrW]

Funny. I read that book, or part of it anyway. Just checked; still have it. I think for someone with your background it could be entertaining but I remember it covering so much (deep and controversial) material to get to what would ultimately be a fairly short point that time better spent elsewhere.

Small world. Truth be told, I still have my copy as well, and don't claim to have read the entire book either.

Judging from the reviews the book received, there may not be many who did actually read the whole thing.

[_SteelHead]

I never said "no mistakes" and I'm not offended. Your description was simply biased and inaccurate. Try again.

Yes, at any moment our understanding of the world can change. That's more likely to be recognized and addressed by science than by someone quoting a bunch of irrelevant old texts.

It is true that I am biased. In my world I see a very large view of reality. It has changed the way I view things. So yes, I will write things from my perspective that may seem odd or even incorrect. I make no excuse for what I do.

You are right again. Science will be the vehicle to bring new ideas into the world. They will not come from an old book. We may disagree on how that idea gets into the mind but it does come from the mind.

The irony, frank's view of reality is largely composed of things un evidenced.

[_Gadianton]

Newton saw God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.[26] Nevertheless he rejected Leibniz' thesis that God would necessarily make a perfect world which requires no intervention from the creator. In Query 31 of the Opticks, Newton simultaneously made an argument from design and for the necessity of intervention:

Maybe "angels swoop in" was my own sarcasm, I thought I read that somewhere, but I'm happy to change it to the above. The main point was that he believed God intervened and did not create the perfect set of initial conditions. Others disagreed.

The question of design is then not about any alternative to initial conditions, as a causal explanation for why things are as they are, but about whether the initial conditions incorporate design, or not.

I figure that both sides agree, at least tentatively, that everything is the way it is because of the particular initial conditions at the start of the universe

.

Yes, we are on the same page to that point. And I am then restating what you just said in these terms: there are two logically possible worlds, one where the set of initial conditions xyz were designed and another where the same conditions xyz were not.

When speaking of logical possibility, It's logically possible that I will not go to work on Monday, even if I really do end up going to work on Monday. If it turns out that I do go to work on Monday, then that must mean it was not physically possible for me to avoid work that day. However, it is not logically possible that I will wake up Monday and 2+2=5.

Inferences drawn from observation are not logically constrained to be what they are. If what I'm inferring about something is really logically constrained, then the inferences are a sham. Suppose I get up in the morning and count 3 white swans on my pond and 2 black swans and I call you on the phone and tell you that just eyeballing it, it looks like one more white swan than black. No problem. But If I tell you that I'm taking a good look here at my pond, and it's looking like based on the swans I'm watching, that 3 - 2 is 1, you'd think I'm nuts. And that's because it's not logically possible for 3 - 2 to be anything but one.

collapse into tautology, by in effect defining design to be CSI encoded in special initial conditions

That sounds about right.

The point i belabored above wasn't to explain what a tautology is, but to explain it in context of using the term "possible". For any inferences drawn from observation, the logical possibility of the inference not being true must exist even if the physical possibility does not exist due to determinism. But if I go out and examine the wing of the swan and run it through my CSI equations, and conclude, "no way that one evolved!" because as you point out the physical history of the universe is precisely the same designed or not if initial conditions xyz are the same, then the CSI equation can yield a false positive of "designed". Designed or not, Maxwell's equations don't yield different answer. All this is to say, that design is not something you can infer by making observations about the world. It still might be true that the world is designed, but for one, unless we can infer it from observation (at least in principle!), it has no place in a science class.

That's not to say that a theory about design is totally off the table. If it's not logically possible for a world of our complexity to exist without design then that might totally be true and extremely interesting to learn about. Maybe there's a proof for it, like the proof for bi quadratic equations. But even if quadradic equations help us understand the physical world immensely, nothing has ever been learned about a bi quadradic equation from doing physics experiments.

A proof like that? Probably worth 100 Nobel prizes. I know where I'll put my money.

[Guest]

Newton said angels swoop in and fix things along the way.

I don't doubt that he said something like that, but do you happen to know where to find the quote? It would be an interesting thing to add to talk slides sometimes. Newton was a smart enough guy that he might have said that for some intelligent reason, but he was also pretty sarcastic. His opinions don't affect the nature of differential equations, however, and the two-faced nature of natural law, with strict causality but arbitrary boundary conditions, is a fact that Newton discovered.

The statement in question comes in the Opticks, query 31:

https://archive.org/stream/opticksortre ... eformation

... the Planets move one and the same way in Orbs concentric, some inconsiderable Irregularities excepted, which may have arisen from the mutual Actions of Comets and Planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this System wants a Reformation.

The assertion is, in effect, that the solar system is not a naturally stable mechanical system, and therefore will require periodical adjustment. No angels are explicitly stated to be involved.

Note that Newton precedes this passage with the words:

Now by the help of these Principles, all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mention'd variously associated in the first Creation By the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature, though being once form'd, it may continue by those Laws for many Ages.

He was clearly an ID-er. Interestingly, he seemed to have used the supposed instability of the system God had created as an argument for his existence - no God, then chaos will inevitably come out of order, just as order cannot come out of chaos without him.

When Laplace presented his Mécanique Celeste to Napoleon in 1802, this conversation is said to have taken place:

Laplace went in state to Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.’ Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.’ ['I had no need of that hypothesis.'] Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, ‘Ah! c’est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses.’ ['Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains so many things.']”

It is said that Laplace in his reply was referring to the fact that he thought he had shown that the solar system was in fact stable, and thus had no need of divine intervention to keep it running normally.

[_Franktalk]

This isn't a flu bug, Franktalk, but would you mind viewing the video in this link and tell me what you think about it?

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/stunning-videos-of-evolution-in-action/499136/

Thanks for the link, great videos. I think what is shown can be viewed a number of ways. So let me take some space here and write some comments on how I view what is going on.

Plants and animals do have adaptive systems built in. Gene expression is one such adaptive system. We have many very small biological creatures that use great numbers and mutations to adapt to a changing environment. We have T cells that have an adaptive system to counteract some host invaders. On top of all this we have random mutations that most likely kill the host but on rare occasions could be beneficial. All of this is obvious to to the casual observer.

On the earth we have found fossils that tell us that plants and animals were vastly different than today. So a scientific theory was developed that links us to those fossils. At its root is an assumption that adaptive processes were used to evolve all creatures. But other theories exist that also explain the fossils. A person is free to choose which one they like. People who like scientific theories tend to accept a theory of evolution. People who are religious tend to see a God made life from undefined miracles. Others push off the question to beings from another place and say the planet was seeded. And the designs of the plants and animals unfolded over time. Of course the people who follow causation say it just shifts the problem off world.

My self I hold to yet another belief system. I believe that physical reality and a couple of other dimensions of reality have always existed. All of these realms are eternal. So the issue of causation goes away. I know that this does not sit well with some people. They just can't let go of a timeline in which everything is ordered like dominos. To me this kind of thinking is limiting and forces only some views of reality.

I have shared my view of reality many times on many treads. Bottom line is I believe this solar system was made from parts brought together for a purpose. I believe this planet was terraformed over billions of years. I believe this is going on all across the universe. I believe this planet was seeded from designs that have been used for eternity. I believe that the designs have built in adaptive systems. I believe that these systems have a purpose. I believe science has misinterpreted these systems and given them great power of creating life. A stumbling block for those who wish to embrace this physical world and ignore the greater reality. But there is nothing wrong in doing so. We come here to get lost in this physical world. Only after we have had our fill of it will we turn the page and proceed to the next chapter in the unfolding plan written before the foundation of the earth.

[_Chap]

On the earth we have found fossils that tell us that plants and animals were vastly different than today. So a scientific theory was developed that links us to those fossils. At its root is an assumption that adaptive processes were used to evolve all creatures. But other theories exist that also explain the fossils. A person is free to choose which one they like.

Free in the political sense, at least in certain parts of the world. No-one in advanced western countries will come round to your house and arrest you if you choose to believe that the Tooth Fairy was responsible for the appearance of variations in the forms of plants and animals throughout the fossil record.

BUT - please don't have the chutzpah to ask that the same amount of respect be given to any view you choose to adopt simply because it feels good, or fits in with the prejudices of whatever religion your parents happened to teach you, in comparison with the evolutionary science carefully and painfully worked out over a century and a half of observation, data gathering, comparison analysis, criticism and consensus building - and then criticism again and again.

The science is a huge and complex intellectual symphony - the other kind of stuff is babyish by comparison.