Super Genius Thread- Evolution Connection

[NotReady]

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And it's such a profoundly simple, elegant, and powerful answer. Truly beautiful.


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But it answers nothing. Where did the universal, absolute, unchangeable law of natural selection come from?

Also, ns is helpless without chance, which makes chance a sine qua non and thus as ultimate as ns. It's therefore logical to say that Beethoven was created by chance.

Also, though I'm not up on the subject, a current objection to evolution by chance is the proposition that ns creates no new information. So whence the new information?

One final point. Ns does nothing to answer the question of the origin of life because it only works on a self-replicating organism.

[vhawk01]

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And it's such a profoundly simple, elegant, and powerful answer. Truly beautiful.


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But it answers nothing. Where did the universal, absolute, unchangeable law of natural selection come from?

Also, ns is helpless without chance, which makes chance a sine qua non and thus as ultimate as ns. It's therefore logical to say that Beethoven was created by chance.

Also, though I'm not up on the subject, a current objection to evolution by chance is the proposition that ns creates no new information. So whence the new information?

One final point. Ns does nothing to answer the question of the origin of life because it only works on a self-replicating organism.

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I honestly don't even understand half of your objections. What do you mean by 'evolution by chance' or 'creates no new information?' There are plenty of ways whereby natural selection can create new information...surely you mean something else? I mean, changing AACT to ACCT creates new information. Did you mean 'more information?' It can do that also.

EDIT: Its also obviously disingenous to claim it 'answers nothing.' It answers nothing to the paranoid theist who thinks that the goal of evolution is to disprove God. It answers plenty to the honest, curious seekers of knowledge, who are curious as to how bright, happy creatures could have come to be on a giant rock floating in space, and how other creatures could come to be that would build pools for the first creatures and feed them fish. It answers plenty. It answers all it was meant to answer, it answers all I expected it to answer, and no, it doesn't answer every single question ever asked. Is that really your contention? It answers nothing because it doesn't answer everything?

[Utah]

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For, if the brilliant intelligent designers were created by chance that the ipod is created by chance as well.



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This statement was almost self-evidently true for thousands of years. Right up until Darwin entirely destroyed it. Evolution is the only method (that I've ever seen) whereby complexity can be derived from simplicity. It is the ONLY answer to the 'turtles all the way down' problem.

[/ QUOTE ]You miss my argument but I was in a hurry so I worded it poorly. Please dont get hung up on the word chance. I am simply speaking of whatever cause and effect mechanism you use (e.g., evolution, intelligent design, randomness, etc). I am simply saying that nothing magical happens the moment the ipod creators come into being. If evolution is the mechanism then the forces of evolution created the ipod. If intelligent design is the mechanism then ID created the ID. You cant have ID appear out of nowhere midstream in evolution.

But, to your other point - complexity can definity be created out of simplicity and it is not worth discussing. But, some examples are the big bang and in a Belousov-Zhabotinki reaction. I believe Prigogine won a Nobel prize for the study of self organizing non-organic systems.

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Evolution is the only method (that I've ever seen) whereby complexity can be derived from simplicity.

[/ QUOTE ]Lets go back to this statement. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that we move towards maximum entropy. Now, if we are creating order we are paying for it somewhere else. Thus, the universe must have been created in a orderly state. Where did the fund of negative entropy come from? Does the fact that the universe was created with order not provide evidence of an intelligent creator?

[chezlaw]

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For, if the brilliant intelligent designers were created by chance that the ipod is created by chance as well.



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This statement was almost self-evidently true for thousands of years. Right up until Darwin entirely destroyed it. Evolution is the only method (that I've ever seen) whereby complexity can be derived from simplicity. It is the ONLY answer to the 'turtles all the way down' problem.

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its not as bad as the flat earth fallacy but the idea of evolution goes back to the Ancient Greeks. Darwin was the first to put it on a scientific footing although his grandfather and a few others were possibly just about there as well.

It's a tough idea to reconcile with religous type gods which could account for its lack of takeup amongst the uneducated and is I'm sure the reason why some want to disrupt the teaching of evolution with the creationist tactic.

chez

[NotReady]

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There are plenty of ways whereby natural selection can create new information.


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I probably shouldn't have mentioned this because I'm not really up on the subject. I was mostly interested in others critique of the idea, pro and con. A cursory scan of the net shows that the issue isn't simple, nor is it yet decided, as far as I can tell. At any rate, I won't mention it again, just hope for some rational discussion.

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Its also obviously disingenous to claim it 'answers nothing.'


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It answers nothing about the ultimate issues, which I made clear in my statement:

But it answers nothing. Where did the universal, absolute, unchangeable law of natural selection come from?

Perhaps you're satistifed with ns as an answer, I'm not.

[Shadowrun]

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I just wanted to share what I think is an ironic twist regarding my stance about the top scientists. My contention is that these scintists are so much better at thinking than most people, that to disagree with them about almost anything they have deeply thought about is a recipe for being wrong. And that observers on the sideline should bet on the scientists especially if they are not themselves expert in the subject.

Some philospher types disagree which I find funny because my point is the strongest argument for not teaching creationism in the schools. (I'm not saying it is the strongest argument against creationism. I'm saying it is the strongest argument to be used on an uneducated board of education member to stop it from being taught.)

But the real irony involves the religious types who also disagree with my assessmnt of the great mental superiority the best scientists posess. Because I try to prove that contention with the statement that I believe that we would never achieve anything like we have today, at least technologically speaking, if it wasn't for these few great minds. And they come back with the comment that all our advances would eventually occur anyway as we muddle along improving things.

See the irony? They are arguing FOR evolution and I am arguing AGAINST it. Its related to a different subject but the principle is the same. Ipods I believe just couln't happen unless there was a brilliant intelligent designer (or a series of them). Mediocrities could never (more precisely there is a miniscule probability) come up with it. There is a limit to how complex something can become just because of a natural progression to improve. Exactly the argument creationists use.

Not trying to prove anything here. Just food for thought.

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What about situations where top scientists disagree with eath other (fairly common espeically in new fields), do we lock them up in a steel cage daeth match and see who wins???

What about scientists that have agendas i.e. of course a top scientist working for a huge ethanol company is gonna say ethanol is far superiour to biodiesal and vice-versa.

I think questioning great scientists is excellent and it seems to have been working so far. Since, the questions often lead to better answers and the new innovations.

[Prevaricator]

you arent arguing against evolution necessarily david. it doesn't really matter which individual member of the species gets credit for a discovery; the means for technological advancements are often due to a single individual as part of the evolutionary process, the same way that a single mutation in the offspring of two parents can end up multiplying its way into a common trait among the species.

[chezlaw]

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you arent arguing against evolution necessarily david. it doesn't really matter which individual member of the species gets credit for a discovery; the means for technological advancements are often due to a single individual as part of the evolutionary process, the same way that a single mutation in the offspring of two parents can end up multiplying its way into a common trait among the species.

[/ QUOTE ]His not arguing against evolution at all. His saying that those who argue for intelligent design are being wierd if they argue that stuff like Ipods could emerge without great minds.

chez

[FortunaMaximus]

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Not trying to prove anything here. Just food for thought.

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Pretty much. Intelligent designers or intelligent tinkerers? It may be the raw material works pretty well on its own. It's just pretty slow. Whether outside influences have tinkered, or with every generation, there is a small percentage that just have those abilities AND the ability to cause change by applying those extremely rare talents...

You can't deny that the achievements of the past half millennia (printing press, scientific leaps, inventions, better media for communication) have more to do with intelligent design rather than trial and error.

Because those supergeniuses simply discard the time-consuming parts of the trial and error process and make the leaps. And if they're fortunate, they cause a big leap in the general knowledge mass of humanity.

I don't get the polarity between the two arguments. Evidently both processes, evolution and ID are at work here, and the issue is whether this is external or internal. Moot point!

As for creationists... Well, this process had to start somewhere. They may have some of the details wrong. But not every creationist insists that 4,004 BC is the jump point. Some are pretty reasonable and have modified their arguments accordingly.

Adaptive processes come into play for some of those statistical quirks. They just "growed", and simply circumvent the dogma that educational processes are. It's a necessary dogma for the other 99.6%. And is not without its value at times later on even for them, because they can cause chaotic positive changes to the system.

[Utah]

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His not arguing against evolution at all. His saying that those who argue for intelligent design are being wierd if they argue that stuff like Ipods could emerge without great minds.

[/ QUOTE ]I will let him speak to what he is arguing. However, I strongly disagree with this statement if you are referring to the human mind only.

Lets say a visitor from the Omega Nebula region comes to this planet never having heard of animals or ipods or of anything of our life of earth. Do you think this visitor would be more impressed with the design and complexity of the ipod than with the design and complexity of a Bald Eagle?

Nature, without the help of the human brilliant mind, has created things of such incredible complexity. An ipod wouldnt even rank as child's play in comparision.

Now, you might have an argument with the form that the complexity takes. However, I don't think such an argument is very interesting or germaine.