A simple case for intelligent design

[Subduction Zone]

What you defined as evolution does not lead to “cell to man evolution”

It explains single cell to man. You are more than likely reasoning incorrectly by treating man as a goal instead of as a result.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It depends, what do you mean by “new information”

Since those on your side cannot define it others have to do so for them.

 

[Polymath257]

It's never an absurdity to perform a gedanken:

1) The water was separated from the universe early (Genesis)
2) Water has many magnificent properties (science)
3) We can say in this universe that stars were made first, then elements and planets proceeded, but we don't know what happens "outside" the universe or in a multiverse (science, conjecture, gedanken, cosmology, the Bible)

You are disallowing for a creative alternative proposed by a physicist who happens to be a believer and said, "What does a large volume of water do to gravitational relativity here?"

You are likely okay with saying "There must be dark matter, which we cannot find, which is invisible--you know, like an invisible God--but there cannot be water or anything outside known time-space, even though we cannot see the extent of the universe and the size of the universe is a theoretical abstract."

THINK BIGGER, darling.

Very, very different scenarios. For one thing, multiverses and such larger aspects are routinely discussed and investigated theoretically. There is NO reason to think anything as complex as water (for that matter, even oxygen) would be around when the early universe was. In fact, what we know of the physics says it could not be.

As for dark matter, we see the effects of it. That was why it was introduced in the first place. We can even map out where it is using gravitational lensing. And, from the particle physics perspective, there are a number of different possibilities that have not been eliminated. The problem is detection in our accelerators, not detection in the cosmos.

Again, there is NO reason to take the Bible seriously as a science text. it is poor enough as a history text. These sorts of speculation are simply not in the realm of reasonable speculation.

 

[Polymath257]

My friend,

An atheist is a person who will agree wholeheartedly that we should spend millions to shoot signals into space to contact non-proven alien entities (SETI), while simultaneously calling UFO believers superstitious nut jobs and at the same time, refusing to say a few basic words of prayer (for free, not millions of dollars) to contact a non-proven (to their satisfaction) entity, to inherit eternal life.

I used the scientific method (make a hypothesis, follow it as true) to get there, by the way.

THINK BIGGER, darling, to paraphrase Tom Hardy.

PS. Participate in my assertion, falsifying it, by PRAYING NOW.

SETI is much more likely to work.

 

[ecco]

But yes I do think we can falsify (with a high degree of confidence) the idea that we were created last Thursday, by appealing to “Reductio ad absurdum” this philosophical principle states that if an idea leads to an absurd conclusion, you most reject it

Now you must explain, with evidence, why God created everything Last Thursday is more absurd than God created everything 6000 years ago (or whatever your particular view of God created everything... is.

 

[Jose Fly]

Remember for the sake of the argument, I am granting that somehow we got to the point where nucleotides exist inside lipid membranes.

This is the first time you've stated anything like that. Previously you were focused on the likelihood of proteins forming.

…….why did these nucleotides organized themselves in the order required to produce self-replicating proteins?

Did it happen by chance? Or is there a natural mechanism that forces this order?

It happened via the laws of chemistry and the presence of a catalyst. The self-replicating strands developed all on their own; the researchers simply picked out the most efficient ones and allowed them to continue to replicate, and after a certain amount of cycles, the end-product (highly efficient self-replicating RNA enzyme) was produced.

The sources that you provide do not even attempt to answer to this question

I'm not sure what you were expecting. These are chemists doing chemistry, so when they write their papers, it's generally understood that the reagents behave as they tend to do, all on their own.

If you want to understand the entire body of work, you have to not only read the Robertson and Joyce 2014 paper, you also have to read the papers that describe the work they were building on. Yes, that's going to take some work on your part, but given that this is a highly specialized field of science, that's to be expected.

There are 4 types of nucleotides, so even if we assume that all you need are 100 nucleotides in the correct order, to form a self-replicating molecule, the probabilities would be 1/4 ^100

4 = number of nucleotides

100 = the size of our hypothetical protein

1/4 ^100 is similar to 1 in 10^60 (which is the number that I provided)

This calculation only applies y you believe that it all happened by chance, so, do you believe it happened by chance?

The event has already been observed to occur, so the probability that it can occur is 1.0.

Granted, the question Is “who puts the nucleotides in the correct order?” chance? Some natural mechanism? Please explain your point of view.

Nobody. The nucleotides arranged themselves in the "correct order" (with the help of a catalyst). There was nothing unnatural in how the nucleotides arranged themselves.

If you believe that it happened by chance, all you have to do is prove that there are enough probabilistic resources,

If you believe that it happened by a natural mechanism that “forces” nucleotides to organize in the correct order, all you have to do is provide such mechanism.

Again, it's been observed to occur, so whether or not it can occur is a meaningless question. We know it can because we've seen it happen.

ID is falsifiable, naturalism is not falsifiable

Is ID creationism a counter to naturalism?

That the pattern is not imposed by the forces of nature, this doesn’t mean that nature can’t produce such pattern; it simply means that there are many other patterns allowed by the laws of nature.

That makes no sense.

This criteria by itself is not enough to justify design, you need the 3 criteria

Except that your application of the third criterion isn't making sense.

 

[Jose Fly]

The variations we see today are always a result of a loss of genetic information, never the addition of new genetic information. Even beneficial mutations are always caused by the loss of information. This is a serious problem for evolution. Major changes such as single cell to multi cell organisms absolutely must have new information.

First, whether or not the change involved a gain or loss of "genetic information" is irrelevant to the question of whether or not evolution occurred. So all you're doing here is moving the goalposts....

TBA: Evolution never happens!

JF: It happens all the time, e.g., the evolution of antibiotic resistance.

TBA: Yeah, but that's a loss of genetic information!

JF: Even if true, it's still evolution.​

Second, before you can make quantitative claims about "genetic information", you must have a definition of "genetic information" and a means to measure it. Do you?

 

[exchemist]

Because God does not lie.

Numbers 23:19
[19]God is not a man, that he should lie...

It's really a question of whose word you are going to believe - the word of God or the word of man. If people can just choose which parts of the Bible they want to believe how much will they omit? If you don't believe God has the power to create life as He said how can you believe He has the power to raise the dead or give eternal life? In the New Testament, Jesus quoted the Old Testament, including Genesis, which proves He believed it. God was there when the world began. Man was not. God is all knowing. Man is not. I think God knows more about how He created the world.

Yes, there are doctrinal problems with evolution. The Bible says:

Romans 5:12
[12]Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:

In Genesis God made the world and said it was "good." It was only after the first sin that death, disease and suffering entered the world. In an evolutionary world death came before man and suffering is just a natural part of life. The Bible also says the Lord will make the world new again when He returns and He will make it as it was in the beginning. If He made this world by evolution that means we will spend eternity in primordial ooze. It's really about accepting the authority of scripture.

Ah OK, thanks very much, that is interesting. I can certainly see that if you take literally the Genesis account that death only entered the world with Adam and Eve's Original Sin, then sure, you have to reject the idea of any fossils antedating human ones. And then you also have to reject the age of the rocks by radiometric dating and the entire scientific account of the formation of the earth and solar system. Which is self-consistent - if admittedly weird to a person with a science background.

Tell me though, are you a Young Earth Creationist or an Old Earth Creationist? I suppose I am really most interested in the Old Earth Creationist position, as that seems to accept taking a certain amount of the Genesis account allegorically, but not the common descent idea, for some reason. What intrigues me is the basis for making this distinction. I had an idea it was something to do with the theology of the Fall and the Atonement, but I am not sure why evolution is deemed to be incompatible with that.

Can you help?

 

[leroy]

It explains single cell to man. You are more than likely reasoning incorrectly by treating man as a goal instead of as a result.

So just to clear, according to you, have these 2 stamens been proven to be true with a grater degree of certainty than the theory of gravity?

1 All life in this planet shares a common ancestor.

2 Random mutations and natural selection are responsible for all (or most) of the diversity of life.

 

[leroy]

Since those on your side cannot define it others have to do so for them.

Well you said that examples of new information have been observed, so what did you mean with “information “?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So just to clear, according to you, have these 2 stamens been proven to be true with a grater degree of certainty than the theory of gravity?

1 All life in this planet shares a common ancestor.

2 Random mutations and natural selection are responsible for all (or most) of the diversity of life.

I said that there was more evidence for evolution than there was for gravity. Since we are talking about a scientific concept then the proper evidence is scientific evidence and the huge number of peer reviewed articles on evolution demonstrate that there is more scientific evidence for evolution than there is for gravity. And far beyond a reasonable doubt it has been shown that the diversity of life is due to evolution. There are no competing scientific concepts at this time.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well you said that examples of new information have been observed, so what did you mean with “information “?

Since you can't define it then a useful definition is the genome as a whole is "information". Any new mutation is obviously a "change in information", therefore it is new information. Don't blame me when you used such a worthless and nebulous term that you have not been able to define.

 

[leroy]

Again, it's been observed to occur, so whether or not it can occur is a meaningless question. We know it can because we've seen it happen.

Nobody has ever seen a bunch of nucleotides “arrange” themselves in to self replicating molecules.

The papers that you provided already started with a self replicating molecules, and they simply observed which variants are more efficient than others

Is ID creationism a counter to naturalism?

Well not necessarily, I don’t know, it seems that at least in theory there might be another alternative, or naturalism and ID can be compatible.

Except that your application of the third criterion isn't making sense.

Why not?

 

[leroy]

Since you can't define it then a useful definition is the genome as a whole is "information". Any new mutation is obviously a "change in information", therefore it is new information. Don't blame me when you used such a worthless and nebulous term that you have not been able to define.

Ok, then what you call “new information” is not enough to account for the origin of new complex structures, you need more than just “information” as you define it.


Information: a series of codes (nucleotides, letters, numbers etc.) that provide information on how a system is suppose to operate…………..don´ t what to call it information, ok, you can call it however you what

The burden that “neo darwinists” have is not just that new information can arise by mutations and natural selection, but that there is an overall trends towards increasing the amount of information in life……….in other words that information tends to increase as time passes.

 

[Jose Fly]

Nobody has ever seen a bunch of nucleotides “arrange” themselves in to self replicating molecules.

The papers that you provided already started with a self replicating molecules, and they simply observed which variants are more efficient than others

Again, you need to read the entire body of work. Robertson and Joyce were building on previous research where self-replicating RNA strands were produced. Robertson and Joyce started with those self-replicators and took the process farther.

Well not necessarily, I don’t know, it seems that at least in theory there might be another alternative, or naturalism and ID can be compatible.

You're being even more confusing now. First you say patterns produced "independent from the forces of nature" are a requirement for something to have been "designed", but now you're saying that may not be the case.

Can we just drop the charade here? The "designer" you're advocating for is God, correct?

Why not?

See above.

 

[leroy]

I said that there was more evidence for evolution than there was for gravity. Since we are talking about a scientific concept then the proper evidence is scientific evidence and the huge number of peer reviewed articles on evolution demonstrate that there is more scientific evidence for evolution than there is for gravity. .

ok so you meant that there are more papers supporting evolution than papers supporting gravity ¿that’s what you meant?

And far beyond a reasonable doubt it has been shown that the diversity of life is due to evolution. There are no competing scientific concepts at this time

That is naive and ignorant, many alternatives have been proposed and are being discussed in the scientific literature, for example is has been suggested that the diversity of life is due to a process of natural generic engineering (Natural genetic engineering - Wikipedia) this is an alternative to “random mutations”

This is just one of many alternative mechanism that have been proposed

 

[leroy]

Again, you need to read the entire body of work. Robertson and Joyce were building on previous research where self-replicating RNA strands were produced. Robertson and Joyce started with those self-replicators and took the process farther.

Well then quote the actual papers that show how the nucleotides organize themselves in the “correct pattern” to produce self replicating proteins

You're being even more confusing now. First you say patterns produced "independent from the forces of nature" are a requirement for something to have been "designed", but now you're saying that may not be the case.

Perhaps I misunderstood you question, ¿can you explain your original question?

Can we just drop the charade here? The "designer" you're advocating for is God, correct?

Yes I personally believe that God is the designer,

 

[Subduction Zone]

Ok, then what you call “new information” is not enough to account for the origin of new complex structures, you need more than just “information” as you define it.


Information: a series of codes (nucleotides, letters, numbers etc.) that provide information on how a system is suppose to operate…………..don´ t what to call it information, ok, you can call it however you what

The burden that “neo darwinists” have is not just that new information can arise by mutations and natural selection, but that there is an overall trends towards increasing the amount of information in life……….in other words that information tends to increase as time passes.

And around we go.

You failed to define information in a useful way again.

We know how "new information" arises. @Polymath257 already told you one of the key mechanisms. Have you not heard of gene duplication?

 

[Polymath257]

So just to clear, according to you, have these 2 stamens been proven to be true with a grater degree of certainty than the theory of gravity?

1 All life in this planet shares a common ancestor.

2 Random mutations and natural selection are responsible for all (or most) of the diversity of life.

Which theory of gravity?

 

[leroy]

Now you must explain, with evidence, why God created everything Last Thursday is more absurd than God created everything 6000 years ago (or whatever your particular view of God created everything... is.

Well because according to my experiences and memories, the world was already there before last Thursday, and I see any good reason for not trusting my memories and experiences.