YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
You say we cannot know if a structure is irreducible.
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Darwin's Illusion
- Thread starter Neuropteron
- Start date
Claims by some scientists?!?!?! You need to cite your claim with references and understand what scientists say when they refer to 'nothing.'.
Some scientists have described the Quantum matrix within which the universe began as a singularity in terms of Quantum nothingness where time and space did not exist. This the eternal Quantum nothing described in the reference.
This is NOT the Philosophical/Theological 'absolute nothing' that we have no evidence that ever existed.
How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything | Quanta Magazine
The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.
Quantum Nothingness
Nothing started to seem like something in the 20th century, as physicists came to view reality as a collection of fields: objects that fill space with a value at each point (the electric field, for instance, tells you how much force an electron will feel in different places). In classical physics, a field’s value can be zero everywhere so that it has no influence and contains no energy. “Classically, the vacuum is boring,” said Daniel Harlow, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Nothing is happening.”Abstractions navigates promising ideas in science and mathematics. Journey with us and join the conversation.
See all Abstractions blog
But physicists learned that the universe’s fields are quantum, not classical, which means they are inherently uncertain. You’ll never catch a quantum field with exactly zero energy. Harlow likens a quantum field to an array of pendulums — one at each point in space — whose angles represent the field’s values. Each pendulum hangs nearly straight down but jitters back and forth.Left alone, a quantum field will stay in its minimum-energy configuration, known as its “true vacuum” or “ground state.” (Elementary particles are ripples in these fields.) “When we talk about the vacuum of a system, we have in mind in some loose way the preferred state of the system,” said Garcia Garcia.
Most of the quantum fields that fill our universe have one, and only one, preferred state, in which they’ll remain for eternity. Most, but not all.
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They are reducible complexity due to natural processes verified by scientific methods. There has not been one complexity of form of life in nature found to be irreducible.
You have a phd in side stepping so I'll just assume you have no proof for your claim
There has not been one complexity of form of life in nature found to be irreducible.
YoursTrue
Faith-confidence in what we hope for (Hebrews 11)
We're talking about the concept of irreducible complexities and the lack of proof or proof for that. If you can't grasp the concept then you won't be able to understand more than that. Sorry but have a nice day. And trust me when I say this; you have really helped me understand more. It is not an easy concept. So take care.
Good to know. Please keep me informed with periodic updates.
To you or me? The video covers more about Behe than the article. I consider the extra meaningful.
Behe's claim was that if you remove any part of a five-piece standard mousetrap that it no longer has a function. Some might say that it should say that by removing any piece that it is no longer a mousetrap, but that wouldn't be analogous to the claim with evolution, which is that a change must make an organism more fecund in order to be naturally selected for, not that a change must make an organism more fecund in the same way. Thus, the precursor to the flagellum might not have been related to propulsion at all, but perhaps to injecting toxins in self-defense.
That is not his claim or his point. See above.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
As always the burden of proof is upon the ones claiming that something exists.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
If I claim that Bigfoot did it I have the burden of proof. If I can't support that claim it is rational to dismiss it.
If a creationist claims that something is irreducibly complex that person has a burden of proof to show that such a thing exists. If they can't it is rational to dismiss it.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Care to explain how / where did I failed?
Or is it an other case of "I am an atheist therefore I dont have to support my claims"
leroy
Well-Known Member
Again , you are not suppose to tell *ME* that mause traps are irrelevant...... contact the author of that article and tell *him*
Actually, the author has been told a number of times by articles published by scientific sources as in the following source.
The mouse trap is not relevant because it is a very simplistic mechanical anthropomorphic analogy. There is no relevance to the organic chemistry, genetics, or evolution of DNA. The processes of human engineering design of anything have nothing to do with the genetic evolution of complexity.
In simple terms, the arguments are intensely circular claiming an assumption that life is designed in the beginning by using anthropomorphic engineered objects such as a watch or mouse trap, and not demonstrating independently based on organic science and genetics without assumptions that it is necessarily engineered or designed.
Of Mousetraps and Men: Behe on Biochemistry | National Center for Science Education
In Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, biochemist Michael Behe claims that biochemical systems exhibit a special kind of complexity - irreducible complexity - that cannot possibly have evolved and must have resulted from intelligent design.
Luckily we do not have to settle this matter. It turns out that Behe's intelligent design hypothesis is the result of his failure to consider relevant natural processes when trying to account for the origins of biochemical complexity. This problem arises in turn because Behe thinks about biochemical complexity with the aid of a misleading mechanical analogy - the well-designed mousetrap. The mechanical mousetrap is to Michael Behe what the mechanical watch was to William Paley. And it goes without saying that machines have [anthropomorphic fallible human] designers.
So how should we think about design and designers? We will argue first that the historical process of the intelligent human design of technological artifacts, such as mousetraps, needs to be sharply differentiated from the hypothetical magical process of supernatural design and creation ex nihilo (literally from nothing). In fact, Behe's case derives its appeal from a failure to examine the details of the human design process. Naturally, he provides no details whatsoever of the hypothetical supernatural design process. Secondly, we will show why the mousetrap analogy fails to do justice to the richness of biochemical complexity. And thirdly, we will offer a conceptual framework that explains the origins of the irreducible complexity Behe finds so mysterious (see also Behe 2000). The key, as we shall argue, is that most real biochemical systems exhibit a type of complexity that we term redundant complexity: a form of complexity that results from natural evolutionary processes amenable to scientific study.
The Mousetrap Model of Biochemical Complexity
Behe's central thesis is that the biochemical systems we find in living organisms manifest irreducible complexity. He further contends that processes of the kind invoked in evolutionary biology cannot explain the origin of irreducibly complex biochemical systems. Behe explains:Behe contends that although intelligent design processes of the kind we find in engineering, for example, can give rise to irreducibly complex systems, evolutionary processes cannot.
Behe employs an analogy with well-designed mousetraps. A mousetrap has several components, all of which are necessary for catching mice. A precursor "trap" that lacked one of the components - the spring, the trigger, or the platform, perhaps - could not trap mice. Lacking even minimal function, it could not be improved through incremental adaptive evolution to become a functioning trap. We already know that mousetraps require intelligent human designers. Behe argues that functioning biochemical systems are like mousetraps. They could not have evolved through incremental adaptive evolution, and must be the products of super-human intelligent design. This argument, like all design arguments, has a surface plausibility. It is too bad that those who rely on design arguments have never taken the time to think clearly about what is actually involved in the intelligent human design of technological artifacts.
God is a Creator, not a fallible trial-and-error human engineer.
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Yes, but you are not talking about science.
Again your ignorance of science is profound and deep. There is no such thing as proof in science. I cited several peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and a detailed video that documented the step-by-step description of the complexity of the eye from a simple light-sensitive cell, and @leroy and have failed to provide a coherent response. @leroy and you obviously did not read the material nor watch the video..
Your intentional lack of knowledge of science and ancient tribal religious agenda precludes any help I could give you concerning the sciences of evolution.
Well, ah . . . your line of dodge of reality goes on and on 'have a nice day' for the thousandth time.
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Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Others have already done so. Catch up and you will see why.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
Mmhmm. So tell us, what did God make the "heavens and the earth" out of, exactly?I agree with you (--I think, unless I missed something you are saying) but so many do not want to admit what you are saying is t.r.u.e. I guess it would hurt their thinking. Again, and it makes sense to me-- "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1. The discussion here about irreducible complexities brings out more about the logic that nothing comes from nothing. Period. It's ridiculous that some would argue over it. However God did it, it is beyond figuring in the detailed sense. If some want to argue it, it isn't because their argument makes sense. But that's my viewpoint now after having seen comments here and otherwise.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
That's not proof of anything. It's just a statement.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
No. That's a claim of religion(s), like the one you follow.
Odd, I could not find a member @Ostronomos
Ostronomos said:
The irreducible complexity is no doubt as demonstrated by Frank Tipler a logico-tautological truth.
I did find references for Frank Tipler, He is rated by 51% of his students at Tulane University as 'Awful'
Frank Tipler is a Christian Math/Physics instructor who advocates Intelligent Design, and Irreducible complexity on a Philosophical/Theological basis. He lacks any competence in the sciences of evolution and biochemistry.
Irreducible complexity is not an issue of logico-tautological truth. It is an issue of falsifiability of science.
He seems to have removed himself or been removed from the site. His thinking was chaotic and grandiose, and he seemed a little emotionally labile. I hope he's alright.
I also Googled Tipler. I read this in his Wiki page: "Tipler has written books and papers on the Omega Point based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's religious ideas, which he claims is a mechanism for the resurrection of the dead." I lost interest in his opinions thereafter.
I've been enjoying your posting lately. If you don't mind the label or me saying so, you're one of those people I call theistic humanists, although perhaps the only one who doesn't self-identify as Christian. This is from a recent post:
"It depends what you mean by religious. I know of several theistic humanists posting here on RF. Their values, methods, and agenda are indistinguishable from mine, and we only differ by a god belief, which they claim to have, but seem to have well compartmentalized. All are educated professionals in the sciences, and none are zealous theists. But they also promote education, secularism, tolerance, social and economic equity, human development and enabling, and the like as an atheistic humanist would. I don't consider them religious, and I suspect that they would agree."
See post #8,452.
Atheism, like Theism, Deism, Agnosticism, and whateverism are subjective beliefs not based on verifiably objective evidence.