Interesting video about evolution and origins.

[exchemist]

According to this site D Noble rejects Intelligent Design.

Denis Noble

Denis Noble (16 November 1936–) is a British biologist known for his criticism of genetic reductionism and neo-Darwinism.

rationalwiki.org

PZ Myer on the same site has some attacks on his sanity however.

Ah you are quite right, I was mixing him up with Alastair Noble. Apologies to you, and to him!

 

[Revoltingest]

At best his reasoning is correct.
He is not trying to do science on the video.

What is his reasoning?
From what premises that can't even be wrong?

 

[McBell]

What is his reasoning?

the video, in a nutshell, is him asking a question, stating that evolution has no answer, and implying the answer is god.
He does not flat out say "GodDidIt" but that is clearly what he is implying.

This is after his history of declared design all though nature, even mentioning Dawkins saying something about design, in appearance.
he does flat out claim that the reason all this apparent design is flat out ignored by science is because science uses evolution to deny a designer.

 

[PureX]

the video, in a nutshell, is him asking a question, stating that evolution has no answer, and implying the answer is god.
He does not flat out say "GodDidIt" but that is clearly what he is implying.

Yes. And the reason this kind of argument is so stupid is that it presumes evolution theory negates the "God did it" theory. That these theories are somehow mutually exclusive.

This is after his history of declared design all though nature, even mentioning Dawkins saying something about design, in appearance.
he does flat out claim that the reason all this apparent design is flat out ignored by science is because science uses evolution to deny a designer.

And this is even weirder, as 'natural design' is what science studies. There could be no science without it. AND it is the very actuality that unites the "God did it" theory with the theory of evolution. Natural design and the evolutionary process that results from it is "God doing it".

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Reaction and ommentary on Garte's video:

He begins with an assertion of "obvious and universal" design. It's a major premise in his apology. He posts a chart with three possibilities: Natural selection without purpose -- which he rejects because he can't accept purposelessness; intelligent agency, which he contrasts with blind, random chance -- a strawman; and God, in which he goes back to asserting the "design" indicative of a divine agent in a sort of Kalam argument.
So: need for purpose -- unsupported. Blind, random chance as the atheist position: wrong. Need for a designer: non sequitur, based on his stated, a priori belief in a god ("indicative of a divine agent"), in this case. Even without the a priori belief, the Kalam argument is unsupported.
So he begins with a premise of intentional agency, which is what he's trying to demonstrate, making the whole argument circular.

He goes on to stress our lack of understanding of abiogenesis -- irrelevant, and state, without support, that "there is no biological mechanism can produce somebody who composed Beethoven's fifth symphony, it just doesn't make sense." This is an obvious argument from incredulity.
He goes on to speak of accurate inheritance of a beneficial trait "to all of its offspring" as a vital component of evolution, and asserts evolution can't occur without this universal inheritance. In fact, it's inaccurate inheritance that produces the variation natural selection depends on, plus useful traits don't have to be passed on with every offspring. Just some is sufficient. His assertion doesn't follow.

He expresses his astonishment at how accurate replication could be achieved in something so complicated as a cell -- more incredulity -- ignoring the millions of years natural selection had to perfect the process and eliminate most replication glitches. He says: "this incredibly high level of accuracy...couldn't have just occurred." -- flagrant incredulity!
He reiterates: "accurate self-replication is required for evolution." This is hogwash. Accurate replication would stop evolution. It would produce insufficient variation for evolution to work with. He asserts a circular reasoning fallacy -- which doesn't follow.
Next he quotes another biologist: "The genetic code is deciphered by a complex apparatus that interprets the nucleic acid sequence." Interprets is misleading. It implies understanding and intent. I don't see it. A polymerase just moves along an'unzipped' DNA fork that acts as a template. No interpretation needed.

He talks of "abstract symbolic information, and the impossibility of any natural process to create it. I'm not following the abstract symbolic information bit, or why he says it can't be produced naturally, ie: without magic. I don't feel like going back over it though, so I'll just have to wonder why biologists haven's picked up on this,

To be continued.

Really well-reasoned! Congrats.

 

[exchemist]

the video, in a nutshell, is him asking a question, stating that evolution has no answer, and implying the answer is god.
He does not flat out say "GodDidIt" but that is clearly what he is implying.

This is after his history of declared design all though nature, even mentioning Dawkins saying something about design, in appearance.
he does flat out claim that the reason all this apparent design is flat out ignored by science is because science uses evolution to deny a designer.

Do you have a time stamp for the point in the video at which he says this? It seems at odds with the more judicious line he takes in the Biologos article.

 

[Valjean]

The system is incredibly complex and I am guessing that the last universal common ancestor (Luca) evolves from then on, and so the whole system would have to be in place, since all the parts he talks about are needed for evolution to occur.

Why? Why would all the complexity of modern organisms necessarily have existed in a four billion year old microbe? The original organisms didn't even have DNA, or oxygen based respiration, or need for an immune system. It was an anærobic, pathogen and competitor-free, RNA world.
Mutation happens. Change/evolution has occurred. Complexity has increased.

He does say that we see abstract symbolic information in the genetic code and transmission of that information from one language to another. He says the polymerace interprets the codons and connects appropriate nucleotides in the duplication process.

The code is copied from one template onto another, onto another. Where is the interpretation?
It's just copying.

The argument against God is not in evolution because evolution can fit with what the Bible tells us.

So the Bible is the ultimate biochemical authority, its authors familiar with molecular chemistry?!
Garte has not explained why chemical abiogenesis is impossible, or why magic poofing is the only reasonable alternative.

He tells us not only that he can't explain abiogenesis (chemical evolution) but that nobody can and the list of questions and problems keeps getting longer instead of shorter.

And man will never fly....

IOWs he is being a whistleblower on the true situation in abiogenesis studies.

No. apparently he's ignoring the progress since Miller-Urey.

He does give his belief that God did it and puts it way beyond Intelligent design because none of us could do what was done in creating the chemical systems involved.

True, it's beyond our technology, but the mechanisms are known and familiar. Taken as a whole, the complexity of biochemistry overwhelms him, and he takes solace in bypassing the intricacy with an appeal to magic.

He gives reasons why chemistry in nature cannot do it. Even in a laboratory it is hard to have the right environment and amounts of chemicals etc etc. The suggestion that chemical evolution could not happen is supported like this.

There isn't a "right" environment. An "intelligent design" isn't necessary. Life works with what it has. It develops and evolves to fit the environment it's in, not vice-versa. His reason is personal incredulity.

Atheists can also apply their confirmation bias of course.

What confirmation bias? Atheists make no claims to confirm. It's the theists making the claim. The burden of proof is theirs.

Why would most atheist biologists even notice these things anyway, esp when the expectation is that if the keep looking they will find the answers.

Notice what things?
Why would any scientist abandon her research, throw up her hands and claim "Goddidit"? The deeper science looks into things, the more complexity is usually found, and the more questions are generated.
Perhaps Garte is just a quitter...

One could ask why nobody before Darwin saw what Darwin saw. The suggestion that Darwin was wrong because other biologists or naturalists did not see it, is not a sensible suggestion.

Other biologists weren't researching causes, and the objections were mostly from the religious and those who felt their spiritual significance threatened.
What appears obvious is often noticed only in hindsight.
Current biologists know everything Garte does, but see no reason to appeal to magic.

I think the thing about Sy Garte is that he was a third or 4th generation atheist and saw some of the problems while still an atheist so confirmation bias applies less to him than it would to others who came to biology as already believers.

He offers no substantive reason to abandon chemistry and appeal to magic, only his incredulity.

But I can confirm that once a person has a faith, that does make it easier to see what he was explaining and a lack of faith makes it harder to see it,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, especially if you demand scientific tests for the existence of God and that nothing else will do, even for a God who is a spirit.

Yes, a belief in magic does make it easier to abandon a need for evidence or a physical mechanism, and accept a magician.

Faith is belief without evidence. Reasonable people ask for evidence before accepting a fantastic claim.
Would you accept a belief in leprechauns, platypuses or orcs without evidence?

 

[Valjean]

He seems to believe evolution could happen from Luca on, as Luca had the aparatus for evolution.

The "apparatus" is simple: reproduction with variation. It doesn't depend on modern, DNA-based biochemistry.
Presumably, LUCA developed with RNA copying chemistry already in place for reproduction.
Evolution is parsimoneous, it works with and modifies what it already has, sometimes bypassing simple solutions, sometimes creating unnecessary complexity.

Before that is unknown and he has trouble seeing that chemical evolution is possible, esp in nature.

That's his problem. Current researchers have no such reservations, and mechanisms are rapidly being uncovered.

He does say that some biologists say that there is observable and testable purpose/goals in organisms and populations of organisms and quotes Dennis Noble from the "Was the Watchmaker Blind? Or Was She One Eyed?" concerning that.

Yet purpose remains both unevidenced and without a discovered need. Divine creation remains an abdication of the search for explanation or mechanism.

I'm not sure how it would be known that teleology was really teleonomy, but I'm sure that would be how it is seen my many biologists.
Btw I just realised that the talk on the video just goes for 28 minutes and the rest is Q@A.

There is no evidence for purpose or a goal.

 

[exchemist]

The "apparatus" is simple: reproduction with variation. It doesn't depend on modern, DNA-based biochemistry.
Presumably, LUCA developed with RNA copying chemistry already in place for reproduction.
Evolution is parsimoneous, it works with and modifies what it already has, sometimes bypassing simple solutions, sometimes creating innecessary complexity.

That's his problem. Current researchers have no such reservations, and mechanisms are rapidly being uncovered.

Yet purpose remains both unevidenced and without a discovered need. Divine creation remains an abdication of the search for explanation or mechanism.

There is no evidence for purpose or a goal.

Your sentence in red is the key point in all this, it seems to me, if it is relied on as an alternative to scientific investigation.

If however, someone simply sees God in the order of nature and the wonderful way order can arise from randomness, that is fair enough, I think. That is just a personal aesthetic or spiritual judgement, rather than proposing magic poofing as a mechanism

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

"Raised in a militant atheist family, Sy Garte fell in love with the factual world of science. He became a respected research biochemist with an anti-theistic worldview to bolster his work--and he had no intention of seeking a God he didn't believe in. That is, until the very science he loved led him to question the validity of an atheistic worldview. His journey to answer the questions that confronted him drew him into becoming a fully committed Christian, determined to show others the truth: modern science doesn't contradict God at all but instead supports Christianity."

Why should this be of interest to others? Most of us have evaluated the same evidence and come to different conclusions. Why somebody slips into supernaturalism after reviewing that same data is interesting to consider, but from a psychological perspective. What makes a person do that - turn to magical thinking to account for nature? Not empiricism.

Philosopher Antony Flew made the transition from atheism to deism when his critical thinking skills began to decline in his dotage. His opinions stopped being interesting. Only the process that resulted in those changes is interesting.

He gives a few possibilites for how things came to be as they are and makes a point about purposelessness in direction of the naturalist answer, because that is what he wanted to make a point of in this talk, in this apologist teaching lecture.

And then he rejects that possibility with an incredulity fallacy.

He does go on to try to say that purpose in biology would be a good thing

So what again? If he believe that biology is telic because it would be good if it were, he is committing another logical fallacy: "Appeal to consequences is a fallacy in which someone concludes that a statement, belief, or hypothesis must be true (or false) simply because it would lead to desirable (or undesirable) consequences if it were so."

and that purpose is shown to exist in nature

No, it has not. He (and perhaps you) seem to assume that, but he can't demonstrate purpose anywhere in the universe except in the minds of sufficiently evolved conscious animals. It's just a gut feeling or intuition for him.

He also says that Darwin admitted that and that he had no idea of the origin of life and that we also do not know.

Another so what, and another fallacy if it's meant to argue against the validity of the scientific theory, it's an ignorantium fallacy.

He says there are stories about consciousness, creativity, love etc human traits which evolution does not explain

Evolution doesn't need to explain them beyond that they arose through the application of natural selection to genetic variation in biological populations across generations. I smell another incredulity fallacy.

He states his incredulity of this high level of self replication having just happened

So what?

But he, as a professor, is pretty certain that there is interpretation involved and reading the code.

Now for another fallacy: "An argument from authority ... is a form of argument in which the mere fact that an influential figure holds a certain position is used as evidence that the position itself is correct."

Interestingly, it can be considered a type of ad hominem (Latin for to the man or person) fallacy, too, but rather than saying that the speaker's argument must be incorrect because of who he is, it's saying the opposite. One is still pointing "to the man" rather than his argument. If he were considered authoritative, then just that he thinks something ought to be meaningful even if not convincing. If he enjoyed consensus among other critical thinkers, then that would be meaningful as well. But neither apply here.

You might consider it unfair, or an ad hominem fallacy, or the genetic fallacy - and I would disagree with you if you did - but I'm just not interested in anything coming from creationist sources. I didn't look at your video link, although I did read your review of it, and thank you for that. I don't mind giving you a few seconds of my time scanning what you wrote, since you paraphrased his position and you're here (he's not).

 

[Valjean]

He was not doing science but had observations about natural systems through the talk. He was showing that the conclusion of a designer was more sensible than the conclusion that it all just happened.

He did not show this. He declared existing biochemistry impossibly complex, and not possible without divine intervention -- supported only by his own incredulity.
His conclusion is not 'sensible'. It's a false dilemma.

And let's face it, there is no science that shows that blind chance and natural laws are more sensible than a designer so it is harsh to expect that to be shown scientifically about a being who cannot be studied by science because He is a spirit.

I disagree. Natural laws are known, measurable and testable. The role of random variation ('blind chance') plus natural selection, is known, tested, and massively evidenced. An appeal to effect without mechanism -- magic -- by "a being who cannot be studied by science because He is a spirit," an unevidenced being, is not sensible

iow the whole thing of origins has to be be answered "we don't know" but we can look at what is the more sensible conclusion based on observations.

I agree, and the conclusion that it was done by magic, by an unevidenced magician, is not the sensible conclusion.

Yawn! Testable hypothesis? He should have been doing science in the video? Science is the only way we can find out if there is a God or not?
That's right, the deniable faith of scientism. Yawn,,,,,,,,,, it's all very tiring, I'm going to bed.

Huh? You're saying that belief without need or evidence is reasonable?

 

[Valjean]

It doesn’t have to be known. It’s just Ockham’s Razor: if teleonomy can account for what we observe, there no need for the additional postulate of presumed purpose. From what I read in his Biologos piece, he is saying no more than that there is purpose, in a minor sense, in an organism hunting its prey or moving towards the light.

Dennis Noble is no authority at all, by the way, he’s a paid up Intelligent Design huckster.

Function is not the same as purpose.

 

[Subduction Zone]

He was not doing science but had observations about natural systems through the talk. He was showing that the conclusion of a designer was more sensible than the conclusion that it all just happened.
And let's face it, there is no science that shows that blind chance and natural laws are more sensible than a designer so it is harsh to expect that to be shown scientifically about a being who cannot be studied by science because He is a spirit.
iow the whole thing of origins has to be be answered "we don't know" but we can look at what is the more sensible conclusion based on observations.



Yawn! Testable hypothesis? He should have been doing science in the video? Science is the only way we can find out if there is a God or not?
That's right, the deniable faith of scientism. Yawn,,,,,,,,,, it's all very tiring, I'm going to bed.

He did no such thing. He should know better. He only made an irrational argument.

And here is how you made an appeal to false authority and just admitted to it. He based his authority on the fact that he is an expert in genetics. I have no argument with that. He was the one that brought science into this, and you brought science into this by using him as a source. Don't accuse others of your sins.

All of his arguments were logical fallacies and all were related to his work. That makes what he was spewing pseudoscience.
Don't accuse me of scientism when that was your sin.

Are there other ways of showing that a god exists besides science? Possibly, but I have never seen a valid argument. I do get tired of the hypocrisy of some believers when they are the ones that appeal to science to prove their faith and then they are the ones that accuse others of "scientism" when their science is proven to be crap.

 

[Subduction Zone]

He did not show this. He declared existing biochemistry impossibly complex, and not possible without divine intervention -- supported only by his own incredulity.
His conclusion is not 'sensible'. It's a false dilemma.

I disagree. Natural laws are known, measurable and testable. The role of random variation ('blind chance') plus natural selection, is known, tested, and massively evidenced. An appeal to effect without mechanism -- magic -- by "a being who cannot be studied by science because He is a spirit," an unevidenced being, is not sensible

I agree, and the conclusion that it was done by magic, by an unevidenced magician, is not the sensible conclusion.

Huh? You're saying that belief without need or evidence is reasonable?

I found the false accusation of scientism at the end to be very aggravating since he was the one that brought science into the conversation.

 

[Valjean]

Yes. And the reason this kind of argument is so stupid is that it presumes evolution theory negates the "God did it" theory. That these theories are somehow mutually exclusive.

But Goddidit is not a theory.

And this is even weirder, as 'natural design' is what science studies. There could be no science without it. AND it is the very actuality that unites the "God did it" theory with the theory of evolution. Natural design and the evolutionary process that results from it is "God doing it".

I don't see them as equivalent, or both as theories. One is evidenced and tested, the other an abdication of evidence, explanation, or understanding; an appeal to magic.

 

[exchemist]

Function is not the same as purpose.

Is is that cut and dried, though? Do human beings exhibit purpose in their behaviour? If they do, do cats? If they do, what about fish?

 

[Valjean]

Is is that cut and dried, though? Do human beings exhibit purpose in their behaviour? If they do, do cats? If they do, what about fish?

A purpose can include a function, but, in science, function doesn't imply purpose.

I was commenting on function as a technical, scientific term, sans implied goal or purpose. Biologists will speak of the function of photosynthesis or the coagulation cascade, for example, but won't call it a purpose, except informally.

 

[Dao Hao Now]

Sy is also the editor in chief of God and Nature magazine and vice president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the American Scientific Affiliation.

The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) is a Christianreligious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines. The stated purpose is "to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science." The organization publishes a journal, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith which covers topics related to Christian faith and science from a Christian viewpoint.
(American Scientific Affiliation - Wikipedia)



This from the ASA website:
(https://network.asa3.org/page/ASAAbout)


Our Statement of Faith

1. We accept the divine inspiration, trustworthiness and authority of the Bible in matters of faith and conduct.
2. We confess the Triune God affirmed in the Nicene and Apostles' creeds, which we accept as brief, faithful statements of Christian doctrine based upon Scripture.
3. We believe that in creating and preserving the universe God has endowed it with contingent order and intelligibility, the basis of scientific investigation.
4. We recognize our responsibility, as stewards of God's creation, to use science and technology for the good of humanity and the whole world.

The above makes cognitive bias obvious….
Actual science doesn’t align itself to any particular religious viewpoint.

 

[Brian2]

The above makes cognitive bias obvious….
Actual science doesn’t align itself to any particular religious viewpoint.

He did become a Christian so belonging to a Christian organisation should be expected.
I don't see how being a Christian makes cognitive bias obvious.
True science doesn't align itself to any particular religious viewpoint. Scientists come from all sorts of religious viewpoints and worldviews.

 

[Subduction Zone]

He did become a Christian so belonging to a Christian organisation should be expected.
I don't see how being a Christian makes cognitive bias obvious.
True science doesn't align itself to any particular religious viewpoint. Scientists come from all sorts of religious viewpoints and worldviews.

The fact that he belongs to an organization alone does not show that. But that along with his nonsensical video does.