In a recent UD post, Gil has been more specific than he often is, so I thought I would respond here:
The resolution of the debate about the creative powers of natural selection is dead simple and utterly trivial to figure out.
- Natural selection throws stuff out. Throwing stuff out has no creative power.
- Existing biological information, mixed and matched, can be filtered by natural selection, as in sexual reproduction, but nothing inherently new is created.
- Random errors can produce survivability quotients, but only in circumstances in which overall functional degradation supports survival in a pathological environment (e.g., bacterial antibiotic resistance), and only given massive probabilistic resources and a few trivial mutational events capable of producing the survival advantage.
- Random errors are inherently entropic, and the more complex a functionally-integrated system becomes, the more destructive random errors become. Anyone with any experience in even the most elementary engineering enterprise knows this.
To his first, I cite this:
To the second, I say: why not? Every mutation is something new, and that can be “mixed and matched” as well as “existing information”.
To the third, I say: this is simply not the case.
To the fourth, I say: this assertion assumes that the biological landscape is as rugged as the engineering landscape. It clearly is not. Engineered artefacts are usually highly vulnerable to slightly alterations – A stuck screw can render an entire motorcycle worthless, as Robert Pirsig noted. This is not the case with biological organisms, which countless slight variants are perfectly viable, as is evidenced by the fact that although all children (including even monozygotic twins) are unique, most are viable.
Therefore this:
Yet, we are expected by Darwinists to believe that throwing a sufficient number of monkey wrenches into the complex machinery of living systems, over a long enough period of time, can turn a microbe into Mozart.
Is not unreasonable at all 🙂
The first- the statue- is not about just throwing stuff out. And the third is definitely the case and is supported by the evidence.
The fourth has Gil equating entropy with disorder.
But anyway there still isn’t any evidence that demonstrates random mutations can accumulate in such a way as to give rise to new, useful multi-protein configurations. And that is a problem because living organisms are full of them.
Which clearly demonstrates the futility of trying to reason with Darwinists as a means of getting them to change their views. You cannot reason with lunatics (at least not to their benefit).
Picking apart Gil’s arguments is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Unfortunately for you, you cannot pick apart his arguments using actual evidence.
1. is demonstrably wrong. Natural selection also keeps the new good stuff, which then accumulates. Keeping the new good stuff does have creative power.
2. is demonstrably wrong. Sexual recombination does produce entirely new genetic sequences, and entirely new morphological variations are created.
3. is only applicable to a perfectly adapted organism is a completely unchanging environment. But organisms aren’t perfect, and as long as the environment is changing there will always be room for improvement, a new fitness optimum to shoot for.
4. is a complete non-sequitur. DNA copying variations aren’t errors, merely differences. The argument again makes the unjustifed assumption that all organisms are perfectly adapted to a completely unchanging environment.
I doubt very seriously that Gil or any IDer will come here and attempt to defend this nonsense.
William J. Murray
Which clearly demonstrates the futility of trying to reason with Darwinists as a means of getting them to change their views. You cannot reason with lunatics (at least not to their benefit).
It’s actually quite easy to reason with us as well as getting us to change our views. You just need to provide sound arguments backed with positive evidence, not ridiculous strawmen based on personal incredulity and woeful scientific ignorance.
Haven’t seen anything except the second from the ID side yet I’m afraid.
1- Please provide the evidence that demonstrates natural selection has creative power
2- Evidence please- sexual selection keeps the norm
3- Fitness, wrt biology, equals reproductive success and is an after-the-fact assessment
4- According to the current theory all copying variations are errors/ accidents/ mistakes
Nope, evos cannot be reasoned with as they do not have any evidence to support their position. You don’t have any sound arguments nor positive evidence. And your scientific ignorance is on record.
Gil makes grand pronouncements, but most of them are content-free, trivial, or plain wrong. He begins his fourth point with a sciency-sounding sentence
I have studied thermodynamics and statistical physics in college and grad school. I teach a graduate course on the subject. I have no idea what this guy is trying to say. And I am not going to wreck my brain figuring that out because it is not essential to his argument. Just added for rhetorical flourish. My best guess is he means to say “errors are unavoidable.” To which I say: “Duh.”
I am not so sure. Adding an error-correcting procedure (e.g., checksum) to a system makes it more complex and less error-prone.
We know, Gil, that you earn your living as a software engineer in aerospace research and development, with specialties in navigation and control software for precision-guided airdrop systems, and most recently in explicit finite-element analysis of dynamic systems. We also know that when all you have is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail. If you wish to say something relevant about biological systems, you have to be proficient in biology. That’s a prerequisite.
In fact, looking at biology from an engineering perspective is bad for your newly found Christian faith. You discover that the designer of biological systems was not a very careful engineer. Lots of genetic errors are easily preventable. You are left to wonder why the designer did not bother to fix them. These issues immediately become a major distraction, so instead of making great progress in understanding biology you end up working on theodicy.
You discover that the designer of biological systems was not a very careful engineer.
oleg, you are looking at the organisms of today to make that claim. The organisms of today arer not the designed organisms.
Lots of genetic errors are easily preventable.
We look forward to seeing YOUR design of a living organism.
You are left to wonder why the designer did not bother to fix them.
Then what would we do? In a perfect world we wouldn’t need science to help us discover stuff- we wouldn’t have an impetus to discover.
Still waiting for that *single* example of a novel insight that only ID/your worldview can provide.
Which clearly demonstrates the futility of trying to reason with Darwinists as a means of getting them to change their views. You cannot reason with lunatics (at least not to their benefit).
Yes, that might appear to be the case from this side of the fence as well – though insulting the opponent’s mental capacity is hardly the most compelling of arguments. Yah boo, and yo’momma!
Repetitive attacking of a misrepresentation of Natural Selection – particularly a sole focus on its negative component, as if gradients only ever point downhill – is not going to get you anywhere. And I don’t understand why you don’t/can’t get it. Would your entire worldview collapse in a puddle? Many, many people from Darwin onwards have investigated and characterised NS and the mutational process, exhaustively. But a few engineers***, lawyers and logicians are here to tell ’em they’ve got it all wrong – worse, they are ALL lunatics. Every last one of ’em. Seriously?
***ETA, I am, incidentally, a software engineer by trade, albeit one with a biology background. Many biologists are capable of coding to a pretty high level, and/or have much experience in the practicalities of designing experimental apparatus. They are just as well versed in the ‘engineering’ side as our Gil.
Ironically, Dembski has consistently pointed out that creation consists of throwing stuff out. Here’s the first paragraph in his Life’s Conservation Law paper (emphasis mine):
Any act of intelligence requires searching a space of possibilities to create information. The preceding sentence illustrates this very point. In formulating it, we searched a space of letter sequences. Most such sequences are gibberish (unpronounceable arrangements of random letters). Of those that are meaningful, most are not in English. Of those that are in English, most have nothing to do with information theory or intelligent design. Only by successively eliminating vast swatches of this search space did we succeed in locating the first sentence of this paper, thereby creating a unique sentence in the history of the English language. Each such reduction of possibilities constitutes an information-generating act. Together, these reductions constitute a search that identifies one possibility (the first sentence of this paper) to the exclusion of others.
You seem to have left any reasoned argument and evidence you intended to present out of your comment, William. Did you hit ‘Save’ too soon?
I’m only leaving this post here because it is a general denigration of a class of people not of individual posters.
But it was close.
WJM, considering your conviction that your beliefs are self-chosen, calling other people lunatics is a bit rich.
Especially so when it touches on a subject you’ve repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of understanding.
Not that that ever stopped anyone, mind*.
* e.g. GilDodgen
woodbine-
Are you saying that YOUR beliefs are not self-chosen? Also it appears that you do not understand the subject…
I guess Gil is correct, provided software engineering is identical to biological evolution. And if the analogy between software engineering of the sort Gil does, and evolution of the sort nature does, is almost entirely inaccurate or inappropriate, Gil responds the way all too many engineers do – they simply repeat their analogy because, hey, it works in engineering!
I also made my living doing software, and I’m familiar with business systems some of whose code dates from the 1960s. This code grew over the generations by accretion, added to by many different programmers. There are big chunks of it nobody can figure out anymore, and probably don’t do anything functional, but nobody dares remove them for fear of breaking a working and critical system. This is NOT just superstition – just causing other code to move around often introduces errors. Those big sprawling messy programs are evolving.
(Incidentally, I LOVE the statue of David as an example of the creative power of discarding what isn’t useful or helpful. The only counter argument to this statue I’ve seen so far is Joe G’s usual IS NOT! IS NOT! Which by itself underscores the deadly accuracy of the illustration.)
Flint-
A sculptor created the statue, by DESIGN. Don’t blame me because neither you nor Liz cannot grasp that fact.
I must say I’m baffled by Joe’s claim that the statue is not an example of throwing stuff out. Say Joe – how is a statue not an example of throwing stuff out?
Say, Robin, here’s a change- why don’t YOU tell us how a statue is an example of just throwing stuff out and has nothing to do with what the DESIGNER is trying to achieve.
Joe has a problem. He KNOWS that discarding stuff can’t be creative. He SEES that it is creative. What do you expect him to do, admit it?
WJM,
How am I take supposed to seriously consider your comment re: logic and insanity when you have yet to explain your illogical argument about purpose, process and priority?
How am I supposed to seriously consider any argument that denies there is a fundamental difference between what purposeful causes can be expected to generate, and what chance causes can be expected to generate?
Why should I seriously engage text on my screen that is claimed to be ultimately generated by chance causes? There is simply no way to engage such a position other than to serve some secondary purpose.
Sure I grasp the fact, Joe G. But Gil seems to think that discarding stuff can’t be creative. Clearly it can.
If his argument was that evolutionary processes can’t throw things out creatively, but designers can, then I’d like to hear it. But the simple assertion that throwing stuff out isn’t creative is nonsense.
And if what comes in is full of novelties, and throwing stuff out is based on a clear criteria (does it help reproduce in this environment) then, clearly, the whole process (novelties plus throwing-stuff-out) can be creative – you end up with an assemblage of novelties that does something useful (helps something reproduce in this environment) and wasn’t there before.
Just as by the time Michelangelo had finished throwing out stuff that wasn’t a statue of David he had a statue of David.
I have confess, my major motivation for making this OP, once I’d seen Gil’s post, was so I could post that sculpture!
It really is the most astonishing object.
Sorry Joe, but trying to change the subject does not address the issue. Whether or not a statue is designed does not change the fact that it is still an example of throwing stuff out having a creative outcome. Of course, you’re welcome to disagree, but if you do, you must explain how a statue is not an example of throwing stuff out if you want to be taken seriously. If you don’t want to be taken seriously, I’m happy to ignore your comments.
The idea that chance can be expected to produce patently purposeful effects, like dictionaries and battleships and computers, is nonsensical. The idea that one can throw monkey wrenches into highly complex, sophisticated, interdependent functional code and machinery and not expect anything to happen other than it breaking down is not worthy of serious debate.
Those that can believe such things are capable of believing anything – even that which is self-refuting and self-contradictory; even that which violates the principle of identity. There is no reasoning with those who will deny the obvious.
I guess it’s hard to take seriously, any position too different from one’s own to understand properly. And as far as I can see, WJM and others find it impossible even to phrase one anothers’ positions correctly. Both sides filter what they read through their own understandings, and out comes something that just doesn’t fit. And if it won’t fit, it won’t make sense.
The problem I see with this “fundamental differences” is that it is between what WJM EXPECTS purpose to generate, and what WJM EXPECTS chance (more accurately, feedback) processes to generate. But those who do not share WJM’s expectations, can’t understand what differences he sees. What could he possibly mean by ULTIMATELY generated? Is he drawing a reasonable distinction between proximate purpose as an aspect of ultimate chance? Or is he simply expressing incredulity that the forces at work in our universe could produce anything he can’t find “ultimate” purpose hiding behind?
What I see is a battle between those who struggle to eliminate confirmation bias as much as possible, and those who seek to maximize it, and pleasure in wallowing in the congenial results.
That you consider that to be Gil’s point just reveals your inability to grasp the most basic points of ID proponents as they mean them.
When “how you see things” is determined by chance, debating you to change your position would be like talking to a pair of dice to try and convince them to come up 7’s. Even were I to succeed in getting anyone to change their mind, it would only be by chance. Of what value is that?
Let’s look at the self-refuting nonsense on display. In order to argue that free will doesn’t exist, or that purpose is ultimately generated by chance, one must argue as if free will does exist, and arrange their words as if purpose is fundamentally different from chance. Even though the nature of debate demands we act as if X is true, they argue that X is not actually true, eviscerating the necessary basis for their arguments to have meaning and validity in the first place.
However, I agree that most posts here appear to be generated by chance, because they are largely nonsensical.
But you have not demonstrated this, either by reasoned argument or by evidence, so it is simply your assertion – what you choose to believe, I guess.
I choose to disagree.
Until responders here start banging away randomly on their keyboards and posting chance collections of letters, I will have to consider them hypocrites in their assertion that everything that we say and do is ultimately by chance.
Well, as Dawkins says, there is no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence. But don’t you ever wonder how so many people (essentially every working scientist) can have discovered so much, and explained it so thoroughly and predictively, if they are all idiots blathering nonsense? Even you should puzzle at such an astounding coincidence.
And when you factor in that those who approach things from a teleological perspective had millennia to learn and basically learned nothing, that only compounds the coincidence. Perhaps there IS a deeper explanation, but you’ll never learn it from anyone buried in self-refuting nonsense – which is to say, everyone who knows better.
Why should I respond to letters arranged by chance with no free will, purposeful agency ultimately behind them? Why should you care how a chance collection of interpretations and reactions types letters by chance in response? I might as well debate a rustling tree or a babbling brook.
It doesn’t require demonstration. It is obvious, and it is necessary. I can’t argue the obvious with those who deny it.
Yeah Liz and company can lose a little on every sale but make it up by selling more.
Ya see in order to throw stuff out you first have to have the stuff.
And again, what is the evidence tat natural selection can be creative?
William J Murray,
And it is precisely because of people like you, who have proven debate is impossible, that ID should be banned from schools by legislation, not debate.
AGAIN- creating that statue was more than just “throwing stuff out”.
Who said anything about scientists? Or science?
In any event, I don’t puzzle at it; most scientists that have livedand worked since religious philosophers invented modern science have used the same protocols and principles those founding scientists created, even if materialists and atheists intellectually deny them.
I’m reminded of Behe on the witness stand, arguing that life must be designed because, well, golly, just LOOK at it! It’s obvious. It’s right there in front of you. There’s no need to do any research, there’s nothing to be researched. Just LOOK at it!
(And subsequently, as I recall, Behe admitted that those who do not share his RELIGIOUS views, can’t see this obvious design. Imagine that.)
Yeah, nothing says freedom like the banning of ideas from the classroom.
Yes, it does require demonstration, either by argument or evidence or both.
For reasons best known to yourself (or perhaps the psychoplasm) you have decided to believe that most of us are a “chance collection of interpretations and reactions” without “free” “will”.
I find that position incoherent, but it’s your choice, I guess, given that you have eschewed evidence and argument.
As I say, I profoundly disagree. I also think it is profoundly disrespectful to other human beings.
yeah.
Type me a response you expect to be seriously considered without intelligently designing it – you know, by chance. Until then, you are relying on purpose while denying it is necessary.
And that is what everyone here is doing – relying on purpose while denying that it is necessary.
I gotta admit, when you ra’ar back and tell a whopper, you don’t stint yourself. And you do succeed in illustrating just HOW untrue your claims have needed to become. Which is, astoundingly, mind-bogglingly, stonking hilariously untrue. Great comic relief.
No demonstration can bridge denial of the obvious. Your post relies upon purpose, but you deny it is necessary.
Every time you write a post that requires purpose, you are witnessing the demonstration of the necessity of purpose as fundamentally different from chance. If it is not, then start typing by chance and post that form now on.
I doubt you will do so.
William J. Murray
The idea that chance can be expected to produce patently purposeful effects, like dictionaries and battleships and computers, is nonsensical.
It sure is. Good thing that no one in the scientific community says or thinks evolutionary processes work by pure chance. Randomness is part of the process for sure, but it is not all of the process, which is decidedly not random.
Trying to discuss evolutionary theory with someone who offers the same tired old ignorance based Creationist strawman is what’s really nonsensical.
William J Murray,
They have also done a good job at focusing science when it strays, like the time they convinced Bill Dembski, that despite all evidence he had considered in coming to the conclusion that Noah’s global flood never happened, theism said it did.
Dembski saw the error of his ways and re-visited the issue.
Clearly, here was religion again helping science stay true to its religious roots.
William J. Murray
When “how you see things” is determined by chance,
The results of evolutionary processes aren’t determined solely by chance.
How many times do you plan on repeating this same ignorant misunderstanding?