Thread: Chancing it to be Human Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
A commonplace of atheist apologetics nowadays is the unexceptional observation that the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy involves chance genetic mutation. This highly improbable yet nonetheless completely accidental process is supposed to be a knock down argument against alleged divine purposefulness in the evolution of homo sapiens. So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice? It's the implications for theology I am interested in, not the process itself, which I accept.
 
Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
Who created the dice?
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Go on .... don't tease .... [Biased]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
Chance is a funny thing. Looking forwards you can see the rare upon rare upon rare events which in the future will generate unexpected and unpredictable results as a form of miracle. But looking backwards it just looks inevitable (genes of this mutation won because it was best fit for the environment, which led to this other mutation being best suited and so on).
 
Posted by Anyuta (# 14692) on :
 
proving that something was a "chance" mutation rather than a divinely directed one is impossible.

Randomness is really un-provable.

Of course, the corollary is that it's pointless to say that a particular endpoint that we see is "statistically a bazillion to one" thus supposedly proving Divine intervention. But of course, that doesn't work when looking back from an event that has already occurred. pick up a grain of sand on the beach. the likelihood that that particular grain of sand would be the one you chose was a bazillion to one before you did it. but after you did it, it became 100%.

Trying to use randomness to either prove or disprove Divine influence in evolution is pretty pointless.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
A commonplace of atheist apologetics nowadays is the unexceptional observation that the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy involves chance genetic mutation.
Not quite -- there is a purpose that shapes the process, and that is natural selection. The genius of evolution is that it provides a mechanism for directed change that does not require teleology. There is real intellectual beauty in the construct. Get over it.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
A commonplace of atheist apologetics nowadays is the unexceptional observation that the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy involves chance genetic mutation. This highly improbable yet nonetheless completely accidental process is supposed to be a knock down argument against alleged divine purposefulness in the evolution of homo sapiens. So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice? It's the implications for theology I am interested in, not the process itself, which I accept.
What do you mean by "chance"?

It seems to me that when it is used to describe the mutations that are the raw material for evolution, "chance" has the special meaning of "not inherently inclined to be have either beneficial or deleterious effects".

More generally it can mean "not under anyone's conscious control", "not predictable", or "an event whose outcome is not determined by the cause of that event".

I think all of those are compatible with belief in God (and if I recall correctly, IngoB has even advanced the case here that the last one can be used as a proof of God), but I'm not sure which you are asking about, or if you are asking about something else.
 
Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune
The genius of evolution is that it provides a mechanism for directed change that does not require teleology. There is real intellectual beauty in the construct.
I am not too sure what kind of "beauty" this is, but there you go.

Anyway, a form of teleology is read back into natural selection, namely, the survival agenda. What is it about the laws of physics and chemistry that determine that an organism should "want to" survive? We see the survival instinct in living organisms and assume that it is a given within that nebulous construct called "nature". There is absolutely no reason at all why certain complex organic compounds should "want to" or need to continue in that state and reproduce rather than revert to the simpler state of non-living matter.

It's clear to me that materialists cannot cope with the full implications of their philosophy: that matter really is dead and mindless. There is no justification for their pretending - within their paradigm - that "nature" is some kind of living entity that is driven by any kind of purpose or "law of life". It isn't. Death and life are frankly both the same. Mindless. As is the process of change commonly known as evolution, which can go backwards (given that most mutations are either neutral or deleterious).

Therefore there has to be another explanation, which is indeed truly intellectually beautiful. DH territory, I know...
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Anyway, a form of teleology is read back into natural selection, namely, the survival agenda. What is it about the laws of physics and chemistry that determine that an organism should "want to" survive?
There is no requirement for this -- animals that fail to want to survive are more likely to not survive. Animals that don't survive have a somewhat lowered ablity to reproduce, so their genes don't get replicated. It is the statistics of pink noise and long time horizons.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :
 
Setting aside the question of God and his purposes, is it not probable that chance natural selection would eventually produce a sentient being? Or am I mistaken? What is the view of evolutionary biologists?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Setting aside the question of God and his purposes, is it not probable that chance natural selection would eventually produce a sentient being? Or am I mistaken? What is the view of evolutionary biologists?
Most of the estimates I've heard rate it as one of the least probable adaptations. The reasoning being that certain adaptations are easy enough to convergently evolve in non-related lineages (like mottled pigmentation for camoflage or the camera eye). As far as we know only one lineage, the hominids, have developed human-type sentience. This uniqueness as an adaptive strategy suggests (though it doesn't prove) human-type intelligence is a fairly complex and difficult adaptation.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
Given that it appears that only the Jewish people select for intelligence, perhaps we can use Darwinism to explain the idea of the Jews as the chosen people... [Big Grin]

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I think that Prof. Conway Morris has argued that humans are inevitable, and if the 'tape' of evolution could be rewound and run again, they would appear. I think he bases this partly on the idea of convergence, and his idea of universals, e.g. music, which appear and reappear. He suggests that therefore evolution is heavily constrained. At this point, you could argue either by engineering principles, or by mathematical principles, or something else.

But certainly, on the surface, evolution seems incompatible with theism, or at least the teleological aspects of theism.

Anyway, I am expecting the various Christian palaeontologists to come up with a brilliant synthesis any day soon! You heard it here first; oh no, we didn't.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
A commonplace of atheist apologetics nowadays is the unexceptional observation that the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy involves chance genetic mutation. This highly improbable yet nonetheless completely accidental process is supposed to be a knock down argument against alleged divine purposefulness in the evolution of homo sapiens. So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice? It's the implications for theology I am interested in, not the process itself, which I accept.
Middle knowledge. God knows the results of every possible world that he could create, and creates a world in which he knows human being will thrive. Much more than that he knows what each human being will do in any given world he might create and creates a world in which certain free decisions bring about certain results that are essential to his plans.

Sheer genius.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Or you could argue, without any evidence at all, that God sets up an infinite multiverse, where all things that are possible are inevitable, and possibly, in an infinite number of copies.

The only point to this would presumably be to say: because I can.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Or you could argue, without any evidence at all, that God sets up an infinite multiverse, where all things that are possible are inevitable, and possibly, in an infinite number of copies.

The only point to this would presumably be to say: because I can.
Well if the multiverse exists, in which all things are possible, then there must be a universe in which a maximally great being exists. If a maximally great being exists in one universe he must exists in all universes (or he wouldn't be maximally great). So if he exists in all universes he must exist in our universe. So you've just given us an amazingly powerful argument for the existence of God.

Q - you're no Luis de Molina, but that's one helluva case for theism.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
So if he exists in all universes he must exist in our universe. So you've just given us an amazingly powerful argument for the existence of God.
Oddly, a stupid argument doesn't become persuasive, even when replicated an infinite number of times...

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Not quite -- there is a purpose that shapes the process, and that is natural selection. The genius of evolution is that it provides a mechanism for directed change that does not require teleology. There is real intellectual beauty in the construct. Get over it.

--Tom Clune
But it does require mutations since the Precambrian at a rate far greater than anything observed in the wild.

Your move.

[ 19. June 2012, 19:08: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think that Prof. Conway Morris has argued that humans are inevitable, and if the 'tape' of evolution could be rewound and run again, they would appear. I think he bases this partly on the idea of convergence, and his idea of universals, e.g. music, which appear and reappear. He suggests that therefore evolution is heavily constrained. At this point, you could argue either by engineering principles, or by mathematical principles, or something else.
This seems to be contradicted by Lenski's E. coli Long-Term Experimental Evolution Project, which involved preserving ancestral strains so that he could, in effect, rewind and rerun the 'tape' of his subject's evolution. Some adaptations (larger cell size, more efficient glucose metabolism) were selected across all strains, but the more specialized and intriguing results (the Cit+ mutation) seems very contingent and occurred only in the Ara-3 lineage, and seems linked to an otherwise neutral mutation somewhere between generations 20,000 and 20,500.

In other word, Lenski demonstrated that "rerunning evolution" will often yield different results.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Not quite -- there is a purpose that shapes the process, and that is natural selection. The genius of evolution is that it provides a mechanism for directed change that does not require teleology. There is real intellectual beauty in the construct. Get over it.

--Tom Clune
But it does require mutations since the Precambrian at a rate far greater than anything observed in the wild.

Your move.
Expand please. Or at least provide a citation.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Anyway, a form of teleology is read back into natural selection, namely, the survival agenda. What is it about the laws of physics and chemistry that determine that an organism should "want to" survive?
There is no requirement for this -- animals that fail to want to survive are more likely to not survive. Animals that don't survive have a somewhat lowered ablity to reproduce, so their genes don't get replicated. It is the statistics of pink noise and long time horizons.

--Tom Clune
Though AIUI, according to Dawkins it isn't really about animals surviving, but genes.

Evolution doesn't give a damn whether you survive - it only cares that you survive long enough to produce fertile offspring.
 
Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :
 
Perhaps Divine providence deals with 'rolls of the dice' in the same way as a computer programmer does, by building them into the software so that all eventualities are covered and the end game will occur as planned.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Though AIUI, according to Dawkins it isn't really about animals surviving, but genes.

Evolution doesn't give a damn whether you survive - it only cares that you survive long enough to produce fertile offspring.
Given that the global death rate is holding steady at 100%, that seems rather obvious.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Though AIUI, according to Dawkins it isn't really about animals surviving, but genes.

Evolution doesn't give a damn whether you survive - it only cares that you survive long enough to produce fertile offspring.
Given that the global death rate is holding steady at 100%, that seems rather obvious.
It should be obvious, but it's quite often not acknowledged when people are trying to derive philosophical conclusions from evolution.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think that Prof. Conway Morris has argued that humans are inevitable, and if the 'tape' of evolution could be rewound and run again, they would appear. I think he bases this partly on the idea of convergence, and his idea of universals, e.g. music, which appear and reappear. He suggests that therefore evolution is heavily constrained. At this point, you could argue either by engineering principles, or by mathematical principles, or something else.
This seems to be contradicted by Lenski's E. coli Long-Term Experimental Evolution Project, which involved preserving ancestral strains so that he could, in effect, rewind and rerun the 'tape' of his subject's evolution. Some adaptations (larger cell size, more efficient glucose metabolism) were selected across all strains, but the more specialized and intriguing results (the Cit+ mutation) seems very contingent and occurred only in the Ara-3 lineage, and seems linked to an otherwise neutral mutation somewhere between generations 20,000 and 20,500.

In other word, Lenski demonstrated that "rerunning evolution" will often yield different results.
Except other reviews suggest Lenksi's experiment supports Conway Morris. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_3_175/ai_n31347660/pg_2/
It's important research but the jury's out on what it's telling us.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
So if he exists in all universes he must exist in our universe. So you've just given us an amazingly powerful argument for the existence of God.
Oddly, a stupid argument doesn't become persuasive, even when replicated an infinite number of times...

--Tom Clune
It's a logical argument Tom, and the conclusion follows the premises. So if there's a problem with it, you need to be more precise as to where the argument breaks down.
 
Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :
 
Please read "Evolutionary Love" by Charles Peirce. His idea is that love is sort of like gravity pulling evolution along (my wording, not his). This is in the public domain, so I think a somewhat sizable quote should be OK here:

quote:
Everybody can see that the statement of St. John [that God is Love - churchgeek, ed.] is the formula of an evolutionary philosophy, which teaches that growth comes only from love, from I will not say self-sacrifice, but from the ardent impulse to fulfill another's highest impulse. Suppose, for example, that I have an idea that interests me. It is my creation. It is my creature... I love it; and I will sink myself in perfecting it. It is not by dealing out cold justice to the circle of my ideas that I can make them grow, but by cherishing and tending them as I would the flowers in my garden. The philosophy we draw from John's gospel is that this is the way mind develops; and as for the cosmos, only so far as it yet is mind, and so has life, is it capable of further evolution. Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life, and makes it lovely.
Basically, you can tie this in with the image of the Spirit hovering over the face of the deep in creation. Not long ago, Marilyn McCord Adams preached at Grace Cathedral and likened that image of the Spirit to the way parents bend over their infants and nurture them into being human. You can listen to it here. It reminded me of the article by Peirce I've linked above.
 
Posted by no_prophet (# 15560) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think that Prof. Conway Morris has argued that humans are inevitable, and if the 'tape' of evolution could be rewound and run again, they would appear. I think he bases this partly on the idea of convergence, and his idea of universals, e.g. music, which appear and reappear. He suggests that therefore evolution is heavily constrained. At this point, you could argue either by engineering principles, or by mathematical principles, or something else.
This seems to be contradicted by Lenski's E. coli Long-Term Experimental Evolution Project, which involved preserving ancestral strains so that he could, in effect, rewind and rerun the 'tape' of his subject's evolution. Some adaptations (larger cell size, more efficient glucose metabolism) were selected across all strains, but the more specialized and intriguing results (the Cit+ mutation) seems very contingent and occurred only in the Ara-3 lineage, and seems linked to an otherwise neutral mutation somewhere between generations 20,000 and 20,500.

In other word, Lenski demonstrated that "rerunning evolution" will often yield different results.
This is a debate I started reading about in the early 1990s. Conway-Morris and Stephen Jay Gould looked at the same data and came to opposite conclusions it seemed. Then there's more data and opinion later. Made me consider scientists as akin to a house of bishops or college of cardinals with many mansions where many different camps of the learned hold court and sway, where all have won and all must have prizes, where all truths are true and falsehoods are just truths in waiting, and where I agree with everyone, just disagree with how they say it.

Maybe CS Lewis was on to something deeper when he had the Lion sing Narnia into existence, animating all the animals with music. Holst's The Planets, also comes to mind.

Is there a deeper, 'perennial philosophy' that might join the random with the predictable? (I had thought the idea was Leibnitz' but the internet says others it seems.)

I also think of Forkhead Box P2, without which we'd not have language and adaptive brains.

Thus large and philosophical, and at the same time, small and also philosophical. Between the two, I seem to get sometimes a mushy brained sense of something more than either.

[ 19. June 2012, 21:54: Message edited by: no_prophet ]
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Croesus ... specific morphologies are only interesting in so far as they generate (VERY occasionally) .. sentience. You are on the horns of a dilemma here. Sentience is either common and, therefore inevitable, or rare ... and therefore, remarkable. Attempting to reduce life radically to randomn noise just doesn't fit the EVIDENCE. This is nothing to do with "faith" of course.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Expand please. Or at least provide a citation.
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.

And you have to fit that within a timespan of 600 million years. Any back-of-envelope calculations suggest that for that to be in any way possible, the rate of mutation must have been much greater than is even measured today in the simplest of organisms.

It is a statement of faith to say that is possible.
 
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Perhaps Divine providence deals with 'rolls of the dice' in the same way as a computer programmer does, by building them into the software so that all eventualities are covered and the end game will occur as planned.
I really like this analogy as I believe (and hope) that the end game is very good.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
I forgot to add that also implies that evolution is linear, when there is evidence of loops/swerves whereby populations change in one direction and back again. As we don't know how often that happened in the past, there would need to be an additional fudge factor to allow for the number of mutations which ultimately did not have any effect on the overall evolution of the species through time.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
It's a logical argument Tom, and the conclusion follows the premises. So if there's a problem with it, you need to be more precise as to where the argument breaks down.
Same place it always has -- "Existence is not a predicate."

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Or you could argue, without any evidence at all, that God sets up an infinite multiverse, where all things that are possible are inevitable, and possibly, in an infinite number of copies.

The only point to this would presumably be to say: because I can.
Well if the multiverse exists, in which all things are possible, then there must be a universe in which a maximally great being exists. If a maximally great being exists in one universe he must exists in all universes (or he wouldn't be maximally great). So if he exists in all universes he must exist in our universe. So you've just given us an amazingly powerful argument for the existence of God.

Q - you're no Luis de Molina, but that's one helluva case for theism.
Oh rubbish. In the multiverse all things exist that can exist. The Maximally Great Being is an incoherent and paradoxical concept and therefore can't exist irrespective of how many times you try.

Now in the multiverse I've no problem with the idea of the Greek Pantheon existing. But the Greek Gods are just powerful beings who want to be worshipped and can be cajoled or even beaten by humans.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.
Why must it?
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Justinian - In any case this reworking (however ingenious) of Anselm's bankrupt ontological argument attempts to prove (in like manner) that God "exists." He does not exist. He is.

[ 20. June 2012, 11:42: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.
Why must it?
Go on then, how many point base mutations does it require?
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.
Why must it?
Go on then, how many point base mutations does it require?
I have no more idea than you do. But even if your estimate is correct, there's nothing to say they all have to occur independently. Half a dozen evolutionarily-advantageous mutations could happen within a single generation.
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
@Marvin, this is true, although hard to see whether that increases or reduces the numbers of mutations required between the precambrian and now. Sometimes individual base changes have a profound effect on individuals, sometimes polyploidy makes a species much more (or less) vigorous. Sometimes the effects of base mutations are only seen generations after with further mutations, sometimes they appear to have no effect at all. There is no general pattern.
 
Posted by Custard (# 5402) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice?
The lot falls in the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Custard:
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice?
The lot falls in the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.
So Lord, would it be too much for You to let me fill an inside straight once in a while?

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on :
 
One of the things that I think is difficult to think about but which is endlessly fascinating, is that the evolution of a mammal skeleton, with breathing and digestive systems, had happened long before the dinosaurs lived, and I understand that the mammalian common ancestor of the ape family evolved from small, shrew-type creatures. So the basic structure was there long before humans evolved.
 
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Setting aside the question of God and his purposes, is it not probable that chance natural selection would eventually produce a sentient being? Or am I mistaken? What is the view of evolutionary biologists?
No idea what evolutionary biologists think. I suspect they feel obliged to believe that, in much the same way as an evangelical from the Deep South of the US feels obliged to believe that creation started at midnight am on 23rd August 2004 BC.

For me, I'm unsure which of those two oversimplifications I find the less credible.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Croesus ... specific morphologies are only interesting in so far as they generate (VERY occasionally) .. sentience. You are on the horns of a dilemma here. Sentience is either common and, therefore inevitable, or rare ... and therefore, remarkable. Attempting to reduce life radically to randomn noise just doesn't fit the EVIDENCE. This is nothing to do with "faith" of course.
I can see something rare looking out of my window. A car with the registration plate LL61CJE. That registration plate is rare enough that there is only one car with it - but just because it is rare doesn't make it inherently remarkable.

And are we talking about sentience or sapience here. Because a cat is sentient but not sapient.
 
Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is a statement of faith to say that is possible.
No, it is a statement of observation since it obviously happened. It is not a statement of faith simply because you do it understand it properly.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
Because a cat is sentient but not sapient.
My cat is a Hell of a lot more sapient than I am, for what that's worth...

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
It is a statement of faith to say that is possible.
No, it is a statement of observation since it obviously happened. It is not a statement of faith simply because you do it understand it properly.
Not at all - read what I said - that there was enough time for all of the necessary mutations is a statement of faith.

There is no 'fact' that mutations occurred without the assistance of God. Hence it can only be a statement of faith that in the absence of a God, there was enough time for all of the necessary processes.

Otherwise you are left in the position of arguing that whatever unknowns there are in your understanding of the past, it must have happened as you say because you are here as evidence that it happened. Which is a silly argument, there could be all kinds of unknown factors which mean that your understanding is flawed.

Without a God involved, I don't believe there was enough time since the Precambrian for all of the necessary mutations. You are entitled to believe otherwise, but that is also a statement of faith.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Without a God involved, I don't believe there was enough time since the Precambrian for all of the necessary mutations. You are entitled to believe otherwise, but that is also a statement of faith.
No, this is just nonsense. We know that the changes did take place in that timeframe. Your "argument" could be tacked onto anything -- "Without God, Obama could never have become POTUS. You believe it could have happened without God. I disagree. We're both making (somehow equivalent) statements of faith." I call bullshit.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
]No, this is just nonsense. We know that the changes did take place in that timeframe. Your "argument" could be tacked onto anything -- "Without God, Obama could never have become POTUS. You believe it could have happened without God. I disagree. We're both making (somehow equivalent) statements of faith." I call bullshit.

--Tom Clune
Then you know nothing about shit or science. At present measurements, there was not enough time for all the necessary mutations. I put the differential down to the effects of an unknown factor, God.

If you don't believe it, then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation why rates should have been much higher across the time period than the current measurements, particularly during the periods of very rapid evolution as proposed by the 'punctuated equilibrium' hypothesis.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
If you don't believe it, then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation why rates should have been much higher across the time period than the current measurements, particularly during the periods of very rapid evolution as proposed by the 'punctuated equilibrium' hypothesis.
Not at all. There is absolutely nothing odd or unusual about different rates of activity in response to perterbation and repose, in just about any system. Insisting on making this a mysterious phenomenon is the thing that would require explanation. But it still would not "require" a deity -- it would be a rare scientist, indeed, who would equate those two notions. You're blowing smoke. This whole notion is too idiotic to support any further response from me.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by the long ranger (# 17109) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Not at all. There is absolutely nothing odd or unusual about different rates of activity in response to perterbation and repose, in just about any system. Insisting on making this a mysterious phenomenon is the thing that would require explanation. But it still would not "require" a deity -- it would be a rare scientist, indeed, who would equate those two notions. You're blowing smoke. This whole notion is too idiotic to support any further response from me.

--Tom Clune [/QB]
I'm not sure I said it "requires" a deity anywhere. That was a statement of belief.

And I don't need you to tell me what scientists would or would not believe. It is as reasonable to believe that the discrepancy is due to God as any other explanation. But then you don't actually have an explanation do you?

Don't bother wasting your precious time replying.

[ 20. June 2012, 14:31: Message edited by: the long ranger ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
Except other reviews suggest Lenksi's experiment supports Conway Morris. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_3_175/ai_n31347660/pg_2/
It's important research but the jury's out on what it's telling us.
Not so. If evolution were on rails, always ending up at the same destination, as this over-simplification of Morris' position would have it, we wouldn't see any variation between the twelve different strains in the Lenski experiment. Additionally, the preservation of ancestral samples in frozen form allows the EcLTEE to "re-run" the evolution of various samples from various points. The way the results of these evolutionary rewinds vary indicates evolution to be very contingent, not "on rails".

quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Croesus ... specific morphologies are only interesting in so far as they generate (VERY occasionally) .. sentience.
Well, only interesting to you.

quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
You are on the horns of a dilemma here. Sentience is either common and, therefore inevitable, or rare ... and therefore, remarkable. Attempting to reduce life radically to randomn noise just doesn't fit the EVIDENCE. This is nothing to do with "faith" of course.
As I've already indicated, human-level sentience is an incredibly rare adaptation. This seems trivially obvious from even a brief survey of present and past species. However, it's a huge leap of logic to assume that any outcome other than the most probable one must be due to divine interference. While certain adaptations may be unlikely, a Universe where the most probable outcome always occurs is even less likely.

quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Expand please. Or at least provide a citation.
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.

And you have to fit that within a timespan of 600 million years. Any back-of-envelope calculations suggest that for that to be in any way possible, the rate of mutation must have been much greater than is even measured today in the simplest of organisms.
That's not a "back-of-envelope calculation", that's just spewing the same assertion with some unexplained numbers thrown in. Where are you getting your numbers? What are your assumptions here? How are you accounting for the effect of selective pressure?
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
If you don't believe it, then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation why rates should have been much higher across the time period than the current measurements, particularly during the periods of very rapid evolution as proposed by the 'punctuated equilibrium' hypothesis.
I think you're making the mistake of ignoring the effect of selection. Rapid periods of change can be effected, as demostrated in the previously mentioned Lenski experiment, by increasing selective pressure without changing mutation rate at all.
 
Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 
long ranger --

How are you calculating the percentage probability of divine intervention?

[ 20. June 2012, 14:46: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
At present measurements, there was not enough time for all the necessary mutations.
Yeah, I think it's time for you to provide reliable links to support this:

1) What are the "present measurements"? What is being measured, and over what timeframe?

2) How many mutations were "necessary"?
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Croesus ... didn't say "must" .... your word.

Justinian ... you are getting distracted by particulars (the licence plate argument).

Sentience by the way, not sapience. Some degree of self awareness, consciousness, self - whether illusory or not.

The Universe thinking about itself. Remarkable!

It makes for deeper rather than shallow thinking - anti-theist OR theist.
 
Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Some degree of self awareness, consciousness, self - whether illusory or not.
Well, lots of different species have that to some degree. It's not that rare at all.
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Oh, I am not anthropocentric at all. If we think that we exhaust the "image and likeness of God" then we are sorely mistaken. I expect to find sentience in the Universe everywhere .... remarkable whether rare or not ... but certainly not confined to this bipedal primate who got slack jaw and omnivorous habits so that his brain could expand.

[ 20. June 2012, 15:03: Message edited by: Father Gregory ]
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Croesus ... didn't say "must" .... your word.
Sorry, I'm not tracking your point. Something unlikely happens, therefore . . . what?

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Some degree of self awareness, consciousness, self - whether illusory or not.
Well, lots of different species have that to some degree. It's not that rare at all.
That kind of development is not that rare, at least among animals with a central nervous system, but that's a very different proposition than "the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy", as stated in the OP.
 
Posted by Father Gregory (# 310) on :
 
Croesos ... what YOU make of that is up to you.

2nd point. I have parents but I also have friends. If I want to talk about my parents must I warn you that I also care for my friends? These are not choices. Moreover something can be commonplace and special as well as rare and special. Actually I think that nothing is pedestrian or random ... nor do I think that God is pushing buttons or pulling levers in the sky either.

In short, I don't have to choose.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
At present measurements, there was not enough time for all the necessary mutations.
Yeah, I think it's time for you to provide reliable links to support this:

1) What are the "present measurements"? What is being measured, and over what timeframe?

2) How many mutations were "necessary"?
Yes, I'm glad somebody has asked for some links, and from peer-reviewed scientific journals or books, I would say, as this assertion, that 'there was not enough time for all the necessary mutations' sounds a bit like creationist statements. They are fond of making these blanket statements, 'this is too complex to have arisen simply from random mutations', and so on.

However, hopefully the long ranger will come up with the goods, so that others can read it.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
Not at all - read what I said - that there was enough time for all of the necessary mutations is a statement of faith.
Now where did I last see that argument? Ah, yes, it was the pile of nonsense that Michael Behe was peddling at the Kitzmiller vs Dover Trial. The same trial where the judge in the court record termed the defence 'breathtaking inanity', and where Behe was forced under oath to accept his maths were out by many orders of magnitude.

quote:
There is no 'fact' that mutations occurred without the assistance of God.
There is a fact that mutations are observed to have happened under controlled laboratory conditions. There is no 'fact' that God exists. Merely a hypothesis believed true by many. If mutations happen with the help of God then he acts in exactly the same way in a laboratory he does outside and you've redefined God into that which is. Which is fine but is for all practical purposes indistinguishable from a God that doesn't exist.

quote:
Without a God involved, I don't believe there was enough time since the Precambrian for all of the necessary mutations. You are entitled to believe otherwise, but that is also a statement of faith.
[Citation Needed]

(Citation especially needed if you try to put the mutations in order rather than have parallel operation).

As for a faith position, no. It is information we don't have yet rather than information that is unknowable. And to quote Tim Minchin "Throughout history every mystery ever solved has turned out to be. Not Magic." And not God either. Given your stunning 0% success rate on the argument from incredulity (see Paley's Watchmaker or how could the eye have evolved?) why should I think that your tweak on the argument from incredulity is any more likely to be successful than any of the previous arguments from incredulity?

[ 20. June 2012, 17:11: Message edited by: Justinian ]
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
And, thinking about it, this is heading fast into the realm of deceased equines.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Just before this gets shunted, is it then correct that the only reply by theists to the question of random genetic mutations, in relation to God, is the one made by Captain Picard, 'make it so'?

I remember debating with a creationist about the Algerian nuthatch, a species separated from the main European group of nuthatches, and I enquired, why would God create an Algerian nuthatch?

The absolutely magnificent reply to this was 'because God in his wisdom willed it so'.

So there we are.

But I wonder if any Christian mathematicians have attempted to deal with this?
 
Posted by IconiumBound (# 754) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune: Not quite -- there is a purpose that shapes the process, and that is natural selection. The genius of evolution is that it provides a mechanism for directed change that does not require teleology. There is real intellectual beauty in the construct. Get over it. --Tom Clune
Tom, you seem to be having a good time with this thread. And maybe you can add this to the mix.

All things that have "life" have three things in common: 1/ a means of getting nourishment 2/ a means of reproduction 3/ a will to live. Yes, I know there can be extensions of these to 6 or 7 but I'd like to focus on the third.

Where and from what does the will to live or the survival instinct come from? Is it a supernatural entity or could it be a natural force like infinite energy that cannot be destroyed or expended?
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
All things that have "life" have three things in common: 1/ a means of getting nourishment 2/ a means of reproduction 3/ a will to live. Yes, I know there can be extensions of these to 6 or 7 but I'd like to focus on the third.

Where and from what does the will to live or the survival instinct come from? Is it a supernatural entity or could it be a natural force like infinite energy that cannot be destroyed or expended?
First off, I'm not exactly sure what this 19th century philosophical notion of a "will to live" means. Whatever it means, it presumably encompasses the fact that a depressingly large number of people commit suicide.

But, whatever it means, the mysteriousness of it escapes me. Imagine two distinct kinds of critters: one that is unable to swim, but readily jumps into lakes. The other is just like the first except that it is afraid of lakes. Create these two critters. After a few million years, which would you expect to find near large bodies of water?

My gut expectation is that the first critter would only survive in areas that didn't have lakes to jump into (unless it evolved into a critter that could swim or that was afraid of water.) But I don't find anything spooky in that at all. Why would you expect creatures that were indifferent to their own survival to continue to exist? Do you have a teenager at home?

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by IconiumBound (# 754) on :
 
quote:
Originally postedby Tclune
Why would you expect creatures that were indifferent to their own survival to continue to exist? Do you have a teenager at home?
First I think teenagers are a species beyond all knowing. But I am thinking of survival that is inherent in all living things from cells to plants to animals. Yes, some do lose their will to live but they are the exceptions. ,In humans the practice of torture is predicated on the existence of a will to live. Try holding your head under water for more than two minutes and see what you want more than anything: air.

If you have ever tried to eradicate dandelions you have experienced will to live in plant life. And the pharmaceuticals would be most unhappy if those pesky germs would just commit suicide.

Living is necessary for reproduction to occur and evolution to work: survivalof the fittest.

[ 20. June 2012, 18:15: Message edited by: IconiumBound ]
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
It's a logical argument Tom, and the conclusion follows the premises. So if there's a problem with it, you need to be more precise as to where the argument breaks down.
Same place it always has -- "Existence is not a predicate."

--Tom Clune
Why not?
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Justinian You're back to affirming that God can't exist because God can't exist. I'll leave you to work out the problem with that.

@Croesos : If Lenski's conclusions are so self - evidently conclusive, why are they not universally held by all biologists?
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian You're back to affirming that God can't exist because God can't exist. I'll leave you to work out the problem with that.
Come up with a definition of God that doesn't inherently lead to a paradox and I'll change my answer. I'm not affirming that God can't exist. I'm affirming that paradoxes can't while still being paradoxes. (At least until you get into infinite sets via barbers who shave all men that don't shave themselves).

And the multiverse needs to be a pretty high order of infinite.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by IconiumBound:
quote:
Originally postedby Tclune
Why would you expect creatures that were indifferent to their own survival to continue to exist? Do you have a teenager at home?
First I think teenagers are a species beyond all knowing. But I am thinking of survival that is inherent in all living things from cells to plants to animals. Yes, some do lose their will to live but they are the exceptions. ,In humans the practice of torture is predicated on the existence of a will to live. Try holding your head under water for more than two minutes and see what you want more than anything: air.

If you have ever tried to eradicate dandelions you have experienced will to live in plant life. And the pharmaceuticals would be most unhappy if those pesky germs would just commit suicide.

Living is necessary for reproduction to occur and evolution to work: survivalof the fittest.
But you are reifying something called the 'will to live'. Since all things die eventually, do you think we should count on a 'will to die' or a 'tendency to die'?

I think you are equivocating between various terms, such as 'survival' and the 'will to live', so that you can drag in something apparently spooky. The word 'will' is interesting of course; suggesting that an organism is self-directed. Sounds a bit Larmarckian to me!
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
Justinian ... you are getting distracted by particulars (the licence plate argument).

Sentience by the way, not sapience. Some degree of self awareness, consciousness, self - whether illusory or not.

The Universe thinking about itself. Remarkable!

It makes for deeper rather than shallow thinking - anti-theist OR theist.
Oh, it's remarkable. But my point remains that unlikely events are interesting but you can't say that because an unlikely event has happened it is serious evidence. You can, however, use it to update your model and if that model then predicts a subsequent event you've good evidence.
 
Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
It's a logical argument Tom, and the conclusion follows the premises. So if there's a problem with it, you need to be more precise as to where the argument breaks down.
Same place it always has -- "Existence is not a predicate."

--Tom Clune
Why not?
Because formal systems examine the formal relationships between posited entities. "Predicate" is a technical term in logic. It is some assumed property of that object. [The even more formal assertion that is the positive form of the above is WVO Quine's statement, "To be is to be the value of a bound variable." That is, in logical systems, it is instantiation that breaks out of the formal into the reified.

A very standard expression to clarify these abstractions: "The current king of France is completely bald" may well imply that the current king of France does not need a haircut. But it actually says nothing about the reality of the current king of France. You just can't force real objects into being through formal mind games.

The last time that was seriously tried was with David Hilbert's challenge to reduce arithmetic to logic. It turns out that even such seemingly formal-only entities as the natural numbers cannot be forced into existence formally. The goal was to fully characterize the natural numbers by formal properties that would allow you to define the natural numbers and their formal relationships without reference to anything but a formal system. It seemed like a problem that was ready to be solved at the end of the 19th century.

But it ran afoul of two famous results of the 20th century: Goedel's incompleteness, which showed that you couldn't capture all the true things that could be said about these formal entities in any consistent system with a finite number of axioms (ACSWAFNOA). There would always be some truth of arithmetic that escaped proof in such a system.

The other end of the telescope was shown to be beyond the pale by Lowenheim and Skolem (L&S). They established that ACSWAFNOA could be modelled in the natural numbers. The thing that made this sticky is that Gregor Cantor had already established formally that there are more than a denumerably infinte number of numbers (we need more than just the natural numbers). But L&S showed that ACSWAFNOA could be fully instatiated using only the natural numbers. What that means is that no such formal system can uniquely "nail down" its own ontology by purely formal means -- there will always be some ambiguity of reference if we limit ourselves to Hilbert's enterprise.

If you think about it, you'll recognize that this fully confutes the Hilbert enterprise. HTH.

--Tom Clune
 
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Stuff, life and mind HAVE to be inevitable, infinite and eternal in recurrence by materialistic induction. I.e. insanely irrational faith in the face of Fermi's paradox.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Croesos : If Lenski's conclusions are so self - evidently conclusive, why are they not universally held by all biologists?
1: Because biologists are academics. If you have two academics in a room you have three opinions.

2: Because some biologists have a prior assumption (Behe again springs to mind).

3: Because they aren't aware that biology is not the only field where we use evolution. Evolutionary hardware is an interesting field (with humans stepping up to provide the winnowing/reproduction). And we've known for fifteen years that unless the starting conditions are more similar than two microchips intended to be identical chips with all other factors controlled for will get different results and optimal solutions. Add any difference in external factors and the best positions will change.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Expand please. Or at least provide a citation.
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.

And you have to fit that within a timespan of 600 million years. Any back-of-envelope calculations suggest that for that to be in any way possible, the rate of mutation must have been much greater than is even measured today in the simplest of organisms.
Please show your "calculations". Because I'm pretty sure you are wrong by many orders of magnitude.

As far as bacteria are concerned you are stunningly wrong - currently observed processes are vastly more rapid than the minimum needed to produce the diversity we see.
 
Posted by mdijon (# 8520) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
If you think about it, you'll recognize that this fully confutes the Hilbert enterprise. HTH.
Mornington Crescent.

I win.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Same place it always has -- "Existence is not a predicate."
Why not?
Suppose God decides to create a herring out of nothing. Now suppose existence is a predicate.
Does God create a herring that exists or a herring that doesn't exist? Obviously God can't create a herring that doesn't exist. But can God create a herring that does exist? No. If God sets out to create a herring that does exist then it already exists and so God can't create it.

Supposing existence is a predicate leads to a lot of logical upsets such as the above.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
Same place it always has -- "Existence is not a predicate."
Why not?
Suppose God decides to create a herring out of nothing. Now suppose existence is a predicate.
Does God create a herring that exists or a herring that doesn't exist? Obviously God can't create a herring that doesn't exist. But can God create a herring that does exist? No. If God sets out to create a herring that does exist then it already exists and so God can't create it.

Supposing existence is a predicate leads to a lot of logical upsets such as the above.
Ah, I'm with you (and with Kant). Where I was coming from was applying the ontological argument in the light of the premise of the multiverse as Q expressed it (and which I know some philosophers of science concur with). He wrote

'Or you could argue, without any evidence at all, that God sets up an infinite multiverse, where all things that are possible are inevitable, and possibly, in an infinite number of copies.

The only point to this would presumably be to say: because I can.' (Which isn't to say Q agrees with this, just that he threw it in to spice up the discussion).

So if you have a multiverse 'where all things that are possible are inevitable' then the premise is based on the assertion that it's *possible* for a maximally excellent being to exist. And the rest follows from that.

The argument isn't persuasive if you don't accept the multiverse as described (which I don't by the way) but if you start from that premise you would have to argue why a it's not *possible* for a maximally excellent being to exist in a multiverse where all possibilities *are* actualised.

I don't use ontological arguments as a rule ( as Tom says they are just playing with ideas) but this is one is fun if you're in discussion with someone who suggests the multiverse does away with teleological arguments for fine tuning, and thereby weaken the arguments for a universal designer. It's not the case in our universe that all possibilities are actualised, so without the premise of the multiverse this argument wouldn't be convincing for the reasons you gave (IMHO).

[ 22. June 2012, 16:09: Message edited by: Ramarius ]
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by the long ranger:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Expand please. Or at least provide a citation.
It is hard to get a fix on it, but the number of chains of mutations required to get from the level of biodiversity present in the precambrian to the level we find today (considering that any present given species must be a result of a chain of multiple mutations throughout time, and that there must also be many millions of 'failed' species that were not best fit) must require trillions of generations and many multiples of that of base mutations of dna.

And you have to fit that within a timespan of 600 million years. Any back-of-envelope calculations suggest that for that to be in any way possible, the rate of mutation must have been much greater than is even measured today in the simplest of organisms.

It is a statement of faith to say that is possible.
This isn't my area of expertise, so all I can claim here is the ability to do some research with limited resources....

Non creationist/ID mathematicians have also questioned the validity of neo-Darwinism on the grounds that the sums don't add up. See http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/science/SC1W0102.pdf. This refers to a symposium which discussed the issue. I have tried to find a neutral review of it but failed miserably.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
Try again with the link...

http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/science/SC1W0102.pdf
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
This isn't my area of expertise [[..]
It is mine...

quote:

Non creationist/ID mathematicians have also questioned the validity of neo-Darwinism on the grounds that the sums don't add up. See http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/science/SC1W0102.pdf. This refers to a symposium which discussed the issue. I have tried to find a neutral review of it but failed miserably.
That was in 1962. I have no idea what happend at the symposium, but Ankerberg's take on it is nonsense. Yet again it merely asserts the numbers zre to big without saying what they are. Just plain untrue.

FWIW Ankerberg isn't a biologist but a church minister and a TV evangelist. He's not a YECcie though, he seems more into a continual creation/ID sort of approach. Not that it matters, these things are not actually that difficult to understand - its not rocket science! Maybe if people thought about it for themselves and did those back-of-the-envelope calculations instead of relying on the authority of assertions about them from anti-scientific propagandists they might get a better view of the problem. Or lack of one.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Ken. I was hoping someone could find an independent review of the symposium - the only references I can find are on creationist sites. I do know there were some well respected mathematicians there. Trouble with this stuff is it gets peer reviewed in academic journals to which I don't have access.

Be helpful to see the issues on the table rather the usual creationist/evolutionist bun fight which is the usual fare on the web.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:

Be helpful to see the issues on the table rather the usual creationist/evolutionist bun fight which is the usual fare on the web.
Then write down what you think the issues are and post it here! (or maybe oin the Dead Horses thread to save the hosts apoplexy)

Yes, some very clever people missed the point. Fred Hoyle, a hero of science if ever ther was one, seemed to have a huge mental block on it. But really so what?
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
Lord Kelvin did the sums, back in the nineteenth century and discovered it was physically impossible for the solar system to be much older than 20 million years. His sums were correct; he didn't take into account nuclear fusion which wasn't discovered until after his death.

Conclusion: figures purporting to show evolution is impossible would have to come from someone more likely to be correct than Lord Kelvin, one of the two or three most brilliant physicists of the nineteenth century.
 
Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:

Non creationist/ID mathematicians have also questioned the validity of neo-Darwinism on the grounds that the sums don't add up. See http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/science/SC1W0102.pdf. This refers to a symposium which discussed the issue. I have tried to find a neutral review of it but failed miserably.
That was in 1962. I have no idea what happend at the symposium, but Ankerberg's take on it is nonsense.
Actually it seems to have been in 1966, at least if "Marcel P. Schutzenberger" is really Marcel-Paul Schützenberger. Ankerberg's inability to correctly cite facts doesn't inspire much confidence in the rest of his analysis.

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Yet again it merely asserts the numbers [a]re to[o] big without saying what they are. Just plain untrue.
This is a common argument from most forms of scientific denialists, commonly referred to as "the Argument From Big Numbers". One of the common tactics, obviously used in Ankerberg's analysis, is using large-numbered probabilities and analogizing to real-world physical objects (like number of atoms in an inkblot or number of electrons in the Universe). To get an idea of the scale of probabilities involved, a shuffled deck of cards has an arrangement with a probability of about 8.1×10^67. A six-deck "shoe" like you'd find in a casino comes out at ~2.8×10^407 if the decks are shuffled separately and stacked, a lot higher if they're all shuffled together. Following Ankerberg's analysis, shuffling cards should be impossible, since such low probabilities are involved.

Actually that's a little too charitable. Ankerberg doesn't really construct an argument beyond "golly these numbers are BIG!"
 
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:
And, thinking about it, this is heading fast into the realm of deceased equines.
Which is exactly where it is now going, following an exchange on Host Board.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
This isn't my area of expertise, so all I can claim here is the ability to do some research with limited resources....
I'll leave the biology to Ken and point out that stats is my area of expertise (although I'm fairly rusty).

Creosus has already shown how tiny a probability things in the real world have using decks of cards (although there's either a minus sign from the exponent or an inverse missing - I can't be bothered to work it out).

But this underlines an important point in statistics. Probabilities are only worth anything as predictions under most circumstances.

To use a simple illustration, I have a blue dice, a black dice, and a clear dice, all six sided and, as far as I know, unbiassed*. When I roll them the blue dice rolled a six, the black a three, and the clear a two. The odds of this having happened are low - 1/216. So I can say I have a pretty unlikely event there, right?

Wrong. The 1/216 is meaningless. Whatever numbers I'd rolled the odds would have been 1/216 (give or take the odds of dice balancing on their edge or rolling off the table). The 1/216 probability only becomes meaningful if I'd predicted in advance that's what I'd roll. If I could do that consistently I'd be psychic. And be playing the lottery. But unless I can predict things in advance retrospectively working out the probability of a shuffled deck of cards or a rolled set of dice is meaningless**.

* The blue one is lucky enough that there are certain games I'm banned from using it in.

** Or at least only meaningful to allow me to make future predictions - if I roll three sixes off three dice that isn't meaningful, but if based on that I pick up the dice and predict I'm going to roll three sixes the next time and do, I can conclude they are probably weighted. But that's not the 3 6s. It's the 3 6s when I'd predicted I was about to.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Justinian. Well the obvious layman's response to that is that biologists and mathematicians thought the issue was worth discussing at the Wistar symposium. So they clearly didn't think probability theory should be ruled out of court in relation to evolutionary theory. 

I'd be interested in seeing more debate here between contributors who hold different views of evolutionary theory (rather than evolution v creation v design). In academic circles these debates are, apparently, quite lively. Niles Eldridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Eldredge; he sat with Gould in the punctuated equilibrium camp) put it like this:

"The doubt that has infiltrated the previously smug confident certitude of evolutionary biology's last twenty years has inflamed passions . . There has been a total lack of agreement even within the warring camps . . Things are really in an uproar these days . . Sometimes it seems as though there are as many variations on each [evolutionary] theme as there are individual biologists."—Niles Eldredge, "Evolutionary Housecleaning," in Natural History, February 1982, pp. 78, 81.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. Well the obvious layman's response to that is that biologists and mathematicians thought the issue was worth discussing at the Wistar symposium. So they clearly didn't think probability theory should be ruled out of court in relation to evolutionary theory. 
You mean that a couple of mathematicians acting well outside their sphere of understanding thought they could throw in a couple of hand grenades and were basically laughed at by the biologists for producing bad biology and bad mathematics?

Saying that academics discussed something somewhere is like saying that two football teams played each other once. Therefore a competition of their strengths should be considered fair.

quote:
I'd be interested in seeing more debate here between contributors who hold different views of evolutionary theory (rather than evolution v creation v design). In academic circles these debates are, apparently, quite lively. Niles Eldridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Eldredge; he sat with Gould in the punctuated equilibrium camp) put it like this:
Of course the debates are quite lively. They are between academics in a growing field. And over my head, certainly. But the debates are all between minor variations in the theory of evolution - creation and design get you laughed out of the room, whereas more current debate is more on subjects of mechanisms of selection and group selection. Here isn't where informed contributers would choose to have those debates most of the time.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinian. Well the obvious layman's response to that is that biologists and mathematicians thought the issue was worth discussing at the Wistar symposium.
Exceopt we do not know what was discussed, or why, all we have is one preacher's selected quotes.

Why don't you way what you think the problem is? Then there woudl be an answerable questiuon, something to discuss.

All we have is you pointing to a website where a creationist that I've never heard of says that a scientist I have heard of (Medawar) said that that some other unnamed scientists hasd some disagreements about evolution fifty years ago!


quote:

So they clearly didn't think probability theory should be ruled out of court in relation to evolutionary theory. 
No-one thinks that.

quote:

I'd be interested in seeing more debate here between contributors who hold different views of evolutionary theory...
Well express a view and debate it then!

quote:

In academic circles these debates are, apparently, quite lively.
They always are. Its one of the fun things about science.

quote:

Niles Eldridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niles_Eldredge; he sat with Gould in the punctuated equilibrium camp) put it like this:

"The doubt that has infiltrated the previously smug confident certitude of evolutionary biology's last twenty years has inflamed passions . . There has been a total lack of agreement even within the warring camps . . Things are really in an uproar these days . . Sometimes it seems as though there are as many variations on each [evolutionary] theme as there are individual biologists."
Yes. But I thinbk you are over-interpreting that if you take it to mean that Eldredge or Gould or very many serious naturalists at all disagree about the basics of evolution. Their ideas, and the others Eldredge refers to, are variations on the theme of the neo-Darwinist synthesis, or developments from it, not really opposed to it.

I'm now about three quarters of the way though Gould's last and biggest book, so I've got a good idea of what he was getting at. And its really not anything that YEC or ID can point to and say "wlook,. we told you so". I know some of them try to but they are either fooling themselves, or their followers when they do. There is a lot of technical stuff about this that and the other to do with levels of selection and interactions between them but...
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
There was an account of the symposium : Moorehhead, P.S.; Kaplan, M. M. (1967) Mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution. A symposium held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, April 25 and 26, 1966. Philadelphia, USA; Wistar Institute Press

What I'm trying to find out is if anyone has a summary of the arguments, other than on creationist/ ID boards.

You're reading into my post by the way. I'm interested in the debate between the various views of evolutionists as an exercise in its own right. Forget about creationism and ID - what are evolutionists debating among themselves and why the multiplicity of views? The evolution/ID/creation debate is, as I said above, a different discussion.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
There was an account of the symposium : Moorehhead, P.S.; Kaplan, M. M. (1967) Mathematical challenges to the neo-Darwinian interpretation of evolution. A symposium held at the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology, April 25 and 26, 1966. Philadelphia, USA; Wistar Institute Press

What I'm trying to find out is if anyone has a summary of the arguments, other than on creationist/ ID boards.
I linked one in my previous post.

And I see nothing to say it was remotely mainstream.
 
Posted by OliviaG (# 9881) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
... I'm interested in the debate between the various views of evolutionists as an exercise in its own right. Forget about creationism and ID - what are evolutionists debating among themselves and why the multiplicity of views? The evolution/ID/creation debate is, as I said above, a different discussion.
Well, that seems weird, given that most of the stuff you've referenced in multiple discussions isn't actually from "evolutionists", it's from creationists and their disingenuous partners, the intelligent [sic] designers. It's like saying you're learing about cars by reading running magazines. OliviaG
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:

Forget about creationism and ID - what are evolutionists debating among themselves and why the multiplicity of views?
Multiplicity of views because the world is a complicated place.

What are biologists debating amongst themselves? Lots of things. Mostly very detailed things rather than "big picture" questions, because that's how science works.

But wider subjects do cause arguments. For example:

The basic question of ecology and evolution: why are there so many different kinds of living things?

How did sex evolve?

Was there once an "RNA world"? If there was how and when did modern protein enzymes evolve?

Are more complex systems really more stable? ("Yes!" say all the ecologists, "define 'stable'" says everyone else)


Is evolution best modelled by thinking about natural selection acting on genes, or on individuals, or on species?

When evolution speeds up for one species, as it seems to now and again, how fast can it get?

When it slows down, how long, and how stable, are the periods of relative stability in a species?

How do genetic changes accumulate in sexual species with large populations of many millions? Will mutations and genetic polymorphisms just keep on getting more common indefinitely? Or will more advantageous ones proceed to "fixation" (i.e. end up shared by the vast majority of the population)

Does natural selection mainly operate within species or between species?

Can group selection ever really work? (this old chestnut keeps on coming back - my feeling is that group selection is of almost no real evolutionary importance at all, but lots of clever people disagree)

How can do chromosome numbers change in mammals? Individuals with different chromosome number usually can't mate (not true for all organisms, but it is for mammals)

How important are selective sweeps in reordering genomes?

Bdelloid rotifers? WTF?

Is there a species concept that works for asexual clones, as we assume bacteria to be?

How much gene transfer there is between strains of bacteria in real life? (I think we are finding out fast and some scientists are having trouble believing it - but that's my bias)

Can sympatric speciation even happen?

Are Archaea and Bacteria *really* different?

How did eukaryotic nuclei evolve?

Are mitochondria ancestral to all eukaryotes? (yes they are, I think).

How did photosynthesis evolve?

Where did viruses originate? (Probably multiple true answers)

Is there any validity in "molecular clocks"?
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Ken - thanks [Biased]
@Justinian - thanks for this link re Wistar. Sadly it's just as much a polemic as the link I shared. There's no discussion of the issues.

[ 24. June 2012, 07:48: Message edited by: Ramarius ]
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Father Gregory:
A commonplace of atheist apologetics nowadays is the unexceptional observation that the development of the human genome from dumb chimp common ancestor to garrulous plotting smart guy involves chance genetic mutation. This highly improbable yet nonetheless completely accidental process is supposed to be a knock down argument against alleged divine purposefulness in the evolution of homo sapiens. So how can divine providence deal with a roll of the dice? It's the implications for theology I am interested in, not the process itself, which I accept.
Way I see it, probability is an interesting and useful branch of maths which says that if certain events are equally likely, then certain conclusions follow.

The chance of cutting the pack to the queen of spades is 1 in 52, right ?

Only if all cards are equally likely. If in a particular deck the queen of spades is creased, that outcome is in practice much more likely.

Any statement about the probability of a particular DNA change is predicated on some assumption of what DNA changes are equally likely.

Without a sound scientific basis for that assumption, it's just games with numbers that tell us nothing about the universe we actually live in.

Best wishes,

Russ
 
Posted by Russ (# 120) on :
 
And continuing that thought, the use of probabilities to give an indication of the likelihood of philosophical "prior states" in a Bayesian manner is even more suspect. What possible basis could we have for asserting that two prior states of the universe are equally likely ?

So I wouldn't be basing any theological conclusions on probability any time soon...

Best wishes,

Russ
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Ken - thanks [Biased]
@Justinian - thanks for this link re Wistar. Sadly it's just as much a polemic as the link I shared. There's no discussion of the issues.
What issues?

As far as the biologists are concerned this isn't even undergraduate level stuff. There are no serious issues. The Wistar Seminar argument is nothing more than a warmed up version of Palley's Watchmaker argument - that was defeated over a hundred years ago. It's not relevant and it's not current. And if you want to rebut that sort of thing, there are the good folks at the Discovery Institute pushing it.

As far as the creationists are concerned there are no issues. God created the world. Evolution didn't happen. And the maths is more or less irrelevant.

As far as the ID lobby (normally the Discovery Institute) is concerned, it's a handfull of chaff to throw at orthodox biology. In depth discussion doesn't suit many of them (and those it does get disillusioned).

This is an ex issue. It is not pining for the fjords. It is a 100 years-dead issue that someone has nailed to a perch and is trying to foist off on a poor customer.

And as for the symposium, it's dead easy to host a symposium on almost anything. Put on free travel, free accomodation, and good food, and it's basically a free holiday that the people you've invited get to sit round and natter to other people like them. So it's easy to host a symposium with an agenda almost no one present agrees with; turning up and opposing is not the same as putting your name to something.
 
Posted by Ramarius (# 16551) on :
 
@Justinain: What issues? The issues discussed at the symposium - which wasn't about evolution v ID but about mathematical models as applied to evolution.

This is the point I was making above. It seems to be impossible to have a rational indisciplinary conversation about evolution without the issue being high jacked by discussions about ID and creationism.

None of the mathematicians who attended Wistar were ID proponents or creationists.
 
Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Justinain: What issues? The issues discussed at the symposium - which wasn't about evolution v ID but about mathematical models as applied to evolution.

This is the point I was making above. It seems to be impossible to have a rational indisciplinary conversation about evolution without the issue being high jacked by discussions about ID and creationism.

None of the mathematicians who attended Wistar were ID proponents or creationists.
No. The issues brought up by creationists were about one specific flawed empirical model applied to evolution. Biologists use mathematics - so does any science.

What can't happen is that two mathematicians with flawed understandigns of biology can ask random questions and not be laughed at for asking things that are basics in the field they are trying to move into.

If you want to find interdisciplinary fields, mathematical and theoretical biology certainly exists. I've a friend with a PHD in Bioinformatics which is one of these hybrid fields. And a lot of statistics was developed through and for biology. What you are asking for is neither more nor less than day to day biology in practice. And are saying it can't happen.
 
Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :
 
Quotes file for the Dead Parrot sketch riff in this context.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Justinian:

I've a friend with a PHD in Bioinformatics which is one of these hybrid fields.
I've only got an MSc in Bioinformatics. About half the marks were on a research project - mine was doing some statistics on codon usage bias in bacteria. So I meant it when I said that this was my field of study,

quote:

And a lot of statistics was developed through and for biology.
Very true! Far from geneticists and population biologists ignoring statistics they mostly invented it [Biased] Pretty much all of the plug-in stats-package stuff that peopel use without really understanding what it does comes out of biology or related fields.

Galton (Darwin's cousin) thought up lots of statistical things including the standard deviation, correlation coefficients, and linear regression. His pupil Karl Person more or less invented what was then known as Biometrics (i.e. the statistical study of biology), the most popular correlation coefficient, statistical tests and the P-value, the chi-squared test, principal component analysis, and the first measurements of skewness and kurtosis. Student's T-test is names after "Student", a pseudonymn of Gossett who was the head brewer at Guiness. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test is named after an industrial chemist who also worked in a plant-breeding lab for a while. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was invented by Spearman (naturally), a psychologist who also developed factor analysis.

The greatest genius of all the early population geneticists, and the main archiutect of the so-called neo-Darwinian Synthesis - lots of people think the greatest of all evolutionary biologists after Darwin - was Ronald Fisher, who spent much of his working life at the Rothampsted Agricultural Reserch station - he improved on Pearsons statistical tests, and he thought up analysis of variance, maximum likelihoood, permutation tests - and of course the F-distribution, F-test, and F-statistics (not that he called them that himself). He was also, for what its worth, a devout Anglican of a rather starchy Victorian politically conservative low-church-liberal sort.
 


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