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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Chancing it to be Human
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the long ranger
Shipmate
# 17109
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Posted
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 ]
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"..into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” “But Rabbi, how can this happen for those who have no teeth?”
"..If some have no teeth, then teeth will be provided.”
Posts: 1310 | Registered: May 2012
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
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?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
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.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
long ranger --
How are you calculating the percentage probability of divine intervention?
[ 20. June 2012, 14:46: Message edited by: Ricardus ]
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
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"?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
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.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
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.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
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 ]
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
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.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
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.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
Posts: 15099 | From: Manchester, UK | Registered: May 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
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.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
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 ]
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
And, thinking about it, this is heading fast into the realm of deceased equines.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
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?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
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?
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
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
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
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 ]
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
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?
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
@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?
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
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!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
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
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
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.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
Posts: 3926 | From: The Sea Coast of Bohemia | Registered: Dec 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
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.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
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.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
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.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
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 ]
Posts: 950 | From: Virtually anywhere | Registered: Jul 2011
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
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.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
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Posted
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.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
@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.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
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?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
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.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Crœsos
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# 238
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Posted
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!"
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Barnabas62
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Posted
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
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
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Justinian
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# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
@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.
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Justinian
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# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
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...
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ramarius
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# 16551
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Posted
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.
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Soror Magna
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# 9881
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Posted
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
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
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"?
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
@Ken - thanks ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
@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 ]
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
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
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
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
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Justinian
Shipmate
# 5357
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ramarius:
@Ken - thanks
@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.
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My real name consists of just four letters, but in billions of combinations.
Eudaimonaic Laughter - my blog.
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Ramarius
Shipmate
# 16551
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Posted
@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.
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