Page 3 of 3

Posted: Tue Feb 27, 2007 1:58 am
by angel
August wrote: Banned from ARN? That's funny, because almost all the posters on ARN are evolutionists.
I don't know your definition of "evolutionists". I may have been there in the wrong time. I met quite few of them.
However, I met a moderator who told me publically that he was not accountable for the quotations he made because he would take and select from anyone thought just what supports his views.
Very scientific.
I think that both of you try to draw conclusions which are not there.
I hate to do this, August.
However, you force me to notice that in science one is more or less free to make any assumption.
What one is not allowed to is selecting the conlusions to be drawn from that assumptions.

It is obvious that if a designer is biological I can ask who/what designed the designer. It is also obvious that Dembski no free lunch "theorem" provides me with an answer: it is necessarily designed by a designer and the CSI of the further designer is way higher that the CSI of what he designed.
Since any biological system has a finite CSI the ultimate deginer must be non-biological, or we are lead to an infinite regression.

There is no way one can escape this.

There are possibilities such as frontloading by an unknown intelligence, panspermia or panpsychism.
Who/what designed the frontloaded intelligence or started the panspermia?
Any starting mechanism you consider either it relies on a higher designer
or may be used to produce life on Earth in an undesigned way.
There is nothing Dembski could say to escape that!

In any event this contradiction is not an idea of mine. if you go to the ARN site and search for UFO keyword you will see the counterarguments that people for ID set up against people believing in ID by UFO civilization. THEY ARE USING THAT ARGUEMENT, not me.

BTW I don't call Dembski a liar, I never managed to discuss with him so I cannot say if he really believes in what he writes.
What I can say is that what he writes is wrong, at least from a mathematical viewpoint. I doubt that something is left if you drop maths from what he writes.


In any event, I would be more than happy to discuss any scenario you could submit to avoid infinite regression, but still preserving the need of a designer for biological life.

Anyhow, you stated somewhere else that you are a believer. How do you reconcile your belief and the theory of evolution?
I am terrified by the possibility of discussing my beliefs publically since we cannot agree on basic scientific notions.
And this is not the suitable topic forum.

However, if you are curious I can discuss it. I only would like to avoid any discussion about subjects which rely on personal opinions only.
godslanguage wrote: Secondly, I am not a biologist so I'm taking my comments from the perspective of design in technology/engineering.
Engineer? well maybe you can explain me how evolutionary systems have proven to be able to produce self replicators from unguided undesigned algorithms.

So, technically, there is no point in discussing this with you since you avoid the possibility and therefore avoid any comparison that adheres or that can correspond to that possibility.
I am getting sick of repeating that on and on... :P
I am NOT rejecting the possibility of design. I am just asking for evidence before buying it.
Is it to ask for too much?

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 8:57 pm
by godslanguage
I don't know your definition of "evolutionists". I may have been there in the wrong time. I met quite few of them.
However, I met a moderator who told me publically that he was not accountable for the quotations he made because he would take and select from anyone thought just what supports his views.
Very scientific.
This is simply not true angel, I have been looking through ARN for quite a while now and have never seen anyone get banned from simply having they're own view or opinion. Like August pointed out, many if not most of them are evolutionists but view evolution as lacking in many respects in terms of the ND'st viewpoint and it is quite a hotly debated forum on evolution and intelligent design, there is no doubt about that. The fact is you must have gone beyond the rules of the forum or perhaps (im suspecting) you were bashing ones view point (ie: intelligent design),and this is what got you kicked.
Engineer? well maybe you can explain me how evolutionary systems have proven to be able to produce self replicators from unguided undesigned algorithms.
No, that is the conclusion ND'sm is making, that it is "unguided undesigned". There is NOWHERE in engineering/technology that the unguided undesigned concept belongs, nothing in designing has any unguided component and is primarily based on intelligent input processes. The only unguided part is the actual finished design itself where there is either a substantial amount of physical interaction or very little interaction for the design to produce/serve a function/purpose. It is a goal intended process to begin with, I am not doubting evolution has some random component but since it is incapable (and highly unlikely) of explaining incredible amounts of specificity it is reasonable to suggest or to make the assumption that it also has a goal directed or goal intended component/process as well.
I am getting sick of repeating that on and on... :P
I am NOT rejecting the possibility of design. I am just asking for evidence before buying it.
Is it to ask for too much?

Apart from the evidence I would like to see from ND'st, HOW much evidence would you like angel for intelligent design?
Intelligent Design is undoubtedly a fairly new theory and which holds up to this point a very limited amount of scientific investigation apart from what Behe or Dembski have already contributed.

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2007 10:07 pm
by Gman
Angel wrote:I am getting sick of repeating that on and on... Razz
I am NOT rejecting the possibility of design. I am just asking for evidence before buying it.
Is it to ask for too much?
Godslanguage and others here have repeatedly shown you numerous information for design.. And yet you keep saying the same thing over and over again.. It's either you don't care to know or you simply have an axe to grind with us... I don't know why you are here on this forum...

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 8:38 am
by angel
No, that is the conclusion ND'sm is making, that it is "unguided undesigned".
I am talking about artificial life systems as Tierra or Archis, not the usual genetic algorithms.
In usual GAs the design is pretty evident in then choice of the fit function and in the genotype --> fenotype map. The result depends on these choice.

Can you show me where the design is in Archis or Tierra sytems where there is no fit function and the g-f map is genetically determined?

I run Archis on my desktop and it evolved self replicators in half an hour with no fit function.
This is simply not true angel
What is untrue? That I have not been banned, that they are evolutionists of that the moderator did not posted what I claimed?
Intelligent Design is undoubtedly a fairly new theory
Well... it is the same theory they hold BEFORE Darwinism.
Since they still have found no new evidence.
Thence pretty old I would say.

PS GMan: thanks for your kind words. I have nothing to add to you.


BTW
http://www.arn.org/ubbthreads/showflat. ... art=2&vc=1
jazzraptor wrote: I have no obligation to fully explain every facet of every link that I use to substantiate MY arguments.
The fact is you must have gone beyond the rules of the forum or perhaps (im suspecting) you were bashing ones view point (ie: intelligent design),and this is what got you kicked.
You may be true, o0f course. Though they never explained me which rule I broke. However, they edited back my mail.
Very nice indeed.

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2007 12:33 pm
by godslanguage
I am talking about artificial life systems as Tierra or Archis, not the usual genetic algorithms.
In usual GAs the design is pretty evident in then choice of the fit function and in the genotype --> fenotype map. The result depends on these choice.
For the limited time I have now:

"The May 8, 2002, edition of Nature magazine carried a study showing the terrible dilemma facing the Darwinist account of biocomplexity. Unable to offer any scientific evidence from nature, the fossil record or the laboratory to back up the claim that the complex features in living things were acquired in stages, Darwinists were apparently seeking consolation in the virtual world.

The researchers wrote that on the programming platform called 'Avida' which they had developed they had evolved rival digital organisms by subjecting them to mutation, and that after thousands of (accelerated) generations these came to possess complex features. They then claimed that their results had shown that the complex functions in living things could emerge through natural selection and random mutations.

However, it is erroneous to portray this experiment carried out in silico (in a computer environment) as evidence for Darwinism, because the complexity obtained in the experiment first emerges in a 'programmed' computer program, in other words through conscious intervention. All these simulations in the computer take place in line with the parameters established by the programmers, all of whom are evolutionists.

No matter how much the events in the simulation appear to happen at random, this is actually deceptive. In this research, clearly carried out with the aim of providing support for evolution, the base parameters are clearly set out in accordance with evolutionist preconception. Nonetheless, this appears as a scientific study in some news resources. Space.com carried the story under the heading “Darwin Proved Right by Experiment with 'Alien' Life” ,Yet that interpretation is very definitely incorrect, since the study is based on a directed process, not a random one.

For example, the digital organisms in this experiment are small computer programs 'rewarded' according to their mathematical ability. A digital organism which performs successful functions is allowed more computer time in which to achieve further success by multiplying. Spac.com however ignores the fact that this is a controlled process, evaluates the situation in the light of evolutionist preconceptions, and states,

“Importantly, the experiment found that complex logical ability never evolves unless simpler abilities?foundational mutations?are rewarded.”

It is evident that the question of what change will be rewarded is entirely up to the programmer's initiative. The programmer first sets out the change to be rewarded, and then forms the reward to be enjoyed by the digital organism undergoing this change; in other words he decides which stage it will move on to. In nature, however, there is no conscious system which knows what is a reward and what a punishment and which selects organisms accordingly. Natural selection, upon which evolutionists rely, is a process put forward as an entirely blind mechanism, lacking any consciousness and therefore unable to distinguish between good and bad, useful and harmful, positive and negative. In short, natural selection lacks one thing clearly supported in this simulation; purpose. Richard Lenski, one of the researchers, made the following comment in space.com regarding the study,

“Our work allowed us to see how the most complex functions are built up from simpler and simpler functions."

It is inconsistent to say that a study whose results were evident beforehand, and even set out by the programmer himself, enabled anyone to see anything. Lenski's words are as illogical as saying when an alarm clock rings at the set time, 'Our study enables us to see that an alarm clock will ring at an appointed time.'

Later in the space.com article Lenski says, “We also saw that some mutations looked like bad events when they happened, but turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time." He suggests, in other words, that harmful mutations can have a long-term beneficial effect on a population.

Lenski's mutations may not have had harmful effects on the digital organisms, and may even have been useful enough to give rise to more complex digital organisms. Yet the mutations in Lanski's digital organisms and those in real-life organisms are very different in terms of their effects. That is sufficient to show that Lenski's comments on in silico mutations need to be restricted to the in silico world.

An article by the chemist Steven A. Benner in the January 9, 2003, edition of Nature magazine contained a number of comments on 'synthetic biology' and said that the mutations in simulations were a far cry from the real thing:

“Computer models that simulate replication and evolution in silico are relatively easy to come by. A computer program can suffer mutations and keep on ticking. But real molecules often change their behaviour dramatically upon even a slight change in structure. Chemists have in hand a modest number of chemical systems that can function as templates for their own synthesis. But those that can suffer mutation and still have 'children' are proving harder to find.”

It has been observed that random mutations always have harmful effects on living things. For instance, a fly's head may come out of its chest or a baby may be born with one eye in the middle of its head. Not a single instance is known of these mutations adding information to a living thing's DNA and thus turning it into a more complex life form. In other words, a digital organism subjected to mutation in Lenski's simulation turning into a more complex form by 'surviving' stems not from imitation of the effects of mutations in the real world, but rather from computer parameters set up in the light of preconceptions.

Another inconsistent aspect of this research is the fact that there are no realistic simulations of the digital organisms employed imitating living ones. On space.com Christoph Adami reveals this inconsistency by saying that these have nothing to do with life on Earth but are nevertheless genuine organisms. Organisms bearing no similarity to anything living on Earth are being used in a simulation alleged to produce findings regarding the origin of life on Earth.

In fact, no in silico simulation can realistically imitate the complex structure of life. For instance, the biochemical events which take place inside a bacterium depend on thousands of complex molecules. It is very difficult for a computer to simulate even the packaging of a single protein. Protein folding happens so fast, in units as small as millionths of a second. So computer simulations have been suggested as an alternative but up to this point the massive number of calculations involved have proven to be too much for single computers to handle. Using one computer, "it would take 10,000 days or 30 years just to see one protein fold," the Stanford University physical chemist Vijay Pande, who published such a study in 2002, said.

For that reason, the results of experiments on in silico organisms have no significance for real life, and any experiment based on digital organisms goes no further than being a computer game.

As we have seen, this simulation experiment published in Nature magazine offers no evidence to show that the complexity of life is the result of evolution. Virtual initiatives of this kind stem from the fact that the theory of evolution, based on gradual stages, is quite unable to account for the generally irreducibly complex structure of life. The only explanation of irreducible complexity is that the components were present, fully formed, at one and the same time, in other words that they were created. Our advice to Nature magazine is that it rely on studies based on true facts about the world, not on fantasies allegedly proven in the virtual one."

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:17 am
by angel
I might agree that computer is not abiogenesis.
Howerver, you certainly agree that often one of the argument against abiogenesis is that order cannot emerge from chaos, or II principle of thermodynamics or information cannot emerge from random mutations.

I know you never (to me at lest) used these arguments. I beg your pardon but I was somehow preventing these arguments which I am sure you were not going to use.

BTW do you agree that these arguments cannot be used against evolution because they are disproven by undirected evolutonary simulations?

Unless you are able to show how they produce informations in detail.

Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:04 am
by angel
I think we are going away from the central core of the thread.

Can someone explain why I would be stupid to consider a miracolous the eye as a product of chance but I could be suprised that I could, with my limited intelligence, improve it if it were produced by an infinitely powerful designer?