Battle Talk ~ Battle Royale VII

[attention]

Bob's 9-th post: Natural selection

Bob's 9-th post: Natural selection

Bob's 9-th post

"BQ37: With Zakath AWOL, would someone in the TOL atheist community please respond: Natural selection is a conservative, not a creative, force. a) True b) False
If B, please explain: "

The existing material objective world, all of nature, exists in the form of development, which goes both ways: Up and Down.
Which means there are both mechanisms that work it's way up from lower complexity to higher complexity, and mechanisms that do the opposite. Life and Death are two sides of the same coin.
Actually, the mechanisms of nature should not be understood as working in circular form, in which the end result is that one ends where one has started, but working in the form of a spiral. You do not go back to the point where you came from, but end up at a higher level.

ALL of nature, which is in both
- The anorganic world (lifeless matter)
- The organic world
- The human society

are proof for that mechanism, developmenet process, at work.

Natural selection is just one element of a infinitely more complex mechanism at work in nature.

Nature works in a Dialectical way.

A very simple example of how dialectics work in a simple development process of a plant:

1. Thesis - a seed
2. Anti-Thesis - a plant
3. Synthesis - multiple and slighly changes seeds

The development is this: from seed to mulitple and slightly changed seeds, we get back what we had: the seed. But quantitaive and qualitativ changes occured, which means we reached a higher level.

 

[D the Atheist]

It's a fact.

Excuse me One Eyed Jack, but if Bob is proposing that the statistical chance of life is extremely low, too low to actually happen in his frame of reality reference, then he is saying that it could happen.

He has to prove his frame of reference is the one that is if he wishes to persist with this line of argument. This is not possible and that is the only fact worth considering here.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by attention
The development is this: from seed to mulitple and slightly changed seeds, we get back what we had: the seed. But quantitaive and qualitativ changes occured, which means we reached a higher level.

Looks to me like all you've got are more seeds. Any changes that took place can be explained by genetics. You can't extrapolate this to show that life can arise on its own from inorganic matter.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
Excuse me One Eyed Jack, but if Bob is proposing that the statistical chance of life is extremely low, too low to actually happen in his frame of reality reference, then he is saying that it could happen.

The probabilities are so low as to approach zero.

 

[D the Atheist]

Approaching zero and actual zero may be an infinite difference.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
Approaching zero and actual zero may be an infinite difference.

As long as you're dealing with numbers, no matter how small or how large, the difference is always going to be finite.

 

[attention]

Bob's 9-th post

Bob's 9-th post

Bob's 9-th post

"BQ38: With Zakath AWOL, would some atheist please demonstrate what mathematic or scientific principle or principles creationists misapply when calculating the probabilities of a single protein originally appearing by chance, or of color vision, or of echolocation."

Probabilistic calculations are only usefull and meaningfull when dealing with KNOWN mechanisms.

You tried to apply a probabilistic calculation in a situation in which it was already acknowledged that the mechanism was not known.
Not known, means: not known. So it does not mean that the mechanism then can be understood as total random chance as the mechanism.

All you "proof" with that approach is that total random chance is NOT the mechanism at work.

In fact, all of nature does not work in a probabilistic way or indeterministic way, but strictly causal and deterministic.

This might - at first sight - contradict of much we know of how science approaches many phenomena in nature.
But that has nothing to do with the way nature itself proceeds, but with the way we can know about how nature proceeds.

For example: the weather system is in itself a deterministic and causal process. But the number of causal events and factors are that immensely big, that we can not possibly (not even in theory) know all the factors that make the weather system into a deterministic event.

We use therefore in an approach to describing and predicting weather chance based or probabilistic models, since we can not know all the facts that make it deterministic.

Only in the most simplest cases can we actually describe a system as an actual deterministic process.

As another example: the event of a tornado that destroys a house and lifts up a car and deposits it tens of meters further away.
When we already know of the fact that this tornado exists, and know how it course proceeds, and know that the house and the car are on the impact course of this tornado, this event of lifting up a car, is not a very inprobable event.

But suppose now, we would not know anything about weather phenomena. The only thing we would know were the basic properties that make up a weather system, which are: the invididual molecules that circulate in the atmosphere, the surface of the earth, and the heating of the sun.

When we on that basis would have to calculate - based on a total random chance process - what the weather phenomena could perform or not perform, this same event of a tornado lifting a car, would have a probability that would make it very improbable indeed. As improbable as: could never happen.

Conclusion:

Wether or not a process is and the extend to which it is deterministic is based on what we actually know about the mechanisms at work.
Not the actual process itself, but our knowledge of a proces determine the extend to which it is deterministic.


And about a-biogenises and chemical evolution leading to life:

What is and can be known about this is, due to the fact that we talk about processes that happened billions of years ago, and we don't have "fossil" remains of proto life forms, and have to deal with a innumerous amount of unknown factors, very little.

We are very sorry, but the account of evolution itself, did not make it possible that a consciouss life form emerged before chemical a-biogenesis had even started, which therefore means: no consciouss observer was there to actually state and proof that the chances of life were very probable.

But we know this:

It actually happened!

And that is all what matters!

 

[D the Atheist]

That is mathematics and may or may not reflect reality. As an example if I came to see you, at every stage I will always be half way there. Does that mean I cannot actually reach you.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
That is mathematics and may or may not reflect reality. As an example if I came to see you, at every stage I will always be half way there. Does that mean I cannot actually reach you.

This is just a rehash of Zeno's paradox. The fact of the matter is that you will reach me.

http://www.deltalink.com/dodson/html/zeno.solution.html

 

[D the Atheist]

Thank you for agreeing with me. It took some though.

 

[attention]

Originally posted by One Eyed Jack
Looks to me like all you've got are more seeds. Any changes that took place can be explained by genetics. You can't extrapolate this to show that life can arise on its own from inorganic matter.

The example of the seed forming a plant and then producing more and changed seeds, was just an example of how in such an example it can be understood that development occurs.

I just showed that, while we arive with what we started with, we did not proceed in a circle but in a spiral. Which means: slight and gradual chances took place.

The example was an example from living organisms.
But the same type of developing process occurs within anorganic matter too, namely that quantitative and qualitative changes occur.

Some time after the Big Bang and before there were galaxies and stars, the universe consisted mainly in the form of hydrogen.
There was no way for chemical evolution to start from that situation.
But matter itself formed clouds of hydrogen and some other light elements into stars and these stars formed galaxy systems, which transformed the hydrogen into heavier elements.
These heavier elements were exposed into the universe again, after the star collapses. After some generations of stars, also the sun formed with the other planets of the solar system.
The conditions on earth made it possible for chemical evolution, so that all sorts of chemical molecules could form.

All this just explains that changes in matter DO lead to not only quantitative chaces, but also qualitative chances, namely: the higher elements, and complex chemical bindings between atoms, forming complex anorganic and organic molecules.

What just means that all those quantitative and qualitative changes do not have a limit. You can not just turn your head away and state that chemical evolution is limited to form only form new chemicals, and life could never emerge from that.

That would be the same as stating that clouds of hydrogen gasses could only form new clouds of hydrogen gasses but never could form new elements, let alone complex chemical bindings and complex anorganic and organic molecules.

Well they did.

You just place an arbitrary point, that where chemical evolution goes over into biological evolution, which by the way should not be conceived of as a single and unique transformation happening all at once, but in slow and gradual steps (there could have been hundreds of millions of years in which the chemical evolution transformed into biological evolution, the a-biogenesis phase).

Why would there be such a limit imposed on development, that chemical evolution could not walk over into biological evolution?

Why is it possible that simple hydrogen and other light elements transform in billions of years into complex anorganic and organic molecules, and why would it not be possible that this evolution went further forming proto-life and ultimately life forms?

What is the principle objection there? And why exactly there?

What is it that makes the birth of the first (proto-)life form so much more incredible then the
- birth of the first hydrogen atoms
- birth of the first star and galaxies
- birth of the sun, earth and solar system
- birth of complex anorganic and organic molecules
- your birth

 

[CapnFungi]

take note.. he only agrees that if you came to him you would reach him. that is it!

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
Thank you for agreeing with me. It took some though.

What am I agreeing with you about?

 

[D the Atheist]

That the mathematics used in the proof of god may not reflect reality.

 

[CapnFungi]

Originally posted by One Eyed Jack
What am I agreeing with you about?

AD thinks that by you saying that he would eventually reach you, you are aggreeing with what ever you stated earlier that you disagreed with.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by attention
That would be the same as stating that clouds of hydrogen gasses could only form new clouds of hydrogen gases but never could form new elements.

Well they did.

Only if they bunch up enough for fusion to take place.

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
That the mathematics used in the proof of god may not reflect reality.

I never said God could be mathematically proven.

 

[D the Atheist]

Origins of life...god...whatever. We all know what we are talking about now, don't we!

 

[One Eyed Jack]

Originally posted by D the Atheist
Origins of life...god...whatever. We all know what we are talking about now, don't we!

I don't think you do...

 

[CapnFungi]

I think i'm lost now! LoL