Hi Bert;
You wrote:
"What is the overwhelming evidence? The overwhelming evidence is
for many complex features in biological organisms without the
faintest suggestion by anyone as to how they might form gradually
and saltationism begs for a creator."
Your complaint continues to be that there is not the "faintest
suggestion by anyone" as to how complex features in biological organisms
might form. My informing you of information generation in
far-from-equilibrium systems (turbulent and/or chaotic) - with the
example of
BZ (chemical) generated information from strange attractors pertinent to
biology - was at least this.
The philosophical center of complexity theory is not simply that
randomness generates order as your responses and examples involving
dice seem to indicate. It is the interplay between the laws of physics
and chemistry (Glenn referred to these in his mention of DEQs),
often described as "top-down", operating on the stochastic fluctuations
(noise) of the individual elements comprising a system that
selects certain events having a parameter or state space that resonates
with the driving mechanisms in a self amplifying manner. This thus
gives prominence to a set of individual fluctuations over the prevailing
stochastic background. The physical laws (environment) select
certain fluctuations (fittest mutation).
This paradigm explains all of the patterns we observe in
far-from-equilibrium systems found in nature, e.g. tornados, sand dune
and rock
formations, (the crystallization you mention is actually very low in
complexity; but it does adhere to the above paradigm in the sense that
upon reaching an energy threshold, order is suddenly generated from a
previously chaotic state - random motion of the liquid ), fractal
geometry (e.g. trees, shore lines, etc.) , pulsed lasers, Grand Canyons,
.... It is therefore so much more than a few patterns arising from a
random toss of the die as is your apparent understanding. In fact, as
Stuart Kauffman puts it, (my paraphrase) because of the presently
understood laws of nature (quantum mechanics), when a threshold is
reached in a turbulent system, self organization predictable occurs;
hence, the origin of life and the evolution of humans is not only
possible but it is expected!
While I agree that the detailed description of processes involved in
biological mutation is demanding ( I leave you in the apparently
competent hands of Tim Ikeda and others on this list serve), it is
fallacious to suggest that since we don't have the mechanism required
by the evolutionary paradigm, it is not possible for it to have
occurred.
As a matter of faith, it is an observational fact that our God has
created a universe that self organizes. What stops a deistic charge is
that
Christian belief involves contingency and interaction via revelation and
Holy Spirit - with the quintessential interjection of new information
into natural process occurring in the manger of Bethlehem.
Sincerely;
George A.
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