[quote]
http://pub18.ezboard.com/fhavetheologywillarguescienceandreligiousbelief.showM
essage?topicID=29.topic
07/23/2000 09:29 pm (retrieved on 04/11/2001 at 10:19 pm, post was unedited
by me at that time)
Tiny Thinker: As for the origin of Pax6, it is a member of the Pax family and
seems related to other members of the homeodomain, which are very promiscuous
in their signal reception. I could mention that gene duplication, inversion,
horizontal transfer, and other mechanisms like simple base pair substitution
have been long known as agents producing novelty in genes, but I assume you
knew that.
WWASIAUC: Yes, I know them. Which one was it that actually led to Pax-6 from
its predecessor?
Lateral gene transfer explains nothing about a gene's origin - just its
subsequent radiation. Gene duplication also does not explain the origin of
new genes - it explains how redundant copies of existing genes can be
introduced into a genome: one of the copies must still undergo some
evolutionary process(es) to arrive at a new function. Does a single base pair
substitution account for the major transition from "almost Pax-6" to "genuine
Pax-6"? If so, which nucleotide site did this occur at, what was the fitness
of the pre-substituted gene, and how did fitness increase after the point
mutation? What segment(s) were inverted if that is the mechanism by which
Pax-6 arose?
If one doesn't know the answers to these evolutionary questions, then how can
he/she claim to know that random mutation/natural selection was the actual
mechanism that generated Pax-6? (PS: Note that I am not resting my case on
Pax-6 - I am just using it as one example of many in which purely natural
evolution is automatically assumed to be the mechanism for change, even
though the evidence to support such a claim is lacking).
Tiny Thinker: As I discussed with JJ, we needn't know everything to know
something. The basic question really comes down to "Where does X come from?"
The choice between naturalism and ID is based on considerations other than
empirical ones, since both are different ways of interpreting such empirical
information. I say that ID is a way of giving up and saying "We cannot know
where X came from so it must have been…Designed". I prefer the scenario in
which it is possible, even if unlikely, to find the answers to our questions.
WWASIAUC: ID does not just throw in the towel when it reaches a problem in
naturalistic explanations - it looks for potential naturalistic answers and
judges the available evidence, and then determines what the best explanation
really is.
Take William Dembski's Explanatory Filter. Take any event and drop it into
the top of the filter and his EF will attribute it to either law
(regularity), chance, or design. Design is not inferred unless all other
possibilities have been exhausted. Here is a barebones run through.
(1) Is event E governed by some law and/or is it highly likely to occur?
Yes - attribute the event to law/regularity
No - continue.
(2) Is event E an intermediate probability event (such as winning a "million
to one" lottery if there are thousands of players)?
Yes - attribute the event to chance
No - continue
(3) The event is now determined to be a small probability event. Is it also
specified?
No - attribute the event to chance
Yes - attribute the event to design
Tiny Thinker: I noticed that somewhere you said that "design need not be
optimal". I suppose then that your designer isn't God.
WWASIAUC: "My designer" doesn't have to be the Christian God, or any deity -
intelligent aliens would suffice (so that gives three broad possibilities:
the Christian God, another deity, or extraterrestrial intelligences).
Assuming for the sake of argument that everyone suddenly accepted that IDists
are right - that there was a intelligent designer of life - I don't believe
that science alone could tell us which of the three possibilities is correct.
[I]The common thread of the ID arguments (those based on Complex Specified
Information, William Demsbki's Explanatory Filter, and Michael Behe's
Irreducibly Complexity) is intelligence[/I]. What intelligence? Can't tell
from the evidence. Was it human? Can't tell. Was it a deity? Can't tell. Male
or female? Can't tell. All we claim to detect is the intervention of
intellgence itself.
If ID ever does "prove" the need for intelligence in the origin of life (or
the origin of irreducibly complex biological systems, etc.), then the various
theologies would be able to take such information and apply it to their own
religions - such confirmation of ID would "support" all religions and no
religions simultaneously. [I]ID does not claim to be able to detect the
attributes or identity of the designer(s), just his/her/its/their
interactions[/I].
WWASIAUC: Now if at least half of all scientists accept that there are
between 10 and 20 thousand intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations in our
Milky Way galaxy alone (see calculations using the Drake Equation), with the
overall number remaining fairly constant as the civilizations that go extinct
are replaced by new civilizations, and that each of these thousands has
advanced far enough to acquire knowledge of electromangetic communication,
then is it so difficult to accept the POSSIBILITY that one of them might have
seeded life on Earth? Is this any more ludicrous than claiming that "my
grandfather was an ape" [a purposeful misstatement in reference to your use
of the trivializing "little green men" in relation to Directed Panspermia].
Tiny Thinker: You also snipped a quote from Science suggesting that
carbon-based life is very rare, so why the turn-around in favor of those
camps who predict widespread ET existence?
WWASIAUC: You misinterpretted the Science article. It did not say that
carbon-based life was very rare -
it said that if the strong nuclear force had been 0.5% or more different, or
if the electromagnetic force had
been 4% or more different, then no carbon and/or no oxygen would have been
produced in any stars. Thus, had these values been different by these
amounts, then there would be no life, of any kind, anywhere in the universe.
Tiny Thinker: Are you a member of the camp that doesn't feel the need for
life to be carbon-based?
WWASIAUC: Yes and No. I believe that first, we should constrain ourselves to
what is known (or at least
has a lot of proof of principle), and that does not include assuming other
bizarre forms of life into existence
just to have some answer to a fine tuning problem - doing so is ad hoc. I
believe that all biological life forms (even those that might exist on other
worlds) would be built upon organic (i.e., carbon) chemistry. However, I also
believe that robotic life is possible, and that we humans will achieve this
goal before the end of the century.
Tiny Thinker: According to your other posts, you suggested that the majority
of ID folks had no problem with the most of evolution, it's the abiogenesis
part that is the main problem.
WWASIAUC: Close enough (but note that Michael Behe, a leading ID author,
obviously does have reservations about evolution other than that related to
the origin of life).
Tiny Thinker: The models for "widespread life" suggest that the processes
which generate life are robust. This argues against the need for help in the
origin of life because the natural processes involved are so potent…
WWASIAUC: Oh, you'll love this! I believe that both the existence and the
non-existence of extraterrestrial civilizations supports my position. If we
were to find even 1 such civilization, it would immediately bolster the
Directed Panspermia hypothesis strongly. If on the other hand, we search and
search and finally decide that to do so is futile (long live the Fermi
paradox!), then that would only serve to strengthen the case for the
difficulty in life originating, and also the idea that the Earth and humans
are unique (down with the Principle of Mediocrity!). I can argue against, or
argue for, either, both, or neither. How is that for an argument one can't
lose!
But one objection I must point out is that just because life can survive in
varied and extreme environments does not mean it could arise under those same
conditions. This is an all-too-common mistake made both in "pop-science"
material (probably as a simple logic flaw) and by NASA (possibly in order to
maintain excitement about finding life "out there" so that funding does not
dry up). Evidence points to a single cell or single community of cells being
the stock from which all other life evolved (this hypothetical organism is
sometimes called the Most Recent Common Ancestor, or the Universal Ancestor,
etc). A single cell or community of cells could not originate in the bitter
cold of an ice sheet, AND in the extreme heat of a desert, AND in the high
pressures of hydrothermal vents, AND in the acid pools of natural springs,
AND kilometers down in the lithosphere, AND ….. [I]One should not conflate
the conditions under which life can exist with those under which life can
originate[/I] (not that you did so).
Tiny Thinker: … or else it requires a designer to facilitate the emergence of
the designer. This is a bad loop to be caught in. Who designed you designer?
Who designed the designer before that? And the one before that? How is this
more likely than a strictly naturalistic causal chain?
WWASIAUC: First, do you consider the Big Bang to be unscientific because its
cause cannot be determined? Something had to create the singularity from
which the universe sprang forth, and something had to create that something
that created the singularity, and so on, and so on, etc. Infinite regress is
a problem in one form or other for both the IDists and the pure naturalists.
However, there might be a way out for ID. What if the complex life found on
Earth is not the simplest possible form of intelligence?
For instance, could intelligence exist in non-biological form? Before you
immediately answer No, consider this. Humans have created off-the-shelf
computer programs that can not only play chess, but play it so well as to
beat all but those humans at the international grandmaster level (and even
they cannot compete with the best programs). Playing chess is not all that
difficult - just memorize a set of rules and follow them. The difficult part
is playing chess well - formulating long-range strategies; keeping an eye out
for tactics; reevaluating the relative values of knights and bishops as the
position opens up or closes; reevaluating the proper placement and function
of pieces as the opening gives way to the middle game, and then to the
ending; understanding and developing plans based on pawn formations, such as
the minority attack, creating a passed pawn, or better yet, a protected
passed pawn; gaining and maintaining control of the center; proper usage of
ranks and files, such as controlling open or half-open files; etc. It is the
mastering of these "tools" that allows one person to demonstrate complete
dominance over another - and that is what was required for a computer to beat
Gary Kasparov (who was at the time the current world champion, as well as
being the highest rated chess player ever). To me, this suggests that if it
does not already do so, that intelligence of some form can exist in a
non-biological entity - computers that can play chess well are "proof of
principle".
Also, what if some of the problems associated with abiogenesis did not
pertain to earlier life forms. What if those life forms were based on organic
molecules that did not have left- and right-handed enantiomers? There would
be no need to look for mechanisms for homochirality, and enantiomeric
cross-inhibition would not be a problem during polymerization. Or what if
sugars, which are easier to generate under prebiotically-plausible conditions
than are nucleic acids, played the informational roles (they have the
capability to store vast amounts of information, but that ability is not
taken full advantage of here on Earth).
Also, what if this hypothetical "life" started off with intelligence, instead
of requiring over 3 billions years to evolve it. Suppose that the first
"cells" under such a scenario were excitable (able to propagate action
potentials, "electrical impulses") and each "cell" in a colony made contacts
with its nearest neighbors. They could form a sort of biological neural net
that would have the potential to learn, just as computer neural nets can. For
example, perhaps certain "intercellular" stimuli resulted in a slight
chemical or physical difference in one of the "cells", which led to an
advantage. If so, then the rest of the "cells" could immediately be so
stimulated such that they would not have to wait for the slow processes
associated with natural evolution to operate - alleles would not need to be
generated, nor spread throughout the population. In this way, intelligence
could direct evolution - that's right - the "cells" themselves could
intentionally direct their own evolution, leading to extremely fast and
accurate complexification.
Of course this solution to the infinite regress arguements aimed against
Directd Panspermia is all very, very hypothetical. But it does show that
there is at least a potential resolution to it.
[/quote]
DNAunion: Now, do those show someone who has already blown his top? Not at
all.
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