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buffalo
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Sure you are. Fossils are very rare and almost always appear in sedimentary rocks. Further scrambled and scattered as catastrophic events happen.
Evolution: Is There Any Good Reason To Reject The Abiogenesis Hypothesis?
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buffalo
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rossum
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God is omniscient. In particular God knows the DNA sequence of all human beings.
If any human DNA sequence contains complex specified information (CSI) then God’s mind also contains CSI as it contains exactly the same sequences.
If God is not designed, then the CSI in God’s mind was not designed.
God is not designed.
Therefore CSI can exist without being designed.
As I pointed out in my thread on ID being self-refuting, at some point ID requires an undesigned designer in order to escape an infinite regress of designers. The Abrahamic God is one possible undesigned designer.
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o_mlly
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The DNA sequence is discursive knowledge to the human mind, that is successive and experiential.
However, God sees all things in one (thing), which is Himself. Therefore God sees all things together, and not successively.
See Summa 1.14.7.
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o_mlly
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ID is no more fragile as a theory than evolution as an explanation of living organisms.
Evolution theory does not answer the questions of: “Where did life come from for living beings?”, or “Where did matter come from for organisms?” ID does not answer the question, “Where did the intelligent designer come from?”
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rossum
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This I will not accept. If a DNA sequence contains a certain amount of information, then the amount of information does not change if you change the format in which that same information is held.
Effectively you are arguing here for a zero-information God, which negates the claim that God is omniscient. Any entity which knows something contains information about what it knows. With no information it can know nothing.
This is not relevant. It says that God holds His knowledge/information in parallel, not in series as we hold ours. God may use a different storage format, but He does hold information and that information is not zero.
Vitalism has long been discredited in biology. Life is an emergent property. Hydrogen is not wet, it is a gas. Oxygen is not wet, it is a gas at room temperature. Water is wet. Wetness is an emergent property of water. It is not present in any of the individual parts, but it is present in the complete assembly.
See cosmology and astronomy, not biology. If you want I could trace everything back to an eternal uncreated multiverse which spawned our current universe. You have an eternal uncreated God; I have an eternal uncreated multiverse.
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o_mlly
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Our God is not the “puny God” as some have claimed. He is not the superman, knowing things as humans know things, only better. He knows things in a completely different way, in their entirety eternally.
The format of that same information does not change but the sparsity of that information does. When one sees the whole picture, the entirety of reality for all eternity, then one sees all things simply. I know that I will never know everything there is to know about a single blade of grass and, yet, I dare to contemplate the reality of my Creator with the ambition of ultimately uniting with that Perfection (Maritain, Existence 67).
We been over this before. Water, H20, is also a gas and a solid. The analogy does not hold.
Either position is an act of faith, not science. Faith is an act of will, not intellect. The scientist ought reject that which is proposed by only an act of faith absent any evidence. So, abiogenesis as a science is rejected. Creationism as a science is rejected. That leaves ID as the best explanation for life.
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rossum
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The format does change, unless God contains actual molecules of DNA the same way living cells do. If God is immaterial then He does not contain DNA, though He goes know the information that DNA contains, albeit in a different format.
If information is measurable, then the amount does not change between formats.
If information is not measurable, then all arguments involving the quantity of information are spurious and unsupportable.
Analogies aside, it is still a fact that emergent properties exist. Your essentialist argument amounts to vitalism, which was scientifically discredited a long time ago.
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o_mlly
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Format refers to the plan of organization. How many molecules in a plan?
That is the wrong question. The science is not called, “Information Design” rather it is called, “Intelligent Design.” Is intelligence objectively measurable? No.
Agreed.
Properties exist. Those properties for which we can identify observed causes are in the realm of science. Those properties for which we cannot identify observed causes are outside the realm of science. The “emergent” adjective is a deception used rather than “cause unknown.”
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rossum
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Thank you for destroying Intelligent Design: “We think our designer is intelligent, but since we cannot objectively measure intelligence we cannot be sure of that statement; it is scientifically unprovable.”
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edwest211
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Intelligent Design is the best explanation.
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Aloysium
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The Cause is known. And, everything can be said to be emergent from Him, if we mean by that word “brought into existence”. Everything is emergent from Existence itself. And, Existence is triune in nature, a self-other relationship. The physical sciences describe the most basic relationships, those fundamental to the creation of the universe. Atoms are unified events composed of subatomic relations, and form molecular geometric configurations through the chemical reactions that occur as a result of their inherent interactional qualities. These in turn, allow for the “emergence” of the cell as a complex set of internal and external events, which make it what it is, having unique properties, superior to those of atom and molecules, in relation to the environment in which it participates. The emergence of multicellular organisms from the same One Ground of existence utilizes all the previous information in the creation of something new and different from all that is ontologically lowert in the hierarchy of being. We ourselves, as we sit here contemplating this wonder, are one step higher, capable of knowledge and action, at its higest level, free of deterministic instictive behaviour. All this is emergent, not from matter, but from Existence, who brings all that is information to our minds, into being as an infinite collection of interwoven events to which we relate.
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Pattylt
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I hope this isn’t offensive, I don’t mean it to be but how is nature triune? Your God, of course is but nature! Please explain (simply, if possible).
Edit…never mind…you were referring to God, not nature. I misread.
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Aloysium
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It’s never offensive to ask an honest question, and this is a very good one.Aloysium:
I hope this isn’t offensive, I don’t mean it to be but how is nature triune? Your God, of course is but nature! Please explain (simply, if possible).
Edit…never mind…you were referring to God, not nature. I misread.
Things exist as themselves. Nothing exists in isolation but in relation to something other than itself.
If we go to the atomic level, we find the periodic table, which describes some of the major qualities of different elements as they exist to their smallest level and and the hows and whys of their relationships to one another. A step up, and we find that cells relate to one another in very different ways. We are individual persons but require a complex psychophysical and spiritual environment in order to exist in each of those dimensions. We are other to each other possessing an individual consciousness capable of bridging the gap through love. And, God is Love itself, the Father begetting the Son, the Logos, the principle of divine reason and order in a the Second Person of the Trinity, the two joined in the mutual giving of themselves through the Third Person, the Spirit of God - Love.
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rossum
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Ed says:
And follows up that claim with a complete and thorough summary of the evidence for ID:
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o_mlly
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Intelligence as defined is scientifically observable, it need not be measurable to be observed (binary). The ID claim is based on observed current common causes, “Experience shows us that everything in which intelligence is observed has an intelligent cause.” The evolution claim is based on the same principle of examining current common causes.
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rossum
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So, you say we cannot tell whether a dog has more or less intelligence than a human. Again, I will have to disagree with you.
Then the Intelligent Designer that ID proposes, which is obviously intelligent, also has an intelligent cause – an intelligent meta-designer. The intelligent meta-designer is itself intelligent and requires an intelligent cause… Hello to an infinite regress.
Thank you for making the vacuity of the ID argument so clear.
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o_mlly
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Again, you must first give us your definition of intelligence. Before we can disagree, we must first agree.
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o_mlly
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ID makes no claims about the causes of the intelligent designer just as evolution makes no claims about abiogenesis. Need a new thread to continue the merits of ID. The OP’s question has been answered in the affirmative both scientifically and philosophically.
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edwest211
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Abiogenesis is hand waving, little more.
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