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lelinator
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And cause and effect can be measured and described, duh. So if God is a cause, then He can be measured and described.
If Science Did Prove Intelligent Design, Would It Make Any Difference?
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whatistrue
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Not even close. I am done. And you can just stop with the gratuitous insults.
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lelinator
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And that couldn’t be regarded as a gratuitous insult?
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whatistrue
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No it wouldn’t. If I had insulted you there would be absolutely no doubt in anyone’s mind.
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lelinator
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Well I regard it as such.
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whatistrue
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And that is not my problem. Welcome to the Ignore bucket.
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PickyPicky
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I’m not actually sure how intelligent design would be proved, but if it were it would certainly make a difference because scientists would then start looking to discover what the designers were.
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ProdglArchitect
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And perhaps you missed the rest of my post, wherein I specify say that I am speaking about the mutations themselves, not the determination of which traits get passed on.ProdglArchitect:
Nope, that’s not correct. Perhaps you missed the word “selection” in the phrase “Natural Selection”.
Unless you believe that the mutations are selected by an external force, in which case I don’t think we disagree.
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lelinator
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Nope, I got that part, but evolution involves an entire process, not just one step in that process. Thus evolution isn’t random.
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ProdglArchitect
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I play a game of solitaire, the shuffle is random. Everything that happens afterwords may be guided by some logic and rules, but it entirely different if the shuffle is even one card off.ProdglArchitect:
Nope, I got that part, but evolution involves an entire process, not just one step in that process. Thus evolution isn’t random.
Similarly, unless you acknowledge an underlying set of guiding principles which governs genetic mutations, then even if every step after the mutation follows a set of rules, you still need that initial random mutation to occur for the rest of the process to take place.
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buffalo
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ID cannot be proven empirically. However, if the confidence in ID is to a very high degree, new atheism is done with. No more intellectually fulfilled atheists.
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lelinator
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I fail to see your point. The process begins with a random step, and then rules govern the outcome. The fact that there are rules means that the outcome isn’t random. It’s not necessarily predetermined, but it definitely isn’t random. And the possible variations in the outcome is dependent upon the number of mutations that the process begins with. Given a sufficient number of mutations from which to choose, the process will come very close to being predetermined.
In your game of solitary you’re assuming that you only get to play one hand. And so whether you win or lose is dependent upon the random process of shuffling. But evolution doesn’t involve just one hand, it involves a multitude of hands.
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ProdglArchitect
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The issue is that the likelihood of that random step happening at all, and then the further unlikelihood of it making sense enough not to kill the creature, and then the additional unlikelihood that it is beneficial, and then to top it all off it has to be within one of the pairs that gets passed on…
When you look purely at the numbers, the statistical likelihood that happening is so infinitesimally small that it may have happened once, maybe twice, in the history of the universe. Then you turn around and say that it has happened, totally unguided, billions upon billions of times in that span of a few billion years. Mathematically speaking, it doesn’t add up.
The number of mutations has no impact on the statistical unlikelihood of any given mutation being non-fatal and beneficial, and capable of being passed on. Also, a recent study seems to show pretty definitively that the number of members of a species had no rate in the frequency of mutation.
The point of all this is that, purely looking at it from the question of statistical likelihood, even small scale evolution should be basically impossible within the current lifespan of the universe, let alone the large scale evolution we’ve found evidence for. This clearly points towards and external governing force.
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CTBcin
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I assume it would make somewhat of a difference, but those with an empiricist or materialist philosophy would probably continue to espouse those views.
I for one don’t find intelligent design to be all that convincing, at least not the Paley arguments that get thrown around by the evangelicals. I don’t think that kind of intelligent design theory will ever be verified. Now a Thomistic understanding of design based in final causes is much more convincing.
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lelinator
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This is assuming that one has a sufficient understanding of the process, such that one can determine the correct probabilities. Oversimplify the process and the numbers may indeed seem insurmountable. It doesn’t mean that one should abandon the process entirely, but that one should look to better understand and refine the process. Leaping to ID as the only reasonable alternative would seem to be a bit extreme.
I find that idea to be plausible. That there’s a limiting factor in the number of available mutations. Which means that the process may be somewhat unpredictable, but not necessarily insufficient for the task.
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lelinator
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Absolutely, but a final cause may not involve the theistic concept of God at all. In fact, if certain theories of quantum mechanics are correct, …i.e the theory of all time, affecting all time, all the time, then the final cause of humanity, may be humanity itself. We…may be the intelligent designer.
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ProdglArchitect
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Finally, I found the thing I was looking for about this whole topic. For some reason my brain stored it as a video, whereas it’s actually an article. I’ve been trying to find a video on Youtube/Curiosity Stream, when I had the link to the article saved in my favorites. XD
The big impossibility of the whole unguided argument comes from the proteins.
There are 20 amino acids that can be used to create a protein chain, the the average length of a protein chain is 250 amino-acids long. The shape of the protein is dictated by the combination, and it’s shape is important to it’s function.
I won’t post the entire thing here because it’s a fairly involved article, but the numbers are as follow.
Looking at a short protein chain of 150 links:
There are 20 possible amino acids to be used. That means there’s 20^150 possible combinations of this one, short chain. That’s 10^195 possible combinations. That is more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe (10^80).
Of these, per the experiments of Douglas Axe, approx. 1 in every 10^74 of these would be able to be stable. The number of these that would be useful is estimated at 10^77. Those three extra zeros may not seem like much, but remember that we’re dealing with orders of magnitude here. A million seconds is 11 days. A billion is 31.5 years. and that’s only 10^6 vs 10^9.
To put this in perspective, the age of the universe in seconds is estimated at only 436,117,076,900,000,000. A paltry 4*10^18.
Bacteria are the most prolific kind of life on this planet, and in the lifespan of this Earth there are estimated to have been 10^40 individual bacterial instances. Even if every single one of those bacteria has a mutation, the odds of a single mutation occurring are 10^40x(1/10^77), or 1 in every 10^37 reproductions.
From a statistical position, that is zero, there is zero chance of that occurring randomly even once, let alone the billions of times it has to have happened for evolution to function. And, bear in mind that this is for a short protein. The average is a hundred longer, which shoots those numbers up a ridiculously large amount. (10^325 vs 10^195)
Here is the full article:
Giving Up Darwin
These numbers are discussed under the headers Building a Better Protein and A Bad Bet
To be clear, the author is not arguing against evolution, simply against the assertion of unguided evolution.
(On an unrelated question, does anyone have any clue if it’s possible to set superscripts on the forum? would have made all those numbers a lot easier to read.)
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lelinator
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Ack, now you’re going to force me to go and find a recently published article I read, about the fact that amino acids, and protein chains, aren’t nearly as improbable as was previously believed. I know that the article is on one of the many science websites that I have links to, but I’m not sure which one.
When I have time I’ll go find it. Suffice it to say, that I find the arguments from probability to be highly suspect.
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ProdglArchitect
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Personal incredulity does not negate the sheer magnitude of the numbers in play here. You’re welcome to link the article if you find it.
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Pai_Nosso
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So there is a sect known as theistic evolutionists. First time i’ve heard of it.
The first problem for me is that one must assume ToE to be 100% true. Not admitting possibility of error in the theory is irrational as debate still surrounds the theory.
The second thing is that one must put their faith into atheists like Dawkins who are deliberately only looking to dismantle religion. One must be blind to the attack on Christianity.
However one can speculate the relationship to scripture I guess.
The first problem for me is that one must assume ToE to be 100% true. Not admitting possibility of error in the theory is irrational as debate still surrounds the theory.
The second thing is that one must put their faith into atheists like Dawkins who are deliberately only looking to dismantle religion. One must be blind to the attack on Christianity.
However one can speculate the relationship to scripture I guess.
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