Pope's astronomer dismisses ID and says Church was "spectacularly wrong" in its treatment of Galileo

[Touchstone]

It is a desperate ploy to imply that there is no limit to what material objects can achieve… If you believe impersonal processes are capable of creating persons you are in effect worshipping the blind Goddess…

I’m sure there is a limit. That’s not at issue, though. The issue is that we don’t know the limit, and so we are fundamentally unable to say “this can’t happen”.

We don’t know, for instance that “resurrection after three days” is impossible. Such an event is without example or precedence in science, and it offends every bit of scientific knowledge we have. But there may be a technology that will make that practical at some point. Can’t say it couldn’t have happened. But it’s very unlikely given what we know and what we observe.

Which puts a theist (you) in the odd position of saying the resurrection can and did happen, and the evolution of the flagellum (or pick your favorite IC example from biology) could NOT. Clearly, the Christian theist is being disingenuous in appealing to probabilities here. The appeal is to supernaturalism, and with that, the odds and all the analysis that finite, natural epistemologies have to deal with in making rational judgment goes out the window. When the supernatural is any factor at all, it’s a joke to talk about probabilities.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

It is a desperate ploy to imply that there is no limit to what material objects can achieve… If you believe impersonal processes are capable of creating persons you are in effect worshipping the blind Goddess…

In other words you are ignorant not only of the possibility but of the probability of such an event.

We don’t know, for instance that “resurrection after three days” is impossible. Such an event is without example or precedence in science, and it offends every bit of scientific knowledge we have. But there may be a technology that will make that practical at some point. Can’t say it couldn’t have happened. But it’s very unlikely given what we know and what we observe.

We have excellent reasons for believing in the Resurrection which is inextricably linked with the life and teaching of the greatest moral teacher known to mankind whose precepts of liberty, equality and fraternity are enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and are accepted by all civilised people. We have no reason whatsoever to believe purposeful activity can be created by purposeless processes because there is not one jot of evidence nor explanation of the mechanism by which it **could **occur…

Which puts a theist (you) in the odd position of saying the resurrection can and did happen, and the evolution of the flagellum (or pick your favorite IC example from biology) could NOT.

On the contrary. I believe evolution has occurred but not by chance. Unless it can be explained how rational beings have emerged from that which lacks the power of reasoning even the possibility is not worth considering. To have such faith in the blind Goddess is gross superstition. The success of science reveals the primacy of creative thought.

Clearly, the Christian theist is being disingenuous in appealing to probabilities here.
The appeal is to supernaturalism, and with that, the odds and all the analysis that finite, natural epistemologies have to deal with in making rational judgment goes out the window. When the supernatural is any factor at all, it’s a joke to talk about probabilities.

You are putting the cart before the horse. Finite, natural epistemologies and rational judgment presuppose first and foremost the existence of intangible thought. It is certainly a joke to talk about probabilities where the rational mind is concerned because it is the sole certainty we have! That fact alone is sufficient to refute naturalism with its mechanistic theory of reality.

BTW Did you tell your daughter the only reason she is valuable is that you value her?

 

[Touchstone]

In other words you are ignorant not only of the possibility but of the probability of such an event.

Yes, just as you are.

We have excellent reasons for believing in the Resurrection which is inextricably linked with the life and teaching of the greatest moral teacher known to mankind whose precepts of liberty, equality and fraternity are enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and are accepted by all civilised people. We have no reason whatsoever to believe purposeful activity can be created by purposeless processes because there is not one jot of evidence nor explanation of the mechanism by which it **could **occur…

You have purposeful beings, who are evolved and produced by purposeless processes. That’s your starting point right there. If you can identify some connection between an identified, available, capable designer and a design that matches those capabilities, then there you go, but in the absence of any such thing, which is what we have, we work with what we got. Otherwise we end up thinking the “gods are fighting” when the thunder claps are heard when it storms.

On the contrary. I believe evolution has occurred but not by chance. Unless it can be explained how rational beings have emerged from that which lacks the power of reasoning even the possibility is not worth considering. To have such faith in the blind Goddess is gross superstition. The success of science reveals the primacy of creative thought.

What would such an explanation look like, then? I still can’t decide if the evidence matters to you or not. If it just can’t happen, as a matter of your personal dogma, because it’s somehow so offensive to you that mind arises from impersonal matter, then there’s no point in saying “unless it can be explained…” What would such an explanation look like for you?

You are putting the cart before the horse. Finite, natural epistemologies and rational judgment presuppose first and foremost the existence of intangible thought.

It doesn’t. There’s nothing in there that requires or assumes such. If scientist or researcher supposes that thought is a purely physical phenomenon of the brain, nothing changes.

It is certainly a joke to talk about probabilities where the rational mind is concerned because it is the sole certainty we have! That fact alone is sufficient to refute naturalism with its mechanistic theory of reality.

It’s not a fact, it’s not required, and a physicalist view is no barrier at all to the building of natural knowledge and the use of naturalist epistemology.

BTW Did you tell your daughter the only reason she is valuable is that you value her?

My daughter values herself. Her mother values her. Her family does, her extended family does, her community does. When she meets a stranger going in the door at Target, the guy will smile a warm smile and opens the door for her, because he values her just as a member of the community and a fellow human being. These are real assignments of value, value in action, manifest in the actions, attitudes and choices made by those around her.

-TS

 

[edwest2]

All we have presented here is a form of Nature Worship. Nature and nothing else, created and brought into being minds. However, there is one more form of worship required - the Worship of the Mind of Man.

But this is an old idea:

“Man is the measure of all things.” - Protagorus, 5th Century B.C.

God bless,
Ed

 

[buffalo]

Sure, let’s do the math!!! Where do we start?

(maybe a new thread!)

-TS

Start at post 490 to get your bearings.

Why don’t we help Dembski out?

Let us set up some simple parameters that would help us detect design.

On a scale of 1 to 10

Rate purpose
Rate number of right angles
Rate texture
Rate patterns
Rate complexity
Rate IR

We can add more.

Where do you want to start?

---

rossum went right for the snowflake and set a benchmark.

I asked for a refrigerator and he dropped it.

 

[tonyrey]

In other words you are ignorant not only of the possibility but of the probability of such an event.

The difference is that you regard it as highly probable without any reason for doing so!

We have excellent reasons for believing in the Resurrection which is inextricably linked with the life and teaching of the greatest moral teacher known to mankind whose precepts of liberty, equality and fraternity are enshrined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and are accepted by all civilised people. We have no reason whatsoever to believe purposeful activity can be created by purposeless processes because there is not one jot of evidence nor explanation of the mechanism by which it could occur…

You have purposeful beings, who **are **evolved and produced by purposeless processes.

That is a dogmatic assertion not an explanation.

That’s your starting point right there. If you can identify some connection between an identified, available, capable designer and a design that matches those capabilities, then there you go, but in the absence of any such thing, which is what we have, we work with what we got. Otherwise we end up thinking the “gods are fighting” when the thunder claps are heard when it storms.

Do you really believe there is no evidence of design in the wonders and beauty of nature and the magnificence of the night sky? You prefer to believe it all ** just happens to exist for no reason or purpose **even though you appreciate having been born. “filial ingratitude”?

On the contrary. I believe evolution has occurred but not by chance. Unless it can be explained how rational beings have emerged from that which lacks the power of reasoning even the possibility is not worth considering. To have such faith in the blind Goddess is gross superstition. The success of science reveals the primacy of creative thought.

I have already decided that the evidence to which I have just referred doesn’t matter to you one jot!

If it just can’t happen, as a matter of your personal dogma, because it’s somehow so offensive to you that mind arises from impersonal matter, then there’s no point in saying “unless it can be explained…” What would such an explanation look like for you?

It is not a question of being offensive but absurd! As Hume would say, the cause is not proportioned to the effect. Can you can sketch a possible explanation of **the physical mechanism **by which mind has originated rather than simply assert the possibility of an explanation?

You are putting the cart before the horse. Finite, natural epistemologies and rational judgment presuppose first and foremost the existence of intangible thought.
It doesn’t. There’s nothing in there that requires or assumes such. If scientist or researcher supposes that thought is a purely physical phenomenon of the brain, nothing changes.

It is certainly a joke to talk about probabilities where the rational mind is concerned because it is the sole certainty we have! That fact alone is sufficient to refute naturalism with its mechanistic theory of reality.

It’s not a fact, it’s not required, and a physicalist view is no barrier at all to the building of natural knowledge and the use of naturalist epistemology.

Please explain why it’s not a fact that the rational mind is the sole certainty we have? Are physical objects your starting point? How do you know they even exist?

BTW Did you tell your daughter the only reason she is valuable is that you value her?

My daughter values herself. Her mother values her. Her family does, her extended family does, her community does. When she meets a stranger going in the door at Target, the guy will smile a warm smile and opens the door for her, because he values her just as a member of the community and a fellow human being. These are real assignments of value, value in action, manifest in the actions, attitudes and choices made by those around her.

Do you or they have any reasons for valuing her? Apart from being a member of the community? (Although that in itself reveals her intrinsic vaIue, the intrinsic vaIue of the community and the intrinsic vaIue of humanity). Isn’t your evaluation based on the type of person she is as well as the fact that she is your daughter?

Would you tell your daughter the only reason she is valuable is that she and others think she is valuable?

BTW These questions are related to the OP because they are relevant to the issue of Design…

 

[Touchstone]

Start at post 490 to get your bearings.

Why don’t we help Dembski out?

Let us set up some simple parameters that would help us detect design.

On a scale of 1 to 10

Rate purpose
Rate number of right angles
Rate texture
Rate patterns
Rate complexity
Rate IR

We can add more.

Where do you want to start?

---

rossum went right for the snowflake and set a benchmark.

I asked for a refrigerator and he dropped it.

You have to be kidding me? You got rossum to use a survey like this (“rate purpose”???) as the test for design?

Shame on rossum, I guess.

Look, perhaps I’m totally misunderstanding, but this is just a child-like way to look at the problem. You were telling rossum at one point that you really didn’t agree that a snowflake’s “purpose” was to “look pretty”. I’m thinking he’s got to have his tongue in cheek, but while I’m interested in the feeble sophistry that is CSI, I’ve got better things to do than start down that path.

Tell me your formula for calculating complex specified information quantitavely, and I will be happy to work hard on that and engage. If you can do objective math, on it, and want to reduce the both of us to the foolishness of rating the “purpose” of a snowflake or a refrigerator, find another chump, and/or admit your looking to waste my time as you have rossum’s. If I was rossum, I’d have been irked to have such lameness pulled on me, and would have bailed, too.

So let’s see if you are full of fluff like I suspect. Time to show your math, the numerical model for CSI, something we can use with our grown-up minds to make grown-up judgments about detecting design by examining physical phenomena. Then we’ll go apply that model and see how it performs.

OK?

Feel free to spin up a new thread. If you do anything substantive toward this, I will salute you and thank you for it in the first post of a new thread. If you persist with the above, supposing that your “survey” does anything more than make everyone participating look foolish, I can’t be bothered. Please be serious. The above, and what you offered to rossum wasn’t serious. 82% is rossum’s “benchmark” for the snowflake, please!

-TS

 

[buffalo]

You have to be kidding me? You got rossum to use a survey like this (“rate purpose”???) as the test for design?

Shame on rossum, I guess.

Look, perhaps I’m totally misunderstanding, but this is just a child-like way to look at the problem. You were telling rossum at one point that you really didn’t agree that a snowflake’s “purpose” was to “look pretty”. I’m thinking he’s got to have his tongue in cheek, but while I’m interested in the feeble sophistry that is CSI, I’ve got better things to do than start down that path.

Tell me your formula for calculating complex specified information quantitavely, and I will be happy to work hard on that and engage. If you can do objective math, on it, and want to reduce the both of us to the foolishness of rating the “purpose” of a snowflake or a refrigerator, find another chump, and/or admit your looking to waste my time as you have rossum’s. If I was rossum, I’d have been irked to have such lameness pulled on me, and would have bailed, too.

So let’s see if you are full of fluff like I suspect. Time to show your math, the numerical model for CSI, something we can use with our grown-up minds to make grown-up judgments about detecting design by examining physical phenomena. Then we’ll go apply that model and see how it performs.

OK?

Feel free to spin up a new thread. If you do anything substantive toward this, I will salute you and thank you for it in the first post of a new thread. If you persist with the above, supposing that your “survey” does anything more than make everyone participating look foolish, I can’t be bothered. Please be serious. The above, and what you offered to rossum wasn’t serious. 82% is rossum’s “benchmark” for the snowflake, please!

-TS

Gotta start somewhere. You are not afraid of where this will lead are you?

Let’s continue working and then prepare a formula.

 

[Touchstone]

The difference is that you regard it as highly probable without any reason for doing so!

I have all the collected experiences and observations of man available to consult as (name removed by moderator)ut and evidence. That’s hardly no reason!

That is a dogmatic assertion not an explanation.

No it’s not. Do you know what dogma means? “Can’t be questioned, unassailably true”. That’s not party of science, or evolutionary theory. You’re projecting your faith onto science, but science doesn’t work that way. Looking at the evidence, we see purposeful beings, and impersonal processes giving rise to them. It’s challengeable, testable, falsifiable, not dogmatic. It stands as the far and away best performing scientific theory for the development of biological diversity on earth.

Do you really believe there is no evidence of design in the wonders and beauty of nature and the magnificence of the night sky?

No more than I believe the same is evidence for an impersonal universe. None of that is dispositive either way. If we see that, and happen upon a cosmic designer being that shows us how she did all that star-making stuff, then yeah, all that wonder would fit in as evidence that works in a cosmic designer model, because the cosmic designer showed us how she made that happen as it happened.

But as awe-inspiring phenomena, no. And if anything, the more we learn about our own human psychological dispositions, it would tilt us away from that idea, understanding that we are honed by evolution to “see design everywhere” whether merited or not. Given that, your conscience should be reminding you (and mine me) that you have a built in distorting bias toward such conclusions in your brain.

In studies of college men, the men regularly rate themselves far more highly in terms of how impressed the women they know are with them then the women rate their impressed-ness themselves. Fine, young men tend to think they are all that more than they are. But knowing that should be a bit of an admonishment, for a young man who wants to see things as they are. You, similarly, have a pre-existing prejudice to design in your brain. It’s natural, and it’s useful, as a bit or paranoia that has helped your species survive to the current day. But now you know it, that you are naturally distortive in your own reactions, and you lean into it. shrug

You prefer to believe it all ** just happens to exist for no reason or purpose **even though you appreciate having been born. “filial ingratitude”?

I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful to my parents. I thought we were talking about God or a cosmic designer. I was a Christian for 30+ years, and in terms of social comfort and psychological comfort (apart from a part of my conscience that goes off when I’m BSing myself), I’d prefer to see design just like you. But it’s a preference, a conceit, a built in bias, it’s not a reasoned position.

I have already decided that the evidence to which I have just referred doesn’t matter to you one jot!

That isn’t what I was wondering about, though.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

tonyrey:

It is not a question of being offensive but absurd! As Hume would say, the cause is not proportioned to the effect.

I think you passing off your offense as a reaction to the absurd. There’s nothing absurd about biological diversity or cognition arising from non-biological, non-cognitive material, any more than it’s absurd that water should arise from the interactions of hydrogen and oxygen. It’s quite clear from reading you at length, you don’t care a whit if materialism were true, you’d deny it steadfastly anyway, because it doesn’t match up with a world as you minimally demand it must be.

Can you can sketch a possible explanation of **the physical mechanism **by which mind has originated rather than simply assert the possibility of an explanation?

Descent with variation operated on my natural selection, the Mother of All Cumulative, Creative Engines. A blind, wandering search operating over deep time will find all sorts of interesting and novel islands along the way. The mind is the brain is a biological machine, nothing magical about it, just operating at large scales (trillions of neurons, etc.)

It is certainly a joke to talk about probabilities where the rational mind is concerned because it is the sole certainty we have! That fact alone is sufficient to refute naturalism with its mechanistic theory of reality.

Oh the irony. You can have no certainty at all about the immaterial nature of mind. No logical contradictions or absurdities result in supposing the mind is all natural.

Please explain why it’s not a fact that the rational mind is the sole certainty we have? Are physical objects your starting point? How do you know they even exist?

None of that establishes anything one way or another with respect to the basis of mind. It works from a “physical mind” perspective, and it works from a “supernatural mind” perspective, if only because anything works supernatural and there are no rules that govern or constrain “supernatural”. A physical mind is more parsimonious, but even so, it’s an open question. To declare you are certain that your mind obtains in some supernatural way is to signal confusion over what “certain” means and how it obtains.

Do you or they have any reasons for valuing her? Apart from being a member of the community? (Although that in itself reveals her intrinsic vaIue, the intrinsic vaIue of the community and the intrinsic vaIue of humanity). Isn’t your evaluation based on the type of person she is as well as the fact that she is your daughter?

I value her more than the guy across town because she’s my daughter yes. And I am aware of particular features of her personality that are particularly appealing, and which I place extra value on, over the baseline value I would assign to her no matter what just because she’s my daughter. These are the real and manifest reasons for value, subjectively assigned, but as real and actual as can be.

Would you tell your daughter the only reason she is valuable is that she and others think she is valuable?

Sure. She’d see the folly of saying she was valued beyond the means she’s valued by.

BTW These questions are related to the OP because they are relevant to the issue of Design…

If so say so. I’ll be interested to see how you tie that in.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Gotta start somewhere. You are not afraid of where this will lead are you?

Let’s continue working and then prepare a formula.

Dude, I have been around the track on CSI fifty times, if I’ve done it once. Bring your formula, specify your measurements and quantify your results, or own your posing, please. I’m ready, but give me numbers, science, grown-up stuff. Please don’t waste my time. I’m ready to devote serious effort to this, and am actually eager for you to go somewhere (wherever this leads), as the further you go, the more vacuous your claims will be shown to be. The risk is the dancing, handwaving and hemming and hawwing that typically accompanies someone actually being challenged on the substance of CSI (and this is as true for Dembski as anyone else, which is one reason he’s dropped it as an arrow in his quiver… maybe you can succeed though, where Dembski failed.)

Bring it, just to don’t fluff me.

-TS

OnEdit: OK, don’t respond here on this, I created a thread here where we can go deep on your CSI claims. Please respond there.

 

[tonyrey]

You are putting the cart before the horse. Finite, natural epistemologies and rational judgment presuppose first and foremost the existence of intangible thought.

Nothing changes in reality because thought is still intangible and the supposition itself is intangible. To suppose thought is physical does not make it physical. Why is thought intangible if it is physical? How can something physical know it is physical? Knowledge presupposes insight but the brain is a biological computer which does not exhibit awareness of itself. Like all computers the brain is programmed and unable to think independently. Yet persons programme themselves…

To reduce persons to machines is to destroy the reality and creativity of the mind and make thought purposeless. Thinking becomes a mechanical process which merely perpetuates the pointless activity of the universe. The output of valueless machines described as human beings is meaningless and purposeless. Reasoning and truth disappear utterly. If only matter exists nothing matters and nothing makes sense…

Yet if nothing makes sense how can we reach the conclusion that nothing makes sense?
That is the formidable problem the physicalist has to overcome. So much for the notion that if the scientist or researcher supposes that thought is a purely physical phenomenon of the brain nothing changes… Everything changes to next to nothing!

 

[Touchstone]

Nothing changes in reality because thought is still intangible and the supposition itself is intangible. To suppose thought is physical does not make it physical. Why is thought intangible if it is physical?

The brain has no nerve endings. How do you suppose you would feel your physical thoughts, given that? The thought itself is the tangibility of thought. Thinking is grabbing hold of a thought. It doesn’t respond to nerves like a stone in your hand because it’s not nerve-based. It’s physical, just not nerve-driven for you experientially.

How can something physical know it is physical?

By learning about it’s own structure and physiology, of course!

Knowledge presupposes insight but the brain is a biological computer which does not exhibit awareness of itself.

The human brain does exhibit awareness of itself! Some people in certain operations can even physically see their own brain in real time, and even count numbers and hear their speech get messed up as the doctor manipulates different parts of said brain.

Like all computers the brain is programmed and unable to think independently. Yet persons programme themselves…

I have spent many years working on evolutionary algorithms for large networks, and given the base starting infrastructure we initialize a run with, it learns all kinds of things on its own, independently, things we never even contemplated, and which continually surprised us. It “programmed itself” beyond what we gave it, and even the architecture of the system is modeled on the human brain, in its ability to adjust, rewire, and optimize models in its neural network.

To reduce persons to machines is to destroy the reality and creativity of the mind and make thought purposeless.

Why would you say that. If humans are biological machines, they remain just as creative as they always have been. Beethoven’s “Eroica” is still what it is, even so.

Thinking becomes a mechanical process which merely perpetuates the pointless activity of the universe. The output of valueless machines described as human beings is meaningless and purposeless.

No it’s not. Go listen to “Eroica”, I suggest. It’s quite gratifying and enchanting as a bit of music for your Saturday evening. This is a “pointful” activity for both Beethoven, and for you and me, centuries later. The absence of an imagined God doesn’t diminish the actual, real purposes that humans adopt and realize, at all.

Reasoning and truth disappear utterly. If only matter exists nothing matters and nothing makes sense…

That doesn’t follow. Truth and reasoning obtain as they always have. To say “the moon exists” in a godless, deterministic world is just as true as it would be in a godful world, and arguably more, because in the godless world, the moon exists objectively, and its existence isn’t subject to the will or mind of any god.

Yet if nothing makes sense how can we reach the conclusion that nothing makes sense?

Nothing like that obtains. You’re just way out in left field, offended at the prospect of a world that coheres as it always has without your God.

That is the formidable problem the physicalist has to overcome. So much for the notion that if the scientist or researcher supposes that thought is a purely physical phenomenon of the brain nothing changes… Everything changes to next to nothing!

Doesn’t change it at all, and you’ve not shown any change whatsoever. The composer still finds pleasure, purpose and creative outlet in composing, on physicalism. The listener finds pleasure and purpose in consuming it, and being edified by it, inspired by it. The God thing is just superfluous to all of it, a cellophane veneer that when stripped away, leave the underlying reality, just a little more clearly visible, and a lot less plasticky.

-TS

 

[reggieM]

Your second paper directly contradicts this by proposing Fits (analogous to Bits) to measure FCS. Which paper do you want? One but not the other please since they contradict each other.

The second paper agrees with the first - that the measure is based on established assumptions and concludes only as being an inference to the most reasonable conclusion.

With that as a starting point, functional information can be measured.

 

[rossum]

The second paper agrees with the first - that the measure is based on established assumptions and concludes only as being an inference to the most reasonable conclusion.

With that as a starting point, functional information can be measured.

So, show us the calculation for the functional information in the human Cytochrome-C gene. If it can be measured, as you claim, then show us the ID papers where these measurements are given. This is science, we like to have some numbers to play with.

rossum

 

[StAnastasia]

So, show us the calculation for the functional information in the human Cytochrome-C gene. If it can be measured, as you claim, then show us the ID papers where these measurements are given. This is science, we like to have some numbers to play with.rossum

Rossum, the DI doesn’t do science, so it doesn’t use reliable numbers. ID is like a pickup stuck in deep mud, spinning its wheels, while science flies by on the freeway next to it!

 

[buffalo]

So, show us the calculation for the functional information in the human Cytochrome-C gene. If it can be measured, as you claim, then show us the ID papers where these measurements are given. This is science, we like to have some numbers to play with

rossum

As StA points out these are calculations done outside the DI.

10 to the 77th power.


PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
117(2):213-239. 2004

Cassette mutagenesis experiments performed during the early 1990s suggest that the probability of attaining (at random) the correct sequencing for a short protein 100 amino acids long is about 1 in 1065 (Reidhaar-Olson & Sauer 1990, Behe 1992:65-69). This result agreed closely with earlier calculations that Yockey (1978) had performed based upon the known sequence variability of cytochrome c in different species and other theoretical considerations. More recent mutagenesis research has provided additional support for the conclusion that functional proteins are exceedingly rare among possible amino acid sequences (Axe 2000, 2004). Axe (2004) has performed site directed mutagenesis experiments on a 150-residue protein-folding domain within a B-lactamase enzyme. His experimental method improves upon earlier mutagenesis techniques and corrects for several sources of possible estimation error inherent in them. On the basis of these experiments, Axe has estimated the ratio of (a) proteins of typical size (150 residues) that perform a specified function via any folded structure to (b) the whole set of possible amino acids sequences of that size. Based on his experiments, Axe has estimated his ratio to be 1 to 1077. Thus, the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 1077.

 

[rossum]

As StA points out these are calculations done outside the DI.

10 to the 77th power.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
117(2):213-239. 2004

Cassette mutagenesis experiments performed during the early 1990s suggest that the probability of attaining (at random) the correct sequencing for a short protein 100 amino acids long is about 1 in 1065 (Reidhaar-Olson & Sauer 1990, Behe 1992:65-69).

Which is completely irrelevant to any discussion about evolution, since evolution is not a random process. The presence of natural selection ensures that the outcome of any such process is not random. It is a selected outcome, since over many generations evolution selects the most effective variant of the protein present in the population. A calculation which fails to model this process of selection, as you reference fails to do, is not relevant to a discussion about evolution.

As a side note, when you are cut-n-pasting a piece of text which has “1 in 10[sup]65[/sup]” embedded in it, you really need to either re-insert the superscript tags or indicate the power with a caret, ‘^’: “1 in 10^65”

This result agreed closely with earlier calculations that Yockey (1978) had performed based upon the known sequence variability of cytochrome c in different species and other theoretical considerations.

You really, really need to read Yockey. According to Yockey there are 2.3 x 10^93 different working versions of Cytochrome-C possible. Since your probability is only 10^65 that means that there is a 1 in 10^(93 - 65) = 1 in 10^28 chance that working version of Cytochrome-C will not arise by chance. When the target is a mile wide it is easy to hit it. The Cytochrome-C target is 10^93 miles wide so it is very easy to hit.

You need to bear in mind that Creationist and ID websites are deliberately deceptive and quotemine as badly as signs outside theatres quotemine their reviews. If they quote something then you really need to go away and read the reference in context. The Bible does indeed say, “There is no God”, and they are quoting that version of science to you. Do not believe them, they are deliberately deceiving you.

More recent mutagenesis research has provided additional support for the conclusion that functional proteins are exceedingly rare among possible amino acid sequences (Axe 2000, 2004). Axe (2004) has performed site directed mutagenesis experiments on a 150-residue protein-folding domain within a B-lactamase enzyme. His experimental method improves upon earlier mutagenesis techniques and corrects for several sources of possible estimation error inherent in them. On the basis of these experiments, Axe has estimated the ratio of (a) proteins of typical size (150 residues) that perform a specified function via any folded structure to (b) the whole set of possible amino acids sequences of that size. Based on his experiments, Axe has estimated his ratio to be 1 to 1077. Thus, the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 1077.

Axe is deliberately narrowing his target to a “specified function”. Other experiments have shown that random RNAs can have many different functions. See Abundance of correctly folded RNA motifs in sequence space, calculated on computational grids.

Finally, none of these calculations you quote are calculations of either CSI or FCSI. Reidhaar-Olson and Sauer merely calculate random assembly probabilities, which are related to Shannon Information, not CSI. Axe is looking at the impact of mutations on an already well adapted protein and, as expected, is finding that there are more deleterious mutations than advantageous ones. Neither calculation is of any relevance to either CSI or FCSI.

rossum

 

[edwest2]

Nothing changes in reality because thought is still intangible and the supposition itself is intangible. To suppose thought is physical does not make it physical. Why is thought intangible if it is physical? How can something physical know it is physical? Knowledge presupposes insight but the brain is a biological computer which does not exhibit awareness of itself. Like all computers the brain is programmed and unable to think independently. Yet persons programme themselves…

To reduce persons to machines is to destroy the reality and creativity of the mind and make thought purposeless. Thinking becomes a mechanical process which merely perpetuates the pointless activity of the universe. The output of valueless machines described as human beings is meaningless and purposeless. Reasoning and truth disappear utterly. If only matter exists nothing matters and nothing makes sense…

Yet if nothing makes sense how can we reach the conclusion that nothing makes sense?
That is the formidable problem the physicalist has to overcome. So much for the notion that if the scientist or researcher supposes that thought is a purely physical phenomenon of the brain nothing changes… Everything changes to next to nothing!

That’s right. If there is no judge then there is no judgment. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die. Or to paraphrase Shakespeare about life: “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The biological robot can only find ways to keep from being bored.

God forbid,
Ed

 

[tonyrey]

The difference is that you regard it as highly probable without any reason for doing so!

How does that brimming confidence tally with your confessed ignorance of the probability of such an event?

You’re projecting your faith onto science, but science doesn’t work that way. Looking at the evidence, we see purposeful beings, and impersonal processes giving rise to them. It’s challengeable, testable, falsifiable, not dogmatic. It stands as the far and away best performing scientific theory for the development of biological diversity on earth.

Your faith goes deeper than science. It is faith in **the primacy of matter **- which is unchallengeable, untestable, unfalsifiable and undoubtedly dogmatic. Your last sentence reveals your unswerving conviction that biological diversity is the sole explanation of purposeful activity. In effect you believe science can in principle explain the existence of persons with no need to investigate further…

Do you really believe there is no evidence of design in the wonders and beauty of nature and the magnificence of the night sky?

No more than I believe the same is evidence for an impersonal universe. None of that is dispositive either way.

In that case you should be an agnostic, not an atheist…

If we see that, and happen upon a cosmic designer being that shows us how she did all that star-making stuff, then yeah, all that wonder would fit in as evidence that works in a cosmic designer model, because the cosmic designer showed us how she made that happen as it happened.

Again your physicalist assumptions are revealing themselves. You are more concerned with the question of “How?” rather than “Why?” even though the second is undubtedly more important. In every walk of life - especially the law courts - motives, intentions and goals are more significant than physical causes. Science is limited to the ways in which things work and it presupposes purpose: the quest for truth and control of our environment.

It is presumptuous to think we can understand how Design was implemented because we cannot even understand how we put our own decisions and plans into effect. Yet we can certainly distinguish between what happens by accident and what is intended. Chaos does not produce harmony and beauty. The number of possible chaotic universes far exceeds the number of possible orderly ones, let alone those which serve specific purposes like sustaining life and rational beings. Physical laws are a limiting factor which militates against the hypothesis that life originated due to fortuitous combinations of molecules.

But as awe-inspiring phenomena, no. And if anything, the more we learn about our own human psychological dispositions, it would tilt us away from that idea, understanding that we are honed by evolution to “see design everywhere” whether merited or not. Given that, your conscience should be reminding you (and mine me) that you have a built in distorting bias toward such conclusions in your brain.

Your antipathy to philosophy - which Aristotle said begins with wonder - is significant.
It seems to me that your psychological disposition is to see design nowhere - not even in your own activity!

How do you reach the conclusion that we are honed to “see design everywhere”? According to you our sole goal is to survive - which depends on being realistic rather than fanciful. If we see design where it doesn’t exist we are more likely to become extinct sooner rather than later! You are also assuming that human beings are animals whose thinking is determined by physical events, yet you somehow manage to transcend that limitation! How on earth do you do it?

You, similarly, have a pre-existing prejudice to design in your brain. It’s natural, and it’s useful, as a bit or paranoia that has helped your species survive to the current day. But now you know it, that you are naturally distortive in your own reactions, and you lean into it. shrug

You are implying that you are an exception to the other members of your species… I’m afraid your argument is a two-edged sword. You are determined to see everything in terms of physical objects because it makes you feel more secure. It is cosier to live in a closed system rather than one with more things than are dreamt of in your parochial universe. If anything your paranoia dispenses you from any obligations other than those you impose on yourself. Absolute freedom from external restraint is a consummation devoutly to be wished!

I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful to my parents. I thought we were talking about God or a cosmic designer. I was a Christian for 30+ years, and in terms of social comfort and psychological comfort (apart from a part of my conscience that goes off when I’m BSing myself), I’d prefer to see design just like you. But it’s a preference, a conceit, a built in bias, it’s not a reasoned position.

I did not mean your parents but the Supreme Parent. They are not the authors of their power to pass on the gift of the life you value so much. The fact that you were a Christian is irrelevant because your version of Christianity was not necessarily rational. Not only that. You seem to think the truth is necessarily unpalatable! However the rejection of God and religion is a form of apparent liberation which may well be wishful thinking…

I have already decided that the evidence to which I have just referred doesn’t matter to you one jot!

That isn’t what I was wondering about, though.

That is understandable because your interest lies elsewhere.