"Sean Pitman" <seanpitnos
...@naturalselection.0catch.com> wrote in message
...
> seanpitnos
...@naturalselection.0catch.com (Sean Pitman) wrote in message
<
news:80d0c26f.0403050851.2235f348@posting.google.com>...
> > "Frank Reichenbacher" <vesuv
...@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
<
news:H9-dnR7YE4srh9vdRVn-vg@speakeasy.net>...
> > > > At some point no one can
> > > > explain, in even the most remote sense, our ultimate origins. No
> > > > theory or even the most high-level intuitive, educated guess even
> > > > begins to be adequate.
> > > Naturally you snipped two places in my post where I note that there is
> > > every reason to believe that scientists of the future *will* discover
> > > the answers to the questions you pose.
> It is easy to say this in so many words, but isn't this really nothing
> more than a statement of your religious faith? I mean really, I can
> say, based on the current evidence that we have available to us, that
> an honest investigation of our universe will only detail an ultimate
> creative Intelligence/God in a clearer and clearer way. Certainly the
> great weight of current evidence already speaks overwhelmingly in
> favor of an incredible intelligence behind what we see in this
> universe - especially when we look at living things.
Dr. Pitman, extrapolation is not a statement of religious faith. Since the
trend of science has been to uncover gradually more information about
natural phenomena as time goes on, it is reasonable to assume this will
continue.
As to evidence for God, there can be none in the scientific sense of the
word. You can take your observations of the natural Universe as suggestive
of God, but that is not the same as scientific evidence. Science must
exclude the supernatural because in principle it cannot be subject to
repeatable experiment nor is it predictable. That is not saying God does not
exist, simply that science cannot approach God.
> Now this is a falsifiable statement. All you have to do to prove me
> wrong is to show me where material in this universe organizes itself
> very far beyond the lowest levels of functional/informational
> complexity without the existence and assistance of pre-established
> complexity at that level or greater. If you do this, I will become
> like you are. So far though, I have only been able to see matter
> organize itself only slightly beyond its original level of functional
> complexity if and only if it started out at a very low level of
> complexity. Going from a higher level of complexity to a brand new
> kind of function at that level or greater simply doesn't happen in
> this universe.
To answer that question would require some way of quantifying level of
functional/informational complexity. Would you care to suggest one?
Barring that, matter routinely organizes itself into complex atoms and then
molecules in a completely natural way. If it didn't, we would only have
quarks and leptons.
> For example, evolution can happen between 3-letter words very easily
> because, although they do carry a fairly high degree of specificity,
> they are coded for by a relatively short sequence of letters. This
> creates a ratio of meaningful vs. meaningless of about 1 in 7
> potential 3-letter words in the English language system. But what if
> the minimum sequence requirement for a particular function was
> 7-letters? Now the ratio of all 7-letter sequences to include 1, 2,
> 3, 4, 5, and 6 letter words is around 1 in 250,000. Getting from one
> meaningful 7-letter phrase to a different meaningful 7-letter phrase
> requires, on average, a fairly long random walk through 250,000
> meaningless options. The evolution between 7-letter phrases slows
> down significantly when compared to the evolution between 3-letter
> phrases.
This is based on the false presumption that evolution cares about meaning.
> Just try a little experiment yourself. Start with a short 2 or
> 3-letter word and see how many words you can evolve that require
> greater and greater minimum sequence requirements. No doubt you will
> quickly find yourself coming to walls of meaningless or non-beneficial
> potential options that separate you from every other meaningful and
> beneficial option. Now, the only way to get to a new meaningful much
> less beneficial option is to cross the meaningless/non-beneficial gap
> of separation. Random walk is all that you have to cross such a gap
> and that is a big big problem (Genetic evolution works the very same
> way).
Why would you presume that "xrp" is not beneficial? You are looking at it
from a teleological aspect. From the evolutionary aspect, once "xrp" arises,
you would watch to see whether it continues to stick around through
generations.
> Without some sort of outside pre-established guidance, such a random
> walk quickly works itself into the trillions upon trillions of years
> of average time at fairly low levels of specified complexity. Natural
> selection is no help here since nature cannot tell the difference
> between equally non-meaningful/non-beneficial options. Nature only
> recognizes meaningful changes in the function or expressed information
> content of a change in the code that caries that information. Such a
> process of random evolution has even been given a name called,
> "Neutral Evolution". Again, the problem is that neutral evolution
> doesn't make new functions; it only makes new meaningless phrases.
The outside pre-established guidance is natural selection.
> > > > Be the reality an all-powerful eternal God or
> > > > an all-powerful, eternal, mindless Quantum Vacuum, both concepts are
> > > > completely beyond human understanding
> > > No they are not. The QV is a theoretically sound physical
manifestation of
> > > well known physical phenomena. Just because you personally do not
understand
> > > it does not mean it is unknowable or mysterious.
> No one understands how QV could have created the big bang. It isn't
> even a testable hypothesis much less a theory of origins. Certainly
> you cannot explain this concept nor can you propose any other purely
> natural non-intelligent process to explain what we see in this
> universe.
> Again, there are only two options: An Eternal Pre-existing Creative
> Intelligence vs. All Other Non-intelligent Creative Processes.
That is a rather silly statement. Just looking at it rhetorically, you could
have a temporary pre-existing intelligence, or you could have an
intelligence for which temporal constraints don't apply. Further, it is a
bit rediculous to assert that all other processes are only one option.
> So far, the evidence is clearly in favor of the intelligent design
> option for everything in this universe because the other option simply
> has no evidence beyond the very lowest levels of
> functional/informational complexity. Many people confuse chaos with
> complexity here, but this is not the form of complexity that I am
> talking about in the present sense. Informational complexity is far
> different from chaos or chaotic complexity. Again, informational
> complexity simply does not come about beyond the lowest levels of
> complexity without the input of pre-established informational
> complexity that is at or above the level of complexity found within a
> newly formed system of complexity.
If you can't clearly define what you mean by levels of
functional/informational complexity, then this is a meaningless argument.
> That is how we can tell if something was intelligently designed or
> not. The detection of intelligent activity is dependent upon two
> things. In order to detect intelligence one must first be aware of
> the potential of intelligence at a certain level or beyond. But, this
> knowledge alone is not enough to clearly detect the workings of
> intelligence. For example, if I were to go out to the desert around
> where I live and find an amorphous rock on the ground, could I
> automatically and reasonable assume intelligent design as the origin
> for the form of this rock? Certainly not even though it could have
> been intelligently and deliberately formed. Certainly its form is not
> beyond the abilities of human intelligence to create - right?
> However, I also know that its form is not beyond the abilities of
> mindless non-deliberate processes to create as well. So, in order to
> detect the workings of high intelligence without a doubt, I must not
> only know the potential of such levels of intelligence, I must also
> have some idea of the limits of mindless non-directed non-intelligent
> processes.
No, you must have some idea of the behavioral patterns of the supposed
intelligence.
The limits of non-intelligent processes are not known. Science continually
pushes out the known limits of natural processes.
> For example, if I walk by a house in the morning and find a window
> broken I can rationally assume either a mindless or mindful cause for
> that broken window as both processes could give rise to such a
> phenomenon. However, if I were to walk by this same house in the
> evening and find that this window had been fixed, could I rationally
> assume anything other than a mindful cause?
Yes, your memory of the broken window may have been flawed. But in any case,
you have pre-existing knowledge of human behavior with respect to making and
mending windows.
> The same is true of any other phenomenon. If a given phenomenon goes
> significantly beyond anything that any mindless processes has ever
> done without the input of higher pre-established information in the
> form of a mind or pre-established order, I can effectively rule out a
> mindless cause for its origin. Then, since a mindful cause can indeed
> explain many phenomena that mindless causes cannot explain, it is
> perfectly reasonable to invoke a mindful cause as involved with the
> production of such phenomena.
This is simply argument from ignorance.
> > > - "beyond searching out". And
> > > > yet, one of these concepts must in fact be true. Even though we
> > > > ultimately cannot understand how we came to be, we can in fact see
> > > > evidence that supports one of these two options.
> > > > As I noted before, our universe is indeed so perfectly balanced
> > > If it's so "perfectly balanced" how come SETI still hasn't found
another
> > > intelligent life form? If it were "perfectly balanced" for life, we
should
> > > be swimming in alien monsters. If it is so "perfectly balanced" how
come
> > > only one out of tens of millions of species to have lived on the earth
is
> > > "intelligent"? Life on earth is believed to have begun about 3.6 bya,
less
> > > than 1 billion years after the earth formed. On the other planets,
which are
> > > all just as old as the earth, there does not seem to be any life, nor
is
> > > there good reason to believe that there ever was life. Earth forms,
bam!,
> > > there's life, but nada on all the other planets after all this time.
> That is because life simply does not evolve without a higher
> intelligence or order creating it. Life doesn't exist on the very
> very few other planets that we have been able to explore because it
> wasn't created there like it was created here. It is as simple as
> that. Certainly some of these other sterile planets could support
> life it were put there, but life isn't going to evolve there even if
> it would thrive there because the level of complexity found even
> within the most simple living thing is way beyond anything that can be
> assembled without the input of high intelligence. Even here on Earth
> life does not evolve beyond its lowest levels of complexity. The
> reason why there is only one intelligence on Earth at the level of
> humans is because humans were the only ones designed with such a high
> level of intelligence. A universe perfectly balanced to *support*
> life does not mean that this universe can *create* life or even new
> forms of life beyond its lowest levels of functional complexity. The
> Anthropic Universe is just able to support life once it is created,
> that is all. It is not the Creator; it is the created.
The strong anthropic principle requires a leap of faith. You could just as
easily state that we find ourselves matched to our surroundings because we
came to exist in them, would not have come to exist if the surroundings were
different, and would not have continued to exist if we were different.
> For those who are interested, I detail to a much greater degree my
> views on the abilities and limits of mindless vs. mindful processes
> at:
> www.naturalselection.0catch.com
> Sean
