Poetry and Science

[MarkE]

These verses from Psalm 139 I think are compelling poetry that would resonate with most parents, and which for me are further enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows; I’m not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe. Enjoy.

Psalm 139:13-16
- SCIENCE DESCRIBING THE WORK OF THE CREATOR

For you formed my inward parts;
- FERTILIZED OOCYTE, ZYGOTE, PRONUCLEI

you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
- MORULA CELL DIVISION, BLASTOCYST FORMATION

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
- LOSS OF ZONA PELLUCIDA, FREE BLASTOCYST, ATTACHING BLASTOCYST, IMPLANTATION

Wonderful are your works;
- EXTRAEMBRYONIC MESODERM, PRIMITIVE STREAK, GASTRULATION

my soul knows it very well.
- PRIMITIVE PIT, NOTOCHORDAL CANAL

My frame was not hidden from you,
- SOMITOGENESIS: SOMITE NUMBER 1-3 NEURAL FOLDS,
- CARDIAC PRIMORDIUM, HEAD FOLD, NEURAL FOLD FUSES

when I was being made in secret,
- SOMITE NUMBER 13 - 20 ROSTRAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
- SOMITE NUMBER 21 -29 CAUDAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
- SOMITE NUMBER 30 LEG BUDS, LENS PLACODE. PHARYNGEAL ARCHES

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
- LENS PIT OPTIC CUP, LENS VESICLE, NASAL PIT, HAND PLATE

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
- NASAL PITS MOVED VENTRALLY, AURICULAR HILLOCKS, FOOT PLATE

in your book were written, every one of them,
- FINGER RAYS, OSSIFICATION COMMENCES, STRAIGHTENING OF TRUNK

the days that were formed for me,
- UPPER LIMBS LONGER AND BENT AT ELBOW, HANDS AND FEET TURNED INWARD

when as yet there was none of them.
- EYELIDS, EXTERNAL EARS, ROUNDED HEAD, BODY AND LIMBS.

[broger...@gmail.com]

There does not seem to be any particular correspondence between individual verses of the psalm and the embryology vocabulary words you place after each verse. The Psalm itself is a nice bit of poetry, and one could certainly wax poetic about the processes of embryology, but I don't think that the juxtaposition of a poem and a bunch of interleaved technical terms really works all that well.

[RonO]

On 2/18/2022 11:47 PM, MarkE wrote:
> These verses from Psalm 139 I think are compelling poetry that would resonate with most parents, and which for me are further enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows; I’m not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe. Enjoy.
>
> Psalm 139:13-16
> - SCIENCE DESCRIBING THE WORK OF THE CREATOR
>
> For you formed my inward parts;
> - FERTILIZED OOCYTE, ZYGOTE, PRONUCLEI

The author knew nothing about these biological entities. The inward
parts were more like the liver, heart, lungs etc. that they knew well
from the animals that they ate, and when they spilled out someone's
intestines on the battle field.

>
> you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
> - MORULA CELL DIVISION, BLASTOCYST FORMATION

It was more like special creation in the womb at that time. They knew
that there was growth from abortions, and domestic animal kills, but
they didn't have microscopes back then.

Think Homunculus before embryology.

>
> I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
> - LOSS OF ZONA PELLUCIDA, FREE BLASTOCYST, ATTACHING BLASTOCYST, IMPLANTATION

The author knew that he was no different than other animals in that
respect, so it is more of a statement on the wonders of creation as a whole.

Really, they knew that a lamb was no less wonderfully made than a human.

>
> Wonderful are your works;
> - EXTRAEMBRYONIC MESODERM, PRIMITIVE STREAK, GASTRULATION

The author knew nothing abouit gastrulation.

>
> my soul knows it very well.
> - PRIMITIVE PIT, NOTOCHORDAL CANAL

The soul he was talking about likely had nothing to do with the
notochordal canal even if he knew it existed.

>
> My frame was not hidden from you,
> - SOMITOGENESIS: SOMITE NUMBER 1-3 NEURAL FOLDS,
> - CARDIAC PRIMORDIUM, HEAD FOLD, NEURAL FOLD FUSES
>
> when I was being made in secret,
> - SOMITE NUMBER 13 - 20 ROSTRAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
> - SOMITE NUMBER 21 -29 CAUDAL NEUROPORE CLOSES

> - SOMITE NUMBER 30 LEG BUDS, LENS PLACODE. PHARYNGEAL ARCHES\

When were somites discovered?

How many ways can you interpret the Bible? After this exercise, in
really out of touch interpretation, why is it so difficult to put your
designer in the gap you are trying to create that existed over 3 billion
years ago, and try to figure out what that designer did in that gap?
Why would denial be enough?

The Biologos fellows are actually trying to interpret reality in a
Biblical sense, but you don't seem to want to do the same thing.

Ron Okimoto

[Mark Isaak]

And the poetry is utterly destroyed.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it." - Terry Pratchett

[Ernest Major]

I don't suppose it's the intent, but the effect is to remind me of the
Muslim apologists who claim that there is revealed knowledge about
embryology in the Koran.

--
alias Ernest Major

[israel socratus]

Poetry in science is mathematical symbolism

[MarkE]

Poetic correspondence; works for me.

Embryology is either another god-of-the-shrinking-gaps or God-of-the-growing-gulfs. Not because development of an embryo violates natural laws, but because the origin of a structure (i.e. a zygote) capable of a self-developing into a human I think points strongly to supernatural design.

“The origin of life, the evolution of increasing biological complexity, and the development of the embryo from a single egg cell, all seem miraculous at first sight, and all remain largely unexplained.” ---Paul Davies

"Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate morphology. A robust solution to the problem of morphogenesis—currently an elusive goal—will only emerge from consideration of both top-down (e.g., the mechanical constraints and geometric properties considered here) and bottom-up (e.g., molecular and mechano-chemical) influences."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542

[MarkE]

I find these more prosaic summaries of the state of scientific understanding of embryology also quite satisfying:

“The origin of life, the evolution of increasing biological complexity, and the development of the embryo from a single egg cell, all seem miraculous at first sight, and all remain largely unexplained.” ---Paul Davies

"Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate morphology. A robust solution to the problem of morphogenesis—currently an elusive goal—will only emerge from consideration of both top-down (e.g., the mechanical constraints and geometric properties considered here) and bottom-up (e.g., molecular and mechano-chemical) influences."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542

>

[MarkE]

Insofar as these phrases poetically acknowledge the wonder of this process: "you knitted me together in my mother's womb" and "intricately woven in the depths of the earth".

The following summaries acknowledge the same, somewhat more prosaically:

[MarkE]

PS

A fertilized egg develops into a human. Our brains alone are described thus:

Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
https://today.uconn.edu/2018/03/complicated-object-universe/

'Each cubic millimeter of tissue in the neocortex, reports Michael Chorost in World Wide Mind, contains between 860 million and 1.3 billion synapses. Estimates of the total number of synapses in the neocortex range from 164 trillion to 200 trillion. The total number of synapses in the brain as a whole is much higher than that. The neocortex has the same number of neurons as a galaxy has stars: 100 billion. One researcher estimates that with current technology it would take 10,000 automated microscopes thirty years to map the connections between every neuron in a human brain, and 100 million terabytes of disk space to store the data.'
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/12/human-brain-intelligence-networks-identified-.html

I've posed this question before, but I think it's worth revisiting. How much information do you think the zygote would need to contain to specify and develop a human?

Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):

3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB

That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:

1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)
2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).

You may appreciate Psalm 139 more in view of this assessment.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/21/22 6:23 AM, MarkE wrote:
> [...]

> Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
>
> 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
>
> That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:
>
> 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)
> 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
> 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).

Certainly the data in DNA is arranged differently than that in a photo,
and a typical photo uses a great deal more storage than its actual
information content. If DNA data were "compressed," though, I would
expect junk DNA to be completely absent.

The other possibility you don't mention is that your calculation is
correct--that 64MB is enough to specify and develop a human. Humans
appear to require more information because a lot of what we are,
especially learning, comes from environment; and some comes from random
noise (which, after all, is pure information).

I little doubt that there is some epigenetic information involved, too,
but my guess is that it is on the same order of the genetic information,
not "much" more.

[broger...@gmail.com]

It did not work for me because there seems to be no specificity between the individual lines of the psalm and the particular technical terms you appended to them. It just seemed like "Here's a bunch of sciencey words, ain't that beautiful."

You didn't want to go down the rabbit hole about the issue that if failure to explain naturalisitically some observed phenomenon is evidence for God, then a successful naturalistic explanation would necessarily be evidence against God. I think you're locking yourself in a box you needn't get into in the first place. The question of God's existence is entirely independent of the existence of well-supported naturalistic explanations for things we observe in nature.

[Martin Harran]

What do you find satisfying about something being unexplained? That comes across to me as someone being afraid of an explanation and what it might mean to their beliefs.

[Glenn]

Little in this universe is "explained" in the absolute sense. Believing there is comes across as being afraid of an explanation and what it means to their beliefs.

[RonO]

The issue is that science has come closer to an understanding, while you
have to wallow in denial. Why not make something out of what is known
instead of wallow in what we don't understand at this time? God would
be responsible for what is between the gaps as much as what is not know
about the gaps. You don't even want to understand what could have
happened in the gap if your god was responsible because you really don't
want to believe in the god that fills those gaps. Demonstrate
otherwise. Put your god in the origin of life gap around 3.8 billion
years ago on an earth that was much different from what it is today, and
make it work for you.

Aside from allowing the IDiot rubes to wallow in denial, what do you
think Denton and Behe are telling you when they claim that biological
evolution is a fact of nature, and that their designer is basically
responsible for it?

Ron Okimoto

[israel socratus]

---------------------------------
God(s) can be responsible for everythings:
1 - that is known,
2 - that we don't understand
3 - in the gap of known and that we don't understand at this time
To demonstrate this, we need to imagine God(s) as a dualistic
quantum of light, that is still an enigma.
In 1954 Einstein wrote:
" All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me
no nearer to the answer to the question, 'What are light quanta?'
Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken.'‘. . .
. . . Since then, the situation has not changed.

[Martin Harran]

That seems a rather odd response to make to someone who has regularly pointed out to scientists here how far short many of their explanations fall e.g. regarding consciousness.

[MarkE]

I find satisfying the confirmation scientific evidence provides of the biblical proclamation, and of what is to me obvious from the information calculation I gave.

[Martin Harran]

Fair enough, but you also said you find satisfying things that "remain largely unexplained." That is what I was asking you about.

> > > "Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate morphology. A robust solution to the problem of morphogenesis—currently an elusive goal—will only emerge from consideration of both top-down (e.g., the mechanical constraints and geometric properties considered here) and bottom-up (e.g., molecular and mechano-chemical) influences."
> > >
> > > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Ron Okimoto
> > > > >
> > > > > intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
> > > > > - LENS PIT OPTIC CUP, LENS VESICLE, NASAL PIT, HAND PLATE
> > > > >
> > > > > Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
> > > > > - NASAL PITS MOVED VENTRALLY, AURICULAR HILLOCKS, FOOT PLATE
> > > > >
> > > > > in your book were written, every one of them,
> > > > > - FINGER RAYS, OSSIFICATION COMMENCES, STRAIGHTENING OF TRUNK
> > > > >
> > > > > the days that were formed for me,
> > > > > - UPPER LIMBS LONGER AND BENT AT ELBOW, HANDS AND FEET TURNED INWARD
> > > > >
> > > > > when as yet there was none of them.
> > > > > - EYELIDS, EXTERNAL EARS, ROUNDED HEAD, BODY AND LIMBS.
> > > > >

r

[MarkE]

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe” ~ 64MB ???

What do you think?

[MarkE]

I am.

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" ~ 64MB ???

What do you make of this scientific data?

[MarkE]

On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 3:00:42 AM UTC+9:30, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 2/21/22 6:23 AM, MarkE wrote:
> > [...]
> > Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
> >
> > 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
> >
> > That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:
> >
> > 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)
> > 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
> > 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).
> Certainly the data in DNA is arranged differently than that in a photo,
> and a typical photo uses a great deal more storage than its actual
> information content. If DNA data were "compressed," though, I would
> expect junk DNA to be completely absent.
>
> The other possibility you don't mention is that your calculation is
> correct--that 64MB is enough to specify and develop a human. Humans
> appear to require more information because a lot of what we are,
> especially learning, comes from environment; and some comes from random
> noise (which, after all, is pure information).

Good point re learning, that does contribute to the development process. For example, I believe if a growing child does not learn language by a certain age, it becomes much harder thereafter. That process continues for a lifetime. All the same, the fundamental reality is the incredible complexity of humans which enables us to be able to receive this learning. And pre-equips us before any leaning.

Noise is not "pure information." Are you confusing maximal incompressibility or Kolmogorov complexity with information?

> I little doubt that there is some epigenetic information involved, too,
> but my guess is that it is on the same order of the genetic information,
> not "much" more.

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" ~ 64MB ???

If you really believe that, we have a very different intuitive grasp of complexity, functionality, and information.

[broger...@gmail.com]

What scientific confirmation are you talking about here? The Biblical proclamation is essentially "We are fearfully and wonderfully made!" That's really an aesthetic judgment, isn't it? And it's an aesthetic judgment that the Psalmist was quite capable of making based only on what people in his time could directly observe about the birth, growth, and death of humans and other animals. There's no need for a knowledge of homeobox genes to feel awe at the processes of biological development, just as there's no need to know the details of plasma physics to find the sun magnificent. Certainly, a detailed knowledge of how things work can inspire admiration, but it's hardly necessary. The world just as you can see it with your own eyes is pretty amazing.

The Psalmist looked at the world and the living things in it and said "Wow, this is cool. God is amazing." Science adds more detail about the world and the things in it, but it's still on you to decide "Wow this is cool. God is amazing." The details themselves are not evidence for or against God; you have to take the same leap of faith that the Psalmist did.

[broger...@gmail.com]

I think that's a lot of neurons. Elephants have more, but so what? If faith depended on counting neurons, Christianity would never have gotten started. It's flattering to me, as a scientist (retired), that you seem to want so badly for science to confirm your faith, but it's really irrelevant. Jesus' message was not "Come unto me all you that wonder about the origin of life and I will explain it." The Psalmist did not sing "Praise the Lord for someday you'll see that there are a freaking awesome number of neurons in your head."

Science just describes the world. If you react to that description with religious awe, that's a reflection of you, not of science. If I react to it with non-religious awe and gratitude, that's a reflection of me, not of science. In either case, the world is there, and its awesomeness, religious or not, is available for anyone to see, without the need of scientific detail.

[MarkE]

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” The human genome supplies only 64MB of data to a process we can hardly begin to comprehend. We are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. Or, if you prefer, fearfully and wonderfully evolved. Wouldn't you agree?

[broger...@gmail.com]

I think I answered that in recent posts. Yes, that's a lot of neurons. I think you are counting data in an inadequate way, but I don't think it's really important to the point. All sorts of living things are complex and remarkable and wonderful to contemplate. We knew that without the scientific detail, though, or the Psalmist would have had nothing much to say.

[MarkE]

I think I need to add a tagline to my posts:

-----
*Reminder to Bill: my faith in Jesus does not depend on any particular scientific model, but the lens of science enriches my appreciation of creation and the creator, and provides a basis to reassure others that science and Christianity are not in conflict, in fact quite the opposite.*

[broger...@gmail.com]

I agree that science and (many versions of) Christianity are not in conflict. I don't agree with the "quite the opposite" bit. You still seem to want science to back up your faith rather than simply stay out of the way. If you, independently, have faith in a Creator, then scientific descriptions of the world, just like poetic descriptions of the world, can heighten your appreciation of the wonderfulness of the world and, based on your already existing faith, your appreciation of the Creator. You might even feel so overwhelmed by the scientific or poetic description of the world that you feel a faith you did not have before. That's a perfectly fine kind of experience. But you keep seeming to want science to confirm your faith in a more objective way, rather than merely to inspire you.

Science can certainly stand out of the way of your faith. It might enhance a faith you already have. In rare cases you might be so overwhelmed by the niftiness of biological things that you feel a faith you hadn't felt before. But it cannot act as evidence for the truth of the claims of your faith. And certainly the presence or absence of a scientific explanation for any particular complex, interesting phenomenon is not evidence one way or the other about God; it is just evidence for our (hopefully temporary, but maybe permanent) ignorance.

[jillery]

You repeatedly emphasize human development, as if it's more
"miraculous" than that of other species. Consider that the
development of any organism, from zygote to full adult form, is no
more and no less miraculous.

And to be clear, I mean miraculous not in the supernatural sense, but
in the sense of wonder that such things are comprehensible.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[MarkE]

On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 10:35:43 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Feb 2022 05:47:29 -0800 (PST), MarkE

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”

The end product is quantitatively and functionally more "miraculous". It follows that the process producing it is correspondingly more "miraculous". No offense to roundworms, but Homo sapien embryology is, well, more.

[broger...@gmail.com]

To call something "miraculous" is to describe your response to it - ie to say that it inspires wonder or admiration in you. Miraculousness is not something that can be "quantitatively or functionally" more or less. There's no objective way to say that a galaxy is more or less miraculous than a roundworm - it's just a question of what interests or inspires you personally.

[Mark Isaak]

No, that really does not follow, any more than it follows that the
hospital delivery room must also be miraculous.

> No offense to roundworms, but Homo sapien embryology is, well, more.

More than roundworms, maybe, not not more than salmon or sequoias.

[Mark Isaak]

I know of no confirmation which scientific evidence provides for any
biblical proclamation, except for the existence of some historical
places that were lost to history for a time. It is more common, I
think, for scientific evidence to contradict biblical proclamation. How
do you feel about that?

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/22/22 3:42 AM, MarkE wrote:
> On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 3:00:42 AM UTC+9:30, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 2/21/22 6:23 AM, MarkE wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
>>>
>>> 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
>>>
>>> That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:
>>>
>>> 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)
>>> 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
>>> 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).
>> Certainly the data in DNA is arranged differently than that in a photo,
>> and a typical photo uses a great deal more storage than its actual
>> information content. If DNA data were "compressed," though, I would
>> expect junk DNA to be completely absent.
>>
>> The other possibility you don't mention is that your calculation is
>> correct--that 64MB is enough to specify and develop a human. Humans
>> appear to require more information because a lot of what we are,
>> especially learning, comes from environment; and some comes from random
>> noise (which, after all, is pure information).
>
> Good point re learning, that does contribute to the development process. For example, I believe if a growing child does not learn language by a certain age, it becomes much harder thereafter. That process continues for a lifetime. All the same, the fundamental reality is the incredible complexity of humans which enables us to be able to receive this learning. And pre-equips us before any leaning.
>
> Noise is not "pure information." Are you confusing maximal incompressibility or Kolmogorov complexity with information?

I'm using the Shannon definition of information. And yes, by that
definition, noise is pure information. Note that information is a very
different thing from meaning.

>> I little doubt that there is some epigenetic information involved, too,
>> but my guess is that it is on the same order of the genetic information,
>> not "much" more.
>
> “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" ~ 64MB ???

Development more than genetics. Not particularly remarkable.

[jillery]

>> And to be clear, I mean miraculous not in the supernatural sense, but
>> in the sense of wonder that such things are comprehensible.
>
>“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
>
>The end product is quantitatively and functionally more "miraculous". It follows that the process producing it is correspondingly more "miraculous". No offense to roundworms, but Homo sapien embryology is, well, more.

By your expressed reasoning above, you would consider elephants and
whales to be even more miraculous, but you haven't even mentioned
them. And since complexity rings your bell, you should at least
mention cephalopods' nervous system. You let your anthropic
chauvinism run amok.

[Glenn]

One of your problems seem to be that someone taught you to write.

[Martin Harran]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2022 06:38:34 -0800 (PST), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Not a problem at all, it allows me to do all sorts of useful things
like answering other people's direct questions, an ability that you
don't seem to have properly acquired.

[RonO]

What do you not do when you wallow in denial?

You have spent a lot of time trying to define the gap in our knowledge
about the origin of life, but why is the denial enough? Not wanting to
understand what you are in denial about is as lame as IDiocy/creationism
gets. It isn't anything to aspire to.

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

Opposite of denial - engagement with scientific data. I’m inviting you to do the same:

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" ~ 64MB ???

What do you make of this?

[MarkE]

On Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 10:10:43 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2022 06:01:47 -0800 (PST), MarkE

I’m interested in what you make of this though:

“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" - from approximately 64MB of data in the genome ???

[broger...@gmail.com]

It's a shame (for your argument) that there are so many neurons and connections. If we had to try to explain human behavior arising from a brain that contained only 4 or 5 neurons, I think there'd be a big enough explanatory gap that you could drive a whole Hindu pantheon of Gods into it, never mind a mere Trinity.

[RonO]

Denial is just denial. What you need to try to do is understand what we
have been able to figure out. Wallowing in denial about what hasn't
been worked out at this time has been a worthless and stupid pursuit for
centuries. All you end up with is more to deny as the gaps fill in.

We do not know everything, but you know that doesn't mean that we know
nothing. We know enough so that creationists have had to revise their
Biblical beliefs for centuries. How does the Reason To Believe creation
model differ from what Augustine would have recognized? Already in
Augustine's time the flat earth model was out the window. The Greeks
had figured out the basic shape of the earth centuries before Christ was
born, and the old cosmology that the Hebrew borrowed from their more
civilized neighbors was found to be lacking.

You spend a lot of time wallowing in the origin of life denial, but what
do we know about what goes around that gap? What good does it do you
when you know enough that you don't want to understand how your designer
fits into that gap, and what happened after for the last few billion years.

Look at your denial above. The basic embryology evolved over half a
billion years ago. What do you think of the fossil embryos that have
been discovered? How has that basic embryology changed over time? What
good does wallowing in the denial do for you? Let's say that your
designer created the first embryos and they developed into the first
multicellular animals. How much has that developmental process changed
since then? After those first embryos multicellular animals came up
with two ways to produce a tube that had a mouth and an anus, and we
have the protostome and deuterostome lineages. Before that what came in
went out the same orifice. What has happened since then? When did the
brains that you are in so much denial about come along in the process?

[RonO]

I thought that I was responding to this post in the first one I did
today. Your 100 billion neuron denial can't possibly do you any good.
What do we know about brains? Did the first brains have 100 billion
neurons? What were the first brains like that your designer is supposed
to have designed?

For vertebrates you can start with the cordate brain and work your way
foreward.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8139002/

Do we have examples of everything? No, but what do we have examples of?
A lot of the lineages that evolved in the last half a billion years
are extinct. We only have extant taxa to look at except for fossils
that tell us a lot once existed that no longer exists.

You start with a small assemblage of neurons and keep adding to it, and
what do you get? It isn't just numbers, various brain structures
evolved and developed over time. You can claim that they were added
from time to time, but you know it took a long time. It took the human
brain over half a billion years to come into being from what is present
in amphioxus. Why wallow in the denial instead of understanding what
you can about nature? How is your designer responsible for the human
brain? Do you want to believe in that designer? You obviously don't
want to believe in the designer responsible for the creation of life
over 3 billion years ago. Why would you want to believe in the designer
of the human brain when you can understand something about the design
process by looking at how the design evolved over half a billion years?

Ron Okimoto

[MarkE]

I've posed the question of how "the most complicated object in the known universe" can be specified by only about 64MB of information.

I can see you have no answer to this. Which is understandable---it's an astonishing fact.

Another question: what is the current scientific response to this?

[MarkE]

You have finally conceded a scenario where scientific evidence would compellingly point to divine intervention. Fantastic!

Now that we have established this in principle, it's just a matter of haggling over what constitutes adequate and suitable evidence.

[Öö Tiib]

You see numbers that I do not know what
these are and then controversy in those numbers that I again do not
understand how you see it. Is the controversy about like how can so
big oak grow out of that little acorn? It is rather trivial, nothing mystical.
Think how can such endless colorful universe be spawned
by simple formula: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhOSM6uCWxk>
That is just how mathematics works.

Other questions:
1) From where you get that 64MB? First what it is? It is 64 millions
bytes? If so then from where you get those bytes? Most similar number is
human genome length. That is 6.4 billions base pairs. But that is 1600
millions bytes not 64. Calculation is simple: each base pair is 2 bits so it is
12.8 billions bits. Byte is 8 bits, so 12.8 billions bits is 1.6 billions bytes
that is 1600 millions bytes.

2) Then why do you think that all the brain is specified exactly in genome
down to neuron? That would be failure if it was so. Brain grows, like
every other organ, to be of hopefully suitable size for its function, given
the available materials. What size it will be depends on lot of factors,
like for example how well was carrying mother feed.

> I can see you have no answer to this. Which is understandable---it's an astonishing fact.
>
> Another question: what is the current scientific response to this?

Mine was layman response.

[RonO]

You are just wallowing in denial because you have no interest in
figuring out how it was specified even if your designer was responsible
because that designer isn't the one that you want to believe in. You
could demonstrate otherwise by dealing with what is known and putting
your the designer in the gaps to determine if you want to believe in
that designer or not.

Brains obviously did evolve, and when did the new genes needed to evolve
brains themselves evolve? You ran from that denial because you don't
want to know what the specifications were and that they came into being
in some order, and those new genes that evolved before the Cambrian
explosion have diversified and led to the specification denial that you
are wallowing in.

Why even use "specification"? Did any of Thaxton's IDiocy or Dembski's
IDiocy ever amount to anything? Why has not a single thing be shown to
be IDer specified?

>
> I can see you have no answer to this. Which is understandable---it's an astonishing fact.

Denial is tragically stupid when you don't want to believe in the
designer that would be responsible for your specification denial.

>
> Another question: what is the current scientific response to this?

We don't know. All that we do know is that there was a genome
duplication in the common ancestor of all vertebrates, and that the
various vertebrate brains evolved with that basic genome. Some extra
genes were lost in various lineages, and some evolved new function in
various lineages, and the paper that I put up indicates that brain
evolution started in our cordate ancestors before the genome
duplication. If you have anything that you can add, do it, but
wallowing in denial won't get you anywhere when we keep coming up with
things like how vertebrate brains are related to cordate brains. That
paper was just published last year, and that is the type of thing that
makes your denial as stupid as it is.

You really do need to start figuring out what your designer is supposed
to have done. There is enough known for IDiots to do that, but it
turned out that IDiots never wanted to accomplish any ID science. The
vast majority of IDiot/creationists never wanted to understand the
creation that actually exists, and you are no exception.

You should be more like the Biologos type creationists by now, but you
likely haven't progressed to the level of ID perp scam artists like Behe
and Denton.

Ron Okimoto

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Monday, February 21, 2022 at 9:25:42 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:

> On Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 3:20:42 PM UTC+9:30, MarkE wrote:
> > These verses from Psalm 139 I think are compelling poetry that would resonate with most parents, and which for me are further enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows; I’m not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe. Enjoy.
> >
> > Psalm 139:13-16
> > - SCIENCE DESCRIBING THE WORK OF THE CREATOR
> >
> > For you formed my inward parts;
> > - FERTILIZED OOCYTE, ZYGOTE, PRONUCLEI
> >

> > you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
> > - MORULA CELL DIVISION, BLASTOCYST FORMATION
> >

> > I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
> > - LOSS OF ZONA PELLUCIDA, FREE BLASTOCYST, ATTACHING BLASTOCYST, IMPLANTATION
> >

> > Wonderful are your works;
> > - EXTRAEMBRYONIC MESODERM, PRIMITIVE STREAK, GASTRULATION
> >

> > my soul knows it very well.
> > - PRIMITIVE PIT, NOTOCHORDAL CANAL
> >

> > My frame was not hidden from you,
> > - SOMITOGENESIS: SOMITE NUMBER 1-3 NEURAL FOLDS,
> > - CARDIAC PRIMORDIUM, HEAD FOLD, NEURAL FOLD FUSES
> >
> > when I was being made in secret,
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 13 - 20 ROSTRAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 21 -29 CAUDAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 30 LEG BUDS, LENS PLACODE. PHARYNGEAL ARCHES
> >

> > intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
> > - LENS PIT OPTIC CUP, LENS VESICLE, NASAL PIT, HAND PLATE
> >
> > Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
> > - NASAL PITS MOVED VENTRALLY, AURICULAR HILLOCKS, FOOT PLATE
> >
> > in your book were written, every one of them,
> > - FINGER RAYS, OSSIFICATION COMMENCES, STRAIGHTENING OF TRUNK
> >
> > the days that were formed for me,
> > - UPPER LIMBS LONGER AND BENT AT ELBOW, HANDS AND FEET TURNED INWARD
> >
> > when as yet there was none of them.
> > - EYELIDS, EXTERNAL EARS, ROUNDED HEAD, BODY AND LIMBS.

> PS
>
> A fertilized egg develops into a human. Our brains alone are described thus:
>
> Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
> https://today.uconn.edu/2018/03/complicated-object-universe/
>
> 'Each cubic millimeter of tissue in the neocortex, reports Michael Chorost in World Wide Mind, contains between 860 million and 1.3 billion synapses. Estimates of the total number of synapses in the neocortex range from 164 trillion to 200 trillion. The total number of synapses in the brain as a whole is much higher than that. The neocortex has the same number of neurons as a galaxy has stars: 100 billion. One researcher estimates that with current technology it would take 10,000 automated microscopes thirty years to map the connections between every neuron in a human brain, and 100 million terabytes of disk space to store the data.'
> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/12/human-brain-intelligence-networks-identified-.html
....................................
> I've posed this question before, but I think it's worth revisiting. How much information do you think the zygote would need to contain to specify and develop a human?

>
> Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
>
> 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
>
> That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:

..................

> 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)

That's a start - plenty of information is stored in the distribution of other material in the cell. Also, enormous amounts of information are stored in the environment - for example the development of useful neural connections in the visual cortex depends on exposure to complex visual stimuli during early life. Motor cortex development depends on interactions with the environment through movement, etc.

> 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.

Some of the data compression is not hard to understand. There is information in the chemical properties of an amino acid that is separate from the three base pairs required to encode it.

> 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).

There's a bit of a leap from 1 and 2 to intelligent design. That may be your philosophical preference, but incredulity (ie "no, not even in the running") is not evidence of anything other than your state of mind. Nature is full of all sorts of nervous systems, a few bigger and more complex than ours, lots of them of varying levels of less complexity than ours all the way down to very simple stimulus/response systems or even simple things like bacterial chemotaxis. I do not see how you could hope to prove that there was no possible pathway from the simplest to the most complex that was based on natural selection.

If you want to scientifically prove the existence of a designer you need more direct evidence than, "I don't believe it all could have happened without one. Or you could give up the pointless quest to have science ratify your faith and just take your faith on faith.
>
> You may appreciate Psalm 139 more in view of this assessment.

[broger...@gmail.com]

He is estimating that only 8% of the genome is functional. That puts him at odds with lots of other intelligent design folks, who think "junk DNA" is a scam to rule out an intelligent designer, but, that's why his number is smaller than the full genome size.

[jillery]

Since you mention it, my impression is you use your "this" as a gotcha
question to avoid relevant counterpoints to your expressed reasoning.
You're welcome.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/24/22 8:26 PM, MarkE wrote:
>
> I've posed the question of how "the most complicated object in the known universe" can be specified by only about 64MB of information.

And you have received an answer: It can't. Most of the complication
comes from outside that 64MB specification.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/24/22 8:31 PM, MarkE wrote:
> [...]

> You have finally conceded a scenario where scientific evidence would compellingly point to divine intervention. Fantastic!

I don't know why you should be excited by the idea. Material evidence
of divine intervention raises all sorts of theological complications,
especially in the area of theodicy. Mostly, though, it indicates the
lack of faith in the people who like the idea.

> Now that we have established this in principle, it's just a matter of haggling over what constitutes adequate and suitable evidence.

Which first requires determining what the nature of the divine is, which
most likely would involve stripping it of any spiritual divinity.

[MarkE]

On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 2:15:45 AM UTC+9:30, Mark Isaak wrote:
> On 2/24/22 8:26 PM, MarkE wrote:
> >
> > I've posed the question of how "the most complicated object in the known universe" can be specified by only about 64MB of information.
> And you have received an answer: It can't. Most of the complication
> comes from outside that 64MB specification.

I did previously acknowledge your correction on environmental information. However:

"An infant’s brain at birth has roughly 86 billion brain cells (neurons)​, almost all the neurons the human brain will ever have​."

The additional information from the environment (learning) is presumably accounted for by connections between neurons:

"Infant’s neurons are connected by only roughly 50 trillion neural connections, called synapses, whereas an adult brain has about 500 trillion of them.​"

https://www.parentingforbrain.com/brain-development/

But information to specify the functionality and complexity of humans (and other "higher" organisms) is not restricted to this one organ of course. An adult human is a highly integrated, autonomous, functional system. The zygote becomes 35,000,000,000,000 cells. That's 100 times the number of stars in our galaxy.

To flesh out those 3.5x10^13 cells, the main systems of the human body are:

1. Cardiovascular / Circulatory system:
- Circulates blood around the body via the heart, arteries and veins, delivering oxygen and nutrients to organs and cells and carrying their waste products away.

2. Digestive system / Excretory system:
- Mechanical and chemical processes that provide nutrients via the mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines.
- Eliminates waste from the body.

3. Endocrine system:
- Provides chemical communications within the body using hormones.

4. Integumentary system/ Exocrine system:
- Skin, hair, nails, sweat and other exocrine glands.

5. Lymphatic system / Immune system:
- The system comprising a network of lymphatic vessels that carry a clear fluid called lymph.
- Defends the body against disease-causing agents.

6. Muscular system/Skeletal system:
- Enables the body to move using muscles.
- Bones supporting the body and its organs.

7. Nervous system:
- The nervous system functions in collecting, transferring, and processing information via cellular communication involving nerve cells, or neurons.

8. Renal system / Urinary system:
- The system where the kidneys filter blood.

9. Reproductive system:
- The sex organs required for the production of offspring.

10. Respiratory system
- The lungs and the trachea that bring air into the body.

11. Sensory system
- Consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception.

The human body's cells, tissues, organs, and systems work together in remarkable harmony. Actions as simple as eating a piece of fruit involve numerous systems in complex coordination, whether the nervous system, with impulses traveling up to 248 mph, or the muscular system, with contracting and relaxation of some of the body's 600 muscles, or the endocrine system, involving hormones produced by glands in one part of the body that affect select cells with the correct receptors in other parts of the body. Should one organ or system of the body falter in performing its function, the entire body is affected. There are over 250 different kinds of cells in the human being (Baldi 2001) and Fukuyama (2002) states there are approximately 100 trillion cells in the average adult (although other sources list estimates of ten trillion or fifty trillion cells). These cells are generally performing 20 diverse reactions at any one time, involving repair, reproduction, communication, waste disposal, and nutrition, and including a purpose that aids the body as a whole. The human eye can distinguish up to one million color surfaces and human hearing is so sensitive it can distinguish hundreds of thousands of different sounds. The liver alone performs 500 different functions, and a square inch of skin contains on the average 650 sweat glands, 20 blood vessels, and more than a thousand nerve endings. The brain has been called "the most developed and complex system known to science" (Davis 1992).

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Human_body#Major_systems_of_the_human_body (Note that I'm not endorsing the particular metaphysical perspective of the site cited.)

[MarkE]

As per Bill's clarification.

> 2) Then why do you think that all the brain is specified exactly in genome
> down to neuron?

Not at all. For example, I recognise the "information compression" achieved with fractal networks of blood vessels.

See my reply to Mark Isaak below for more detail.

[MarkE]

Agreed?

[MarkE]

The sugar code a possible candidate? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10798195/

> > 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
> Some of the data compression is not hard to understand. There is information in the chemical properties of an amino acid that is separate from the three base pairs required to encode it.

That's not an information multiplier. If the nucleotide sequence is random, the resulting protein will almost certainly be non-functional.

[Öö Tiib]

Is there some reason to doubt that the systems of ancestors of humans
did not work in harmony? Were jawless fish of late Cambrian somehow
disabled and messed up? If there was some kind of design somewhere then
what did the designer do and when?

[broger...@gmail.com]

I assumed you were being as tongue in cheek as I was.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Your argument is good for inspiration, perhaps. Any organism is a "complex, integrated system." Your argument requires that you show there is a definitive, insurmountable obstacle to such things evolving in small steps from simpler things. That is, if you keep wanting science to ratify your faith. If you can just have faith, as faith, then you ca be inspired by the world in any way you like and science will not get in your way.

[jillery]

On Fri, 25 Feb 2022 08:16:51 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Thu, 24 Feb 2022 04:40:36 -0800 (PST), MarkE
><mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Wednesday, February 23, 2022 at 10:10:43 AM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
>>> On Tue, 22 Feb 2022 06:01:47 -0800 (PST), MarkE
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >On Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 10:35:43 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
>>> >> On Mon, 21 Feb 2022 05:47:29 -0800 (PST), MarkE
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>
>>> >> >On Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 9:45:42 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> >> >> On Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 12:50:42 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:

>>> >> >> > These verses from Psalm 139 I think are compelling poetry that would resonate with most parents, and which for me are further enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows; I? not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe. Enjoy.

>>> >> >?he origin of life, the evolution of increasing biological complexity, and the development of the embryo from a single egg cell, all seem miraculous at first sight, and all remain largely unexplained.?---Paul Davies
>>> >> >
>>> >> >"Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate morphology. A robust solution to the problem of morphogenesis?urrently an elusive goal?ill only emerge from consideration of both top-down (e.g., the mechanical constraints and geometric properties considered here) and bottom-up (e.g., molecular and mechano-chemical) influences."

>>> >> >
>>> >> >https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542
>>> >> You repeatedly emphasize human development, as if it's more
>>> >> "miraculous" than that of other species. Consider that the
>>> >> development of any organism, from zygote to full adult form, is no
>>> >> more and no less miraculous.
>>> >>
>>> >> And to be clear, I mean miraculous not in the supernatural sense, but
>>> >> in the sense of wonder that such things are comprehensible.
>>> >

>>> >?he human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.?

>>> >
>>> >The end product is quantitatively and functionally more "miraculous". It follows that the process producing it is correspondingly more "miraculous". No offense to roundworms, but Homo sapien embryology is, well, more.
>>> By your expressed reasoning above, you would consider elephants and
>>> whales to be even more miraculous, but you haven't even mentioned
>>> them. And since complexity rings your bell, you should at least
>>> mention cephalopods' nervous system. You let your anthropic
>>> chauvinism run amok.
>>

>>I? interested in what you make of this though:
>>
>>?he human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe" - from approximately 64MB of data in the genome ???

>
>
>Since you mention it, my impression is you use your "this" as a gotcha
>question to avoid relevant counterpoints to your expressed reasoning.
>You're welcome.

So what to make of a poster who asserts a line of reasoning, but
refuses to acknolwedge counterfactuals to that line of reasoning?

[MarkE]

Let’s take the hypothetical—if it were the case that the human brain consisted of an impossibly small number of neurons, how would you interpret that?

[MarkE]

On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 9:45:44 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2022 08:16:51 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >On Thu, 24 Feb 2022 04:40:36 -0800 (PST), MarkE

I tried, I really did: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/N7gOZcom0tQ/m/RQc1L74vAwAJ

[broger...@gmail.com]

Why take a hypothetical? If you are willing to do that, there are any number of possible observations that would confirm your religious belief - say, the entire Gospel of Mark being encoded in a simple cipher in "junk DNA" in one of the human chromosomes.

That would, in fact, be a good deal more convincing than a human brain consisting of an impossibly small number of neurons. In the case of such a brain, I'd just scratch my head and try to figure out how it could work - you, though, might be willing to build a cathedral in that explanatory gap.

My point was not that such an explanatory gap would, for me, constitute evidence for God, but that it would be an even more appealing explanatory gap, for you, than a brain with lots and lots of neurons.

[MarkE]

Is that in effect a statement of your unconditional commitment to philosophical materialism?

[broger...@gmail.com]

Of course not. As I have said many times to you. The question of whether there is a worked out naturalistic explanation for some phenomenon (OoL or a hypothetical 5 neuron human brain) is completely separate from the question of whether there is a God. That we find such an explanation is not evidence against God; that we lack such an explanation is not evidence for God.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/26/22 5:10 AM, MarkE wrote:
> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 10:30:44 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 7:35:44 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
>>> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 9:25:44 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 3:30:45 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:

>>>>> [...]

>>>>> You have finally conceded a scenario where scientific evidence would compellingly point to divine intervention. Fantastic! Now that we have established this in principle, it's just a matter of haggling over what constitutes adequate and suitable evidence.
>>>>> Agreed?

>>>> I assumed you were being as tongue in cheek as I was.

>>> Let’s take the hypothetical—if it were the case that the human brain consisted of an impossibly small number of neurons, how would you interpret that?

>> Why take a hypothetical? If you are willing to do that, there are any number of possible observations that would confirm your religious belief - say, the entire Gospel of Mark being encoded in a simple cipher in "junk DNA" in one of the human chromosomes.
>>
>> That would, in fact, be a good deal more convincing than a human brain consisting of an impossibly small number of neurons. In the case of such a brain, I'd just scratch my head and try to figure out how it could work - you, though, might be willing to build a cathedral in that explanatory gap.
>>
>> My point was not that such an explanatory gap would, for me, constitute evidence for God, but that it would be an even more appealing explanatory gap, for you, than a brain with lots and lots of neurons.
>
> Is that in effect a statement of your unconditional commitment to philosophical materialism?

What about your own commitment to philosophical materialism?

Many theists are quite happy to see reminders of God in simple things
like a child's laughter or the colors of a sunrise. You aren't. Based
on the direction of all your questions and comments, God cannot be real
to you without some material proof. Your god is a magician, and so you
perpetually hunt for signs of real magic (not the figurative stuff like
laughter and sunrises) as evidence of its existence. Given that the
magic needs to have a physical manifestation, I consider your belief to
be a sort of materialism every bit as much as the person who insists
that there can be nothing supernatural. Certainly your commitment to
the belief that God cannot exist without supernatural manifestations,
even if not philosophical materialism, is of the same type.

[Mark Isaak]

On 2/26/22 12:09 AM, MarkE wrote:
> On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 2:15:45 AM UTC+9:30, Mark Isaak wrote:
>> On 2/24/22 8:26 PM, MarkE wrote:
>>>
>>> I've posed the question of how "the most complicated object in the known universe" can be specified by only about 64MB of information.
>> And you have received an answer: It can't. Most of the complication
>> comes from outside that 64MB specification.
>
> I did previously acknowledge your correction on environmental information. However:

> [snip]

"However" what? You gave a bunch of extraneous information showing that
biology is complicated. Yeah. That says nothing to detract from my point.

Incidentally, do you want to know a great way to generate functional
complexity? It's called "evolution".

[Ernest Major]

On 21/02/2022 14:23, MarkE wrote:
> PS
>
> A fertilized egg develops into a human. Our brains alone are described thus:
>

> Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
> https://today.uconn.edu/2018/03/complicated-object-universe/

I don't find that a particularly coherent claim - what is the
operational definition of complexity that allows us to assign a measure
of complexity to disparate objects? However

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons

>
> 'Each cubic millimeter of tissue in the neocortex, reports Michael Chorost in World Wide Mind, contains between 860 million and 1.3 billion synapses. Estimates of the total number of synapses in the neocortex range from 164 trillion to 200 trillion. The total number of synapses in the brain as a whole is much higher than that. The neocortex has the same number of neurons as a galaxy has stars: 100 billion. One researcher estimates that with current technology it would take 10,000 automated microscopes thirty years to map the connections between every neuron in a human brain, and 100 million terabytes of disk space to store the data.'
> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/12/human-brain-intelligence-networks-identified-.html
>

> I've posed this question before, but I think it's worth revisiting. How much information do you think the zygote would need to contain to specify and develop a human?
>
> Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
>
> 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
>
> That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:
>

> 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)

> 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.

> 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).

4. Complicated objects can have simple specifications. For example, the
Mandelbrot Set is infinitely complicated, but can be specified in
relative few words - "The Mandelbrot set is the set of complex numbers
c for which the function f(z) = z^2 + c does not diverge to infinity
when iterated from z = 0" (Wikipedia).

A blueprint is a bad analogy for a genome. Most multicellular organisms
don't have deterministic cell fates. (Caenorhabditis elegans is an
exception, which is why it's used as an model organism to investigate
genetic control of development - in an eutelic organism you don't have
the problem of disentangling nature and nurture.)

>
> You may appreciate Psalm 139 more in view of this assessment.

I'm trying to shake the idea from my head that you're mocking the psalm.

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ernest Major]

You, however, haven't responded to jillery's point that elephants and
whales have brains with even more neurons. (I doubt that humans are
significantly out of line with other mammals in respect to the number of
synapses per neuron.)

>
>> --
>> You're entitled to your own opinions.
>> You're not entitled to your own facts.
>

--
alias Ernest Major

[jillery]

When I click on your link above, GG refers to a much older post by me
from an entirely different topic:
********************************
Subject: Re: Phases from self-replicator to LUCA?
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 22:10:38 -0500
Message-ID: <709hvgld5mlir592v...@4ax.com>
On Mon, 31 Jan 2022 22:10:38 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:
********************************

I know GG is unreliable about their links, so that might not be your
fault.

But neither of your replies to my post above even try to address my
counterfactuals, that there exist much larger and so according to you
more "miraculous" brains, and also there exist other organisms whose
complexity equal humans. I could also mention several other factors
unrelated to brains where other organisms are more "complex" ex.
genome size.

My impressing is your understanding of "tried", is as confused as your
understanding of "miraculous".

[jillery]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2022 23:39:41 +0000, Ernest Major
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

[...]

Since you mention it:

<https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4685590/>
**************************************
With respect to the [information processing capacity] of the cortex,
the number of synapses may be of importance. However, this topic is
controversial. Some authors, like Schüz, state that the number of
cortical synapses per neuron is constant throughout mammals, while
others, like Changizi, assume that it increases with cortical volume
and neuron size with an exponent of 0.33. Thus, larger cortical
neurons should have larger numbers of synapses, but this increase in
number of synapses is believed to be compensated by a decrease in NPD,
so that in mammals cortical synapse density would remain constant.
Unfortunately, exact data on number of synapses are largely lacking.
*****************************************

IIUC the number of synapses in human brains varies by age, maximizing
before age 4, reducing by half before adulthood, and slowly decreasing
thereafter, as does the ability to create new synapses. So yet
another counterfactual to MarkE's measure of miraculous.

[MarkE]

Okay. Out of interest, how would you describe your position and worldview? (Apologies if you've shared this before.)

[broger...@gmail.com]

> Okay. Out of interest, how would you describe your position and worldview? (Apologies if you've shared this before).
OK. I am an atheist who was for many years a Christian. In fact, I flipped back and forth a couple of times before settling on atheism. Through all the flips, though, I found scientific questions irrelevant to whether I was theist or atheist. What attracted me to Christianity in the first place was what I saw as Jesus' message of love and human brotherhood and the idea that love was fundamental to the creation. If that message was true, it was far and away the most important thing in life. It had nothing to do with the lack of a solution to the OoL problem. When I lost that faith it was a result of simply not thinking it was true, not believing in the miracles, sure, but also just not seeing the universe as having humanity's interests at heart. And yes, I am familiar with all the arguments about theodicy - I just found them unconvincing.

I don't see that science comes into these questions one way or another. If God made the universe and the laws that govern it, He could, it always seemed to me, have made laws that allow for the evolution of life and conscious in accordance with those laws, so neither finding nor failing to find a scientific account of OoL or the origin of consciousness would make any difference to the likelihood of God's being there. If there is an open scientific question, like OoL, it seems to me pointless to say "Can't think of how this could have happened, God must have done it," and then give up. You might decide to give up because you are stuck and cannot think of any experiments to try, but that's a different thing.

Finally, as a Christian I always disliked God-of-the-Gaps arguments because they seem to me to reduce God to a scientific explanation of last resort for things at the periphery of human knowledge, rather than as a loving First Cause of everything, familiar and unfamiliar, understood or not understood. I keep responding to your posts not because they challenge my atheism, but because they bother the former Christian in me.

[MarkE]

On Monday, February 21, 2022 at 11:55:42 PM UTC+9:30, MarkE wrote:

> On Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 3:20:42 PM UTC+9:30, MarkE wrote:
> > These verses from Psalm 139 I think are compelling poetry that would resonate with most parents, and which for me are further enhanced by the lens of science. A few years ago I annotated this psalm as follows; I’m not trained in the biology quoted, but you get the vibe. Enjoy.
> >
> > Psalm 139:13-16
> > - SCIENCE DESCRIBING THE WORK OF THE CREATOR
> >
> > For you formed my inward parts;
> > - FERTILIZED OOCYTE, ZYGOTE, PRONUCLEI
> >

> > you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
> > - MORULA CELL DIVISION, BLASTOCYST FORMATION
> >

> > I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
> > - LOSS OF ZONA PELLUCIDA, FREE BLASTOCYST, ATTACHING BLASTOCYST, IMPLANTATION
> >

> > Wonderful are your works;
> > - EXTRAEMBRYONIC MESODERM, PRIMITIVE STREAK, GASTRULATION
> >

> > my soul knows it very well.
> > - PRIMITIVE PIT, NOTOCHORDAL CANAL
> >

> > My frame was not hidden from you,
> > - SOMITOGENESIS: SOMITE NUMBER 1-3 NEURAL FOLDS,
> > - CARDIAC PRIMORDIUM, HEAD FOLD, NEURAL FOLD FUSES
> >
> > when I was being made in secret,
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 13 - 20 ROSTRAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 21 -29 CAUDAL NEUROPORE CLOSES
> > - SOMITE NUMBER 30 LEG BUDS, LENS PLACODE. PHARYNGEAL ARCHES
> >

> > intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
> > - LENS PIT OPTIC CUP, LENS VESICLE, NASAL PIT, HAND PLATE
> >
> > Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
> > - NASAL PITS MOVED VENTRALLY, AURICULAR HILLOCKS, FOOT PLATE
> >
> > in your book were written, every one of them,
> > - FINGER RAYS, OSSIFICATION COMMENCES, STRAIGHTENING OF TRUNK
> >
> > the days that were formed for me,
> > - UPPER LIMBS LONGER AND BENT AT ELBOW, HANDS AND FEET TURNED INWARD
> >
> > when as yet there was none of them.
> > - EYELIDS, EXTERNAL EARS, ROUNDED HEAD, BODY AND LIMBS.

> PS
>
> A fertilized egg develops into a human. Our brains alone are described thus:
>

> Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku said, “The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.”
> https://today.uconn.edu/2018/03/complicated-object-universe/

>
> 'Each cubic millimeter of tissue in the neocortex, reports Michael Chorost in World Wide Mind, contains between 860 million and 1.3 billion synapses. Estimates of the total number of synapses in the neocortex range from 164 trillion to 200 trillion. The total number of synapses in the brain as a whole is much higher than that. The neocortex has the same number of neurons as a galaxy has stars: 100 billion. One researcher estimates that with current technology it would take 10,000 automated microscopes thirty years to map the connections between every neuron in a human brain, and 100 million terabytes of disk space to store the data.'
> http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/12/human-brain-intelligence-networks-identified-.html
>
> I've posed this question before, but I think it's worth revisiting. How much information do you think the zygote would need to contain to specify and develop a human?
>
> Assume functional human DNA is 8% (based on genomic conservation estimates from comparative genomics):
>
> 3.2 billion base pairs x 2 (bits) / 8 (bytes) x 0.08 = 64MB
>
> That's 16 photos on my phone. That can't be right, I hear you gasp! I share your insight. Solutions I can think of:
>
> 1. Much more data is stored epigenetically (i.e. in the distribution of other material in the cell)
> 2. The human genome uses extreme levels of data compression/representation yet to be discovered/understood.
> 3. Both 1 and 2, which require intelligent design (The blunt instrument of survival of the fittest phenotype? No, not even in the running).
>

> You may appreciate Psalm 139 more in view of this assessment.

To jillery, Mark Isaak, Ernest Major, thanks for your various responses. (Bill, I think I've responded to most of your comments? Not implying that you found those responses convincing.)

I thought it might be helpful to make a consolidated attempt here to address issues you've raised and to clarify my argument.

I'm intrigued by what seems to be the low information count in the human genome for the entity it produces: 64MB to specify an organism with 100 billion neurons. A zygote multiplies to 35 trillion cells.

Note that I'm not simply saying, "here's a very complex object, therefore evolution must be must wrong". Nor am I suggesting that divine intervention is required for embryological development. Rather, I'm wondering about how, seemingly, so much is contained within so little?

MARK ISAAKS: you helpfully pointed out that a substantial amount of information comes from the environment. This prompted me to ascertain that a newborn has about the same number of neurons as an adult, but experiences a ten-fold increase in synapses in the process of growing and learning (motor skills, language, etc etc etc).

JILLERY: Note that although I'm singling out a humans on the basis of our quantitatively and functionally preeminent brains (hence the quotes about them being the complex objects/subsystems known), that's not to imply that humans are superior in all categories. Even in the brain department, a link EM provided reported that an African elephant has 2.57×10^11 neurons compared to our 8.6×10^10. The logic of my argument would hold for other "higher" animals; indeed for many different lifeforms. Although I've focused on the brain, the same single cell also contains what is needed to specify and produce all 11 major bodily systems, all of great complexity, functionality, integration and coordination: Cardiovascular/Circulatory, Digestive system/Excretory, Endocrine, Integumentary/Exocrine, Lymphatic/Immune, Muscular/Skeletal, Nervous, Renal/Urinary, Reproductive, Respiratory, and Sensory systems.

ERNEST MAJOR: I'm allowing for efficiencies from mechanisms like fractal development of say networks of blood vessels, neurons etc (I've written programs to explore the Mandlebrot set, and even had the privilege of seeing Benoit Mandlebrot lecture on this subject in person).

I expect a great deal of information to be epigenetic, e.g. in the distribution of material in the cytoplasm of the zygote (which makes me wonder about the potentially disruptive effects of invitro-fertilisation).

But, these raw facts remain: 64MB to specify an organism with 100 billion neurons; a zygote that multiplies to 35 trillion highly coordinated cells. This is profound by any reckoning. We are truly "fearfully and wonderfully made," whoever or whatever you credit.

Consistent with this conclusion is the state of our scientific understanding of embryology: "Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate morphology." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542

Here's the nub of my argument: there is something deeply complex and intricate about the structure and content of the zygote and its latent capability. How could such a thing be created by the blunt force of differential reproductive success of competing phenotypes? By some ancient chordates scrabbling in the mud?

[jillery]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 04:17:56 -0800 (PST), MarkE
<mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Here's the nub of my argument: there is something deeply complex and intricate about the structure and content of the zygote and its latent capability. How could such a thing be created by the blunt force of differential reproductive success of competing phenotypes? By some ancient chordates scrabbling in the mud?

[jillery]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 23:28:26 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 04:17:56 -0800 (PST), MarkE
><mark.w.e...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Here's the nub of my argument: there is something deeply complex and intricate about the structure and content of the zygote and its latent capability. How could such a thing be created by the blunt force of differential reproductive success of competing phenotypes? By some ancient chordates scrabbling in the mud?

Now that you have dropped your use of "miraculous", on what basis do
you doubt the plausibility of differential reproductive success of
competing phenotypes to produce something so complex and intricate? Do
you have some reason to doubt the power of successful phenotypes to
reproduce exponentially, while unsuccessful phenotypes reproduce much
less or even not at all? Simply consider the vast amount of time and
the great number of organisms which have lived between your "ancient
chordates scrabbling in the mud" and extant forms, and the "deep
complexity" to which you allude is a virtual certainty.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

I think that throughout this discussion MarkE is relying on what
Richard Dawkins called the argument from personal incredulity. Sitting
in front of his fire in his armchair he can't conceive of how natural
selection could have produced the results we. Therefore it didn't;
therefore a designer, otherwise known as God.


--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

[Glenn]

I think you rely on what you can conceive of how natural selection could have produced all the complexity seen in life, therefore you think it did, therefore no God.

[MarkE]

Thanks for that. The theodicy question is important.

>
> I don't see that science comes into these questions one way or another. If God made the universe and the laws that govern it, He could, it always seemed to me, have made laws that allow for the evolution of life and conscious in accordance with those laws, so neither finding nor failing to find a scientific account of OoL or the origin of consciousness would make any difference to the likelihood of God's being there. If there is an open scientific question, like OoL, it seems to me pointless to say "Can't think of how this could have happened, God must have done it," and then give up. You might decide to give up because you are stuck and cannot think of any experiments to try, but that's a different thing.

My focus on talk.origins is far from that with Christian friends. I rarely discuss these issues in that company - our shared faith does not depend on any particular scientific model and verification. There are believers at Biologos who would similarly argue against me regarding scientific interpretation, but with whom I'd comfortably share mainstream theology.

As I keep saying: may faith does not depend on this. Rather, I think purely naturalistic accounts of OoL and evolution are bad science and deserve to be challenged.

>
> Finally, as a Christian I always disliked God-of-the-Gaps arguments because they seem to me to reduce God to a scientific explanation of last resort for things at the periphery of human knowledge, rather than as a loving First Cause of everything, familiar and unfamiliar, understood or not understood. I keep responding to your posts not because they challenge my atheism, but because they bother the former Christian in me.

With reference to the preceding, be released from that burden.

And as I've said before, I also dislike god-of-the narrowing-gaps arguments. I'm interested in God-of-the-widening-gulfs evidence.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

see

[MarkE]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:50:44 PM UTC+9:30, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> On 2022-02-28 04:45:22 +0000, jillery said:
>
> > On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 23:28:26 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 04:17:56 -0800 (PST), MarkE

> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Here's the nub of my argument: there is something deeply complex and
> >>> intricate about the structure and content of the zygote and its latent
> >>> capability. How could such a thing be created by the blunt force of
> >>> differential reproductive success of competing phenotypes? By some
> >>> ancient chordates scrabbling in the mud?
> >
> >
> > Now that you have dropped your use of "miraculous", on what basis do
> > you doubt the plausibility of differential reproductive success of
> > competing phenotypes to produce something so complex and intricate? Do
> > you have some reason to doubt the power of successful phenotypes to
> > reproduce exponentially, while unsuccessful phenotypes reproduce much
> > less or even not at all? Simply consider the vast amount of time and
> > the great number of organisms which have lived between your "ancient
> > chordates scrabbling in the mud" and extant forms, and the "deep
> > complexity" to which you allude is a virtual certainty.
> I think that throughout this discussion MarkE is relying on what
> Richard Dawkins called the argument from personal incredulity. Sitting
> in front of his fire in his armchair he can't conceive of how natural
> selection could have produced the results we. Therefore it didn't;
> therefore a designer, otherwise known as God.
>

"We can accept a certain amount of luck in our explanations, but not too much..." I.e., if our theory requires too much chance, it is not scientifically or rationally legitimate.

Who made that statement? Richard Dawkins.

We may not agree on how much is too much luck or how to measure this, but regardless, there will always be a degree of personal judgement in arriving at position either way. Sometimes that process might be superficial and subjective, and rightly be labelled "argument from personal incredulity". But it cuts both ways (as Glenn responded): a lazy and unquestioning acceptance of naturalistic explanations could similarly be called "argument from herd credulity".

[MarkE]

On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 2:15:44 PM UTC+9:30, jillery wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 23:28:26 -0500, jillery <69jp...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >On Sun, 27 Feb 2022 04:17:56 -0800 (PST), MarkE

> > wrote:
> >
> >>Here's the nub of my argument: there is something deeply complex and intricate about the structure and content of the zygote and its latent capability. How could such a thing be created by the blunt force of differential reproductive success of competing phenotypes? By some ancient chordates scrabbling in the mud?
> Now that you have dropped your use of "miraculous", on what basis do
> you doubt the plausibility of differential reproductive success of
> competing phenotypes to produce something so complex and intricate? Do
> you have some reason to doubt the power of successful phenotypes to
> reproduce exponentially, while unsuccessful phenotypes reproduce much
> less or even not at all? Simply consider the vast amount of time and
> the great number of organisms which have lived between your "ancient
> chordates scrabbling in the mud" and extant forms, and the "deep
> complexity" to which you allude is a virtual certainty.

My use of the term "miraculous" was imply quoting the scientific paper on embryology which in turn quoted Paul Davies use of the term (by which he does not mean supernatural):

“The origin of life, the evolution of increasing biological complexity, and the development of the embryo from a single egg cell, all seem miraculous at first sight, and all remain largely unexplained.” ---Paul Davies

Another quote from the same paper:

“The palm will be won by the one who can trace the formative forces of the animal body back to the general forces that direct the life of the universe.” ---Karl Ernst von Baer

And from the paper's authors themselves:

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Bear in mind, however, that Paul Davies is not a biologist but a
physicist, one so ignorant of basic chemistry that he associated
himself with Felisa Wolfe-Simon's nonsense about arsenic-based life.

>
> Another quote from the same paper:
>
> “The palm will be won by the one who can trace the formative forces of
> the animal body back to the general forces that direct the life of the
> universe.” ---Karl Ernst von Baer
>
> And from the paper's authors themselves:
>
> "Though speculative, the model addresses the poignant absence in the
> literature of any plausible account of the origin of vertebrate
> morphology."
>
> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610716300542

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 4:15:45 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 9:05:45 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 6:10:44 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> > > On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 11:20:44 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:

<snip older stuff>

> > > > > Is that in effect a statement of your unconditional commitment to philosophical materialism?
> > > > Of course not. As I have said many times to you. The question of whether there is a worked out naturalistic explanation for some phenomenon (OoL or a hypothetical 5 neuron human brain) is completely separate from the question of whether there is a God. That we find such an explanation is not evidence against God; that we lack such an explanation is not evidence for God.
> > > Okay. Out of interest, how would you describe your position and worldview? (Apologies if you've shared this before).
> > OK. I am an atheist who was for many years a Christian. In fact, I flipped back and forth a couple of times before settling on atheism. Through all the flips, though, I found scientific questions irrelevant to whether I was theist or atheist. What attracted me to Christianity in the first place was what I saw as Jesus' message of love and human brotherhood and the idea that love was fundamental to the creation. If that message was true, it was far and away the most important thing in life. It had nothing to do with the lack of a solution to the OoL problem. When I lost that faith it was a result of simply not thinking it was true, not believing in the miracles, sure, but also just not seeing the universe as having humanity's interests at heart. And yes, I am familiar with all the arguments about theodicy - I just found them unconvincing.
> Thanks for that. The theodicy question is important.
> >
> > I don't see that science comes into these questions one way or another. If God made the universe and the laws that govern it, He could, it always seemed to me, have made laws that allow for the evolution of life and conscious in accordance with those laws, so neither finding nor failing to find a scientific account of OoL or the origin of consciousness would make any difference to the likelihood of God's being there. If there is an open scientific question, like OoL, it seems to me pointless to say "Can't think of how this could have happened, God must have done it," and then give up. You might decide to give up because you are stuck and cannot think of any experiments to try, but that's a different thing.
> My focus on talk.origins is far from that with Christian friends. I rarely discuss these issues in that company - our shared faith does not depend on any particular scientific model and verification. There are believers at Biologos who would similarly argue against me regarding scientific interpretation, but with whom I'd comfortably share mainstream theology.
>
> As I keep saying: may faith does not depend on this. Rather, I think purely naturalistic accounts of OoL and evolution are bad science and deserve to be challenged.

So far your argument that they are bad science is that there remain unsolved problems. That's the way science works. Some religions may aim to wrap everything up and call it solved, but science does not work that way.

> >
> > Finally, as a Christian I always disliked God-of-the-Gaps arguments because they seem to me to reduce God to a scientific explanation of last resort for things at the periphery of human knowledge, rather than as a loving First Cause of everything, familiar and unfamiliar, understood or not understood. I keep responding to your posts not because they challenge my atheism, but because they bother the former Christian in me.
> With reference to the preceding, be released from that burden.
>
> And as I've said before, I also dislike god-of-the narrowing-gaps arguments. I'm interested in God-of-the-widening-gulfs evidence.

Then you are still using God as an explanation of last resort; it's just that you keep finding more and more things for which you want to use Him.
<snip old strata>

[jillery]

Both you and Glenn refuse to apply your pseudoskepticism to your own
unquestioned presumptions for an unseen designer. Neither jillery nor
Athel even mentioned "luck". Your argument above is a mindless
strawman. What part of "differential selection" do you not
understand?

[jillery]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:48:48 -0800 (PST), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Nobody in this topic said or implied anything about there being no
God. Try to keep up.

[jillery]

If you, MarkE, meant "miraculous" as something other than
"supernatural", then your mention of it has no relevance to your
expressed point, that human brains are too complex to have evolved
by unguided natural processes.

And once again, you didn't even try to answer my question. Why is
that?

[jillery]

That's my impression as well. The sad part is, it's almost certain
MarkE knows his line of reasoning is incoherent. Even if ToE was
completely wrong and factually incorrect, that still wouldn't inform
the existence of an unseen designer aka God.

[Mark Isaak]

On 3/1/22 1:31 AM, MarkE wrote:
>> [...]

> "We can accept a certain amount of luck in our explanations, but not too much..." I.e., if our theory requires too much chance, it is not scientifically or rationally legitimate.
>
> Who made that statement? Richard Dawkins.
>
> We may not agree on how much is too much luck or how to measure this, but regardless, there will always be a degree of personal judgement in arriving at position either way. Sometimes that process might be superficial and subjective, and rightly be labelled "argument from personal incredulity". But it cuts both ways (as Glenn responded): a lazy and unquestioning acceptance of naturalistic explanations could similarly be called "argument from herd credulity".

If your metric is the amount of laziness involved, supernatural
explanations lead the pack by a wide margin. There are three ways to
get a supernatural explanation: 1) Make up a fantasy explanation. This
at least requires some effort, but not as much as research. 2) Go with
a traditional explanation. Maybe you could put some effort into
researching the tradition, but that's not necessary, and it would only
get in the way when you discover there are myriad contradictory
traditional explanations. 3) Give up entirely and say no more than "not
natural."

[Martin Harran]

Are you suggesting people here are guilty of "a lazy and unquestioning
acceptance of naturalistic explanations"? I totally reject many
naturalistic explanations (consciousness being a prime example) and I
have had numerous debates about that with various people here, some of
them quite vociferous, where I had have strongly rejected their
arguments but I can't think of even one of those posters whose
opinions were based on lazy and unquestioning acceptance.

The only people I can think of whose ideas seem to be based on lazy
and unquestioning acceptance are all on the Creationist side of the
debate.

[MarkE]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 2:40:45 AM UTC+9:30, martin...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 01:31:12 -0800 (PST), MarkE

So in your experience of argument quality, all non-creationists are good, all creationists are bad?

[broger...@gmail.com]

That's not what he said. Not all bad arguments are based on "lazy and unquestioning acceptance", nor did he claim that all creationists made bad arguments or that they all made arguments based on "lazy and unquestioning acceptance."

[MarkE]

I imagine the process of flipping back and forth between belief and unbelief was personally difficult, especially if you were involved in a church and had many Christian friends. Though having settled on atheism, you have an inherent strong bias against the possibility of scientific evidence pointing to supernatural agency. I'm not saying this nullifies your opinions, but it is noteworthy. I also have a bias as a Christian with a leaning towards ID. The difference is, I can opt for "evolutionary creation" (a la Biologos) should scientific evidence compels me at some stage, whereas your position is a hill to die on. Like Lewontin, you "cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Your epistemology demonstrates this bias with its pre-emptive exclusion of the supernatural. For example, if hypothetically the human brain consisted of an impossibly small number of neurons, your response was: "In the case of such a brain, I'd just scratch my head and try to figure out how it could work - you, though, might be willing to build a cathedral in that explanatory gap."

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

He didn't say that. You're inventing.

[MarkE]

Okay, to be precise, in Martin's experience:
- no non-creationists are guilty of lazy and unquestioning acceptance
- all lazy and unquestioning acceptance is on the creationist side

[Glenn]

You're whitewashing. No surpise there.

[Glenn]

That is not what he said.

>Not all bad arguments are based on "lazy and unquestioning acceptance",

Yes they are, for most any regard of "bad".
Arguments that are based on lazy and unquestioning acceptance *are* "bad" arguments.

>nor did he claim that all creationists made bad arguments or that they all made >arguments based on "lazy and unquestioning acceptance."

Yes, it is.

Mark pretty much nailed exactly what he meant, unless he regards some creationists with ideas based on lazy and unquestioning acceptance have good arguments. But he didn't say that, he implicitly implicated all and only creationists.

[Lawyer Daggett]

My initial reaction is "none of those things follow". But let's count.
Personally, the transition from belief to a lack of belief was not painful.
Painful would have been maintaining belief when there were so many reasons
to reject various aspects of belief. It's called cognative dissonance. Properly
understood, the phrase addresses a feeling of discomfort that one ought to
have when one discovers contradictions in what one accepts to be true.
For example, if one believed that the earth was only 6000 years old and all
existing humans descended from two originating people, Adam and Eve, but
one learned something about genetics and the diversity in the human gene
pool, one would have a conflict. The painful thing is preserving the conflict.
So you look at the two, find the genetic science and observations compelling,
and so discard that particular belief about Adam and Eve. Similar things happen
when looking at evidence for the age of the Earth and that 6000 years thing.
It helps that a sane person doesn't have to throw away all of theology in this step
because they can be separated. Those things aren't really necessary aspects of
a belief in a creator.

As life goes I, for me, more and more of the specifics that were present in the
cannon of my childhood religion were disposed of because they made no sense.
For some people, they reach a point where they hit a crisis and decide if 1, 2, 3
up to N things were false, heck it looks like it must all be false and so toss aside
everything in their theology basket. They might go further and apply it to everyone
else's theology too. Or, they might adopt a more mystical view that "well, I don't
know everything, maybe all that false stuff was made up by silly people but that's
because they just aren't good at grasping the great mysteries. But it's still possible
for there to be something greater out there that we just haven't grasped". Which
way a person goes varies. I never found it difficult. Maybe it's more impactful
on those who get angry about having been lied to, and those who angrily decide
to throw all possible belief aside in a fit of rage. I have met those who seem
to fit that model, but it didn't seem very common to me.

I also don't see how your comment about being involved with friends and a church
fit. None of my friendships have been based on having a common theological
set of beliefs or unbeliefs.

I also don't have any strong bias against the possibility of anything supernatural.
I simply don't see any need to introduce the supernatural. If there's something
creating miracles, they seem to hide well. And if they can work miracles,
I expect they can hide well. I just don't worry about it.

You also seem to be thinking that atheism is a belief that gods
don't exist, rather than a lack of belief that gods don't exist.
Those aren't the same. As a scientist, my default is "I don't know".
I'm comfortable with "I don't know". Some call that agnostic.
It's a rather literal view of the word. As it happens, I also don't
have any affirmative beliefs in any gods but I also don't have
some conviction that there can't be any gods. I get a sense
that you don't understand this perspective.

I get that for someone who already believes that a god exists, it's
nice to have something for them to do. Creating and designing the
world or life would work there. So you want to give your god
credit for some of creation. That's nice. Good for you. But I have
trouble with you being biased in how you interpret data. There's
a big difference between "maybe he did that" and "the data makes
it look like he did that". From reading your posts, it seems like you
don't understand that distinction either.

As for as your "thinking" about the numbers of neurons, well that's
pretty confused too. All you're demonstrating is that you don't understand
how a fairly simple set of instructions can interact with an environment
with lots of information in it to create a very complex result. That's
just understanding math and perhaps thermodynamics.

Ultimately, your testimony is very unconvincing as it makes odd assertions
and draws flawed conclusions even when you have good premises.

[broger...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, March 2, 2022 at 11:20:45 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 9:35:45 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 4:15:45 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> > > On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 9:05:45 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 6:10:44 AM UTC-5, MarkE wrote:
> > > > > On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 11:20:44 PM UTC+9:30, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > <snip older stuff>
> > > > > > > Is that in effect a statement of your unconditional commitment to philosophical materialism?
> > > > > > Of course not. As I have said many times to you. The question of whether there is a worked out naturalistic explanation for some phenomenon (OoL or a hypothetical 5 neuron human brain) is completely separate from the question of whether there is a God. That we find such an explanation is not evidence against God; that we lack such an explanation is not evidence for God.
> > > > > Okay. Out of interest, how would you describe your position and worldview? (Apologies if you've shared this before).
> > > > OK. I am an atheist who was for many years a Christian. In fact, I flipped back and forth a couple of times before settling on atheism. Through all the flips, though, I found scientific questions irrelevant to whether I was theist or atheist. What attracted me to Christianity in the first place was what I saw as Jesus' message of love and human brotherhood and the idea that love was fundamental to the creation. If that message was true, it was far and away the most important thing in life. It had nothing to do with the lack of a solution to the OoL problem. When I lost that faith it was a result of simply not thinking it was true, not believing in the miracles, sure, but also just not seeing the universe as having humanity's interests at heart. And yes, I am familiar with all the arguments about theodicy - I just found them unconvincing.
> > > Thanks for that. The theodicy question is important.
> > > >
> > > > I don't see that science comes into these questions one way or another. If God made the universe and the laws that govern it, He could, it always seemed to me, have made laws that allow for the evolution of life and conscious in accordance with those laws, so neither finding nor failing to find a scientific account of OoL or the origin of consciousness would make any difference to the likelihood of God's being there. If there is an open scientific question, like OoL, it seems to me pointless to say "Can't think of how this could have happened, God must have done it," and then give up. You might decide to give up because you are stuck and cannot think of any experiments to try, but that's a different thing.
> > > My focus on talk.origins is far from that with Christian friends. I rarely discuss these issues in that company - our shared faith does not depend on any particular scientific model and verification. There are believers at Biologos who would similarly argue against me regarding scientific interpretation, but with whom I'd comfortably share mainstream theology.
> > >
> > > As I keep saying: may faith does not depend on this. Rather, I think purely naturalistic accounts of OoL and evolution are bad science and deserve to be challenged.
> > So far your argument that they are bad science is that there remain unsolved problems. That's the way science works. Some religions may aim to wrap everything up and call it solved, but science does not work that way.
> > > >
> > > > Finally, as a Christian I always disliked God-of-the-Gaps arguments because they seem to me to reduce God to a scientific explanation of last resort for things at the periphery of human knowledge, rather than as a loving First Cause of everything, familiar and unfamiliar, understood or not understood. I keep responding to your posts not because they challenge my atheism, but because they bother the former Christian in me.
> > > With reference to the preceding, be released from that burden.
> > >
> > > And as I've said before, I also dislike god-of-the narrowing-gaps arguments. I'm interested in God-of-the-widening-gulfs evidence.
> > Then you are still using God as an explanation of last resort; it's just that you keep finding more and more things for which you want to use Him.
> I imagine the process of flipping back and forth between belief and unbelief was personally difficult, especially if you were involved in a church and had many Christian friends.

I've never been divorced, but the first loss of faith was as painful as I imagine a divorce to be.

>Though having settled on atheism, you have an inherent strong bias against the possibility of scientific evidence pointing to supernatural agency.

How could scientific evidence point to supernatural agency? Being supernatural means that it does not follow detectable laws, so what experiment could you ever do to detect its presence? All you are left with is using the supernatural as a default explanation for stuff you cannot figure out.

So try to answer this question. What would constitute direct, positive evidence for a supernatural designer apart from the lack of a current explanation for some phenomenon? So far, everything you've offered as scientific evidence in favor of a designer is simply evidence that there are unsolved scientific problems, which you, given your bias, take as evidence for the supernatural. You've not offered anything positive.

>I'm not saying this nullifies your opinions, but it is noteworthy. I also have a bias as a Christian with a leaning towards ID. The difference is, I can opt for "evolutionary creation" (a la Biologos) should scientific evidence compels me at some stage, whereas your position is a hill to die on. Like Lewontin, you "cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

I don't think you've quite got it right. I reject Christianity, and similar religions. That is not the same as rejecting "the supernatural" if by the supernatural you simply mean things that are outside the scope of natural laws. There might be such things. If there are, there's no reason to think they are anything like a Christian God. Indeed, that's another problem with God-of-the-Gaps arguments - all they do is put a name on the unknown cause of whatever you're trying to explain. There's no reason at all to think that something that got life started or set the physical constants to specific values had any interest in or sympathy for the human species or that it bears any resemblance to a Christian (or Hindu or Jewish or Zoroastrian) God. That you are here does not mean you are what the hypothetical designer was interested in.

>
> Your epistemology demonstrates this bias with its pre-emptive exclusion of the supernatural. For example, if hypothetically the human brain consisted of an impossibly small number of neurons, your response was: "In the case of such a brain, I'd just scratch my head and try to figure out how it could work - you, though, might be willing to build a cathedral in that explanatory gap."

Again, you too easily identify the abstract supernatural with your chosen God. I have excluded the sort of God described by Christianity, for reasons that seem compelling to me. That does not preclude my becoming convinced that some other sort of thing that was not constrained by natural laws exists. I have not excluded the supernatural. I'd just want some evidence that something was there. But I'm as open to that possibility as you are to "evolutionary creation."

[Martin Harran]

Neither that nor your earlier interpretation are even remotely close
to what I said. Taking that along with ways in which you have
misinterpreted others here, your accusation of Bill Rogers being
biased rings rather hollow when it is clear that your inherent
weakness for Confirmation Bias transforms what people actually say
into something different that conforms with what you already believe
and want to continue believing.