Richard Dawkins' Blind Watchmaker - Surprisingly Faith Promoting

[Alvino]

However the notion of an alien "superbeing transplanting" life here on Earth seems far more likely than archebiosis, which Miller-Urey, Jack Szostak, and Craig Venter (who was born in SLC) have all found impossible to replicate.

Which would beg the interesting question of how life arose in the first place.

[Alvino]

My claim about Dyson, etc., was not the "impossibility" of abiogensis, but of the inability of any current science to give an adequate account thereof, thus the essentially non-scientific nature of the speculation about it.

So, science that doesn't work is not science? A weird view indeed.

[Hamilton Porter]

Porter:

"There are, however, ways in which we develop technology by mimicking nature"

AL:

Whether expls can be found is irrelevant to what you asserted. You made a specific claim about a particular application, which I refuted. The point is that the original argument you made does not hold up. Perhaps another approach would achieve your goal. One that is more modest and limited in scope and focused just on the point (Dawkins is inadvertantly faith promoting or whatever). It is the extra stuff which undermined the purpose or your original post.

You oughta take this class:

http://apps.ep.jhu.edu/course-homepages/viewpage.php?homepage_id=2790

[thesometimesaint]

Alvino:

Except that no one knows what Gods' DNA looks like .

[cdowis]

Which would beg the interesting question of how life arose in the first place.

Which further begs the question of the origin of the big bang. For someone silly like myself, he big bang demonstrates that time existed prior to the BB -- utterwise there is no before and no after the BB. Perhaps someone can help me out with that.

Even the creationists are hung up on that issue, whether God can create time. The BB gives them nowhere to hide.

One interesting solution is that there is no beginning, includes life itself, or the templates of life. The BB is just one event in a long chain of creation events.

Edited September 24, 2012 by cdowis

[Robert F. Smith]

Alvino:

Except that no one knows what Gods' DNA looks like .

What would glorified human DNA look like?

[Robert F. Smith]

That carbon compounds exist in the *vacuum* of space has been known for some time. All that does is shift the origin of precursor material back a bit. How that material forms into proto cells is a separate area of study.

The article you cite does not support transmission in the sense that you are upholding. There are no self-replicating entities in space.

Mormonism posits sentient, self-replicating entities throughout the universe (multiverse?), but does not provide the details which we will only be able to understand when we join that august host on the other side of the veil.

I cited the article merely to point out that serious scientific evidence exists not only for the pervasive existence of organic compounds throughout the universe, but also the notion that those compounds can be transmitted from one stellar system to another. I do not mean to suggest that this supports archebiosis (spontaneous generation of life), which I consider impossible based on the Law of Entropy and other natural laws..

The problem with this viewpoint is that of suggesting that complex physical life forms simply exist from all eternity, like intelligence and pure element whatever that is. Science does not agree with anything simply existing forever with the possible exception of whatever gave birth to the big bang. (We'll have to wait for a theory that succesfully combines QM with gravity to know more there).

No one can pretend to know what "intelligence" is, but it is posited by Mormonism as eternal. Of course, science knows of no such element or entity. There is no direct evidence, and the claim is not falsifiable. To verify such a notion requires that we extrapolate from what we do know in other areas, i.e., the extraordinary coherence of some improbable Mormon claims with scientific reality.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Robert F. Smith

[mfbukowski]

To verify such a notion requires that we extrapolate from what we do know in other areas, i.e., the extraordinary coherence of some improbable Mormon claims with scientific reality.

"Coherence" is precisely the right word whereas "correspondence" implies a whole different world view. Pretty amazing how important nuances of jargon can be. In ordinary discourse there isn't much difference, but in philosophy, the difference is huge.

A coherence theory of truth states that the truth of any (true) proposition consists in its coherence with some specified set of propositions. The coherence theory differs from its principal competitor, the correspondence theory of truth, in two essential respects. The competing theories give conflicting accounts of the relation between propositions and their truth conditions. (In this article, ‘proposition’ is not used in any technical sense. It simply refers to the bearers of truth values, whatever they may be.) According to one, the relation is coherence, according to the other, it is correspondence. The two theories also give conflicting accounts of truth conditions. According to the coherence theory, the truth conditions of propositions consist in other propositions. The correspondence theory, in contrast, states that the truth conditions of propositions are not (in general) propositions, but rather objective features of the world. (Even the correspondence theorist holds that propositions about propositions have propositions as their truth conditions.)

http://plato.stanfor...ruth-coherence/

As is stated, in a coherence theory, truth is a property of propositions, and not of the world. The Pragmatic theory of truth, to which I subscribe in a broad way is actually a coherence theory of truth.

In other words, truth is based on language and not on its correspondence to the world. True propositions cohere- meaning that if you know one is true then the others are also true.

Applying that to the church and theology it is like saying that if one has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, one also has a testimony that Jesus is the Christ, because if the Book of Mormon is true, then the proposition that "Jesus is the Christ" must also be true, because the two propositions "cohere"

That is an over simplification, but it will suffice I think to explain the difference.

But notice that both propositions here are presenting a unified "theory" or world view- nothing more or less. What is being said is that the story of the Book of Mormon implies the story of Jesus being the Christ, or the "description" or "theory" or "view" if one wants to substitute those words for "story".

The underlying assumption is that all we have is what we speak about and cannot be about "the world" since all we have is language and interpretations.

It echos Nietzsche's statement that there are no "facts", just linguistic interpretations beyond which there is literally nothing to talk about

Big edit sorry

Edited September 25, 2012 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

So when one says that Mormonism "coheres" with science one is saying that in the respect in which they cohere, each portrays a view of things which "cohere" with each other- in a sense, that one implies the other as a world view, or that saying it one way is roughly equivalent to saying it in the other way- that the statements are in some sense synonymous in their respective contexts.

THAT, Bob is a VERY long way of saying "I agree".

But each in their individual contexts put it a different way using different language games, religion speaking of spirit and science perhaps speaking of plasma fields or whatever "spirit matter" coheres with in science-speak.

Maybe that makes it clearer, I dunno.

Edited September 25, 2012 by mfbukowski

[thesometimesaint]

What would glorified human DNA look like?

I have no idea. I guess we'll just have to WAFO.

[mfbukowski]

What would glorified human DNA look like?

A tree of life?

[shalamabobbi]

I do not mean to suggest that this supports archebiosis (spontaneous generation of life), which I consider impossible based on the Law of Entropy and other natural laws..

Seriously, if this were the case, it would be apparent to scientists working in that arena and they would have thrown up their hands a while ago.

But we are safe for the foreseeable future if this be a threat to anyone's faith since in the lab we are limited by time and on the computer we are limited by the complexity of the calculations.

Modelling biochemisty can be excruciatingly difficult, this is why people still do experiments.

For example, consider the infamous Protein Folding Problem.

In fact, it takes about a day to simulate a nanosecond (1/1,000,000,000 of a second). Unfortunately, proteins fold on the tens of microsecond timescale (10,000 nanoseconds). Thus, it would take 10,000 CPU days to simulate folding -- i.e. it would take 30 CPU years!

Hence, Folding@Home are proud to boast that

Thus, with power of Folding@Home (over 100,000 processors), we have successfully smashed the microsecond barrier, simulating milliseconds of folding time.

You got that? With a pooled effort of 100,000 computers, they've successfully managed to simulate milliseconds of biochemistry. It's only taken them six years. And this is such a remarkable achievement that they're bragging about it.

ref: EvC forum

[Calm]

What would glorified human DNA look like?

Sparkles in the sunlight?

[Robert F. Smith]

"Coherence" is precisely the right word whereas "correspondence" implies a whole different world view. Pretty amazing how important nuances of jargon can be. In ordinary discourse there isn't much difference, but in philosophy, the difference is huge.

Yes, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of coherence in order to reach a probable category. At least in the sense in which Bayesian Probability is estimated via cumulative evidence.

[Robert F. Smith]

Sparkles in the sunlight?

Well, maybe under the electronmicroscope. However, for some reason I am thinking of Persis Khambatta in that 1979 Star Trek movie about Voyager, in the final scene.

[mfbukowski]

Yes, and extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of coherence in order to reach a probable category. At least in the sense in which Bayesian Probability is estimated via cumulative evidence.

Exactly- that is why inductive evidence works and relies on coherence rather than correspondence.

[Robert F. Smith]

Seriously, if this were the case, it would be apparent to scientists working in that arena and they would have thrown up their hands a while ago.

But we are safe for the foreseeable future if this be a threat to anyone's faith since in the lab we are limited by time and on the computer we are limited by the complexity of the calculations.

Not necessarily. It may not be as bleak as you imagine. It may be possible for scientists and technicians to develop synthetic forms of life based on what we are learning about genetics. Perhaps even in this century.

Just because spontaneous generation of life (abiogenesis) is not possible does not mean that intelligent design is not possible. We humans are very clever and very inventive. I don't know whether we might want to compare the creation of life by humans akin to building the Tower of Babel (there may be risks), but it is an interesting issue to say the least.

[mfbukowski]

Not necessarily. It may not be as bleak as you imagine. It may be possible for scientists and technicians to develop synthetic forms of life based on what we are learning about genetics. Perhaps even in this century.

Just because spontaneous generation of life (abiogenesis) is not possible does not mean that intelligent design is not possible. We humans are very clever and very inventive. I don't know whether we might want to compare the creation of life by humans akin to building the Tower of Babel (there may be risks), but it is an interesting issue to say the least.

So when we synthesize life will that qualify as "intelligent design"? And since we will be using natural principles to do it, (they certainly would not be "supernatural" would they!) would that prove that intelligent design can happen "naturally"?

Ah, the wonders of language! What will that do to the debate?

Edited September 27, 2012 by mfbukowski

[shalamabobbi]

Ah, the wonders of language! What will that do to the debate?

Check out the computer science department at your local university. You will have to learn machine language..

[Robert F. Smith]

Check out the computer science department at your local university. You will have to learn machine language..

Or the machines will do it for us. According to some thinkers, at the current rate of computer technology advancement (speed and capacity doubling every 18 months), the machines should be smarter than humans by 2025. At that point (an "event horizon"), we will become obsolete and the machines take over. If they consider us a waste of resources, they may simply delete us. Or maybe they will be kind . . . and obey Asimov's laws of robotics.

[shalamabobbi]

Or the machines will do it for us. According to some thinkers, at the current rate of computer technology advancement (speed and capacity doubling every 18 months), the machines should be smarter than humans by 2025. At that point (an "event horizon"), we will become obsolete and the machines take over. If they consider us a waste of resources, they may simply delete us. Or maybe they will be kind . . . and obey Asimov's laws of robotics.

Kurzweil? This all assumes that if we succeed in creating an artificial brain that mind will follow. Is that immortal intelligence that is not created neither indeed can be the essence of mind? Dunno..