Comments on Thacker's Proposal

I don’t know. I think that a lot happened before there were any cells. Metabolism is more about moving protons across membranes, or maybe other barriers. They wouldn’t have to be completely enclosing anything.

I think that your understanding is at best imperfect, since those don’t relate to the origin of life.

Common descent only refers to what we see today. It doesn’t preclude many independent origins with only one “winning.”

Nope. I think that you should read scientists instead of creationists’ straw men and university press releases.

Here’s a good book that might relieve many of your misconceptions:

But isn’t this thread about discussing your proposal and not your misunderstandings of biology?

Are you talking about the 12 (sometimes more, sometimes less) avatars of Vishnu? While I have an awesome, huge carving of them above my sofa, it’s linear and not branching, so it isn’t very accurate biologically.

I’ve spent most of my scientific career studying the molecular motors called myosins. I don’t have any religious or even quasi-religious notions about them.

I have done many materialistically measurable (redundant), testable, and definable assays on them.

I know that machine metaphors, while they have great explanatory value, always break down and generally not very helpful when used as hypotheses.

I don’t doubt that, but a lot of things happen in a lumberyard which don’t result in a house, and certainly not something as complicated as reliable specific protein generation and insanely sophisticated molecular informational handling and processing systems.

Most certainly true.

Win the lottery once shame on me, win the lottery twice, shame on you. :slight_smile:

But are they “strawmen”? Dr Douglas Axe and Dr Tour don’t seem to think so… both working in the field, both Doctors like Dr Harshman, and perhaps yourself… I tend to think Science’s aversion to Religious institutions; dogma and sacred doctrine, excommunication of heretics, seems to have been more of an upset about who was in power, not the goal of Science; the search for truth. In that regard, it reminds me of the legal profession.

Would that include your molecular “motors”? I mean, by definition, a motor is a machine. Can or have you built one? If not, why not?

I think its important to restate the proposal, btw, I like the discrete element here re the Universe, and the recognition of the Observer Effect, the backward in time causation capacity of the Observer is the dead give-away to the artificiality of this Universe, imo.

It appears that you are more interested in playing with words than in having a real discussion of anything, much less your “proposal”, whatever it may be. Boring.

Where do you find these myosin? How are they produced? Do they occur naturally, w/o some sophisticated process which is far more complex than the motors themselves? If you had a notion, a burning desire to build one, for real, how would you do it? and finally, do you think we’ll one day design one from scratch?

What this tells me is, Dawkins was right “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Dr Harshman, it was you who brought in semantics, poetic license, analogy, metaphor, not me. DNA is molecular media, it has code on it, more sophisticated, more robust than anything we can build, with programming so complex it can build self-replicating machines. Now, you can call that anything you want, but the words I used: OS (an operating system which has meta control over the individual subsystems to produce a reliable and repeatable result), Code (symbolic representation of a real object), HD (media designed for information, data storage), fit, such that even Biologists are forced to use them.

Even Mercer calls the system he is working with a “motor”, and the reason why is simple, that word we have for the huge chunk of iron under the hood of your car, designed by intelligence, fits perfectly as a description of the mechanism he’s researching.

Here is a new proposal, one which perhaps you’ll not find “boring”:

Show me a mechanism capable of producing fully formed and functional myosin which is not designed by someone.

And, we’ll dispense with the circular response: the cell.

This is known as “begging the question”. Are you aware that myosins (and actins) appear in one-celled organisms without muscles, showing that they must have evolved their role in animals later on?

More importantly, what is the relevance of all this to the original topic and your scenario, which is what I actually asked about?

The point of my question was regarding a specific molecular machine and its production, not its function, is there any evidence such a machine could be a demonstrated production of a non-intelligently designed system? If one appeals to the “cell”, it is classic circular reasoning; I’m my own grandpa, and question begging; appealing to a source for which the same question applies, or a source for which no definitive source can be, or has been identified.

As such, because we know such a structure can be produced but do not know its sourcing, we should be able to provide plausible explanations, based upon what we know can produce such mechanisms, as to a plausible source theory. I have evidence that such productions CAN be sourced to intelligence, and I maintain you cannot provide a single example of a demonstrable example of non-intelligent sourcing for them, which of course, is a serious problem for both Neo-darwinism and Atheism

Moreover, machines or mechanisms which are capable of producing many different products on demand are far more complicated, and thus far less plausible to not have been intelligently designed, as with your “one-celled organism” example; a 3D printer is significantly more complicated than an injection mold system.

I responded to your question, if you’d like I can repost it, if you think its lacking something you’d like to know, I’d be happy to unpack it for you and who knows, it be a novel perspective.

It’s lacking any relevance to what I have repeatedly asked: for you to present your scenario of earth history.

More precisely, you have evidence that human beings make such things, which would seem to imply that human beings made life. Have you ever seen God make anything? If not, you can’t say you have evidence for divine creation. And you ignore the long evolutionary history of those “machines”, which argues against design, certainly against design by an omnipotent being who could just poof things into his preferred final form.

Certainly Dr Harshman,

  1. In the beginning God created this Universe
  2. Intelligent, transcendent entities occupied this Universe, and specifically this planet
  3. They explored and experimented building stuff, including bio-mechanics
  4. Once they had a protein generator, they began to design “life”, through trial and error here and likely elsewhere in the Universe, their creations got better and more complex; think computers
  5. On this planet they took their bio-systems to the next level, building self sustaining ecosystems.
  6. Some ecosystems they modified, some they destroyed and, with the results, the next iteration used some of the previous body plans, modified others, and some they built outta whole cloth.
  7. [Biblical stories omitted]
  8. Here we are.

So, “life” like “animal” has some pretty extensive religious preloading, I fully expect that we’ll produce an AI which will be as “alive” as any animal, to some extent, one could argue they are now. But, the “life” on this planet obviously was done by a non-human intelligence, yeah.

Nope, but I didn’t see the Egyptians make the Pyramids either, and no one knows who made the Statues on Easter Island or all the Megalithic structures scattered round the globe. Here you take assumption as fact, of course, when its convenient, and not when it isn’t.

Now, here we agree at least re the trial-n-error which seems obvious in the fossil record, and I agree, its not likely God (the one who made the Universe) did that. But no, I fully accept that these bio-machines “evolved”, just like weapons and agriculture and clothing and houses and computers and cars and airplanes and…

That’s the fun fact of this universe, stuff devolves, when we find something that doesn’t, that evolves against the entropic tide, we know intelligence is at work; directly or indirectly.

I have questions:

How long ago was this beginning, and what was created at that time?

Who are those entities, and did they occupy this planet from the beginning of the universe?

What do you mean by “a protein generator”, and how would that come before life?

So the fossil record is a record of separate creation of species? Would we expect this process to produce a nested hierarchy of genetic sequences?

Why are the omitted biblical stories places in this position in the sequence?

To you, perhaps. Not to biologists. Now what makes you think life was done by a non-human intelligence?

Of course we do: the people who live there. Were you imagining a descent by aliens? We also have evidence of the building of the pyramids, and even various megaliths. We also know that people exist. Now, have you seen any evidence that your undescribed entities exist and have ever built anything?

None of these things (other than life) evolved, and they don’t show the characteristics of evolved species. Are you familiar with the term “nested hierarchy”?

That’s an interesting contention. But it seems not to be true. There are many natural processes that can locally reduce entropy at the cost of increasing entropy somewhere else. Your metabolism does that, for example. So does natural selection. You can claim that it was designed, but entropy-reduction is clearly not evidence of itself.

On the outset, I want to make it clear, I’m discussing a model, a theory, one which I think has merit, but one which I’m not positing as authoritative or definitive. I find this seems to fit the evidence I see, and I’m prepared to jettison the lot for something better, modify it, or go just throw my hands up and go butcher another round of golf…

What, 14.5 Billion years ago? give or take… or yesterday, maybe. Time is merely another element in a Universe coordinate location.

So, this is a curious question… of course we don’t know what “energy” is, we know what it does, but is it eternal, does it exist beyond the bounds of this universe? At the very least, the rule set was created; cellular automata perhaps, and perhaps, that’s all it took.

Because the “arrow of time” seems to be reversible, data from Universe’s inception to smooth conclusion became instantly available upon its initiation, any dynamic variation therefore would be from an external or transcendent source, imo, is how we so easily identify intelligently designed stuff from the rule created stuff.

I think its clear this universe is a VR, so, this isn’t really a heavy lift, they’re users here, its possible you’re one, at least that’s what I’d expect.

Ehh, who knows, they might have discovered it… the universe is a big place, they might have managed its formation, from the Biblical record, and ancient myths, it seems they had some physical limits as to what they could and couldn’t do here.

I mean an extremely sophisticated method of producing MASSIVE amounts of different kinds of protein, with which bio-machines could be formed.

So, you have to actually, at least in principle, look at this model from within → outward to be able to ask relevant questions; these aren’t “alive” as you are using the term. I mean, from the myths and the Bible, these occupy immortal bodies, not bound to the tight physical limitations we experience.

Per the Bible, these bodies can modulate gravity, perhaps nullify it, they are able to walk through what seems to be solid objects. It doesn’t appear their bodies are a product of genetics, and procreation isn’t a thing for them as we understand it. Its probable they don’t need to breath air, eat or sleep, though they can, meaning these bodies are utterly alien to anything you’re familiar with biologically. Moreover, it seems they can “inhabit” other bodies, both man and animal, at least that’s what the Bible claims.

Now, this probably seems more like a Marvel comic than a plausible pre-history theory, but there it is, I have a feeling, as time progresses, it will seem less comical (imo, its not all that funny now). The notion and probability of this universe being a VR, which is what the Bible describes imo, has proponents in the scientific community and definitely is a viable theory. Moreover, there are several phenomena that seems to affirm this; entanglement, the observer effect, Planck space and time, are some of the scientific discoveries and I do believe we are seeing ET space craft, tracking them and filming them.

When we view light, from a far distant star or galaxy lensed by a black hole, the which-path of a right-side photon, retroactively collapsed millions/billions of years ago to be there for you to see it. Backward in time causation is a definite give-away to the VR theory, imo.

Look, I don’t imagine they re-invented the wheel with every iteration of an ecosystem.

So, “nested hierarchy” seems to be essentially a flow chart, if this is somewhat accurate, yes, we would. If I’m mistaken about that concept, Please correct me.

Because they deal with things after most, if not all of the fossil record is laid. Apparently, per the Bible, there was an issue regarding “good and evil”, kinda like liberal vs conservative politics, or theist vs atheist… and things took an immediate and distinctly messed up turn. I see no point in going over the Biblical arguments and claims with an atheist, but we could if you like.

Hmm, no, not to me… however, I find that biologists and some MD’s have issues with accepting the underlying mechanical nature of “life”, I mean, it seems in their view to be two distinctly different classes; man vs machine.

Moreover, machine definitely connotes a machinist like program connotes a programmer and creation connotes a creator, etc… and biologists really don’t like Intelligence wandering in on their world view so they avoid such terms as bio-machine and HD and OS and Code… in fact, they can get downright irate at times :slight_smile:

It seems very clear that there is an undeniable continuity here with the bio-machines, and, given this tech produced “humans”, it would be pretty tough to expect, humans created it. Beyond this, if one argues this planet was seeded, it only begs the question, at some point the creative chain necessarily exceeds this universe.

Preference based causation/creation has to, necessarily, be externally introduced into this universe, imo.

:slight_smile:

Lets be clear, the theory “people did it” is an assumption, a reasonable one, yes, but one nonetheless. So, when we see stuff like that, we sort to a class of plausible creators; (Intelligent (humans)), I agree, this is definitely plausible. When you see evidence of coding, plan preceding production, complex mechanical devices, creatively designed tech to produce a goal or served a purpose, your reasonable explanation settles on: (intelligent (human)), but pre human, we’re left with (intelligent (x)).

Using your own method, yes, You.

Hmm, ok, I’d be interested in that argument and your usage of that term.

Thx, and I’m sure it will come as no surprise I’ll have to disagree here, it is true. :slight_smile:

So using your theory as evidence; Life was formed by a non-intelligent, bottom up source, therefore our metabolism evidences Life was formed by a non-intelligent bottom up source, seems less than reasonable.

How about this, the very fact that we can synthesize raw material into usable energy which then is transported to specific systems for consumption, on demand, virtually demands an intelligent, top down source.

Moreover, when one applies this to an informational system, entropy (noise) is a huge problem, just as it is with fuel processing and use, but here, the more energetically open the system, the worse the noise becomes, try running your computer on 220. Energy has to be carefully tuned, and information has to be carefully stored, data retrieval has to be carefully managed, and transmission has to be carefully error corrected, or the entire informational system will collapse.

And, of course, we all know computers naturally form from bottom up processes, I mean, come on… :slight_smile:

Btw, Dr. Harshman, you do have an example for me forthcoming, right?

I have to ask at this point how old you are and what you have recently been doing (the verb as in “I did three tabs of windowpane”).

This is a whole new level of weird. Elon Musk is with you, at least. Do the users know they’re users? Presumably not. Do you expect that you’re one too?

This protein generator is called a living cell, including DNA, mRNA, tRNA, aminoacyl synthetases, and ribosomes. Are you familiar with that?

Beg pardon?

Nested hierarchy refers to a mathematical relationship among characteristics and the entities possessing them. The characteristics can be used to define groups of entities. In a nested hierarchy, there are two possible relationships among these groups: either one wholly includes the other or the two are disjunct. The characteristics of species form such a hierarchy, though it isn’t a perfect one. Still, it’s good enough to allow us to infer patterns of common descent and, through that, the existence of common descent of life. Your scenario, on the other hand, denies common descent.

Life isn’t mechanical; it’s mostly chemical. You seem to be arguing against vitalism, which has been dead for considerably over a hundred years.

Sorry, but what we can use for examples are only, apparently, things we have seen happening. What we have seen happening is just people building stuff. We have not, however, seen people building myosin, so the relevance is unclear. Then again, we have seen a pattern of myosin evolution that suggests it’s happened over a long period of time, beginning with single-celled eukaryotes. That suggests that evolution is capable of building myosin, and it’s the best evidence of mechanism we have. The fact that humans can build outboard motors doesn’t seem relevant.

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LOL! You know, that’s also a curious question… In the Bible Jesus was 33 (or so the story goes) when he was killed… yet, he claimed: “before Abraham was I am”, which would have made him, ehh, 2k’ish years old and John claimed Jesus was the logos that created the Universe, about 14.5 billion years ago, so, how old was he?

As to my activities, well, I shot an 89 with 3 lost balls.

Re VR

But is it? I think devotion to dogma must be boring, and historically, it doesn’t end well for the society or adherents. But, don’t get me wrong, I totally understand why; that desk feels sound, and solid and reliable, and all is right with the world when you sit behind it… everything fits nicely in its place.

Thing is, the references I gave have substance and are real, for instance, Dr Scully’s backward in time quantum eraser, which has been confirmed by Dr Aspect and others. And MWT seems to be falling out of favor as an explanation for the quantum oddities, which is just as well, it definitely is a “new level of weird”.

Moreover, the notion of this universe being a hologram by Dr Susskind isn’t a joke. Naturally, I get where he might not like what’s done with his theory, but that’s to be expected.

It has been demonstrated that entanglement is FTL informational transfer between the pair, its just not usable for us yet, but we have just dipped our toe into this world, give us time.

What this tells us, imo, is there is an overarching governance of this Universe’s function, like a server running a VR, which can propagate user specific information, with instantaneous global implications, and this just isn’t my opinion, EPR has been debunked, there is no “hidden variable”.

For instance, did you know that the “natural” state of a sub-atomic particle is a superposition? That the only known way to decohere or collapse that superposition is via observation or interaction with matter already collapsed? That, at the BB, everything was in spherical superposition, everything was probabilistically everywhere, and there is no explanation of how it collapsed? Perhaps you know how that happened, Dr Harshman?

Re Spiritual agents, Yes, I tend to think everyone here is, yeah.

Now, I don’t know about Elon Musk, but I totally might be a kook… and after long consideration and discussion with Academic folks like yourself, I’m good with that :slight_smile:

Yes, as a matter of fact, I cited that in my “Proposal” to you. Its quite a machine, ain’t it!

Re Interesting descriptions of Angelic bodies:

That’s what taking the Bible seriously looks like, imo.

Does it? There is a common thread throughout, enhancements, modifications, new ideas implemented, and you wind up with a formula one race car from a Model A, or Windows 10 from Windows 3.11, as I understand it, some of the original code still exists and is used. But I do understand your objection… and it is food for thought, thank you.

No, I’m pretty sure the issue is quite clear, we have evidence of intelligence creating molecular machines, we have no evidence of non-intelligent production of such protein structures, particularly one fit for a function within a system. As a Doctor, I’m sure you are aware of this. This means my theory has evidence, at least in principle, and yours has none, and we both know it.

Intelligence has a unique capacity, preferential creation, when we see it; a rock chipped into a point, V’ing out with sharp chipped edges that reduces to a notch at the bottom… now, some might say this is just happenstance, chance and circumstance, the wonders of nature… but we both know better, don’t we Dr Harshman. :slight_smile:

Gavia immer is a fine species, though I prefer encountering it on the water rather than the internet.

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Ad hominem Dr Harshman?

Who here is providing evidence for their theory and argument, and who isn’t? :wink: