I went into this on the last thread, but you didn’t address my points, so I want to go over it again. Specifically, I don’t think you have given enough evidence to support your Designer being perfect or common as opposed to a generalized force.
The evidence supporting the perfect character and will of this being [D]:
The Alleged design flaws that are found to be optimal
99.99% of species are extinct. There are whole classes of organisms whose only trace is in the fossil record. The simple fact that some species are outcompeted and replaced by others demonstrates that “optimal” is relative. Crucially, this shows that optimal is not equal to perfect.
You need to provide a definition of optimal in this context, and a more robust explanation as to how “optimal” logically translates to a perfect designer.
The evidence supporting the common attributes of this being [E]:
The Remarkable similarities of Natural languages and Genomes
The similarity between genetic languages and natural languages does not necessitate a common designer. “Languages,” genetic or otherwise, are based on universal constants. Mathematics, for example is an abstract concept that exists with or without language, but it is only expressible through language with “letters” (numerals) “grammar” (order of operations) and “sentences” (equations).
“Languages” are similar because they express consistency, and consistency can exist without a designer. Further, consistency can exist without a perfect designer.
The Appearance of Common Design
The phenotypic traits (“design”) of an organism are an expression of its genotype. Genomes are heritable material, so appearance of common design by definition implies appearance of common descent.
Reproduction of Common Descent Patterns
The article on prebiotic evolution that you cite was performed using natural processes under empirical predictions. It also doesn’t deal with the arising of consciousness. By itself it is not evidence that information is metaphysical. The explanation that the researchers put forward is completely sufficient for their work, and does not support a common design process.
My guy. You literally quoted the FIRST SENTENCE of the ABSTRACT of this paper, AND you misrepresented the quote as well.
Here’s what you said:
"…this prebiotic experiment demonstrated how self-replicating RNA molecules can “evolve into complex living systems by expanding their information and functions open-endedly”.’
And here’s what the sentence actually says (emphasis mine):
“In [the theory of] prebiotic evolution, self-replicating molecules are believed to have evolved into complex living systems by expanding their information and functions open-endedly.”
You’re going to have to live up to a slightly higher level of academic credulity if you want us to teach this in schools.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon’s blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
First off, this is not about perfection because nothing that I know of is a perfect process of anything. This is about whether the scientific consensus is an objective process. There is a difference.
Has the general trend and evolution of science been based on objective standards and reasons or was Thomas Khun right. The study I provided seems to favor Khun’s idea that it is, in general, primarily or at least half of it is subjective.
Sure, I will propose an objective standard right now that is definitely better than the scientific consensus in my opinion. There are 4 known standards of proof:
Consensus (scientific)
Absolute certainty
Persuasion (I.e. until I’m convinced)
Beyond a reasonable doubt
I think the fourth one is the best, which entails that a proposition must have:
(A) Enough evidence that supports the actual claim being made or evidence proportional to the claim
(B) There can’t be other explanations that explain the evidence equally as well or better.
(C) There can’t be unexplained conflicting evidence, unaddressed objections, or untested predictions that are designed to falsify it.
Can you be clearer on what you are objecting to here. What exactly did I assert without providing evidence?
I will just ask you the questions I asked @Dan_Eastwood and @John_Harshman since this is similar to what they said, and I have not gotten an answer from them yet.
How do you know that including the Orch-OR theory into the textbooks would require a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics than Quantum information science and, thus, incomprehensible for kids that age?
What evidence do you have that shows how this claim that “agreement among scientists is a reasonable way to estimate what can be presented as true” is true itself and is there a consensus that even agrees with that statement?
Yes, this is definitely absurd I agree, but for different reasons. What you presented is a false analogy. Churches are private institutions that are not funded by tax payers. This is obviously not the case for public schools.
Correct and Creationists feel the same way about secular scientists. So the question is… who is the one who is trying to educate versus trying to indoctrinate by force? I think it’s both to be honest, which is why I support school choice vouchers for parents so they can have full control over what is taught to their children.
I agree and it is all the more reason why the Universal Common Design theory should be taught in schools.
How do you know that though? How do you know it was not the objective standards of the scientific method that produced the quality evidence rather than the consensus?
I agree, which is why I presented both experiments as more of a way to falsify my theory based on future experimental results rather than evidence for the theory. But, it could be evidence for my theory as well since the test have been done already for both metabolism-first and Lenski’s experiments. i just did not feel the need to reference them since it’s not a controversial claim in my view, but seem to be obvious.
That’s because there are too many examples I would have to post if I gave you all of them. Here is a sample of them:
Useless designs
Definition: A design that no longer has a function.
Definition: A design that appears to be poorly constructed to achieve a particular goal involving the survival and reproductive capabilities of that organism.
Definition: A feature of an organism that is allegedly designed to impede on that organism or other organisms’ ability to survive, reproduce, and fit an environmental niche.
As I told @John_Harshman, my model for classifcation is obviously going to be different than the pardigm since the common design model predicts several separate creation events. I reject definition of species in favor of kinds that evolved from basic types. For instance, basic types are families and within each of these families contains different genera (such as, dog/fox/ wolf) and each genus contains one or more species.
This means that families are created (not genera or species) where there would be a basic type of dogs, which are the ancestor of all the different kinds of dogs that evolved afterwards. Therefore, discontinuities in the fossil record are considered families according to the common design model.
So a better example of a basic type going extinct that would conflict with the model’s predictions is Dinosaurs. However, it has been suggested that Dinosuars evolved into birds, so there may not be a conflict, especially if they are just another form of reptiles. However, I can’t give you a definitive answer or detailed explanation because the theory lacks a useful model for predicting morphological changes within the fossil record. This is one of the three problems with the theory at the moment.
Optimality: a function or a sensible purpose for basic type of organisms, which involves the survival, reproduction or fit within an environment of those basic types.
Yes, I agree. I forgot to fully connect the dots on this part of my case. I was not suggesting that anyone of these lines of evidence in isolation proves that this mind is human, but collectively speaking. All three combined show a common designer.
Not quite, but let me elaborate on this.
Because all experiments are performed by an experimenter, they must involve investigator intervention. However, there are experiments that must be viewed as an ineligible prebiotic simulation when certain aspects of observer interference are crucial to their success.
In constructing a prebiotic simulation experiment, the investigator creates the setting; supplies the aqueous medium, the energy and, the chemicals; and establishes the boundary conditions (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985). This activity produces the overall background conditions for the experiment, and although it is vital to the success of the experiment, it is relatively legitimate because it simulates conceivable natural conditions.
However, the intrusion of the researcher becomes critical in an illegitimate sense whenever laboratory conditions are not defensible by association to consistently credible features of natural processes and conditions. Thus, the illegitimate intervention of the investigator is directly comparable to the geochemical implausibility of the condition arising from the researcher’s experimental design and/or procedure, and the level of such intrusion would be the greatest when such plausibility is missing altogether (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985).
With this in mind, it appears reasonable to propose that acceptable interference by the investigator would comprise constructing reasonable design features of the experiment, regulating the initial reaction mixture, starting the input of free energy to drive the reaction at the outset, and performing whatever minimal disturbance to the system is necessary to withdraw portions of the reaction products at various stages for analysis (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985).
Thaxton et al. (1984) established these criteria for the amount of observer interference acceptable for attempts to prove that unguided material processes produced life:
Degree of investigator interference
Selected chemicals, isolated from other soup ingredients
Selected wavelengths of UV, heat, isolated from other energy sources
Spark, shock waves, isolated from other energy sources
Concentrated solutions where reactions depend on concentrated conditions (e.g., HCN polymerization)
Traps
Photosensitization
Threshold of illegitimate interference
Concentrated solutions where law of mass action is validly extrapolated +
“Synthesis in the Whole”: dilute solutions mixed together
As shown in the outline, the demarcation line between legitimate and illegitimate interference is between 2) and 3). Any situation higher than 3) (i.e. 2) and 1)) would be illegitimate because the experimenter is deviating from plausible prebiotic conditions, and there is no analogy between the techniques and reliably plausible prebiotic conditions (Thaxton 1984 p.99-110; Jekel 1985).
Unfortanutely, I don’t see how I misrepresented that quote since this is what they actually did in their paper. They showed how RNA molecules can “evolve into complex living systems by expanding their information and functions open-endedly”. Are you saying they did not do that? If not, then I don’t see any misrepresentation on my part.
Let’s not get carried away here. This is just an informal discussion forum not a journal or academic institution. That being said, I want to make sure I communicate my message the best way that I can for each person I talk to on here. So thanks for letting me know.
Khun, famously, is often guilty of two-dimensional thinking. Unless, of course, you mean Kuhn. I’m guessing, based upon the spelling, that you are not familiar with either of these men or their work.
Meanwhile, your thesis that ill-informed, verbose, raging crackpottery should be taught in the high schools isn’t actually looking all that healthy at this point. The thneeds of the many, you know, outweigh the thneeds of the view, as Dr. Swiss once said.
I really don’t think there’s any need to be more specific.
You claim that so many alleged design flaws have been found to be optimal designs that we should conclude that there is a perfect designer. I. Support you offer a blog post speculating that some of the examples might not be so poor. That’s not even one example. And any rational person can see that.
Similarly you have provided no real evidence that consciousness plays any significant role in quantum mechanics. Or for any of your other claims. It’s all wild speculation.
Who exactly arbitrates whether or not a theory has meted burden of proof? I am convinced that biological evolution has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, and conversely, I do not believe ID theory has reached that standard. If I was selecting school curriculum, I would not include ORCH-OR hypothesis.
But I don’t think that the decision of what scientific theories are sufficiently proven should be in the hands of me, a Bio undergrad. I think it is BEST in the hands of an expansive panel of members of the public who are well-educated on the subject and free of conflicts of interest. In other words, the scientific consensus.
What I “mean” is that if you want to teach this in schools, it needs to be included in your hypothesis. You can’t say “I demonstrated ORCH-OR, therefore ALL of ID theory is supported.” That doesn’t follow.
As far as this video, it’s poorly supported and misleadingly cited. I don’t have time to go through every claim it makes, nor is that on topic, but for example:
Tracking down the sources for the quotes attributed onscreen, Hawks et al. 2000 is a paper comparing Australopithecine species to archaic H. sapiens. However the study doesn’t involve other Homo species such as ergaster, erectus, habilis, etc. Additionally, this video completely disregards genetic data from neanderthals, archaic humans, denisovans, and chimps.
Obviously if you compared africanus to sapiens without considering any other hominins or genetic data, your conclusion would be changes that are “sudden and not gradual.” You would get the same result if you compared chihuahuas to timber wolves.
The source cited for the second quote is not even from a journal. “Swanbrow” is not a scientist, she is a PR rep at U Michigan. I have no idea why they would include this quote, other than to pad out their presentation and make it look like they have more scientific support than they actually do.
This pattern is repeated throughout the video. And, frankly, a video is not evidence, empirical studies are evidence. I have recorded videos on youtube, too.
There are 15 families of dinosaur. Birds are theorized to have evolved specifically from theropods.
More importantly, dinosaurs are not the only families to die off completely. We tend to think of organisms in terms of the big cool ones in picture books. But in reality there are thousands of extinct families, mostly insignificant marine invertebrates. Over 500 families went extinct in the the Permian die-off alone.
Two things. The scope of this study is not attempting to demonstrate emergence of life. It’s testing the limits of an RNA self-replication system, which may be evidence for prebiotic emergence of life. But also, “This was done with researchers’ interference, therefore it cannot be done without researchers’ interference,” is an inverse fallacy, or denying the antecedent.
The paper absolutely did not show RNA molecules evolving into “complex living systems.”
Earlier in the thread you told me I could not make objections to ORCH-OR because I am not credentialed. Is this an informal discussion or not?
Useless traits being selected against is a prediction of evolution. if a system is not repurposed (vestigial) it is usually lost. We’ve talked about the Lenski experiment and that is a good example. Several e. coli strains underwent antagonistic pleiotropy, where they lost the ability to catabolize several substances due to mutation and selection.
Not all unutilized traits affect fitness. Non-coding regions of genomes are a good example of that, and knockout tests on mice show that large portions of non-coding regions can be completely deleted with no adverse affects.
This concept is just too non-specific to be meaningful. In the antagonistic pleiotropy example ; e. coli strains lost several catabolic processes to conserve resources. But if those strains were ever introduced to a new environments, they would struggle because without those catabolic processes they can no longer grow on many substances.
This trade off happens frequently; other examples are cave fish losing eyesight, or whales losing articulate hips. Evolutionarily this makes sense; selection has no foresight. But why would a designer create a process like this that could potentially cripple the organism in the future?
This definition doesn’t tell us where the line between “sufficient” and “poor” is. Is the human brain poorly designed because it is susceptible to mental illnesses (depression, anxiety, etc)? Are flowers a poor reproductive system because they are not resistant to drought? Are clownfish poorly designed because they cannot survive in saltwater?
The idea that every detriment has to benefit the organism or population holistically in some regard is simply unrealistic. It seems to me that it takes a lot of faith.
Sinister designs
I don’t know that any evolutionists believe ANY features function to directly impede the organism they belong to.
But competition both interspecific and intraspecific, parasitic symbiotes, and predation certainly impede other organisms. Interference competition is a name for traits that exist only to interfere with other organisms, and there are thousands of examples.
Something that has been at the back of my mind whilst lurking on this thread is the following question:
Does the scientific consensus fully determine what is taught in science classes?
Given that there are whole libraries full of information that are in the scientific consensus, but not taught in science classes, the answer obviously has to be “no”.
The scientific consensus merely acts as an initial gatekeeper. The final gatekeepers would be science educators, most principally those who write science textbooks and science curricula.
The reason this educator was making a video about it, was that he’d been asked about it by a teacher who, whilst originally a maths teacher, had recently been tasked with teaching biology as well, and was concerned whether what she was teaching was still correct.
For such a teacher, if a topic isn’t in the textbook, or in the curriculum, there’s a good chance it won’t get taught. Even for a teacher with a background in biology, if it wasn’t something they were taught at school or university, or is in the textbook, or in the curriculum, there’s again a good chance it won’t be taught.
And I suspect that the science educators who write science textbooks and science curricula will tend to be extremely careful about what they let into their textbooks and curricula, given publishers’ page-limits, and the limited number of student tuition hours. They will be concentrating almost exclusively on what is needed to be taught in order to give students a basic understanding of the topic and the building blocks for further education in it. Anything extraneous to that, even if it is part of the scientific consensus, will be subject to considerable scrutiny, and harsh pruning.
The question then becomes, what is the chance that @Meerkat_SK5 can convince a science educator that their “Universal Common Design Theory” is not merely valid, but sufficiently crucial to a student’s understanding of biology, that room must be made for it (requiring other topics to be pruned to make room) in their textbook or curriculum?
I already gave @Andrew_Christianson the list of alleged design flaws that have been found to be optimal. If you want more examples, just ask.
Let me bring some context before I address this.
The rationale behind the approach I presented is based upon a principle regarding causation from past events, which was popularized by Charles Lyell who also influenced Charles Darwin and Stephen Meyer, of course. “Lyell argued that when scientists seek to explain events in the past, they should cite causes that are known from our uniform experience to have the power to produce the effect in question. Historical scientists should cite ‘causes now in operation’ or presently acting causes, which would be humans in this case.
This is because experiments and observations in quantum physics have shown that only the conscious observer has the ability to choose which aspect of nature his knowledge will probe. The participatory universe theory that was proposed and confirmed by John Wheeler and his delayed-choice quantum eraser experiment is an example of this:
"He was an early advocate of the anthropic principle, the idea that the universe and the laws of physics are fine-tuned to permit the existence of life. For the past two decades, though, he has pursued a far more provocative idea for an idea, something he calls genesis by observership. Our observations, he suggests, might actually contribute to the creation of physical reality. To Wheeler we are not simply bystanders on a cosmic stage; we are shapers and creators living in a participatory universe.
Wheeler’s hunch is that the universe is built like an enormous feedback loop, a loop in which we contribute to the ongoing creation of not just the present and the future but the past as well. To illustrate his idea, he devised what he calls his “delayed-choice experiment,” which adds a startling, cosmic variation to a cornerstone of quantum physics: the classic two-slit experiment."
This means that we are the conscious minds that are playing a significant role in quantum mechanics and have in the past. This was the backbone of my recent presentation. It also means that your response is nonsensical because you are a conscious being that plays a significant role in quantum mechanics right now while also claiming "no real evidence that consciousness plays any significant role in quantum mechanics. "
Now, I know you will respond by saying we are contingent beings and we don’t have evidence of a non-contingent consciousness. But, the origin of life simulation experiments I showcased that require a designer to produce life and the digital information harbored in life that is non-local would be the evidence of a non-contingent mind. Moreover, the alleged design flaws that have been found to be optimal designs would be the real evidence showing how this non-contingent consciousness played a significant role in quantum biology.
Not quite, I am saying we can and should infer that this designer has immutable characteristics and will even though it is a non-contingent conscious agent we are dealing with. It was in response to what @Dan_Eastwood said regarding the testability of common design theory.
For instance, we don’t have to worry about using an unfalsifiable theory that involves an omnipotent human because we have evidence that this human being is immutable and cannot violate his own nature in comparison to imperfect beings, which can change and violate those principles.
In other words, the immutable trait this particular designer possesses offsets the omnipotent trait this designer would also have to possess if true. This is what makes the difference on why we can treat an omni-potent God the same way as other intelligent agents (Neanderthals, modern humans, aliens,etc.) when we want to use an intelligent cause to explain a phenomena over a mindless force. Thus, all candidates are considered natural but immaterial causes that we can test because consciousness is supposed to be fundamental not classical physics.
Well that is just classic. First, @John_Harshman assumes without merit that the development of the scientific consensus on a topic is objective. Now, you are assuming without merit that the consensus in science is somehow morally infallible and free of bias or conflicts of interests.
Look, I can accept that the scientific consensus should probably be the gatekeepers of what should be taught in science classes in a vast majority of cases. However, in cases where there is strong metaphysical and religious implications and undertones like Darwinian evolution, we should definitely not give them the benefit of the doubt. Here is a quote to illustrate an aspect of my point:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
[Billions and Billions of Demons - JANUARY 9, 1997 ISSUE]”
― Richard C. Lewontin
Well first off, It is not a hypothesis anymore, but a full-fledge theory. In fact, the Orch-OR theory has gone through everything this article has suggested that makes an idea a scientific theory. It just does not have consensus yet. That’s it. However, all this means is that not enough of the old school paradigm of scientists have died off or its just philosophical/religious bias according to my analysis.
Secondly, what you are saying actually does not follow. Theories in science don’t have to be demonstrated to be true, but instead, they need to be demonstrated to work and have practical application in order for it to be taught in science ( or at least it should be that way according to my position):
'The issue is not whether a scientific theory is settled, but rather whether it works. Any successful scientific theory must be predictive and falsifiable; that is, it must successfully predict outcomes of controlled experiments or observations, and it must survive tests that could disprove the theory.
A scientist advocating a particular theory must propose an experiment and use her theory to predict the results of that experiment. If the experimental results are inconsistent with her predictions, then she must admit that her theory is wrong. To gain acceptance for a theory, a scientist must be willing to subject it to a falsifiable test.
If an experiment produces results that are consistent with a scientist’s predictions, then that’s good news for her theory. Just one successful test, though, is not usually enough. And the more controversial a theory is, the more experimental verification is required. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence .”
Wide acceptance comes from repeated, different experiments by different research groups. There is no threshold or tipping point at which a theory becomes “settled.” And there is never 100 percent certainty. However, near-unanimous acceptance by the scientific community simply doesn’t occur unless the evidence is overwhelming.’
The evidence I presented before was to demonstrate that the theory can and does work even though it involves a non-material, non-contingent conscious agent. So far, most of your objections have nothing to do whether the theory is unscientific or not and, thus, should not be taught in science classes.
According to the common descent model, Yes but not the common design model…
Which group of organisms are considered basic types?
There is 11+ groups of basic types, which involve…
Avalon, Cambrian fauna, Ordovician, Nekton animals, Odontodes vertebrates, Land vertebrates, Insects, Dinosaurs/birds, Placental mammals, Genus Homo, and one Human pair.
So were you suggesting that no animals exist today that branched off these groups?
You are making the same mistake that you made when you defined “species” according to the common descent model in order to make an objection. The Common Design model defines the first life in the form of RNA viruses NOT bacteria. Let me show you the model again so you don’t get confused:
Universal Common Design Model
Before the leftover meteorites were clumped together to form the primitive earth 3.8 billion years ago, virus-like RNA molecules were created within the deep-sea hypothermal vents of the earth. Then, some of these virus-like RNA molecules were naturally selected into different species of unicellular organisms and they underwent a heavy amount of HGT from the viruses that were created within the deep-sea oceans.
Then, the designer re-used these microbes, modules, and chemical constituents to separately construct basic types of animals from different locations and times around the globe. These basic types would be able to adapt to changing environments and diversify into kinds over long epochs of time.
This would involve the designer employing many familiar mechanisms, such as HGT, to facilitate this process and address a common set of problems facing unrelated organisms that are undergoing natural selection. As a result, we would see biochemical and morphological similarities among all living things that naturally give the appearance of Universal common ancestry.
No, I never said it can’t be done by unguided processes. I am saying we don’t have any evidence that they were done by unguided processes. We only have evidence that they were guided:
That’s because you have shown you are not competent enough to make that judgement on their theory and you had your chance in the last topic.
When you claimed that it was a “hypothesis”, you continued to show that you have not the done the research on it. But, you don’t have to be an expert to go look up whether your claims on the theory are accurate because I am certainly not an expert nor did I ever pretend to be one.
Correct and a prediction of the common design model is that they have a function.
I don’t get the objection or see how this is relevant to my theory. The argument for function within non-coding DNA does not depend only on whether the organism would survive or not survive without this functional activity but can still be useful regardless. For instance, I can eat a bowl of cereal without a spoon but with a spoon I can eat my food more efficiently.
Well, faith is a crucial part of the scientific method because making predictions about a theory will always require a form of faith. Nevertheless, thank you for demonstrating that the theory is a very fruitful scientific idea.
Let me give you an example then. In animals, injury can lead to long-lasting distress, whereby frequent exposure to pain-producing stimuli causes a progressively amplified response well after the injury has healed. This phenomenon has been referred to as “nociceptive sensitization.” Biomedical researchers have long viewed nociceptive sensitization as maladaptive because, in humans, it is associated with anxiety (Crook et al., 2014).
However, Crook et al. (2014) studied nociceptive sensitizations in squids and concluded that heightened sensitivity to pain helps these creatures evade predation. Squids are an outstanding laboratory model because they undertake a precise sequence of defensive behaviors when threatened by a predator.
For instance, when endangered, squids fully recovered from a previous injury reacted sooner than those that had not been injured. Conversely, the previously injured squids exhibited a slower response to predatory threats when the scientists used anesthetic to block the pain immediately after injury, thus preventing nociceptive sensitization.
Since nociceptive sensitization is pervasive, it likely serves a similar benefit among other animals, as well. Thus, these results indicate that pain (or suffering) plays a key role in enhancing the survival of animals following an injury and recovery.
Sure, let me breakdown further. There are actually both alleged bad designs and suboptimal designs in nature.
First, suboptimal designs are optimized for their purpose but not completely optimized to exercise their full potential in achieving that purpose when compared to similar designs that show better optimization. On the other hand, bad designs are considered poorly made to achieve their perceived purpose (i.e. design tradeoffs). The fundamental difference between a bad and a suboptimal design is that bad designs are designs considered not constructed well, while suboptimal designs are those considered not constructed well enough.
An example of suboptimal designs is the bronchial system in the human lung, which is not optimally designed to produce maximum efficiency in distributing air with minimal dissipation and it is relatively oversized. However, it has been suggested that the design actually is optimal when one considers physiological variability: a more optimal design of the bronchial tree would result in many more humans suffering from asthma and other lung disorders (Mauroy et al., 2004).
An example of a bad design would be the energy metabolism which invovles tradeoffs between conflicting design goals (Flamholz et al., 2013; Stettner & Segrè, 2013).
I have already explained why it is crucial to a student’s understanding of biology. Again, It has been repeatedly found that what initially seemed to be design flaws caused by an unguided process instead of a divine agent turned out not to be flaws at all with increasing understanding of the design. In fact, an article has even suggested that this current evolutionary framework and perspective is actually impeding scientific advancement and causing practical difficulties.
This realization solidifies the grounds for using modeling formalisms from the engineering subdisciplines and apply them to biological systems.
Are you kidding me? The only thing that the teacher would need to do is point out that there is another explanation, called common design, that has been proposed to better explain the discrepancies in the fossil record, phylogenetic trees, biogeography distribution, and apes and humans. That’s it.
Now, when it comes to the mechanisms being brought forth to explain it. The only three mechanisms they would need to teach at that level is natural selection, proton-tunneling, and quantum entanglement. That’s it.
Where does Meerkat get the idea that there is all this leisure time hanging loose in science class? The breadth of new material to master hits a peak in first year university science. Failure rates already range from a soft 25 percent up to a brutal see ya, good luck with plan B. High schools science preparation cannot afford to indulge digressions.
By conflict of interest, I am referring to monetary or positional gain. I did not say “free of bias,” everyone has an ideology, that is unavoidable.
If you’re going to put words in my mouth then I don’t think you’re competent to have a discussion. I did not say “morally infallible,” either, I said “best.” You have yet to offer a better arbitrator for what theories meet the burden of proof than consensus, despite being asked several times. I am certainly not comfortable putting the decision in your hands.
Again, I said nothing about being true, I said “supported.”
And yes, most of my objections have nothing to do with the “scientificness” of ORCH-OR, because A) I don’t have the expertise to criticize it, and B) the title of this discussion is… “Why should consensus determine what is taught in science classes?”
I don’t have a problem with ORCH-OR being taught in science classes if the theory is supported. I do have a problem with you piggybacking ID in along with it. If you want ID to be taught in classes, your hypothesis and supporting evidence need to demonstrate ID theory (“11 creation events” and all), not ORCH-OR.
Per your list, if humans are a separate creation event, genus homo is extinct.
The paper did not show RNA molecules evolving into viruses, either.
Calm down. For ORCH-OR to be a capital T Theory, other theories of consciousness need to be invalidated. Which they haven’t been. “Hypothesis” isn’t some sign of disrespect from me.
Again, with the putting words in my mouth. I did not say “survive,” I said “no adverse affects.” The mice were unaffected by the deletions, according to over 100 separate tests of fitness that the researchers performed.
An example is not a more useful definition, which is what I asked for.
It’s strange to me that out of all the arguments I presented, including cited arguments regarding the video you sent me, antagonistic pleiotropy, and interference competition, the only one you actually chose to reply to is a throwaway sentence about faith. I’m not really sure how you got “fruitful scientific idea” from me calling your hypothesis unrelaistic, but okay.
No, it’s your job to show that your theory actually does satisfy the conditions. So far, nothing.
I made no such assumption. I just said that it’s the best we have. You have suggested no alternative.
What happened in the Permian according to the common design model? Was there no extinction at all? And I believe I have pointed out previously that few of the supposed “basic types” you mention could even be considered taxa, and some of them contain others of them. It was, in other words, an incoherent list. Avalon is a place, the Cambrian and Ordovician are time periods, nekton is a lifestyle, odontodes vertebrates is gibberish, land vertebrates include everything after it except insects, placental mammals include genus Homo, and genus Homo includes “one human pair”. The Cambrian fauna is ancestral to the Ordovician fauna, which is ancestral to all the fauna after it. Further, you clearly have no criteria for inclusion in this list, and in fact there could be no sensible criteria for such a random assemblage. Incoherent.
This does not change the fact that you choose to cite a blog post which did not even demonstrate that even one alleged bad design wasn’t bad…
Which is not in fact sufficient to support your claim. The setup of the experimental apparatus dictates the possible results it may produce. That does not say that consciousness plays any particular part. If the apparatus was not consciously chosen would it make a difference ? Or is it merely - as many physicists would say - the setup of the apparatus that matters?
If it was nonsense you could provide the evidence. You have not.
So my point stands. The evidence for your claims is sadly lacking and that is one reason why your opinions - for that is all they are - do not merit a place in science classes.
Yet your ‘explanation’ fails to support this point:
This claim is false. And no@Meerkat_SK5, I am not interested in the citations that you (but nobody else)think supports your claim on this. I’ve gone down that rabbit hole far, far, far too many times with you on other threads.
More importantly, you have provided no evidence that “design flaws” are a part of textbooks or curricula, let alone that the are a sufficiently “crucial” part of them that your rebuttal (even if you could convince anybody of its validity, which you have failed to do so as yet) would likewise be a “crucial” addition to them.
Articles suggest all sorts of strange and improbable things. The issue is not what some random article “suggests” but what the evidence states.
What books/textbooks on quantum physics, written by actual quantum physicists have you read? (As opposed to Youtube videos by apologists.)
Until you can demonstrate sufficient understanding of quantum physics to even give a meaningful answer to the above questions (which is a low bar), I see no point in engaging with you on the topic, or giving your claims on the topic any credance whatsoever. So your above statement becomes simply:
But, at the end of the day, none of this matters. Neither I, nor the others on these threads, are the ones you have to convince. It is the writers of science textbooks and science curricula that you need to convince. But given that what you have in fact convinced me of is that you are unable to make a coherent argument, let alone a convincing one, I do not hold out any hope for your success at that task.
Actually, you were the one who put words in mouth here because I never said you mentioned this. I said you are assuming it when you said what you said. Conflicts of interests is a source of bias as well, BTW.
What do you mean? I just did recently and you commented on it. Again, proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the best standard, which entails that a proposition must have:
(A) Enough evidence that supports the actual claim being made or evidence proportional to the claim
(B) There can’t be other explanations that explain the evidence equally as well or better.
(C) There can’t be unexplained conflicting evidence, unaddressed objections, or untested predictions that are designed to falsify it.
This is not true. The Orch-OR theory has 20 predictions that show how the mind is non-physical. Although only 6 out of 20 predictions have been confirmed for a quantum mind, most of the 14 other predictions survived falsification from testing. According to Karl Popper’s falsifiability principle, a theory is truly tested when it has survived falsification. More importantly, materialism in general has been officially disproven and there is a consensus on this as well, which means materialistic assumptions do not have preferred status but violate Occam’s razor:
“…The violation of the classical weight structure is similar to the violation of the well-known Bell inequalities studied in quantum mechanics, and hence suggests that the quantum formalism and hence the modeling by quantum membership weights, as for example in [18], can accomplish what classical membership weights cannot do.” [emphasis added]
Experimental evidence for quantum structure in cognition (2009)
by Diederik Aerts , Sven Aerts , Liane Gabora
No, genus homo would just be an ancestor of modern apes rather than humans.
I don’t see a problem here since viruses are made up of RNA. In addition, they did not have other living organisms to be there as a host nor did they have the chemical constituents that would turn them into bacteria. Besides, there are studies showing humans creating viruses from scratch you know.
Sure, let me break it down better. There are actually alleged bad designs and suboptimal designs in nature.
First, suboptimal designs are optimized for their purpose but not completely optimized to exercise their full potential in achieving that purpose when compared to similar designs that show better optimization. On the other hand, bad designs are considered poorly made to achieve their perceived purpose (i.e. design tradeoffs). The fundamental difference between a bad and a suboptimal design is that bad designs are designs considered not constructed well, while suboptimal designs are those considered not constructed well enough.
An example of suboptimal designs is the bronchial system in the human lung, which is not optimally designed to produce maximum efficiency in distributing air with minimal dissipation and it is relatively oversized. However, it has been suggested that the design actually is optimal when one considers physiological variability: a more optimal design of the bronchial tree would result in many more humans suffering from asthma and other lung disorders (Mauroy et al., 2004).
An example of a bad design would be the energy metabolism which invovles tradeoffs between conflicting design goals (Flamholz et al., 2013; Stettner & Segrè, 2013).
What exactly did you want me to respond to that you felt needed a response here?
Sure, I can do this again to remind you.
What do you mean? I just did recently, and you commented on it. Again, proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” is the best standard.
I was just going off the studies that were presented by Gunter Buechley on fossil discontinuities because I am not expert on the subject. So I am willing to grant that some of them should not be considered “basic types” according to the model and thus we can eliminate those examples from consideration.
Why does this matter to you so much, seriously? LOL
I actually agree with this, which is why I went a step further in my recent presentation to provide evidence that the conscious observer himself is quantum mechanical or non-material and can collapse the wave-function of the brain.
Again, the Orch-OR theory has 20 predictions that show how the mind is non-physical. Although only 6 out of 20 predictions have been confirmed for a quantum mind, most of the 14 other predictions survived falsification from testing. According to Karl Popper’s falsifiability principle, a theory is truly confirmed when it has survived falsification. More importantly, materialism in general has been officially disproven and there is a consensus on this as well, which means materialistic assumptions do not have preferred status but violate Occam’s razor:
"…The violation of the classical weight structure is similar to the violation of the well-known Bell inequalities studied in quantum mechanics, and hence suggests that the quantum formalism and hence the modeling by quantum membership weights, as for example in [18], can accomplish what classical membership weights cannot do. [emphasis added]
Experimental evidence for quantum structure in cognition (2009)
by Diederik Aerts , Sven Aerts , Liane Gabora
It should matter to you that your “evidence” is grossly inadequate. But if it doesn’t that rather proves that you are on the side of indoctrination.
That doesn’t seem to be what the theory actually claims. The collapse would not be caused by the observer, indeed the causation seems to be more the other way around.
