Stairway to Understanding Hypothesis vs. Common Descent, my presentation to science students and church groups

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@Timothy_Horton

No Bill, it is you making the completely unsupported assertion that a disembodied mind IS a mechanism capable of physically manipulating matter into a desired form.

Yeah. If I could have what I want by just wishing rather than doing, I would be very well set up indeed.

[Jonathan_Burke]

@colewd

If I look at how science uses the term it is usually a cause that can explain the observed effect.

In science a mechanism is not simply a cause. In biology specifically, it is “a system of causally interacting parts and processes that produce one or more effects”. You haven’t identified this.

So here is the task again.

I have a mind, so according to you I should be able to create a de novo protein, with my mind. Tell me how to do this. What do I do with my mind to bring a de novo protein into being? If something else is necessary in addition to my mind (as you finally admit), what is that thing, do I have it, how do I use it if I do have it, and how do I get it if I don’t have it?

You keep avoiding this.

@colewd

Electromagnetism is a very abstract concept which explains the field that surrounds a wire containing changing current however it is a mechanistic explanation or cause of many of the observations we see in the natural world.

Electromagnetism is a phenomenon, not a mechanism. The way it interacts systematically to cause other phenomena, would be a mechanism.

@colewd

You are back to assertion.

No. I am back to verifiable evidence. The science of genetics is so well understood that it repeatedly makes successful predictions, and is used to identify ancestry and parentage.

@colewd

You can equally say it is very poorly explained by common descent by looking a Sal’s flower.

Why would I say this? On what scientific grounds?

@colewd

With common descent I would not expect such a dramatic mixing and matching of gene sets.

Why not? On what scientific grounds?

[RonSewell (RonS)]

@colewd

Because I think mind is an important scientific hypothesis to help science both in biology and potentially physics.

I looks to me like you are attempting to firewall God, the supernatural, and miracles, as outside the purview of science, while retaining the mind of God as an agency within science. But you are attempting to separate the warp from woof here. Mind is an internal state of self awareness and has no bearing on the outside world until acted on. Any divine teleology in nature is from God acting on his purposes. Christian theology repudiates pantheism. You cannot have the mind of God without God, and you cannot have God’s purpose without God’s creative speaking into being.

[Timothy_Horton]

@colewd

Because I think mind is an important scientific hypothesis to help science both in biology and potentially physics.

OK, we’ll call this Bill’s Mind Did It Hypothesis. Now how do you go about testing the hypothesis and what evidence would falsify it?

You’ve only been asked those questions several dozen times but can never supply an answer.

[evograd (Blogging Graduate Student)]

@colewd

With common descent I would not expect such a dramatic mixing and matching of gene sets.

You have yet to provide any justification for this belief.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@colewd

The paper I gave is untested and highly speculative models being developed.

Bill, your usage of the word “model” is incoherent.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@colewd

If I look at how science uses the term it is usually a cause that can explain the observed effect.

Then you haven’t looked at how science uses the term.