Universal Common Designer theory [UPDATED and REVISED]

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Not by any normal meaning of “verbatim”. For example, “must mention that consciousness is non-local” is not the same as “must contain the exact statement that ‘Consciousness and digital information are non-local (I.e. Transcendent)’ verbatim.”

AFAIK, this is NOT Penrose’s interpretation. If you wish to keep regurgitating this absurd claim, then please cite where Penrose himself made this “interpretation”.

As far as I can ascertain, nothing in your theory is “legit”, and your “analysis” is simply a string of non sequitors.

Utter blithering nonsense!

  1. I never said that “the studies that [you] presented” said anything of the sort.

  2. That an analogy is only evidence of a “weak similarity” is inherent in the definition of “analogy”:

Equivalency or likeness of relations; ‘resemblance of things with regard to some circumstances or effects’ (J.); ‘resemblance of relations’ (Whately); a name for the fact, that, the relation borne to any object by some attribute or circumstance, corresponds to the relation existing between another object and some attribute or circumstance pertaining to it. Const. to, with, between. [OED]

The fact that the resemblance need only be “with regard to some circumstances or effects”, means that you can have an analogy between two things that are largely dissimilar.

  1. Nothing that I have said about the insufficiency of analogies in any way conflicts with what I said about “You claim X, your cited sources do not mention X.” So this is in no way “arbitrary”.

  2. I have made no mention of “metaphor” or “metaphorical” on this thread, so I have no idea why you claim that I “suggested that the analogy was … metaphorical.” You seem to have a Pavlovian response to say “not metaphorical” whenever somebody mentions analogies.

A quick skim on your 1-8 indicates that I am not “on the same page” on any of them. However, I really don’t have time to waste on new nonsense of yours, so I will restrict myself rebutting your final point:

  1. This is not some minor flaw (as your “only thing” claim would seem to suggest). It is a pervassive flaw, that renders your ‘theory’ absolutely worthless.

  2. It is not some mere typo, whereby you mistakenly cited “the wrong sources” for the occasional isolated point. Nearly every source you cite fails to support the claim you base on it.

  3. This problem has been pointed out to you repeatedly. You have failed to learn from this criticism and stop making claims unsupported by your citations.

As such, my general response remains:

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Well that is just it. I am not trying to convince anyone here that my theory is valid. Instead, I am trying to get PS users to help me improve on my theory until it gets to a point where most lay people can understand it and it is not lacking anything important within my reach.

Besides, you can convinced somebody of something to be true and it can still false and vice versa

Correct, this is why I also mentioned that…if the only thing that you object to in my previous post was the wrong sources cited, then make sure you explain why the quotes I pulled from those sources are inadequate.

Yes! Thank you for pointing out how @Tim is being arbitrary and inconsistent with HIS rules. He did this first but I am not allowed to do the same.

"(B) Consciousness is a separate quality, distinct from physical actions and not controlled by physical laws, that has always been in the universe. Descartes’ ‘dualism’, religious viewpoints, and other spiritual approaches assume consciousness has been in the universe all along, e.g. as the ‘ground of being’, ‘creator’ or component of an omnipresent ‘God’ ……

“…Nonetheless, in the Orch OR scheme, these events are taken to have a rudimentary subjective experience, which is undifferentiated and lacking in cognition, perhaps providing the constitutive ingredients of what philosophers call qualia. We term such un-orchestrated, ubiquitous OR events, lacking information and cognition, ‘proto-conscious’. In this regard, Orch OR has some points in common with the viewpoint (B) of Section 1, which incorporates spiritualist, idealist and panpsychist elements, these being argued to be essential precursors of consciousness that are intrinsic to the universe .” [emphasis added]

Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory - ScienceDirect

Well you made two conditions…

I tried to meet the first condition and then you changed the rules. So I am switching to meet the second condition. Now, I am waiting for people to address what I said in my last comment to @Rumraket.

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I don’t know what you mean by “scientifically valid”. I most certainly would not consider Orch-OR to be scientifically valid. It is, at best, a tentative speculative hypothesis.

Science is based on empirical evidence, not on textual analysis. You have not provided any empirical evidence.

Lots of luck with that. There is no basis for this that anybody can see.

The appearance of design is no more than subjective opinion. You will need to get beyond that.

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I didn’t see any of your points that are true, except for #3, which still incorporates false assumptions. It’s really frustrating that you pay no attention to anything anyone tells you.

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Have a beer and relax.

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Thanks, but Single Malt is more my tipple of preference – and I did have a nice wee dram of Ancnoc 12yo tonight. :smiley:

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One way you could improve your ‘theory’ is to base it on claims that are actually valid. Give that a try.

@Tim has done this extensively. I’ve done it for Abel’s work.

You did it in your initial post starting this thread, so no he did not do it first.

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Then throw it into the trash can, and start over.

Or, better still, just throw it into the trash can.

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I have already provided the quote from the article that illustrates my point.

I did this already on this topic in post 80 and now I am awaiting approval of my latest changes from you guys.

“However, if scaled to the stratigraphic level of the stage and the taxonomic level of the family, the past 540 million years of the fossil record provide uniformly good documentation of the life of the past.”

Quality of the fossil record through time | Nature

Yes, I do acknowledge that all those points prove how the fossil record must be incomplete. However, the problem with all those points is that it does not go far enough to explain the sudden appearances between major groups of animals that Gunter Beuchely laid out in his video. There are simply too many of those type of gaps, especially if 99.9 of species are already extinct… In fact, these gaps existed and were already explained by common design from researchers before Darwin created and mentioned those gaps as being problematic in his book.
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Furthermore, “the astonishing agreement between evolutionary trees based on molecular (DNA) data and the fossil record, and the fact that the detailed pattern of the evolution of life has not changed much over 200 years of study, suggests that the fossil record is adequate for the purpose we have put it to. It provides incontrovertible evidence of Darwinian evolution.”

The completeness of the fossil record - Benton - 2009 - Significance - Wiley Online Library

Thus, since I have provided multiple studies that show how the fossil record is adequate enough to establish at least one of the many gaps between major groups is complete. This means that we have to view common design and common descent as mutually exclusive models on this basis alone.

But, there is more on…Another reason why they are mutually exclusive involves how the first life forms came about.

For example, RNA viruses cannot propagate without a host or intelligence. For this reason, it would require the designer to continuously create viruses to have them evolve into bacteria from within deep-sea vents AND force those bacteria to evolve further from other created viruses. As a result, this would require multiple origins for single cell organisms, which happens to be consistent with current observations. On the other hand, common descent assumes that every living thing came from one single-cell organism (LUCA).

This is what I mean by scientifically valid:

  • It makes falsifiable predictions with consistent accuracy across a broad area of scientific inquiry (such as mechanics).
  • It is well-supported by many independent strands of evidence, rather than a single foundation.
  • It is consistent with preexisting experimental results and at least as accurate in its predictions as are any preexisting theories.

With that said, the Orch-OR theory has not established that a “self-existent” consciousness exists yet. This is the aspect of their theory that I admit is speculative, but this is what I am trying to do now.

That’s what I am trying to do now.

I think you guys misunderstood what I was trying to do before. I was trying to meet the first condition Tim laid out and then he changed the rules. So I am switching to meet the second condition. Now, I am waiting for people to address what I said in my last comment to @Rumraket.

’ In his “orchestrated objective reduction” theory (a.k.a. Orch-OR), Penrose posits that consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules throughout neurons in the brain. In this view, individual consciousness is connected to a universal proto-consciousness. This theory may resonate with the classical Buddhist view, that consciousness is the “ground” or primordial nature of the universe.’

The Beginner’s Mind of Scientist Sir Roger Penrose - Lion’s Roar (lionsroar.com)

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^^^^^^^THIS.

@Meerkat_SK5, have you looked at any of the data in any of the papers you have cited, or is it all second-hand text?

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This is merely describing various philosophical/religious/spiritual belief systems.

It is not stating that this is Penrose’s interpretation.

Likewise:

… is only stating that “Orch OR has some points in common” with this view, not that Orch OR entails a creator/“self-existent consciousness”.

Therefore, your claim of:

Lacks any foundation.

I already addressed this in excruciating detail:

(I suppose I should add to the list of ‘insufficiencies’ where the author is, without endorsing the view, explicitly describing somebody else’s viewpoint.)

Also, I would note that I never said that, if you “[found] a legitimate, peer-reviewed article that explicitly links Quantum Consciousness to evolution” I would automatically accept your claim, only that I had “no interest whatsoever in further engaging your claims on this topic” until you had done so. Arguably, I have already fulfilled any obligation that might be implied by that statement by engaging the topic here.

You have no excuse for continuing to cite works that do not support your claims, after repeatedly being criticised for it.

All your wild hand-waving appears to be just an ineffective attempt to distract from this point, and your inability and/or unwillingness to correct this behavior which renders your ‘theory’ fatally flawed.

Correcting this pattern of behavior needs to be your first step, without which any attempt to “improve” your ‘theory’ is futile.

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So there is “good” representation at the family level. Which does not imply the conclusion that the fossil record is complete.

I completely agree with that quote. The fossil record provides incontrovertible evidence of Darwinian evolution, in part because of the astonishing agreement between evolutionary trees based on molecular data and hte fossil record.

Then we are done. Case closed, game over. You are over reaching.

Sure it does. That’s exactly and literally what it does.

That seems to suggest the diametrically opposite conclusion than what you are suggesting.

Given the astonishing match between fossil and molecular phylogenies, and given that “The fossil record provides incontrovertible evidence of Darwinian evolution” - then it seems to me that the very existence of gaps is overwhelming evidence of the incompleteness of the fossil record, and the fossil record’s incompleteness is in fact readily explained by obvious geological effects. The process of fossilization is rare, the long-term preservation of any organisms that still manages to fossilize is rarer still, some organisms intrinsically don’t seem to fossilize at all but under the rarest of circumstances leaving only rough outliness and imprints with way to infer or elucidate their internal structures, that enormous amounts of fossil-containing sediments have already eroded away, and that another large fraction is hidden away in inaccessible locations on the Earth, either deep below glaciers, or in the crust.

Then there’s the fact that new “gap”-filling species are still routinely discovered. They are still finding new transitional whales, or early Devonian tetrapods.

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Can you point out which post that was?

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The problem is that your quotes never actually illustrate your point.

Sorry, but you didn’t. Your posts never tie together into a logical argument. You think they do, I suppose, but there are giant gaps in every step. Further you cite and quote papers you haven’t read, often from secondary or tertiary sources, and the quotes still don’t say what you think they do.

And there’s a case in point. You don’t know what that means and you haven’t read the paper.

What do you mean by “major groups”? Are they supposed to be basic types? Until you can identify basic types you have no claim capable of being discussed. Bechly is, at any rate, just wrong about this, but we would have to talk about particular cases to see that.

That’s nice. What researchers? Are you talking about Cuvier? He explained the geology near Paris by multiple catastrophes and recreation of the entire biota. That’s not your claim, though, is it?

Doesn’t that directly contradict your claim? And you need to read for comprension. The key phrase there is “adequate for the purpose we have put it to”. Your purpose is quite different. Clearly this is another paper you haven’t read.

No, you haven’t. Nothing you have provided does anything of the sort. You have provided studies (none of which you have actually read) that show the record to be adequate for some purposes. But none of those is your purpose.

It means nothing of the sort. Note that your main source, Bechly, has a model that incorporates both.

That was gibberish. Note, incidentally, that LUCA has nothing to do with the origin of life.

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Alright guys, this is what I am talking about. I need you guys to get back to evaluated the latest changes to the main argument because we are starting to get off-track. I will address your latest objections after you respond to this…

Oh, that’s actually helpful, but are you sure everyone agrees that life as we know it in part depends on digital information? If so, we can go with that.

Now, is it fair to assume that everybody agrees with these claims and the sources supporting them as well since they seem to be more straightforward and uncontroversial:

The Appearance of Design

“The repetitive non-coding RNA sequences resemble that of a natural everyday language, i.e., the essential tool to coordinate and organize common behavior.”

Failure to Explain the Evidence through Unguided Natural Processes

“ Simply mixing chemicals and watching for a living system to appear from the broth seems unreasonable to me. This approach has never worked, and it is not expected to work, at least not if one is limited to the lifetime of a human, let alone the duration of a funding period or a Ph.D. thesis."

Confirmed the Time and Place of Origins

Geologists found evidence of the first life from the oldest rocks on earth. They discovered viruses in the deep-sea oceanic vents and found that RNA viruses represent the most abundant form of organisms within them.

Reproduction of the Design Patterns

“For experiments aimed at demonstrating chemically more complex processes, such as multistep syntheses mimicking biochemical pathways or genetic replication , repeated interventions by the experimentalist have been necessary.”

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The you should start with one of your four initial premises. Pick one and demonstrate it’s validity. Then the next.

You should be citing both the conclusions explicitly supporting your claims and the data used to reach those conclusions. Since you aren’t in the field, you aren’t qualified to read between the lines of anything you cite. Several participants in this thread are qualified, and their commentary on the quality and meaning of your citations should be given enormous weight. I’d recommend starting with (B) from your original post, as it is the most important for your overall point.

You mean:

For reasons that have been explained, your citations were either not legitimate, or not explicit. Thus, your criteria for @Tim’s criteria has been met.

When and if a physicist is able to chime in, then you can rely on those citations again. Until then we’ll continue to assume the inadequacy of those sources.

Natural languages are not designed, nor do they appear to be designed. So this quotation is contradictory to your point.

The quotation does not say that natural processes have failed to explain the evidence, but that there has been no replication of the explanation. It further states that such replication is not expected given the evidence anyway. So again, contradictory to your point.

Confirming that life started at some point says nothing about the source of that life, so nothing here is relevant to your point at all. The current abundance and distribution of viruses is not a demonstration of anything 4Ga ago.

Nonenzymatic template-directed synthesis can replicate RNA to reasonable yields under reasonable conditions without significant intervention. Including some work by the author you quoted.

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OK, but first: I am saying that you have conflated these terms, and have been saying this thru several discussions (Information is not magical).

There is only one relevant meaning of the message in RNA/DNA: CHEMISTRY. The message is encoded chemistry (and a bit of physics, which is the same thing at a deep level). “Digital” as in “digital information” is irrelevant. This is just the simplest way of encoding information. ANY information might be encoded digitally - it’s not magic - merely a standardization in arbitrary units (“bits”) imposed by humans.

What I wanted to know from you is whether the study actually establishes what I said before.

No. At best, the snippet is using a metaphor.

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This is an error - a misunderstanding of what it means to do an experiment. Of course the experimenter manipulates the experimental variable(s). This is not “intervening” to manipulate the results of an experiment; this is systematically testing interventions to see the results.

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  1. These words are those of Tony Stultz, not Penrose’s own.

  2. It is not clear how this claim that “individual consciousness is connected to a universal proto-consciousness” derives from Penrose positing “that consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules throughout neurons in the brain.”

  3. It is also not clear whether this “universal proto-consciousness” relates to your " self-existent consciousness".

  4. There is no indication whatsoever that either Stultz or Penrose viewed this “universal proto-consciousness” as a ‘creator’, let alone that either claimed that it “created finite conscious minds”.

Therefore, your claim of:

Still lacks any foundation.

The best that you can claim from this piece is that Stultz interpreted Penrose’s work as there being a universal proto-consciousness to which individual consciousnesses are connected.

And we now have further examples of @Meerkat_SK5 citing sources that do not support their claims.

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Have we any examples of @Meerkat_SK5 citing a source that he has read that does support his claim?

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