You might ‘think’ it is faster but, much like nearly everything else you have said in this thread, you are wrong. For instance…
The time to say the premise is supported is after objections have been addressed, not before.
If they appeared the same it would not mean they were the same, and having the ‘appearance’ of design would not mean something was designed. But that wasn’t your initial claim, it wasn’t what I was replying to, and I have no idea why you thought saying it would be helpful.
Here’s the part that’s actually relevant! Indeed, if two things show strong similarities, then you can say that they ‘appear’ to be like one another. Unfortunately, according to the paper, they don’t!
For my statement to be special pleading, it would need to be an exception in the first place. Your quote from @John_Harshman is about rejecting a hypothesis on the basis of absence of evidence we should expect to already have if it is true. Since we don’t expect to already have examples of a reproduction of abiogenesis if current models of it are true, and since we do have examples of precisely the kinds of experimental success we do expect, there is no special pleading in saying the current data supports abiogenesis.
What would be special pleading is rejecting the current evidence in support of abiogenesis on the grounds there hasn’t been a reproduction while allowing the possibility of a violation of nested hierarchy on the basis that such might be found in the future.
There is no reason ‘what’ reasoning would not apply to ‘what’ ‘how’? Nothing about that makes sense either on its own or in context.
Go on then…
False dichotomy. False trichotomy? Whatever, there are other options.
Complete nonsense.
It doesn’t show that the genetic code transcends any physics.
The only thing I’m presupposing here is the way human languages work and the way biochemistry works. Both of which are entirely physical processes, whether there is a non-material mind required for them to start or not.
I have no reason to think you can understand your source well enough to make your claims about it.
Wrong.
It is called template directed polymerization because the sequence of the resulting polymer is directed by the template of the original sequence.
What follows is an admission that you have irrational a priori objections to a field of science.
This:
Is not an example of a prebiotic, or even early biotic, process, so that’s not really relevant.
Yet another example of @Meerkat_SK5 using quotes to say something contrary to the author and in fact to the quote itself. At some point do we have to attribute this sort of behavior to intention rather than cluelessness?
You are missing the whole point of this discussion. It is a fact that there are all sorts of gaps in the fossil record, which would be considered basic types according to my model as I mentioned before. I provided an Ernest Mayr quote to illustrate this point along with other quotes from prominent experts. However, you argued that this was best explained by the artefact hypothesis.
Then, I mentioned that the details of the Cambrian explosion was considered to be a real event based on current evidence. More importantly, I made it very clear that all it takes is ONE genuine gap between lineages to establish that common descent and common design models are mutually exclusive. That’s it! Now, are you saying there are no real gaps within the Cambrian explosion event?
Sure, I will be more clear.
You said that " If the ancestors are viruses (if the ancestors were anything, really), that’s not separate creation; it’s common descent. Again, LUCA has nothing to do with the origin of life; you need FUCA, the first universal common ancestor. Anyway, LUCA could exist under an unguided or guided model of evolution."
According to observations and experiments, this is NOT true as I explained.
I provided articles that explained how current evidence shows that LUCA’s genetic make-up must have been RNA based. However, LUCA did not possess an ancestral membrane that is needed for the transfer of information to successive generations.
Therefore, LUCA has everything to do with the origin of life according to the common design model because LUCA could only exist under a guided model of evolution.
This might have been the case if the rest of the bible did not demand a literal view of Adam and Eve. However, as another article mentioned, 'the rest of the Bible clearly presents Adam and Eve as real-life people who lived in a real-life Garden of Eden. They literally turned against God, they literally believed the devil’s lie and they were literally thrown out of the Garden (Genesis chapter 3, verse 24). They had real-life children and passed on the problem of sin and being against God to all of them. And that problem was passed down all the following generations to us today.
God promised a real-life Saviour to save us from this real-life problem (Genesis chapter 3, verse 15). That Saviour is Jesus Christ, called the “last Adam” (1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 45), who died on a literal cross and literally came back to life again. Those who trust in Jesus will have literal salvation and spend forever in a literal heaven.’
Therefore, it would clearly be deception if Jesus was just using the common cultural background of his audience to make a point but actually knew they were not real people. In fact, you can apply this same reasoning to just about everything he said if this were the case. Moreover, the good Samaritan story is NOT backed up by the rest of the bible like the Adam story.
Biblical Hebrew has a very limited vocabulary (approximately 3,100 words) compared to the English vocabulary (estimated to be 1,000,000 words). Hebrew words often have several literal meanings. For example, Linguistic scholars acknowledge the Hebrew word yom (translated “day” in English) has several literal meanings: a period of daylight, 12-hour day, 24-hour day, time, period of time with unspecified duration, and epoch of time. While modern English has numerous words to describe a long time-span, no word in biblical Hebrew adequately denotes a finite epoch of time other than yom .
So you can’t infer a 24 hour day period from reading the text.
Furthermore, Peter addresses the extent of Noah’s flood. In both cases, Peter qualifies the Greek word cosmos, translated as “world.” In 2 Peter 2:5 he writes that the “world of the ungodly” was flooded. Here, Peter implies a distinction between the whole of planet Earth and that part of Earth inhabited by ungodly human beings. He does this again in 2 Peter 3:6 where he refers to the world that was deluged and destroyed as cosmos tote, which literally means “the world at the time the event occurred.” By attaching the adjective tote to cosmos, Peter implies that the world of Noah is not the same as the world of the Roman Empire.
This principle of conservation, or limitation, In God’s acts of judgment clearly applies to the Genesis flood. It means that if humans had spread as far as Antarctica, The flood would have covered Antarctica, Destroying the Emperor penguins along with the people, Except those aboard the ark. If no people lived in Antarctica, God would have had no reason to destroy the place or its penguins. Nor would Noah be required to take a pair of Emperor penguins aboard the ark. ”
Thus, a Global flood model claims to destroy all of life in general except Noah and his family, which would cover the entire planet. A worldwide flood model that I adhere to claims to destroy all of human life (except Noah and his family), which covered only a local area at that time in history. More importantly, we actually do have evidence for this model.
“A computer OS is described by a regulatory control network termed the call graph, which is analogous to the transcriptional regulatory network in a cell .”
Let me explain in a clear and concise manner why you are special pleading. You specifically said that…
“The expectation of abiogenesis is that it shouldn’t happen under timescales and conditions practical for current experimental methods.”
I said in response that we found and reproduced several material mechanisms in a short amount of time that contributed to the origin of life process from current experimental methods. Then, you responded with…
“And if the mechanism takes 300 million years to work, then we can’t reproduce it in a reasonable time-frame, now can we? We’ve been running tests for several decades now, it has been an extremely fruitful field with substantial progress all the time.”
I explained that there are two problems with this. First off, you suggested that there is a material mechanism out there that requires millions of years instead. But, this is clearly special pleading because you are creating an unjustified exception in comparison to the several material mechanisms we have discovered in a short amount of time using current experimental methods.
Secondly, as @John_Harshman pointed out and I am going to paraphrase now:
“If you’re appealing to unknown future results, all you’re doing is ignoring current results. We have to judge hypotheses based on data we have, not data we hope might turn up some day. In particular, the data we have are conclusive. And we are very, very unlikely to find a new [material mechanism that does not require human intervention to produce life according to current experimental results].” We have tested pre-biotics experiments under a wide range of conditions.
Just read the sources below this video or watch the video itself from 10mins into it:
In that case, Please read this article so you can understand the argument and then look into the other source to get all the latest evidence that supports the article’s premise that are listed below the video OR you can choose to watch 11mins into the video:
Again, false. Digital information is fundamental NOT emergent from matter or brain chemistry. Please watch 11:15mins into this video or read the sources below the video:
Then, give me the source and quotes from it to support your claim.
That is not true. I am just going to have to copy and paste what I argued in my previous topic:
Scientists were successfully able to synthesize the RNA molecules of a virus and reconstruct a virus particle from scratch. They accomplished this by creating another virus and used it’s parts, such as specialized proteins (enzymes), to construct an RNA virus in order to solve the problem of an unstable RNA.[1] This is how human designers operate all the time. They use preexisting mechanisms, material parts and digital information to assemble designs in order to solve a problem. This is no different from what we see within origin of life experiments as well.
For instance, whenever unguided chemical processes under atmospheric conditions were left to themselves without any interference, they did not produce the desired results. Rather, the living state would always subside and turn into “useless networks of RNA sequences” as demonstrated by Szostak and Bartel (1993) where more than half of the pool of RNA molecules precipitated when incubated for 90 minutes at 37º C in high concentrations of Mg2+ and monovalent ions and even more rapid at higher temperatures. [just ask for reference]
They were able to solve this problem by tying the molecules onto a substrate to make sure the pool of RNA molecules do not diffuse and form intermolecular reactions, and, thus, safely incubated. This is similar to what we see from observations I mentioned above where the mineral surfaces of the earth would have contributed centrally to the linked pre-biotic problems of containment and organization.
Therefore, we have basis to say that RNA viruses were developed within the pool of self-replicating RNA sequences by an intelligent agent, which can only be identified as a transcendent cause. This is because functional RNA sequences or RNA viruses have not yet been observed in nature or laboratory to self-replicate without the help of other living things or intelligent life. [2]
However, the main reason why I believe this agent most likely created and designed the first life to be viruses is because they not only display elements of functionality, but look as if they perform important and overarching purposes in ecosystems that could only be done by an intelligent designer according to PACE experiments.
For instance, PACE utilizes a mutant M13 bacteriophage whose gIII gene is replaced by that for the protein of interest (the mutant phage is called Selection Phage, SP) where successful SP propagation is linked to the activity of the protein of interest . Moreover, “SP carrying a mutant protein with enhanced activity will have a fitness advantage over other SP particles, because the enhanced protein activity allows for increased pIII production, thereby increasing offspring production”. [3]
Now, it is important to note that they did not design or use specialized proteins beforehand, but the experimenter still played a fundamental role in these experiments because they were the ones that chose the protein of interest . Without this targeted protein of interest by the researcher, it would have been an unsuccessful result.
However, to be clear, I am highlighting this experiment in conjunction with previous experiments showing how viruses were created from scratch. Both experiments combined would show how God created and designed viruses to function like the viruses we see in the deep-sea oceans I mentioned above, such as the…
Major viral impact on the functioning of benthic deep-sea ecosystems
Viruses ability to manipulate the life histories and evolution of their hosts in remarkable ways.
The article in question is explicitly an essay, not a research article, as such it contains opinion not evidence.
The author, Richard Conn Henry, although prominent, is prominent as an astrophysicist, not as an expert on Quantum Mechanics.
The video is likewise not a presentation from a Quantum Physicist. It is from a Christian apologist, with no apparent expertise in QM, and a clear “personal bias” (towards Christian theism) – the very thing that @Meerkat_SK5 complains about over, and over and over again. It would seem that @Meerkat_SK5 is less worried about personal biases, when the biases in question match their own.
Please see point (3) above. As for “read[ing] the sources below the video”, I would note that they are are nearly 40 of them, and that they seem to be a fairly random grab-bag (it even includes Thomas Nagel’ execrable and ill-informed Mind and Cosmos), of questionable applicability to your claim. They are also likewise mostly videos, meaning that we cannot in fact “read” them but would need to watch them – three are an hour and a half long and a fourth is 45 min.
The claims made at 11:30 are not sourced from an expert in QM, but are the claims of Bryan Whitworth (from Massey University’s Centre for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science) made in an apparently-unpublished article titled ‘The physical world as a virtual reality’. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0337=
In investigating how much expertise RCH has in QM, I came across a ‘Letter to the Editor’ that appears to be applicable to the subject of ‘are wave functions real?’ It states:
“Manifestations of a wave function” leaves a reader to question what is meant by the “wave function.” It would be clearer, and more consistent with quantum field theory which is our most accurate form of quantum physics, to speak instead of “manifestations of a matter field.”
I think this goes somewhat to address the claim that life (and all matter?) is “a mathematical wave function”. The function in question is merely a mathematical abstraction of the underlying reality that is the “matter field”.
As I have repeatedly said, your refusal to pick a single topic and stick with it is overly time-consuming and wholly non-productive. If you wish to actually make progress you will stick with a single topic until a satisfactory conclusion can be reached.
From here on, I will ignore everything except the first topic you raise in response to my comments. That will be our subject until we are agreed. Changes in subject will be assumed as indicating abandonment of your position, excepting references necessary to your assumptions, in which case the first of those will be the new topic.
I encourage @Tim, @John_Harshman, and anyone else still active in this thread to do likewise.
And round and round we go. Natural languages are not designed, showing similarities to natural languages does not show similarities to design.
Is again quoting from a paper that found that biology DOES NOT appear similar to computer systems. Making the analogy entirely metaphorical. Metaphorical analogies don’t cut it.
So no, you have not supported your claim of appearance of design.
And please stop repeating claims that have already been corrected. It is dishonest.
If that’s true, you should be able to identify a large number of basic types. So why don’t you?
This is a claim. But you haven’t made any argument for that claim. And in fact the claim makes no sense at all. How do you account for Michael Behe, who accepts both common descent and common design?
What exactly do you mean by “real gaps”? Name one, and then we’ll talk.
Assertion is not explanation. And you are not more clear when you just repeat the same assertions you made before.
Wait, you’re saying that’s not a parable?
So, the bible always literally means what it says except sometimes it doesn’t. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. Your exegesis on the flood is absurd.
Please don’t quote-mine me. Please don’t quote-mine anyone. This habit of yours is pernicious and unethical.
Unfortunately that statement is logically incoherent. There being gaps in the fossil record indicates nothing about the possible compatibility of common descent and “common design”.
You’re going to have to explain yourself and derive this conclusion step by step.
That’s disputed (there is no consensus on that in the field) because such a conclusion is not a necessary consequence of the available evidence. Here’s a recent article that argues that the all the available evidence concerning the different homologous relationships between RNA and DNA replication systems in all domains of life, and in viruses, is best explained with a DNA-based LUCA:
This is definitely false. LUCA is known to have several membrane-embedded proteins. For example the homologous membrane-spanning portion of the V and F-type ATP synthases. It also possesed the homologous membrane-embedded portions of the peripheral stalk. The key-words there are “membrane-spanning/embedded”.
Similarly, LUCA is known to have had the Signal Recognition Particle (SRP) system, part of which is a protein translocation system.
You can read about that here:
It would seem very strange for an organism to have proteins and molecular machines who’s function critically depend on the existence of a membrane, and yet not have a membrane.
While bacteria and archaea do not share homologous pathways for membrane lipid biosynthesis, they do both have membranes, so that would imply by character reconstruction the ancestral cell did have a membrane too.
It would then either have a chimeric membrane (by possesing both pathways for lipid biosynthesis), and that one of the two pathways was lost in each clade subsequently to their divergence from the LUCA. Or alternatively it had one of them, and then another evolved and replaced it.
Incidentally, some species of archaea are known that have chimeric membranes by having pathways for the biosynthesis of both types of membrane lipids, and experiments have shown that a bacterium artificially supplied with the pathways for archaeal membrane lipids produced a membrane with a chimeric compositon of lipids, and went on to survive and reproduce just fine.
The paper did not say it was a “metaphorical” analogy nor did I claim that biology DOES NOT appear similar to computer systems. I was just going off of what the study said. The appearance of design is the analogy between the computer OS and the transcriptional regulatory network in a cell.
Again, the paper did not make that conclusion. YOU DID. As I said before, I am not here to convince you of anything. Just trying to improve on my case. So we can just move on from here if that is how you feel about those studies that make this case.
That being said, here is an article that suggests that the analogy is not metaphorical:
I did. I specifically said that basic types are created kinds where each of these basic types contain different genera (such as, dog/fox/ wolf) and each genus contains one or more species.
This means that basics types 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 basic types according to the common design model .
However, as I said before, I don’t have an OEC version of Baraminology fully developed yet. So I can’t go into detail. Instead, I am just arguing that common design and common descent are mutually exclusive because one predicts discontinuities and other predicts continuities between lineages. This means that even if every disconnect in the fossil record can be explained by the artefact hypothesis right now, the common design model predicts that those gaps are real NOT apparent.
This is also means that the difference between the models are actually practical rather than in principle.
The burden of proof is not on me John. You have yet to explain why LUCA has nothing to do with the origin of life or is different under the common design model. Until you do, I am not obligated to figure out what the difference is supposed to look like.
I changed it to say “NOT backed up by the …”
No, John. It does not specifically say it was a 24 hour day. You are assuming it.
"Under this model, RNAPs and replicative DNAPs evolved from a common ancestor that functioned as an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase in the RNA-protein world that predated the advent of DNA replication. "
Sure, it is one very recent study that suggests it had a membrane but it does not do anything to support John’s central argument because it is not as well-establish as RNA being the starting point for LUCA. And we know RNA to unstable to carry those genes to the next generation.
This was below the video’s introduction
"Materialism has been dead for decades and recent research only reconfirms this, as this video will show. This video was reviewed by physicist Fred Kuttner and Richard Conn Henry. A few other physicists reviewed this but asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons. "
You seem to have rather severe reading comprehension issues. That article is not in any way even trying to constitute an investigation of the chemical basis for LUCA’s genome. It is only and entirely a publication that summarizes work on elucidating the evolutionary history of the ribosome.
Again I am truly perplexed by so extreme a degree of poor reading comprehension as you are exhibiting.
No, the study I linked you says LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, had a DNA genome. It’s right there in the abstract:
Abstract**
**Origin of DNA replication is an enigma because the replicative DNA polymerases (DNAPs) are not homologous among the three domains of life, Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya. The homology between the archaeal replicative DNAP (PolD) and the large subunits of the universal RNA polymerase (RNAP) responsible for transcription suggests a parsimonious evolutionary scenario. Under this model, RNAPs and replicative DNAPs evolved from a common ancestor that functioned as an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase in the RNA-protein world that predated the advent of DNA replication. The replicative DNAP of the Last Universal Cellular Ancestor (LUCA) would be the ancestor of the archaeal PolD.
That’s also why it is consistently referred to in the text as possessing a RDNAP, Replicative DNAPolymerase. What you are quoting there is merely an explanation for how the systems of DNA and RNA replication also evolved from a common ancestral RNA-based system. That system would be prior to the last universal common ancestor of cellular life.
Don’t confuse the common ancestry of the RNA and DNA based replication systems with the common ancestry of the cellular lifeforms in which these systems are found. The common ancestry of RNA and DNA replication goes back before LUCA.
Your mistakes here are completely inexplicable, and frankly unforgivably obtuse. Please read with comprehension. It’s already there in the abstract. LUCA is inferred to have possessed a replicative DNA polymerase.
I’m sorry but you’re just flat out mistaken here in literally all claims made. Whether LUCA had an RNA based genome or not does not in any way undermine the evidence that LUCA had a cell membrane. Uncertainty with respect to the chemical basis for it’s genome does not somehow falsify or overturn the rather straightforward evidence that it was a cellular lifeform.
It has not been established that LUCA was RNA based (though it’s possible it was), as the evidence is apparently at least as consistent with it having a DNA-based genome.
And no, we don’t know that RNA is “too untable to carry those genes to the next generation” either. Among other things because RNA can function in unison with peptides and proteins (they do so in the ribosome, and in RNA viruses) and have mutually stabilizing and catalytic and fidelity-enhancing effects.
Remarkably everything you wrote in your response to me is wrong.
If the conclusion of the paper is that biology doesn’t look like computer systems (which it is), then the analogy is metaphorical.
It does if you are conversant in biochemistry, which I am.
If your case is based on things you don’t understand, it is weak. You can strengthen it by only using material you actually understand. This will likely require you gain a reasonable understanding of biochemistry. Until then, you should stop claiming that material you don’t understand supports your argument.
Not an article, a news feature. And is discussing designing a system using DNA, which says nothing about whether or not DNA appears designed.
You misunderstand. Behe accepts universal common descent. Nor have you managed to identify a single one of these supposed basic types. Incidentally, dogs and wolves belong to the same genus, and there are several genera of foxes.
Are you claiming that the family Canidae is a basic type? But what discontinuity is there in the fossil record that supports this claim?
That’s an understatement. You in fact have nothing whatsoever.
Discontinuity (a gap) in the fossil record is not the same thing as a discontinuity between lineages. Further, the fossil record isn’t the only thing your theory would have to explain (even if it could actually explain that, which it can’t). It would also have to explain the nested hierarchy of life, which extends both above and below the family level. Further, the model you are talking about here is not properly referred to as common design but separate creation.
This isn’t about proof. It’s about the common meanings of ordinary terms. LUCA is the Last Universal Common Ancestor. The origin of life would involve the first, not the last. Now, of course under your common design (by which you actually mean separate creation) model, there is no such thing as LUCA or FUCA at all.
Is it too much to ask for you to pay attention to what you post?
I suppose the evening and the morning weren’t really evening and morning either. Then what were they? At any rate, it isn’t just the length of time that doesn’t work if interpreted literally. It’s also the sequence of events and the events themselves. You really have to force the text to fit reality.
Because that’s not what the text itself says, and the reference to Peter doesn’t imply what you force it to. The land was covered up to the high mountains. There’s no way to accomplish that in a local flood. Everyone who was not in the ark died. There’s no way to accomplish that in a local flood. You can make up any story you want, but don’t pretend it’s what the bible actually says.
To be fair and honest, I rushed through that last response because I had to go somewhere that I was late to. As a result, I did not have time to provide a quality response but I sent it anyway just to get more information from you guys responses. So relax!!!
Yes and that is primarily the problem with John’s and your objection. With no origin of life model for common descent or a concrete idea of what LUCA is, how do you know LUCA has nothing to do with the origin of life?
Remember, we are discussing whether common design and common descent models are “in principle” mutually exclusive based on the origin of life model that is lacking in common descent. John’s objection right now is unfalsifiable but he seems uninterested at explaining how both models are the same in principle in regards to Abiogenesis. Maybe you can do better here.
Well, this is why I am relying on other experts like RTB to break it down for me. That is where I got the majority of my information and arguments from.
Fine, we will just assume it is metaphorical for the sake of moving forward in the discussion, as I mentioned before.
How so?
I have already explained how HGT and the Dependency graph model accounts for the nested hierarchy.
Well, you have not proven that common design and common descent are the same in principle yet to justify this interpretation, which leads me to the next thing you said…
Well now, you just made my point as to why common design and common descent are “in principle” mutually exclusive models and why separate creation models are subsets to the overarching common design model NOT different. There is no reason to go any further on this point if you really mean what you say.
Did you know that the words “and there was” are not even in the Hebrew version, but added to make the English flow better. The actual translation is “evening and morning ‘n’ day.” ?
In fact, if you read the creation account, there is no reference to the end of the seventh day. On every other day, there is “evening and morning, day ‘n’.” Not so on the seventh day. The bible even tells us that the seventh day continues into the present:
For He has said somewhere concerning the seventh day: “AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS”; (Hebrews 4:4)
Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest, so that no one will fall, through following the same example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:11)
We cannot enter God’s seventh day of rest unless it continues to this day, since we were not alive during the first 24 hours after the sixth day. If God’s seventh day of rest was 24 hours long, than the author of Hebrews is telling us to do something that is impossible. This is just another example of the problem of assigning each creation day to 24 hours.
Like what? Make your case.
The Genesis text does not specify the exact depth of the floodwaters. It states only that the ark floated up on the waters and that the nearby hills were so inundated that “from Noah’s perspective” the whole face of Earth was covered with water. That is, from one horizon to the other, all Noah could see was water.
For instance, We see that in the tenth month, the mountains became visible to Noah (Genesis 8:5). Some 40+ days later (Genesis 8:6), Noah sent a dove out of the ark (Genesis 8:8). However, the dove was unable to land because of all the water (Genesis 8:9). Then, the text tells us that water was “on the surface of all the earth.” This is obviously a bad translation of kol erets, since we know that the water had not covered the mountains for at least 40 days.
The context makes it clear that kol erets must refer to local geography and should be translated as the “all the land” or “all the ground.” In fact, all our major English translations (NASB, NIV, KJV, etc.) make this same error. It is no wonder that people who read the English translation of the Bible “literally” come to the conclusion that the flood must have been global. However, it is apparent that our English “translations” of the Genesis flood text are more than just “translations,” but actually interpretations (and probably incorrect ones at that).
There is another indication in the text that the flood did not cover the highest mountains. Again, from Genesis 8:
“So he waited yet another seven days; and again he sent out the dove from the ark. And the dove came to him toward evening; and behold, in her beak was a freshly picked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the water was abated from the earth.” (Genesis 7:11)
If the ark had come to rest on the top of Mount Ararat, this would be at 17,000 foot elevation. Olive trees (and every other tree) do not grow at 17,000 feet. In fact, you will not find olive trees growing much above 5,000 feet. Therefore, we know from the Bible that the ark did not come to rest on or near the top of Mount Ararat, but probably somewhere on the foothills of the mountain.
The method by which the flood ended also tells us that the flood was local. According to Genesis, the water receded and was dried by the wind. If the flood were global, there would be no place for the waters to recede to. Likewise, a wind would not significantly affect a global flood, further suggesting that the Genesis flood was local in extent.
Yes, and this has about as much probative value as anything else published on Youtube: zero.
As I had already pointed out, RCH is not an expert in QM.
It is unclear how detailed a ‘review’ Kuttner, RCH or any of the “anonymous” physicists gave this video.
Given that at 11min the video talks about the “coach inspector theorem” (a theorem that scores no hits in Google Scholar, or Google Search more generally) and states “the notion physical reality is not there without an observer as Anton Zeilinger explains”, whereas the Zeilinger et al paper briefly shown on the screen makes no mention of an “observer” and has the unrelated introduction of:
We present a simple experimental scheme which can be used to demonstrate an all-or-nothing type contradiction between non-contextual hidden variables and quantum mechanics. The scheme, which is inspired by recent ideas by Cabello and Garc´ıa-Alcaine, shows that even for a single particle, path and spin information cannot be predetermined in a non-contextual way.
… this suggests that the ‘review’ was less-than-thorough.
Addendum: the “coach inspector theorem” was from the video’s auto-transcript. It is possible that this may be an automated mis-hearing of “Koch inspector theorem”. This sort of ambiguity is yet another reason why videos are really awful sources. I could only find one Google hit on the latter, to this piece of polytheistic apologetics that also mentions Brian Whitworth (the source of the ‘universe as virtual reality’ claim mentioned in a previous post). I would also note that, short of trawling through the nearly forty sources this video lists, there is no way of finding out where, or even if, this claim is sourced – so there is no reasonable way of check if I even heard the phrase correctly. This is yet another problem with this format.
The fact that they reviewed it is not the same as their supporting the video’s conclusion.
All this leads to two conclusions:
You should not give Youtube videos as sources, and expect to be taken seriously. Videos are an appallingly bad way of presenting serious information. They are “infotainment”, at best.
You should not give apologists as sources, and expect to be taken seriously. They are both (in most cases) not experts in the relevant scientific field, and have a strong (and in many cases all-encompassing) “personal bias”.
Instead of basing your understanding of QM on apologetic Youtube videos, I’d suggest you might instead read this introductory book by the Physics Professor who I quoted above. Or any other scientifically-written introductory book on QM.
So, for the avoidance of doubt, sources that are unacceptable include:
Sources that do not support your claim.
Sources lacking explicit expertise in the subject area – this includes the vast majority of apologists.
Sources that are Youtube videos.
Claims within sources will not be accepted as evidence include:
Speculative claims.
Analogies.
Where the author is describing a view without explicitly endorsing that view.
Because the fossil record has gaps in it that are unrelated to gaps in lineages. Even you must know that there are unconformities and hiatuses at all scales in the rocks themselves. Right?
Not true. You have waved your hands in the direction of these two things, but that’s not an explanation.
I haven’t tried to show they’re the same in principle. I’ve tried to show that they’re compatible in principle, which is not the same thing at all.
No. The point is that separate creation and common descent are mutually exclusive. Common design is an umbrella term that can include both separate creation and common descent models. Your point is wrong, and again I direct your attention to Michael Behe, among others, who accept both common descent and common design.
So God has been resting ever since creation? But that would mean that he hasn’t intervened in the world during recorded history. It would mean that he never had himself born as a human being, spent a year or so wandering about preaching, got crucified and resurrected, etc. You can’t do any of those things while resting. Anyway, why does an omnipotent being even need to rest? You can pick bits out of the bible that seem to show all sorts of things, including whatever you personally want to be true.
I’m sure you have seen most of them. Plants before creation of the sun, moon, and stars. Birds before mammals. All plants on one day (or period, if you like) before sea and air animals on on one subsequent day, before land animals all on one subsequent day. Solid dome of sky. Water surrounding the universe. You probably have bizarre exegeses that attempt to explain all that, but you’re inventing stories, not reading them.
No, that’s not what it says. It says that the whole earth was covered, and this is from an omniscient perspective. It doesn’t say “local hills”; it says “high mountains”. So you’re saying that Noah floated for a whole year in a little pond, never coming within sight of land? Why couldn’t a dove, flying high and far, find any land?
“Mount Ararat” is of course an invention. It’s the mountains of Urartu, but those actually are mountains. And the olive leaf is just silly. No olive tree could survive a year under water.
True. But this is evidence that the flood never happened, not that it was local. If you look at the story at all seriously, it’s just absurd. Local floods don’t last for a year. A boat full of thousands of animals and 8 people can’t survive a year. Local floods don’t cover mountains of any height, and if by some miracle they did, the water would quickly drain away. If the ark moved at all it should quickly reach the boundaries of this local flood. The civilizations of Mesopotamia failed to notice this event when it happened. Etc. It’s just a story.
Good, then I expect to not see further discussion of ‘appearance of design’ or ‘design analogies’ or the like. That premise fails, but I’d say it isn’t critical to your argument anyway.
Carrying on…
You are somehow confused component mechanisms for complete explanations. I have no idea how you have made such a substantial error in basic logic, but there it is. The material mechanisms we have found are not for abiogenesis, but for the production of certain chemicals. These chemicals, in appropriate concentrations and combinations, might be sufficient for life to start, however the time frame of individual component steps does not impose any expectation that the entire process have an equivalent time frame.
In fact, everything we know about all of the component processes suggests that the entire process must take orders of magnitude more time. So it is entirely justified on the basis of the current results from current experimental methods.
If you’re appealing to unknown future results, all you’re doing is ignoring current results.
I’m not appealing to unknown future results, I’m appealing to the current results. The current results imply that a reproduction of abiogenesis should not be expected under reasonable experimental time scales.
We have to judge hypotheses based on data we have, not data we hope might turn up some day.
The data we have, right now, supports a slow processes of abiogenesis.
And we are very, very unlikely to find a new [material mechanism that does not require human intervention to produce life according to current experimental results].
This is just confused. Firstly, for this to be an appropriate translation from @John_Harshman’s original, it would need to be the case that the current mechanisms are known to require human intervention to produce the experimental results at all, rather than merely to produce the experimental results in a reasonable time frame and with a reasonable experimental scale. However, the latter is the most that can be claimed. So there is nothing about the current data that implies that intervention is required given the time frame and physical scale of abiogenesis itself.
What is supported by current data is that we are unlikely to reproduce abiogenesis, however this is not helpful to your argument.
And such experiments have produced results that are broadly supportive of the general concept of abiogenesis. Your misunderstanding of, and general unfamiliarity with, modern biochemistry is not my problem.
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. [20]
Then, the designer re-used these microbes 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.
Nested hierarchy through the dependency graph model:
"Designing agencies can anticipate functional requirements. They also understand one does not have to re-invent the wheel every time a new car is being designed.
'Structural homology at a higher functional level, dictated by functional demands, may exist independently of its particular material substrate, because intelligent designers are not bound by the constraints of what might be called physical transmission or continuity. …
In precisely the same way, diverse vertebrates exhibiting the pentadactyl pattern in their forelimbs and hind limbs may possess that pattern not because they inherited it from a common ancestor- that is, not because of material continuity- but because there exists some functional requirement that the pattern satisfies.- J. Wells and P. Nelson, “Homology in Biology”, Design, Darwinism and Public Education , 319-20, 2003’
And although it is true that designing agencies can violate any hierarchal scheme that would not be the case in a common design scenario."
Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks for the correction. They are incompatible because common descent claims that the discontinuities in the fossil record are artifacts of incompleteness, the Adam and Eve story is false, and there is a LUCA
These leads me to address your response to the last two…
NO, you are now equivocating between intelligent design and common design. They are not the same thing, as Fuz Rana explains why…
"In his day, the great debate among biologists related to whether “function” or “form” provided the theoretical framework to understand biological structures. At that time, while many scientists in Britain favored a teleological view (function), Owen preferred the transcendental view popular on the European continent. Owen’s goal was to come up with a theoretical framework that united both approaches, but he preferred “form” over “function.” In Owen’s mind, the archetype represented teleology of a higher order…
…Owen’s (and others’) conception of function and form were strongly theistic in orientation. According to Owen the archetype points to a “deep and pregnant principle…some archetypal exemplar on which it has pleased the Creator to frame certain of his living creatures.”
No, you are wrong again. I know OEC and ID literature pretty well to know this is definitely false. Here take a look at this interview by Michael Behe himself:
'ML: In The Edge, you make a defense for common descent (p.182) and later attribute it to a non-random process (p. 72). Considering the convergent evolution of the digestive enzyme of lemurs and cows, hemoglobin of human and mice, and in your own work resistance mutations that also arise independently (p77), why such a commitment to common descent? Isn’t genetic convergent evolution or even common design (considering your view of mutations) good alternative explanations to common descent?
MJB: I don’t think so. Although those other explanations may be true, I think that common descent, guided by an intelligent agent, is sufficient to explain the data. It has the great advantage of being easily compatible with apparent genetic “mistakes” shared by organisms, such as the pseudo-hemoglobin genes I wrote of in The Edge of Evolution.’
“resting” just means that God stopped doing creative acts. Stadler’s study provides some support for this. The study shows the decrease in the number of new species emerging in the recent past for this description of how species emerged. He concluded that the appearance of new mammal species peaked between 33 and 30 million years ago and declined significantly at 8.55 and 3.35 million years ago:
I don’t have time or the space to correct all your flawed Hermeneutics of Genesis ch. 1 on here. I will just refer you to a source that will help you understand the text better regarding those things you mentioned here:
Genesis 8:1 states that God removed the floodwaters by sending a wind. Given the gentle slope of the land, evaporation plays a more significant role than gravity in removing the water. Just how effective is evaporation for removing flood waters?
During a typical Southern California summer the swimming pools lose an average of one inch of water per day to evaporation. Lower humidity, higher heat, and a strong wind can triple or quadruple that rate.
Over the 335 days during which Noah’s Flood receded, that would add up to 84-112 feet of evaporation. If gravity had removed about half that much water, the total water depth removed would have been 126-168 feet. That is easily enough water to account for Noah’s seeing nothing but water for as far as his eyes could see. That is easily enough water to destroy all of Noah’s contemporaries and their animals outside the ark. And, that is easily enough water to carry the ark to the foothills of Ararat.
You actually never explained why a metaphorical analogy could not still suffice as an appearance of design.
More importantly, you did not explain why the archaeologists argument that there was intentional activity of a hominid was NOT wrong or metaphorical compared to my appearance of design premise.
This is why I was only agreeing for the sake of discussion that the study was referring to a metaphorical analogy. That being said, I will go a step further and accept the premise is false anyways since I agree with you that it is not a big deal for it to be true or not.
No, all this means is that we were not on the same page apparently or we misunderstood each other. That’s all.
Under replicater-first models, it has been repeatedly shown that life cannot and did not arise from classical space-time constituents because life is fundamentally digital, which is non-material. This can and has only been created and designed by conscious minds.
Under Metabolic-first models, it has not been experimentally demonstrated that life could have arisen from unguided material mechanisms or conditions either. That being said…
It is possible that future experiments may show how life could have arose from classical space-time constituents without intervention under metabolic-first scenarios. But, I acknowledged this already and explained how this actually makes my theory falsifiable. In fact, this aspect of my theory is what separates it from arguments that ID theorists propose since they mainly argue for a generic but contingent agent.
Well first off, I was referring to life as we know it NOT life of any kind.
Secondly, this is false either way you spin it because there is no such thing as a concrete physical reality made of space-time, matter and energy in the first place. Instead, the so-called physical realm actually exists in a super positional state of all quantum possibilities that are mathematical in nature as I mentioned before. The intangible phenomenon of conscious observership is the only means that is capable of producing a final collapse of any given combination of quantum wave-functions, which imparts a concrete and physical reality to them: The Measurement Problem - YouTube
This means that abiogenesis would still require intervention regardless of the time and physical scale it is needed to establish it according to current data on quantum physics.
And your misunderstanding of, and general unfamiliarity with, quantum physics is not my problem either.
Aside from the fact that there is zero evidence for any of the events you posit, we would not expect to see a nested hierarchy resulting from what you describe. Nested hierarchy is not the same thing as “biochemical and morphological similarities”, nor does it have much to do with universal common ancestry.
You have presented no argument for this being the case. Note also that Ewert appeals to functional requirements, but fails to demonstrate that any such things exist.
Actually, common descent doesn’t demand that the Adam and Eve story is false. Do you have any idea what the point of this web site is supposed to be?
No, that’s what separate creation claims. Common design is silent on all these matters. Separate creation is your scenario, and you really ought to start calling it by the appropriate term. Mostly, though, separate creation differs from common descent in alleging that there are “basic types”. You have been unable to identify a single one. Shouldn’t that be cause for concern?
Your quote from Rana is, as usual, irrelevant to the point you were attempting to make.
Your quote from Behe comes closer to being relevant, but it’s not clear that he’s fastening onto the term “common design” in the way you imagine.
Ah, so you redefine “resting” too. And no, Stadler’s study does not. You misread almost everything.
And I likewise have no interest in correcting your flawed hermeneutics. Neither does it seem useful to correct your nonsense about the flood. I’d rather get you to talk about basic types and try to make your notions both concrete and consistent.