Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

There would be some sort of proto-organism. Perhaps a bag of chemicals with a simple membrane. Perhaps a group of tightly bound molecules that were difficult to separate. If these organisms could replicate, then some kind of rudimentary selection would occur. Note that no genes are required in the conventional sense.

But, again, I make no claim to understand how things started. If I did, I'd be a famous biologist.

~~ Paul

I think if someone could demonstrate a bag of chemicals that met that specification, I might believe it a bit more, but modern cells seem to become ever more complex as they are investigated.

Note that selection implies that the bag of chemicals could exist in several related but different forms - otherwise there would be nothing to select between.

I think that if there were an alternative idea as to how life began, the incredible chicken and egg problem of starting life would have pushed science to look at alternatives, but the idea of ID just raises such  hackles! Essentially this is just an accident of history - that science played a part in defeating the Christian domination of Europe and the US, so it adopted the most extreme opposite position regarding the mind.

It really need not do so, we exist in physical bodies, and yet our mentality remains strangely distinct from our bodies. We can think about a vast range of subjects, there is evidence of reincarnation, and there is all the evidence from NDE's. That all points to a separate non-physical aspect to consciousness. In some sense I think it was us that devised life - using our minds!

The bigger picture really could be vastly more interesting than most scientists accept.

The current argument between ID science and the orthodox scientists is absurd. It is like a crazy concept of archaeology, where whenever anything is discovered - even bits of pottery - someone attempts to devise a hand-waiving explanation as to how it might have formed naturally! I mean, maybe a curved shard of pottery formed when some magma swirled in a whirlpool - and then wind patterns etched the symbols on the side!

If science shifted ground a little, I am sure most people would separate from those Christian ID enthusiasts who want to declare that Yaweh did it. There are just so many more interesting possibilities. I certainly don't think J. Scott. Turner imagines that Yaweh did it!

David

I think that if there were an alternative idea as to how life began, the incredible chicken and egg problem of starting life would have pushed science to look at alternatives, but the idea of ID just raises such  hackles! Essentially this is just an accident of history - that science played a part in defeating the Christian domination of Europe and the US, so it adopted the most extreme opposite position regarding the mind.

    It really need not do so, we exist in physical bodies, and yet our mentality remains strangely distinct from our bodies. We can think about a vast range of subjects, there is evidence of reincarnation, and there is all the evidence from NDE's. That all points to a separate non-physical aspect to consciousness. In some sense I think it was us that devised life - using our minds!

How would you suggest science approach the nonphysical?

~~ Paul

How would you suggest science approach the nonphysical?

~~ Paul

Not answering the question for David, but for myself and a legion of others: the non-physical has been approached, quantified to some degree, mathematically described, harnessed by engineering and put to practical use.  Information science has changed the face of human culture and how the world works.

In light of the current topic - bio-information fields of study are determining the conversation.  Bio-semiosis, bio-informatics and the coding research in genetics are all dominated by how information runs physical processes.

All that is left is the myth of the magic of matter and physical substance.  And how "meaning" comes from brain cells and not being naturally present in our environments like gases.  Just as there are still believers that the earth is flat - there are still believers in the magical properties of blood as a special class of matter.  Many folks do not understand genes and codons in any other way, than as a "magical" power of matter.

When in fact, science shows us signal molecules in biology are just "meaning laden" with information as specified instructions.  Instructions which are able to connect the bio-signals they convey with the functional goals achieved by organic systems.

Not answering the question for David, but for myself and a legion of others: the non-physical has been approached, quantified to some degree, mathematically described, harnessed by engineering and put to practical use.  Information science has changed the face of human culture and how the world works.

You are saying that we have technology based on the nonphysical? What are some examples?

All that is left is the myth of the magic of matter and physical substance.  And how "meaning" comes from brain cells and not being naturally present in our environments like gases.  Just as there are still believers that the earth is flat - there are still believers in the magical properties of blood as a special class of matter.  Many folks do not understand genes and codons in any other way, than as a "magical" power of matter.

There is meaning floating around in the environment? Could you give some examples?

~~ Paul

The evolution of the genetic code is most certainly a physical thing. If you believe it is not, could you point to the "information mechanism" that drove its evolution?

The periodic table is no more an add-on to valence electron chemistry than the code table is an add-on to biology.

~~ Paul

Think about it calmly, take out the information on a chart that makes it easier for humans to understand and the chemistry that has gone on lawfully for 14 billion years or so, is totally unaffected.

Take out the operating real world structured information that is the natural coded language of nature and biology - and death to all organisms.

A parallel observation would be to remove the natural code between physical things interacting known as the laws of physics.

Let me be plain - I am saying that the coded messages of DNA/RNA/Ribosomes are natural events from the intelligence of living things and should be included in naturalism as much as the laws of matter and energy.

You are saying that we have technology based on the nonphysical? What are some examples?

~~ Paul

the ascii code, logic gates, storage architecture, quantum computation, etc.......

Edited to add: The ID folks now agree that to evaluate the CSI of a biological mechanism, you also need to calculate the probability of it coming about by evolution. This is, unfortunately, impossible.

So it's also impossible to calculate the probability of a biological mechanism not coming about by neo-Darwinian evolution. So, neo-Darwinian evolution is unfalsifiable and unscientific. For every just-so story that is falsified another one can be devised, and so on ad infinitum. It's neo-Darwinian evolution that isn't really science, not ID.

How would you suggest science approach the nonphysical?

~~ Paul

It would be a long, long job, because science has painted itself into a corner for a very long time.

Perhaps the first thing may be to recognise that there are areas of reality that science can't explain materialistically, but it can keep up a show of doing further research so as to never admit defeat.

I think perhaps it might help to pretend you are a materialist SF writer. Such authors have to invent some science, and the best do so very plausibly, and one test is whether it is possible to invent a plausible story - whether it is right or wrong.

Based on the above discussion, I'd say there is no plausible way to explain the origin of life, based on other discussions we have had, I'd also say there is no plausible way to explain how the brain can experience anything, given that it is just a bag of chemicals interacting chemically and electrically. Equally, I'd say there is no plausible way to explain the reincarnation data, or the remote viewing data, etc.

Science could grow a lot if it recognised some of those problems. To me, institutionalised science has become scared of the genuinely new, because the comfortable bureaucrats that run the system don't want the hassle that such ideas tend to provoke. We need to remember that in former times science was far more receptive to really new ideas - it didn't just try to get rid of them.

David

the ascii code, logic gates, storage architecture, quantum computation, etc.......

Logic gates and quantum computation are physical.

Whether an idea (ASCII, architecture) is a physical thing is something we could debate until we pass out in exhaustion. But if you can find a free-floating idea that isn't embodied in a brain, then we might get somewhere.

~~ Paul