Darwin Unhinged: The Bugs in Evolution

I wonder if you will acknowledge that this is no different to scientist's usual attempts to prove evolutionary theory rather than just seeing what possibilities the results open up and giving due credence to all reasonable models.

My point is that their intent really doesn't matter. The evidentiary and logical soundness of their ideas or studies do. Are Ewert's arguments strong, do they make sense, are they fair based on the evidence, etc? Those are the things that matter.

Brian just made an excellent point. There are clearly materialistic scientists who thrive on the idea that they could crush religion or the spiritual, that the random, unguided, mechanistic evolutionary picture is the right one. They are driven by that. Would you discredit them because they are trying to prove their own point of view rather than following the evidence or checking their own biases? Certainly not, because you agree with their worldview. You only call out people like Ewert because you are repulsed by the notion that there is something more than random, purposelessness behind life and this universe.

I know your point. If Ewert' keep to the science I would not utter a peep. But intent matters like it or not. Guessing my motives has led you to a wrong conclusion. My objections are entirely practical. Brian, see my reply to Dante previously. 

Here's a question for you et al. Why is it important to have God or consciousness or some metaphysical cause to drive evolution? I'll anticipate your reciprocal question. *I can only speak for the country I live in. The reason I dislike creationism and IDism in the public arena is because the persons involved are entirely uncompromising non inclusive and would have a political agenda that would make Christian dogma the only acceptable way of life. They would roll back women's health issues by preventing women from aquiring reproductive health information. They tried back in the 80's early 90's. Creationists et al. would  be a threat to science education by promoting the Genesis creation story. I once knew two individuals that believed based upon Genesis that humans and dinosaurs walked the Earth at the same time. There are people on YouTube professing the Bible teaches the Earth is flat. Those are religious beliefs not science. I also know including such a nebulous consciousness does it concept would eventually be conflated to mean God.

* It seems European countries have concerns. https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/X2H...=11751〈=en Doc. 11375
17 September 2007

The dangers of creationism in education

Report
Committee on Culture, Science and Education
Rapporteur: Mrs Anne BRASSEUR, Luxembourg, ALDE

Summary

Creationism in any of its forms, such as “intelligent design”, is not based on facts, does not use any scientific reasoning and its contents are definitely inappropriate for science classes.

However, some people call for creationist theories to be taught in European schools alongside or even in place of the theory of evolution. From a scientific view point, there is absolutely no doubt that evolution is a central theory for our understanding of life on Earth.

The Assembly calls on education authorities in member states to promote scientific knowledge and the teaching of evolution and to oppose firmly any attempts at teaching creationism as a scientific discipline.

A.       Draft resolution

1.       For some people the Creation, as a matter of religious belief, gives a meaning to life. Nevertheless, the Parliamentary Assembly is worried about the possible ill-effects of the spread of creationist ideas within our education systems and about the consequences for our democracies. If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights which are a key concern of the Council of Europe.

2.       Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon. Today creationist ideas are tending to find their way into Europe and their spread is affecting quite a few Council of Europe member states.

You must know that machine learning - is really the information processing electronics.  Before 1950's - machines did not learn create codes on their own.  From the article you referenced:

Do you agree that the paper is about information science findings that directly relate to Shannon' coding theorem?  The term codon comes from the word code.  To be mechanistic you have to believe that the information processing is deterministic like physical systems.  Is this how you see it?  Although DNA provides instructions, you think that it really contains no meaning.

I don't know whether you were around the Skeptiko forums when they were hosted by Mind-Energy but there was a huge, long-running thread about these subjects and particularly about the nature and origin of the DNA code. Shannon came up a lot in that discussion which was primarily a question of whether such a code could arise by "natural" (i.e. accidental) means or whether, as Stephen Meyer argues in his book, Signature in the Cell, the code is in itself evidence of intelligence.

That thread was educational for me. Before embarking on reading those posts and following the links - provided by both sides of the debate - I was largely ignorant of how DNA works and about origin-of-life theories. Both Lone Shaman and Paul Anagnostopoulos are well versed in the subject and had interesting things to say but, for me, the argument that some kind of intelligence must be involved was solidified over the course that thread. It is still there (click the link above) for anyone who would like to catch up and still, I might venture, worthwhile as a means of getting to grips with the arguments.

huge, long-running thread

Happily devouring it now! Thanks, Kamarling!

Also... I spot a familiar name in the post... well, I'm far from surprised! I'm even less surprised that they don't seem to have evolved past their stagnant perspective at all!

I know your point. If Ewert' keep to the science I would not utter a peep. But intent matters like it or not. Guessing my motives has led you to a wrong conclusion. My objections are entirely practical. Brian, see my reply to Dante previously. 

Here's a question for you et al. Why is it important to have God or consciousness or some metaphysical cause to drive evolution? I'll anticipate your reciprocal question. *I can only speak for the country I live in. The reason I dislike creationism and IDism in the public arena is because the persons involved are entirely uncompromising non inclusive and would have a political agenda that would make Christian dogma the only acceptable way of life. They would roll back women's health issues by preventing women from aquiring reproductive health information. They tried back in the 80's early 90's. Creationists et al. would  be a threat to science education by promoting the Genesis creation story. I once knew two individuals that believed based upon Genesis that humans and dinosaurs walked the Earth at the same time. There are people on YouTube professing the Bible teaches the Earth is flat. Those are religious beliefs not science. I also know including such a nebulous consciousness does it concept would eventually be conflated to mean God.

Your reply is not entirely practical, steve. We all know you here.

Many of the concerns you listed just don't follow at all from thinking that consciousness or some intelligence play a role in the development of the universe or life. Belief that god exists or that some universal intelligence/consciousness has something to do with things like evolution does not at all demand that women's health issues be "rolled back". It does not entail Christian dogma. It does not necessitate a 2000 year old Genesis story. It does not mean the Earth has  to be flat. 

There are loads of educated people who think there's more to it than RM+NS and that consciousness might play a greater role than given credit for. I am virtually certain that nearly no people who fit that bill would attempt to proclaim any of those things you listed, nor would they be hell bent on bringing things back into the stone ages. Those are just horror stories to scare people into thinking "creationists" are bad. 

And that's another issue, is the label "creationist". For instance, in the pure, unburdened sense of the term, I am a probably a creationist. I tend to believe that something created the universe, and thus am open to the possibility that whatever that thing is has also had some role in the development of life. I am a "creationist" if I believe there was creation involved. It is easy to see the issue here -- the term creationist ordinarily carries with it the belief that the Earth is 2000 years old, and (usually) the Christian God was the one who created it. It isn't difficult to see that one can believe in pure creationism without believing literally a single one of the things you listed. In fact, I would imagine most of the more reasonable and educated people who fall into that pure creationism group would not at all agree with any of them. I know I don't, and I'm pretty confident most of the others in this thread and PQ also don't. So it isn't the idea that there's a weakness in mainstream evolutionary thought that you and the EU are attacking -- you're attacking a subset of the larger pro-consciousness/intelligence or "anti"-purely-mechanistic crowd that includes perhaps the least informed and educated group of people of the lot.

It's just a distraction from the real issue. Let's talk about the actual issues in the studies, the actual issues with the theories, instead of talking about potential lateral concerns that are surely greatly overstated.

It is easy to see the issue here -- the term creationist ordinarily carries with it the belief that the Earth is 2000 years old, and (usually) the Christian God was the one who created it.

I think you do the creationists an injustice here. The usual claim is that the Earth is 6000 years old!

(based on some calculations by a certain Bishop Usher, who If I recall correctly, calculated that the world was created in 4004 BC. At 9 o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday - or was it a Monday?)

I think you do the creationists an injustice here. The usual claim is that the Earth is 6000 years old!

(based on some calculations by a certain Bishop Usher, who If I recall correctly, calculated that the world was created in 4004 BC. At 9 o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday - or was it a Monday?)

My mistake. Apologies to any of the New Earth crowd for misrepresenting your beliefs 

I think you do the creationists an injustice here. The usual claim is that the Earth is 6000 years old!

(based on some calculations by a certain Bishop Usher, who If I recall correctly, calculated that the world was created in 4004 BC. At 9 o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday - or was it a Monday?)

Should we, then, prepare for the Second Coming and Apocalypse somewhen around 4004 AD, 9.00 A.M.? It would be quite expectable that Jesus came at the very center / middle of the Earth history!

Mechanistic too means by entirely physical processes (without the need to insert unprovable metaphysical, supernatural... causes), for example QM is mechanistic yet not deterministic as far as we can tell yet does not require an appeal to metaphysical explanation.
You're implying DNA has metaphysical meaning. Because it is involved with life why should it have meaning? Can you argue how?

I understand "entirely physical processes" as Physicalism.  You may be surprised that Physicalism/Materialism is a metaphysical idea.  

QM as physics is truly a physical model for events.  However, QM is not mechanistic - it is probabilistic!!!  Part of QM is rule bound by uncertainty.  Uncertainty is measured in information science.  Surely, you must know that quantum systems and rules are now used to process information with qubits as a unit of measure.

DNA has formal information (a lot of it) as codons and can be measured in bits by the Mathematical Theory of Communication (C. Shannon & W. Weaver 1947)  The MTC does not say anything about meaning and it measures the successful transmission of code.

DNA has functional (semantic) meaning that are open to observations as instructions.   The capability of communicated instructions is measured by outcomes of target states.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/infor...-semantic/

You ask how this is explained - try this paper on how evolution is effected by signs and symbols like the coding systems of DNA/RNA/ribosomes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988684/  

So in fact - you are the one stuck in Metaphysics  and the science I refer to is straightforwardly pragmatic and used as tools of science.

 Supplement to David Lewis's Metaphysics
Physicalism
It is a much bigger deal than has been recognized that the space of perfectly natural relations must, apparently, encompass more than just the spatiotemporal relations (and not just in some possible world, but in the actual world). Seeing why will both showcase some of the power Lewis's conception of fundamental ontology has in shaping and clarifying metaphysical debates, and highlight a centrally important question that he has (perhaps unintentionally) bequeathed to us.
Part of Lewis's reductionist aspirations include a rock-solid commitment to physicalism—a commitment, of course, that is about as close to a bit of orthodoxy as one will find in contemporary philosophy:

Roughly speaking, Materialism [= physicalism] is the thesis that physics—something not too different from present-day physics, though presumably somewhat improved—is a comprehensive theory of the world, complete as well as correct. The world is as physics says it is, and there's no more to say. (1999, pp. 33–34)

Although Steve001 is on ignore for me, I can read his responses when quoted. These last two are at least honest in that they show that his real motivation is purely ideological and that his understanding is naive at best and wilfully ignorant at worst.

This old canard about creationism has been answered time and time again. I get tired of explaining it - and I'm pretty sure that if anyone really wants to trawl back through the forum you will find me stating something similar to Dante's reply above. And need I point out yet again that it was Thomas Nagel, a leading ATHEIST philosopher who recommended Stephen Meyer's ID book for Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year?

So, just to be clear as I might have missed something in the unquoted parts of his posts, Steve is saying that a) we must accept the mechanistic theory because the only alternative is the Genesis creation myth and b) that the mechanistic theory has no metaphysical foundation. Is that a fair summary? If so, and as I mentioned earlier, it is incredibly ignorant. Yet it remains unsurprising as he is merely parroting Lewontin's rant: 

Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. 

 
Materialism, mechanism, physicalism - these isms are all metaphysical. Wikipedia says it in the first line of its definition:

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that explores the nature of being, existence, and reality.

Jeez, it is like talking to a stone wall which is precisely why I have Steve on ignore. As Valmar pointed out above, the ignorance is ingrained and unchanging. I mean, just look at this post from this very thread 10 months ago.

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-d...9#pid10379

I have criticized Steve001 for thinking or believing that his position is void of metaphysical "causes".  It is only fair that I expose my own metaphysics and how they may have some justification.  A simple statement of my position on biological design is that -- living things designed themselves and we can know this through the natural sciences.

The metaphysical position I hold is - Informational Realism.  It models an ontological stance that information as formal structure for communication and logical order exist as a counterpart of physics.  Further, in my own version it includes a ecological view that meaning in the environment is likewise detectable and objective.  It doesn't replace any laws of physics or standard units of measure (SI), but sees information objects on a separate level of interaction, as that of physical objects.  Information objects are measurable in units associated with Thermodynamics, the MTC and in formal logics.

Science has a methodological basis and a viewpoint that physics is nature bound.  Somehow, mind has been disassociated from natural events.  Informational Realism (IR) heals the fracture - and mind is simply seen as information processing as observed in information science and in linguistics.  Meaning is not an arrangement of neurons and peptides, but a component of all natural environments.  Hence, matter/energy equations hold and further; so do the equations of information science and relations in logical circumstances.  Meaningful behavior is measurable in terms logical affordances, just as much as force is measured from the output of an engine.