Trashing natural selection as a special case.

The existence of very large amounts of meaningful, functional organisation manifesting specified complexity and associated information is what has to be explained at the root of the tree of life. Undirected chance and/or necessity are not credible causal factors for such. So what else than discarnate intelligence of some form do you claim is responsible?

Good question.  But rather than a projection of human-like entities, basic purposeful information processing could start with raw material at the beginning.  Much of what we see today comes from living things designing themselves.  This we can model and measure.

"At the beginning" is metaphysical territory.  There are Theologians with credentials far beyond mine I would listen to with interest.  Maybe God evolved to be a person, since the Beginning.

"Life is achingly beautiful and creative once you free yourself from the mind-numbing shackles of neo-Darwinian dogma."

Mae Wan Ho

https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/p...mae-wan-ho

Can't trash NS + RM better than that.

Anybody who disagrees with you is waffling?  You speculate on "discarnate entities," something that nobody has any proof of and then you claim that everybody who disagrees with you is waffling?  The onus is on you to show us a discarnate entity so that we can start to take your presumptions seriously.  By all means speculate; discussion and debate are what the forum is about, but please stop implying that there is no opinion other than yours that is intelligent and workable.  Doing so is utterly arrogant!

As I remarked back in #15, "Undirected chance and/or necessity are not credible causal factors for such (the large amounts of fcsi of living organisms). So what else than discarnate intelligence of some form do you claim is responsible?"

No answer yet. Edit: Other than a little ad hominem ranting along with just a little substantive argumentation, furnished in the original post.

You know that I completely disagree with the notion of 'proof' when using this argument. A proof is a logical argument that demonstrates that a proposition is true, based entirely on other true propositions and rules of inference.

Well is it just my use of the word proof that you object to? Strictly speaking there is no such thing as a proof in empiracle science, only in maths.

Let's put it this way. Do you doubt that biology starting without the impetus of RM+NS is absurd? I outlined part of what would need to be explained a few pages back, and you seemed to agree with me that this could not just start by chance.

Furthermore, as James Tour is happy to point out:

Most of the biochemical precursors of life are extremely fragile, and just getting them all into one place so that life could be created by accident just piles on the absurdity of this concept (BTW, I'm not totally sure if you are in favour of this idea or not - I rather think you want to disown it, but vaguely hold on to it at the same time).

OK if you accept that chance is not a viable explanation for the origin of life Then it is not unreasonable to accept the obvious conclusion that a mind was involved.

Now, since we are talking about the time before life began on earth, that mind has to be discarnate, does it not?

But for clarification could you maybe explain if the proposed designer designed the universe or only the life in it?

I am fairly easy, I don't like the idea that the mind in question belonged to Yaweh, and in fact I don't much like the concept of God, because it implies omniscience, and I think infinities are handy in maths but you don't want them in a physical theory (which means I am very dubious about the Big Bang and black holes in general).

The discarnate entity could be plural. That seems rather natural when you think of predator/prey arms races in nature.

I think the designer can clearly think problems through to an impressive depth, but when you think of the Cambrian Explosion, he/she/them probably felt the need to do an experiment now and again to test a range of possibilities and then choose the best few.

I'd quess some more hints about the designer(s) could be found from NDE stories in which he figures.

As to whether he created the whole universe or just life on earth - who knows?

I sense that you love physics a bit too much, and you have always thought that the origin of life was a slam dunk, but you are terrified to go over to my view. I only realised that RM+RS was nonsense from a scientifically very well read guy called "Lone Shaman" on Skeptiko. It is a shock to begin with

David

OK if you accept that chance is not a viable explanation for the origin of life Then it is not unreasonable to accept the obvious conclusion that a mind was involved.

Now, since we are talking about the time before life began on earth, that mind has to be discarnate, does it not?

 I only realised that RM+RS was nonsense from a scientifically very well read guy called "Lone Shaman" on Skeptiko. It is a shock to begin with

David

I may have very different ideas about some of the topics you broached.  However, I strongly agree that mind was a fundamental causal element in the origin of life.  Unlike the modern view of his ideas - Darwin did include mind in his published analysis of origins and the development of instincts.

I most strongly agree that disincarnate mind (information processing) was prior to biological life and the process could have been working on code for a few billion years, prior to it organizing material chemistry to support it.

Lone Shaman's posts were excellent to read.  If only he would come to Psience Quest!!!

As I remarked back in #15, "Undirected chance and/or necessity are not credible causal factors for such (the large amounts of fcsi of living organisms). So what else than discarnate intelligence of some form do you claim is responsible?"

Not discounting disembodied mind at the very beginning, there is abundant science that is documenting the actual processes of communication, which foster life.  A friend has just pointed me to Robert Marks and The Evolutionary Informatics Lab.  You will find William Dembski listed as a Senior Researcher.
https://evoinfo.org/

 Intelligent design is the study of patterns in nature best explained as the product of intelligence. So defined, intelligent design seems unproblematic. Archeology, forensics, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) all fall under this definition. In each of these cases, however, the intelligences in question could be the result of an evolutionary process. But what if patterns best explained as the product of intelligence exist in biological systems? In that case, the intelligence in question would be an unevolved intelligence.

Good question.  But rather than a projection of human-like entities, basic purposeful information processing could start with raw material at the beginning.  Much of what we see today comes from living things designing themselves.  This we can model and measure.

"At the beginning" is metaphysical territory.  There are Theologians with credentials far beyond mine I would listen to with interest.  Maybe God evolved to be a person, since the Beginning.

These claims require a lengthy response.

Living things designing themselves (presumably from scratch)? I think that is impossible, and equivalent to a man lifting himself by his own bootstraps.

And even more important, I just don't see how bare "purposeful information processing" with no intelligent source (first) can even exist as stated, and (second) can possibly do the job of the designing of life. In the first place, purpose (related to agency and intentionality) is one of the completely immaterial, unmeasurable and existentially totally separate from materiality properties of consciousness identified by the Hard Problem and can only be generated by intelligent conscious agents. Other such properties are qualia, subjective awareness, thought, emotion, etc. 

The term "information processing" is generic, refers to an unintelligent mechanical process, the process of dealing with information, especially number crunching using a computer. This is nothing but a mechanical process of computation of algorithms and even if (as seems unlikely) it is carried out by nature is in a fundamentally, existentially different realm of reality than the world of sentient focused conscious entities, which are the only things that can possibly creatively generate complicated irreducibly complex machine-like living organized systems. 

A well known example is the bacterial flagellum, essentially an irreducibly complex machine with the characterisics of a bacterial outboard motor and propeller with major subsystems being the flagellum filament propeller, bushing assembly, molecular radial motor using atp, sensor and control system, and complicated manufacturing process using yet more specialized proteins. All these parts and more have to be finely matched to each other and to the overall design including that of the cell in order for the flagellum to work as designed. If it doesn't work it could easily kill the bacterial organism.

Consider the processes that must be accomplished by whatever intelligent agent it is that does the design (i.e. invention) of living organisms. These design processes inherently require the sentient focused awareness and attention of a conscious entity in order to do the basic design tasks of organizing and listing the biological engineering functional requirements, creatively envisioning possible engineering solutions, and analyzing and selecting the best solution considering all major tradeoffs. This is a very intelligent cognitive and creative process involving foresight to predict the consequences of different design options.

This intelligent creativeness and foresight is absolutely required in order to foresee the results of a complicated design of many mechanical parts each and every one of which are required to work perfectly in the machine, and where removal of even one would result in failure and possible death of the organism. This last constitutes the often necessary property of irreducible complexity of complicated biological machines. 

And (along with other important  factors) it is this property ubiquitous in biology of irreducible complexity of the major subsystems of living organisms that prevents such systems from possibly being "evolved" by being gradually built-up by addition of one simple small change at a time, as required by RM+NS Darwinism. Another major preventing factor is the progressive genetic deterioration and increase in "broken genes" that inevitably occurs with classic undirected RM+NS Darwinistic processes, identified by Michael Behe in his book "Darwin Devolves".

And (along with other important  factors) it is this property ubiquitous in biology of irreducible complexity of the major subsystems of living organisms that prevents such systems from possibly being "evolved" by being gradually built-up by addition of one simple small change at a time, as required by RM+NS Darwinism. 

This is a thread pointing to actual prominent thinkers and researchers explaining in detail how RM + NS don't work.  I don't get how you come back with a negative response to me - as if you are the only who can understand how it doesn't work.  I can make no sense of your position other than it is important to you personally.

Living things design adaptations to their environments and there is evidence that this has been working since single-celled organisms.  They use mind to adapt.  Humans design social environments - and do so with limited foresight.  Trial and error feedback works.  Living things have god-given intelligence.

 According to information theorist Douglas Robertson, the defining
characteristic of intelligent agents (i.e., teleological causes that act for an end or
purpose) is their ability to create and communicate information.2 That’s what
intelligences do for a living. Assuming Robertson is correct in so connecting
intelligence and information (in chapter 20 I’ll argue that he is indeed correct),
it follows that if nature is itself the act of a creative intelligence, then nature is
a form of information and nature’s operations may themselves be regarded as
intelligent and teleological. Nature’s intelligence would in that case be a derived
intelligence.
William Dembski in Being as Communion

This is a thread pointing to actual prominent thinkers and researchers explaining in detail how RM + NS don't work.  I don't get how you come back with a negative response to me - as if you are the only who can understand how it doesn't work.  I can make no sense of your position other than it is important to you personally.

Living things design adaptations to their environments and there is evidence that this has been working since single-celled organisms.  They use mind to adapt.  Humans design social environments - and do so with limited foresight.  Trial and error feedback works.  Living things have god-given intelligence.

Well, referring specifically to that word 'mind', that I bolded, Can you describe where it is situated? I mean I can only think of two possibilities, either

a) It is discarnate.

or

b) it is constructed out of matter, and presumably would not fit inside a single celled organism!

David

Well, referring specifically to that word 'mind', that I bolded, Can you describe where it is situated? I mean I can only think of two possibilities, either

a)          It is discarnate.

or

b)          it is constructed out of matter, and presumably would not fit inside a single celled organism!

David

I would describe mind as an abstraction referring to information processing.  The common view is that it is biological information processing.  Single cell organisms detect food and dangerous conditions and respond appropriately.  This is mind.  Non-biological objects don't observe and respond purposefully, unless they contain information processing equipment (your b).

Information is not material, although information structures (such as codes or historical effects of activity) can be inferred empirically in materials.  Is there non biological information processing in an informational environment?  An environment that is wave-like rather than particular.  I believe so.

If correct, then minds as functioning structured information objects (observers of real-world probabilities) existed before they encoded materials.  And once active (as consciousness) within a person, can exist after biological death.