Why evolutionary theory contradicts materialism

Which is fine, I just find myself the opposite "side" in terms of which arguments I like but ultimately it leads to the same "place" - that RM + NS cannot fully account for the existence of consciousness...

Even more importantly, RM+NS can't possibly account for life itself in all its complexity, as shown by all the evolutionary biology/genetics arguments against Darwinism.

Even more importantly, RM+NS can't possibly account for life itself in all its complexity, as shown by all the evolutionary biology/genetics arguments for ID.

Assuming these arguments hold any water - sure.

Assuming these arguments hold any water - sure.

The mechanism that allows DNA to code for protein etc is extremely complex. While it is probably more complicated now than it was originally (e.g. the need for two encodings DNA and RNA might not be necessary) it is pretty obvious that even the simplified version will still be far too complex to have got going by chance, but no argument that it evolved is possible because we are talking about the first self-replicating molecules.

Try asking a chemist to reproduce that mechanism de-novo, and then remember that it has to happen by chance in a mud pool! Watch any of the videos on this subject by James Tour:

https://peacefulscience.org/articles/tou...greements/

That guy is famous for producing working molecular machines, so he knows what he is talking about. Again he ties the argument to Christianity, but that is totally unnecessary.

David

The mechanism that allows DNA to code for protein etc is extremely complex. While it is probably more complicated now than it was originally (e.g. the need for two encodings DNA and RNA might not be necessary) it is pretty obvious that even the simplified version will still be far too complex to have got going by chance, but no argument that it evolved is possible because we are talking about the first self-replicating molecules.

Try asking a chemist to reproduce that mechanism de-novo, and then remember that it has to happen by chance in a mud pool! Watch any of the videos on this subject by James Tour:

https://peacefulscience.org/articles/tou...greements/

That guy is famous for producing working molecular machines, so he knows what he is talking about. Again he ties the argument to Christianity, but that is totally unnecessary.

David

I've seen some of Tour's stuff before. I can only repeat myself that I don't personally find it all that convincing. Maybe if I dug through my old textbooks on statistics and did a deep dive into biology & chemistry I would be completely convinced...but given the variety of naysayers that include Christians and other theists I have doubts.

OTOH I do realize that accomplished scientists like Nobel winning physicist Brian Josephson are fans of ID so I get that maybe it's me who is being overly skeptical.

Ultimately when it comes to questioning RM + NS I prefer arguments that can [be] followed from simpler applications of observation & reason, like the one in the Opening Post of this thread, than probabilistic arguments that fail to even convince some members of the Christian community most IDers are a part of.

I've seen some of Tour's stuff before. I can only repeat myself that I don't personally find it all that convincing. Maybe if I dug through my old textbooks on statistics and did a deep dive into biology & chemistry I would be completely convinced...but given the variety of naysayers that include Christians and other theists I have doubts.

OTOH I do realize that accomplished scientists like Nobel winning physicist Brian Josephson are fans of ID so I get that maybe it's me who is being overly skeptical.

Ultimately when it comes to questioning RM + NS I prefer arguments that can [be] followed from simpler applications of observation & reason, like the one in the Opening Post of this thread, than probabilistic arguments that fail to even convince some members of the Christian community most IDers are a part of.

As I said before, the essence of the argument is statistical. If you had two groups of animals, one of which had a gene to produce an enzyme that could digest vegetables, and another did not, then obviously over time the group with the gene would prevail if they could not access any other form of food.

I got a feeling for what Tour is saying as an early postgraduate. I needed to make an organometalic compound for subsequent experiments. The chemical had been made before, a synthesis was there in the literature, and it was stable at room temperature. How hard could that be? Answer - very hard - because while it was wet, even tiny traces of oxygen destroyed it. It took me four tries before I got the reaction to work using various tips and suggestions from other people. The synthesis took about a week to do, so I was pretty damn despondent after the first three failures!

That molecule was minute compared to the chemicals Tour is talking about that provide the mechanism for self-reproducing life. Do I think that chemistry went on in mud - no I don't!

Another big factor is that chemists purify everything at most steps. If you don't you end up with a vast mixture of products that interact with each other and generally polymerise to produce what chemists refer to as 'tar'. Chemicals produced in mud aren't going to be pure.

The real point is that mutation isn't about swapping whole genes - as Darwin envisaged - it is about making changes on a much smaller scale.

Remember, all that is needed before you get a working gene and a way to reproduce it, and transcribe it into proteins.

David

Remember, all that is needed before you get a working gene and a way to reproduce it, and transcribe it into proteins.

David

Well I can't remember because my study of chemistry and biology ended in highschool.  

This is why I don't really like these arguments because they are at a level the layperson isn't going to easily grasp.

Well I can't remember because my study of chemistry and biology ended in highschool.  

This is why I don't really like these arguments because they are at a level the layperson isn't going to easily grasp.

Well my ordinary biology - drawing the muscles in a frog's leg etc. was awful because I am very bad at drawing. That meant by the sixth form I was doing chemistry, physics, and maths. At university I had to take several different subjects in the early part of the degree, and I selected "biology of cells" once I realised that in practice it was nothing like high school biology! I don't have a suitable book in mind, but I reckon you could find something that would relate to how cells work and DNA/RNA etc - or just let Wikipedia teach you - because the basics aren't really contentious.

Even the chemistry is incredibly abstracted, for example the four nucleotides that compose DNA are mostly discussed in terms of their initial letters C,G,T,A.

If you are at all curious about the whole subject of RM+NS and how it fits into the big picture, I'd really encourage you to discover! As I say, this is a big part of why I am convinced materialism is false.

As for what James Tour says, you would really need some hands on experience of organic chemistry to really appreciate what he is saying, but I can assure you, he is only saying what others know but prefer not to think about!

David

As for what James Tour says, you would really need some hands on experience of organic chemistry to really appreciate what he is saying, but I can assure you, he is only saying what others know but prefer not to think about!

David

Entirely possible...I look at this stuff akin to the varied interpretations of QM - as a layperson I can read about the varied options but I also think as a non-physicist I can only go so far in deciding which interpretations are good or bad.

Perhaps the lack of chemists and biologists being more open about the possibility of ID is b/c the advocates of ID are clearly hoping to keep the door open toward their particular beliefs after Creationism went out of style, but at the same time probabilistic arguments about events in "Deep Time" are always going to be questionable.

Then add in Dembski saying the evidence of ID may not even need a designer...

Why evolutionary theory contradicts materialism

Richard Oxenberg

The Evolutionary Argument for Phenomenal Powers

Hedda Morch

Epiphenomenalism is the view that phenomenal properties – which characterize what it is like, or how it feels, for a subject to be in conscious states – have no physical effects. One of the earliest arguments against epiphenomenalism is the evolutionary argument (James 1890/1981; Eccles and Popper 1977; Popper 1978), which starts from the following problem: why is pain correlated with stimuli detrimental to survival and reproduction – such as suffocation, hunger and burning? And why is pleasure correlated with stimuli beneficial to survival and reproduction – such as eating and breathing? According to the argument, the fact that we have these particular correlations and not other ones must have an evolutionary explanation. But given epiphenomenalism, differences in phenomenal properties could not cause differences in fitness, so natural selection would not be expected to favor these correlations over any other ones. Epiphenomenalism thus renders these correlations an inexplicable coincidence, and should therefore be rejected. The evolutionary argument has been widely criticized and few have deemed it cogent (Broad 1925; Jackson 1982; Robinson 2007; Corabi 2014). In this paper, I will consider previous and potential criticisms and conclude some of them are indeed fatal to the argument if it is understood, as it traditionally has been, as an argument for any standard version of non-epiphenomenalism such as physicalism and interactionism. I will then offer a new and improved version of the argument, as an argument for a particular non-epiphenomenalist view, which I will call the phenomenal powers view. This is the view that phenomenal properties produce and thereby (metaphysically) necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, or in virtue of their intrinsic, phenomenal character alone – along the lines of C. B. Martin and John Heil’s powerful qualities view (Martin and Heil 1999; Heil 2003). I will argue that the phenomenal powers view explains the correlations given natural selection far better than any other view. It follows that if (and only if) understood as an argument for the phenomenal powers view, the evolutionary argument is far stronger than it is usually thought to be.

I came across this excellent lecture by James Tour about abiogenesis.

I hope it has not ben posted before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bss0RXPsBuQ

It is a bit technical, but I hope the message comes across that even very simple life is vastly too complicated to have got here randomly.

Btw if you want to understand the concept of enantiomers, think of shoes or gloves. There is a left glove and a right glove.

The video also illustrates the way that various scientists have lied to the general public while admitting these problems in more specialised discussions.

David