The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

Zombrex

robindch wrote:

> But, thank you for all the responses. I learned quite a bit.

Out of interest, who wrote the post that you found most informative?

Me! me! was it me!

bus77

psi wrote:

Intelligent design surely wouldn't put such a crude answer forward. I mean, there isn't a whole lot intelligent about designing an organism that has a 1/4 chance of having an offspring that will not survive to pro-create (assuming the organism breeds with another carrier)?

wolfsbane wrote:

It is indeed a problem for the Theistic Evolutionist IDers.

Not really no. You can't get more crude than a big explosion at the beginning.

wolfsbane

Son Goku said:

Where's its empirical support?
A single non-christian source would be enough.

Don't you mean a non-theistic source? There are non-Christians who hold to an original perfect creation.

Anyway, that was not my point in posting. Our friend had raised a credible objection to ID and had not received an answer. I gave the theological Creationist response.

wolfsbane

psi said:

Ahh but hold on. How does this account for the emergence of the sickle cell phenotype? We know this is a relatively new mutation and it certaily wouldn't have been something inherited from the first humans.

Correct. But the mechanism for its occurance came from the first humans: the sentence of death they received following the Fall. That produced all the on-going variations of disease and decay we experience.

Wicknight put it well: The Creationist argument is that pretty much any flaw, anything bad, anything that isn't working quite as it should, is that way because of the Fall of Man (to give it its full title).

God created everything perfectly, and things wound up in the state that they are because man sinned and cursed himself and the universe around him by doing so.

Actually, I'm not clear on what you're saying - malaria parasites didn't infect humans pre the Fall of man or that they did and just had no pathology?

Hmm. I'm not sure we can say what were the exact functions of the first parents of the malaria parasite. Maybe they had a role in processing the vegetable matter digested by man and animals? But certainly they were not harmful.

wolfsbane

Wicknight said:

Science can only deal with how things are at the moment. Things being originally perfect but now they are imperfect looks exactly the same, from a scientific point of view, as if things weren't perfect in the first place.

That sounds fine.

This is similar to the fact that from a scientific point of view God is irrelivent, because he either doesn't interact with the universe or doesn't exist (both of which from our perspective look the same)

That's OK too, provided we don't confuse the scientific with all reality. For example, science has nothing to say about what I saw in my back garden last night. I might have seen a squirrel, but science can not prove or disprove that since it was not observing at the time.

So the idea that God does not interact with the universe may be true for any tests they have set up, but it does not prove He does not do so many times every day. Just that science cannot determine it. The tornado that rips up my house but ignores my neighbours' - was that God interacting in my life or just physics in action? Science cannot say. Science does not prove God does not exist or does not interact: science is ignorant.

The whole Fall of Man theory is a bit of a cop-out in my view. You first suppose God designed life in a perfect way, but they say he then allowed things to become imperfect. So you end up with the same result as if God hadn't designed anything.

Not at all. Science does recognise design, incredible design, though not perfect design. But the reality is far more serious than the level of design we see before us: the Fall has had disasterous consequences, both in this world and the next.

Its another reason why ID is a completely baseless theory, from a scientific point of view.

ID clearly demonstrates incredible design, design it alleges cannot be accounted for by materialism. An imperfect design does not get materailism off the hook.

wolfsbane

Scofflaw said:

One of the problems with creationism, from a scientific point of view, is just how many of creationism's assertions are unfalsifiable. The original creation itself is unfalsifiable, the Fall is unfalsifiable, and the various complex (rather than naive) Flood theories are unfalsifiable - and these are three major tenets of creationism.

There are certianly many unfalsifiable assertions. But there are falsifiable ones too, the requirement for a world-wide record of all the land being covered by water, for example.

Separately - something I find interesting with respect to the Fall is the idea that, for example, human lifespans decreased after the Fall - incrementally. Oddly, this means that the burden of the Fall gets heavier the further removed one is from the original transgression, which is an unusual concept of justice. This has to be deliberate on God's part, since it is impossible that he was incapable of inflicting the whole Fall at once.

The sentence was death: the way that is brought about varies from person to person and from time to time. War, plague, T.B., cancer, RTAs, etc. The 'burden' is the same in the ultimate sense. It is 100% in every case.

wolfsbane

bus77 said:

Not really no. You can't get more crude than a big explosion at the beginning.

That is indeed a crude mechanism. But the point raised was how does ID fit in with an imperfect design as we observe today? Theistic Evolution has no answer; Creationism does.

Diogenes

wolfsbane wrote:

Scofflaw said:

There are certianly many unfalsifiable assertions. But there are falsifiable ones too, the requirement for a world-wide record of all the land being covered by water, for example.

Could you prove it then?

Son Goku

wolfsbane wrote:

the tornado that rips up my house but ignores my neighbours' - was that God interacting in my life or just physics in action?

If it follows from the initial conditions as physics says it would, then it is the laws of physics. This is one thing science can show.

wolfsbane

Diogenes said:

Could you prove it then?

Falsifiable does not require being able to be proved.

But if there were not world-wide sediments, then the world-wide Flood could not have been. Scientific research has established the former, so the Flood was not falsified, but it could have been.

As to proving the Flood, that is a big area, as the evidence shows that all the world has been covered by water, but it is argued as to how that came about.

Diogenes

wolfsbane wrote:

Diogenes said:

Falsifiable does not require being able to be proved.

But if there were not world-wide sediments, then the world-wide Flood could not have been. Scientific research has established the former, so the Flood was not falsified, but it could have been.

As to proving the Flood, that is a big area, as the evidence shows that all the world has been covered by water, but it is argued as to how that came about.

No sorry, you need to give some kind of evidence that the world was covered in liquid at some point in the last 6,000 years, and during the course of human civilisation.

bus77

wolfsbane, If the early scriptures were meant to be taken as a simple narative Ezekiel would not have had to explain them.

wolfsbane

Son Goku said:

If it follows from the initial conditions as physics says it would, then it is the laws of physics. This is one thing science can show.

It would be difficult for science to do that. To prove that the initial conditions of the tornado originated from just nature or from the direction of God. The tornado itself would be just that, a tornado.

wolfsbane

Diogenes said:

No sorry, you need to give some kind of evidence that the world was covered in liquid at some point in the last 6,000 years, and during the course of human civilisation.

Exactly. That is where the argument and counter argument occur. The Flood was falsifiable on the grounds of world-wide sediment. It passed that test. More remain. It is therefore falsifiable.

wolfsbane

bus77 said:

wolfsbane, If the early scriptures were meant to be taken as a simple narative Ezekiel would not have had to explain them.

Not sure what you are referring to. Can you post them up?

Diogenes

wolfsbane wrote:

Diogenes said:

Exactly. That is where the argument and counter argument occur. The Flood was falsifiable on the grounds of world-wide sediment. It passed that test. More remain. It is therefore falsifiable.

Thats hopeless logic there are plenty of falsifible tests that the flood falls completely, just having one claim that can be explained a variety of ways doesn't help prove the flood.

wolfsbane

Diogenes said:

Thats hopeless logic there are plenty of falsifible tests that the flood falls completely, just having one claim that can be explained a variety of ways doesn't help prove the flood.

Never said it did. But now it is up to you to provide the plenty of falsifiable tests that disprove the Flood. That is where the debate goes on.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

Falsifiable does not require being able to be proved.

But if there were not world-wide sediments, then the world-wide Flood could not have been. Scientific research has established the former, so the Flood was not falsified, but it could have been.

As to proving the Flood, that is a big area, as the evidence shows that all the world has been covered by water, but it is argued as to how that came about.

Alas, neither of these are the case. The world is not covered with sediments, nor are there world-wide sediments, and many areas show no signs of having been covered by water.

If you regard that as a test of the Flood, it fails it. Would you care to try again?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Son Goku

wolfsbane wrote:

It would be difficult for science to do that. To prove that the initial conditions of the tornado originated from just nature or from the direction of God. The tornado itself would be just that, a tornado.

The intial conditions could be shown to smoothly flow from earlier conditions. You're picking a very bad example.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote:

That's OK too, provided we don't confuse the scientific with all reality.

Well science is a model of reality.

wolfsbane wrote:

So the idea that God does not interact with the universe may be true for any tests they have set up, but it does not prove He does not do so many times every day.

True, but then again if God never happens to interact with anything where it can be scientifically observed again the view is the same as if God never interacts at all, or even never exists.

For science to factor God into a scientific model of reality He has to do something when someone is actually looking. Otherwise the perspective is that he isn't

Using the dragon analogy, there is no point the dragon being in the room when no one is looking, and not being in the room when someone is. It is not possible to tell the difference between the dragon not being in the room, and the dragon not existing in the first place. This is also true for God and science. Unless God demonstrates his existence in some fashion it is not possible for science to tell the difference between God existing and God not existing, since God existing looks exactly the same as God not existing.

wolfsbane wrote:

was that God interacting in my life or just physics in action? Science cannot say.

That is the point. God interacting in your life looks exactly the same as just natural physics running it course. Science can't tell the difference, and as such can't say "that was definately God"

wolfsbane wrote:

Not at all. Science does recognise design, incredible design, though not perfect design.

Yes but science also indentifies a natural process, namely evolution, that will develop this design.

So again you end up with the fact that God designing life on Earth looks exactly like nature designing life on Earth. Science can't tell the difference. It can only say "it looks like life developed like this". If someone wishes to believe that it was God that made it look like this that is fine, but from a scientific point of view there is nothing to support or counter that claim

wolfsbane wrote:

An imperfect design does not get materailism off the hook.

Thats what I mean by the Fall of Man cop-out. The Fall of man gets Creationism "off the hook"

Take this for example -

I see a ball in the middle of the road. I go away for 30 minutes and come back, the ball is in the exact same spot. I go "umm, still there" and a guy across the street goes "No, actually it rolled 100 meters that way". I go "Clearly it didn't since it is still here" The man goes "Yes, but after it had rolled 100 meters that way, it rolled 100 meters back in the same direction, and stopped exactly where it had started"

From my point of view I can't tell it did that, because it rolling up 100 meters and then rolling back 100 meters looks exactly the same as if it just didn't move. Equally another man can come along and say that it actually rolled 200 meters in that direction and then rolled 200 meters back to where it originally started. How do I tell that either of these events happened at all, let alone which one of the men is correct?

The Fall of Man presents the same problem for science.

One can claim that life was designed by God, but looks imperfect now, and therefore seems to look like it would fit evolutionary theories, but its really because of the fall of man. But the end result is that it looks like evolution. We can't tell if the design was perfect and then degraded (ball rolls up, ball rolls back) because it looks like evolution (ball never moved in the first place)

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote:

Exactly. That is where the argument and counter argument occur. The Flood was falsifiable on the grounds of world-wide sediment. It passed that test. More remain. It is therefore falsifiable.

Sorry wolfsbane got to stop you there.

Despite what JC says, the Biblical Flood has been shown not to have happened.

As this thread has demonstrated you have to be coming up with ridiculous ideas such as lions that feed on sea plankton like whales, and meat that can survive under wather for a year, never mind every single dating system ever designed by science or history also has to be wrong, to work around all the problems presented by a flood.

This is aside from the fact that geology simply doesn't work the way Creationists say it does work for the flood to happen. The Grand Canon could not have been dug out in a few weeks, miles of solid rock could not have been laid in a few days. The Alps could not have formed in a few days.

I have no great desire to go back over the Flood again, as it has been done to death already. But, while the question of God is beyond human science and science is not able to assertain an answer either way, the Flood isn't and it has been shown to have not happened. The idea that the Flood has passed some kind of scientific test is silly nonsense.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

That's OK too, provided we don't confuse the scientific with all reality. For example, science has nothing to say about what I saw in my back garden last night. I might have seen a squirrel, but science can not prove or disprove that since it was not observing at the time.

Indeed, and therefore, were it necessary for some reason to establish that squirrels were in your garden last night, and that you saw them, it would be impossible to do so to any scientific standard, since your evidence is anecdotal. Fortunately, the question is not important, and can therefore be safely left in the realm of anecdote - something that is not true of, for example, the Flood, or the existence of God.

Scientific observation is simply observation of the world to a certain specified standard - is there a reason why that standard should not be adopted for any important question?

wolfsbane wrote:

So the idea that God does not interact with the universe may be true for any tests they have set up, but it does not prove He does not do so many times every day. Just that science cannot determine it. The tornado that rips up my house but ignores my neighbours' - was that God interacting in my life or just physics in action? Science cannot say. Science does not prove God does not exist or does not interact: science is ignorant.

This is the case - we have no control universe, and therefore no way of knowing whether God constantly has his thumb on the scales.

On the other hand, the ascription of divine intervention to phenomena such as wind reminds me of the anti-bullet charms worn by primitive warriors. You can tell yours are better than the next guy's, because he's full of holes and you aren't.

wolfsbane wrote:

ID clearly demonstrates incredible design, design it alleges cannot be accounted for by materialism. An imperfect design does not get materailism off the hook.

Not as such. ID confuses design (which implies an agent, but need not imply perfection) with accident (which need not imply imperfection or randomness, but merely the lack of an agent). As usual, you have simply assumed that this is true, although at no point has any IDer/Creationist actually demonstrated design, or irreducible complexity, to anyone's satisfaction but their own - all resolve rapidly to arguments from ignorance.

However, the argument from imperfect design is specifically against God as a designer - it would seem unlikely that God would create imperfection.

cordially,
Scofflaw

bus77

bus77 wrote:

wolfsbane, If the early scriptures were meant to be taken as a simple narative Ezekiel would not have had to explain them.

wolfsbane wrote:

Not sure what you are referring to. Can you post them up?

Well, I remember reading a story in there about how the Jews in one village had forgotton what the precepts meant. So one fella steped forward and spent the day explaining it to them. After that the village had a celebration.
Now, I thought that was in Ezekiel but it looks like it was somewhere else.

Oh well.. That was a short Bible quoting career eh?

wolfsbane

bus77 said:

Well, I remember reading a story in there about how the Jews in one village had forgotton what the precepts meant. So one fella steped forward and spent the day explaining it to them. After that the village had a celebration.
Now, I thought that was in Ezekiel but it looks like it was somewhere else.

Oh well.. That was a short Bible quoting career eh?

Hmm. Not too far off, now that you explain yourself. You may be thinking of the reading of the Torah after the return from exile of the nation. It is found in Nehemiah 8:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=16&chapter=8&version=50

The reason for the need to have it explained was that it contains not only straight narrative but many promises, obligations, commandments, etc. that may require a good overview and familiarity with the whole in order to correctly understand a specific. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are some read.

Scofflaw

wolfsbane wrote:

bus77 said:

Hmm. Not too far off, now that you explain yourself. You may be thinking of the reading of the Torah after the return from exile of the nation. It is found in Nehemiah 8:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=16&chapter=8&version=50

The reason for the need to have it explained was that it contains not only straight narrative but many promises, obligations, commandments, etc. that may require a good overview and familiarity with the whole in order to correctly understand a specific. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are some read.

Indeed. The dangers of simplistic readings of the Bible are manifold.

cordially,
Scofflaw

BrianCalgary

robindch wrote:

> But, thank you for all the responses. I learned quite a bit.

Out of interest, who wrote the post that you found most informative?

This is waht I found useful on all of them:
Wicknight:
From a functional point of view (and this is very simplified description) RNA is created based on the DNA template in our genes, and this RNA carries this information to the part of the cell that products protiens. So it acts as a kind of middle copying stage between DNA and the final produced protien, keeping the phsycial DNA seperate from actual process that creates proteins.


Psi:
RNA and DNA differ mainly in structure, DNA being double helical, RNA being single. DNA has deoxyribose and RNA ribose and then of the four base pairings used, RNA uses uracil instead of thymine.

Viruses may have either RNA or DNA (not just one or the other), by and large DNA and RNA are both found in most organisms, the excetions being some RNA exclusive viruses. From an evolutionary point of view RNA may well have been a precursor to DNA and recent suggestions (Zimmer 2006, Science) oint towards viruses playing a role in the evolution of DNA.


Robindch:
Had to really read this one. A little to strong on scientific terminology.
Double and single strand useful as well as the statement on AIDS.


(But I just HAD to pick wicknight as the BEST:D )

J C

Scofflaw
All your arguments against it, on the basis of how difficult it would be to produce, only apply to trying to produce exactly the same again. In the real world, your arguments don't amount to a row of beans.

All my arguments about how (IMPOSSIBLY) difficult it is to produce the biochemical sight cascade, using materialistic processes without intelligence, apply TO PRODUCING THE CASCADE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

In the real world, my arguments are irrefutable PROOF of the Intelligent Design of life!!!:D


Scofflaw
As (I think) Son Goku said, the odds against something are irrelevant after the fact, unless you plan on waiting around for a repeat performance

…….after the FACT of what?

Yes the odds are irrelevant ‘after the fact’ of Creation – because intelligence could easily constrain combinatorial space to produce these molecules.:cool:

The odds against the production of the observed sophisticated components of living systems, using random processes, are so overwhelming as to be statistically impossible and they are therefore an insurmountable obstacle ‘BEFORE the fact’ of Materialistic Evolution.:D


Scofflaw
Let me point out another thing you keep missing, or can't understand. It takes an intelligent designer to model what has already happened as a result of chance & selection. That has no implications whatsoever for the original process - if it did, we should also rationally conclude that evolution is a computer program, and expect it to generate sentences in the DNA!

Yes, indeed pH’s model “has no implications whatsoever for” evolution – and indeed is PROOF of Intelligent Design being REQUIRED to reduce the ‘combinatorial space’ of 5.8 E+98 down to 9,339.

pH’s programme is actually a demonstration of INTELLIGENCE in action – and shows HOW a rational agent (like pH) was able to programme a computer to constrain combinatorial space with distant outcomes in mind, to the point where the odds of something specific happening was reduced from 5.8 E+98 down to 9,339.

However, had he done something akin to what God did during Creation Week and used his intelligence to simply write the words “EVOLUTION HAS BEEN PROVEN TO BE MATHEMATICALLY INVALID ON THIS THREAD” – he could have reduced the odds down to 1 – and saved a considerable amount of computer programming effort!!!!


Originally Posted by J C
Look, this isn’t an argument between Creationists and ‘all the rest’ – it is actually an argument between Atheistic Materialists on one side – and Theistic Evolutionists, Intelligent Designers AND Creation Scientists on the other side.

Scofflaw
Ho ho ho. You wish. You're on your own, I'm afraid,

Ho, ho NOTHING!!!!:)

It is TRUE that ID proponents, Theistic Evolutionists and Creation Scientists believe that life is the result of the appliance of Intelligent Design by God. The only people who believe that ‘intelligence’ WASN’T applied are the Materialistic Evolutionists, whose overwhelming ‘faith need’ to deny God, causes them to believe that “a series of tiny incremental ERRORS, over a period of 3.5 billion years, changed Slime Balls into Eye Balls” (complete with biochemical cascades to match).:D

Theistic Evolutionists, Intelligent Designers AND Creation Scientists may well have intense differences about the THEOLOGY of Creation – but they are UNITED on the fact that an omnipotent and omniscient God used his infinite intelligence to design life.
Whether He did it during Creation Week or over 15 billion years is essentially a question for Bible Study and the forensic scientific investigation of the evidence for Creation – but the FACT that God designed life is beyond all doubt.:cool:


Scofflaw
You have commited, in your posts, every single schoolboy mistake in the book –

Even a five year old knows that Slime Balls can NEVER evolve into Eye Balls – not in a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, years!!!!!:eek:

Do you NOT understand the simple MATHEMATICS of what 5.8 E+98 means or what??
Do you NOT understand that there are ONLY 3.29E+90 cubic millimetres in the entire volume of the supposed Big Bang Universe?


Scofflaw
You have no idea what you're saying. The exact arrangement of sand grains on any specific beach, giving a smoothly sloping surface to the sea, is impossible to replicate, but even you surely would not claim that each beach is individually designed (and redesigned constantly).

How do random piles of sand grains have ANYTHING to do with organised tightly specified living systems?

The problem is that living systems can ONLY be produced with the tightly specified systems that we observe – just like TV sets can ONLY be produced with the tightly specified systems that makes a TV sets ‘work’.

Why do Evolutionists fully accept that TV sets can NEVER arise spontaneously using random processes – but don’t apply the same LOGIC to infinitely more complex and tightly specified living systems ?


Wicknight
That is exactly how something would evolve, the "locking in" of benefital mutations by natural selection.

You have two parts to evolution, the random mutations and the "selecting" (locking in as you call it) of those mutations that provide benefit to the organism by Natural Selection.

Fair enough, but the problem is that every individual biochemical step in the sight cascade is totally useless on it’s own – so each step cannot ‘lock in’ as beneficial to the organism. These systems are ‘irreducibly complex’ i.e they work in the current configuration – but if any step is missing or in a different place in the sequence they are functionally USELESS.

So, you cannot ‘work up’ to an ultimately useful sight cascade – as all partial cascades are functionally USELESS!!.

Molecular Biology also confirms that the gradual Evolution of useful biological structures is an impossibility. For example, the discovery of Critical Amino Acid Sequences means that a biologically active Peptide becomes totally useless when ANY changes are made to it’s sequence – thereby effectively making it a ‘prisoner’ of it’s own sequence. Even if it could blindly 'search around' in it’s immediate Amino Acid ‘combinatorial space’ it is unlikely to EVER ‘discover’ another useful Peptide chain by undirected processes such is the vastness of the 'combinatorial space' and the observed rarity and specificity of the sequences for useful Peptides.
There is no simple stepped advantage between one useful Peptide and another one – so undirected processes cannot follow some ‘yellow brick road’ of increasing utility to reach the next biologically useful Peptide. The possible number of intermediates are literally ‘astronomical’ and because the intermediates are ALL equally USELESS, they can offer no signal of progress or 'advantage' towards the next useful Polypeptide for Natural Selection to ‘follow’ or select.
It is analogous to a useful Peptide bobbing about in an ocean of useless Polypeptides, trying to blindly locate another useful Peptide on the far side of the ocean. It is literally like trying to find a 'needle in a haystack’ the size of the Universe while blindfolded.

It is also like trying to blindly 'crack' open a Safe – you have to try every possible combination. You could be within one digit of the right combination and would never 'know' it or you might have none of the digits. Either way, the result is phenotypically identical (i.e. biologically useless) – and so Natural Selection CANNOT help, when faced with quadrillions of equally useless intermediaries with NONE of them conferring any advantage.:D

J C

Wicknight
there currently exists creatures that use "eyes" or systems like eyes at pretty much every major step one can imagine the human eye developing, from worms that have very basic light sensitive cells, to eagle eyes.

…..and all of them with unique, specific, biochemical cascades of similar complexity to the one that I have already shown you.

……and all of them totally isolated in ‘combinatorial space’ with NO linkage between them, even theoretically possible.

They are PROOF of Direct Creation of EACH unique ‘eye’!!!!:D


Wicknight
Here's how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made "vision" a little sharper. At the same time, the pit's opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.

Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.

A great ‘story’ no doubt but it collapses when we consider the vast ‘combinatorial space’ that even a potential ‘light sensitive’ spot would have to 'cross' to become a functioning ‘light sensitive’ spot. It would need HUNDREDS of specific proteins generated in a specific sequence for the ‘spot’ to become ‘light sensitive’ – and hundreds of other proteins to form the nervous system to interpret the light signals and take coherent actions in response in order for it to provide ANY survival advantage.

Please remember that EACH of these hundreds of functional proteins reside in ‘useless combinatorial spaces’ that are greater than the number of electrons that could fit into the entire VOLUME of the Big Bang Universe – and so ‘finding’ a ‘correct’ biochemical that has ANY chance of being usefully linked to the next biochemical in the sight cascade is IMPOSSIBLE – even if the entire volume of the Big Bang Universe was filled ‘wall to wall’ with electrons and each electron was ‘searching for’ the next useful biochemical in the cascade – they would probably NEVER ‘find’ it!!!!


pH
I took on board your criticism however, and tried something new. How hard is is to generate a random string of letters which make up English words? Very hard it seems, you can let a computer run and run and you get pretty much nothing.

Not really. It is actually RELATIVELY EASY to generate short English words randomly. The total ‘combinatorial space’ for 2 letter words is only 676 and there are about 20 English two letter words like on, at, it, is, if, an, do, go, so, etc.
Therefore, in any random line of letters, a two letter English Word will be ‘found’ on average within a series of ONLY about 60 randomly generated letters.

Similarly, the total ‘combinatorial space’ for 3 letter words is 17,576 but there are about 300 English three letter words.
Therefore, in any random line of letters, a three letter English Word will be ‘found’ on average within a series of ONLY about 175 randomly generated letters.

Equally, the total ‘combinatorial space’ for 4 letter words is 457,000 but there are about 4,000 English four letter words.
Therefore, in any random line of letters, a four letter English Word will be ‘found’ on average within a series of ONLY about 457 randomly generated letters.

Because the English language is ITSELF Intelligently Designed and phonetically based, it exhibits ‘clumping’ i.e. there are derivative words from existing words, for example, the word ‘bike’ can be extended to ‘bikes’ by the simple addition of the letter ‘s’. Equally, words like ‘mare’ can be easily converted to ‘tare’, ‘bare’, ‘fare', 'dare', care’, ‘cane’, ‘mane’, 'mace' or ‘maze’ by the substitution of only one letter at a time.
A word like ‘caste’ can be converted to ‘castle’ by the insertion of one letter. However, there is a dramatic change in ‘meaning’ between all of these words – and if such a mutation were to occur in ‘real life’ the chances of an organism that was formerly usefully using a ‘caste’ being able to utilise a ‘castle’ coherently and functionally would be ZERO!!!!

However, be that as it may, the really big problem arises when you try to ‘evolve’ long ‘isolated’ words like ‘encyclopedia’ for example (where the useless ‘combinatorial space’ is in excess of 10 billion).

Further problems arise when you try to form coherent sentences. You could programme in grammatical rules, but then you would be introducing further Intelligent Design into your programme – which would kinda defeat the objective of demonstrating Materialistic Evolution in action.

The difficulties become astronomical if you try to produce meaningful prose because of the enormous ‘combinatorial space’ involved.

Because of the phonetically close nature of English words, intensive ‘searching’ of the immediate ‘phonetic combinatorial space’ of one short word, will usually yield other words, as per pH’s programme or my example with the word ‘mare’ above. However, proteins don’t exhibit such ‘phonetic’ attributes and therefore their ‘combinatorial space’ is not ‘clumped’ but ‘distributionally random’ in nature.


pH
But what happens if you 'evolve' them? No goal, just a fitness function based on an English dictionary. Surely it couldn't produce anything that resembled English, merely by randomly changing and adding letters?

Once again, you are using Intelligent Design. The whole model is supported on an Intelligently Designed computer complete with Intelligently Designed software that is MILLIONS of orders of magnitude more complex than the simple words being formed. This powerful computer intelligently interrogates the random series of letter for pre-programmed English Dictionary words and when it finds a (small) word, it then starts ‘fiddling about’ with it, intensively searching the word’s relatively small immediate phonetic 'combinatorial space' – and voila it is rewarded by another small, phonetically similar word being generated!!!
This is ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in action – and proof of the phonetic closeness of phonetically similar English words – which is, after all, HOW one searches for words in a Dictionary, in the first place (for example one searches for the word ‘chair’ near the word ‘chain’, etc) !!
Although the word ‘chair’ follows the word ‘chain’ in the Dictionary, this ISN’T proof of the 'evolution' of ‘chair’ from ‘chain’, it is merely an example the phonetic similarity, efficiency of expression and elegant DESIGN of the English language!!

In any event, the ‘words’ that we are dealing with in living systems are not short 5-7 letter English words and their immediate phonetic derivatives – they are hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of Nucleotides long and with ’distributionally random’ immediate ‘combinatorial spaces’!!!
Because DNA is NOT phonetically based, intensive local searching WON'T have any functional effect with living systems – and so integrated tightly specified irreducibly complex systems, like the biochemical sight cascade, are beyond the generative capacity of random physical processes.:D

Zombrex

J C wrote:

Fair enough, but the problem is that every individual biochemical step in the sight cascade is totally useless on it’s own – so each step cannot ‘lock in’ as beneficial to the organism.

It isn't totally useless on its own. A vast number of benefitial mutations have been observed in nature. The nylon bug is one well known example.

Please stop talking nonsense. We have been over this before.

J C wrote:

i.e they work in the current configuration – but if any step is missing or in a different place in the sequence they are functionally USELESS.

As I explained to BrianC, if you remove any part of your TV it stops working. That doesn't mean a less complicated TV from the 40s won't work because it doesn't have the same parts as a modern day TV.

There is a difference between de-evolving and simply removing parts.

This has been explained before JC

J C wrote:

Molecular Biology also confirms that the gradual Evolution of useful biological structures is an impossibility.

No, actually its the exact opposite. Evolution of useful new biological structures has been observed to take place in rapidly evolving organisms, such as bateria.

Even Creationists admit that.

This has been explained before JC

J C wrote:

…..and all of them with unique, specific, biochemical cascades of similar complexity to the one that I have already shown you.

……and all of them totally isolated in ‘combinatorial space’ with NO linkage between them, even theoretically possible.

That is the whole point :rolleyes:

Why would God design 40 different eyes, at thousands of different stages, when one would do.

The only rational explination is that these different designs developed naturally independently of each other.

J C wrote:

A great ‘story’ no doubt but it collapses when we consider the vast ‘combinatorial space’ that even a potential ‘light sensitive’ spot would have to 'cross' to become a functioning ‘light sensitive’ spot.

It doesn't collapse at all, you just don't understand it.

There is a difference between nature and your ignorance JC.

pH has already demonstrated how a relatively small number of steps can be used to produce a very unlikely (on its own) event, when natural selection is used.

Zombrex

J C wrote:

It would need HUNDREDS of specific proteins generated in a specific sequence for the ‘spot’ to become ‘light sensitive’

What are you basing that on

Look JC, you don't know what you are talking about. Your arguments have been force to resort to "no it isn't" in the fact of over whelming evidence of evolution.

J C wrote:

– and hundreds of other proteins to form the nervous system to interpret the light signals and take coherent actions in response in order for it to provide ANY survival advantage.

Maybe you missed the part where life took 2.5 billion years to even develop cells :rolleyes:

J C wrote:

Please remember that EACH of these hundreds of functional proteins reside in ‘useless combinatorial spaces’ that are greater than the number of electrons that could fit into the entire VOLUME of the Big Bang Universe – and so ‘finding’ a ‘correct’ biochemical that has ANY chance of being usefully linked to the next biochemical in the sight cascade is IMPOSSIBLE

Groan ... its like the last 180 pages don't exist.

Evolution does not attempt to FIND the CORRECT protein. There is no correct protein. There is just the proteins evolution happens to find and what it can do with them. We are what it can do with them. We are not "correct," we just are.

Look, seriously JC YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND EVOLUTION THEORY Please read up on it before you post again :rolleyes: