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Human Devolution
#11
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Pulse Wrote: The Documentary "Expelled; No Intelligence Allowed" exposes the well funded, draconian, Nazi-like grip on power that Materialists have on science these days.

Stein's documentary is a steaming pile of bullshit.
http://www.expelledexposed.com/

(January 19, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Pulse Wrote: Very Intriguing, In the above Documentary Dawkins says he is OPEN TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN , as long as it involves ALIENS Clap  (who he says would've evolved themselves; but why wouldn't they be products of other Aliens and the regression continued ad Infinitum?). Any ridiculous theory allowed, Just not God.

"Toward the end of his interview with me, Stein asked whether I could think of any circumstances whatsoever under which intelligent design might have occurred. It's the kind of challenge I relish, and I set myself the task of imagining the most plausible scenario I could. I wanted to give ID its best shot, however poor that best shot might be. I must have been feeling magnanimous that day, because I was aware that the leading advocates of Intelligent Design are very fond of protesting that they are not talking about God as the designer, but about some unnamed and unspecified intelligence, which might even be an alien from another planet. Indeed, this is the only way they differentiate themselves from fundamentalist creationists, and they do it only when they need to, in order to weasel their way around church/state separation laws. So, bending over backwards to accommodate the IDiots ("oh NOOOOO, of course we aren't talking about God, this is SCIENCE") and bending over backwards to make the best case I could for intelligent design, I constructed a science fiction scenario. Like Michael Ruse (as I surmise) I still hadn't rumbled Stein, and I was charitable enough to think he was an honestly stupid man, sincerely seeking enlightenment from a scientist. I patiently explained to him that life could conceivably have been seeded on Earth by an alien intelligence from another planet (Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel suggested something similar -- semi tongue-in-cheek). The conclusion I was heading towards was that, even in the highly unlikely event that some such 'Directed Panspermia' was responsible for designing life on this planet, the alien beings would THEMSELVES have to have evolved, if not by Darwinian selection, by some equivalent 'crane' (to quote Dan Dennett). My point here was that design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity. Even if life on Earth was seeded by intelligent designers on another planet, and even if the alien life form was itself seeded four billion years earlier, the regress must ultimately be terminated (and we have only some 13 billion years to play with because of the finite age of the universe). Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen. That, for goodness sake, is the creationists' whole point, when they bang on about eyes and bacterial flagella! Evolution by natural selection is the only known process whereby organized complexity can ultimately come into being. Organized complexity -- and that includes everything capable of designing anything intelligently -- comes LATE into the universe. It cannot exist at the beginning, as I have explained again and again in my writings.

This 'Ultimate 747' argument, as I called it in The God Delusion, may or may not persuade you. That is not my concern here. My concern here is that my science fiction thought experiment -- however implausible -- was designed to illustrate intelligent design's closest approach to being plausible. I was most emphaticaly NOT saying that I believed the thought experiment. Quite the contrary. I do not believe it (and I don't think Francis Crick believed it either). I was bending over backwards to make the best case I could for a form of intelligent design. And my clear implication was that the best case I could make was a very implausible case indeed. In other words, I was using the thought experiment as a way of demonstrating strong opposition to all theories of intelligent design.

Well, you will have guessed how Mathis/Stein handled this. I won't get the exact words right (we were forbidden to bring in recording devices on pain of a $250,000 fine, chillingly announced by some unnamed Gauleiter before the film began), but Stein said something like this. "What? Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN INTELLIGENT DESIGN." "Richard Dawkins BELIEVES IN ALIENS FROM OUTER SPACE." I can't remember whether this was the moment in the film where we were regaled with another Lord Privy Seal cut to an old science fiction movie with some kind of android figure — that may have been used in the service of trying to ridicule Francis Crick (again, dutiful titters from the partisan audience)."[/quote]
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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#12
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:14 pm)Mathilda Wrote:
(January 19, 2017 at 6:08 pm)Pulse Wrote: The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.

Evolution is not occurring in an isolated system. It is an open system because it is getting energy from the sun.

Order can arise locally at expense of entropy increasing globally. This is why snowflakes or other crystals form for example.

Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [L. Orgel, The Origins of Life, John Wiley, NY, 1973, p. 189]

The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things.
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#13
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Pulse Wrote:      Dawkins himself, in a Youtube video called Richard Dawkins stumped by creationists' question, simply cannot give one example of a mutation adding new information to the Genome. 

Most probably edited to make it look like that then. I write genetic algorithms which are useful applications of the theory of evolution. If the theory was wrong the algorithms wouldn't work. They do work.

When writing a GA, you have to bear in mind that mutation adds variety to a genotype (i.e. new information), crossover decreases it. Setting the mutation rate is a careful balancing act. Set it too high and you find a good solution quickly but are less able to find an optimal one. Even if you find the global maxima on the fitness landscape it will be less chance to reach the top. Set it too low and the run takes longer but you are able to find a better solution, but you may also get stuck on a local maxima.

I actually devised my own evolutionary algorithm on these very principle and have been using it extensively for almost 20 years.

There are thousands of papers about genetic algorithms over many years learnt from practice. The theory is sound. The practice is useful.
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#14
RE: Human Devolution
Quote:Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity.

Certainly not true of creatards.

Go blow your fucking god out your ass.... whichever silly-assed god you think exists.

You might try reading Dawkins but I'm sure the big words would throw you.
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#15
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:15 pm)Pulse Wrote: Quoting Professor Sarfati;  The information in even the simplest organism would take about a thousand pages to write out. Human beings have 500 times as much information as this. It is a flight of fantasy to think that undirected processes could generate this huge amount of information, just as it would be to think that a cat walking on a keyboard could write a book.

It wasn't a completely random process. Complexity develops over time precisely because of the laws of thermodynamics.

(January 19, 2017 at 6:15 pm)Pulse Wrote: Remember the Second Law says Entropy increases, so how did Order evolve in Genomes??

Entropy increases globally but can increase locally.

This can easily be demonstrated in real life.
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#16
RE: Human Devolution
"Forbidden Archaeology".

'nuff said.
Dying to live, living to die.
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#17
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:31 pm)Pulse Wrote: Living things are distinguished by their specified complexity. Crystals such as granite fail to qualify as living because they lack complexity; mixtures of random polymers fail to qualify because they lack specificity. [L. Orgel, The Origins of Life, John Wiley, NY, 1973, p. 189]

The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things.

Wrong. That is his definition and not one that stands up to scrutiny. The only consistent characteristic of life is that it has a metabolism.

Free energy flowing through matter is what can generate complex systems.

Anyway it's getting late and I'm going to bed. Ask if you want examples or references. I sense that you aren't actually open to any evidence though hence the reason why you are already starting to repeat yourself.
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#18
RE: Human Devolution
Just out of curiosity, Pulse, do you actually have a point of view that isn't somebody else's?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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#19
RE: Human Devolution
Pulse, why do search for selective quotes to post?
Do you ignore the vast majority of scientific articles which don't fit your agenda?

As Rob alluded to before, you swallowed the koolaid as a young kid when you were prone to believe anything by your parents. Trust at that age is a normal survival mechanism. Nothing to be ashamed of. Your parents are entirely responsible for that. What you are doing now as an adult is trying to justify the emotional blackmail through science!
It wasn't science which got you addicted to God in the first place. Please stop wasting your time...
No God, No fear.
Know God, Know fear.
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#20
RE: Human Devolution
(January 19, 2017 at 6:31 pm)Mathilda Wrote:
(January 19, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Pulse Wrote:      Dawkins himself, in a Youtube video called Richard Dawkins stumped by creationists' question, simply cannot give one example of a mutation adding new information to the Genome. 

Most probably edited to make it look like that then. I write genetic algorithms which are useful applications of the theory of evolution. If the theory was wrong the algorithms wouldn't work. They do work.

When writing a GA, you have to bear in mind that mutation adds variety to a genotype (i.e. new information), crossover decreases it. Setting the mutation rate is a careful balancing act. Set it too high and you find a good solution quickly but are less able to find an optimal one. Even if you find the global maxima on the fitness landscape it will be less chance to reach the top. Set it too low and the run takes longer but you are able to find a better solution, but you may also get stuck on a local maxima.

I actually devised my own evolutionary algorithm on these very principle and have been using it extensively for almost 20 years.

There are thousands of papers about genetic algorithms over many years learnt from practice. The theory is sound. The practice is useful.

There is controversy regarding GA, as Will Larson expressed in his article Genetic Programming: A Novel Failure. 

Again can you show a concrete example in Nature that shows a mutation increasing, and not corrupting, the Genome? Granted some mutations can, for example, make a mosquito more resistant to pesticides, but this mutation actually corrupts the Genome and makes the organism weaker.
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