Precision in Nature: Evidence of God or Accidents?

[Newby]

Why don't you point your hypothesis at the 'theory' that life is random?

As there is no such theory, I hardly see the point.

EDIT: i see that PC made the same mistake. You should realize that people you disagree with don't actually believe the way your caricatures of them suggest.

Why not? Isn't that what you 'believe', that life is random? Why can't you prove it or disprove it?

 

[Dragon]

Why don't you point your hypothesis at the 'theory' that life is random?

As there is no such theory, I hardly see the point.

EDIT: i see that PC made the same mistake. You should realize that people you disagree with don't actually believe the way your caricatures of them suggest.

Why not? Isn't that what you 'believe', that life is random? Why can't you prove it or disprove it?

No, it's not what I believe, nor is it what biologists believe, nor is it part of evolution theory, nor is it part of the concept of evolution aside from that theory, nor is it an idea that anyone would actually advocate.

As for disproving it, that's easy. Just point to any of the many important processes of life that are not random. I can use natural selection, the key mechanic of evolution according to current theory. That isn't random. As it's really really crucial to the way evolution works, we can also say on that basis that evolution itself isn't random, or at least is mostly non-random.

Life includes some random processes, but to say that life on the whole is random is just nonsense. Nobody says that, and it's obviously untrue.

 

[Newby]

As there is no such theory, I hardly see the point.

EDIT: i see that PC made the same mistake. You should realize that people you disagree with don't actually believe the way your caricatures of them suggest.

Why not? Isn't that what you 'believe', that life is random? Why can't you prove it or disprove it?

No, it's not what I believe, nor is it what biologists believe, nor is it part of evolution theory, nor is it part of the concept of evolution aside from that theory, nor is it an idea that anyone would actually advocate.

As for disproving it, that's easy. Just point to any of the many important processes of life that are not random. I can use natural selection, the key mechanic of evolution according to current theory. That isn't random. As it's really really crucial to the way evolution works, we can also say on that basis that evolution itself isn't random, or at least is mostly non-random.

Life includes some random processes, but to say that life on the whole is random is just nonsense. Nobody says that, and it's obviously untrue.

So where did life originate?

 

[Dragon]

So where did life originate?

In the ocean most likely.

How the first transition was made between non-living organic molecules and the earliest living things is not really known, but the process may not have been random and was certainly not altogether random even if it included random components.

 

[Newby]

So where did life originate?

In the ocean most likely.

How the first transition was made between non-living organic molecules and the earliest living things is not really known, but the process may not have been random and was certainly not altogether random even if it included random components.

So, if it wasn't random or spontaneous, or designed, then what was it?

 

[Dragon]

So where did life originate?

In the ocean most likely.

How the first transition was made between non-living organic molecules and the earliest living things is not really known, but the process may not have been random and was certainly not altogether random even if it included random components.

So, if it wasn't random or spontaneous, or designed, then what was it?

I obviously can't answer that in detail, because it's not known, but here's how it MIGHT have happened, in general terms.

Start with a very hot, lifeless planet, with more or less the current chemical composition (as far as elements are concerned -- compounds would be different because of temperature differences and because there was no life).

Over time, it cools enough that water vapor precipitates and forms the oceans. Water dissolves certain chemicals and, with energy provided by sunlight and perhaps some other sources, chemical reactions involving nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen compounds form "organic" compounds. (Speaking chemically -- obviously they're not "organic" in terms of source, that is, not from living things. At this point there are no living things.)

An important step here is the formation of amino acids. It's been proven in the laboratory that these compounds can form from non-living processes. Another crucial step, and this has also been laboratory demonstrated, is the formation of nucleotides, which are the building-block molecules of nucleic acids, as amino acids are of proteins. So we can easily understand how both amino acids and nucleotides come to be in the absence of actual life; these are precursor chemicals to life.

The most popular hypothesis these days for how life began, and note that this part has definitely not been proven, it's just a speculative idea to play with and try to find evidence for or against, involves RNA providing a reproductive-information function rather than DNA which does the job in all living things today. (Or all that I know about. RNA still has an important function in transmitting DNA instructions to proteins) The emergence of a molecule capable of transmitting information and so of replicating itself, which RNA can do, would fit the main part of the definition of life. Once that happened, it would begin replicating, and any mutations that occurred would begin the process of evolution, along with natural selection to guide the process.

Exactly how this occurred is not known, but it would not necessarily have been a "random" process at any point before the occurrence of the first mutation, except maybe in terms of precisely what characteristics the first RNA molecules would have exhibited. (It's likely there would have been more than one.) And even if that was itself random, it would have built on a whole sequence of events that were not, creating the circumstances in which life could begin.

 

[Newby]

How is that not random? If not random, then it was planned or designed, and if so, then by whom? You either believe random or intentional, there is no in between.

 

[Dragon]

How is that not random? If not random, then it was planned or designed, and if so, then by whom? You either believe random or intentional, there is no in between.

No, that's not true. Random does not mean "not designed," it means "not predictable." The opposite of random is deterministic, not designed. The orbit of the moon is not known to be designed, but nor is it random.

Chemical reactions are not random. Large-scale physical processes like the cooling of the planet and the precipitation of the oceans are not random. Everything leading up to the origin of life is believed to be either a large-scale physical process or a chemical reaction, and hence not random. The process by which RNA came into existence would also be a chemical reaction and hence not random. The only random element would involve exactly what genetic information the first RNA molecules would transmit, and most of that randomness would be eliminated thereafter by natural selection.

I read recently that NASA researchers, reexamining the data from Mars exploration robots, believe they've found strong evidence of life on Mars -- real live microorganisms, you understand, not dead fossils; critters that are alive now. If that's confirmed, what it says to me is that the emergence of simple living things is much more likely than we might previously have supposed, so that the process isn't just non-random but probably widespread in the universe.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Multiverse ???.....what a joke you are.

It means that there are no facts in science....

But you didn't understand the concept, did you?
Next time do a little study before you pretend you know something.

I can explain it to you, I just can’t comprehend it for you.


Looking forward to your repeat of that highlight-reel faceplant.

You can explain the multiverse to me? LOL! OK, then go ahead! Start with the Einstein field equation and take it from there! This is going to be good.


I must say its quite amusing to find someone who probably doesn't even know multidimensional calculus claiming she's an expert on cosmological theory.

You pretend-scientists are the easiest to take apart.

You never studied....you merely memorized.

LOL! They don't give out Ph.D.'s for memorizing.

Thinking is too darn much trouble for you.

Bet the number of times you questioned a professor or disagreed is slightly less
than the number of heads you have.

Its many more than the number of times you've proven general relativity and quantum physics wrong, and as a post-doctoral researcher its actually my job to tell my boss when I think he's wrong.

That's exactly why you negged when I laughed at your choice of 'Multiverse' as
an answer: because you didn't understand that what it means is that every fact of science must be thrown out!
Multiverse: there are no universally true facts or laws!

huh? That's not what the theory says. That's not even close. Where the fuck did you get that?

Multiverse is explained right in the post you linked, dunce.

I've never linked to a post with mathematical equations in it, so that's not possible.

Got you, didn't I.
Be honest and admit it: to believe in the multiverse concept, one must suppose some
universe where gravity pushed things away.

Well....do you believe that????

Consider this your Kodak moment.

If you can think of another way to explain the accelerating rate of expansion observed in the Universe the entire physics and cosomological community would be all ears. Please! We'd love to hear your theory.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

You can explain the multiverse to me? LOL! OK, then go ahead! Start with the Einstein field equation and take it from there! This is going to be good.


I must say its quite amusing to find someone who probably doesn't even know multidimensional calculus claiming she's an expert on cosmological theory.

Your side can't even agree on this.

The Case for Parallel Universes: Scientific American

3. Scientific American: “The Case for Parallel Universes”

Faith in the multiverse

The “anthropic principle”—the idea that the physical features of our world are ideally suited for life on earth—has been an annoyance to those who believe that our universe and life on earth are products of random processes. Indeed, it has been difficult to explain even the physical constants of the universe without resorting to some sort of “intelligent design” position. Multiverse to the rescue!

The notion that parallel universes exist is not a new idea. The latest versions of the multiverse concept postulate that there exist other realities in which even the physical laws which govern our universe are different. Thus, given enough time and enough realities, random processes could result in absolutely anything. And the random processes which produced “us” are just the only ones we know about.

Recent articles in Scientific American have explored various scientists’ opinions on the multiverse issue. Those that oppose the possibility must necessarily do so on the basis of the physics in this universe. Those who accept the possibility can argue from an “anything goes” position in which the only rules which exist are those they choose to imagine. Thus the multiverse would be completely untestable based on any scientific principles.

The latest Scientific American article tries to recruit the inflationary hypothesis3 espoused by big bang cosmologists to scientifically demonstrate that multiverses should exist while still allowing that the absence of evidence for their existence is equally okay. After all, enough time may not have passed, the writer reasons, for the big-bang-generated bubble which represents our universe to have bumped into other reality bubbles!

The Scientific American article concludes that those who reject the multiverse’s existence are arrogantly claiming to be omniscient or at least capable of intuitively understanding all physical realities. Then it appeals to the inflation paradigm on which current big bang cosmology depends (as if either the inflationary hypothesis or the big bang were proven facts) and uses it as scientific support for the multiverse.

The multiverse question must of necessity be a matter of faith, and not even the kind of faith held by Bible-believing creationists who are able to see that no valid indisputable scientific observations violate God’s Word. Yet reputable secular scientists are able to freely discuss their faith-filtered scientific opinions on the multiverse question while mocking the positions held by creation scientists.

The article equates faith in the Bible’s account of creation with faith in “comfortingly familiar childhood notions like Santa Claus, local realism, [and] the Tooth Fairy.” How curious that the scientifically supportable information in the Bible is mocked while faith in a multiverse—by definition allowed to violate any scientific laws—is respected! While multiverse notions make good fodder for sci-fi, we need to remember that the idea represents one more effort to randomize God out of the reality human beings must face in this world and the next.


News to Note, July 23, 2011 - Answers in Genesis

"faith in a multiverse—by definition allowed to violate any scientific laws—is respected!"

Bravo! Skewered him!

This deserves the Edmund Rostand-Cyrano line: "Then as I end the refrain, thrust home!"

The text I've highlighted in bold is just completely wrong. You don't even know what you're talking about, but its very amusing to me so keep going! Its always funny to see someone who thinks they can understand general relativity and quantum physics without math, but its even more funny to see someone who thinks they understand it better than those who understand the math!

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

I doubt the species who are a part of the 99.9% that ended up extinct would agree with the whole precision in nature view.

Or all the people who have died from horrible diseases for nothing. Unless God is trying to kill us with precision.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Your side can't even agree on this.

The Case for Parallel Universes: Scientific American

3. Scientific American: “The Case for Parallel Universes”

Faith in the multiverse

The “anthropic principle”—the idea that the physical features of our world are ideally suited for life on earth—has been an annoyance to those who believe that our universe and life on earth are products of random processes. Indeed, it has been difficult to explain even the physical constants of the universe without resorting to some sort of “intelligent design” position. Multiverse to the rescue!

The notion that parallel universes exist is not a new idea. The latest versions of the multiverse concept postulate that there exist other realities in which even the physical laws which govern our universe are different. Thus, given enough time and enough realities, random processes could result in absolutely anything. And the random processes which produced “us” are just the only ones we know about.

Recent articles in Scientific American have explored various scientists’ opinions on the multiverse issue. Those that oppose the possibility must necessarily do so on the basis of the physics in this universe. Those who accept the possibility can argue from an “anything goes” position in which the only rules which exist are those they choose to imagine. Thus the multiverse would be completely untestable based on any scientific principles.

The latest Scientific American article tries to recruit the inflationary hypothesis3 espoused by big bang cosmologists to scientifically demonstrate that multiverses should exist while still allowing that the absence of evidence for their existence is equally okay. After all, enough time may not have passed, the writer reasons, for the big-bang-generated bubble which represents our universe to have bumped into other reality bubbles!

The Scientific American article concludes that those who reject the multiverse’s existence are arrogantly claiming to be omniscient or at least capable of intuitively understanding all physical realities. Then it appeals to the inflation paradigm on which current big bang cosmology depends (as if either the inflationary hypothesis or the big bang were proven facts) and uses it as scientific support for the multiverse.

The multiverse question must of necessity be a matter of faith, and not even the kind of faith held by Bible-believing creationists who are able to see that no valid indisputable scientific observations violate God’s Word. Yet reputable secular scientists are able to freely discuss their faith-filtered scientific opinions on the multiverse question while mocking the positions held by creation scientists.

The article equates faith in the Bible’s account of creation with faith in “comfortingly familiar childhood notions like Santa Claus, local realism, [and] the Tooth Fairy.” How curious that the scientifically supportable information in the Bible is mocked while faith in a multiverse—by definition allowed to violate any scientific laws—is respected! While multiverse notions make good fodder for sci-fi, we need to remember that the idea represents one more effort to randomize God out of the reality human beings must face in this world and the next.


News to Note, July 23, 2011 - Answers in Genesis

"faith in a multiverse—by definition allowed to violate any scientific laws—is respected!"

Bravo! Skewered him!

This deserves the Edmund Rostand-Cyrano line: "Then as I end the refrain, thrust home!"

The text I've highlighted in bold is just completely wrong. You don't even know what you're talking about, but its very amusing to me so keep going! Its always funny to see someone who thinks they can understand general relativity and quantum physics without math, but its even more funny to see someone who thinks they understand it better than those who understand the math!

The cover-up is always worse than the crime...
...your crime, ignorance....

1. Alan Lightman (born November 28, 1948 in Memphis, Tennessee) is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the humanities.
Alan Lightman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. The accidental universe:
Science's crisis of faith
By Alan P. Lightman
The accidental universe: Science's crisis of faith?By Alan P. Lightman (Harper's Magazine)

3. In the article, Lightman explains the concept so that even a fraud such as yourself will find it difficult to obfuscate...

"Theoretical physicists, on the other hand, are not satisfied with observing the universe. They want to know why. They want to explain all the properties of the universe in terms of a few fundamental principles and parameters. These fundamental principles, in turn, lead to the “laws of nature,” which govern the behavior of all matter and energy.

….If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles—to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true.

Because there is no way they can prove this conjecture. That same uncertainty disturbs many physicists who are adjusting to the idea of the multiverse. Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove. Sound familiar? Theologians are accustomed to taking some beliefs on faith. Scientists are not. All we can do is hope that the same theories that predict the multiverse also produce many other predictions that we can test here in our own universe. But the other universes themselves will almost certainly remain a conjecture."


So....not only are you a fraud and a dunce....

...but this: 'The text I've highlighted in bold is just completely wrong. You don't even know what you're talking about,....'

...pretty much defines you.


Again: "to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile,..."
Did you understand that???

Multiverse?? Then 'to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile'!


Does that neon light flashing IDIOT over your head keep you awake at night?

 

[code1211]

The same people in this thread arguing that precision in the natural world is not proof of an intelligent designer will readily admit that it requires an intelligent, well trained technician to build a working computer.

It also requires an intelligent person to create a workable club, crude stone hatchet, or simple digging-stick. It is not the complexity or the precision of the computer that makes it something that requires an intelligent designer, but simply the fact that it is a tool, in a category of things that we know ARE the product of intelligent designers. Something equally precise and elegant can (and does) emerge from nature without a conscious designer at all; specifically a computer could not -- or, more accurately, DOES not -- because there is no process in nature that leads to this outcome. (Well, other than the process of evolving the intelligence that in turn creates the computer, of course.)

Where did intelligence originate from ?

One might ask the same question about the intelligence behind intelligent design.

 

[code1211]

With mysticism, it's all about "argument".

With evolution, it's all about "evidence".

See how that works out?

Wrong there is more evidence of purposeful design then purposeful accidents.

Recognizing a pattern does not demand that intelligence designed that pattern.

The sand on a beach often has a beautiful design left by the lapping waves. Those waves are neither intelligent nor are they purposeful. They just do what they do because that is all they can do.

Such is nature. capable of both beauty and terrible destruction. The bee has no other option than to spread pollen. The flower has no other option than to yield its treasure to the bee. Neither is intelligent nor purposeful in what they do beyond the instinctive actions they perform.

We may recognize that to the bee the flower is the well of life and to the flower, the bee is the messenger of love. That may be true, but not to the flower or to the bee. They are merely parts of the whole and function as they do because they do.

 

[Dragon]

It's not at all hard to answer where intelligence came from. Intelligence in the form of trial and error is a very simple process, built into the very nature of life. Specialized nerve cells for carrying information is something that emerged not long after the first multi-celled organisms. Use of similar tissues, with a modified carrying-information function, is used to remember former trial-and-error experiments so they don't have to be repeated. A step or two further and it becomes possible to extrapolate from one trial to a similar trial. And so on. Intelligence becomes difficult to understand only if you try to imagine it all coming about at once in a single step. That's not how it happened.

 

[Youwerecreated]

I doubt the species who are a part of the 99.9% that ended up extinct would agree with the whole precision in nature view.

Doc do you consider this world we live in now to be like the one adam and eve experienced in eden ? you have your answer but to be willfully blind to the precision in nature is to be an Ideologue.

 

[Youwerecreated]

So where did life originate?

In the ocean most likely.

How the first transition was made between non-living organic molecules and the earliest living things is not really known, but the process may not have been random and was certainly not altogether random even if it included random components.

Uh oh you have a problem here ,amino acids could not form in water, now what ?

Then when you are finished with that problem they could not form with free oxygen, now what ?

You are getting in over your head.

 

[Youwerecreated]

In the ocean most likely.

How the first transition was made between non-living organic molecules and the earliest living things is not really known, but the process may not have been random and was certainly not altogether random even if it included random components.

So, if it wasn't random or spontaneous, or designed, then what was it?

I obviously can't answer that in detail, because it's not known, but here's how it MIGHT have happened, in general terms.

Start with a very hot, lifeless planet, with more or less the current chemical composition (as far as elements are concerned -- compounds would be different because of temperature differences and because there was no life).

Over time, it cools enough that water vapor precipitates and forms the oceans. Water dissolves certain chemicals and, with energy provided by sunlight and perhaps some other sources, chemical reactions involving nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen compounds form "organic" compounds. (Speaking chemically -- obviously they're not "organic" in terms of source, that is, not from living things. At this point there are no living things.)

An important step here is the formation of amino acids. It's been proven in the laboratory that these compounds can form from non-living processes. Another crucial step, and this has also been laboratory demonstrated, is the formation of nucleotides, which are the building-block molecules of nucleic acids, as amino acids are of proteins. So we can easily understand how both amino acids and nucleotides come to be in the absence of actual life; these are precursor chemicals to life.

The most popular hypothesis these days for how life began, and note that this part has definitely not been proven, it's just a speculative idea to play with and try to find evidence for or against, involves RNA providing a reproductive-information function rather than DNA which does the job in all living things today. (Or all that I know about. RNA still has an important function in transmitting DNA instructions to proteins) The emergence of a molecule capable of transmitting information and so of replicating itself, which RNA can do, would fit the main part of the definition of life. Once that happened, it would begin replicating, and any mutations that occurred would begin the process of evolution, along with natural selection to guide the process.

Exactly how this occurred is not known, but it would not necessarily have been a "random" process at any point before the occurrence of the first mutation, except maybe in terms of precisely what characteristics the first RNA molecules would have exhibited. (It's likely there would have been more than one.) And even if that was itself random, it would have built on a whole sequence of events that were not, creating the circumstances in which life could begin.

 

[Youwerecreated]

It also requires an intelligent person to create a workable club, crude stone hatchet, or simple digging-stick. It is not the complexity or the precision of the computer that makes it something that requires an intelligent designer, but simply the fact that it is a tool, in a category of things that we know ARE the product of intelligent designers. Something equally precise and elegant can (and does) emerge from nature without a conscious designer at all; specifically a computer could not -- or, more accurately, DOES not -- because there is no process in nature that leads to this outcome. (Well, other than the process of evolving the intelligence that in turn creates the computer, of course.)

Where did intelligence originate from ?

One might ask the same question about the intelligence behind intelligent design.

God of course he has always existed.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I doubt the species who are a part of the 99.9% that ended up extinct would agree with the whole precision in nature view.

Or all the people who have died from horrible diseases for nothing. Unless God is trying to kill us with precision.

Death is just a part of life. Everyone and everything eventually dies, so dont get your panties in a wad.