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25th January 2013, 03:35 PM | #3321 |
The Infinitely Prolonged
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I don't think that contradicts anything I stated.
I realize DNA originated from biochemical processes, currently being ironed out by abiogenesis scientists. I was making a point that the reason DNA looks like "information" (in the language or code sense) is because Natural Seleciton worked out sequencecs that generally work... And innate human biases make us believe anything that works that well must have been intelligently designed that way. Only through more careful examination* do we find that intelligence was not required, at all. (*That is: An examination more careful than any creationist is willing to go.) When did I say we need a designer? |
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25th January 2013, 04:14 PM | #3322 |
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Alright then. Let's try this again. Your argument was nothing but rhetoric. Specifically, though, the "absolute nothingness" in question was defined in such a way as to remove even the potential of anything coming from it (and thus, if something did come of a nothing, it wouldn't be what he had been talking about, by definition), because last time, it was demonstrated that something can come from "nothing" as it exists for us. It's a self defeating position, really, for what he's trying to support, but not all criticisms are valid, regardless.
EDIT: Either way, since I'm still waking up, I failed to point out that, to put things in somewhat mathematical terms, 0 = 0+0+0+0+0+0+0+... Your argument pretty much relied upon a concept that isn't quite true about nothing. Adding an infinite number of absolute nothings is still absolute nothing, with nothing actually added, and thus, talking about nothing being produced is not actually saying that anything was produced. |
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So sayeth the crazy little dragon. |
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25th January 2013, 06:59 PM | #3323 |
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25th January 2013, 07:02 PM | #3324 |
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25th January 2013, 07:13 PM | #3325 |
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Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my hard drive? ...love and buttercakes... |
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25th January 2013, 07:19 PM | #3326 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Can't you just ask your god to show forth his incredible love and power to each of us individually, insuch a way that we will all be amazed and turn from our disbelief and become believers?
Isn't that what your god wants? Then we can all proclaim what happened so we can verify the truthfulness of it all. Does your god love his creations or does he wish to destroy them? |
25th January 2013, 07:31 PM | #3327 |
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Once again, you don't realize what you are saying.
Brain-m was correct in saying that the junk DNA doesn't code for any genes. The junk DNA does contain elements that happen to alter the coding. These fragments goof with gene expression in weird ways. As your article says...
Quote:
Now, how do you explain epigenetics and its rather huge impact on gene expression? Take your time with an answer. I'll wait for you to google it. |
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25th January 2013, 07:49 PM | #3328 |
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you don't know what you are talking about.
http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/dn...ists/dna-code/
Quote:
Quote:
http://elshamah.heavenforum.org/t287...-for-a-creator
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25th January 2013, 07:52 PM | #3329 |
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No. Its not the watchmaker argument. Its a new argument, based on the fact that complex information is storen in the cell. That demands for a explanation. No other answer is reasonable, than to admit a intelligent mind must have created this information. Chance or physical necessity cannot produce such information .
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25th January 2013, 07:55 PM | #3330 |
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25th January 2013, 08:06 PM | #3331 |
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Amazing, then, that he didn't even imply otherwise? Is there supposed to be a point here? Maybe that you somehow think that he was claiming that DNA and cells appeared magically in their modern forms, despite the evidence that he wasn't saying that at all?
The evidence, so far, suggests that you don't really understand what you're talking about. This, too. It's a straw man. One that's been addressed over and over and over. That you keep trying to use the "random" argument is a sign of your dishonesty, arrogance, and failure to account for your audience. You will not convince anyone with such tactics that was not already convinced and the demonstrable vacuousness of your case may well cause others to see it for what it is. Empty rhetoric. |
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So sayeth the crazy little dragon. |
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25th January 2013, 08:22 PM | #3332 |
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Define physical necessity? Something similar to the strong anthropic principle, maybe? Either way, you're using chance as random chance, so your last statement can be dismissed as irrelevant, because it doesn't deal with what is actually being held up as reasonable by the opposing side.
Either way, we are at something of an impasse, as you've specifically stated that you refuse to honestly consider alternatives to your belief. Given the evidence that we've seen and the natural processes that we've continued to gain better understandings about, we find it to be completely reasonable to say that it is completely reasonable that no intelligence was involved at all, just going on a mechanical basis. Furthermore, once we get into the philosophical and logical realms, the arguments that there must have been an intelligent creator fall to pieces on examination. Thus, your assertion is not trustworthy at all to us. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen the way you think it did, but it does mean that your arguments and assertions are deeply flawed, and thus, unconvincing. |
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So sayeth the crazy little dragon. |
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25th January 2013, 08:40 PM | #3333 |
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The article mentions 4 million of these "switches" in human DNA, but you have to remember that these 4 million "switches" are tucked away within 3.2 billion base pairs ("letters").
Plus the "switches" don't actually encode for anything, just control which parts of the encoding (non-"junk") DNA gets used. |
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25th January 2013, 08:51 PM | #3334 |
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Not true. Mutation and natural selection can be shown to both generate new information in the lab and to account for the information already present in the many species currently on Earth. In fact, the interrelationship of DNA sequences between species was predicted by evolutionary theory long before DNA itself was even identified. That is the core of science- it generates hypotheses that make predictions; correct predictions reinforce the validity of the hypotheses, whereas incorrect ones lead to changes in the hypotheses. Evolutionary theory correctly predicted the DNA observations made over one hundred years later.
You seem to like the book analogy for DNA. Okay, what if you found a book with a word crossed out and replaced with another word that changes the meaning of the passage. Wouldn't you, by your analogy, assume an intelligence had made the change? Do you see where I am going, or should I complete my analogy? |
25th January 2013, 09:18 PM | #3335 |
Penultimate Amazing
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How come you just skipped over my questions in post #3326?
Here is a reminder: Can't you just ask your god to show forth his incredible love and power to each of us individually, insuch a way that we will all be amazed and turn from our disbelief and become believers? Isn't that what your god wants? Then we can all proclaim what happened so we can verify the truthfulness of it all. Does your god love his creations or does he wish to destroy them? |
25th January 2013, 10:03 PM | #3336 |
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Using the word "code" to describe DNA does not enable us to discover where it came from. Period.
The "best" you can say is "God did it!", but can't go into any details of how, when, where, or why, etc. Nothing can be gained from such a description, if one's goals is to discover more about the origins of DNA. Using "replicating molecule" to describe DNA does lead us into experiments that can show us where it came from! And, we can thus figure out how it came about without any intelligent intervention. I could go on with a point-by-point refutation of the article. But, I think I covered the gist of my point. But, here are some brief responses:
Quote:
Scientists seeking to make new discoveries about DNA are generally NOT using the word "code" to describe it, anymore, except in the popular press. Oh, and informatics people (database developers) will also often think of DNA as code, but it's their job to think of EVERYTHING as storable code. It's not their jobs to make the new discoveries about its origins.
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If you use the word "code" or "language" to describe DNA, none of those things would follow from the analogy.
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Cloud formation can be understood with Shannon's model. Does that mean pictures in the clouds really are supposed to be pictures?! DNA is NOT "by definition" a code, at all! By definition, it is a molecule. A molecule that replicates in an imperfect manner. |
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25th January 2013, 10:27 PM | #3337 |
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To be fair, I don't think your "98% meaningless gibberish" statement was very accurate. DNA is certainly not efficient. One could encode an entire human with much, much less data.
But, just because the medium is inefficient, doesn't mean it's "gibberish". For an analogy: I could use 4 million lines of code to make a simple bubble-sort algorithm. Sure, one could do it with much fewer lines. But, if each of those 4 million lines contributed to the overall algorithm, even if it was in a rather Rube Goldberg-ish manner, all that code would not be "meaningless gibberish". It would just be an inefficiently coded algorithm. For DNA, there is no expectation that its code be efficient, since it is an imperfectly replicating molecule, subject to the whims of selection pressures, and limited by the heritage of its ancestors. That is the more important point to get across. |
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25th January 2013, 10:30 PM | #3338 |
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It is indeed the watchmaker argument. It became so the instant you inserted the alleged necessity for an intelligent designer.
The explanation is that a stable pattern of self-replicating organic molecules will tend to "grow" the same or similar organisms. It isn't the other way around. The human genome almost certainly did not intend in advance to grow humans with 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 nose, 1 mouth, etcetera; that's just what the recipe happens to produce.
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26th January 2013, 01:07 AM | #3339 |
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[
Gibhor, other posters more knowledgeable than I am have tried to explain how the ''information'' in DNA developed through entirely naturalistic means. Perhaps a layman's perspective could convince you. At least I hope to plant a small doubt about yor opinion and inspire you to get better information. The link I'm posting is a good place to start.
Some, but not all, of DNA's nucleotides ''codify'' for sequences of amino acids and thus proteins. Many of these proteins are enzymes (catalysts). These enzymes catalyze biochemical reactions that optimize an organism's functions and thus increase the organism's chance of survival. In reproduction, the DNA is copied almost always faithfully and passed on to the new cell or new living being. Ocassionally there are copying errors and the ''information'' is transferred slightly changed. The alteration could be of no consequence, it remains in the DNA. It could be harmful, decreasing the new organism's opportunities for survival, and probably absent in future generations. Or it could be beneficial, giving the new living being an advantage over its competitors and preferentially passed on to future generations. The end result would be a set of ''information'' that developed by entirely natural means and is mostly beneficial to the carrier. http://www.mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-l...tak-SA2009.pdf The link is for an article in Scientific American 2009. Very easy to read. It explores one of the possible explanations for the origin of RNA (precursor to DNA) Perhaps it can satisfy your demands. Probably old, boring and brainless, but very true. ETA: The link isn't working . Google ''The origin of life on earth.'' It should come as the top result. The article is worth the effort. |
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26th January 2013, 01:14 AM | #3340 |
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No, there is nothing of that kind missing in what I said. Why do you think there is something missing? To spell it out (again) - the "evidence" discovered through science, is fully explained (in great detail) as arising from what you are calling "natural" processes. Eg, from processes such as simple chemical & physical reactions. There is no dispute about that (except in the fantasy world of uneducated religious creationists). The explanations are perfectly and entirely "natural" in all cases. Ie, no invisible miracle gods involved. Incidentally, you are evading the question (you were asked) of whether you fail to understand how science has explained millions of things (almost everything anyone could ever think of) by entirely “natural” (god-less, miracle-free) answers … … and those scientific answers have not only been tested in great detail many millions of times over, but they have also been fully explained by theoreticians telling us with mathematical precision how and why the underlying maths shows that the scientific answers are correct. |
26th January 2013, 01:20 AM | #3341 |
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26th January 2013, 06:40 AM | #3342 |
Penultimate Amazing
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Quote:
Author of Expanding Space: the Root of all Evil? http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.0380
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The quote you cite is not about fine tuning at all, their statements are hilarious. Fine tuning is about the parameters of the constants as they exist, not about saying, 'what if electrons were bosons'? Your quote has nothing to do with the fine tuning argument at all. How many values for the mass of the electron X are possible between mass of electron > X < twice the mass of the electron? The one thing we can tell is that you GIBHOR have no comprehension of what the fine tuning argument is and you just copy and paste. |
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I suspect you are a sandwich, metaphorically speaking. -Donn And a shot rang out. Now Space is doing time... -Ben Burch You built the toilet - don't complain when people crap in it. _Kid Eager Never underestimate the power of the Random Number God. More of evolutionary history is His doing than people think. - Dinwar |
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26th January 2013, 06:47 AM | #3343 |
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I suspect you are a sandwich, metaphorically speaking. -Donn And a shot rang out. Now Space is doing time... -Ben Burch You built the toilet - don't complain when people crap in it. _Kid Eager Never underestimate the power of the Random Number God. More of evolutionary history is His doing than people think. - Dinwar |
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26th January 2013, 06:52 AM | #3344 |
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please answer some questions :
http://www.sciencepointstogod.com/re...%20Version.pdf Do accidents ever: • produce laws that govern development? • produce complex things from simple things? Do accidents ever: • develop precise parameters that work with complex laws to govern their own results? • cause anything to be fine-tuned? Do accidents ever: • cause anything to develop with exquisite precision? • develop highly-improbable events and inter-related conditions that produce cooperative ventures? Do accidents ever: • produce complex and highly cooperative ventures? • develop structures and organize functions that our most brilliant scientists cannot replicate? Do accidents ever: • harness and control the laws of physics? • organize complex systems? Do accidents ever: • produce language-based information systems? • produce smart information that not only knows how to do things but then proceeds to actually do those things? Do accidents ever: • result in simple things assembling themselves into complex things? • result in the creation of intricate and elegant systems of energy production, recycling and use? • solve complicated problems, like how to prevent a living organism from spontaneously burning up? Do accidents ever: • create mechanisms that reverse natural physical laws? • produce intricate and sophisticated electrical grids necessary to power data processing information systems? |
26th January 2013, 07:17 AM | #3345 |
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Depends on what you mean by "accident". We can demonstrate on computer simulations, that each and every one of those bullet points can come about through algorithms that match natural processes, without any intelligent intervention driving their direction. ALL OF THEM.
If by "accident" you mean "completely random chance", then no. We wouldn't expect most of those points to come about from completely random chance. But, no naturalist, here, assumes random chance had anything much to do with life or the Universe. Random chance is antithetical to the naturalist who examines natural processes that are not random. |
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26th January 2013, 07:42 AM | #3346 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One of the problems with this thread, I think, is that too many of your references seem to have this false dichotomy. Either something MUST be designed OR it MUST be random accident.
To help illustrate why this is wrong, I decided to put together this little chart that answers your questions. (IanS: I hope you don't mind, since this was supposed to be targeted at you.)
Does that help illustrate the points we are making better? |
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26th January 2013, 08:04 AM | #3347 |
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This will end well, won't it?
Unknown. As in, you honestly don't know, either, and nor does the person who's asking. Either way, the bias here is blatantly obvious from the start by the very way that the question's being asked. Define complex versus simple? The results of a car accident can be pretty a pretty complex thing compared to a car, as an easy example. Emergent processes, in general, though, work just fine as examples of what the questioner is trying to imply doesn't happen. See first answer. Either way, the complex laws referred to would likely be reasonably described as emergent properties of relatively simple base forces. You have yet to give any real evidence that fine-tuning is the case that isn't amply countered by understanding the weak anthropic principle, alone, much less all the rest of the refutations, despite your efforts. Hence, asking this is somewhat stupid, even superficially. This is actually dealt with with the previous answers. Either way, how is one defining the exquisite precision? By simply assuming that things could only be the way they are? By positing determinism? By attempting to apply somewhat flawed and convoluted logic? By begging the question? Highly improbable events happen all the time. Every day. Every minute. Every second. Nothing particularly remarkable about that, there's just a LOT of highly improbable events that could potentially happen. A very simple way to demonstrate it is to take a deck of cards, shuffle them, then deal the deck out. The probability that the cards will end up in that EXACT order is incredibly low to the point that most of the people making that argument would call it impossible, but yet they did. Even more interesting than that is that it is utterly and completely mundane and assertions of the necessary of supernatural involvement in the cards can be rightfully ridiculed. That's when there's less than 60 parts and the math is remarkably simple. Now, to put this in perspective, that's a pittance. A quick look found me this link.
Quote:
Hey, look, repeating questions. That's totally not something I've see before from massive conspiracy-level arguments. Either way, this has been dealt with in previous answers. Don't you know? Flight is for birds. Humans will never fly. It cannot be done! Seriously, this type of argument has been shown to be moronic so many times that it's honestly not funny. But hey, looky here! That we even know about those structures and functions is evidence for the usefulness of methodological naturalism! Theology had plenty of time to figure these things out, and yet it didn't. No gods provided this information through revelation, either, by the looks of it. Totally not a leading question. Really. Maybe this is directed at the more spiritual atheists, though? In particular, ones who posit that the laws of physics can be *controlled?* Harnessing, well, methodological naturalism has found ways to harness a lot of forces usefully that theology didn't even try to harness, if it even knew they existed. Two words. Emergent systems. As good as answered already. Heh. Sounds like there's conflation going on here. Either way, this is so non-specific that one can say humans are examples of this. To be clear, I'm fairly sure that most here have absolutely no issue with the concept that humans could arise solely from naturalistic processes, as an example, and you have yet to give decent reason why humans, much less their constituent parts, couldn't have done so. Emergent systems. Either way, this is deeply flawed, possibly largely because of its extreme vagueness. At the level that's actually being dealt with? It's been shown that it's reasonable that these can arise naturally, posturing aside. Within limits, of course. The death toll tends to be exceedingly high, but that's of little concern when morality doesn't apply. Feel free to give actual examples of this in current scientific literature? Sounds like nothing but rhetoric to me, as it stands. So, you're really supporting asking this? Seriously? Well, luckily it's the last one, because calling our power grids an "accident" is an incredible insult to so very, very many people, on top of being a straw man. Either way, seriously, understand what you're asking, first. You just end up looking foolish, arrogant, ignorant, and dishonest when you use the tactics that you've been using. EDIT: Also, thank you Wowbagger, even if you did beat me. I think that I failed to specifically explain parts that you covered, so... good job, even if saying yes to controlling the laws of physics is something that I quite disagree that natural algorithms can do. That looks like it was put there as a cheap rhetorical trick, though, to imply that it actually happens, like the reversing laws of physics bit. Sneaking a deity in through the backdoor, as it may be. |
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26th January 2013, 08:06 AM | #3348 |
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What does ''cosmic fluid'' mean? Tippex? Chivas Regal?
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26th January 2013, 08:19 AM | #3349 |
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26th January 2013, 08:33 AM | #3350 |
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26th January 2013, 08:57 AM | #3351 |
Meandering fecklessly
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26th January 2013, 09:49 AM | #3352 |
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26th January 2013, 10:09 AM | #3353 |
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Why are you asking about accidents? And why are you quoting something called "SciencePointsToGod"? Do you really think people and animals (etc) "stick" to the surface of the Earth by "accident"? Perhaps you think people stick to the earth by an inexplicable "miracle"? How do you think planes can be designed to remain flying in the air? Do you think planes rise into the air because God commands them to do that via an unexplained miracle? Can you name anything that has been proved to happen by a “miracle”. Where is your God? Where is he living? What does he look like? |
26th January 2013, 10:21 AM | #3354 |
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The most important one to understand is the evolutionary algorithm, and its variations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm These aim to closely matches the process that takes place in real life:
Running many, many, many generations of instructions like that CAN yield fantastically complex systems! Even "irreducibly complex" ones! Systems that, for example: produce otherwise highly improbable cooperative ventures, with exquisite precision, that control energy production, recycling and usage, without burning the whole system up... just to name a few things it can do. We have computers that can demonstrate that, which we can then use to predict new findings in the wild. (For example: Expected parasite behaviors.) That element of prediction helps us know the algorithms are fairly accurate, even if they are approximate. There are a few others worth mentioning, that sometimes work in conjunction with those. They mostly covered in here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_computing See also Networking Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory A lot of natural systems tend to form into "hubs and satelites", so-to-speak. (There are some who are claiming Natural Selection is a special case of a larger, grander idea related to networking theory. But, that actual theory has yet to be developed. At least we learn new ways in which biological entities can form, in the process of investigating this sort of thing, even if it turns out not to be as "grand" as thought. That makes it more productive than creationism, at least.) Conway's Game of Life is not, exactly, an algorithm that matches natural processes. We don't live in a 2 dimensional grid. What this DOES show us is that it is POSSIBLE for complex behaviors to emerge out of very, very simple rules. And, that's worth knowing! It just does it in a way that doesn't match natural rules very well. |
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26th January 2013, 11:04 AM | #3355 |
Penultimate Amazing
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How come you keep skipping over my questions in post #3326 & #3335?
Here is a reminder: Can't you just ask your god to show forth his incredible love and power to each of us individually, insuch a way that we will all be amazed and turn from our disbelief and become believers? Isn't that what your god wants? Then we can all proclaim what happened so we can verify the truthfulness of it all. Does your god love his creations or does he wish to destroy them? |
26th January 2013, 11:49 AM | #3356 |
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Wolfram's "NKS" work goes much deeper into this discovery. Systems with not only simple rules but also simple starting conditions can still have very complex behaviors. And such systems do not have to be "designed;" they are scattered among the simplest possible causal (rule-based) systems, and can be found by searching or by waiting for one to arise. It is even possible (though not yet proven) that just three masses orbiting in space are capable of arbitrarily complex behavior and universal computation. Respectfully, Myriad |
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26th January 2013, 12:35 PM | #3357 |
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26th January 2013, 12:40 PM | #3358 |
The Infinitely Prolonged
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WARNING: Phrases in this post may sound meaner than they were intended to be. SkeptiCamp NYC: http://www.skepticampnyc.org/ An open conference on science and skepticism, where you could be a presenter! By the way, my first name is NOT Bowerick!!!! |
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26th January 2013, 02:45 PM | #3359 |
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26th January 2013, 05:05 PM | #3360 |
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The main problem with the fine-tuning argument is the underlying assumption that our existence is an intentional outcome, an assumption that's based on a belief that the universe was created by an intelligent creator. So using the fine-tuning argument is really little more than than a mixture of circular logic and argument from incredulity.
It's like a lottery winner saying... Think of all the variables that had to be perfectly aligned for the exact balls I picked to have come out of the machine. If the balls hadn't been put in the machine in the same order they went in, then different balls would have come out. If the air pressure had been slightly different, this would have affected the movement of the balls and different balls would have come out. If the machine had run for a single millisecond longer or sooner before drawing each ball, different balls would have come out. If the smoothness of the balls were different, this would have affected their movement and different balls would have come out. If the machine was operated at a different speed [...] [and so on] The chances of all these things being exactly as they were is less than one in a quintillion, far too unlikely to have come about by chance. Therefore some divine entity must have intervened to make the balls come out as they did. |
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