I just bought a book, The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore, with a foreword by my cognitive sciences prophet and zoologist, Richard Dawkins. I hadn't realized that it was way back in 1976 that he coined the term, "meme", in his book, The Selfish Gene. I've read most of it and River out of Eden, and they were truly mind-blamming, informing me of the power and significance of information. Information is one of the things that is everything.

This is some of what I got out of them:

My particular flavor of feeling small and insignificant beneath the stars:

From what I understand of chaos theory and about matter and energy, the origin of life is a glorious accident of crooked energy flow. As we all know, light travels in a straight line at, well, the speed of light, which is extremely fast. If the universe after its creation had contained just radiant energy, and not matter, life would have had to take a very different form, if it would have been possible at all.

But the universe did and does contain matter. More importantly, fluids. Because fluids flow, and glooze around, they are better at letting energy in and holding it for awhile. The matter slows the energy down, buying life time to find an opportunity to exist. Even then, it seems that life has a hard road ahead to find its way. But some scientists say that with the conditions that happened to crop up here on earth, the destiny for life changed from sketchy to near inevitable. How it works is this: Energy sent by the sun lands on the planet. It is basically going to reflect back out into space again, or, for some of it, more accurately, reradiate, but because it spends some time on the surface, it can power life. After all, life doesn't need to keep any energy. It just needs to keep reborrowing new energy.

Imagine a river full of water flowing perfectly, steadily, and unobstructed until it hits a branch sticking up. That is the flow of energy becoming life. The branch is the first condition that came together to create life. The turbulence behind the branch is life itself. The reason for the parallel is that the turbulence doesn't just disappear within, say, 2 inches downstream of the branch. To the contrary, it forms an ever widening V the further you go downstream. At some point the V will be wide enough to reach both banks, and the turbulence, the V, life, will occupy the entire opportunity of the river.

Sunlight enters an ancient ocean. Ocean is key, because fluids help greatly in this process of energy slowing. Eventually every photon of the incoming sunlight strikes something in the ocean that it can warm or reflect off of. If it warms something, it can cause it to rise and or react with some other molecule. And the fact that the energy doesn't just bounce away from an unmoving solid is what creates countless fractions of an opportunity for a complex chemical to form, and take a first step toward life. And once life gets underway, it is quite self-sustaining, by definition. It replicates itself, making the "turbulence" continue.

At some point several billion years ago, a self-replicating molecule formed and made copies of itself, quickly expanding its range from one microscopic point to most of the world's oceans. I forget whether it is theorized to have taken a matter of weeks, months, or a year or two. But quite suddenly, there was a replicating medium for unimagineable genetic diversity to begin being written on. Anytime the "food", or raw material molecules, came in contact with a replicator, they too would accrete into replicators. Soon, some replicators changed slightly (the first mutation) and were good at replicating at some sort of different condition - different temperature, or different sea choppiness, or different surrounding catalysts, or something like that. The first adaptation, and the first niche. Eventually, some replicator strain was able to actually break apart an old strain of replicator and use its raw materials, which is useful, since the raw stuff is now rarer in a pseudo-information saturated ocean. The first predator.

Noone knows, of course, the exact timeline of all those firsts, but it's exciting to think of the secret miracle brewing on the surface all those billions of years ago. Someone flying by in orbit wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the before picture versus after replicator saturation. Possibly there would be a slight change in aroma at the surface. The change would be like driving from New York into Pennsylvania. You can't feel it, but crossing that border puts you in a whole different legal environment - different laws, different cultural hierarchy, different icons and memes.

Slightly.

Because as we well know, New York life really just smoothly blends into Pennsylvania life near the southern tier, near the tri-city area. The borders actually just try to put an arbitrary discrete division in a place that is otherwise a continuous blend. But that is another essay, and besides - NY and PA are like Mac and Crispin apples. We need an analogy that is like apples and oranges, or better yet, like apples and tennis balls, or like apples and geodes. Or like surf and spilled seltzer. Because that billions-ago change possibly remains the best example ever of something looking identical and yet being absolutely racked by a change so radical, rare, complex, and even unique. A better analogy might be crossing the border from 1300 Manitoba into 2050 Minnesota, in a cross-border area that is still wooded.

If the earth had happened to be like the moon: far from fluid, dusty at best, as reflective as bathroom tile, life 'as we know it' could not have come to pass here. But what about life as we don't know it? We're used to Star Trek spinoff species - commonly humanoid, and at least being composed of recognizeable flesh, even if in a different body shape. But what about other possible whole media for life? What if life could exist in a way so irrelevant to our space that we can go about our business completely unaware of it even as it moves through our houses and bodies? Or what if it shares our space and needs us to leave it its territory, but we might miss it for its different context or scale or timescale? For instance, what if life existed as turbulence within flame? Or what if life existed on an extremely slow scale in rock as a geologic modulation? To look for these things, scientists have to look for universal, all-encompassing signs of life, not just the humdrum characteristics of earth-like planets. They can't just look for a planet-sized chia kit, but rather the subtle clues that some type of information is present. That life is trying to communicate, reproduce, or has its body there. For all we know, life could actually be quite common in some other context, and could exist right here on earth unbeknownst to us. It could exist in the molten iron of the earth's core, and many other planets whose cores are also molten. Don't worry, scientists aren't fooled by a core that is merely moving with chaotic convection. There has to be some type of detectable order folded into it, beyond the default predictability of physics.

Life is a product of bought time, on a finance plan from chaos. Heat dawdled through saltwater instead of bouncing on-and-off in a fraction of a second. It is akin to wind being swirled by the resistance of a flag, or the licking, swirling flames of a fire. Nature doesn't care about a perfect drawing board efficiency of geometric flow. And thank "God". There is opportunity in chaos, and that is how we are here.

Some of what you said makes complete sense, others would cause Stephen Hawking to die of laughter. You say "if the Earth were like the moon", well if it were, we simply wouldn't be around to ask why the Earth is not the moon. Circumstance is all it was. And there is no water or atmosphere on the moon, life could not have ever evolved there.

Pure speculation...

All experiments trying to prove this failed.

Furthermore, what is the mechanism with which the energy of the sun is used to create life in the first place? The energy from the sun by default is destructive, causing things to melt, vaporize, or wither, unless a complex mechanism is in place so that this energy is put to use: say, converted into another form of energy through the process of photosynthesis. There is no explanation for the development of your "self-replicating molecule." Life is too specifically complex to be bought with just time and energy, and, in the words of Dr. William Dembski, "cannot be purchased without intelligence."

To Borghunter:

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Why would he die of laughter? I'm just mentioning a hypothetical, if conditions on earth, by some chaotic whim of interplanetary physics, had not accrued an atmosphere, but instead had stayed solid-only and moonlike, simply using the moon as an example. I agree it is all circumstance.

To psamtik071:

Experiments trying to prove what? I'm thinking you're referring to the "primordial soup" model. If so, no experiments will ever prove that life arose from it. Experiments can eventually prove that it is a possible cause, and increase the liklihood of it as a model, and the compelling strength of that liklihood. All experiments fail to prove anything, by the laws of philosophy. They just show a widening path of pattern. Also, the study of this primordial soup is in its infancy. We've had a few decades of sketchy funding to do it, whereas the early planet had billions of years with nothing better to do.

The energy from the sun is the energy used by all life on earth. Now, by that, I mean that it has been converted before being used by life. The ultraviolet radiation from the sun is indeed damaging to much current life. But the first replicators, it is theorized, used sunlight, and/or possible electrical charge (more indirect sunlight) to fuel chemical reactions that formed them.

And actually, there is an explanation in I forget which of Dawkins' 2 books I mentioned, but he makes it compellingly and quite clearly, which is a real treat when it comes to science writing. It is another matter whether you agree with the validity of his proposal, and I'll be happy to discuss it.

The energy from the sun is the energy used by all life on earth. Now, by that, I mean that it has been converted before being used by life. The ultraviolet radiation from the sun is indeed damaging to much current life. But the first replicators, it is theorized, used sunlight, and/or possible electrical charge (more indirect sunlight) to fuel chemical reactions that formed them.

You are dodging my question. I asked, where is the mechanism through which the sun's energy is converted? For instance, a car needs an engine, a transmission system, and related control mechanisms to convert the energy in oil to work. Without such an energy conversion system, the car will not be able to use the energy stored in oil. The same thing applies in the case of life as well. It is true that life derives its energy from the sun. However, solar energy can only be converted into chemical energy by the incredibly complex energy conversion systems in living things (such as photosynthesis in plants and the digestive systems of humans and animals). Without an energy conversion system, the sun is nothing but a source of destructive energy that burns, parches, or melts.

With repect to the cell, if we add together the probabilities that amino acids are laid out correctly, that they are all left-handed, and that they all are joined by peptide links, then we come face to face with the astronomical figure of 1 in 10^950 (that's a 1 followed by 950 zeroes). This is a probability only on paper. Practically speaking, there is zero chance of its actually happening. In mathematics, a probability smaller than 1 in 10^50 is statistically considered to have a "zero" probability of occurring. Even if we suppose that amino acids have combined and decomposed by a "trial and error" method, without losing any time since the formation of the earth, in order to form a single protein molecule, the time that would be required for something with a probability of 10^950 to happen would still hugely exceed the estimated age of the earth. And this is just forone protein.

Even your pet scientist Richard Dawkins admits this, but he maintains his position with a thin argument using the anthropic principle:

So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year. If it did happen on only one planet, anywhere in the universe, that planet has to be our planet-because here we are talking about it.

He also says that "if we are here, then that means that evolution happened." This is circular reasoning! This admission by one of evolution's foremost authorities clearly reflects the logical muddle the theory of evolution is built on. The above statements in Dawkins's book Climbing Mount Improbable (maybe that's the book you're thinking about) are a striking example of circular reasoning which actually explains nothing. Even the most prominent of the proponents of evolution confess that the theory is buried in impossibility when it comes to accounting for the first stage of life. But how interesting it is that, rather than accept the complete unreality of the theory they maintain, they prefer to cling to evolution in a dogmatic manner! This is a completely ideological fixation.

I close this reply with a discussion of the second law of thermodynamics. Evolutionists' claims regarding thermodynamics are based on a classic case of error and deception. The first error consists of ignoring the difference between ordered and organized systems. Evolutionists cite the examples of mineral crystals and snowflakes, and say that these "complex structures" emerge spontaneously through natural processes. Yet these are not complex systems, but organized ones.

Imagine a completely flat beach on the seashore. When a strong wave hits the beach, mounds of sand, large and small, form bumps on the surface of the sand. This is a process of "ordering". The seashore is an open system, and the energy flow (the wave) that enters it can form simple patterns in the sand, which may look regular. From the thermodynamic point of view, the wave can set up order here where before there was none. But we must make it clear that those same waves cannot build a castle on the beach. If we see a castle there, we are in no doubt that someone has constructed it, because the castle is an "organized" system. Furthermore, the construction of crystals depends on physical necessity and is intrinsic to the mineral from which it forms.

Finally, Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen explain that "such analogies have scant relevance to the origin-of-life question. A major reason is that they fail to distinguish between order and complexity... Regularity or order cannot serve to store the large amount of information required by living systems. A highly irregular, but specified, structure is required rather than an ordered structure. This is a serious flaw in the analogy offered. There is no apparent connection between the kind of spontaneous ordering that occurs from energy flow through such systems and the work required to build aperiodic information-intensive macromolecules like DNA and protein."

The energy from the sun is the energy used by all life on earth. Now, by that, I mean that it has been converted before being used by life. The ultraviolet radiation from the sun is indeed damaging to much current life. But the first replicators, it is theorized, used sunlight, and/or possible electrical charge (more indirect sunlight) to fuel chemical reactions that formed them.
You are dodging my question. I asked, where is the mechanism through which the sun's energy is converted? For instance, a car needs an engine, a transmission system, and related control mechanisms to convert the energy in oil to work. Without such an energy conversion system, the car will not be able to use the energy stored in oil. The same thing applies in the case of life as well. It is true that life derives its energy from the sun. However, solar energy can only be converted into chemical energy by the incredibly complex energy conversion systems in living things (such as photosynthesis in plants and the digestive systems of humans and animals). Without an energy conversion system, the sun is nothing but a source of destructive energy that burns, parches, or melts.
Sure, I could not answer that question about ancient life, or the theorized first replicators, because I am not acquainted enough with organic chemistry and do not remember the specifics form the book. That is why I mentioned the loose reference. I did not bring up photosynthesis, or chemical assimilation and synthesis because they are only more recently present according to the theory. But if I had to liken (not lichen, ha-ha) the first replicators to anything we now know, based on appearance, it would be viruses in spore form. There is of course a big difference in principle, however, that's why only their appearance might be similar and only for the arguably least important part of their life. Viruses are entirely dependent on a host species, often a quite specific host species, or narrow group, and so are very limited and necessarily simple. But in spore form appearance, they are little more than a few molecules composing a shell, some replicator signal material, and an injector mechanism. I've heard that they are thought to have mutated from rogue cell organelles.

But I digress about viruses only because it was fun, not because it was overly relevant. The method of energy conversion would be some chemical reaction involving convected or conducted heat from the sun warming the water and suspended substances, or possibly chemically stored energy by the sun's light or heat creating a catalyst or ingredient. Possibly the actual replicating energy could come from an electrical charge, the result of energy converted and stored chemically. Like I said, I don't know the exact mechanism, and I'm not even sure Dawkins proposes one that actually goes chemical by chemical.
With repect to the cell, if we add together the probabilities that amino acids are laid out correctly, that they are all left-handed, and that they all are joined by peptide links, then we come face to face with the astronomical figure of 1 in 10^950 (that's a 1 followed by 950 zeroes). This is a probability only on paper. Practically speaking, there is zero chance of its actually happening. In mathematics, a probability smaller than 1 in 10^50 is statistically considered to have a "zero" probability of occurring. Even if we suppose that amino acids have combined and decomposed by a "trial and error" method, without losing any time since the formation of the earth, in order to form a single protein molecule, the time that would be required for something with a probability of 10^950 to happen would still hugely exceed the estimated age of the earth. And this is just for one protein.
You are in error to say that 1 in 10^950, or 1 in 10^50 is considered statistically zero. Only 1 in infinity could be considered zero. Those are widely considered to be practically zero, but statistically, 1 in 10^950 = 1 in 10^950. If you're going to hold scientists to some of the semantic standards that you do later in your post, I would think you could do so yourself.

That figure of course imagines that some form of advanced life is faced with suddenly springing forth ready to function in an advanced environment. I mean, specialization and symbiosis are well established, regardless of how the life was placed here, and forms that don't benefit from them are shown to be simpler. What follows is an easy and logical interpolation of evolution in a backward-engineered direction closer and closer to simpler and simpler sources. Now, of course, it gets more indistinct and swiss-cheesed with missing links the farther back you go, due to the age of rocks. But greater detail is always being uncovered through finer methods, and so the interpolation to the beginning of all graphs gets more distinct. Of course, it wouldn't just start with like, a liver cell, floating around looking for other liver cells and connective tissue to convene with. The theory is about a necessarily simple first replicator molecule.Even your pet scientist Richard Dawkins admits this, but he maintains his position with a thin argument using the anthropic principle:Richard Dawkins is not my pet. I never saw him in any shelters when I got my second and third cats. I was not aware of him being up for adoption or for sale at any pet stores, and for now it will pass consideration the question of whether I would have adopted / bought him.
So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one year. If it did happen on only one planet, anywhere in the universe, that planet has to be our planet-because here we are talking about it.He also says that "if we are here, then that means that evolution happened."I'd like to see where he says that. He said a different conditional, as your own first quote of him clearly shows.This is circular reasoning!Not so. This admission by one of evolution's foremost authorities clearly reflects the logical muddle the theory of evolution is built on. The above statements in Dawkins's book Climbing Mount Improbable (maybe that's the book you're thinking about) are a striking example of circular reasoning which actually explains nothing. Even the most prominent of the proponents of evolution confess that the theory is buried in impossibility when it comes to accounting for the first stage of life. But how interesting it is that, rather than accept the complete unreality of the theory they maintain, they prefer to cling to evolution in a dogmatic manner! This is a completely ideological fixation.Your apparent prejudiced opposition to the theory puts you in at least as bad a boat as them. I'm being favorable to you here; I could say worse, except I don't know if you've actually read an evolution theorist with a poor quote.I close this reply with a discussion of the second law of thermodynamics. Evolutionists' claims regarding thermodynamics are based on a classic case of error and deception. The first error consists of ignoring the difference between ordered and organized systems. Evolutionists cite the examples of mineral crystals and snowflakes, and say that these "complex structures" emerge spontaneously through natural processes. Yet these are not complex systems, but organized ones.You make a very valid point here. I'll agree that some scientists, especially when they appear on TV shows for interviews, risk getting quoted with erroneous use of terminology when they step a little outside their specialty. But the thing to do is interrogate it, see if (s)he's just having a momentary articulation problem, interrogate the theory as a whole, not discard the entire work of the individual.Imagine a completely flat beach on the seashore. When a strong wave hits the beach, mounds of sand, large and small, form bumps on the surface of the sand. This is a process of "ordering". The seashore is an open system, and the energy flow (the wave) that enters it can form simple patterns in the sand, which may look regular. From the thermodynamic point of view, the wave can set up order here where before there was none. But we must make it clear that those same waves cannot build a castle on the beach. If we see a castle there, we are in no doubt that someone has constructed it, because the castle is an "organized" system. Furthermore, the construction of crystals depends on physical necessity and is intrinsic to the mineral from which it forms.Further truth. Good. But by no means was Dawkins trying to say that the equivalent of a sand castle washed up in the primordial soup. Perhaps a better analogy would be if a seasonal lake, every year, fills, empties, fills, empties on a yearly interval. It forms cracks in the mud every year when it dries. Random cracks based on the whim of which individual areas of the mud held a little bit more moisture than others. But then the climate shifts and the wet seasons are shorter. The lake fills less and the mud from the previous year is not fully dissolved. This year's mud cracks will probably form where last year's did, with some exception and variation due to outside factors. It will replicate. Will it become more complex? Probably not, because that is difficult. But it might. And if you have a universe with trillions of planets with hundreds of drying lakes each, maybe one will complexify to a greater degree, and form life. This is as speculative as my other introductory ideas on possible life matrices, and I bring this and them up as a diversion, a thinking exercise without the burden of rigor. But Dawkins' theory has rigor and is about molecules in a saltwater matrix.Finally, Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen explain that "such analogies have scant relevance to the origin-of-life question. A major reason is that they fail to distinguish between order and complexity... Regularity or order cannot serve to store the large amount of information required by living systems. A highly irregular, but specified, structure is required rather than an ordered structure. This is a serious flaw in the analogy offered. There is no apparent connection between the kind of spontaneous ordering that occurs from energy flow through such systems and the work required to build aperiodic information-intensive macromolecules like DNA and protein."True again about order vs complexity. I wish the media wouldn't limit scientists to sound bites. But when they are, they're unfairly easy to criticize.

I want to conclude by saying that you seem a little emotional and/or disrespectful to the body of work and community of scientists involved in evolution theories. I don't believe it is warranted to the degree you seem to express. Please keep an open mind.

As for myself, I favor evolution theory. But I keep an open mind in that I am always prepared to hear and even accept significant evidence that God somehow set it in motion without forcing it to just fend for itself from the square-one-replicator-stage. Certainly, if there is a God, he could have arranged any initial condition he wanted, including things that look like evidence of an earlier initial condition. In my view, all the scientists do is keep finding a pattern that shows a progression from earlier and earlier stages. Many scientists easily reconcile God in their theories. If I was to bet money, I wouldn't bet on a post-big-bang God. But that's just betting. I wouldn't stake my reputation on any certainty, just on pattern.


By the way, speaking of order vs complexity: How would you categorize the seemingly chaotic sequence of primes (or all factor values) in the integer chain, or the digits of pi or any other irrational? They are predestined and calculateable yet not infinitely - only increasingly far. They are not predictable. What are they?

Apparently, you cannot show that there is any evidence for irreducibly complex systems. Just saying that "complex things evolved from simple things" is too vague be credible. So far, I have been giving you very specific examples of where the theory breaks down, and all you're giving me is speculation and just-so stories. I'm not being emotional. I'm keeping an open mind, unlike those like Richard Dawkins and John Rennie who stick to the theory like gospel. They refuse to even contemplate the idea of intelligent design. The evolutionary notion has been cloaked in a scientific disguise for the last century and a half in order to justify itself. Though put forward as a supposedly scientific theory during the mid-19th century, the theory, despite all the best efforts of its advocates, has not so far been verified by any scientific finding or experiment. Indeed, the "very science" on which the theory depends so greatly has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate repeatedly that the theory has no merit in reality. Laboratory experiments and probabilistic calculations have definitely made it clear that the proteins from which life arises cannot have been formed by chance. The cell, which supposedly emerged by chance under primitive and uncontrolled terrestrial conditions according to evolutionists, still cannot be synthesized even in the most sophisticated, high-tech laboratories of the 20th century. Not a single "transitional form," creatures which are supposed to show the gradual evolution of advanced organisms from more primitive ones as neo-Darwinist theory claims, has ever been found anywhere in the world despite the most diligent and prolonged search in the fossil record.

Might I add that The oldest stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found is that of the "Cambrian", which has an estimated age of 530-520 million years. Living creatures that are found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period emerged in the fossil record all of a sudden without any pre-existing ancestors. The vast mosaic of living organisms, made up of such great numbers of complex creatures, emerged so suddenly that this miraculous event is referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion" in scientific literature. Most of the organisms found in this stratum have highly advanced organs like eyes, or systems seen in organisms with a highly advanced organization such as gills, circulatory systems, and so on. There is no sign in the fossil record to indicate that these organisms had any ancestors. Not being able to find answers to the question of how earth came to overflow with thousands of different animal species, evolutionists posit an imaginary period of 20 million years before the Cambrian Period to explain how life originated and "the unknown happened". This period is called the "evolutionary gap". No evidence for it has ever been found and the concept is still conveniently nebulous and undefined even today.

You are in error to say that 1 in 10^950, or 1 in 10^50 is considered statistically zero. Only 1 in infinity could be considered zero. Those are widely considered to be practically zero, but statistically, 1 in 10^950 = 1 in 10^950. If you're going to hold scientists to some of the semantic standards that you do later in your post, I would think you could do so yourself.

Perhaps you do not understand how big this number is and how small this probability becomes. It is known that the number of elementary particles in the known universe is estimated to be about 10^80. In addition, matter can only make a transition from one state into another in no faster than 10^45 times per second. This is due to the length of the shortest unit of time, called the Planck time. The universe is about a billion times younger than 10^25 seconds (that is, if the universe is about 10-20 billion years old). By multiplying these together we assume that any specification of an event within the known physical universe requires at least one elementary particle to specify it, we find that the total number of specified history throughout the duration of the universe as we know it cannot exceed 10^150. Scientists call this the "universal probability bound," since there is no probabilistic resource nor conspiracy of probabilistic resources that can render remotely probable an event whose probability is less than this.

This probability becomes a lot greater if intelligent design is introduced into the situation, if the systems in question are specified, which a protein is. The point is, there are lots of complex things in this universe than can be explained by necessity and chance, but are not specified, and that is where life comes in.

For example, Harold F. Blum, a prominent evolutionist scientist, states that "The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability."

Evolutionists claim that molecular evolution took place over a very long period of time and that this made the impossible possible. Nevertheless, no matter how long the given period may be, it is not possible for amino acids to form proteins by chance. William Stokes, an American geologist, admits this fact in his book Essentials of Earth History, writing that the probability is so small "that it would not occur during billions of years on billions of planets, each covered by a blanket of concentrated watery solution of the necessary amino acids."

So what does all this mean? Perry Reeves, a professor of chemistry, answers the question:"When one examines the vast number of possible structures that could result from a simple random combination of amino acids in an evaporating primordial pond, it is mind-boggling to believe that life could have originated in this way. It is more plausible that a Great Builder with a master plan would be required for such a task." Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University and a DNA expert, calculated the probability of the coincidental formation of the 2000 types of proteins found in a single bacterium (There are 200,000 different types of proteins in a human cell.) The number that was found was 1 over 10^40000. A professor of applied mathematics and astronomy from University College Cardiff, Wales, Chandra Wickramasinghe, comments: "The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

Look, these "sound bytes" I provide are in context and appropriately apply to the material I'm presenting to you. I am not going to quote a book on this short post.

What follows is an easy and logical interpolation of evolution in a backward-engineered direction closer and closer to simpler and simpler sources. Now, of course, it gets more indistinct and swiss-cheesed with missing links the farther back you go, due to the age of rocks. But greater detail is always being uncovered through finer methods, and so the interpolation to the beginning of all graphs gets more distinct.

Yes, but not at the expense of scientific fact. Surveyability, a mathematical term for how clear a view can be made of the problem, in the question of the origin of life is very limited. For example, the Darwinian extrapolation retrodicts that at some time in the past reptiles, through selection, developed into mammals. Evidence shows that this mechanism does not command a clear view of the origin and development of life. There are details that can never be revealed.

Richard Dawkins is not my pet. I never saw him in any shelters when I got my second and third cats. I was not aware of him being up for adoption or for sale at any pet stores, and for now it will pass consideration the question of whether I would have adopted / bought him.

Obviously, you should know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you're aware of things called alternate definitions.

In my view, all the scientists do is keep finding a pattern that shows a progression from earlier and earlier stages.

As I have said before, no such pattern exists, due to evidence from the Cambrian period of geologic history.

If I was to bet money, I wouldn't bet on a post-big-bang God. But that's just betting. I wouldn't stake my reputation on any certainty, just on pattern.

Based on the numbers above, I'd say that your chances of winning that bet is lower than the universal probability bound. Just because I advocate a position that seems to favor something nonmaterial does not make me unscientific. Who said that science was fundamentally materialistic, anyway? This philosophy, which was originally formulated among the ancient Greeks, has also made an appearance from time to time in other cultures and has been advanced by individuals as well. It holds that matter alone exists and that it has done so for an infinity of time. From these tenets, it claims that the universe has also "always" existed and was not created. In addition to their claim that the universe exists in an infinity of time, materialists also assert that there is no purpose or aim in the universe. They claim that all the equilibrium, harmony and order that we see around us are merely the product of coincidence. This "coincidence assertion" is also put forward when the question of how human beings came into being comes up. The theory of evolution, widely referred to as Darwinism, is another application of materialism to the natural world. Some of the founders of modern science were faithful people who were in agreement that the universe was created and organized by God. In the 19th century, an important change took place in the attitudes of the scientific world with respect to this matter. Materialism was deliberately introduced to the agenda of modern science by various groups. Because the 19th century's political and social conditions formed a good basis for materialism, the philosophy gained wide acceptance and spread throughout the scientific world.

According to its tenets, everything in this universe is merely the result of chance and not the product of any intentional design, plan, or vision.

Those two notions were boldly advanced and ardently defended by 19th-century materialists, who of course had no recourse other than to depend upon the limited and unsophisticated scientific knowledge of their day. Both have been utterly refuted by the discoveries of 20th-century science.

The first to be laid in the grave was the notion of the universe existing in infinite time. Since the 1920s, there has been mounting evidence this cannot be true. Scientists are now certain that the universe came into being from nothingness as the result of an unimaginably huge explosion, known as the "Big Bang."

The 20th century has also witnessed the demolition of the second claim of materialism: that everything in the universe is the result of chance and not design. Research conducted since the 1960s consistently demonstrates that all the physical equilibriums of the universe in general and of our world in particularly are intricately designed to make life possible. As this research deepened, it was discovered each and every one of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, of the fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, and of the details of the structure of atoms and the elements of the universe has been precisely tailored so that human beings may live. Scientists today call this extraordinary design the "anthropic principle". This is the principle that every detail in the universe has been carefully arranged to make human life possible.

I'm trying to show the validity of intelligent design as opposed to Darwinism, that's all.

By the way, speaking of order vs complexity: How would you categorize the seemingly chaotic sequence of primes (or all factor values) in the integer chain, or the digits of pi or any other irrational? They are predestined and calculateable yet not infinitely - only increasingly far. They are not predictable. What are they?

That is an interesting point presented in the field of mathematics. Many mathematics philosophers wrestle with the question of whether mathematics is a human creation or a byproduct of nature. Honestly, I am not sure yet. There is obviously a nature of complexity inherent in irrational and transcendental numbers, in fractals, and knot polynomials (we still don't know how many distinct knots have 14 crossings), but as of yet I do not see any signs of specificity in this complexity. I do know that there is evidence of fractals in the growth patterns of plants and the development of crystals, but I'm not sure whether the mathematics (namely fractals) is independent of its corresponding natural examples.

Originally posted by psamtik071
Apparently, you cannot show that there is any evidence for irreducibly complex systems.
Correction: I am referring to reducibly. You talk about a cell springing into existence. I am talking about replicators. Just saying that "complex things evolved from simple things" is too vague be credible.I know that. I am not the zoologist, the theorist. Sue me for not copying his entire work onto the server. So far, I have been giving you very specific examples of where the theory breaks down,False. It is a theory, and there are differeing opinions, all with premises that can be called into question. Later you begin to mention preexisting intelligences. What's more of a broken theory than that? But, you see me keeping an open mind, because I extend the absolute of what's possible as separate from what's probable. Later you further try to defend the idea that "probably not" and "impossible" are the same. This is false. If you're going to preserve the integrity of your absolute definitions, you have to admit to this. Besides, I have said all along that I accept the theory as a pattern recognition. You can have your "preexisting intelligence" anywhere in the evolutionary timeline, but that isn't good enough for your rabid prejudice. and all you're giving me is speculation and just-so stories. Which is all any theory is. Again: the only way around the Matrix (for sure) is pattern recognition. ... ... an open mind, unlike those like Richard Dawkins and John Rennie who stick to the theory like gospel.No, it's called pursuing a path of reasoning. I do not believe there is a proponent of the theory that you could possibly regard with fairness. They refuse to even contemplate the idea of intelligent design. That too is false. Plenty of evolutionists believe in God, and , for instance, place his effect before the appearance of life, or the earth, for that matter. The evolutionary notion has been cloaked in a scientific disguise for the last century and a half in order to justify itself. Though put forward as a supposedly scientific theory during the mid-19th century, the theory, despite all the best efforts of its advocates, has not so far been verified by any scientific finding or experiment. To say "not any" is such an extreme position and falls so soundly in the face of Occam's razor, that it convinces me that you have led yourself to that conclusion long before reading the scientists' works.Indeed, the "very science" on which the theory depends so greatly has demonstrated and continues to demonstrate repeatedly that the theory has no merit in reality. Spoken like a true televangelist. Laboratory experiments and probabilistic calculations have definitely made it clear that the proteins from which life arises cannot have been formed by chance. Absolutely false.The cell, which supposedly emerged by chance under primitive and uncontrolled terrestrial conditions according to evolutionists, A total misinterpretation; nay complete misquotation.still cannot be synthesized even in the most sophisticated, high-tech laboratories of the 20th century. Because that's not even what they're trying to replicate, under your misquotation.Not a single "transitional form," creatures which are supposed to show the gradual evolution of advanced organisms from more primitive ones as neo-Darwinist theory claims, has ever been found anywhere in the world despite the most diligent and prolonged search in the fossil record. That one is at least a possible interpretation. But the likes of you would not believe even if every single individual organism that ever lived were dug up and arranged in columns one species-instant abreast.

Might I add that The oldest stratum of the earth in which fossils of living creatures have been found is that of the "Cambrian", which has an estimated age of 530-520 million years. Living creatures that are found in the strata belonging to the Cambrian period emerged in the fossil record all of a sudden without any pre-existing ancestors. Likely because they are (hello) the deepest rocks, the hardest to get to, the likliest to be remetamorphosed.The vast mosaic of living organisms, made up of such great numbers of complex creatures, emerged so suddenly that this miraculous event is referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion" in scientific literature.Which is well explained. You are refusing any sense of scale about that even as you overreach any logic of scale with your misinterpretation of mathematics later. Most of the organisms found in this stratum have highly advanced organs like eyes, or systems seen in organisms with a highly advanced organization such as gills, circulatory systems, and so on. It's all on a continuum my oh-so-green friend.There is no sign in the fossil record to indicate that these organisms had any ancestors. Have you looked through it? Not being able to find answers to the question of how earth came to overflow with thousands of different animal species, evolutionists posit an imaginary period of 20 million years before the Cambrian Period to explain how life originated and "the unknown happened". This period is called the "evolutionary gap". No evidence for it has ever been found and the concept is still conveniently nebulous and undefined even today. The journey has to start somewhere, in order to be pursued, and you conveniently forget all the things that ARE confirmed.Perhaps you do not understand how big this number is and how small this probability becomes. I don't try to understand it like balancing a checkbook. You have to think outside the box and among the big-boy absolutes on this one, my friend.[quote]It is known that the number of elementary particles in the known universe is estimated to be about 10^80. In addition, matter can only make a transition from one state into another in no faster than 10^45 times per second. This is due to the length of the shortest unit of time, called the Planck time. The universe is about a billion times younger than 10^25 seconds (that is, if the universe is about 10-20 billion years old). By multiplying these together we assume that any specification of an event within the known physical universe requires at least one elementary particle to specify it, we find that the total number of specified history throughout the duration of the universe as we know it cannot exceed 10^150. Scientists call this the "universal probability bound," since there is no probabilistic resource nor conspiracy of probabilistic resources that can render remotely probable an event whose probability is less than this.That's great, and informative. And, I'll agree it's relevant. But it is also based on estimates of particle quantities in the face of the universe's shape even still being theorized. It's also relevant based only on what type of improbable first replication event you're trying to eliminate. Hello, we're not asking a full functioning cell to pop into the precambrian ocean.This probability becomes a lot greater if intelligent design is introduced into the situation, if the systems in question are specified, which a protein is. The point is, there are lots of complex things in this universe than can be explained by necessity and chance, but are not specified, and that is where life comes in.Talk top me about the evidence for an outside intelligence. Anecdotal, not instrumental, right?For example, Harold F. Blum, a prominent evolutionist scientist, states that "The spontaneous formation of a polypeptide of the size of the smallest known proteins seems beyond all probability."And yet the value of one, meaning what actually happens everyday, contains a profusion of examples of molecules forming from a tiny liklihood. That is related to your number of particles thing. Just on earth. If you have enough particles, you increase the chance that some weird chemicals might form. Multiply that over millions of years of extended chance. How many molecules are in the ocean?Evolutionists claim that molecular evolution took place over a very long period of time and that this made the impossible possible. Nevertheless, no matter how long the given period may be, it is not possible for amino acids to form proteins by chance. Wrong again, in the absolute sense. (Again, not that we're even shooting for something that difficult.)William Stokes, an American geologist, admits this fact in his book Essentials of Earth History, writing that the probability is so small "that it would not occur during billions of years on billions of planets, each covered by a blanket of concentrated watery solution of the necessary amino acids."If that is a direct quote, then he is wrong. It is improbable, but he cannot logically claim that it would certainly not happen.So what does all this mean? Perry Reeves, a professor of chemistry, answers the question:"When one examines the vast number of possible structures that could result from a simple random combination of amino acids in an evaporating primordial pond, it is mind-boggling to believe that life could have originated in this way. It is more plausible that a Great Builder with a master plan would be required for such a task." Again, not what we're shooting for. I'm beginning to think that you're deliberately taking out of context scientists' pronouncements in favor of Dawkins' theory of replicator-not-protein. Naturally they could be quoted as saying some paths to life would be less probable.Robert Shapiro, a professor of chemistry at New York University and a DNA expert, calculated the probability of the coincidental formation of the 2000 types of proteins found in a single bacterium (There are 200,000 different types of proteins in a human cell.) The number that was found was 1 over 10^40000. Relevant in favor of Dawkins. A professor of applied mathematics and astronomy from University College Cardiff, Wales, Chandra Wickramasinghe, comments: "The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it... It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence." How does he arrive at that number?Look, these "sound bytes" I provide are in context and appropriately apply to the material I'm presenting to you. Uh - for the most part, no. I am not going to quote a book on this short post.Nor am I, but if Dawkins is so bad, one would think you could quote more of his supposed ridiculosity.... ... Surveyability, a mathematical term for how clear a view can be made of the problem, in the question of the origin of life is very limited. For example, the Darwinian extrapolation retrodicts that at some time in the past reptiles, through selection, developed into mammals. Evidence shows that this mechanism does not command a clear view of the origin and development of life. There are details that can never be revealed.Never? wrong. Just not so far.Obviously, you should know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you're aware of things called alternate definitions.Of course. And I wanted to highlight the fact that you had to get emotional & disrespectful toward Dawkins.As I have said before, no such pattern exists, due to evidence from the Cambrian period of geologic history.You absolutely cannot know that: that no such pattern exists. You can say it is improbable if that is what you believe. But some of your pronouncements and separately, attitudes, have eroded your credibility.Based on the numbers above, I'd say that your chances of winning that bet is lower than the universal probability bound. Yeah. According to your estimate. I'd take that bet. Just because I advocate a position that seems to favor something nonmaterial does not make me unscientific. I know that full well. I have explained what erodes your scientificity, and why I can claim to be open-minded. Who said that science was fundamentally materialistic, anyway? Just fundamentally logical. You can't know your're not in the Matrix.This philosophy, which was originally formulated among the ancient Greeks, has also made an appearance from time to time in other cultures and has been advanced by individuals as well. Okay, fine.It holds that matter alone exists and that it has done so for an infinity of time. From these tenets, it claims that the universe has also "always" existed and was not created. In addition to their claim that the universe exists in an infinity of time, materialists also assert that there is no purpose or aim in the universe. None of this bars one from making a perfectly logical effort towards the pattern of evolution. Nor does it bar anyone from making a logical search for so-far unseen higher intelligences.They claim that all the equilibrium, harmony and order that we see around us are merely the product of coincidence. This "coincidence assertion" is also put forward when the question of how human beings came into being comes up. The theory of evolution, widely referred to as Darwinism, is another application of materialism to the natural world. Some of the founders of modern science were faithful people who were in agreement that the universe was created and organized by God. In the 19th century, an important change took place in the attitudes of the scientific world with respect to this matter. Materialism was deliberately introduced to the agenda of modern science by various groups. Because the 19th century's political and social conditions formed a good basis for materialism, the philosophy gained wide acceptance and spread throughout the scientific world.

According to its tenets, everything in this universe is merely the result of chance and not the product of any intentional design, plan, or vision.
Of course, this is before scientists could do more with complexity than call it "unmeasureable". Studies of complex systems are still in their infancy, but, with the help of computers can be reproduced experimentally.
Those two notions were boldly advanced and ardently defended by 19th-century materialists, who of course had no recourse other than to depend upon the limited and unsophisticated scientific knowledge of their day. Both have been utterly refuted by the discoveries of 20th-century science.I'm not sure of all this. But I have formed my understanding of evolution as a pattern while taking into consideration many, many coexisting possibilities.The first to be laid in the grave was the notion of the universe existing in infinite time. Since the 1920s, there has been mounting evidence this cannot be true. Scientists are now certain that the universe came into being from nothingness as the result of an unimaginably huge explosion, known as the "Big Bang."I am definitely not prepared to accept your assertion that this is what the scientists are "certain" of. I think they believe our locally visible portion of the universe formed in the big bang.The 20th century has also witnessed the demolition of the second claim of materialism: that everything in the universe is the result of chance and not design. Research conducted since the 1960s consistently demonstrates that all the physical equilibriums of the universe in general and of our world in particularly are intricately designed to make life possible.Complete fabrication on your part. As this research deepened, it was discovered each and every one of the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, of the fundamental forces such as gravity and electromagnetism, and of the details of the structure of atoms and the elements of the universe has been precisely tailored so that human beings may live. You are a riot! So why aren't there people on every other planet. I'll be the first to say it could be true that they were designed by someone for that purpose. Now where are the indications that increase that probability?Scientists today call this extraordinary design the "anthropic principle". This is the principle that every detail in the universe has been carefully arranged to make human life possible.

I'm trying to show the validity of intelligent design as opposed to Darwinism, that's all. Then do only that, and don't insult valid efforts.That is an interesting point presented in the field of mathematics. Many mathematics philosophers wrestle with the question of whether mathematics is a human creation or a byproduct of nature. Honestly, I am not sure yet. There is obviously a nature of complexity inherent in irrational and transcendental numbers, in fractals, and knot polynomials (we still don't know how many distinct knots have 14 crossings), but as of yet I do not see any signs of specificity in this complexity. I do know that there is evidence of fractals in the growth patterns of plants and the development of crystals, but I'm not sure whether the mathematics (namely fractals) is independent of its corresponding natural examples. It is interesting, isn't it. I think that (speculatively of course) that whatever God there is to be found will be found in the inherencies of mathematics. We may ALL be surprised at what we find.

Dear Lord. I think I should rename this thread the "insanely long post" thread. :D

Sorry.

(That ought to help the average length situation.) ;)

Whoops, I guess we got a bit carried away