Here is an informative little video by a guy named Steve Mould who does a lot of “science” videos on youtube. Its all (ostensibly) about how simple little processes can make “meaningful” structures from stochastic processes-and he uses magnetic shaped little parts to show this. Its a popular channeled followed by millions, and is often referenced by other famous people in the science community-and his fans love it.
And hey, it does show how meaningful structures CAN form from random processes. Right? So you can learn from this. Wink, wink. Nod, nod. And all the skeptics will know exactly what he is really saying. Cause we are all part of the clique that knows this language-the language of the skeptic propagandist. I mean, he almost hides it, the real message, it is just under the surface, and the less skeptically aware, the casualist, might even miss it. The casualist might not learn as much about Steve Mould and what he is trying to say here-but the skeptic knows. “See, atheism is true! Spread the word!” Steve has given the wink. The same wink used by DeGrasse Tyson, and Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, and on and on. You know the one.
And for 95% of his viewers, whether they know it or not, they got his message. I mean, look, its plain as day, right? He just showed you, that is certainly a meaningful structure that arose from random processes, isn’t it? Its defintely meaningful, its a, a, a , well, it’s shape that, we have a, a name for…that’s kind of…anyway, defintely random, I mean other than the magnets and the precut shapes, and the little ball with nothing else inside, and the shaking only until its just right then stopping kind of way…That’s random kind of right???
But there are 5% percent of his viewers that spotted his little wink and nod, and said, hold on a second. If you want us to believe that your little explanation about how simply life can form from nonsense without a plan, how blind exactly do you want us to be? 95%, they are hooked, you got them (Ryan StallardThere are so many creationist videos this obliterates. Especially 4:18.). But some likeGhryst VanGhod helpfully point out: “this is incorrect. the kinesin travels along fibres within the cell and takes the various molecules exactly where they need to be, they are not randomly “jumbling around in solution”. https://youtu.be/gbycQf1TbM0 ” and then you get to see a video that tells you just a few more of the things that are ACTUALLY happening which are even more amazing if you weren’t already skeptical (the real kind).
And if you go through some more of the comments you will notice a few more (real) skeptics, not the wink and nod kind, and you will start to notice why the wink nod propogandist skeptics everywhere you look in modern culture are a very puposefully designed cancer on knowledge and thought.
That’s what I thought you were saying. Any god is better than no god.
Well, I disagree. I’m fine with wondering,. not knowing, and enjoying the life I have without any expectation of eternity. I doubt you’ve read any of Pullman’s novels so you may not appreciate how your use of the word “dust” suggests a more appealing idea than an eternal heaven of individual souls praising the lord.
Alan Fox,
You are the one talking about what one wants Alan, I am talking about what is. Your theory has holes, and even the biologists are starting to acknowledge it. Without your random dust, (as bad as I know you want it, its already blowing away), the only thing left is a creator-whether you like it or not.
But it does make more sense why you can’t see it-as you have said, you don’t want to.
What is is unaffected by either of our likes or dislikes. I am not attracted to any religious explanation or belief system that I’ve come across so far. If you find some religion a benefit or a comfort to you, good for you.
I’m still curious which religion you find suits you and whether you recommend it to others. What about Michael Flynn and his one religion? Does that appeal?
Alan Fox,
The fatal flaws of evolution have nothing to do with what you like or don’t like.
On the contrary, nature has vastly superior technology to what we have. The fact that as you say ‘pulling one thread changes 100 other things’ shows the complexity and high level of design, not millions of years of bump and run, jury rigged solutions. That is the skeptic’s fall back storyline.
Any human design we have ever discovered has already been deployed by nature. There are literally tons more awesome design concepts waiting to be unveiled. Unfortunately, as long as we have design deniers in the lab, we won’t get anywhere.
for the record, today’s scientists have absolutely no idea what they are observing. If they did, they would be designing awesome AI by now.
phoodoo,
Indeed. Mind power is fiction.
Steve
Don’t disagree we have much to learn about the world around us. What is stopping you or anyone from finding out?
What’s stopping you?
absolutely. it is in line with my current comments where I stated that information is embedded in nature.
Look, it simple. If we really understood what we were looking at, we would have imitated nature’s design capability by now and have created some awesome AI. we haven’t done so because IMO we are stuck in this randomness, chaotic, unrelated, uncoordinated, morass of thinking. denying design in nature is pretty stupid. We know that nature has already deployed all the design concepts we ‘invented’. So what else can nature teach us? a shitload
Skepticism is the science’ fentanyl.
Why not start a company then and show everyone how it’s done?
Afraid to put your money where your mouth is perhaps?
Not confident in your claims perhaps?
Wanting other people to do all the work perhaps?
It, apparently, can teach you nothing.
It seems like phoodoo thinks that “Darwinism” equals all of science, the explanation for everything for an atheist, or something like that. Oh, but it has to consists of random nothingness too. I never read any book by Darwin claiming that random nothingness did everything. The books seem about observations of life and its evolution, nothing about anything else, and never about random nothingness “creating” everything. Who the hell knows what books phoodoo read.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else. I cannot talk for anybody other than me. I don’t say “it’s not God”, I say that all we can observe is what’s around us. We call that nature. it has some way of working. It has deterministic phenomena, which are as far from being random nothingness as can be, and we have some underlying seemingly random phenomena, like quantum fluctuations, for example, which are not “nothingness.” Therefore, it seems like nature works by a combination of random and deterministic phenomena. I can put together those kinds of ingredients and see patterns forming, some very interesting. These things combine around me. I can observe that, and patterns do emerge by themselves, without my help. More importantly, as far as we can observe, without anybody else’s help. So, if I observe nature doing amazing things around me, who am I to deny that nature can do it?
Then we have some nut-jobs who come and talk to me about incoherent magical beings in the sky. They want me to accept that if I have no answers to something I must consider their incoherent fantasies, and that leaving those fantasies in the category where they belong is some kind of denial. Sorry, but, I need something better than incoherent blabber to start talking about the possibility that some magical beings did anything at all. Mischaracterization of science, or of Darwinian hypotheses and theories, as “random nothingness”, doesn’t help, won’t help.
You cannot know if evolution has any flaws, let alone fatal ones. You think that evolution means “random nothingness.”
This doesn’t really make sense to me. Whether or not God exists has nothing to do with whether or not there’s evidence of design in nature.
Even if there were evidence of design in nature, it wouldn’t show that God exists. It wouldn’t even make it more likely that anything like God exists.
And whether there’s evidence of design in nature is separate from whether there’s self-organizing systems, trends towards increased complexity, or whether or not “mutations” (whatever you mean by that!) are “random” (whatever you mean by that!)
Also, not that it matters, but I’m not an atheist. I don’t like discussing my religious beliefs with strangers, so I’d rather not talk about it here.
Like any aspect of living systems there is always conflict between integral processes and disruptive external influences. For example DNA repair involves coordinated activity and much else besides. Lymphocytes make use of DNA repair processes to deal with antigens. So there is much more going on within cells than pure coordinated activity
From the very beginning any cell that has ever existed has needed some sort of coordinated activity within its membranes.
Yes, these are the enzymes I was thinking about. But why mention divine intervention? We can appreciate the wisdom and orchestrated processes within the living systems themselves without having to invoke any external interventions.
In this thread, phoodoo is the one who is exhibiting intense fear.
Think about all the proteins that need to be enclosed within “barrel” structures to allow them to fold correctly. Do you think that they would be produced in enough numbers (if at all) to carry out their function if they were just left to float about freely in the cytoplasm?
Designated by more subtle field activity similar to the way the material is laid down as shown in this well known video Of in a similar way in which iron filings take up a pattern designated by the lines of force.
Mitosis is a very much more intricate process than splitting a cell down the middle. The daughter cells are usually partitioned like the mother cell.
Ok, so you don’t know what random mutations are. Cool, me either. So we both agree the ‘scientific consensus” of biology is cobblygook.
But here’s where we differ-if what we see in life is that biological systems self-assemble, if they have a logical method of construction, if they display a teleological intelligence, then to say but that doesn’t imply anything else whatsoever about an intelligent force behind that is really just complete denial. To have a philosophical stance of saying OK, I see that life systems know what they are doing. They have purpose, they have intent, AND it evens goes so far as to create beings who are conscious of that intelligence, BUT, BUT, that’s where my philosophy ends. I am just going to chalk that up to , whatever. Not interested in the how or why. Just is. Voila.
That in my opinion is the mindset of a 15 year old skateboarding, fortnight playing slacker. And even worse still, you have the audacity to call the idea of intelligent design bullshit. You think a belief of “nature just does it, beats me” is rational. But intelligent design, oh, what bullshit! If that is what studying philosophy is, maybe playing fortnight all day is a better use of one’s time.
I wish that would have been the argument in Kitzmiller vs. Dover. “Well judge, we can all agree that life definitely has an intelligent method of coming into being, but that doesn’t mean we should be able to teach children that! The ONLY thing children should be taught in schools about how life came into being is random mutations and natural selection, and, mumble mumble, some other things like that…”
What is life all about? How did we get here? “Um, like nature just does man. Bang, bang, awesome!”
I suggest your criticism of the Discovery Institute is misplaced.
So what say you Neil, is KN crazy? I mean he believes the scientific consensus of the last 100 years is nonsense! There is no such thing as random mutations. Who even knows what hat means?? No, life is teleological. It has a plan. Some might even use the term, a design (Wait, who said that, who said that? Stone him!).
Are you with Jock, and Rummy, and Alan, and the “scientific consensus” of settled science crowd? Is Goodwin a crank? Is Stuart Kaufman a crank? Random mutations, natural selection, rah, rah, rah until the end of time?
Because, were I to play ID’s devil’s advocate, Aminoacyl tRNA synthetases would be my candidate for an example of “Intelligent Design”. I’m sure some ID proponent with better advocacy skills than the odious Upright Biped could have got more notice using aars as an example.
I don’t have an answer to those questions. Do you?
It’s getting a mite (more) incoherent.
so WITH random mutations, the atheists are all set, apparently?
Or is he trying sarcasm again?
phoodoo seems to have a knee-jerk reaction to things he doesn’t understand: splutter and fume, and yell “That can’t be right!”
It is not just limited to subjects that impinge on his unconventional religious beliefs: mathematics is problematic too. He quite determinedly refuses to learn anything, happy to be outraged by this “War of Christmas” paranoia.
So, because phoodoo does not understand what phoodoo means by random mutations[??], then the scientific consensus must be wrong. That’s his claim.
I think a key insight is the discovery that he does much of his research on social media, in particular YouTube. I found his citing of YouTube comments as evidence of err, the unGodliness of mankind, I guess … to be particularly revealing.
KN and I have both tried to point out to him that the videos YouTube suggests for him is driven by his past history of interacting with such videos, but to no avail — he still writes
KN notes ” I’ve been watching SciShow for a few years and I’ve never heard of Forrest Valkai.”
but phoodoo resolutely misses the point and responds
He really has no clue as to how the online environment he experiences has been colored by his own peccadilloes.
As Kathryn noted:
Oh, the unGodly people commenting on YouTube!
Does he really? Or did you misunderstand what he wrote?
How how carefully phrased!
I can happily agree that life can indeed be Intelligently Designed. We’re not too far off doing such ourselves. Nobody disputes that.
The question is, is there evidence that the origin of life on planet earth was Intelligent Design.
We can all agree that no, there is no such evidence.
So, what precisely is it that you want to teach children about “life definitely has an intelligent method of coming into being”? Do you actually know?
Odd how you did not write: Well Judge, we can all agree that the evidence that life was designed is clear.
Even you know that’s a bridge too far.
So, what exactly is it that you want to teach children phoodoo?
Prison camps and misery. Right? But for the right people.
The people in that picture are terrorists, according to phoodoo.
At least they have something to say and have said it. People know who they are and can evaluate their arguments on their merits whereas you’ve never actually made an argument for something at all.
You seem jealous, frankly, of the people you name.
DNA_Jock,
Are you talking to me or KN? Because he has no idea what mutations are, little yet random mutations. And apparently thinks you are a fool for believing that evolution nonsense.
Divide and rule is it? You don’t rise to the level of sophistication to make that work I’m afraid. Everybody here in the reality based community is united in one thing – phoodoo does not understand evolution.
Little yet random mutations? Is that something that you’ve discovered in your basement all on your widdle-own is it?
I was writing for everybody except you and KN… that’s why I referred to you both in the third person.
Wrong. He has a good understanding of what random mutations are. He is unclear as to what YOU mean by those terms, viz:
to which you replied
Which I made fun of:
I also tried to explain to you that Alphabet Inc. makes money by feeding you YouTube videos that upset you.
Not the vibe I’m getting from him at all. He did note that I was committed to fallibilism; perhaps you misunderstood.
I’ve never met a fundamentalist creationist who actually understood how evolution works. They embarrass themselves.
On the issue about what mutations are, and whether they are random. I’m currently reading Lenny Moss’s What Genes Can’t Do. He argues that the whole conceptual framework in which biologists talk about genes is a muddle. And if that’s a muddle, then so too is the conceptual framework about what mutations are.
As for “random”: this word is also overused, and very little careful thought goes into what it really means. Of course in one sense it means the following: that there is no empirically detectable process that can anticipate what traits will be adaptive in the future and then cause those traits to appear.
Yes, we do disagree here. And here’s why.
Firstly, I think you make the inference from teleology to design far too quickly. This can be seen by asking, “is design the same thing as teleology or is design the explanation for teleology?”
(This debate is not new with us. It was already the central issue in the 18th century debate between preformationists and epigeneticists in German embryology.)
Kant suggests, in his “Critique of Teleological Judgment” in Critique of the Power of Judgment that there’s a distinction between extrinsic teleology and intrinsic teleology. Intrinsic teleology is the purposiveness or goal-oriented character of each and every individual organism. Extrinsic teleology is the plan or design which causes organisms to come into existence and pass out of existence.
So with that Kantian distinction in mind, we can see that it requires an inference to get from intrinsic teleology to extrinsic teleology. The mere fact of accepting the former doesn’t mean that the latter gets to come along for free.
So my main disagreement with intelligent design is that it ignores Kant’s distinction between two very different concepts of teleology. At Uncommon Descent we see occasional promotion of J. Scott Turner and Steve Talbott, who are certainly quite eloquent and forceful advocates of intrinsic teleology. Yet neither of them accepts intelligent design, precisely because because they are sophisticated enough to know that intrinsic teleology is neither identical with extrinsic teleology, nor does intrinsic teleology logically entail extrinsic teleology.
Second, we disagree about how to carve up the boundary between philosophy and science.
I certainly accept that the question, “why does the universe have fundamental physical structure — the laws of physics and the constants of fundamental physics — that enables the emergence of purposive organisms, including intelligent, conscious, and rational animals?” is a question worth asking.
But I do not think that this question can have a scientific answer. Even if it does have a rational answer, it can’t be a scientific answer. We cannot take any measurements that aren’t made somewhere in this Universe, which means that we cannot confirm or disconfirm any claims about the origins of the Universe.
This is then my other big criticism of intelligent design: that it is promoted as a scientific explanation, when I don’t see how it could be.
I was exaggerating there. This is a common tactic in arguments about life. Those who argue for blind evolution like to exaggerate any haphazard chaotic processes and us who see evolution as more directed tend to exaggerate any well organized purposeful processes.
The fact is that the chemical properties of matter is ideal for producing living systems and these systems make use of a wide range of physical forces. And the more that is being revealed about living systems the fewer examples there are of accidental chance events being prominent. As Behe loves to point out what was once thought of as a bag of amorphous jello now reveals immense complexity. Haphazard chaos as a generative force is going the same way as the “God of the gaps”.
Enzymes working within a process must work together in systems in which the timing and rate of reactions are critical to its overall function. The rates of reactions are interdependent. If one essential reaction was left to proceed without its associated enzyme, even if in theory the reaction could take place without the enzyme, it most probably would not get the opportunity to do so because it would be too far out of sync with the rest of the system.
I’ve been looking at how the amount of amino acids in cells are determined and I found this article on arginine:
Arginine: beyond protein, Sidney M Morris, Jr published in, “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition”> It states:
(Simplified diagram of arginine reactions from link shown below)
Is it too simplistic to say that amino acids just float around in the cytoplasm? They have a constant turnover which takes a great deal of regulation.
One other finding about ribosomes that I found interesting:
Newly identified process of gene regulation challenges accepted science
Yet another complex level of control.
No. Coordination is far more sophisticated than your basic example. For instance, take an essential amino acid and think about its journey though your body and the various routes it can take.
The coordinator is the organism through which all the processes take place.
I don’t think anyone is a fool for accepting the Modern Synthesis. I just think there are serious problems with it.
Only a few comments ago phoodoo was making the case that children should be taught the truth about design and the the origin of life. The question as to what actually would be taught remains unadressed however.
People like phoodoo can demonstrate that intelligent design is in fact a scientific explanation by giving the explanation that they presumably must have in order to believe it should be taught in schools.
Or do you just want to skip over that step phoodoo?
Isn’t this kind of the definition of a cell? Ever since planets existed they have been large masses orbiting around some stars. Like that?
I suspect that phoodoo has trouble understanding that Darwin’s hypotheses are pretty much a tiny seed compared to what’s going on today in terms of evolutionary theory. So, I wouldn’t go as far as imagining that phoodoo knows what the modern synthesis is.
By the way, I’ve got that and the newer synthesis books as a gift from a very good friend. The modern synthesis is not as dumb as Gould wanted to portray it, and the “newer” not as illuminating as pretentiously presented by their authors. The modern synthesis is much more modest in acknowledging potential pitfalls, and being very careful about where things were pointing out. Anyway, phoodoo seems to think science is literalist and dogmatic, holding to ideas that cannot be better defined or refined, like “random mutations”, for fear of being excommunicated.
I have tried to explain more precise terminology and how science works, but it doesn’t seem to register. To phoodoo it’s either “random dust” or magical beings in the sky. The mere idea that things could work on their own seems opposite to what science investigates. Apparently, we’re not looking for equations to describe patterns, we’re only producing equations for rolling dice. Imagine that. The laws of newton being rolling dice algorithms, rather than describing the way gravitation seems to behave. But that doesn’t register. If gravitation has a precise, or a series of precise, deterministic-looking equation(s), then that’s some magical being in the sky, not nature.
Why? We are in agreement that the bonding of amino acids to tRNAs has a stochastic element. Is it stochastic that they attach in a set order? Also from here
Does that sound like a stochastic process?
If you go back in time will it remain the same process, or will it change?
How far can you go back in time without it changing?
When it starts to change, if it does, how is it changing?
If we continue to go back in time to the “first” version of the process what will that look like?
In the step previous to the first step, what does that look like?
Just as phoodoo gets a hopelessly distorted view of the world, courtesy of Alphabet Inc., so does Charlie with his reliance on scientific press releases.
His “ribosomes are hetergeneous” story is messier, and a lot less ground-breaking, than his source (a Stanford Press Release) makes out, and his Science Daily blurb from Urbana-Champaign refers to “high energy bonds”, which makes me scream.
Nice to see Charlie continue with the bald assertions of top-down coordination and ongoing whataboutism, though. He’s making my point for me.
I already explained that. You spoke about the rate(speed) of the reaction, not the degree of bias in the distribution of outcomes of the reaction. You insinuated that the uncatalyzed reaction being slower made it more stochastic, but it’s rate is irrelevant to whether it is stochastic or not. Hence my dice analogy.
Good. That’s really all I wanted to say about that.
There is a stochastic element to that too, yes. But the distributions are much more biased. No biochemical process known has a 100% fidelity. Even with editing domains, tRNA-synthetases still occasionally do mistranslate.
Even better, occasional mistranslations are known under some conditions to facilitate evolution:
Mistranslation can promote the exploration of alternative evolutionary trajectories in enzyme evolution.
There are even organisms known with aminactyl-tRNA-synthetases that lack editing domains. Somehow these still manage to make a successful living despite higher rates of mistranslation. Someone wrote an entire PhD thesis about that.
Interestingly, the pre-LUCA last common ancestor of certain aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetase enzymes have been phylogenetically reconstructed, and they are highly promiscuous catalysts. They will accept basically all amino acids, with only slight preferences for their specific descendant substrates(class I synthetases are biased towards preferring class I substrantes, and class II enzymes prefer class II substrates). That basically shows that the specific extant enzymes evolved from less discriminating ancestors at earlier stages in the evolution of the genetic code and translation system.
See figure 6C in this paper.
Rumraket,
So much winking and nodding there Rum! For shame!
Oh, he does huh?
Kn, Jock says you know what random mutations are. So what makes you think I was referring to something different than what you call random mutations? Or is Jock wrong again?
Do you think Jock believes life is teleological? Or are you going to claim you also don’t know what that means? Or Jock doesn’t know what that means? Or all those people writing books that you recommend don’t know what that means?
Entropy,
Is this what you are calling the modern synthesis? That living cells are machines that construct their own parts?
Do you believe physics alone can not explain where we came from?
The modern synthesis is founded in morphogenetic fields? Are you a closet Rupert Sheldrake fan?
morphogenetic field ≠ morphic resonance.
“I’ve never met a fundamentalist creationist who actually understood how evolution works. They embarrass themselves.”
KN thinks you are nuts.
When are you going to move beyond the strictly accepted measures that consider only the mechanics of nature Jock? Tomorrow?
I have never met a mathematician who understands how words work.
Idiot.