I thought I would give a comment by a poster with the handle “ericB” a little more publicity as it was buried deep in an old thread where it was unlikely to be seen by passing “materialists / evolutionists”.
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Calling all evolutionists / materialists! Your help is needed! Alan Fox has not been able to answer a particular challenge, but perhaps you know an answer.
The issue is simple and the bar is purposely set low. The question is whether there exists one or more coherent scenarios for the creation of a translation system by unguided chemicals.
The translation system in cells indicates intelligent design. I would submit that, regardless of how many billions of years one waited, it is not reasonable to expect that unguided chemicals would ever construct a system for translating symbolic information into functional proteins based on stored recipes and a coding convention.
[I realize people have thoughts about what happened earlier (e.g. that might not need proteins, for example) and what happened later (e.g. when a functioning cell provides the full benefits of true Darwinian evolution). For the purposes here, attention is focused specifically on the transition from a universe without symbolic translation to construct proteins to the origin of such a system. Whatever happened earlier or later, sooner or later this bridge would have to be crossed on any path proposed to lead to the cells we see now.]
One of the key considerations leading to this conclusion is that a translation system depends upon multiple components, all of which are needed in order to function.
+ Decoding
At the end, one needs the machinery to implement and apply the code to decode encoded symbolic information into its functional form. (In the cell, this is now the ribosome and supporting machinery and processes, but the first instance need not be identical to the current version.) Without this component, there is no expression of the functional form of what the symbolic information represents. The system as a whole would be useless as a translation system without this. Natural selection could not select for the advantages of beneficial expressed proteins, if the system cannot yet produce any. A DVD without any player might make a spiffy shiny disk, but it would be useless as a carrier of information.
+ Translatable Information Bearing Medium
There must be a medium that is both suitable for holding encoded information and that is compatible with the mechanism for decoding. Every decoding device imposes limitations and requirements. It would be useless to a DVD player if your video was on a USB thumb drive the DVD player could not accept instead of a suitable disk. In the cells we see, this is covered by DNA and ultimately mRNA.
+ Meaningful Information Encoded According to the Same Coding Convention
One obviously needs to have encoded information to decode. Without that, a decoding mechanism is useless for its translation system purpose. If you had blank DVDs or DVDs with randomly encoded gibberish or even DVDs with great high definition movies in the wrong format, the DVD player would not be able to produce meaningful results, and so would have no evolutionary benefit tied to its hypothetical but non-functioning translation abilities. In the cell, this information holds the recipes for functional proteins following the same encoding convention implemented by the ribosome and associated machinery.
+ Encoding Mechanisms
This is perhaps the least obvious component, since the cell does not contain any ability to create a new store of encoded protein recipes from scratch. Indeed, this absence is part of the motivating reasons for the central dogma of molecular biology. Nevertheless, even if this capability has disappeared from view, there would have to be an origin and a source for the meaningful information encoded according to the same coding convention as is used by the decoding component.
(For the moment, I will just note in passing that the idea of starting out with random gibberish and running the system until meaningful recipes are stumbled upon by accident is not a viable proposal.)
So there has to be some source capable of encoding, and this source must use the same coding convention as the decoding component. To have a working, beneficial DVD player, there must also be a way to make a usable DVD.
+ Meaningful Functional Source Material to Represent
It would do absolutely no good to have the entire system in place, if there did not also exist in some form or other a beneficial “something” to represent with all this symbolic capability. If you want to see a movie as output, there needs to be a movie that can be encoded as input. If you want functional proteins as output, there needs to be access to information about proper amino acid sequences for functional proteins that can serve as input. Otherwise, GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. If there is no knowledge of what constitutes a sequence for a functional protein, then the result produced at the end of the line would not be a functional protein.
+ Some Other Way To Make What You Want The System To Produce
If we supposed that the first movie to be encoded onto a DVD came from being played on a DVD player, we would clearly be lost in circular thinking, which does not work as an explanation for origins. Likewise, if the only way to produce functional proteins is to get them by translating encoded protein recipes, that reveals an obvious problem for explaining the origin of that encoded information about functional proteins. How can blind Nature make a system for producing proteins, if there has never yet been any functional proteins in the universe? On the other hand, how does blind Nature discover and use functional proteins without having such a system to make them?
The core problem is that no single part of this system is useful as a translation system component if you don’t have the other parts of the system. There is nowhere for a blind process to start by accident that would be selectable toward building a translation system.
The final killer blow is that chemicals don’t care about this “problem” at all. Chemicals can fully fulfill all the laws of chemistry and physics using lifeless arrangements of matter and energy. Chemicals are not dissatisfied and have no unmet goals. A rock is “content” to be a rock. Likewise for lifeless tars.
The biology of cells needs chemistry, encoded information, and translation, but chemicals do not need encoded information or biology. They aren’t trying to become alive and literally could not care less about building an encoded information translation system.
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I’m hoping ericB will find time to respond to any comments his challenge might elicit.
Yeah, drawing logical conclusions from an author’s clams and supporting those conclusions by demonstrating the logic is not allowed. If he didn’t say that ‘”life” violates the second law’, including the bolding and the quotes, it doesn’t matter whether or not his claims lead directly to the conclusion that his claims mean that life must violate the second law.
Standard creo tactic.
Well, you say this:
You asked how we would recognize that it is not the produce of unguided natural processes. The answer is the same one I’ve always given. It is not by similarity (e.g. not “because it superficially matches some already seen” example), but because of dissimilarity, namely because “it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen before” including anything that we’ve ever known unguided natural processes to produce.
So how do you decide that, in this possible world I described, that silicon based life is like something we have seen before? I mean, “like” doesn’t establish kind or degree of similarity.
Now, on this Earth, one can form the broad hypothesis that life is a result of natural processes. There is evidence that justifies this as a tentative hypothesis. So to reject the hypothesis one needs grounds to reject it. What are the grounds to reject the hypothesis?
p.s. For that matter, if the system has learned to preferentially supply only the long monotonous sequences that would work with the one monotonous anticodon, then how does it ever learn to supply alternate pattern sequences that include the second anticodon pattern to come along? And then the third?
Having a new anticodon is absolutely useless if the supplied sequences do not have that pattern.
But if you have truly random sequences in the input (which might someday match a new anticodon), then almost all of the time the system will be doing nothing at all, because it will stopping as the first step overwhelmingly.
I could go on, but rather than guess at what you would propose, I would rather have what you actually propose as the process of transition.
So, perhaps now it becomes a little more clear why I was expecting you to need a full set of anticodons. [Again, that is no excuse for my not being clear about your actual proposal (my error).]
I have only a moment for a quick response. The grounds are in the obstacles such as those I’ve described for this challenge. In short, chemicals don’t show any capacity to engineer the molecular machines and systems required.
Sorry to be so brief, but I have to go.
You could easily find this stuff for yourself, you know. Google?
Word gaming doesn’t do it. Do ID/creationists understand how the laws of thermodynamics fit with evolution and the origins of life? We are talking about basic understanding of fundamental concepts in science.
You can’t spot the misconceptions in Thaxton?
Here is where it all started in 1973. You can find much more over at the ICR website.
Compare Morris’s “scholarship with what the originator of the term said.
This is from Rudolf Clausius in Annalen der Physik und Chemie, Vol. 125, p. 353, 1865, under the title “Ueber verschiedene für de Anwendung bequeme Formen der Hauptgleichungen der mechanischen Wärmetheorie.” (“On Several Convenient Forms of the Fundamental Equations of the Mechanical Theory of Heat.”)
It is also available in A Source Book in Physics, Edited by William Francis Magie, Harvard University Press, 1963, page 234.
(Note: Q represents the quantity of heat, T the absolute temperature, and S will be what Clausius names as entropy)
…………..
We obtain the equation
∫dQ/T = S – S0
which, while somewhat differently arranged, is the same as that which was formerly used to determine S.
If we wish to designate S by a proper name we can say of it that it is the transformation content of the body, in the same way that we say of the quantity U that it is the heat and work content of the body.
However, since I think it is better to take the names of such quantities as these, which are important for science, from the ancient languages, so that they can be introduced without change into all the modern languages, I propose to name the magnitude S the entropy of the body, from the Greek word η τροπη, a transformation.
I have intentionally formed the word entropy so as to be as similar as possible to the word energy, since both these quantities, which are to be known by these names, are so nearly related to each other in their physical significance that a certain similarity in their names seemed to me advantageous.
………………………..
Here is Thomas Kindell, a protégé of Henry Morris.
Here is Sewell’s paper.
As you read Sewell’s paper, answer these questions which I asked before. Does Sewell understand the second law of thermodynamics? Does Sewell understand what entropy is?
There are many very elementary errors in Sewell’s paper. Can you find them? At least one of them a high school student can easily understand.
Do I need to give you links to Sanford’s “genetic entropy”?
Do I need to give you links to David L. Abel and “spontaneous molecular chaos” and the “cybernetic gap”?
Do I need to give you links to Dembski and Marks?
There are dozens of examples I can point to with links. But you can google “evolution and the second law” or “entropy and evolution” and sort through all the ID/creationst stuff for youself.
You also know all the discussions that have taken place over at UD. I have followed many of them, and I can spot the misconceptions and misrepresentations. Can you?
You yourself suggested that designed machines were necessary for the origins of life. That is wrong. You need to explain why you know that the second law forbid such origins without such machines.
Your own statements are full of misconceptions about the second law. You also avoided those five questions, two of which I repeated here.
Exactly as I expected and predicted, the only quotations (or suggested Google searches) provided so far are those related to the position that “evolution” is contrary to the 2nd law. As I expected, none have claimed that “life” is contrary to the 2nd law.
The claim that there are those advancing the latter position is so far batting zero.
However, no quotations yet from cubist, so we will see.
If none are provided, we will have to see whether
a) the claimers admit the claim was false, or
b) the claimers claim there is no difference between the former and the latter (thereby showing they don’t understand the difference).
nirwad@ud
granvilleUD
As life is presumably more complex then a computer…
granville again
David Abel
Robert Sheldon
Now you are just word-gaming; exactly as I was expecting.
It is statements like this the give away the fact that you never read the literature of your own leaders. And you certainly don’t understand the real science.
You have no clue about the implications of Dembski’s probability calculations. You haven’t read Dembski. You haven’t read Abel. You haven’t watched the calculations by your cohorts over at UD.
I referred you to your own people. I don’t play quote-mine war games. You are supposed to read for yourself. Why did OMagain have to do it for you?
Instead of scanning stuff just to quote mine sentences, try reading thoroughly for comprehension. It is all there in the stuff to which I referred.
And you are still dodging those questions:
(1) Does Sewell understand the second law of thermodynamics?
(2) Does Sewell understand the concept of entropy?
(3) Do YOU understand the second law of thermodynamics?
(4) Do YOU understand the concept of entropy?
(5) Why do the origins of life violate the second law of thermodynamics?
Either you know the answers to these questions or you don’t.
Your word gaming is just an attempt to cover up the fact that you don’t understand the concepts and their implications.
Word gaming is one of the primary characteristics of ID/creationism. It doesn’t belong in science or the science classroom.
Your word gaming has simply gotten you into a deeper hole, because you now have to explain why the second law forbids chemical processes leading up to life but does not forbid evolution. Molecules evolve.
You have also confirmed that you now want to violate the first law of thermodynamics in order to say that abiogenesis violates the second law.
Do you even understand any of this? Try stopping the quote mining and word gaming and concentrate on concepts.
A couple further points:
If you don’t think ID/creationists think abiogenesis violates the second law, how do you explain their constant use of the tornado-in-a-junkyard argument?
If you don’t think ID/creationists think abiogenesis violates the second law of thermodynamics, why did Granville Sewell use the illustration of a video of a tornado being played in reverse?
You most certainly “get” the implications in these “arguments”; but you don’t think about them enough to understand what is wrong with them. They are simply subliminal messages you store away in your mind in order for you to convince yourself that science is wrong and ID/creationists have discovered science’s “dirty little secret.”
Forget the copy/paste “authority” spam wars that are so rampant over at UD. Instead, try learning some real scientific concepts and engage in some real issues instead of playing games.
I do appreciate how OMagain has actually provided quotations. Nearly all of these are not applicable to the question at hand, since they appear to be discussing various proposed ideas regarding the “Naturalistic origin of life”, “the origin and evolution of life”, etc., which is exactly as I expected and explicitly predicted.
The only apparent exception is a quote from someone named Robert Sheldon, who made the statement in a comment (#24) of a discussion thread. With no disrespect intended to Sheldon, there is no indication that he is anything like a leading figure or recognized representative voice either among Creationists or ID proponents.
Before looking at what he meant (which he explains @90), three very interesting significant points are supplied by keiths in his comment @53.
keiths has no difficulty understanding and recognizing the significance of the difference between claiming that evolution violates the 2nd law and claiming that “life itself…violates the second law!” Why should anyone find that such a hard distinction to understand?
Not only does keiths clearly understand the difference between the two types of claims, he also clearly recognizes that Robert Sheldon’s apparent claim that life itself violates the 2nd law is not a claim that Granville Sewell makes. keiths has just pulled the rug out from under any who want to imply Sewell is making such a claim.
keiths points out that no one was regarding Sheldon’s comments as necessary to understanding Sewell’s position.
But what about Robert Sheldon’s comment @24? Sheldon elaborates @90 (see there for the full text).
So, “As far as “thermodynamics” is concerned, ” Sheldon does not consider life to violate the 2nd law with respect to thermal entropy. The violation by the cell that he claims is only with regard to “applying Boltzmann’s definition”.
Even so, if we were having a contest, so far OMagain’s entry of the Robert Sheldon quote is the only one in the running (and even then it slips in with certain caveats of meaning). If I were to grant a prize, OMagain’s Sheldon entry is the only one that appears to even qualify.
So you think this is a copy/paste contest; with UD rules of engagement? Make others run around collecting quotes while you sneer that it isn’t good enough for you? Do you think you can pretend to be knowledgeable this way?
What you are really indicating is that you have no clue; you just recite ID/creationist talking points from memory. You never check their correctness; you never even think about them.
Word games and copy/paste spam wars are not what this is all about.
You are still avoiding the very straight forward questions about ID/creationism’s understanding of fundamental scientific concepts.
Does Sewell, or Dembski, understand the second law of thermodynamics?
Does Sewell, or Dembski, understand the concept of entropy?
Do YOU understand the second law of thermodynamics?
Do YOU understand the concept of entropy?
Why does abiogenesis violate the second law of thermodynamics?
Do you have any clue about why Dembski et. al. of the ID/creationist movement calculate the probabilities of the assemblies of atoms the way they do. You have heard of CSI; but do you know how the concept caricatures real scientific concepts?
Why do ID/creationists use the tornado-in-a-junkyard argument? Are you going to use Fred Hoyle as an “authority” figure? Is the argument correct? Do you even know?
How much more direct do questions have to be?
The fundamental questions here are about ID/creationist’s knowledge of fundamental concepts in science. Trying to give the appearance of understanding with brash assertions isn’t getting you anywhere. The conceptual errors of ID/creationism are so egregious that high school science students can see right through them.
There is no substance in anything you have posted here to date. That is why ID/creationism is a pseudoscience. It’s all bluff and bluster; political street theater.
The point, ericB, is that you don’t know; and you won’t check. That is the way of the ID/creationist camp follower.
Hope vs. The Buried Doubloon in Australia
If one approaches the hypothesis of unaided natural process origins as though it cannot fail, one can be prone to seeing only the hopeful side of a fact and completely missing the full extent of the dire consequences.
Another Inconvenient Truth: While the number of potential path candidates grows in an exponential manner, the number of physically realized blind undirected explorers of those path candidates in any actual varying colony of such explorers is always bound by finite three dimensional space and a finite allowance of one dimensional time.
Corollary: Since the number of potential path candidates grows in an exponential manner while the physically realized blind explorers and the available time are bound, the real searching resources cannot possibly keep pace with the potential searchable space. It very soon becomes the case that it is completely infeasible to explore any significant portion of the possible paths by means of blind random search.
Yet Another Inconvenient Truth: Even if we were to generously assume that the number of potentially successful paths grows exponentially without bound, this can still be rendered unhelpful and not realistically accessible by the fact that the number of path candidates that ultimately fail can also grow exponentially.
Illustration:
[In passing, the advantage of intelligence is not in being able to do blind search better. It is in having superior options that don’t rely upon blind search, such as the ability to imagine future states, to perceive future advantages, and to build directly toward those outcomes in spite of the fact that intermediate states are not functional at all. This is something that we know natural selection can never do.]
To consider the difficulty of blind search on a “mountain” whose potential paths grow exponentially, suppose that we divide Australia into 4^24 (= 281,474,976,710,656) numbered locations. Into one of these locations, Allan Miller secretly buries a doubloon.
The probability of blindly picking the right location to dig is then exactly equal to the probability of randomly generating one particular sequence of 24 RNA nucleotides, which is the length of just 8 triplets that might correspond to a “poly”peptide of only 8 amino acids.
Picking 1 (or 4^0) winning sequence for 24 nucleotides =
picking any of 4 (=4^1) winning sequences for 25 nucleotides =
picking any of 16 (=4^2) winning sequences for 26 nucleotides =
picking any of 4^N winning sequences for N+24 nucleotides.
Even though the number of winning sequences in this progression is expanding exponentially, since the total number of sequences is also growing exponentially, every one of these cases is still exactly just as improbable as blindly picking the correct spot for the buried doubloon in Australia.
Consider Allan Miller’s proposal for using an early triplet reading system with only one tRNA to provide length control. Notice that since there is only one tRNA, then generating a “poly”peptide of at least 8 amino acids would require generating one specific sequence (that matches the anticodon of the only tRNA) of at least 24 nucleotides in length.
In other words, even at that nominal length, it is already as difficult as blindly picking the correct spot of the buried doubloon in Australia.
If one does not make unwarranted teleological assumptions about how the blindly created system starts out already knowing to use only sequences of that particular pattern, then one is immediately tossed into the great misfortune of blind search in an exponentially growing search space.
You raise a good point that the number of exploring walkers does affect the scale of space that can be covered within a particular time. This is true. But it is also true that the scale of the space itself also matters.
As I mention in Hope vs. The Buried Doubloon in Australia, any finite number of actual blind explorers operating in finite time is easily overwhelmed by the exponential growth of a potential search space.
So the allegory of one explorer covering one merely physical mountain of unspecified size is actually a generous understatement of the real problem. For some small end mountains, a purposeful person could make multiple trips to the summit in a single day. (If you have Netflix streaming and nothing better to do, take a look at The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. This is not great art, but it serves the point at hand.)
But the main point of the analogy was not to determine the exact scale of the problem. Rather, it was to provide another way to encourage people to think about engaging with the fact that there are obstacles along the way. As long as people aren’t dealing with the obstacles, they aren’t yet dealing with the nature of the challenge.
It is just an allegory, after all. To the extent it provided an alternate, allegorical way to talk about and conceive of the reality of obstacles along the way, to encourage thought about them, and most importantly to expose the error in reasoning of disregarding the obstacles, it serves its purpose.
More simple questions for you.
Do the following sequences have the same probability?
ACTGACTG
GCTTATGC
AAACCTGT
AAAAAAAA
AAAACCCC
Second question: What does this kind of calculation have to do with the behaviors of atoms and molecules?
I agree that “like” is not very helpful. I should point out a detail about my post that is easily missed.
The parts of that reply of mine to thorton that I put into quotation marks were not originally statements of my own. I was borrowing the wording that thorton chose to use. My reason was to try to express the point in terms that were as close as possible to his own wording, and to highlight the contrast between what he had thought my position was (i.e. about similarity or something that “matches” or is like something we know) and what my position has actually been (i.e. which is nearly the opposite of that).
But if you look back at my own earlier comments describing my own position, my own preference is to understand the matter in terms of what could be (or could not be) reasonably attributed to the products of unguided natural processes.
For example, I just pointed out certain severe known limitations on what natural selection can do. That is not an argument from ignorance. It comes from our knowledge about the inherent limitations of natural selection. It cannot look into the future or prefer future benefits over present disadvantages. This limitation will never change. It is a fact that can inform our evaluation about whether an effect X could reasonably be attributed to natural processes, even if something like replication or reproduction is involved.
Yet, when we examine proposals to meet the challenge, we repeatedly find features justified by the benefits they will eventually provide when they become functional. But natural selection is completely blind to such considerations.
Even now, we have no justification (apart from sheer blind incredible luck) for why chemicals would build a Triplet-Reading System. The only claimed advantages happen sometime after it has been built and has developed enough to be functional and (supposedly) beneficial.
False.
It is only ID/creationist “probability calculations” that come to this conclusion; by design.
They would not. So perhaps there’s more to it then “chemicals”, no? Perhaps before you leap to a conclusion of ID you might want to consider alternatives other then “chemicals did it randomly”.
Of course, at some level, it was “just chemicals”. Just as it was also “just bosons” or “just electron shell interactions”
Given that nobody is claiming that biological components are assembled in a tornado I’m not sure what your point is.
What if there are also trillions of buried doubloons, each perhaps slightly different from the other? What if they were also generally direct neighbors, so that you could move from one doubloon to another in a single step and typically that new doubloon, because it was only slightly different from the last, also allowed you to live and (potentially) do even better then the previous doubloon allowed?
What if you’ve really misunderstood the whole concept of a fitness landscape and your “preferred conclusion” of design was in fact a conclusion you had before you looked at the evidence, so you’ve cast the evidence into a form that supports your prior belief system rather then developing an understanding from the evidence?
ericB:
Mike Elzinga:
Perhaps Mike can point us to the chapter and page where this is explained in the book he’s been touting. The one he claims no IDist has read. Of if they have read it, they haven’t understood it. And if they have read it and understood it, they are just IDists/Creationsts, and therefore they are lying about it.
Or perhaps he can explain how Fred Hoyle was a ID/creationist.
ericB:
But didn’t Mike Elzinga assert that Granville Sewell had claimed that life was impossible? And didn’t I post a link to the freely available online chapter authored by Granville Sewell and invite Mike to back up his assertion with actual evidence? And didn’t Mike respond, putting me in my place?
Many have made the claim that an unguided natural process origin for life would require violating the 2nd law. The point in contention was whether anyone was claiming that the operation of cells and of life itself violates the 2nd law.
If you look at the comments by keiths that I provide, it is clear that he understands the difference between these two claims and fully recognizes that only Robert Sheldon claimed the latter, not Granville Sewell. Since keiths is no fan of Sewell’s and is a hostile witness in that regard, the acknowledgement by keiths that Sewell does not claim that life itself violates the 2nd law is especially compelling evidence.
Sewell’s position is that having an open system allowing energy flow is not sufficient to make an unguided natural process origin of life plausible in light of the 2nd law. There is no indication he has ever claimed that the operation of life itself violates the 2nd law.
The Triplet-Reading System and the Exponential Space of Interacting Parts
Allan Miller’s proposal to meet the current challenge depends on the appearance of a Triplet-Reading System. If it is not reasonable that unguided processes would produce one, his proposal fails. Yet, apart from sheer blind incredible luck, the plausibility of it ever appearing — in spite of identified obstacles — has never been justified. At this point, it remains a leap of blind faith, in spite of the obstacles.
I completely agree that you have described what would be needed for such a scheme to work. But describing what would be needed is one thing. Showing that reality is the way one needed it to be is something very different.
In terms of the successful nucleotide sequences that can be read by Allan Miller’s single starting tRNA, we know for a fact that there are not trillions of buried doubloons. There is necessarily only one doubloon in all of Australia that works to even generate a “poly”peptide of at least only a mere 8 amino acids. Anything longer than that trivial length grows exponentially worse. That is a direct consequence of Allan’s chosen proposal.
In the more general context of the Triplet-Reading System, your suggestion would translate into supposing that the space of all possible arrangements of interacting parts is densely filled with functional combinations, so that even a very, very small sample by a finite group of actual physical “explorers” can reasonably find such a system, e.g. an “ancestor” system to the Triplet-Reading System. Then, tiny changes to the “cousin” would need to transform the one system into another functional system, and so on until one has a functional Triplet-Reading System, yet without needing to venture too far away from a preceding working system.
Since Allan Miller does not appear to be defending his own proposal currently, you are certainly free to stand in the gap and give it a go. But there are a couple key problems.
1. It is almost certainly false that the exponential space of possible arrangements of interacting parts is densely filled with working arrangements. There is no apparent basis in fact for such a belief. See for example:
The Levinthal paradox of the interactome.
Tompa P, Rose GD.
Protein Sci. 2011 Dec;20(12):2074-9. doi: 10.1002/pro.747. Epub 2011 Nov 9.
In a different context, the gist of the same problem is described by Richard Dawkins this way:
(Feel free to look to Dawkins for advice on how to deal with this issue.)
Intuitively, anyone can consider any machine, including any molecular machine. Is the number of ways of arranging the parts that works as great as or vastly less than the number of ways of arranging the parts that does not work?
2. There are also serious problems with the idea of easily island-hoping from one kind of working system to another of a different kind.
If a predecessor system also reads triplets (but for some other purpose), that only shifts the problem sideways and renames it without substantially decreasing its difficulty. If the predecessor system is different in any significant way (e.g. it doesn’t read triplets), then there is a huge new problem of trying to change a working system into something else without breaking it into dysfunction. On top of that, the predecessor system may still be difficult to justify on its own. (See my comments in The Triplet-Reading System — Part Two, and also here about the obstacle of changing a system in operation.)
In summary, you are exactly on target for what would be needed. The problem is that no one has figured out a way to make that fit with reality when it comes to producing working systems of molecular machines.
EricB,
Mike asked you, in response to your Triplet Reading System Part II calculations, if different oligonucleotides have the same probability.
He is trying to lead you, gently, to a very important realization:
Your math is wrong.
Presumably you have such a demonstration to hand?
E.G. Pick a space, protein for example, and demonstrate that it is not so interconnected as to allow life to move from one position in the space to another.
I may comment on other aspects of your post later Eric, but for now I’d just like to make a more general point.
When people, KF for example, make a claim about how some space cannot be traversed incrementally I typically ask “OK, let’s see your map then”.
The response? Well, I could link you to any one of dozens of variations of “ignoring the question”. And I probably will at some point.
You are obviously not a computer programmer then.
Computer programs typically are in a state of broke. Sometimes “broke” means “won’t run at all”. Sometimes it means “you’ll find out in a year what the problem is”.
Every day I make a change in a working system and try not to break it into dysfunction. If I do, I can of course roll back the changes. Sometimes it’s more complex then that, but in essence the same type of task to recover.
Where there a trillion of me I could probably proceed via totally blind trial and error. I don’t type that much on an average day. And sometimes I’m reduced to trial and error, to my discomfort.
But there is no “huge new problem” of trying to change a working system into something else without breaking it. Nothing is “trying” to do it. Nothing. A space is being explored.
For example, gene duplication. One gene continues to perform the original function, the other is free to mutate.
A working system that will also potentially change into something else. Your problem solved? Agree?
Look up Muller’s ratchet. .
I beg to differ. Behe did a bang up job of that already, and best of all it’s on the record:
So your own scientist agrees with me, not you, no? Seems that way to me at the moment.
You are not characterizing Sewell’s paper correctly.
I have read Sewell’s paper many times over and have found a number of egregious errors in it. I even asked you if you could find them.
My conclusion is that you have not read Sewell’s paper, let alone comprehended anything in it.
I asked you some very direct questions which, clearly, you are deliberately avoiding.
Does Sewell, or Dembski, understand the second law of thermodynamics?
Does Sewell, or Dembski, understand the concept of entropy?
Do YOU understand the second law of thermodynamics?
Do YOU understand the concept of entropy?
Why does abiogenesis violate the second law of thermodynamics?
In the light of your assertion about Sewell, I will add another question:
Why do you believe that “having an open system allowing energy flow is not sufficient to make an unguided natural process origin of life plausible in light of the 2nd law”?
You still haven’t answered the questions about the probabilities of those sequences either.
These are straight-forward questions about concepts. Word-gaming them is not answering them.
Are you only looking for specific instances of Creationists making the direct, explicit statement that Life violates the laws of thermodynamics? Or would you accept instances of Creationists making claims which, if said claims were actually true, would entail, in consequence, that Life violates the laws of thermodynamics?
Yep.
Well you know how creationists and IDists are about quoting/quotemining: no thing is ever said in context; no thing is ever to be read for understanding rather than for the bare words in the sentence … so yeah, EricB is “only looking for specific instances of Creationists making the direct, explicit statement that Life violates the laws of thermodynamics”. Nothing else will count, no matter what it means, no matter how clearly it shows the creationist incomprehension of thermodynamics.
But there’s no point trying to discuss it with EricB anyways; even if you find the exact quote he demanded, he will never acknowledge that you are right.
Like this?
Or this?
Or even this?
See also Answers in Genesis
rhampton,
I overlooked ericB’s request for comments specific to life’s operation, and not it’s origin. This quote makes plain that the processes of life that generate additional information also violate the second law:
This is always such a weird phenomenon to watch. But it highlights the fact that these “arguments” are complete nonsense right down to their very core.
On a superficial level ID/creationists want to appear to be making arguments from “advanced” concepts in science. But on closer inspection, we discover these “advanced” concepts are serious misconceptions and misrepresentations of elementary concepts taught in high school; and even in middle school.
Here is the original claim that I objected to as false.
Notice, the claim is about what “ID/creationists assert” (not about what other people think of their assertions) and it is claimed that they assert “that life violates the second law of thermodynamics” (not that merely the origin of life or evolution violates the second law).
I’m not bothered that people disagree on the topic of thermodynamics, but I do object to this misrepresentation of what ID proponents (or creationists) are themselves asserting.
From my first objection, I’ve made explicit the distinction that keiths also recognized, i.e. that claiming life violates the second law is different from saying that an unguided origin of life would have needed to violate the second law, and that Granville Sewell claims the latter but not the former, as keiths also acknowledged. So the original statement by Mike is indeed false as it was stated. Just ask keiths, who is no fan of Granville Sewell.
Here is the cubist response:
Note again that the claim by cubist is about what the Creationists themselves “assert”. cubist claims that, “Lots of Creationists assert that Life violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, …”. Note the cubist didn’t say, “Lots of Creationists assert that the origin of life violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and this (in my opinion) implies that life itself must also be in violation of the 2nd law.”
So far we haven’t seen “Lots” of quotes from Creationists (or from ID proponents) where they themselves “assert that Life violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics”. That is because this is a misrepresentation of what they assert.
If you want to disagree with their position, fine. My objection is to creating and attacking a straw man by misrepresenting what they themselves assert.
As to taking the thread off topic, I encouraged a very specific special case exception. As I said to Mung…
So to answer cubist’s question, from the very first my only interest in taking the thread off topic in this matter is to find out whether there are actual Creationists or ID proponents who themselves assert such a bizarre claim, or whether that is a misrepresentation of what they themselves assert.
Beyond that limited objective for the purpose of clearing away the misrepresentation (or else documenting it), I’m not intending to turn this thread into a discussion of Granville Sewell or his thesis or of the thesis of any Creationist on that topic. Not saying it is an unworthy subject. It’s just not the focus of this thread.
Of course the don’t make the claim directly, but what they say is a bit like saying two plus two in order to avoid saying four.
The processes of metabolism, growth and development are thermodynamically equivalent to evolution. You cannot differentiate them by any valid statement in chemistry or physics.
And any process of learning or any system that learns from feedback accumulates specific information.
For an analogy of accumulating information, you can intelligently design a nuclear reactor to generate electricity, and design a pump to pump water uphill.
Or you can let the sun do it.
Either way the water gets uphill and forms a stream or river.
No violation of thermodynamics either way. Pumps do not violate 2LoT.
Not addressing any comment in particular, may I suggest that part of the problem with explaining evolution is the metaphor chosen*. In this post thread, at least, the metaphor is a search of a space. Evolution uses living things to search a space. I think the proper metaphor is fill. Evolution fills a space with living things. No searching takes place any more than water searches a landscape when a flood occurs. It simply fills it.
*Beyond, of course, the simple fact that a metaphor is a metaphor and they are always limited as representations of reality, as analagies are(they being related).
“Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seeds. 4 As he scattered them across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. 5 Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The seeds sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. 6 But the plants soon wilted under the hot sun, and since they didn’t have deep roots, they died. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants. 8 Still other seeds fell on fertile soil, and they produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted! 9 Anyone with ears to hear should listen and understand.”
Um…okay? Whatever you say.
I just thought you were being nitpicked to death by ericB over a metaphor and wanted to make sure this was recognized. Being able to argue over the metaphor instead of the science is surely a happy thing for a creationist.
ericB,
Well, in fact it is NOT false; and it was stated exactly as I meant it to be stated. You obviously know this to be the case because you are consciously avoiding answering direct questions and going directly into hackneyed word games.
All your so-called “probability calculations” are based on the ID/creationists misconceptions. Your assertions and your “arguments” all reveal that you have imbibed this thinking.
Note again that you are consciously avoided direct questions about your calculations and about Sewell’s knowledge of entropy and the second law. You avoided answering about your own understanding.
This is not a trivial avoidance; and it is not irrelevant to this thread. All your “arguments” are verschlecht because you and the rest of the ID/creationist have no clue about how atoms and molecules behave.
It IS the focus of this thread. Your “arguments” and assertions have no meaning whatsoever. You have no idea what the second law is all about. You have no idea what entropy is. You have no idea what any of this has to do with your “arguments.” You have no idea how to calculate probabilities of atom and molecular interactions.
And you certainly have no idea about the chemistry and physics of life. You are just making up stuff. You have no clue.
You have been nailed and now you have retreated into word-gaming.
“I suggest that part of the problem with explaining evolution is the metaphor chosen*. . . . No searching takes place any more than water searches a landscape when a flood occurs. It simply fills it.”
Absolutely. I believe Lizzie and other regulars here have pointed this out in various online fora in the past. Intelligent design creationists love the idea that evolution is a search because that implies that there is a target (humans) to find and that there is someone doing the searching.
This is related to why Dembski’s CSI is a failure. As has been pointed out here, it ignores known evolutionary mechanisms when calculating probabilities. It’s even more fundamentally flawed however, because as you point out, evolution is not a search.
ericB,
I’ve been following this thread for a bit now. I would be very interested in hearing your answers to Mike Elzinga’s questions:
I don’t have Mike’s academic credentials, but I do have a degree in chemical engineering and have taken graduate courses in thermodynamics. My view is that Sewell is extremely confused about the topic, at best. What is yours?
Two more quotes about evolution after life’s origin violates the 2nd law:
And
For further evidence that the 2nd law is a major problem for Evolution (including rebuttal arguments against claims that this law is wrongly applied against Evolution or that it is contradicted by growth, living systems, crystal formation, etc.)
Okay, so you are only looking for specific instances of Creationists making the direct, explicit statement that Life violates the laws of thermodynamics, and you won’t accept instances of Creationists making claims which, if said claims were actually true, would entail, in consequence, that Life violates the laws of thermodynamics. Got it.
The stuff is easy to find isn’t it?
But ericB won’t take the time to find stuff that has been around for decades. I suspect he knows it is out there, but he clearly hasn’t read any of it; and he certainly doesn’t understand its implications and its influence on ID/creationist thinking, including his own thinking.
As I seem to always have to remind ID/creationists, not one of them knows their own socio/political and pseudo-intellectual history.
Such is the nature of ID/creationist word-gaming. 🙂
There’s amnesia and there’s fugue.
You sure about that? How would you distinguish between [a] a Creationist who’s honestly ignorant of their movement’s history, and [b] a Creationist who does know their movement’s history, but chooses not to display any indication of possessing that knowledge?
Anyone participating in this forum has been informed.