Do I understand you correctly, that for you a computer has such a thing as a mental state, and a cell hasn’t?
When introducing facts while presenting an argument, people usually chooses facts that have some relevance to the argument being made. I assumed you were doing the same.
I’m afraid this is still obscure to me. I still don’t know what the rate of energy exchange in living things has to do with irreducible complexity, nor do I (as a physicist by training) understand why our usual equations can’t describe the make-up of the relationship between codon and amino acid. It’s just chemistry.
Now it is true that the genetic code is arbitrary, in the sense that some other mappings of codons to amino acids could function just about as well as the basis of inheritance, but I don’t see what that has to do with energy flows or rate dependence. I also don’t see why it’s significant. Extremely small differences in initial conditions – or even unpredictable quantum events – can lead complex dynamical systems to very different subsequent states. If life did arise naturally, then the choice of a specific genetic code could easily be the result of such random factors.
I must not have been clear, since I’m making no such assumption. The core machinery of life is irreducibly complex and has been since the most recent common ancestor of all extant life. I haven’t disputed that. My point was that that core irreducible complexity is not the subject of this thread. This thread is about irreducible complexity that has appeared since then, during the course of biological evolution, where we do know a great deal about the processes involved. That’s what Behe has based his argument on.
No, you do not understand me correctly. As a programmer I have a mental state (at least on good days), including mental constructs of what I want the computer to do for me. The computer language is a medium by which those constructs can be converted(*) into machine instructions for the computer to carry out.
(*) After lots of debugging
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OK, that is clear. And when one computer communicates with another computer. Do they exchange information? Do they use a language? Does that imply a mental state?
Yes.
No, they use a protocol. That’s the term I’ve seen used.
No.
ETA: I’d call the transfer of data between computers an exchange of information even if the data is gibberish, as is sometimes is when I haven’t debugged my programs successfully.
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I finally got around to reading the article you linked!
The thing about God intervening in evolution is that give the millions ((billions? trillions?) of mutation involved between a first single cell and today’s humans He could have tweaked things by causing thousands of mutations and it wouldn’t be possible to tell those apart from random mutations. A university friend claimed he’d examined the differences between that single cell and us and calculated God only needed to introduce seven mutations to end up with modern humans, the first one (IIRC) making multicellular organisms then others along the way – though I don’t recall if he counted the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs as an intervention.
BTW, he was one of those atheist students who due to studying evolution concluded there must be a designer and ended up deciding that the Bible was the best candidate for holding communication from that Designer and became a Christian.
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And that’s correct.
That brings back memories of the last programming class I took! There were days when my mental state allowed me to churn out code for our assignments, but others when that mental state just wasn’t happening and even charting out the structure I wanted was agonizing. (It was because of the latter that I gave up on computer programming since it led to me getting the lowest grade I ever earned in a university class).
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Some years ago, I was deeply impressed by the article written by Thorvaldson, where he made the connection between finetuning in the universe and finetuning in biology.
Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems - ScienceDirect
It contradicts the suggestions here that a few undirected mutations can create entirely new functions, enough to explain all biological structures.
In 2018, the Nobel prize was won by Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith en Sir Gregory P. Winter titel “directed evolution of enzymes and binding proteins”. They stated several times, that they couldn’t create new functions.
I think there’s some misreading going on here because new functions happening has been observed numerous times (I’ve given a few examples in various threads here).
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In the same way as cells are proofreading their DNA for bugs, but less efficiently, I am affraid.
In practice, it can be defined mathematical, as Thorvaldson did in 2018. You can estimate the specific features that are both necessary and unique for a function. The numbers of the obliged sequencens can be compared with the relevant sequence space, and you have a probability.
I would suggest that a probability of less than 1.66 10^-27 indicates that the given features couldn’t have risen by chance.
I have suggested this earlier on this forum, but it was not appreciated at that time.
To what “features” are you ascribing this probability?
If you’re talking about abiogenesis, that’s not the topic here.
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You can still read the original text of the Nobel prize winners.
I have read your creation of the disabled flowers. I didn’t see new functions there. But was nice to read!
?? what are you talking about?
I am not talking about abiogenesis. Different features, thought to have emerged afterwards are so overwhelmingly complex, that I regard problems during evolution of about the same order as the problem with origin of life. Think only of the nuclear pore complex. Change from prokaryote to eukaryote is huge. To think that endosymbiosis solved it all, is not correct.
And I mentioned earlier, already the origin of such a simple organ as a lens is a problem. You wrote that you have learned the evolution of the eye, and that there were references in the book. I would ask you, if you have checked the references. I assume that you haven’t done it. Such checks ar scarcely done by students (me included, at that time)
Sorry about your disabled flowers. I mean your comment number 58
Oh, the apparently nonviable seeds? It’s odd because the very same increase in blossoms and stem shape have been achieved purposely and seeds are sold for growing them. I presume, given the same results, that it’s the same mutation, but someone had it with viable seeds. Apparently it’s not a dominant gene, though, since if you plant some of that floral variety and just let them essentially go wild they will have offspring that revert.
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Yes. Directed evolution of enzymes produces new functions, if that’s actually the target of the experiment.
A good example of new function evolving quickly without direct human involvement comes from the nylon-eating bacteria that have evolved. Despite certain young-earth sources denying that it’s evolution and falsely claiming that it is degrading of the bacterial DNA, that is in reality new functional information evolving.
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I’ve actually had nightmares of bacteria evolving to eat plastics.
They deny it in the case of the arsenic-metabolizing bacteria that I’ve related here several times, too, despite the fact that degraded DNA is not going to confer a totally new ability.
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The example of nylon eating bacteria is well known. It was modification of an already existing function. And yes, that occurs.
Whoa, I am reading along thinking it is not worth responding to this conversation which seems to be going nowhere. But pray tell, how does truth arise from a godless universe which created itself out of nothing? Please, how does matter in motion create truth? On what basis can an atheist claim to know truth? And since the atheist’s mind–oops, brain–is the result of a mindless undirected process, why should we believe that brain can tell us anything we should believe.
Theists, including YEC theists, know Jesus, who claims to be the Way, the Truth and the Life. As believers in Jesus, theists are plugged into the person who is Truth.
And pray tell, how can YEC promote an atheistic worldview? I can already almost hear the crunching and grinding your theological train wreck.
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