Well Howdy Chris! As usuual, you seem far more invested in discrediting me personally and my sources generally (a monster I simply refuse to feed) than addressing the issues I raise. In your zeal for the former, you have completely missed the point of contention between Steve and I. In the eternal hope that you and I can some day have an actual conversation, I refer you to my reply to him above.
But that anthropic principle reply, with reference to such planets, does nothing whatsoever to explain how intelligent life comes to exist in the world in the Goldilocks Zone - it only explains their surprise at being there.
In the case of CFT, likewise it may explain the wonder at fine tuning, but nothing whatever about how it came to exist. The anthropic argument only holds if there is reason to think that many other universes exist of all specifications, of which this one is just an example. Currently there is no scientific support for such a thing, which of course is a very different case from that of habitable planets.
Anyway, before you guys wax too lyrical about CFT being a poorly conceived ID error, bear in mind that BioLogos officially considers it a valid pointer to the existence of God here.
And I too see it as a valid pointer to god … as a point of (and supporter of) my faith. But the phrase “a fine tuned Universe” is not a proof of anything - - since only those that emerge in a fine-tuned Universe are able to marvel at it’s fine-tuned-ness.
The emergence of life from dead matter is another topic… and should not be used to divert the discussion away from the separate issue of a Cosmos that appears to be fine-tuned. [But BioLogos would agree that God is involved in leading natural events to jump this amazing juncture in Earth’s history.]
I find the existence of Consciousness mmmmuch more compelling than a Universe that appears fine-tuned.
Spetner claimed that Archaeopteryx is a forgery.
And then there’s this:
- Spetner’s metrics depend on a binding mechanism that does not occur in nature…
- Spetner’s metrics require that substances bind to enzymes in an all or nothing fashion, whereas real substrates do not bind in this way.
… Spetner himself is inconsistent in his application of his metrics. In his Xylitol example he does not actually use the measure he develops, and in the streptomycin example he swaps to a different metric, when his original metric would show increased information.
… his “directed evolution” model is based on a misunderstanding of one form of random mutation.
Also: His model’s espousal of local maxima is complete hooey. His model eliminates neutral changes from consideration, in contradiction to biologists’ experimental evidence. His model assume linear changes across a single line parentage rather than across populations.
I could go on, but I’ve gotta run.
I know you will probably continue to wax eloquently about how Spetner has provided evidence of the highest caliber, Joe. But maybe, just maybe, you will understand now why I base my faith on the Apostles’ testimony and on my personal encounter with Christ, rather than on an ID advocate’s assessment of what constitutes evidence of the highest caliber.
Have a blessed day, Joe.
EDIT: For the readers who don’t wish to search through 1000 posts extending over several months, here is the full statement I made about Spetner in June:
“Spetner is a Jewish physicist who believes that all of life stems from 365 different species that God created during the literal 6 days of Genesis 1. You expect me to take a citation to Spetner as evidence of your recent reading outside of YEC/ID authorship?”
The astute reader will note that I did not assess the merit of Spetner’s writings on the basis of his hermeneutical approach. The context was that my friend Joe had cited his reading of Spetner as evidence of his broad reading in the scientific literature. I was disagreeing with the notion that reading Spetner is a form of reading the scientific literature, as the term is commonly understood.
Have a blessed day, dear readers.
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Irrelevant question. The question wasn’t, “Who created the immune system?” The question was, “Where did the information to make antibodies come from”. In you analogy, the question is, "Where did this piece of information in that text of Hamlet come from? And the answer, of course, is that it came from Miss Random. Shakespeare certainly didn’t create it.[quote=“deliberateresult, post:1043, topic:4944”]
Ahh, but the intelligent agent is indeed discernable! As you concede multiple times in your reply to me, your “DNA has prescriptive information for carrying out a specific function”. Now, recall the exact wording of my claim:
“every single time we trace functional prescriptive information to its source, that source is always an intelligent agent, and never natural processes,”
I think the word you need to consider here is “source.” Your memory B cells do indeed perform a biological function; a function that was programmed into them from the beginning (more on this in a moment), bearing witness to an intelligent agent at its source. To the point currently under consideration, a copying error to original text cannot possibly occur absent the existence of the original text. Therefore, the original text is the source and the copying error is simply that: a copying error. Can a copying error result in a different coherent message? Sometimes. And I grant that this truth opens up an entirely different discussion when it comes to biological systems (which I will be happy to have). However, it remains true that the original message is the source.
[/quote]
As far as I can tell from you entire response, the word “information” in your statements has no meaning at all. It doesn’t mean semantic information – meaning of the message – because the meaning of the final message was not present initially. It’s not the string of symbols being output, as it would be in information theory, because they weren’t present initially either. Perhaps you can define what you’re talking about in some way, because at present I see no way of having a rational discussion about an undefined term.
Well, I would say that there’s a great deal of novel information in human DNA, but I’d also say that my B cells contain lots of novel information. Once again, I have no idea what you mean by “information”. I cannot think of any definition by which human DNA has novel information while B cells don’t. In both cases, there’s a DNA sequence that is replicated with random modifications, yielding a new sequence. In both cases the initial sequence is functional, and so is the final sequence.
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10 years, 20 years, whatever … I don’t think it’s going to happen.
I was in the University lecture room when Dr. Noam Chomsky suggested that because of the inherent limitations of any biological thing, it should come as no surprise that the human brain may not be capable of understanding how the human brain works.
I found that logic quite compelling!
In any case, even if such a materialistic discovery is made regarding consciousness, this is hardly likely to change the overall ranking of what is miraculous and amazing in the world. I don’t see how a finely tuned Universe will ever outrank Consciousness!
universe
Really?
Four days later…
My brother Joe,
At the time of your first comment–the one I initially addressed–you were phrasing your argument in a way so orthogonal to the way the immune system works that it seemed like you would genuinely benefit from some background reading.
I am glad that you are now expressing your argument with the appropriate terminology.
I refer you to Steve’s reply above. And with that I bid you good day and God’s blessings.
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Hello Joe.
I want to take after your example and get back to everyone who responded to me. 
(I have one or 2 additional more recent responses that I’ll be trying to get to today as well).
Well, I didn’t always believe that. I thought being a bible-believing Christian REQUIRED me to believe that God, “created” life (which to me was a simple single-cell organism).
Then I attended a forum at the end of an apologetics conference that discussed 4 common Christian views of creation. There was a person representing YEC, “ID” (though the person representing it didn’t like it being called that), evolution with a few, “interventions” from God and evolution with no interventions from God - which was represented by Dennis Lamoureux, whom I had not heard of. I was impressed that he was an evangelical Christian who knew his bible and had the guts to believe and promote his views. I was almost swayed to lean his way but in the end I still felt more comfortable in the 3rd category (evolution with interventions).
I then did a little research on the origins of life. It seemed that people, including some ECs, were looking more at self-replicating RNA molecules as being the earliest forms. At first I was revulsed - “how can you call that life!”. Also, at that time my theology on Genesis 1 was evolving. I called myself a, “progressive creationist”, meaning that the days of G1 were not to be taken literally and God, “created” (through evolution) different things on different days (epochs). Then it dawned on me: modern scientific findings are so far removed from a natural reading of G1 that I decided to take science out of it altogether. I consequently felt more comfortable with life evolving since what G1 is teaching has nothing to do with, “science” in the first place. In the end there were 2 ideas that persuaded me to conclude that life probably evolved. One is that God’s creation evolving us from a one-celled organism is a much larger accomplishment than a few self-replicating molecules becoming encircled by a cell wall. Two, EVERYTHING evolves. Biological life, cosmological life and spiritual life all evolve. Relationships evolve, careers, etc. Everything in God’s creation evolves through the natural forces of physics, emotions, etc. That the case, then why couldn’t life itself evolve? That’s a fairly brief version on how I came to my viewpoints on the origins of life.
Joe, why are you switching to a (very bad) analogy instead of addressing the actual evidence?
The information was not programmed into the B cells. The memory B cells are those after clonal selection and proliferation, BTW, not before. Steve, you, and I will all make antibodies to the same antigen, but the sequences of their variable sequences will be different–that’s an important refutation of the claim that they were programmed.
The variation is the source of the information in this case.[quote=“deliberateresult, post:1043, topic:4944”]
Due to the incredibly coordinated response system that includes both your innate immune system and your adaptive immune system; a dynamic system designed to facilitate detection and destruction of foreign pathogens; a system designed to grow in both recognition and response; a system which relies on the execution of well coordinated, precise protocols, all of which are designed to protect you.[/quote]
These are all assertions, Joe. You said that you were about the evidence, remember?
[quote]The “information” that built your immune system, allowing it to be both dynamic and deadly effective was already in place, designed to recognize and respond to a host of foreign invaders. Indeed, as you say, you started life with this information.
[/quote]No, what Steve said, and more importantly what the evidence says, is that none of us started life with the information to make specific antibodies. It arises by genetic variation that is random with respect to fitness, which is why we have a system in place to kill off cells that make self-reactive antibodies.
Was the Intelligent Designer just being ironic when He designed your adaptive immune system to function using Darwinian mechanisms?
[quote=“deliberateresult, post:1043, topic:4944”]
…But are all mutations “random”? The folks over at http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/ would take issue with this claim.
[/quote]That’s relabeling and opinion, not evidence.
There’s evidence for increasing mutation rates under stress, but that’s paleo-Darwinian.
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Hi Joe,
I see intelligence in life with a, “small” i, meaning I see too much organized complexity to believe that life could have gotten here without an intelligent creator. That is completely consistent with God initiating the universe with the intent of it evolving life.
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Hi Joe,
I don’t I follow you here. If, “established”=“proven”, then to say that something has established the existence of God means that it has proven the existence of God, no?
Of course I believe that the fine-tunedness of the universe constitutes strong evidence for a creator. But that is different from saying that a creator has been, “proven”. That’s my only point.
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Hello George.
Agreed.
Yes, Spetner has his critics. Indeed, inasmuch as ID is an enemy of the “club,” every ID advocate who has ever published their support of ID, no matter how well credentialed,no matter how modestly or cautiously their claims are stated or how well referenced and meticulously researched their work is, they will have critics and their critics will be loud and often times vicious and unforgiving. Yet the funny thing is, the ID movement continues to grow and in spite of threats to careers, tenure, grants, and status, more and more professionals are joining the ranks. Imagine the groundswell that would be under way if the ID position were simply tolerated!
Once again Chris, you have invested some time in a response to me. And once again, your energy has been invested in putting together an ad-hominem attack. This is the last time I will say address it, because it should certainly be very obvious by now - even to your friends. I refuse to feed this monster.
An ad hominem attack would ignore a researchers actual work and attack the character or motives of the researcher. How is it ad hominem to point out perceived flaws in a researchers methodology or models? That’s all I see in the quote you provided from Chris.
Brother Joe,
You seem to have a very unique definition of “ad-hominem.” So much so, I am not sure I even understand what you are trying to say. So I would like you to explain how just one of my statements is ad-hominem, as opposed to evidential. Here, let’s try this one:
“His model eliminates neutral changes from consideration, in contradiction to biologists’ experimental evidence.”
How is this ad-hominem?
Meanwhile, I pray you and yours enjoy the power of the Resurrection on this Lord’s day.
Chris
the question from the beginning has always been, what is the source of the information. This is my third and final analogy for you to consider: Now let us suppose that it is neither my secretary nor miss Random making the mistake. Now let us suppose that Hamlet is being transcribed from the spoken word to the written word by way of a voice recognition devise (VRD). But when the phrase, “Meet me by the wall,” is read, the VRD understands “Meet me by the well” instead, and faithfully transcribes that phrase. According to your logic, the source of the information is the VRD. But this is a machine incapable of generating any functional prescriptive information on its own. It is merely programmed to faithfully transmit what it receives. By itself, it will never generate any functional prescriptive information. It is not capable of doing so. Yet, in the course of transmission, if it should erroneously record a word, your logic would dictate that this machine, incapable of generating any functional prescriptive information, has done just that! Really, the best you could say is that the VRD is the source of the mistake, not the source of the information.
A mistake in transcription (which is exactly what a point mutation is) cannot be the source of the information. It can only be a mistranslation of the original source. Here is the logical argument:
p1. absent an original text of information (i.e. a source), no mistake in the translation can possibly occur.
p2. a mistake in translation can only occur to an existing piece of information.
from these two premises, we can draw two conclusions:
c.1 therefore, the mistake in translation cannot possibly be the source of the information; it can be nothing more than the source of the mistake.
c2. therefore, the source of the information is the original text.
I understand why you want to say that the mutation is the source: The evolution of life has required massive inputs of functional prescriptive information. This much is common knowledge; so much so that even the atheist recognizes it. But in order for the TOE to account for this influx of functional prescriptive information, it must be true that purely natural processes are capable of producing it. If one wants the TOE to be true, it is much more palatable to see mutation as the source of novel genetic information rather than what it clearly is: a copying error.
Empirical observation confirms that massive inputs of novel genetic information have been required to account for all the diversity of life and all the novel body plans of living systems. Your logic claims that all of this information can be attributed to a long stream of copying errors. One of the many challenges the TOE faces is that for every novel body plan, there must exist an adaptive functional continuum which can be wholly accounted for by the mutation/ selection mechanism. For all the novel body plans of life, the mutation/selection mechanism has yet to provide even one empirical example of such a continuum.[quote=“glipsnort, post:1049, topic:4944”]
As far as I can tell from you entire response, the word “information” in your statements has no meaning at all. It doesn’t mean semantic information – meaning of the message – because the meaning of the final message was not present initially. It’s not the string of symbols being output, as it would be in information theory, because they weren’t present initially either. Perhaps you can define what you’re talking about in some way, because at present I see no way of having a rational discussion about an undefined term.
[/quote]
Again, our dispute revolves around the source of the information. Thus, it would be helpful for you to shift your focus from the word “information,” to the word “source.”[quote=“glipsnort, post:1049, topic:4944”]
I cannot think of any definition by which human DNA has novel information while B cells don’t. In both cases, there’s a DNA sequence that is replicated with random modifications, yielding a new sequence.
[/quote]
You contend that in both cases, the process is the same. It is not. In the case of the immune system, the story is not the mutations, but the system, which is a coordinated response mechanism involving the deliberate, goal oriented, programmed activity of several sub-systems interacting with one another in a precise, coordinated effort to achieve a specific purpose. This is from immunologist dr. Donald Ewert:
“When the ‘natural’ mechanisms that generate antibody diversity are examined as an integrated system, it becomes apparent that, unlike Darwinian evolution, they are not ‘blind’ or ‘random,’ but rather are highly regulated both temporally and physically to achieve specific purposes while maintaining the integrity of the surrounding genome. If these processes tell us anything, it is that the immune system leaves very little to blind chance, but instead is designed to allow organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions without altering the integrity of their genome.”
Nutt and Lee add:
“instead of a simple transcriptional hierarchy, efficient B cell commitment and differentiation require the combinatorial activity of multiple transcription factors in a complex gene regulatory network…[T]he transcriptional network controlling B cell specification and commitment is not a simple linear cascade but involves multiple combinatorial inputs and feedback loops.”
and dr. Ewert concludes:
“The evidence from decades of research reveals a complex network of highly regulated processes of gene expression that leave very little to chance, but permit the generation of receptor diversity without damaging the function of immunoglobulin protein or doing damage to other sites in the genome…it is just the kind of system one would design for independent survival of an organism”
Earlier, you made the claim that there is zero evidence that organisms are programmed to produce specific beneficial mutations and abundant evidence that they produce random mutations. Yet the immune system is designed to allow random mutations for the specific purpose of protecting the organism in a process that is tightly controlled and regulated. If this is darwinian evolution in action, then I submit that we have empirical evidence that mutations bear evidence of intelligent design.
@Glipsnort and @deliberateresult
Do you two realize you are both arguing for God’s role in animal populations
being derived from common ancestral populations?
You both believe that the Earth is millions of years old. You both believe in God.
You both think God added something to the process of changing life forms.
The only thing you two disagree on is epistemology … the epistemology of God:
"Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, the rationality of belief, and justification. Much of the debate in epistemology centers on four areas:
(1) the philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and how it relates to such concepts as truth, belief, and justification,
(2) various problems of skepticism,
(3) the sources and scope of knowledge and justified belief, and
(4) the criteria for knowledge and justification."
That’s pretty dry stuff!
No, I didn’t realize I was arguing for that. In fact, I’m quite puzzled to learn that I’m arguing for that.
I’m quite doubtful that I think that.
I thought we were disagreeing about whether information processing in life was good evidence that life requires a creator.
gbrooks9:
You both think God added something to the process of changing life forms.
Glipsnort said: I’m quite doubtful that I think that.
Ha! Well the laugh is on me then! You don’t think God had anything to do with the emergence of life? Then why are you at BioLogos? You don’t think God even added purpose?
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gbrooks9:
The only thing you two disagree on is epistemology … the epistemology of God:
Glipsnort said: I thought we were disagreeing about whether information processing in life was good evidence that life requires a creator.
Disagreeing about whether information processing in life was good evidence - - that is Epistemological question. You are disputing the issue of how we come to know things… a classic dispute on the source of knowledge.