New Article: Common Descent vs. Common Design: 4 Examples Explained Better by Descent

Thanks Randy,
These are genuine questions which I feel require a few answers.

My observation is that evolutionists use terms like ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ quite casually as if they were empirical terms when in fact, if considered within a purely materialistic framework are actually ‘meaningless’. Not that all evolutionists are materialists. However, even theistic evolutionists do need to take care if and when employing such terms. They are assumptions upon which their theory rests, but they are not proven scientific facts.

If theistic evolutionists do not allow ‘creative intelligence’ a foot in the door when it comes to the existence of the development of various ‘forms’ of plant and animal life, then words like ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ in this particular context become meaningless too.

I would agree that bacteria are ‘fit’ for their environment if, by the term ‘fit’, we mean ‘well suited’. I am not so sure about the word ‘successful’. This may imply that bacteria may in some way have achieved something they consciously aimed at. However even bacteria do seem to serve a function which exists outside of their own particular existence.

Hm, thanks. I am honestly not sure how to define “meaning” and “purpose.” On sole observation, it appears that all living things have evolved without express purpose, at least a purpose that we can define. “Life finds a way” sometimes, but that’s a self fulfilling prediction, except in the case of extinction, which apparently occurred for 99% of all species. I am a Christian, but would be hard put to identify purpose from empirical observation or induction.

the meaning of evolution is the slow unfolding of a plan.

I don’t know how one would observe meaning as it is a metaphysical property attributed to reality by a mind
but the purpose of biological evolution would be to ensure the propagation of life, e.g. the ability to move energy and matter at will.
The factor that regulates the process is commonly identified as survival fitness. Adaptation is on element of survival fitness, but the more important element is the ability to love thy neighbour like thyself which allows the development of complex biological systems such as animals or plants that are complex biomes, e.g. cellular communities.

Bulk motion happens when random motion is biased.

It is not that this disclaimer is forgotten. It is that ID only makes sense in a worldview where such capabilities exist for a designer which are typically associated with God. Without the existence of such a designer, how could design exist, in the same sense of the question as to how could design be detected if it did not exist?

So while it is noted that ID can and does make no formal claim about the identity of the designer, it is within bounds to challenge that stance as an arbitrary boundary. Paley’s watchmaker argument was explicitly theistic.

3 Likes

Random variation can lead to increases in maximum complexity, because evolution starts out near the low end of complexity. There’s little room for a decrease in complexity and lots of room for increases. Once more complex forms exist, then there is more potential for simplification as well as becoming more complex. As bureaucracy demonstrates, increasing complexity is not necessarily a sign of intelligence or progress.

4 Likes

The ID movement proclaims its agnosticism about the identity of the designer when trying to market itself as a purely scientific movement, but it also markets itself as a Christian apologetic, even when practiced by non-Christians.

In reality, if you have no clue about the designer, you can’t detect design, because you don’t know what the design should look like.

7 Likes

Random is random, not biased. The fact is, the thermal movement of molecules is random when they are observed individually, but the movement of molecules is uniform when they are viewed collectively.

Electric current is biased random motion of free electrons under the influence of voltage. Gas pressure equalization is biased random motion of molecules. The thermal component is random. Bulk movement is due to some force which the biases the random thermal motion. The vectors change, but the particle motion is still random. I’m not sure what you mean by the movement of molecules is uniform when viewed collectively. The random mean molecular speed of the air you breathe is much faster than the wind, so it cannot all be moving together.

If you measure current, of course you get one reading (aside from skin effect). If you could see the electrons, some would be moving contrary to the current. Voltage imposes a bias to random electron movement. That is what current is.

What I mean is that the molecules of air in a basketball are moving randomly because they contain thermal heat. We know that because the air in the ball has pressure caused by this random movement. On the other hand this air is not moving in relation to itself.

Only if the ball has a leak will the air “move” and then because of the difference of pressure of the air inside and outside of the ball, which pushes the air through the leak, which is not random.

the purpose of biological evolution would be to ensure the propagation of life, e.g. the ability to move energy and matter at will.<

Who’s will?

The factor that regulates the process is commonly identified as survival fitness.<

Has ‘survival fitness’ been observed to have regulated the process of evolution?

The ability to love thy neighbour like thyself which allows the development of complex biological systems such as animals or plants<

Please give me an example.

Gas pressure equalization is a matter of statistical mechanics. Molecules travel a greater distance between collisions in the direction of lessor pressure, thus it is random from the perspective of individual molecules. Statistically, there will be a few molecules that travel into the ball, even while it is leaking out.

1 Like

Who’s will? Ultimately the will of the creator as explained in “thy will be done” In simple organisms the will is executed based on the program encoded in the cells which the cell death occurs when the execution of their program becomes disabled. this is why viable but not culturable cells exists that still can move matter or energy, but just not selfreplicate any more. Just because you had the snip does not mean you are no longer alive :slight_smile:

The prime example for loving thy neighbour is endosymbiosis as originally explained by Lee Margulis. But when you look at yourself as one of the most complex biological systems living in symbiosis with more bacteria than your own cells and carrying a genome that is a multitude larger than your own, and depending on so many others dying for you - it becomes clear that this feedback loop in the process leads to an integrative system.

  1. If 1 billion air molecules are moving out of the ball while 1 thousand are moving toward the ball through a small hole, how many, if any, will make it into the ball? None, I would say.

Indeed, this example well illustrates the difference between the activity of an individual molecule, which is random and the group which is uniform. The pressure, the temperature, the direction of an individual molecule is random, but the whole is uniform.

It appears to me that statistical mechanics is part of a concerning trend that makes “science” more dependent on math and “stiks,” and less transparent to those who are not familiar with these disciplines. Transparency is needed for trust in all areas of life, science included.
@jstump
Also, while math can be an important tool in science, math is a language that helps us describe, but not understand the world. 2 + 2 = 4 describes a relationship, but does not say why or how 2 + 2 = 4. It even has a name Phenomenology.

Again there does seem to be a trend whereby science is becoming less transparent to one scientists and more linear and mechanistic, which Is also not good.

For the record her name was Lynn Margulis, a pioneer ecologist. She gives credit for endosymbiosis to Soviet scientists.

surprised I typed Lee, as Lynn was the wife of Carl Sagan, but then I start thinking my keyboard is possessed by artificial intelligence - or by crumbs under the keys :slight_smile: Surely my mind was already somewhere over the rainbow by the time my fingers hit the keyboard

1 Like

Hi @Relates -

I will try to make this as simple as possible, but the technique has a great deal of intrinsic complexity.

Assume that your dataset includes lots and lots of observations. Each observation consists of some input variables and a corresponding ground truth outcome. You are trying to find the function that, across the entire domain of data, transforms the input into an output that is as close as possible to the ground truth. This is the function that, according to the Universal Approximation Theorem, can be approximated with a neural network.

You start by randomizing the weights of a neural network. You specify a loss function, which provides a meaningful difference between ground truth and a neural network’s output for each observation. For numerical outputs, this is often Euclidean distance squared, and for categorical outputs, cross-entropy is often used.

You then train the neural network by these steps:

  • Apply the neural network to the input variables for some set of observations, producing a corresponding set of outputs. This is sometimes referred to as forward propagation.
  • Use the loss function to calculate the total error between ground truth and the outputs.
  • Use backpropagation via gradient descent (GD) to apply the loss to the neural network’s weights. Gradient descent, per Wikipedia…

is a first-order iterative optimization algorithm for finding a local minimum of a differentiable function. The idea is to take repeated steps in the opposite direction of the gradient (or approximate gradient) of the function at the current point, because this is the direction of steepest descent.

Essentially, backpropagation incrementally adjusts the weights so the output of the neural network gets a little bit closer to the ground truth for the observations being processed.

This steps are followed incrementally and iteratively across the entire set of training data until some stopping criterion is reached.

There is a lot of science and no small amount of art to selecting the most appropriate neural network architecture, the neural activation function, the loss function, the use of momentum to optimize the size of the backpropagation step, the best stopping criterion, etc.

Hope this helps.

Chris

2 Likes

Not very much, but thanks any way…

1 Like

Who’s will? Ultimately the will of the creator as explained in “thy will be done” In simple organisms the will is executed based on the program encoded in the cells which the cell death occurs when the execution of their program becomes disabled. this is why viable but not culturable cells exists that still can move matter or energy, but just not selfreplicate any more. Just because you had the snip does not mean you are no longer alive :slight_smile:

The prime example for loving thy neighbour is endosymbiosis as originally explained by Lee Margulis. But when you look at yourself as one of the most complex biological systems living in symbiosis with more bacteria than your own cells and carrying a genome that is a multitude larger than your own, and depending on so many others dying for you - it becomes clear that this feedback loop in the process leads to an integrative system.<

Not very easy to follow that Marvin. I am not sure at what you are getting at.

Are you saying that evolution depends on loving you neighbour as yourself? Or that loving your loving you neighbour as yourself is a bi-product of evolution? That evolution demands it requires it or creates it?
What’s going on?

survival fitness is the ability to love ones neighbour like ones own. it is the feedback loop of the process of evolution. do you think that processes create their own rules, demand or require them?

survival fitness is the ability to love ones neighbour like ones own. it is the feedback loop of the process of evolution. do you think that processes create their own rules, demand or require them?<

Are you saying that this is the natural disposition of human beings i.e. that all have this natural ability to love one neighbour as ones self? I thought that Christianity taught the opposite i.e. that no one does. Historical record would seem to bear this out.

1 Like