Subject:
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Re: Atheism (was: Santorum Fails In His Effort To Pervert The Constitution)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 19 Aug 2004 16:06:53 GMT
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Viewed:
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2982 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, David Laswell wrote:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler wrote:
> > Of particular importance is the fact that the experiments produced 13 of
> > the 20 amino acids used in life, and in a relatively short amount of time.
> > Remember that the primitive Earth had billions of years to accomplish what
> > Miller sought to do in the space of a researcher's career!
>
> Isn't that something like comparing an individual's ability to reproduce the
> complete works of Shakespeare from memory with a fleet of monkeys being able to
> randomly bang them out on typewriters?
For a thorough debunking of the "infinite monkeys" myth, I recommend Richard
Dawkins' book "The Blind Watchmaker," which gives a great explanation of why
that model is flawed as a representation of evolution or of the origins of life.
Beyond that, I'm afraid I don't understand your question. How does the
"Shakespeare from memory" bit correspond to my comments? I'm not dismissing
your question out of hand, but I don't quite understand it, either.
> > Give the researchers a billion years and a whole world's worth of materials
> > and then see what they come up with.
>
> It would be more significant if he'd taken the various amino acids, introduced
> them into a sterile environment, and seen what he could get them to do.
> Injection molding machines can spit out the bricks necessary to build an
> Imperial Star Destroyer until the sun blows up, but they still won't be able to
> assemble the model.
Well, so what? Evolution isn't about assembling random components to achieve a
pre-determined organism (or model). What if your machine spit out copies of the
Millennium Falcon instead--would you call it a failure? If you insist that a
certain final model is required at the outset, then you've assumed outright that
a designer is involved, and this is circular reasoning.
In any case, this, too, is debunked by Dawkins.
But if you must insist on a particular model, the your role in this experiment
must be to act as a proxy for the forces of natural selection. The reason is
simple: evolution didn't start with a puddle of goo and say "let's build a
person." Evolution began when bits of the puddle of goo began to replicate and
combine, and the forces of natural selection favored certain combinations over
others. The end result--well, there's no "end" result, since the process is
ongoing--the current result is the organism that most successfully reproduced
given the conditions acting upon all previous generations.
Let's assume a box or tumbler in which a supply of bricks is shaken around and
intermingled (and assuming that such jostling is sufficient to engage the clutch
power of the (I presume) LEGO bricks). Under your initial assumption, the
bricks must be re-randomized after every combination that does not equal a whole
ISD. However, if you preserve successful brick-groupings (selecting them as
better suited to the environment, or, in this case, to the ultimate goal of an
ISD) in the mix and reject (disassemble) the unsuccessful ones, then it is
probable that you will achieve a Star Destroyer in a finite amount of time. And
the amount of time required is even less if you don't set an arbitrary model as
your goal.
> The question is whether the cosmos is capable of randomly spitting out an
> ISD assembler machine, or if some sentient being would still be required to
> come along and get the show started.
Then the question *must* be "where did this sentient being come from?" This is
why, for example, Intelligent Design is pseudoscience and should not be taught
as science in public schools; ID claims to be interested only in the fact of a
designer's existence, without worrying about the designer's nature. Honest
scientific inquiry would require the researcher to investigate the designer,
since an understanding of the designer would be much more revealing than an
understanding of the design.
Intelligent Design is, at the end of the day, the old "God of the Gaps" in
barely new clothes.
If you wish to say that the designer is God, then you've acknowledged that ID is
a religion and should not be taught as science. If you wish to say that the
designer is some other entity, then I invite you to present your observational
evidence of this designer. And remember--it's not enough to say "we can't
figure out this bit, so someone must have designed it." And if you can find no
conclusive, positive evidence that a designer exists, then you cannot include
that designer in your scientific models of the universe or of evolution. To do
so would be an invocation of faith, which is contrary to the practice of
science.
> And once the first microscopic beasties were floating around in the ooze,
> what possible reason would there be for them to have reproductive
> capabilities built in? And why, in the eons since the dawn of life, have we
> never seen any evidence to suggest that life continues to spring fully-
> formed from the ether?
Mr. Rezkalla has already given a great answer here:
http://news.lugnet.com/off-topic/debate/?n=25361
but I'll add a little to it, if I may.
First of all, good "beasties" reference, which of course is an allusion to the
pioneering microbiologist Anton von Leeuwenhoek, as discussed here:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=254216 Nicely done!
Secondly, it's a mistake to leap directly to microscopic beasties, the sudden
and unprecedented existence of which, fully formed, would be a good refutation
of evolution. And no part of evolutionary theory predicts fully-formed life
springing from the ether, either.
The current theory is that the capacity for self-replication developed in
pre-cellular molecular structures, and this capacity was passed on through many
steps of evolution into proto-cellular organisms, and then into unicellular
organisms, and finally into multi-cellular organisms capable of rendering
Imperial Star Destroyers out of plastic bricks.
Lastly, probably the two main reasons that we don't see such structures is that
we don't know where to look and that they're out-competed almost as soon as
they're formed. That's natural selection at its most basic!
Dave!
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