First you criticize me for "hijacking" this thread (which was not a hijack
because I was trying to draw a parallel and I renamed the thread.), then you
continue to criticize me for hijacking even though I have stopped
responding, then you continue to keep this topic alive even though I and
others have given it a rest.
So, make up your mind. If you want to discuss this topic with me, please
identify another forum and I will show up and we can continue this
discussion. I have a lot of corrections to your allegations and faulty
understanding of the issue.
Jojo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax" <a...@lomaxdesign.com>
To: <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Darwinian Evolution (Was Tritium in Ni-H LENR)
You tell people that they "believe" in something preposterous and you
fear that they will "criticize" you?
The list owner could decide that discussion of evolution was not useful
here. But he hasn't, AFAIK. What was a problem was the hijacking of a
thread on tritium and NiH LENR, and you were not solely responsible for
that. Here, the thread is about "Darwinian Evolution," whatever that is.
My own interest is ontology, and how we choose (or fall into) what we
"believe," as distinct from what we experience (and remember of
experience, as distinct from what we made it mean.)
There is a whole family of pseudosciences based on fallacious post-hoc
estimation of probability. In this case, an argument is invented with a
pretense of objectivity, when it is clear that the conclusion is
incorporated in the assumptions.
This is not about whether or not there is "intention" behind the
phenomena of life. Rather it is about whether or not functional
complexity beyond some level is a proof of intention. Your argument has,
in fact, been circular.
It's not that I deny intention itself. It is rather that discerning the
purpose of life, the intention, if you will, requires stepping outside
the normal machinery of thought and stepping into direct, unmediated
experience. You will never get there through firm adherence to any
belief. Faith can take you there, but only a faith in reality itself,
which, again, I distinguish from collections of words, crystallized as
meanings we prefer.
Faith in reality, I'll assert, underlies genuine Science.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 28, 2012, at 5:42 AM, Jojo Jaro <jth...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Once again, I hesistate to respond to you cause that will cause people
to roundly criticize me for starting a long off-topic thread. You bring
up several points that need a response, to set your fallacies straight.
Can you suggest a forum where we can do this? Let me know and I'll show
up.
Otherwise, there is nothing much I am willing to do in this forum.
Jojo
----- Original Message ----- From: "Abd ul-Rahman Lomax"
<a...@lomaxdesign.com
>
To: <vortex-l@eskimo.com>; <vortex-l@eskimo.com>
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2012 7:52 AM
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Darwinian Evolution (Was Tritium in Ni-H LENR)
At 09:11 AM 5/27/2012, Jojo Jaro wrote:
I am unsure about your point or what you are asking.
What exactly is your discussion point or what exactly is your
question?
Of course,there are strong inference. For example, if you find the
presence of Information in DNA, that is an inference for Intelligent
Designer, not Darwinian Evolution based on randon chance mutations.
Random processes never create Information, because information is
"Order", the exact opposite of Randomness.
The conclusion is being assumed. It is easy to demonstrate information
in random output with or without output selection. "Information" is not
defined here, and I suspect that the undisclosed definition again
incorporates the conclusions.
There is order in the non-living, presumably mechanistic, universe, by
any reasonable definition of order. We associate very high levels of
order with life, normally, for life organizes material, it can be one
of the definitions of life.
For instance, the assembling of random letters into a coherent
sentence requires the input of an Intelligent being.
Easy to demonstrate otherwise. Make a random sequence generator, then
select the output which makes sense. Humans actually do this detection
well, almost too well, sometimes, we will indeed "make sense" of random
combinations. And then people will insist that the sense that they make
from this stuff is "intended," a "code" that proves something or other.
Like that the Torah is from God ("Torah Code") or the Qur'an from Allah
("The Miracle of the Nineteen.")
Gambler's Fallacy is a phenomenon related to this.
If your throw a bunch of Scrabble letters on the ground, the
following 2 sentences have equal chance of occuring.
"There is a God"
"ethresi da Go" - (No, this is not a foreign language.
This is a random mixture of the same letters above.)
Yes. But if you have a Scrabble set tossed to make random words, but
you have a setup which rejects what is not in a dictionary, the second
set is impossible, it will not be kept. There is *not* an equal chance
as you assume.
The genetic code is not randomly mutated, in the sense you think. Many
mutations would result in copying failure, for starters. Many more
mutations would result in organism failure. In complex organisms, many
more mutations would not be viable. Even more might be temporarily
viable, but would not survive to reproduce. Or might only last a few
generations, either by accident or because of loss of survivability.
And many mutations are irrelevant, have no effect on the function of
the DNA, so the DNA behind a particular functional part of an organism
is, in fact, a family of patterns, not a single one.
That "junk DNA" can be mutations waiting to become, through some
further process, something active. It might represent something that
was active in the past but which is no longer active, that mutated out
of activity but caused no damage because any necessary function was
also carried elsewhere.
This is all just how DNA functions. It proves nothing about "creation"
one way or another. What is the real issue here?
What is the difference between the 2 sentences above. Nothing as far
as randon chance is concerned.
The first sentence *might* have been created by random chance and, in
fact, I could demonstrate this if I thought it were important. The key
is that I'd set up an algorithm using random letter selection. "There
is a God" is short enough that I could get this result with fairly
little computer time, and that's why web sites advise more complex
passwords!
What you have shown, Jojo, is that your own selection process is not
"random chance." This proves?
It *certainly* does not prove that random chance cannot produce
sensible words, but you seem to think so, which demonstrates what?
Are you familiar with the Torah Code? See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_code
Yet for an Intelligent Entity, there is a huge difference.
Sure. That is, to an Intelligent Entity, which you assume yourself to
be, of limited intelligence. A *huge* difference. Which the intelligent
entity made up. That's what intelligent entities, in fact, do, they
make up meaning. It's a useful process, often. Not always. Gambler's
Fallacy.
What differentiates the 2 sentences? It is Information of course.
That's debatable. What information? What I see in the first sentence is
grammatically correct, but "information" is actually supplied by the
reader. You *say* that the second sentence is not a foreign language,
but that is your *assumption.*
In the end, both sentences are assemblages of letters, and whether or
not they mean something is dependent upon the *reader* -- or reading
device.
What is *meant* by "God"? Indeed, what is "meant" by any of the words,
most especially "is"? Is what, is where, is how? All these are supplied
by the reader, in "making sense" of the sentence. You may say that
there is an *intended* meaning, which *assumes* an author, someone with
the intention. But two people saying that same sentence may intend
quite different meanings. You are imagining that there is one. Your
meaning.
And then someone else says "There is no god." And you might imagine,
then, that this is contradictory to your sentence and your sentence,
and, gain, you would be making this up.
There is no *intrinsic contradiction*, and I'll demonstrate this by
pointing out that "There is no god" is the preface to the affirmation
of faith in Islam, "There is no god, but the God." It's usually stated
as "but Allah," but "Allah," very likely, merely is "god" with the
definite article, "the," i.e., a *specified* object of the appelation,
implying unity. "Al-ilah," contracted. "god" in the first half is
"ilah."
And when we look underneath that, it is all an affirmation of unity,
since "God" is equivalent, at least in Islamic theology, to "Reality."
There is only one reality. You might well disagree, or not. Do you
agree or disagree?
We make up our own agreement and disagreement. None of this exists in
reality, which is not captured by words.
There is information in the first sentence that conveys an idea? And
Ideas are the purvue of Intelligent Beings.
Again, you are assuming the conclusion. Can you see that?
Now, do this with 4 letters and create a sentence 600,000 letters
long; you might begin to understand the complexity and the remarkable
presence of Information in our DNA.
The information is supplied by the reader, the reader is the cellular
process that reads the DNA and creates proteins according to the
patterns, and the living thing behaves according to those proteins, as
well as a whole other level of "information," for humans and some other
living things that can learn, as most animals can. DNA is, in fact,
only part of the cellular process.
There is no doubt that life is complex, though "complex" is a human
interpretation. It's possible to create measures of complexity, but
they are somewhat arbitrary.
Jojo, you are presenting assumptions as if they were a logical proof.
You will not convince *anyone* with this. Why are you pushing it here?