Discussion for AronRa and OFNF exclusive thread

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

I don't think everything in the bible is literally true but I think both of us would agree that some of it is and I don't know very much about God but to me he seems to be real.

Ok, fair enough, not everything. I also taught that he was pretty real when I was younger.

also I believe the word "truth" is something philosophy is still struggling with. even whether or not it is attainable or if we can only construct practical models that seem to work. Do you know the truth? Can a terrestrially evolved brain designed merely to survive and not understand- know the truth?

Truth is a label that we apply to statements, when I say that something is true what I mean is that the statement accurately reflects the actual state of things. I was just an example of things that christian say that warped their view, they all do it. When then say God is truth, do they mean that God is literally the abstract characteristic of a statement to accurately represent the actual state of things?
But never mind mind about that, that is another discussion. The main point here intuition is nothing more than baggage that we acquire doing our life time, and different people acquire different baggage, and none of it makes it necessarily true.

I think that was a beautiful bit from Richard Feynman. We could all be wrong maybe it isn't elegant, maybe we'll find that it doesnt match the kind of things a mind would do. To me though, it does seem elegant, functional and designed. Don't worry though, I'll try and be willing to change my mind if it turns out I'm wrong.

And that is the important thing, because thing are complicated, they are not intuitive, but if you have an open mind and follow along you will see that everything checks out despite the fact that it goes against our intuition.
This isn't the same as saying that you have to accept everything and anything. It just means that you are willing to consider ideas and challenge what you think you know.

People tried God before, it didn't work, it didn't tell them anything, it was useless, it was wrong. And then they tried something simple, "maybe God doesn't have anything do with it", and in that case it worked.

You're summary of mans assent from religion to a world wide acceptance of atheism is a history lession I don't think I could get anywhere else.

Well I would say it's more of a reason why science is secular. You could still believe in God, you just don't use it as an explanation because it doesn't work. One could argue that is all it takes to stop believing in God, because you stop having reasons to do so, but you don't do it because you want to not believe in God, it is just something that happens.

Some people were driven to study the natural world in order to understand God. in that, their belief wasn't useless. They learned many useful and amazing "truths" and maybe they are wrong about God but it doesn't seem like it to me, it sure didn't seem like it to them.

Sure they were people of faith. And they even may have been moved by the concept of God, but God wasn't an answer, to try and answer anything with god didn't actually helped them, and that is what I mean.

I'm not saying I have an explanation when I don't.

I accept that maybe that was not what you mean, but that is what it means when you say: "If we don't know, why not go with the simplest explanation?". What did you think that would mean?

I'm saying that to me the universe appears designed by an intelligence. I'm not sure I could live my life if I said "I don't know" to absolutely everything simply because I am not omniscient?

Just because you are not omniscient it doesn't mean that you can't say that you know something to the extent were we can actually know anything. But we have to be honest when we don't know something to admit that we don't know.
And just because we don't know something, it doesn't mean that we are unable to function.

1 I'm not a scientist droid. I don't think anyone really lives their life as scientist droids. Pretending that the only useful questions are scientific questions doesn't really work for me. Science is extremely limited in what it can give us in this regard. There are useful, even necessary questions that are not falsifiable or testable or within the realm of science. There are other ways for us to learn things. intuition is a good tool when you're lost like we all are. mine points to some cosmic presence. I don't see how you can tie your shoes or drive a car thinking only about facts and chemical processes.

I would disagree. Science doesn't make you a fact spewing robots. It doesn't tell you how you should live your life, but it can tell you allot. Science isn't a thing, it's method of looking at the world, and if there is a way in which Y makes a difference in respects to X then you can be sure that there is a scientific way to to tell X and Y apart. And if science can't do it, then nothing else can.
This isn't the same thing as to say that you make all your decisions based on science. You don't, to take your example, you don't have to submit to peer review your method of tying your shoes or conduct inquiries on the best method to put on your pants.
And as I have mentioned about intuition, intuition is not a good tool to tell you things about the world, if you are not prepared to abandon it, you will have an hard time learning new things.

Everyone has been very cool. I'm so glad that it feels less like everyone is fighting each other and more like everyone is struggling with new ideas and working together to understand. A good learning environment.

Well it's a bit late, and I won't address everything. I think this is getting of topic. However if you have any question, ask and ye shall be answered.

 

[Miracles4Real]

Hey there Miracles4real, how's it going?


I'd just like to offer a quick thought in response to one of your comments. I noticed that you believe design to be intuitive or a reasonable inference with regards to the biological world.

I'd just like to offer some agreement with this idea of yours. Roughly put, design probably does imply a designer. However, a designer doesn't have to be sentient or intelligent. There is great design in nature, but the design we see that you correctly infer comes about by selective pressures and natural processes. The designer of the biological world is not a sentient or deific being, but the natural mechanisms of evolution.


Another way to look at it would be by differentiating between teleonomy and teleology. We see design in the natural world, but it is teleonomic rather than teleological.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleonomy

So I just wanted to offer a little agreement with your ideas about design. I believe we can correctly infer design from the biological world, but we have to try and understand the mechanisms and infer the correct designer.

A youtuber I enjoy watching very recently produced an interesting video with an insight into these two concepts. The video may be of interest to you, but no worries if not. I'll link it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP2Fd3IqBdw

Cheers.

Engelbert, I took the longest responding to yours because I wanted to watch the video you posted and read the wiki before I responded. I liked your post most of all though.
I watched the video very carefully and found it very insightful. I subscribed to his channel too.

I especially liked how you (in one sense) agreed with me. (teehee) anyway, common ground is a great place to start. The tactic he gives atheists of agreeing with creationists using the term "design" here, definitely worked on me.

I suppose my belief in "purposive" design (with a mind behind it) is based somewhat in incredulity. (though I don't think it's entirely incredulity)
I can't see how mindless processes can do quite everything to account for the design we both see.

I saw a nature show where a bunch of bees covered a hive invader (a grasshopper I think/ maybe it was a wasp?) over its entire body and flapped their wings, many of them dying from overheating exhaustion only to be replaced by another waiting bee, until they literally cooked the invader below them. How the heck can an ingenious behavior like that evolve in a mere biological machine? Is there a lesser version of that which works to a lesser extent? I don't know. It just seems impossible to me for it to happen gradually with beneficial incremental steps.

So I think a mind might use evolution to an extent but must be tweaking the knobs at some level for some ultimate plan. I realize that Augment from Personal Incredulity is a logical fallacy but I just can't bring myself to believe the alternative, that all of this is unplanned.
I haven't seen a big enough trend of these unbelievable things being explained by natural processes to believe that it is only exclusively natural processes, without any guidance needed. It seems like a big step.

Is there some element of reality that I don't understand which isn't a mind which acts so much like a mind that it replaces any need for it? I'm looking into it.

Though, even if the entire process IS just physical laws and constants (though I'm not yet ready to say that it is) those laws and constants themselves still seem best explained by a creative mind.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

HE-WHO-IS-NOBODY

How is common descent irrelevant to Onceforgivennowfree’s challenge?

Because OFNF challenged “evolutionists” to prove that the diversity of life can be accounted by random (uninelegantly guided) proving or disproving common decent won´t do anything to support or refute the challenge.

I have no idea what you are even trying to say here. Perhaps take more than 13 minutes to respond to any given post and you will start to make more sense.

I am not saying that common descent is not a relevant topic in the general evolution vs creation debate, however for this specific challenge common descent is irrelevant.

First off, there is no evolution vs. creationism debate. Debate implies that both sides have something valid. There is nothing valid about creationism (evidence by your lack of response in this thread). Second, as I pointed out, and you omitted, Onceforgivennowfree rejects common descent, thus proving it is relevant to his challenge. Once again, you forget that you and Onceforgivennowfree do not even agree on what part of reality to deny.

For the sake of this discussion we can assume that common descent is true, you still have to prove that darwinain mechanisms (or you can call it differently) can account for the diversity of life, specifically complex things like the eye or the ATP motor

Once again, I already corrected your terminology. There is no excuse for using the wrong terminology still. Second, twice AronRa has already done that.

Well, AronRa has provided the sample of steps needed. Now one must wait to see how you will reject this.

I sure you don’t mind to copy-paste the portion of his new article where the mutations to create an ATP motor are described

You are simply adorable.

What I wanted to say was that design seems pretty intuitive to me. Like common sense really. Isn't the simplest explanation usually the right one? All of these evolutionary mechanisms seems so complex, like they are trying everything they can for a naturalistic explanation. I think with enough work you can explain how it will be possible for an elephant to hang off a cliff by holding onto a daisy.

You are positing a designer without first evidencing one. Until you are able to show any evidence for a designer, you cannot use it as an answer for an unknown. Otherwise, you are answering one unknown with another. Furthermore, your designer is not only an unknown, but also an infinitely more complex unknown than the mechanisms that we already know about that guide evolution. Thus, your designer is not the simple answer by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Isotelus]

Onceforgivennowfree[/url]"]Ok so wait, that paper you first cited doesn't show a possible biochemical pathway by which the first ATP could have evolved? I hope you understand my frustration. You cite a scientific paper where I need to PURCHASE the paper or get a SUBSCRIPTION in order to read it. All people can see when they click on the link is the title and abstract.

:?

What are you talking about? You did not have to pay for anything. ATP synthase is free and how could you miss it? AronRa quoted it in a different color and posted the link to the website right under the quoted section. I think I will chalk this one up to incompetence on your part. Everyone else that is following this discussion (even dandan) was able to find that link. Why could you not? The rest of your post is pure hilarity following from your incompetence. And creationists wonder why they get laughed at.

He's talking about this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17938630
Aron linked to it after OFNF said the ATP synthase source didn't prove anything, and it isn't open-access. It's just the peer-reviewed version of the website.

 

[Darkprophet232]

They need to say exactly the quote you mentioned? Well I guess you got me beat there. If you are a little more charitable though, maybe you could see that these quotes do show that many scientests do indeed believe they are learning about the mind of God. I know I've seen quotes from scientests saying more precisely that they are indeed motivated by that desire. One from Kepler and one from Newton I think- I'll keep looking.
I hope you can take what I gave you though without dismissing it so. They were great scientests and they believed they were literally justified in calling the order in the universe God.

I won't belabor the point, as we both agree that motivations are irrelevant to what was discovered.

Gosh. I didn't realize I was at the peer review board. Yes I feel like there is a designer. The order in the universe seems to me like good enough evidence for this. Many very smart scientists have also come to the same conclusion after studying the universe in more depth than I have. How is this feeling wrong?

You're saying our current understanding of evolution is wrong, our understanding of cosmology is wrong, our understanding of genetics is wrong, our understanding of geology is wrong. Any why is it wrong? Because you feel it's wrong. You don't have any evidence for these feeling, just that it makes sense to you. Yeah, that's not a good enough to overturn our current understanding of the universe.

Well maybe I'm wrong too. Maybe you are. I'm going with what it seems like from my perspective as best as I can. What else can anyone be expected to do? Do you just wander around saying you don't know anything until you fully understand the under-workings of every particle?

If I honestly don't know something, then yes, I will admit I don't know it. I won't cling to the first thought that comes into my mind and say, "yeah, that's good enough." I will research what I don't know, and if I can't, as none of us have the education and facilities for every kind of experiment, I will trust the word of those that do.

It was tongue n cheek Darkprophet. I wasn't actually getting the vapors from the images of snails and beetles in the article. I was saying that the implication of "God is a sadistic bastard so you shouldn't believe in him" is an entirely emotional argument, a fallacy akin to the tactic used by pro-life protesters.

There is a sarcasm tag if that is your point, and please forgive me for not understanding the limits of your offense seeing as you did censor out the word "asshole" before. It's been my experience that people that can't handle mild swear words are often offended by the mere thought of something incongruent with their world view.

I'm not saying the designer is sadistic so don't believe in him. I'm saying that if you think that a designer created life, you need to square the fact that he created unneeded and unwarranted pain and suffering with whichever scripture you ascribe to him.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

:?

What are you talking about? You did not have to pay for anything. ATP synthase is free and how could you miss it? AronRa quoted it in a different color and posted the link to the website right under the quoted section. I think I will chalk this one up to incompetence on your part. Everyone else that is following this discussion (even dandan) was able to find that link. Why could you not? The rest of your post is pure hilarity following from your incompetence. And creationists wonder why they get laughed at.

He's talking about this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17938630
Aron linked to it after OFNF said the ATP synthase source didn't prove anything, and it isn't open-access. It's just the peer-reviewed version of the website.

Well, I stand corrected.

Thanks.

 

[Engelbert]

Engelbert, I took the longest responding to yours because I wanted to watch the video you posted and read the wiki before I responded. I liked your post most of all though.
I watched the video very carefully and found it very insightful. I subscribed to his channel too.

I especially liked how you (in one sense) agreed with me. (teehee) anyway, common ground is a great place to start. The tactic he gives atheists of agreeing with creationists using the term "design" here, definitely worked on me.

I suppose my belief in "purposive" design (with a mind behind it) is based somewhat in incredulity. (though I don't think it's entirely incredulity)
I can't see how mindless processes can do quite everything to account for the design we both see.

I saw a nature show where a bunch of bees covered a hive invader (a grasshopper I think/ maybe it was a wasp?) over its entire body and flapped their wings, many of them dying from overheating exhaustion only to be replaced by another waiting bee, until they literally cooked the invader below them. How the heck can an ingenious behavior like that evolve in a mere biological machine? Is there a lesser version of that which works to a lesser extent? I don't know. It just seems impossible to me for it to happen gradually with beneficial incremental steps.

So I think a mind might use evolution to an extent but must be tweaking the knobs at some level for some ultimate plan. I realize that Augment from Personal Incredulity is a logical fallacy but I just can't bring myself to believe the alternative, that all of this is unplanned.
I haven't seen a big enough trend of these unbelievable things being explained by natural processes to believe that it is only exclusively natural processes, without any guidance needed. It seems like a big step.

Is there some element of reality that I don't understand which isn't a mind which acts so much like a mind that it replaces any need for it? I'm looking into it.

Though, even if the entire process IS just physical laws and constants (though I'm not yet ready to say that it is) those laws and constants themselves still seem best explained by a creative mind.

Hey there Miracles4real. Thanks for your kind response.

Yeah I like Ozy. Whether I agree with him or not, it's the way he goes about things that I enjoy. I don't see any problem in referring to things in biology as having design. I don't think it's necessarily incorrect to see organisms as designed. I think that the important thing is inferring the correct designer by exploring the subject matter. The designer, as I see it, for the biodiversity of our world is the compilation of natural processes combining that are described in science and the theory of evolution.

I believe I recall seeing a very similar thing in a documentary with David Attenborough in which an unwanted visitor was overwhelmed and cooked by a ball of bees defending their hive. It was a little shocking. I'm not a scientist, but I think what you're doing in response to the behaviour of the bees is asking questions and as far as I can see, that's a great response.

There are good naturalistic explanations for so many things in biology and I imagine that others here will do a fine job of answering many of your questions.

A thought that I would have to offer to you though is that belief in naturalistic evolution is not to dismiss the idea of God. Explaining the mechanisms of biology and understanding how life evolves, does not answer all the difficult questions we have about existence. You could stand completely convinced by every aspect of evolutionary theory and yet still very legitimately ask the question, "Does God exist?" Personally I struggle to conclude either way in answer to this question. You could very well be correct in believing that there is something more, perhaps a mind or prime mover, behind the universe. However, this possibility is quite compatible with the theory of evolution, rather than being mutually exclusive to it.

What does seem to be rather more certain than an answer to the question about the existence of God, is our understanding of the natural world. It seems to me that you are asking rather good questions about this subject and I suspect that if you're interested, you will find some very interesting and persuasive answers here and from science.

Cheers.


ps. I don't know if you like a documentary, but one of my favourite documentary makers has always been David Attenborough. I would imagine that if you type his name into youtube, anything of his that comes up, you'll find most enjoyable.

 

[Miracles4Real]

They need to say exactly the quote you mentioned? Well I guess you got me beat there. If you are a little more charitable though, maybe you could see that these quotes do show that many scientists do indeed believe they are learning about the mind of God. I know I've seen quotes from scientists saying more precisely that they are indeed motivated by that desire. One from Kepler and one from Newton I think- I'll keep looking.
I hope you can take what I gave you though without dismissing it so. They were great scientists and they believed they were literally justified in calling the order in the universe God.

I won't belabor the point, as we both agree that motivations are irrelevant to what was discovered.

sheesh! then why knit pick?
What they DID believe is that they had discovered evidence for God. Though I'm not sure we agree with that.

Gosh. I didn't realize I was at the peer review board. Yes I feel like there is a designer. The order in the universe seems to me like good enough evidence for this. Many very smart scientists have also come to the same conclusion after studying the universe in more depth than I have. How is this feeling wrong?

You're saying our current understanding of evolution is wrong, our understanding of cosmology is wrong, our understanding of genetics is wrong, our understanding of geology is wrong. Any why is it wrong? Because you feel it's wrong. You don't have any evidence for these feeling, just that it makes sense to you. Yeah, that's not a good enough to overturn our current understanding of the universe.

I never realized that our current understanding of the universe included God not being real. Somehow I missed that news.

I'm not saying our current understanding of evolution is wrong, honestly I'm learning about evolution. But our understanding of evolution (such as it is) doesn't show there is no God.

I'm not saying that our current understanding of cosmology is wrong. in fact I believe, as many cosmologists have believed, that the order of the universe is positive evidence for God.

I'm not saying that our current understanding of genetics is wrong, honestly I'm not sure I fully understand it. the code work in genetics seems like the work of a mind to me.

I'm not saying our understanding of geology is wrong. I have no idea where you got that from.

I feel like there is a designer- yes. This cannot be totally scientifically verified. Many important questions are unfalsifiable and untestable and unscientific.
What is more important, the rights of the individual or the rights of the society?
What is the best use of your time on earth?
What does it feel like to be a cow, a bat, an onion?
You can't scientifically verify questions like these, so is coming to conclusion on these questions by using other means at our disposal (philosophy, epistomoloigy, noetics, intuition, logic, empathy.) "dishonest"?

logical positivism, philosophical naturalism and scientism do not seem to be helpful worldviews, or even functional. I don't think anyone really uses them if they are honest with themselves. We do use intuition and feelings to learn things all the time and they are often right even if they are not as perfect and verifiable as science. Science doesnt have all the answers. it is incapable of having all the answers. Even answers that you need in order to function as a healthy conscious soul.

Well maybe I'm wrong too. Maybe you are. I'm going with what it seems like from my perspective as best as I can. What else can anyone be expected to do? Do you just wander around saying you don't know anything until you fully understand the under-workings of every particle?

If I honestly don't know something, then yes, I will admit I don't know it. I won't cling to the first thought that comes into my mind and say, "yeah, that's good enough." I will research what I don't know, and if I can't, as none of us have the education and facilities for every kind of experiment, I will trust the word of those that do.

I'm not saying "yeah that's good enough" I'm here to learn. I don't know how you missed this as I've said it many times. I just have the courage to state my current opinion (an opinion which I admit could be wrong)

Can you even have an opinion, or are you a scientific droid?
What if someone asks you who you think will win in a Lakers game? because you do not have the available statistics on every player in each team and cannot at that moment calculate with peer reviewed accuracy the trajectory of each shot and its statistical likelihood of making a basket do you believe it is dishonest to say anything other than "I don't know"?

In everyday life I do not find myself talking to androids. So yeah I usually share my *cringe* feelings.
live long and prosper.

It was tongue n cheek Darkprophet. I wasn't actually getting the vapors from the images of snails and beetles in the article. I was saying that the implication of "God is a sadistic bastard so you shouldn't believe in him" is an entirely emotional argument, a fallacy akin to the tactic used by pro-life protesters.

There is a sarcasm tag if that is your point, and please forgive me for not understanding the limits of your offense seeing as you did censor out the word "*******" before. It's been my experience that people that can't handle mild swear words are often offended by the mere thought of something incongruent with their world view.

I'm not saying the designer is sadistic so don't believe in him. I'm saying that if you think that a designer created life, you need to square the fact that he created unneeded and unwarranted pain and suffering with whichever scripture you ascribe to him.

O! I didn't realize! I live in a home with small children and this computer sometimes does that to swear words it finds.heh!
Lets do eachother a favor and try not to make assumptions about one another by reading between the lines.
The evidence of design in the universe is enough for me to believe in God. That is a powerful disembodied mind.
I won't pretend to know what God's goals are or why he creates a universe with warts and all.
one that includes suffering, beauty, morality and parasitic microbes.
Maybe a few different spiritual gurus had something of an insight into Gods plan. If I had to speculate (again not 100% scientifically peer reviewed on this) I'd say it has something to do with loving one another, not taking anything for granted and being free to express ourselves. Maybe Jesus was onto something, maybe Gandhi and Buddha were too. Maybe no one has any insight into it at all, but it sure seems designed. at least, to me.

(edit: tried to fix my bad word "censorship")

 

[Mugnuts]

I saw a nature show where a bunch of bees covered a hive invader (a grasshopper I think/ maybe it was a wasp?) over its entire body and flapped their wings, many of them dying from overheating exhaustion only to be replaced by another waiting bee, until they literally cooked the invader below them. How the heck can an ingenious behavior like that evolve in a mere biological machine? Is there a lesser version of that which works to a lesser extent? I don't know. It just seems impossible to me for it to happen gradually with beneficial incremental steps.

One driving factor for evolution is called an "Arms Race". Arms races are a form of pressure that pushes evolution along. As each generation moves on the predators thin out the prey that aren't suited to that advantage, while the prey that have variations that give them a survival advantage survive and pass on these beneficiary adaptations. This cycle repeats over and over, generation after generation. What we are seeing with the Wasps and bee's is one of those things that has built up over time. Since just one of these wasps can kill hundreds of bees itself, will send out help pheromones, and the bee stingers cannot penetrate the wasp, the beneficial adaptation in the bees genes that helps their survival against those weapons is just what we see.

If they did not build up any mechanism or strategy, they wouldn't survive and go extinct where there are wasps around. It doesn't require planning or tinkering. But if it did, that would suggest that the mind behind is playing both sides of the field in some kind of sick gladiatorial fight to the death of one of the species experiment. Giving each side better weapons and defenses back and forth in order to keep the war waging. Who would conceive that as a moral purpose behind life at all no matter what the species was?

So I think a mind might use evolution to an extent but must be tweaking the knobs at some level for some ultimate plan. I realize that Augment from Personal Incredulity is a logical fallacy but I just can't bring myself to believe the alternative, that all of this is unplanned.
I haven't seen a big enough trend of these unbelievable things being explained by natural processes to believe that it is only exclusively natural processes, without any guidance needed. It seems like a big step.

The same point at the end of my first response goes to this as well, but also adding that this is very similar to what the whole 'what kind of designer/god would design things this way'. It's not emotional, it's rational to ask this question. I'm sorry, but when you start looking at the big picture, design by a mind designer doesn't work. There is no perceivable mechanism ever presented other than intuition and assertion.

 

[abelcainsbrother]

There is no scientists on earth that can produce life,all of the scientists combined cannot do it,yet you want to believe that science proves there is no God.You are fooling yourself,even Christopher Hitchens kicked the can down the road when it came to science,hoping science would one day validate his atheist world view.There is not one atheist scientists that can demonstrate this universe forming itself on its own and no sciewntists that can stand there and watch as life evolves into being like he believes.You people are being decieved and don't even realize it.You have more faith than any Christian does believing things that no scientist can demonstrate.I want to see a demonstration of life forming itself like atheist evolutionists believe by nature alone which means the scientist cannot touch or tinker with any matter,because the moment he starts messing with matter he is proving that a creator is needed.You overlook this,scientists tinkering with what God already created does not prove your world view at all,you overlook this.Even the evidence Aron Ra produced is man trying to create something,don't be fooled.You cannot create something and then say no God is needed,instead of believing science fiction believe the bible it is much much easier to believe than what you do..

 

[Miracles4Real]

I saw a nature show where a bunch of bees covered a hive invader (a grasshopper I think/ maybe it was a wasp?) over its entire body and flapped their wings, many of them dying from overheating exhaustion only to be replaced by another waiting bee, until they literally cooked the invader below them. How the heck can an ingenious behavior like that evolve in a mere biological machine? Is there a lesser version of that which works to a lesser extent? I don't know. It just seems impossible to me for it to happen gradually with beneficial incremental steps.

One driving factor for evolution is called an "Arms Race". Arms races are a form of pressure that pushes evolution along. As each generation moves on the predators thin out the prey that aren't suited to that advantage, while the prey that have variations that give them a survival advantage survive and pass on these beneficiary adaptations. This cycle repeats over and over, generation after generation. What we are seeing with the Wasps and bee's is one of those things that has built up over time. Since just one of these wasps can kill hundreds of bees itself, will send out help pheromones, and the bee stingers cannot penetrate the wasp, the beneficial adaptation in the bees genes that helps their survival against those weapons is just what we see.

If they did not build up any mechanism or strategy, they wouldn't survive and go extinct where there are wasps around. It doesn't require planning or tinkering. But if it did, that would suggest that the mind behind is playing both sides of the field in some kind of sick gladiatorial fight to the death of one of the species experiment. Giving each side better weapons and defenses back and forth in order to keep the war waging. Who would conceive that as a moral purpose behind life at all no matter what the species was?

But what good is half of that strategy? An impenetrable wasp comes and this strategy has not yet evolved. Our bees are doomed! Evolution over. Or what if it has only evolved to some lesser extent, say a few bees only get on the wasp and start flapping. It isn't enough to have the outcome of sucking all moisture out of their attacker.
Is it that wasps must have also been more vulnerable back then, so a lesser strategy was somehow affective- if so how?
To me a simple answer jumps forward very intuitively, design.
Maybe, in our fertile imaginations, we can actually conceive of a way that this attack strategy can evolve incrementally through an arms race and actually work at every single necessary step.
But an answer with that many variables all working so well seems so convoluted and ad-hoc to me.
But maybe it's actually true, as weird as it is. Sure doesn't seem like it though and without a definite answer I'm left only with my intuition to fall back on.

So I think a mind might use evolution to an extent but must be tweaking the knobs at some level for some ultimate plan. I realize that Augment from Personal Incredulity is a logical fallacy but I just can't bring myself to believe the alternative, that all of this is unplanned.
I haven't seen a big enough trend of these unbelievable things being explained by natural processes to believe that it is only exclusively natural processes, without any guidance needed. It seems like a big step.

The same point at the end of my first response goes to this as well, but also adding that this is very similar to what the whole 'what kind of designer/god would design things this way'. It's not emotional, it's rational to ask this question. I'm sorry, but when you start looking at the big picture, design by a mind designer doesn't work. There is no perceivable mechanism ever presented other than intuition and assertion.

Do we need an explanation for every explanation?
I don't know why God is having wasps and bees fight each other in endless gladiatorial battles. Maybe he (like me) thinks its kind of cool. Like totally metal! Maybe the fact that it is so difficult to explain this strategy with an evolutionary process is Gods lesson to us that he really is working behind the scenes- a kind of God signature.

Why do I need to understand the mind of God in order to propose it as the most elegant answer with greater explanatory power and greater explanatory scope? It accounts for things without us needing to tie ourselves up in knots to explain it, and it does so simply and intuitively.
It would shut my mouth right up if we had a time machine to see how a bee attack strategy which requires such team work, is so useful (seemingly only in a complete state) evolved;
But we have no Time machines yet.
Some hard scientific evidence would also change my mind;
But there really aren't a lot of bees trapped in amber (or some such thing) in the midst doing lesser versions of this attack strategy.
both sides are left with their intuition and their conclusion.
An evolutionary biologist may say

"Intuitively it looks designed. But we can prove more directly how some things evolved so this must have evolved too."

But I find myself gravitating toward

"Intuitively it looks designed. that's all I can say about it for sure without knowing, I'm going with designed"

Is that foolish? is that etymologically bad? Is that inherently dishonest? Do you understand better where I'm coming from? I'm eager to have my mind changed.

 

[Mugnuts]

Argh. Just typed out big response to the arms race, had a Dodo story and everything. I'll re-type it later.
I suggest googling 'evolutionary arms races observed'. Happy reading.

 

[Mugnuts]

I can't wait for OFNF's giraffe video. I'm expecting some cgi'd giraffes exploding from lifting their heads because of course that's how evolution would really do it if it were real. :roll: Creationism Micheal Bay style just might be what they need to suck in audiences.

 

[Inferno]

Since this has become a point of contention, I thought I'd step in and provide the open access version of the paper Aron cited:
The evolution of A-, F-, and V-type ATP synthases and ATPases: reversals in function and changes in the H+/ATP coupling ratio

I already messaged OFNF, saying that it took me all of 2 minutes to find this. It really isn't that hard. I also agreed that Aron should have linked to the open-access version, as such is common courtesy, but that he's not really at fault here.

I will PM the same to AronRa so he can post it in the thread or could we possibly ask a Mod to post it there?

EDIT: Idiot me, should have checked the debate Forum first. Aron already posted the open access version.

 

[dandan]

I feel like this discussion is becoming circular, I already provided my arguments and responded to most of your objections; you may or may not think that my arguments are valid, but in any case I would have to repeat my same answers.

So plain and simple, can any of you provide any scientific papers that actually proves that Darwinian mechanisms are responsible for the evolution of the eye, the ATP Motor or any other organ or system that creationists typically consider complex?

Some clarifications:
Keep in mind that there is a big difference between proving something and presupposing something.

With Darwinian mechanisms I mean “random genetric changes” + Natural selection, and perhaps other mechanisms like genetic drift, sexual selection, or any other un-intelligently-guided mechanism.

For the sake of simplicity, we can assume that common descent is true, I obviously don’t accept common descent ether, but for the sake of this discussion we can assume that common descent is true, and we can assume that the earth is old, and we can assume that your interpretations of the geologic column are correct. We are discussing specifically on weather if Darwinian mechanisms can build complex systems like the eye.

To hold a spirit of reciprocity, I will provide peer reviewed evidence for any of the so called “creationists claims” (just one per person) it could be any creationists claim, ether related or unrelated to this topic. If I can´t provide such article I will honestly and unambiguously admit that I can´t provide such article

 

[Inferno]

So plain and simple, can any of you provide any scientific papers that actually proves that Darwinian mechanisms are responsible for the evolution of the eye, the ATP Motor or any other organ or system that creationists typically consider complex?

Yes. I already provided several articles for the eye and Aron provided several for ATP. Others have posted several articles as well. I can post them again, but you won't read them and dismiss them without thought.

The Eye:
Trevor D. Lamb, Shaun P. Collin & Edward N. Pugh (2007) Evolution of the vertebrate eye: opsins, photoreceptors, retina and eye cup, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8, 960-976 (December 2007)

Nilsson DE, Pelger S. (1994) A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proc Biol Sci. 1994 Apr 22;256(1345):53-8.

Also, here's PBS's quick guide: Video

ATP:
Mulkidjanian - ATP synthase

The evolution of A-, F-, and V-type ATP synthases and ATPases: reversals in function and changes in the H+/ATP coupling ratio

I even found the Nature-paper open-access: Inventing the dynamo machine: the evolution of the F‑type and V‑type ATPases

 

[fightofthejellyfish]

Since this has become a point of contention, I thought I'd step in and provide the open access version of the paper Aron cited:
The evolution of A-, F-, and V-type ATP synthases and ATPases: reversals in function and changes in the H+/ATP coupling ratio

I already messaged OFNF, saying that it took me all of 2 minutes to find this. It really isn't that hard. I also agreed that Aron should have linked to the open-access version, as such is common courtesy, but that he's not really at fault here.

I will PM the same to AronRa so he can post it in the thread or could we possibly ask a Mod to post it there?

EDIT: Idiot me, should have checked the debate Forum first. Aron already posted the open access version.

This is all about as clear as mud. The paper you have linked there is the back up that he brought out as an alternative.
For the record:
The original quote, picture and link AronRa posted was to a university webpage that was a summary of Mulkidjanian's published work on ATP synthase. The picture was taken from the sixth reference on that page, a paper titled Inventing the dynamo machine: the evolution of the F-type and V-type ATPases (full text pdf)

AronRa later linked to an abstract of it, saying:

Apparently the world-wide scientific community disagrees with you, because the explanation I provided was peer reviewed.

Which seemed just to be to show that the explanation on the webpage he referenced was peer reviewed.

In his latest post AronRa has confused things a little more by linking to the first reference from the ATP synthase summary, which isn't the one where the originally quoted material came from.

 

[Inferno]

This is all about as clear as mud. The paper you have linked there is the back up that he brought out as an alternative.

Agreed, I was confused about that. Note that I posted the full PDF-version (the one you linked) 31min before you did, thereby correcting my earlier mistake.

In his latest post AronRa has confused things a little more by linking to the first reference from the ATP synthase summary, which isn't the one where the originally quoted material came from.

To be fair, it's hard to keep up with which paper was talked about at which point. In the original thread, an excess of 30 papers were quoted and linked to. In the debate, at least two were quoted and linked to, the peanut gallery contains another ten.

That being said, I believe Aron made a far greater mistake, one I intend to address on about an hour or so.

 

[AronRa]

To be fair, it's hard to keep up with which paper was talked about at which point. In the original thread, an excess of 30 papers were quoted and linked to. In the debate, at least two were quoted and linked to, the peanut gallery contains another ten.

I don't know what y'all are talking about. I originally linked to the Osnabrück paper, showing those illustrations. That citation had a link at the bottom for the Full PDF. There was no subscription required for that. Then I showed that this same research was also examined in peer review at PubMed and Nature, under the title, "Inventing the dynamo machine: the evolution of the F-type and V-type ATPases". That one I didn't provide the full text to, because my point was made without that. Then I cited a second study from Upstate Med.U., and I made sure to show the accessible version of that too. I don't what you guys are confused about when you say that I didn't cite the same thing as last time.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

To hold a spirit of reciprocity, I will provide peer reviewed evidence for any of the so called “creationists claims” (just one per person) it could be any creationists claim, ether related or unrelated to this topic. If I can´t provide such article I will honestly and unambiguously admit that I can´t provide such article

I suggest you return to this thread and start citing sources that back the assertions you have made there.