Two Gods or One

Quote: Face

Rather I think it was its presence in a God thread. I think I auto jumped to creation when you went anti-random.

But yeah, we're on the same page, then. "Fit enough". I dig that whole line of thought, know right were it goes. And agree with it.

Is it AZD's old tagline "Rome wasn't planned, but it didn't just happen"?

Quote: FrGamble

You are correct sir, God is not a thing. God is immaterial and the very essence of being.

Or not. Mostly he's just a figment, and
not material at all either way.

I remember pretending god was real
when I was trying to be a Christian,
trying to make all that weirdness work.
Not fun at all.

Quote: FrGamble

Why not use the example of an appendix or something like that instead of pointing to the amazing human eye?

It's not yet settled whether or not the appendix has benefits. The eye is a lot worse than I made it out to be. Do you know any bird has better visual acuity and sees more colors in visible light than humans can?

Quote:

What about the amazing brain that comes up with all these amazing analogies and ideas you have and comes up with things like cars and rocket ships? Isn't that amazing?

It is, but it's riddled with bugs, too. Due to the need to do the eye's work, the brain falls easily for illusions. Then, too, the human brain is hardwired to give weight to anecdotes, to act on incomplete information, to arrange everything into patterns whether there be any or not, to weigh good outcomes over bad ones (which relates to its preference for anecdotes), and more. And all this, mind, when it's working right. Slight malfunctions, which everyone experiences from time to time, range from terrifying to dangerous.

Much of what I describe above explains why science took such a long time to develop. Fortunately science has been very helpful in finding out these deficiencies, so now we can correct for them by taking them into account in our thinking. To that extent, the brain is slowly correcting its own shoddy design.

Quote:

Isn't philosophizing the act of doing philosophy?

No. I won't repeat the definition just because you missed it in the same post you were mocking. But you can look up-thread for it.

Quote: Face

Rather I think it was its presence in a God thread. I think I auto jumped to creation when you went anti-random.

But yeah, we're on the same page, then. "Fit enough". I dig that whole line of thought, know right were it goes. And agree with it.

aside from natural selection, fitness to reproduce and all that, there's also the matter of how random a random mutation can be. Genes do not change so much as to become something completely different due to a mutation. And changes are to structures already in place.

As an analogy, if you're playing craps it's possible, but not likely, you'll throw two box cars in a row. It's not possible to throw a full house.

Quote: Nareed

aside from natural selection, fitness to reproduce and all that, there's also the matter of how random a random mutation can be. Genes do not change so much as to become something completely different due to a mutation. And changes are to structures already in place.

As an analogy, if you're playing craps it's possible, but not likely, you'll throw two box cars in a row. It's not possible to throw a full house.

That is possibly the biggest problem with neo-darwinism. Mutations don't produce new structures. The organism has to already exist for selection to happen.

Quote: pew

That is possibly the biggest problem with neo-darwinism. Mutations don't produce new structures.

That's not right. A single mutation won't produce new structures. Several mutations, accumulated over several generations, can produce new structures.

Quote:

The organism has to already exist for selection to happen.

Also not right.

No amount of chemical reactions with the right elements can produce a protein. But such reactions can produce amino acids. These, in turn, can combine to produce proteins. Proteins then can combine further. And all can draw on raw elements and energy sources (like volcanic vents, sunlight, etc.) Before there were organisms with genes, there was DNA, before that there were proteins, before that amino acids. And all were pushed by selective pressures.

.

Quote: Nareed

That's not right. A single mutation won't produce new structures. Several mutations, accumulated over several generations, can produce new structures.




Also not right.

No amount of chemical reactions with the right elements can produce a protein. But such reactions can produce amino acids. These, in turn, can combine to produce proteins. Proteins then can combine further. And all can draw on raw elements and energy sources (like volcanic vents, sunlight, etc.) Before there were organisms with genes, there was DNA, before that there were proteins, before that amino acids. And all were pushed by selective pressures.

"And changes are to structures already in place." Which is it?

Quote: pew

That is possibly the biggest problem with neo-darwinism. Mutations don't produce new structures. The organism has to already exist for selection to happen.

Eventually the mutations can produce a new struture one small step at a time. Over enough time the new structure will have little resemblence to the original.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

No one has observed life form from scratch.

But we know a few things. Proteins are made of amino acids. We know the composition of Earth's primordial atmosphere. The Urey experiment mixed water with the gasses making up Earth's old atmosphere and added sparks of electricity to simulate lightning. He got amino acids among other things.

So we know of one way in which amino acids may have formed. We also know amino acids have been found in meteorites, and they've been detected in dust clouds in space. The conclusion is the building blocks of proteins, which in turn are the building blocks of living beings, are rather common and they could have formed on the primordial Earth.

We don't know exactly how these wound up as DNA, but there are many hypotheses. Perhaps a future experiment will settle the plausibility of one or more of these.

DNA can direct other organic molecules. That's what it does and how it replicates itself. Bill Bryson once observed DNA's purpose is to make more DNA. Since it is susceptible to mutations, this is where changes to it eventually form new structures. A DNA strand with a protective coat of protein, for example, would be more apt to replicate more than one without. You can go on from there.