The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 2)

Hi Morbert, I apologise for the amount of time it has taken me to respond to your reply to me, but I have just recently completed moving house, and I was otherwise occupied by packing up, moving on and try to organise my new dwelling

Morbert wrote: »

Royal Truman, the author of the rebuttal, does not argue against the conclusion of the paper (That Darwinian mechanisms can give rise to an increase in information.) Instead, he argues that, while the program does exhibit an increase in information, it does not comprehensively model a biological system.

Rather than try to quibble about what the author of the rebuttal does or does not believe now, I will focus on your remark, "he argues that, while the program does exhibit an increase in information, it does not comprehensively model a biological system". I would agree with this statement, as I am not claiming that the 'computer simulation of evolution' does not simulate an increase in information in the program, as it is designed by 'intelligent designers' that have made a program with the aim of 'increasing information'.

The claim of creationists is not that it is impossible to create a computer program that can 'increase information', but rather that "there is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organisms genetic code". Therefore, to state that this intelligently designed computer program does not "comprehensively model a biological system" is therefore in agreement with my understanding of the problem.

Morbert wrote: »

So first, it must be made perfectly clear that the eV program categorically demonstrates an increase in information via Darwinian mechanisms. This puts to rest the notion that information cannot increase via Darwinian mechanisms.

I do not agree, this intelligently designed program is 'supposed' to be a simulation of the Darwinian mechanisms, but since it is not a realistic simulation of biologically complex systems, it does not demonstrate that any new genetic information has been or can be added to living organisms.

Morbert wrote: »

Similarly, the Avida simulation categorically demonstrates the evolution of irreducible complexity through Darwinian mechanisms.
http://devolab.msu.edu/

This may be your belief, but it is not shared by some highly qualified people that have studied the program in greater detail than I would assume you have. "Genetic algorithms typically succeed because programmers incorporate problem-specific knowledge into the search algorithm. Various examples have been published in the literature. Avida , a program purported to demonstrate evolution, works by rewarding simpler versions of complex components. Dawkin’s “METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL” simulation works by providing the distance to a target phrase. Ev, another program purported to demonstrate evolution, works by providing the distance to a target along with a biased genomic representation. Such algorithms do not demonstrate the abilities of undirected processes, but rather the powerful combination of human intelligence and brute force computing power. (P2 of pdf)

Morbert wrote: »

Whether or not they are strictly biological systems is irrelevant to the refutation of the creationist claim that irreducible complexity, formally speaking, cannot emerge through Darwinian mechanisms.

On the contrary, I think that it is highly relevant that we are not dealing with a 'strictly biological system' as this is the system that creationists are claiming that new genetic information is needed to be added to. The system being simulated by these intelligently designed computer programs are not 'simulating the complexity that is exhibited in biologically complex systems', such as a 'simple cell', and therefore they do not impact on the creationist claim.

Morbert wrote: »

So, before anything else is said, it must be acknowledged that information theory is perfectly consistent with complexity and Darwinism.

I am not sure that I do agree with this statement. I can see that information theory is perfectly consistent with complexity, as it appears that these intelligently designed computer programs do have something to tell us about the complexity of the cell, as they both seem to rely on the input of a 'code' to run the systems. The computer 'code' is written by the computer programmers but the DNA code seems to be more more complex and to exhibit a greater degree of efficiency that the computer code, perhaps signifying that the author of the DNA code is much more Intelligent that the computer code authors I am not convinced though that information theory is compatible with Darwinism. Are trying to suggest that an 'unguided' process can create either a computer program or a biologically complex system?

Morbert wrote: »

Now, to the follow-up question of whether or not such mechanisms occur in life. The rebuttal was written in 2001. Since then, the eV program has generated a number of publications related to real-life systems.
link

I was unable to access your link as I did not have the ability to see your examples, but unless you wish to quote excerpts from them anyway which demonstrated that new genetic information was added to a biological system, the results would be irrelevant to the creationist claim anyway.

Morbert wrote: »

Similarly, Avida, whom Truman has similar objections to, has also complemented numerous real results.
http://devolab.msu.edu/biblio

All of these intelligently designed computer simulations have the same basic flaw, in that they rely on the input of complexity before they even begin to 'simulate' anything.

"As with our prior work, we have shown that the search algorithm proposed as an example of the power of natural selection to generate information from scratch in fact demonstrates the abilities of humans to devise genetic algorithms that draw on existing information.... In order to demonstrate the abilities of natural selection, it would be necessary to avoid making any decisions in the development of the genetic algorithm that deliberately assist in finding the solution. Only a teleological process guided by some form of intelligence can function in this way. Insofar as simulations of evolution make use of prior knowledge, they are not simulations of Darwinian evolution in any meaningful sense." (P13 of pdf)

Morbert wrote: »

Tom Schneider maintains a website detailing the reactions to his paper.
http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/blog-ev.html

So you can see, even without any detailed knowledge, that Truman's rebuttal is either wrong or irrelevant. (Schneider has said it is both.)

As I had limited time when I made my last post, I did not want to go into any great detail on the paper itself, but I did notice some things about it that made it appear to be either wrong or irrelevant to the creationist claim that you seem to think that it demolishes.

In the opening paragraph he points us to a paper published in 1948 by Claude Shannon and gives us his definition of information. The problem is, creationist are not questioning this definition of Shannon information, but rather we are claiming that this is the wrong sort of information and that rather what should be being discussed is the type of prescriptive information found in cells. It may be useful to watch the whole program, but here is an excerpt from the program which describes the differences between the different types of information and demonstrates that the Shannon information that the paper you quoted used is irrelevant to the claim that creationists make about the information in living organisms.

The full video of the Progamming of life can be found here.


So I would say that though these intelligently designed computer programs are very interesting and may have some limited use, they do nothing to refute the creationist claim that "there is no known observable process by which new genetic information can be added to an organisms genetic code".

As you may be aware Michael Behe explored the papers published about actual biological systems in his book "The edge of evolution" and showed that the Darwinian mechanism is only capable of a few small steps, and that it is incapable of producing the vast amount of increase in biologically complex information that we see in organisms by purely naturalistic processes.

Dr. J. C. Sandford also demonstrated the that natural selection and mutations are only a downhill process in all real life examples that have been studied in his book " Genetic Entropy and the mystery of the genome".

Andrewf20 wrote: »

Hoping not to go off a morality tangent too much, but - The bible suggests that the following 2 people are damned in equal measure:

Actually it doesn't. Nowhere does the Bible suggest that all are punished equally. In fact it indicates that judgement will be worse for some than for others.

Zombrex wrote: »

Scientists who abandon scientific principles are not scientists, no matter what their degree from 30 years ago says, any more than Katie Homes is still a Catholic.

Hi Zombrex
Do you have some particular scientists in mind when you make this statement?
I would say that there are many scientists today that do not follow strictly the scientific method and so by your standard they should not be classed as scientists. The scientific method that has been standard for the last few centuries is one in which systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, testing, and modification of hypotheses take place. I do not think that the historical sciences are able to follow this very strictly.

It seems apparent that many of the conclusions reached by much of the historical sciences are based more on speculations and assumptions rather than observable, testable or repeatable principles.

Do palaeontologists 'know' that we 'evolved' from an apelike creature 6 or 7 million years ago, or do they simply speculate what 'they think happened' based on their 'education' and presuppositions? I suspect that there are very few observable or repeatable processes that they can use to test their hypotheses, and certainly as far as I am aware there have been no conclusive tests that have been carried out to demonstrate their speculation.

I suspect then that either we will have to redefine what a scientist actually is, or we will have to exclude historical scientists from being described as such.

dead one wrote: »

Because you say so

Nope. It isn't true because it is not true. I don't decide that.

dead one wrote: »

Everything you believe isn't biased, every thing we beleive is biased. I get your point.

I don't know who "we" is. I was simply referring to you. What you believe in relation to biology is ridiculously and paralyzingly biased and misrepresentative of reality.

But I suspect you don't care because it makes you happy to believe it and you have no requirement to know how reality actually is in relation to biology.