Could Genesis be literal?

[Mallon]

You have not shown that evolution does not happen in the light.

But he's an engineer!

 

[exquirer]

And light is an electromagnetic phenomenon that in no way conflicts with biological evolution. You have not shown that evolution does not happen in the light.

In addition to Maxwell's work on informational entropy, you might profit from his work on non-evolution of electric charges - all of which had proper limited scope, but derived as all theories, from an underlying philosophy (Einsteins from Riemann for example).

Any statistical or set of statistical phenomena will tend toward minimum energy, maximum randomness.

To overcome entropy, one needs intelligence, and if one has intelligence that overcomes entropy, one has design for the machinery is designed (forces balanced). Be that machinery informational, electrical, structural, etc... all of which is present in living cells - immensely advanced in every way.

That does not exclude adaptation, population shifts etc.... but it does exclude statistics itself as being formative.

Light overcomes darkness - entropy is overcome through intelligence, heat flows from hot to cold - information flows from intelligence to intelligence, springing from intelligence.

The teaching goes to the root of the Philosophy.

Even in history, God has taught you that in wisdom he has made all things.

But there is more hope for a fool than for one wise in his own eyes, so poor Boltzmann committed suicide, and Maxwell, who as a Christian would say of himself as the most ignorant of men, went on to live a Holy Life.

Evolution and Epicurean philosophy have serious and dangerous problems - we should study sciences intrinsic limits. [Engineers do so to get around them.]

ex......

 

[shernren]

But he's an engineer!

Wow, even paleontologists make engineer jokes? ;D

 

[gluadys]

In addition to Maxwell's work on informational entropy, you might profit from his work on non-evolution of electric charges - all of which had proper limited scope, but derived as all theories, from an underlying philosophy (Einsteins from Riemann for example).

Electrical charges may not be subject to evolution; biological species are. I think you are comparing apples and oranges again. Until you can see biology for biology and remember the salient differences between biology and machinery, I don't think you can follow biology.

Two salient differences are that living things exist in populations and that living things reproduce. Evolution is a change in populations over generations, not a change in individuals. That makes a great deal of difference.

Any statistical or set of statistical phenomena will tend toward minimum energy, maximum randomness.
Be that machinery informational, electrical, structural, etc... all of which is present in living cells - immensely advanced in every way.

Yes, along with a unique way to transform that information, pass it to another generation and spread (or curb the spread) of the information through the population. None of these mechanisms exist in human manufactures.

That does not exclude adaptation, population shifts etc.... but it does exclude statistics itself as being formative.

Quite right. Selection does not form new alleles. But selection is the means of generating evolution. And I don't know how selection can be measured other than statistically. We are, after all, dealing with a genetic change in population. How else would you measure that change?

Light overcomes darkness - entropy is overcome through intelligence, heat flows from hot to cold - information flows from intelligence to intelligence, springing from intelligence.

And evolution allows a population to overcome ecological barriers, enter into new habitats, distribute seed in new ways, make use of new food sources, etc.

The teaching goes to the root of the Philosophy.

Even in history, God has taught you that in wisdom he has made all things.

Yes, of course. I don't consider this problematical re evolution.

Evolution and Epicurean philosophy have serious and dangerous problems - we should study sciences intrinsic limits. [Engineers do so to get around them.]

ex......

Even if philosophy has a hard time dealing with evolution, that doesn't make it untrue. It just means philosophy has to do its job better. A philosophy that cannot deal with observed reality is, after all, not worth much as a philosophy.

Since evolution is science, it has the same intrinsic limits as all science.

 

[exquirer]

.....
Even if philosophy has a hard time dealing with evolution, that doesn't make it untrue. It just means philosophy has to do its job better. A philosophy that cannot deal with observed reality is, after all, not worth much as a philosophy.

Since evolution is science, it has the same intrinsic limits as all science.

It goes to cause and effect. Statistical evolution and population change are effects - measurable/manipulatable effects, not causes.

The cause is the machinery itself, the DNA/RNA in the cells and their combination - however, rapid changes occur.

Evolution is a part - but it is not causal - it is effectual- fundamentally, and that is the whole point of everything I have been trying to communicate.

The cause of a genetic algorithm is the genetic algorithm - the effects of the genetic algorithm are the statistical system and combinations employed to get the outcomes themselves. You design a genetic algorithm to get a near-optimal designed outcome.

Cause and effect matter - consider:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090112093334.htm

External effects cause death - as above, genetics adapts....

And there are obvious examples, including the air we breath. Biological Nitrogen fixation requires one tenth the energy as creation of sugar - yet BNF is in a symbiotic relationship to inherently control the atmospheric content - otherwise, plants could easily evolve (if evolution were causal) the capability to use O2 and N2 - and greatly reduce respiration that causes them to dry out.....

Evolution is not causal - the cause is intelligence - and yes, good science recognizes that because religion is the science of sciences.

ex....

 

[gluadys]

It goes to cause and effect. Statistical evolution and population change are effects - measurable/manipulatable effects, not causes.

Yes, the change in the population is an effect. The cause of this change is differential reproductive success.

Each case of differential reproductive success would need to be studied as to the particular conditions which brought it about. In some cases it may be due to mate selection, in some cases to differential predation, in some cases to variable resistance to an infective agent, or there may be other causes. But in principle (if not always in deed) we can trace every instance of differential reproductive success back to some sort of factor such as this.

The cause is the machinery itself, the DNA/RNA in the cells and their combination - however, rapid changes occur.

I think you are trying to locate evolution in the wrong place. The machinery you are referring to is located in the cell. It cannot have a direct evolutionary impact except in unicellular, asexual organisms. Even then a change in a cell is not evolution. It is the frequency with which this change is inherited vis-a-vis alternate alleles that may indicate evolution. If the frequency of inheritance of an allele falls into a Hardy-Weinberg balance, then it only indicates an increase in variability. An increase in variability is not, strictly speaking, evolution. In fact, the normal result of an evolutionary change is a decrease in variability.

So it seems you are not really directing your focus at evolution (a genetic change in a population), but at whether or not variability in a population can increase via mutations in the cells of individual organisms.

Obviously, if mutations are not possible, evolution is not possible. Since natural selection tends to decrease variabilty, the end result of a selective process over time would be a population that is homozygous at every locus on its genome. That would bring evolution to a standstill for there is no longer any variation to select.

So, for evolution to be possible, there must be a counter-acting mechanism that increases variability. That mechanism is mutation.

External effects cause death

Only in the sense that every death has a cause. If an organism escapes a predator or survives a disease today, it is still going to die of some cause some day. The important question for evolution is not how or when a particular organism died but whether some factor affecting the population produces differential reproductive success.

- as above, genetics adapts....

Not without evolution. Genetic changes on their own only affect levels of variability. You need differential reproductive success (natural selection) to get to adaptation.

And there are obvious examples, including the air we breath. Biological Nitrogen fixation requires one tenth the energy as creation of sugar - yet BNF is in a symbiotic relationship to inherently control the atmospheric content - otherwise, plants could easily evolve (if evolution were causal) the capability to use O2 and N2 - and greatly reduce respiration that causes them to dry out.....

I don't know why you would say plants could easily evolve a different way to fix nitrogen. Evolution depends on inheritance. How, given the resources of their inheritance, could they convert to a new system of nitrogen fixation?

Probably the biggest chemical challenge living cells ever had to contend with was the increasing amount of free oxygen put into the air by photosynthetic organisms. It could not have been easy to convert from chemical respiration to the use of oxygen. I expect a change in the mode of nitrogen fixation would be of similar magnitude.

Evolution is not causal - the cause is intelligence

I don't know that an intelligent cause rules out evolution. I expect evolution works as well as it does because it is designed and supported by an intelligent Creator.

 

[exquirer]

Yes, the change in the population is an effect. The cause of this change is differential reproductive success.

No - the success of the differential reproductive success is proof that the cause is not intrinsic to the stress on the population. The stress on the population causes the machinery which ascends in essence to ascend - like an irritation causes a Pearl (in a poetic sense of course).

....
I don't know why you would say plants could easily evolve a different way to fix nitrogen. Evolution depends on inheritance. How, given the resources of their inheritance, could they convert to a new system of nitrogen fixation?

Because in the beginning - they were not to inherit that capability.

Improvements require at essence, intrinsic, the ability within the base machinery to improve - you've in essence proved that by your very statement. The issue is cause.

Had they had infinite degree of capability to do whatever - where the effect of evolution was intrinsically formative and deterministic (e.g. decreased variability) - then - because it is clearly advantageous from a Malthusian or differential point of view to do so - they would have evolved the capability to simply process N2.

After all, "seeing" evolved - and there is a huge advantage to being able to process N2 from the air for the plant.

But instead each plant expends 10x as much energy creating sugar from 300 PPM CO2 than getting N2 which is 70% of the atmosphere and requires 1/10 the energy - because the entire ecosystem is designed in essence. The chemistry is easy - why evolve incredibly sophisticated machinery to get CO2 and not get N2???? And why not get C where it is plentiful - the ground?

Why should evolution go beyond microbes - microbes survive just fine? The essence, the causal engine of ascent to massive complexity - which goes against entropy - and massive order - which goes against entropy must in essence be beyond statistical mechanism. That is the whole point of statistical entropy which all statistical systems are constrained to. Entropy is intrinsic - James Clerc Maxwell's "demon".

There are fundamental mathematical proofs that assert this. Every evolutionary change is an improvement - but an improvement in what respect? Survival?

Cockroaches survive just fine, microbes survive the harshest environments.

What has occurred on the Earth is far beyond mere survival. And it goes against informational, ordered, energetic entropy in essence.
[quote[
Probably the biggest chemical challenge living cells ever had to contend with was the increasing amount of free oxygen put into the air by photosynthetic organisms.[/quote]
Yes!

It could not have been easy to convert from chemical respiration to the use of oxygen. I expect a change in the mode of nitrogen fixation would be of similar magnitude.

No - Actually from a chemical plant process point of view, burning O2 is very, very easy.

I don't know that an intelligent cause rules out evolution.

It goes to the root of the cause - evolution is an effect.

I expect evolution works as well as it does because it is designed and supported by an intelligent Creator.

Exactly - there has to be an intelligence, intrinsic to the universe (the Very Good) - that is at the root of an intelligent outcome - from an entropic point of view.

The essence of overcoming entropy is intelligence, simple and compound - which is old school Church Fathers way of saying, God.

ex.....

 

[The Barbarian]

Any statistical or set of statistical phenomena will tend toward minimum energy, maximum randomness.

Roll three six-sided dice 100 time, noting the sum of each throw. Graph them. Is the graph ordered, or disordered?

To overcome entropy, one needs intelligence

Plants do it all the time. But they aren't normally considered intelligent. If you mean by that, "intelligence Who formed the universe so that such wonders could evolve", I'd have to agree with you. Otherwise, not.

and if one has intelligence that overcomes entropy, one has design for the machinery is designed (forces balanced). Be that machinery informational, electrical, structural, etc... all of which is present in living cells - immensely advanced in every way.

More so than anything that can be designed. Indeed, engineers are now copying nature, using evolutionary processes, to find solutions for problems that resist design. Would you like to learn about it?

 

[mark kennedy]

Yes is the answer to the question of the OP, it is in fact. now back to the regularly scheduled discussion

 

[exquirer]

Roll three six-sided dice 100 time, noting the sum of each throw. Graph them. Is the graph ordered, or disordered?

Take the derivative of that resultant Cumulative Distribution Function and you will arrive at the Probability Distribution Function (PDF - Binomial in the case you sighted).

Plants do it all the time. But they aren't normally considered intelligent. If you mean by that, "intelligence Who formed the universe so that such wonders could evolve", I'd have to agree with you. Otherwise, not.

More so than anything that can be designed. Indeed, engineers are now copying nature, using evolutionary processes, to find solutions for problems that resist design. Would you like to learn about it?

Through the Grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I have a patent on a self-verifying computer language compiler used to automate PWR nuclear power reactor core designs in the United States and globally - and as a result, I know this problem in depth.

In fact, we could write our names in the power distribution of the reactor if we wanted to. It comes from intelligence, not randomness - random processes are very, very weak.

The truth is, informational entropy is very, very real - as is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, as are any number of phenomena that fundamentally limit the ability to formulate systems, model etc.....

The algorithms you refer to work because of their innate design - because at the heart of those algorithms is intelligence, intrinsic to the system.

Intelligence is causal in ordering statistical systems.

Now I have to go back to working on my presentation to our government on ways of minimizing the uncertainty of the transport operator associated with the Boltzmann equation, which is fundamentally limited by:

(∫∞ x2|f(x)|2dx)(∫∞ξ2|f(ξ)|2dξ ) ≥ 1/16π2

Engineers can do math too! (f(x) and f(ξ) can be PDFs of the time-frequency domain, energy-momentum, or any other set of phenomena associated with statistical observations reduced to observable phenomena, and the fundamental inability of observing with precision is very real - as is the reality of information entropy when you study it - for real in depth)

 

[Mallon]

(∫∞ x2|f(x)|2dx)(∫∞ξ2|f(ξ)|2dξ ) ≥ 1/16π2

Engineers can do math too!

You forgot to pigeonhole God into your equation.

 

[exquirer]

You forgot to pigeonhole God into your equation.

Actually its not my equation - its the equation that presents the formal proof of the Uncertainty Principle, that limits our ability to know material reality in essence (for when God saw all He made, low it was the Very Good) and of course, we cannot know God in essence.

And God is in the equation, notice the integral is over infinity - He is not Pigeonholed, but rather transcendent.

ex....

 

[gluadys]

Actually its not my equation - its the equation that presents the formal proof of the Uncertainty Principle, that limits our ability to know material reality in essence (for when God saw all He made, low it was the Very Good) and of course, we cannot know God in essence.

And God is in the equation, notice the integral is over infinity - He is not Pigeonholed, but rather transcendent.

ex....

Interestingly, both Kenneth Miller and John Polkinghorne also call on the fact of quantum indeterminacy to point to the fact we can never know creation or the Creator fully. Miller (in Finding Darwin's God) also points out that the DNA molecule through its governance of biology amplifies the physical indeterminacy of the material world into the world of life. This is the fundamental reason mutations are random.

One of the things this means is that history, whether natural or human, cannot be predetermined. So the materialistic determinism of a Daniel Dennett, which might have been a logical position in the framework of Newtonian mechanics, cannot truly be sustained even on a scientific level.

Theologically, the fundamental indeterminacy of material events permits both the freedom of God to create and the freedom of the creature to become.

 

[shernren]

Through the Grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I have a patent on a self-verifying computer language compiler used to automate PWR nuclear power reactor core designs in the United States and globally - and as a result, I know this problem in depth.

In fact, we could write our names in the power distribution of the reactor if we wanted to. It comes from intelligence, not randomness - random processes are very, very weak.

"Hey Dad, why are the lights flickering? I thought you replaced the old tubes months - "
"Shh. Son, it's Morse Code ..."

The truth is, informational entropy is very, very real - as is the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, as are any number of phenomena that fundamentally limit the ability to formulate systems, model etc.....

Do you mean the Shannon entropy of an information source? Because that would mean that you have an improper mental model of evolution. Shannon entropy is a measure (roughly speaking, in transmission theory) of the chances that the signal at the end of a transmission line is identical to the signal that went in at the start. If you're transmitting from a low-entropy source, you don't need a very good channel to ensure that the message is faithfully reproduced at the end; if you're transmitting from a high-entropy source, you need a strong, high-bandwidth channel to get the signal through.

Evolution isn't concerned, however, with indiscriminate fidelity of genome transmission. Evolution doesn't care whether I have the exact same genes as my father; what evolution cares about is whether I can survive and thrive in the environment that my father happens to bequeath to me. More often than not this will involve some modification. Yes, the genome is a very high-entropy source of information, especially when it comes to sexual transmission. (Parents have no idea what their baby will look like before it's born.) But that's okay. We aren't playing Chinese Whispers or Pass The Parcel here; we're playing Let's See If Our Children Can Withstand The Nonsense That Did Us In Better Than We Did.

And that's a whole different ball game.

 

[exquirer]

"Hey Dad, why are the lights flickering? I thought you replaced the old tubes months - "
"Shh. Son, it's Morse Code ..."
..... Yes, the genome is a very high-entropy source of information, especially when it comes to sexual transmission. (Parents have no idea what their baby will look like before it's born.) But that's okay. We aren't playing Chinese Whispers or Pass The Parcel here; we're playing Let's See If Our Children Can Withstand The Nonsense That Did Us In Better Than We Did.

And that's a whole different ball game.

You gene expression changes in the course of minutes - have you seen the studies lately? You literally can formulate - by your will - your gene expression. In fact people are doing it in research studies.

So if you listen to particular music etc.... pray etc... your gene expression will change, and that will be passed down to the next generation.

Hence, because we have free will and make choices - that is an exception to natural selection - because now it is a matter of will.

Therefore, an exception has been found in man which in essence disproves the sufficiency of necessity of natural selection - there is free will selection based on a reasoning being's preference (on the high end of the evolutionary scale). Natural selection is no longer causal.

If it is no longer sufficient (for man) or necessary (for man) why should it be sufficient or necessary for any other being in the evolutionary chain? Mechanistically, it isn't sufficient on its own.

Check it out.

So if a theory is neither sufficient or necessary for cause, formally, it is untrue for causal. Now people will argue that evolution isn't causal - and they are right. But if it isn't causal - what is? Oops - back to intelligence intrinsic, simple, compound (God).

ex.....

 

[The Barbarian]

You gene expression changes in the course of minutes - have you seen the studies lately? You literally can formulate - by your will - your gene expression. In fact people are doing it in research studies.

I just got up from the keyboard, and poured myself an iced tea. Change in gene expression. I normally get a water. But my genes remain exactly the same.

So if you listen to particular music etc.... pray etc... your gene expression will change, and that will be passed down to the next generation.

Nope. My kids pray, because I spent time teaching them. But their taste in music...

Therefore, an exception has been found in man which in essence disproves the sufficiency of necessity of natural selection - there is free will selection based on a reasoning being's preference (on the high end of the evolutionary scale). Natural selection is no longer causal.

Last time I tried it, it was. And so far, everyone else is finding the same thing, every time we try it.

Check it out.

You perhaps have a checkable source for this belief?

 

[exquirer]

I just got up from the keyboard, and poured myself an iced tea. Change in gene expression. I normally get a water. But my genes remain exactly the same.

Your genes are exactly the same - but the number and type expressed are different.

Sorry about the checkable sources - you can google as easily as I can. I received a lecture a couple years ago at the research institute where my office is located (We are not part of that institute), and they were doing microarray studies on gene expression.

It was mindblowing stuff.

"Let us create man in our image" is literally true - we are joint heirs of our own creation. We are what we eat - what we listen to ...... truly amazing stuff.

The genes don't change (much?) - but the number of each type expressed do.

Have you ever considered the perfection of the image of God in that in the beginning is our DNA (molecular Word)? Fascinating stuff.

Of course they didn't make any religious connections. People prefer to believe in their own intrinsic scientific superiority.....

You know, there is an ancient hymn with a line, "Oh Lord save thy people, and bless thine inheritance, and to thy faithful people grant victory over the Barbarians...." Sorry - its just amusing how that song pops into my head when I see your Icon!

ex.....