How human language refutes atheism

[Coito ergo sum]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNDZb0Kt ... re=channel[/youtube]

[spinoza99]

Time to repeat this again.

1) long chains of RNA can spontaneously form in water, randomly (observed fact)
2) some of the possible sequences confer self replicability , and this sequence length falls within the chain length documented for 1)
3) self replication generates raw genomic material.(observed fact, since we have seen it in cases of ploidy and gene duplication within organisms, and in gene pools wrt populations)
4) Mutations act upon raw genomic material (observed fact again)
5) Ribozymes et cetera trigger protein synthesis (observed fact again)
6) We have the basic ingredients for the execution of the central dogma with RNA and ribozymes, throw in free amino acids. (RNA-RNA interactions to form tRNA, I did present a paper on this too, ribozyme catalyzes peptide bond formation)
7) Protein based metabolism is more diverse and adaptable than RNA based metabolism alone, hence shift by natural selection, on account of the selective advantage conferred.
8) Proteins are bound to interact due to the chemistries of secondary and tertiary structure formation
9) Protein interactions themselves will consequently be selected for naturally, as happens in the case of gene networks.
10) Once interactions are selected for, and the "add a protein, make interaction necessary" steps occur by the Mullerian two step, if the organism loses that protein it goes kaput, so we now have a minimum complement defined for an organism that has already evolved from replicators. This when extended is what gives you, erroneously, your dodgy minimal complement numbers, when it is not a barrier to evolution from simple replicators, the feasibility of which is an empirically demonstrated fact.

To put it simply, optimal sequences are part of stochastic sequence space, or the fitness landscape, and selection leads towards optimality, this too is demonstrated fact, as the Hayashi et al paper demonstrates.

To put it simply...flawed argument is flawed.

By the way , Spinoza, as a parting gift I have a link for you.

http://www.bioxplorer.com/

That site links to freely downloadable textbooks, and there are truckloads of them, but registration is required.

Genes, thanks for helping me out. It's amazing how real you are. I was wondering if you could help me get some science articles that I can't get a hold of?

[GenesForLife]

Of course I would have to be real to be posting here

I will try, please PM me with a list.

Cheers.

[my_wan]

To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material. ...

I'll get to "randomness" but first I must clear up this notion of "only material". Temperature is the simplest and most basic example, but this is essentially ubiquitous in physics. The air in the room has a temperature, yet no one air molecule by itself has a temperature. So if the temperature of the air does not exist in the individual air molecules, does that mean that temperature is non-physical? No! So the fact that properties exist that are not properties of any individual part is not a non-physical claim. Such properties remain perfectly and mechanistically predictable from an ensemble of parts.

Mind is directly juxtaposed with randomness. Randomness has no knowledge, no power, and no will. Randomness merely selects a choice from a finite set of choices. ...

Wrong, here's an example of why. Consider the air in your car tire. The pressure in that tire is a purely random distribution of molecular collisions. The only reason the laws of physics says the tire can't go flat on one side but not the other is not because it can't happen, but because it is too extremely unlikely to happen. If you poke a hole in the tire, then air molecules will randomly hit the hole leading out, while outside air randomly finds the hole leading into the tire. The only reason more air leaves the tire than enters it is because there are more molecules per area to randomly find their way out.

Hence the "pure" randomness inside and outside the tire has information. If, as you say, mind is a juxtaposition with randomness, then the air leaking out of the tire means the air has a mind of its own. Only it's easy to demonstrate that it doesn't, because the results of a hole in the tire predictable from purely classical mechanistic collisions of air molecules. It's just as predictable, and follows the exact same mechanistic rules as pool balls on a pool table.

You say monists "believe" this, but that's wrong. It's a result of proof. A proof that may not be absolute, yet the proof defines a testable difference between volitional information in randomness and mechanistic information in randomness. Contrary to theistic claims, randomness *is* mechanistic "information". In fact, with Shannon information, after you remove all the non-information, you are left with "purely" random information.

The biggest proof of this in history was when Einstein used Brownian motion to demonstrate that the atom actually existed. Before then many scientist, like the theist, denied that pure randomness was "information". Brownian motion demonstrated that not only was randomness real information, it was purely mechanistic information.

The fact is scientist would mostly agree with you if it wasn't so easily demonstrated to be false today.

Either: Will exists
Or: will does not exist

So is purely randomized air leaking out of a tire with a hole in it a "will"? Yet it selects a non-random result.

Either: Power exists
Or: power does not exist

So is the air leaking out of a tire not a source of power? It powers all sorts of power equipment is run off of air.

Either: Knowledge exists
Or: knowledge does not exist

When we use genetic algorithms to invent stuff that no human invented, which instead uses a "random" number generator to come up with solution, does that "random number generator" contain knowledge? In fact, we use "random number generators" to decide what the best satellite orbits are for many of our communication satellites. Some of the orbits invented by "random" number generators are downright weird, no human would have invented that way, yet they work better and more efficiently with fewer satellites than the ones we came up with. So the theist maxim that "it can't happen by accident" is total bullshit. Otherwise your cell phone wouldn't work.

Either: all three exist together
Or: all three do not exist together

Here is a bullshit application of the law of the excluded middle. If I have 3 marbles in some of 3 jars, why can't I have 2 together in the same jar but not 3? If individual air molecules don't have a temperature, how come you get a temperature when you put a bunch of them together?

Either: ALL causes are due to an obedience to physical laws
Or: ALL causes are not due to an obedience to physical laws, but some are due to mind

Yet if the air leaking out of a tire is a non-random consequence of pure randomness and "obedience to physical laws", how is "mind" not simply an "obedience to physical laws"?

This is where monism falls apart. How do you program a human to speak correct sentences? The number of correct sentences is easily more than a googolplex, it may even be infinite, and the number of incorrect sentences is still larger.

So. Genetic algorithms, which use "random number generators" to make choices, can easily sift through a googolplex of data for valid information. It doesn't list every possible valid piece of information, but neither does language state every possible way to say the same thing. Nor does language represent every possible language.

Your thesis fails experimentally and logically. I would explain about neural nets, neuroscience, etc., but given that even something so basic as randomness and "accidents" are so demonstrably misconstrued, I suspect it would be a waste of time.

[charlou]

Would be good if spinoz would come back and absorb that ..

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Would be good if spinoz could absorb that ..

[spinoza99]

To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material. ...

I'll get to "randomness" but first I must clear up this notion of "only material". Temperature is the simplest and most basic example, but this is essentially ubiquitous in physics. The air in the room has a temperature, yet no one air molecule by itself has a temperature.

I don't have time to answer all your points, but heat is the measurement of the extent to which particles move. Heat is just a property of matter.

[spinoza99]

Actually this post is rather good, other than the subjective use of the word bullshit. It's very difficult to debate with someone who has such strong disrespect for the other's ideas that he calls them bullshit. If you want to have an intelligent debate with me, then I would encourage you not subjectively label my ideas bullshit. If we are going to learn from each other, then we must respect each other. So since this post does have a lot of thought in it I will respond.

Mind is directly juxtaposed with randomness. Randomness has no knowledge, no power, and no will. Randomness merely selects a choice from a finite set of choices. ...

Wrong, here's an example of why. Consider the air in your car tire. The pressure in that tire is a purely random distribution of molecular collisions. The only reason the laws of physics says the tire can't go flat on one side but not the other is not because it can't happen, but because it is too extremely unlikely to happen. If you poke a hole in the tire, then air molecules will randomly hit the hole leading out, while outside air randomly finds the hole leading into the tire. The only reason more air leaves the tire than enters it is because there are more molecules per area to randomly find their way out.
[/quote]
The above statements are correct.

Hence the "pure" randomness inside and outside the tire has information....Contrary to theistic claims, randomness *is* mechanistic "information". In fact, with Shannon information, after you remove all the non-information, you are left with "purely" random information.

In order for information to be distinguished from mere randomness it must be highly improbable. The more improbable a sequence is the more probable it is information. This is the only way to distinguish info from randomness, make it improbable.

If, as you say, mind is a juxtaposition with randomness, then the air leaking out of the tire means the air has a mind of its own.

Each particle of air, in my humble opinion, has a mind of its own, but the particles do not know what the other particles in doing, cannot communicate with another and therefore cannot act in concert.

The biggest proof of this in history was when Einstein used Brownian motion to demonstrate that the atom actually existed. Before then many scientist, like the theist, denied that pure randomness was "information". Brownian motion demonstrated that not only was randomness real information, it was purely mechanistic information.

You'll have to provide quotes.

Either: Will exists
Or: will does not exist

So is purely randomized air leaking out of a tire with a hole in it a "will"? Yet it selects a non-random result.
[/quote]
One particle has a will of its own, but all the particles combined are not the result of one will.

Either: Power exists
Or: power does not exist

So is the air leaking out of a tire not a source of power? It powers all sorts of power equipment is run off of air.
[/quote]
Each particle has power over its own body, it can choose where to go, but no particle has power over the other particles.

Either: Knowledge exists
Or: knowledge does not exist

When we use genetic algorithms to invent stuff that no human invented, which instead uses a "random" number generator to come up with solution, does that "random number generator" contain knowledge? In fact, we use "random number generators" to decide what the best satellite orbits are for many of our communication satellites. Some of the orbits invented by "random" number generators are downright weird, no human would have invented that way, yet they work better and more efficiently with fewer satellites than the ones we came up with. So the theist maxim that "it can't happen by accident" is total bullshit. Otherwise your cell phone wouldn't work.
[/quote]
I'm very skeptical of this. You'll have to provide evidence.

Either: all three exist together
Or: all three do not exist together

Here is a bullshit application of the law of the excluded middle. If I have 3 marbles in some of 3 jars, why can't I have 2 together in the same jar but not 3? If individual air molecules don't have a temperature, how come you get a temperature when you put a bunch of them together?
[/quote]
In order for mind to exist, you need all three properties, will, knowledge and power. If one of those properties do not exist, there is no mind.

Either: ALL causes are due to an obedience to physical laws
Or: ALL causes are not due to an obedience to physical laws, but some are due to mind

Yet if the air leaking out of a tire is a non-random consequence of pure randomness and "obedience to physical laws", how is "mind" not simply an "obedience to physical laws"?
[/quote]
When you write a sentence, let's say, we hold these truths to be ... There is not physical law that forces you what word to write next. The mind can choose any word it wants next, there is no law that forces it to make a choice. When you drop a rock, it cannot choose its speed, its speed is determined by the law of gravity.

Genetic algorithms, which use "random number generators" to make choices, can easily sift through a googolplex of data for valid information.

Evidence please

Your thesis fails experimentally and logically. I would explain about neural nets, neuroscience, etc., but given that even something so basic as randomness and "accidents" are so demonstrably misconstrued, I suspect it would be a waste of time.

Since this is a subjective statement I won't comment.

[FBM]

I have outlined my points in another thread here.
Now I will discuss the main points in it succinctly one by one.

To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material. That is to say there is no immaterial force which can control the movement of material.

Erm...energy?

I don't have time to answer all your points, but..

How many times have we read that dodge?

Spinz, have you ever paused to reflect on why you desire this obvious fiction to be true, despite the absolute lack of evidence that it is so? What's the emotional drive that presses you to so firmly assert knowledge of a universal power that loves YOU individually (but conditionally) and guarantees you eternal bliss (as long as you BELIEVE and OBEY), despite an absolute lack of any credible evidence that such is acutally the case? Have you ever paused to self-examine?

Many atheists take a shot in the gut, so to speak, when they evaluate the evidence and decide to jettison the absurdly improbable. Yes, it would feel great to believe in eternal bliss, but when the evidence doesn't support it, those with balls just 'fess up: the evidence ain't there, and until it is, claiming otherwise is just group

[Feck]

Each particle of air, in my humble opinion, has a mind of its own

Next time you go unicorn hunting can I come too ?

[my_wan]

To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material. ...

I'll get to "randomness" but first I must clear up this notion of "only material". Temperature is the simplest and most basic example, but this is essentially ubiquitous in physics. The air in the room has a temperature, yet no one air molecule by itself has a temperature.

I don't have time to answer all your points, but heat is the measurement of the extent to which particles move. Heat is just a property of matter.

Motion is a property, but not a property of individual parts. It's a foundational principle of relativity. If you only have one object in the universe, what is its motion? There is no such thing as absolute motion. Motion is a product of the coordinate system used, and a coordinate system is a non-physical choice. This is why modern physics generally uses a coordinate independent formulation.

If you and your buddy are in separate spaceships, and you both come to a stop, each of you can still be moving relative to each other. Every single air molecule in the room is simply sitting still, from its own perspective, and it's all the other air molecules that has the motion. Think about that. Motion is physical, not a physical part.

[Hermit]

I got as far as "To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material."

Anybody who cannot see how evolution works to transcend the "only material" without recourse to metaphysical mumbo jumbo, obviously has not developed his/her philosophical competency beyond Plato, or indeed, the bible. Newsflash, spinoza99: We have have advanced in the intervening 2000+ years.

[MrFungus420]

I have outlined my points in another thread here.
Now I will discuss the main points in it succinctly one by one.

To be a true atheist you have to believe that there is only material.

Wrong. To be an atheist requires not believing in a god. Nothing more, nothing less.

Your strawman is constructed. Try again when you can be honest.

[my_wan]

Actually this post is rather good, other than the subjective use of the word bullshit. It's very difficult to debate with someone who has such strong disrespect for the other's ideas that he calls them bullshit. If you want to have an intelligent debate with me, then I would encourage you not subjectively label my ideas bullshit. If we are going to learn from each other, then we must respect each other. So since this post does have a lot of thought in it I will respond.

My post admitted that the "ideas" you presented were reasonable assumptions if we lacked the empirical data to know better. Even noted that at one time, before we had the evidence, scientist took such notions seriously, as they should without the evidence. Yet the fact is we do have the empirical data (direct experimental verification) to distinguish between your model of randomness and a mechanistic model. Thus I have direct experimental proof of "bullshit", hence it's not at all a "subjective" use of the word.

In order for information to be distinguished from mere randomness it must be highly improbable. The more improbable a sequence is the more probable it is information. This is the only way to distinguish info from randomness, make it improbable.

The details of any sequence of events is equally unlikely. But on the large scale, certain patterns have more ways to be produced that others. So out of pure randomness certain patterns must happen.

Take pool balls on a pool table. If it's a single ball you roll onto the table, then the odds that all the balls (one) will stop on one side of the table or the other is essentially 100%. If it's two balls the odds is 50%. Yet with lots of balls they will always be distributed roughly 50% on each side of the table, exactly because the balls follow purely mechanical rules. So when we talk about odds, or randomness, we are talking about mechanical rules without specifying the exact path each and every ball took. Yet that does not means those balls didn't follow mechanical rules.

So when you try to claim something is unlikely, the fact that at the macro-level we only consider purely random micro-states, does not mean that non-random information at the macro-level was improbable. And the fact that it produces non-random information at the macro-level mean that it wasn't the result of purely random mechanistic macro-states.

Each particle of air, in my humble opinion, has a mind of its own, but the particles do not know what the other particles in doing, cannot communicate with another and therefore cannot act in concert.

If particles of air have a mind of their own, why does thermodynamics always, *always*, do exactly what you expect from mechanistic rules similar the pool balls? I guess you blame losing that game of pool on balls that have a mind of their own, but I'm still collecting that bet.

You'll have to provide quotes.

http://www.einsteinyear.org/facts/brownian_motion/
http://www.vias.org/physics/bk4_02_04_04.html

Anything else you need? Can you formulate, even in principle, how to test the difference between mechanistic randomness and your notion? Before Einstein did this with Brownian motion, science generally thought it was impossible to experimentally distinguish between two views of randomness. The theist's notion of randomness and "accidents" still pretends that at the very least their model is empirically equivalent, like science thought before Einstein's use of Brownian motion. Only it's not.

One particle has a will of its own, but all the particles combined are not the result of one will.

If each particle has a mind of its own, care for a game of pool?

Each particle has power over its own body, it can choose where to go, but no particle has power over the other particles.

Do pool balls "choose" where to go? The "Ideal Gas Law" is a direct consequence of the mechanistic rules of a game of pool, and thermodynamics can be derived directly from that. That's why Einstein won the Nobel Prize, and not for Relativity. Because even though thermodynamics can be derived from statistical mechanics, statistical mechanics cannot be derived from thermodynamics.

I'm very skeptical of this. You'll have to provide evidence.

http://www.space.com/news/darwin_satellites_011016.html
http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ajaps ... 237&org=12
I also once wrote a genetic algorithm mimicking Dawkins WEASEL program using AutoIt, except that you could use any characters, upper and lower can, and any sentence you wanted. Would source code and watching any sentence you choose evolving from a random string, using the "Random()" function of the program to mutate, help? There are lots and lots of examples of this program freely available.

In order for mind to exist, you need all three properties, will, knowledge and power. If one of those properties do not exist, there is no mind.

What about AI that formulates laws of physics without our help, invents antenna designs and other things that no human engineer invented, etc.? This is an interesting area I like researching, but I'm dubious that it's anything more than a waste of time to explain till you understand the basics of thermodynamics.

Do you know where the power for life on Earth is derived from? This is a dead simple easy one. How would you define "will" and "knowledge". You can create a belief system supposing they are fundamental things, but they are no more fundamental than temperature.

When you write a sentence, let's say, we hold these truths to be ... There is not physical law that forces you what word to write next. The mind can choose any word it wants next, there is no law that forces it to make a choice. When you drop a rock, it cannot choose its speed, its speed is determined by the law of gravity.

Is there a fundamental law that says a random number generator in a genetic algorithm can design working antennas, satellite orbits, arbitrary sentences like Shakespeare, etc.? As a matter of fact their is, just like the pressure in a tire is information, which can then be used to perform work, even though all the air molecules inside and outside the tire merely bounce around randomly, with the same rules pool balls bounce around a table.

Evidence please

See the genitc algorithms referenced above.

Since this is a subjective statement I won't comment.

[/quote][/quote]
Oh, but see my starting comments. These are by no means "subjective" statements.

Yet, why is it you want to be taken seriously by saying "I believe", which is by definition "subjective", but actual evidenced statements you deem "subjective" are not worth commenting on? Is "belief" somehow special, so that it gets preferential treatment that is not given to actual evidence? Some of us spend our careers trying to find ways to show the evidence is somehow wrong, and you want to trump that with "I believe"? When is the last time you actually tried to figure out a way to prove your "belief" wrong, the way science tries to prove the evidence is misinterpreted or wrong? Obviously not much, given the type of evidence you asked me for above. Genetic algorithms are their capacity to evolve really outrageous enginearing solutions no human ever thought of is a trivial aspect of the whole field, from biological evolution to engineering. By all rights, if you can simply decide evidence you deem merely "subjective" is not worth commenting on, what gives you "belief" claims any more right to be commented on?

[spinoza99]

Wan, I'm going to simply take a mental note of many of your criticisms. Remember, I make no attempt to persuade other people but only use debate forums so as to hone my own understanding. I will however debate Weasel with you, since it is an interesting debate. This topic deserves a thread of its own so I'm starting a new thread.