Irreducible complexity and Evolution

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: cooperton

You're "8 years rigorous study" can not have been that rigorous now can it? Mind you, as I said, neither Chemistry nor neuroscience are sciences associated with evolution.

The wiring in the brain is so tightly calibrated. it is an electrical circuit that would put the work of the best electrician to shame. The science of neural plasticity demonstrates the ability for these circuits to rewire throughout an organisms lifespan to allow it to further adapt to various environmental cues. No sort of amalgamation of mutations could ever manage to create such complex mechanisms.

With over 100 billion neurons and approximately 1 quadrillion synapses, the brain is the most complex computer known to humans. This is no accident. This is a purposefully designed computing machine.

a reply to: cooperton

No sort of amalgamation of mutations could ever manage to create such complex mechanisms.

Why not?

This is a purposefully designed computing machine.

So basically your argument is complexity automatically means design. But why couldn't the brain start out more simple and increase complexity over hundreds of millions of years to what it is today? Why are you so against the idea of incremental change leading to complexity?

a reply to: Barcs

Why are you so against the idea of incremental change leading to complexity?

You know why.
Right?

a reply to: cyberjedi

Peter Russell on the Reality of Consciousness



In my view, a solid basis for understanding the driving force behind biological evolution.

Not discussing this! just leaving it to ponder on.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Barcs

Why are you so against the idea of incremental change leading to complexity?

You know why.
Right?

Im guessing his brain didnt evolve???

a reply to: cooperton

Here is someting you houlld read.it discusses genes and what we have learned about the brain.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Double post

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: cyberjedi

This makes a lot more sense to me than anything you are talking about. There's a natural progression to complexity over millions and millions of years:

"Those are some of the things molecules do given 4 billion years of evolution."

Fish have 2 eyes, a mouth, 2 nostril holes, a backbone, and a poop hole might be a clue as to where we came from!

Or, those features, at whatever level of size, formation and development, might just be a basic requirement/template for life to exist and survive.

a reply to: cooperton

Prove it. Quite simply prove what you said. Prove that it is not chance.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Barcs

Why are you so against the idea of incremental change leading to complexity?

You know why.
Right?

I have no idea.

No I know exactly why, I'm just hoping he will come to that realization himself.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Barcs

Why are you so against the idea of incremental change leading to complexity?

You know why.
Right?

I have no idea.

No I know exactly why, I'm just hoping he will come to that realization himself.

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: cooperton

Prove it. Quite simply prove what you said. Prove that it is not chance.

We can all agree that a car motor does not occur by random chance correct? It is an intelligent design that serves a purpose and behaves in a predictable, logical manner.

Notice the mitochondrion. It acts very similar to a car motor. Just like in a car motor, combustion reactions in living cells metabolize macronutrients to create energy for the organism. The energy from this reaction is meticulously transferred by coenzymes into the inner chamber of the mitochondrion to create an electrochemical gradient. This electrochemical gradient, which is much like a hydrogen fuel cell, then powers a turbine called ATP Synthase which creates ATP to be used as energy for the body. This entire process is carefully regulated by various biochemical and electrical cues to allow ample energy to the cell without causing excessive oxidative stress. Problems with these regulators can lead to cell death, cancer, etc, but for the most part mitochondria do an amazing job at maintaining a healthy metabolic equilibrium.

And unlike car engines, mitochondria are able to effortlessly reproduce. Henry Ford has nothing on these wonderful creations.

a reply to: cooperton

Except that would be a non sequitur argument.

Proof requires evidence.
Evidence can be written down.

And Go

a reply to: cooperton

Ok lets deconstruct this.

(a) Who designed the designer in your theory?
(b) Evolution, life, etc are not "predictable". Indeed there is evidence in our genomes of that. SNP alterations to codoms tha code for hemoglobin can and DO have catastrophic issues. Yes indeed a single nucleotide difference, and we have a problem, of the life sucks sort.
(c) Mitocondria are not quite the perfect little things you imagine. There area number of conditions out there, which mkae life well intolerable to impossible for those who hold them.

So unlike your theoretical car, the designer of life, if it were "intelligent" is a shoddy workman.

So your non sequitur begins with assuming that life is too complex to have evolved. I know you are not being so disingenuous as to include bio-genesis into evolutionary theory neighbour

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: cooperton

(a) Who designed the designer in your theory?

Is it not said in the law that energy cannot be created or destroyed? Since something cannot come from nothing, this Being must have always existed... and anything that exists is the creation of this Being.

So unlike your theoretical car, the designer of life, if it were "intelligent" is a shoddy workman.

Is Ford to blame for drunk driving accidents? If a driver does not drive the car the way it is meant to be driven, there will be catastrophic consequences. Such is the nature of sin and death in regards to the human body.

a reply to: cooperton

"The Law". Do you know if the system is an open or closed one?

Again, who created the creator. Otherwise your argument is with out merit.


As for Drunk driving accidents? You really do not understand what I am getting at? You just implied sin is the cause of disease right? That would still be shoddy workmanship on a designers part. OR you know logically, there are mistakes in the non guided evolutionary process.

Keep your Abrahamic dogma away, least My Karma runs it over

a reply to: kennyb72

He was going alright there for a while, until he suddenly alighted that well used woo express bound for airy fairyville, in a big way lol.

So he is exasperated at those who claim consciousness is an illusion which, depending on definition, overwhelmingly appears to be true. Certainly the consciousness that most people believe they have is an illusion (ie. something that is not what it appears to be). Yet he has no problem with the idea that nothing exists apart from consciousness ie. he is doubting that there is any physical reality, only consciousness exists?

The way he applies Occam's razor, seems it could do with a little sharpening.

No problem with the idea that we don't perceive reality as it really is, but regardless, something is there. Wonder what he thinks the brain is made of then? In his view, the brain would be an epiphenomenon of consciousness, therefore God? This view has enormous problems that go beyond the so called "hard problem" of consciousness.


Michael Graziano explains it best IMO, when he talks about a patient who while seemingly normal in every other way, was certain that he had a squirrel living in his head. It's not really possible to find the squirrel, it's only possible to find out why he claims this. The "search for consciousness" is often no different to the search for the squirrel, or of trying to understand the squirrel based on assumption that it exists. The "hard problem" of consciousness in many ways could also be termed "the problem of the squirrel".

The most fundamental, testable and repeatable observation is that consciousness is a product of brain function. Consciousness is not a "thing". It is an "effect" (of a functioning brain). Anything that affects brain funcion has a corresponding effect on consciousness.

One problem for those who wish to see it as something more than this, as something that has an independent existence, is that we understand enough about matter to discount the notion. We certainly don't know it all, but if there were another fundamental force, it would have been detected long ago. If it's too weakly interacting for us to detect and measure, it is also too weak to have the effects on our nervous system that it is claimed to. So such claims seem baseless.

The way that technology and AI is progressing, it's very likely that we will have human level AGI in the not too distant future (conscious machines), once we get the computing power (consciousness will be more a software based problem than a hardware one IMO). Though machines are so much faster and more efficient than us, it will quickly surpass us. It will be a "blink and you'll miss it" type of thing. Hopefully it will be without all of the evolutionary baggage that us tailless monkeys have. Pity help us otherwise.

originally posted by: cyberjedi
Hi ATS,

Hi Cyberjedi.

So on one side there is irreducible complexity on a cellular level, and arguably on a macro level (the woodpecker),

Anything can be argued, I doubt "irreducible complexity" can be successfully argued though. It is an entirely speculative claim, devoid of evidence and based on the logic of those making it and nothing more.

Surely lots of micro changes, over a vast amount of time, can result in macro changes to a (group of) organisms? This is supported by the evidence available.

For "irreducible complexity" to hold true, such organisms would have suddenly appeared in their present form. Where is the evidence for this, and what mechanism are you proposing for it? Magic? Has any species ever been observed spontaneously generating into existence?

That there could be something guiding the process of evolution seems like a far more refined and plausible argument, although still devoid of evidence. The "irreducible complexity" stuff seems more the claim of religious fundamentalists.

and regarding evolution, species seem to only evolve when there are new genes artificially introduced into the genepool of that species.

What do you base this claim on?

originally posted by: dragonridr

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

I don't know any evolutionists.
Can you provide contact information? A University with a Department of Evolution maybe?

Nice try. Not convincing, but a nice try.

We all know full well it doesn't come as a degree. It's a mindset, and one you share.

A mindset? Do you mean someone who evaluated the evidence and formed a conclusion? Do you know most people see proof of evolution every day. Look at the varieties of dogs we have. Selection of specimens to breed based on particular traits is, in effect, changing the environment for the population. Those individuals lacking the desirable characteristics are not allowed to breed. Therefore, the following generations more commonly have the desired traits. So we know the process works we even domesticated livestock. So arguing it doesnt occur is stupid. However evolution doesnt explain the origin of life, and was never meant to for that matter

Gee, you mean exactly the same thing that people have done who share a different opinion? Yes, it's a mindset. Evolution is nowhere close to being proven. It's a theory, and there are a lot of problems with the theory. For someone to claim that there are no "evolutionists", as was done, because there is no degree issued for that, is disingenuous at best.

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes


Gee, you mean exactly the same thing that people have done who share a different opinion? Yes, it's a mindset. Evolution is nowhere close to being proven. It's a theory, and there are a lot of problems with the theory. For someone to claim that there are no "evolutionists", as was done, because there is no degree issued for that, is disingenuous at best.

The colloquial term "proven" is subjective and reliant on individual preference. Nothing is ever "proven" scientifically in the way most people would think of that term (something final, incontrovertible). That's usually the area inhabited by religions. Science is subject to revision and falsification. "Facts" themselves are never considered an absolute truth.

What do you think would happen if you were to supply scientists with a pre Cambrian rabbit fossil, for instance?

There is often consensus regarding the best explanations that are consistent with the evidence, that haven't been falsified (despite having the possibility). This would better describe a "theory" in the scientific sense. It is anything but a "guess" or "opinion" the way these things are used colloquially. You seem to be misapplying certain terms in a way that is misleading.