The Sounds of Science

[aaron]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I cannot disagree with your are saying. However, my point was directed towards cpnscarlet's rant. Darwin's theories are certainly not crap and there is quite a bit of evidence for them.

[aaron]

Re: The Sounds of Science

Cow: I want my 2 hours back!

--> Biology meets Tony Robbins. I kept watching and watching and watching waiting for the insight related to God/Darwin.
If you have read Tony and have read a biology book, do NOT watch this video (Lipton ).

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: The Sounds of Science

Cow: I want my 2 hours back!

Yes, Lipton does confuse science with analogy. I will confess to a higher tolerance for such confusions than most. Half my mind thinks in metaphors and the other half logically, so I have much practice slipping between the two.

For what you might find to be a more balanced review of Lipton (of his latest book, not this video, but that distinction is minor) see the 3 of 5 star review on Amazon Disappointing, but still worthwhile

I did flinch at Lipton's explanation of quantum mechanics "action at a distance", as well as his oversimplification of energy versus matter.

My biology knowledge is much more limited than my physics knowledge. What did he misrepresent in the area of biology? I was assuming that he had that part closer to right, given it was his technical specialty.

A major part of what I liked about Lipton was where he ended up. I thought he got the nature of body, mind, cells and our connection with the world about us about right, in a"big picture" sort of way. I was willing to forgive him his scientific glosses and oversimplifications as a way to coherently present and sell his view in the confines of a single lecture.

P.S. -- I also liked Lipton's explanation of proteins, cells and receptors. I liked it because it made sense to me, not because I have any great clue as to whether he was accurate or not.

[jiimbergin]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I've have had a belly full over my 26 years as an aerospace engineer and spacecraft designer with arrogant bastards who claim to "know about science" and spout their trash about Darwinism and parade their anti-Christian/Biblical bigotry like it's a badge of honor.

"Get a hypothesis and test it..." the song says. Well NO ONE HAS EVER proved the change of a species into another by random mutation...ever. And that's the heart of short-sighted Darwin mechanistics. Sure, there's such a thing as Natural Selection, but that is not the same thing as the Theory of Evolution. They are two distinct concepts. Natural selection is the expression of EXISTING genes through pressures on a population. That's why there's all those different finches. They all have the genes, but the environmental conditions favor the expression of a certain set through many generations (or even a few in some cases).

Random mutation 99.9999% of the time gets you one thing...DEAD! There are NO recorded random mutatuions in a species that have made it more successful. And damn few that have kept the organism viable. And when we find them, we make lots of $$$ of them because they are so rare - Munchkin Cats as an example. Can you imagine a Munchkin Cat in the wild trying to run from a predator - viable maybe, survivable no.

And for the final nail in the old Darwin's coffin - Where are the fossils of all the transitional forms? If the Theory of Evolution is true, we should be finding smooth strings of transitional form fossils...we don't. we should be finding hunks of random DNA in every scoop of dirt...we don't. And don't give me that "punctuated evolution" crap. It doesn't wash on a genetic level. To get a correct new protein from an existing DNA strand, you would need many coordinated proper mutations of the DNA sequence at once. The odds are truly astronomical. Oh yeah - for DNA to form, a chemically reducing environment is needed...Earth never had one (iron always turns to rust, even in postulated "primordial earth" atmospheres and oceans).

I'll just say that I've conducted more experiments on various scales than most of you have had hot meals. Only a fool believes a flipped coin can come up heads a thousand times in a row. Only a fool thinks a tornado through a junk yard yields a 747. Only a fool can look at cellular microbiology and call it "chance". And only a fool says in his heart, "There is no God."

DNA is the most sofisticated software...therefore, there is a programmer. Or maybe you think MS WORD is more complicated than DNA.

Thanks for the excellent summary of the folly of the Theory of Evolution!

[Techdread]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I've have had a belly full over my 26 years as an aerospace engineer and spacecraft designer with arrogant bastards who claim to "know about science" and spout their trash about Darwinism and parade their anti-Christian/Biblical bigotry like it's a badge of honor.

I think someone needs to widen their reading material, why not start on the good book The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

[cpnscarlet]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I cannot disagree with your are saying. However, my point was directed towards cpnscarlet's rant. Darwin's theories are certainly not crap and there is quite a bit of evidence for them.

Yes, it was a rant, but I have enough academic credentials to make it. Evidence? What evidence? Show me a living organism created by random events...no such evidence. Sure, you can create amino acids and proteins in a lab all day long, but it takes the intellect of a lab technician to do it. Replies to comments about transitional fossil forms only proves my point.

Follow the logic - The complexity of aerospace systems do not happen by random chance. It takes an intelligence like mine to design them and the skill of technicians to realize them. The human body is much more complex than any aerospace system. Therefore, some intelligence designed it.

Now there's no need to rehash the last two centuries of debate. Simply answer for yourself - Do you believe that there is a Creator or not? If you believe there is no Creator, then deal with this internal inconsistency in your ontology: If there is no creator, than all of reality is ulitmately without purpose and absurd. Therefore, you and all your beliefs are without purpose and absurd. You go down that path....and I'll go down mine.

[cpnscarlet]

Re: The Sounds of Science

The process of fossilization is one of sampling on a very coarse scale. There may be billions of individuals in a species at any one time, and we're lucky if only one of them is fossilized and then later discovered.

That's only YOUR theory - prove it. And if it is true, you admit basing a theory on thin and random evidence.

You know, it still boils down to faith no matter what side you take. I have put may faith in a Creator, you put your faith in science and random events. Both of us point fingers and say "Prove it!" I cannot prove "God" and you cannot prove "Random". But I hold this thruth to be self-evident: We live in a cause-and-effect universe. Therefore, what was the first cause?

[cpnscarlet]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I think someone needs to widen their reading material, why not start on the good book The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.

And I think someone needs an avatar that will make me want to read the post seriously. Keep smokin', buddy...I was reading Bronowski on the subway at the age of 14. Your obvious prejudice that all "religious" people are uneducated hicks falls on its face more often than you would care to think.

And while you're at it, we don't you try reading some Francis Schaeffer and St. Augustine. Oh, and how about a little New Testament while you're at that doobie.

[Spartacus]

Re: The Sounds of Science

your "explanation" is so powerful, so elegant.

"explains" everything doesn't it?

Let me guess a few of your other explanations:
"how does lightning happen?" "the god of lightning makes it happen"

"how is glass clear?" "the god of clear glass makes it so"

"How does a car run?" "the god of cars makes it so"

I used to think it had to do with gas & spark plugs & "stuff" , but I was obviously wrong.



WOW. Powerful explanatory concept - I'm immensely impressed

Just curious, what do you think you explained, specifically, and exactly how does your explanation qualify as explaining it? Is this an explanation you would accept from a car repair guy?

[cpnscarlet]

Re: The Sounds of Science

Yes, those mechanist Darwinist bigots you describe are misguided.

But notice that their arrogance sticks in your craw and fills your belly. If you feel anger towards their arrogance, then while it is their arrogance, still it is your anger, regardless of how well you can justify it. (Indeed, I find that the adamantly and persistently I find myself justifying something, the more wrong and usually more harmful it really is <grin>.)

As Lipton points out in the videos Rajiv linked, defensive anger is stressful, limiting to one's own well being. It is best to limit one's defensive anger to real threats. I doubt those arrogant bastards are really threatening you for your beliefs. I doubt you risk prison or beatings for what you believe.

When you find anger limiting your well being for no good result (after 26 years!) then reconsider your beliefs about how others should recognize and adapt to what you think. Perhaps those beliefs are both harmful to you and unhelpful to others.

I hate it when somebody sees one of my obvious flaws! "Prophet" is one of my strong suits. "Mercy" is not.

[cjppjc]

Re: The Sounds of Science

To me it seems clear that a creator has drawn of the rules of the game. Now we can argue what those rules are. But there are rules.

Einstein wrote:

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

[mooncliff]

Re: The Sounds of Science

Hmm, perhaps you are looking at this from the perspective of an engineer. Proteins and the DNA that encodes it comes in functional units, not individual bits. The functional units swap, are doubled, etc., often in normal cellular replication.

The best evidence of evolution is not in what is perfect; it is in all the strange junk that is in our DNA. There are more than 100 HIV-like retroviral sequences that long ago integrated themselves into human DNA and are copied along with everything else every time a human egg is fertilized. Mitochondria are endosymbiotic bacteria, yet part of us. Chimpanzee DNA is nearly identical to ours; what is different is the timing of expression of the genes.

Again, like climate change, this takes several thousand hours to understand. If you start from the premise that it is untrue, you will never spend the time necessary to understand how extremely complex systems can form and evolve and persist without any rational designer.

To take a simpler example, it used to seem that an intelligent entity had formed the Sun and set the planets in orbit. Now we understand that gas clouds can collapse and automatically form protoplanetary disks with planets clearly visible. We can see thousands of them in nearby nebulae. It is a spontaneous process. Most planets are unihabitable by beings like us, but it now seems that perhaps 10% of stars have potentially habitable planets. If you had come to this solar system 3 billion years ago, Venus and Mars were also covered by oceans and were somewhat Earthlike, but they evolved differently due to proximity or distance from the Sun and due to absence of magnetic fields, and so whatever life was there is extinct or relatively dormant. This is an example where previously no one could imaging mechanisms to produce such systems, but now we can observe many of them, so being unable to imagine how a process could work does not equate to such a process being impossible.

And the Universe is MUCH stranger. I think the Multiverse is perfectly plausible. In addition, there is the matter of space appearing to be quantized in Planck "voxels" which exist in only a few states. The observable Universe is say 10 to the 80 meters in diameter; if it is in fact 10 to the 120 meters, statistically this pattern (you, me, the Earth) has a high probability of repeating. Meaning we have had this argument many times in the past and will again many times in the future. If there are multiple universes or if the Universe is much larger than that, this pattern and every permutation of it has occurred, is occurring, and will occur over and over again in the future like some kind of Cyclic Time hell in which because there is a finite number of states, the same damn thing just happens over and over again...

Compared to that, evolution is a trifle.

Emotion of course enters into everything we think and do, but something is not true because we like it, nor is it untrue because we don't like it, and the idea of going from oblivion to existence to oblivion again is surely the most unpleasant idea ever... but if this statistically repeats, we get to do it all over again... and again...

[don]

Re: The Sounds of Science

For a serious look at the faith vs science debate, albeit on the side of the latter, an excellent, short one volume treatment is:

Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism from Antiquity to the Present

by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York

I was surprised at how much of today's debate was intensely argued in the age of the great, classic economists, as well as in ancient Greece, etc.

[aaron]

Re: The Sounds of Science

I was looking for something new. He did not say anything that I have not heard/read before. And, it was not related to a discussion of Darwin & God.

But, I will confess I did lose a lot of sleep last night after watching it. I have been treating myself very poorly (too much stress & poor outlook on life) and I should change that. The events of the past 3 years have opened my eyes to the reality of our country & world.

--------

[aaron]

Re: The Sounds of Science

To me it seems clear that a creator has drawn of the rules of the game. Now we can argue what those rules are.

A creator was drawn from the rules?
Or a creator has drawn up the rules of the game?

Your sentence is not clear.

I would say there is some order to the universe. This does not mean somebody designed it. It just may BE. That order may be defined as "God".

Humans may be genetically programmed to submit to a "higher power". However, perhaps this submission can be to anything --> the Secret, the Darwin, the Jesus, the Buddha, the Santa Clause, the Mary Jane, Fate, Money... You certainly can find examples of happy people in all of those faiths.