SANDY AND ME

Here's what happenned. I wrote a blog post almost two years ago called 'Selfish Genes and Replicators." About a week ago someone named Sandy McKean wrote a comment on that blog. I recognized the style of writing and the name. I had seen some of Sandy's comments (I originally thought Sandy was a woman but I am now sure he's a man) on some other blog commentaries. He is a materialist evolutionist and especially demeaning and sarcastic toward anyone who disagrees with the strict neo-Darwinist party line; in other words a member in good stead of the Church of Richard Dawkins and the Holy Replicator. What followed was a long back and forth between the two of us that I reprint here for two reasons. One is that I thought it was pretty interesting and was buried in the commentary of a blog that I had written two years ago. The second is that the order of comments got confused and, as it is written on that blog post, some of his responses do not follow my comments, as my responses don't follow his. Oh, yes, I think some of it is pretty damn funny, too. I begin this post with another comment by a third party, because Sandy's first response is a reaction to this comment as well as to my blog post. I hope you enjoy.

Rudy said...
Matt, I re-read this again tonight and I found it just as incredible as the first time I read it. Your examination of the phrase "MAKES COPIES of ITSELF" is beyond fascinating. Also your comparison of the evolutionists idea of the first occurrence of life with no parents compared with the virgin birth with only one parent is just jaw dropping powerful.

I have never read any writings such as yours that make the case as strongly for the spiritual plane of existence and yet your blog is tucked away in a hidden corner of the internet. If it was up to me, your blog would be required reading in every philosophy class taught in America.

If you ever decide to take all your blogs and publish a book, I will be first in line. I must tell you that I am very nervous I will go to your blogsite one day and find that all your wonderful writings will be gone and I have no way to capture them. One of these days, I am going to have to copy every one of them as I am fearful your ideas will got lost and overlooked in today's march towards scientism and evolution.

You have a powerful gift indeed. I pray that one day your writings will be more available and to your success.

God Bless You Matt




SandyMcKean said...
I note that the previous comment ends with "God Bless". I find it interesting that folks who would explain away concepts such as those found in "The Selfish Gene" START with a religious belief. The same can be said of the scientists at the Discovery Institute and they now popular ID arguments (I don't have the facts, but I'd be willing to bet that NO scientist that works for the Discovery Institute is a non-believer).

More specifically you said that "One of the basic tenets (or, as Dawkins' calls them, 'memes') of evolutionary thinking is that things proceed from the simple to the complex." This is just NOT so. Dawkins says no such thing, and evolution by natural selection says no such thing. Yes, it's true that it is possible for things to evolve that way (as parts of biology here on earth have), but evolution toward ANYTHING, much less complexity is NOT a basic tenant of evolutionary thinking. It is likely to happen I suppose, but ONLY if the replicators involved statistically increased in numbers by being part of a more complex form, than replicators that were part of a more simple form. There is NO direction, or intent, or grand plan, or goal involved (any more than over time waves on a beach sort smaller rocks higher on the beach than larger rocks).

If you believe this tenant of evolution, as you call it, exists then you either didn't read all of "The Selfish Gene" or you read it without "listening".



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

Please read my post ‘The G Word.’ Yes, as soon as anyone mentions the G word everyone is guilty as charged. But what am I guilty of? I also do not know what the Discovery Institute is.

You cannot pretend that the whole thrust of evolutionary thinking is not to find a way to explain the fantastic, coherent complexity of modern life forms by postulating a simple beginning and the build up, random blind mutation by random blind mutation, to the complexity you see today. The problem is that there never was any ‘simple beginning.’ Any beginning of life had to involve metabolism, replication, transcription, translation, digestion, elimination, growth and a way of sensing the environment and responding in an adaptive way to it. NONE of that is in any way simple. Also, the path of going from simplicity to complexity, mutation by mutation. has never been described and never will be, because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence.

You also may be interested to know that I do not have a ‘belief’ in God. I also thought, for a time, that I had evolved beyond the silly superstitions of my ancestors and would now be able to march forward in the clear light of reason and science. But science does not explain the origin of anything, and it does not explain how we experience, initiate or desire anything. Biology is the study of the apparatus that life uses, not the study of life itself. I came to these ideas not because of a belief that was inculcated in me, but because of an EXPERIENCE that I had. That experience made it very clear to me that I am not my body, but I am that which experiences my body. That insight and many other related insights await you also, the moment that you are able to suspend your thought processes and not repeat these tired unexamined mantras that you learned in biology classes and from promoters like Dawkins and simply experience yourself as your self. Then you will find, among other things, that you are not a content but a context; that you are not from a physical world of proteins and nucleic acids, but you are from a spiritual world of will, desire, intelligence, love and experience.

I am sorry if you cannot hear these words because they sound too religious too you.

Good luck!



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

Here are the very first words of Dawkins from his chapter 'The Replicators' in his book 'The Selfish Gene':

"In the beginning was simplicity. It is difficult enough explaining how even a simple universe began. I take it as agreed that it would be even harder to explain the sudden springing up, fully armed, of complex order-life, or a being capable of creating life. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection is satisfying because it shows us a way in which simplicity could change into complexity, how unordered atoms could group themselves into ever more complex patterns until they ended up manufacturing people."

Have you ever noticed that you unmask religious people, real or imagined, with the same enthusiasm that Joe McCarthy unmasked Communists, real or imagined? You seem to be well qualified for an excellent post during the next Inquisition.



SandyMcKean said...

I've tired to make a reponse. It is 550 characters long, but the system rejects it saying that my response must be no longer than 4096.




Matt Chait said...

Sandy,

I haven't heard anyone else make that complaint before, but please try again. Perhaps you could send two shorter ones; or as many as you like.

And in your response please answer the following: In your comment you wrote:
"It is likely to happen I suppose, but ONLY if the replicators involved statistically increased in numbers by being part of a more complex form, than replicators that were part of a more simple form." This explains how natural selection could make the more complex replicators more numerous. But please explain how these more complex replicators got more complex in the first place; and how , through either natural selection or random mutation, they could get still more complex than they already are.

You seem to think that if I don't get it (evolutionary theory) it must be because I am blinded by religious prejudices. You don't entertain the possibility that I do get it; I just think it is stupid.


SandyMcKean said...
Part 1 of 2

This comment will have to be posted in 2 segments due to the limitation of this blog to comments no longer than 4096 characters. Note that this reply was written after first reply to me. It therefore does not address the comments you've made since then (you added 2 additional comments). My 2 part reply here should be read as the 4th post in this series of comments.

--------------------------------------------------------

Matt, you sound like a threatened person; why you should feel threatened I find curious. You ask what you are guilty of. I didn't accuse you of anything, so I have no idea. My statement was that I find it interesting that so many, who find their answers in God instead of in evidence-based disciplines like science, seem to have been committed to their belief in God before they conduct an inquiry into the nature of reality. Note that I never indicated that you believed in God (altho the title of this blog would seem to make that a reasonable assumption). In fact, if you read my words carefully, I think you will find that I was referring to the person who posted the 1st comment in this comment section, not to you. But be all that as it may.....on to the discussion. (I will attempt to take on your issues one at a time.)

I'm not pretending anything. I merely refuted your claim that it is a tenant of evolutionary theory that (to use your words again) "...things proceed from the simple to the complex." This is not a tenant of evolutionary theory. OTOH, evolutionary theory can be used as one highly plausible way to explain the observation that over time there has been, in some life forms, a movement through time from the more simple to the more complex. The mistake you make is to imply that evolutionary theory holds movement from simple to complex as a goal of evolutionary theory. There is no preferred direction in evolutionary theory; however, if one notices evidence that there is a condition of movement from simple to complex (as you and I both seem to agree has occurred), then one can use evolutionary theory to explain how that might have occurred. Huge difference. As you acknowledge, complex life forms are a bit of a side show when one considers the entire biosphere (e.g., bacteria etc). Steven J Gould is probably the most famous person to say that.

July 17, 2009 9:31 AM
Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

“Matt, you sound like a threatened person; why you should feel threatened I find curious.”

If I sound that way it’s probably because I feel that our whole society is threatened by this myopic, soul destroying materialist philosophy that you cling to.

I am not an academic but I have been around enough to know the code. “I find curious” and “I find it interesting” which you used in this comment and in the earlier one, are thinly veiled hostile attempts to undermine my position. In it I hear echoes of the House Unamerican Activities Committee saying, “Mr. Mckean, you say you are not a Communist, but I find it interesting that you were seen at a meeting of the Socialist Workers Party on the night of June 16th; or a Nazi interrogator saying, “You say you have no Jewish blood, but I find curious that a letter was found in your possession signed with the word “Shalom!” But that must be my paranoia. I am sure that butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth.

“My statement was that I find it interesting that so many, who find their answers in God instead of in evidence-based disciplines like science, seem to have been committed to their belief in God before they conduct an inquiry into the nature of reality”

I have no problem with evidence based science. So please show me the evidence for pre-biotic evolution. Show me the evidence for mutations increasing the complexity of anything. Show me the evidence for accidental mutations changing the basic body plan of any living creature; and show me how that could happen beneficial mutation by beneficial mutation (If it was a deleterious mutation at any point that life form would be at a disadvantage and would disappear through natural selection). Show me the evidence for any replicator, simple or complex, that ever existed, and tell me when this evolution from replicator to single celled creature took place. (Certainly not on this planet. Bacteria appeared here en masse almost four billion years ago at the same time temperatures at the surface dropped below the boiling point of water.) If you are saying that there is evidence that there are such things as mutations and that occasionally those mutations allow an organism to produce enzymes that will protect it from invasions, fine. But to say that whole body structures are changed by random, blind mutations is an absolute fantasy. Not because of, but in spite of, geological, historical, astronomical and logical evidence to the contrary, Darwinian evolutionists keep concocting these tortured scenarios of how life, will and intelligence emerged, by themselves, from inanimate matter. Why? Because they are as committed to their atheism as the most rabid fundamentalist is committed to his limited notion of God. Please read my post EVOLUTION.

“This is not a tenant of evolutionary theory.”

I never said it was a tenant. In fact I’ve never know evolutionary theory to be anyone’s landlord. I said a tenet of evolutionary theory.

Cheers!


SandyMcKean said...
Part 2 of 2

(Note part 1 and 2 were originally writeen as all one post several days ago)

To address your concerns about a "beginning". Evolution does not attempt to answer that question. Maybe someday we will have an answer to that, but not now, not yet. There is nothing usual in science for this state of affairs to exist. For example, there was a time not so long ago that science had no idea how the sun could produce so much energy and still be shining. Science itself had proven that if the sun's energy were being produced by chemical energy or gravitational energy (the only 2 sources known at the time), the sun would have burned itself out long ago. Eventually, science discovered a heretofore unknown source of energy, nuclear energy, that explained what was previously unknown. I doubt you would consider it a logical criticism of science to say in 1830 that because chemistry could not explain how the sun was still burning that lack somehow proved that chemistry must be a false doctrine. Yes, you are right, we don't (yet) know how the first replicators got started, but we know a lot else (incidentally, Dawkins would be the first to say that we have no idea what the first replicators were -- and BTW, whatever they were, the entire process did not start with DNA because, as you point out, too many other support structures are required for DNA to reproduce -- those support structures must have come after the first replicators started replicating).

You say "because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence". How do you know this? Do you have some sort of proof of this, or does it just "seem that way" to you?

You make "an EXPERIENCE that I had" quite important to your world view. It might interest you to know that I too once (about 30 years ago) had what I suspect was a very similar experience to whatever yours was. For me, it was that my "I" disappeared (or rather my "I" seemed like an illusion), and I existed as what I can only describe as "The One". I was The One, and The One was me, and ALL was only The One: existing on a conscious plane of some undefinable sort that was timeless (incidentally no drugs were involved). My experience was profound as I'm sure yours was, but unlike you, I find that experience to be completely compatible with the concepts found in "The Selfish Gene".

Finally, I want you to know that I do not consider evolutionary theory, and other elements of my world view (most of which I've studied and contemplated with much effort for a very long time), to be "tired unexamined mantras". And even if they were mantras, which I don't think they are, but even if they were mantras, I am dumbfounded that you hold yourself up somehow to know, over the internet, that I have not examined them.


Matt Chait said...
This reply will also be in two parts because of the 4,096 character rule.
Part I

Sandy,

“To address your concerns about a "beginning". Evolution does not attempt to answer that question.”

I don’t know what version of The Selfish Gene you read but in mine the chapter called ‘The Replicators’ which was the bases for this blog post that you are commenting on, begins with the words, “In the beginning there was simplicity.” Dawkins then continues on to explain how life began. He admits that this may not have been precisely the way it began, but whatever way it was, he is absolutely sure that it was pretty similar to his scenario. Isn’t that the whole point? To concoct a scenario that purports to explain how life could begin from inanimate materials, to organic materials to ‘simple’ living beings and then to ‘complex life, by itself, without the intercession of any intelligence or intelligent being? That may not be the intention of the theoretical replicators, themselves, but it is certainly the intention of the evolutionists that are concocting these theories.

“ I doubt you would consider it a logical criticism of science to say in 1830 that because chemistry could not explain how the sun was still burning that lack somehow proved that chemistry must be a false doctrine.”

For almost one hundred years prior to 1778, according to phlogiston chemistry, which was the accepted scientific way of viewing these things at the time, the sun was burning because it was releasing ‘phlogiston,’ the supposed matter and principle of fire. Antoine Lavoisier proved that fire didn’t release anything, that it was actually taking oxygen from the atmosphere. So do I believe in chemistry? Sure. Do I believe in phlogiston chemistry? Of course not. Do I believe in biology? Sure. Do I believe in evolutionary biology and its fanciful assumptions about the origin of life and the origin of species (as opposed to variations within species)? Of course not.


Matt Chait said...
Okay, this is part II:

“Eventually, science discovered a heretofore unknown source of energy, nuclear energy, that explained what was previously unknown.”

Yes, there is an energy in biology that has not yet been discovered; at least not by evolutionary biologists. Imagine that you were a scientist coming from another planet. In observing all the material that you found on this planet, you were able to divide these objects into three categories. The first was inanimate objects. The second was living bodies. And the third were artifacts made by humans and other animals (beavers’ dams, birds’ nests, bees’ hives, etc.) With the first category, inanimate objects, you discovered that they functioned exactly as you would expect objects to function knowing what you knew about the fundamental laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. But in the second and third category of objects you discovered that while they functioned within the four laws of physics, they were not formed simply by those four laws. In each case there was another force, another energy, that overcame those four forces. In the case of artifacts, that extra energy is desire. No artifact was ever built without some one or some animal ‘wanting’ it to be built. Beings do two things that inanimate objects do not. They experience things and they desire things. That desire created the energy which that being marshaled to overcome the four forces of physics and create the artifact that was standing before you. The creation of living bodies, like the creation of artifacts, depends on an energy to overcome the four forces of physics. This energy is also a desire, but it is usually called will. We can call this energy God’s will, or if you find that word repellent, we can say the universal will or life force or the cosmic consciousness’ will, or the will of Allah, or Jehovah or the Tao or whatever you like.

The point is that consciousness, will and intelligence are not accidental offshoots of a material evolution. Life and the entire material world are the result of consciousness, will and intention. The materialist evolutionists have it exactly backwards.

“I was The One, and The One was me, and ALL was only The One: existing on a conscious plane of some undefinable sort that was timeless (incidentally no drugs were involved). My experience was profound as I'm sure yours was, but unlike you, I find that experience to be completely compatible with the concepts found in "The Selfish Gene".”

Thank you for sharing that experience with me. The only way, though, that that can be compatible with Dawkins’ concepts is if you accept the modern schizophrenia of the material world vs. the spiritual world. There is spirit and oneness and then there is this other material world of separation. But the point is that the world of separation comes out of the world of oneness; and the instrument for that separation is will. Before there were life forms with their specific and limited intelligence, consciousness and desires, there was life formless with its unlimited intelligence, consciousness and will. This Oneness, beyond time and space, this unlimited consciousness, will and intelligence, which we both have caught a glimpse of, is what spiritualists (not necessarily fundamentalists, but truly evolved spiritual people) call God.

Peace!


SandyMcKean said...
You neglected to answer my previous question I will reproduce here:

You say "because blind accidents with natural selection is not a process that could ever accomplish that level of complexity and coherence". How do you know this? Do you have some sort of proof of this, or does it just "seem that way" to you?

One other point. You say: "Dawkins then continues on to explain how life began." He most certainly does not. Every reputable scientist admits that no one has any idea how the first replicator formed in an early earth environment that contained only atoms and molecules -- that might form into somewhat more complex arrangements via pure chance (e.g., say the combination of 1 carbon atom plus 4 hydrogen atoms to form the simple molecule methane) -- but have absolutely no ability to replicate exact (or even inexact) copies of themselves. How that first replicator formed remains an unknown in science, and no scientist worth his/her salt would claim otherwise.....and specifically Dawkins does not. Indeed how the first replicator formed may never be known. Dawkins at best describes some possible developments and chemical reactions that may have been involved, but he is clear that these possibilities are pure speculation on his part.


Matt Chait said...
I am happy to address both your points, but I do have to say that while I will answer all your objections I asked you for evidence of six different neo-Darwinist claims and no evidence is forthcoming from your end.

Your first question about blind accidents and natural selection being incapable of creating life at the complexity and coherence that we observe today, is a huge question that I cannot answer adequately in this format. I will answer it, hopefully to your complete satisfaction, in a post that will be called either MUTATIONS or BEHE WATCH. I promise you that within the next month. Please read it and let me know what you think.

Regarding your second point, I said that Dawkins claims to tell us how life began. Then you say, “How that first replicator formed may never be known.” Excuse me! What replicator? Do you see the materialist leap and assumption you make? I am talking about the origin of life and you are talking about the origin of the first replicator. Who said there was a replicator? What is a replicator anyway? Has anyone ever seen one? And please don’t say DNA. DNA replicates, but only in conjunction with a whole cell’s replication. It merely responds automatically to electrical and chemical signals received from the cell. It does not replicate by itself. It does not have a self. I don’t think you appreciate what a colossal, and I might add, absurd, assumption it is to assume that in a universe that Dawkins and I assume you, postulate had no consciousness, no purpose and no intelligence, where all that existed were atoms and molecules randomly colliding with each other; where every event was completely a reaction to a previous event, predictable by determined laws of physics and chemistry, that suddenly a molecule will begin to replicate BY ITSELF! And not only will it replicate its material, but it will replicate in its progeny the same determination to replicate that continues to this day. Sandy, we don’t metabolize by ourselves. We don’t grow by ourselves. Genes don’t replicate by themselves. It is all done for us. How in the world can you assume that the first initiated action in the entire universe is that a molecule replicates itself? Does a molecule have a self? Of course not. Replication is an act that is done by overcoming the four forces of physics. It is an act that uses energy. If the energy to accomplish replication cannot be explained by gravity, electro-magnetism, the strong force or the weak force, it can only be explained by will. Some life forms may have sex, but no life form replicates. They are replicated. Just like we may bring food into our mouths but from there on it is our good fortune to be blessed with the equipment that digests it; so all life forms are blessed by the equipment that allows us to replicate.

And where could that long, long evolution that Dawkins’ details where organic material in tidepools, or wherever, just happened to accumulate into a replicator; and where replicators just happened to accumulate into a cell; where and when could that have taken place? The oldest life forms that we know of are hypothermophilic bacteria, that lived alongside deep sea thermal vents perhaps four billion years ago. These bacteria can exist in temperatures well above the boiling point of water because of the extra bonding of their protein molecules. How do you suggest such a bacteria could ‘accumulate’ in an environment where each of its individual molecular parts would break down faster than you could boil an egg?

Please think about it Sandy. I know Dawkins is very eloquent, but he really makes no sense.


SandyMcKean said...
I will respond to your last post with 3 separate posts limiting each post to just one subject.

For my post #1, you say:

"I asked you for evidence of six different neo-Darwinist claims and no evidence is forthcoming from your end.......Please read my post EVOLUTION" I don't see 6 claims in your comments posts here. Perhaps you mean in the "Evolution" blog post you mention, but I can't find a blog post entitled "Evolution" (it appears your index menu on the left of your home page is out of date). In your comments here I can glean 4 claims ("pre-biotic evolution", "mutations increasing the complexity", "accidental mutations changing the basic body plan", and "any replicator.....tell me when this evolution from replicator to single celled creature took place"). I could address each of these issues, but I'd essentially have to write much of what the books Dawkins and many other biologists have already written. Clearly that would not be productive. My comments here are not meant to argue the ENTIRE case for evolution, I am just responding with my comments to words that YOU say HERE on this blog and in these comments.

However, in brief, to at least respond in a minimal fashion to these 4 issues you raise, I will say that whatever molecule first catalyzed its own reproduction WITHOUT the need of any supporting systems, would not be considered a biological molecule. It would likely be an organic molecule (just as methane gas is), and be very simple. BTW, a molecule has no "intent" to replicate as you seem to imply in some of your writings, the replication would just be a mindless chemical reaction as so many are even today -- especially when a catalyst is involved (such as the nitration of benzene in the presence of concentrated sulphuric acid). Once a replicator exists (again Dawkins and no other reputable scientist claims to know what the first replicator was or how it worked -- altho it is a safe assumption that the molecule and the replication process was very simple), the rest of your issues are all explained by the process of that some random mutations in the replicator molecule are helpful and vastly increase the numbers of that of the replicator that has the mutation over competing replicators that do not have the mutation (note other mutations can be unhelpful and decrease the numbers of that version of the replicator. This selective advantage proceeds via the process of natural selection over incredibly long periods of time (billions of years).

Matt, I suggest that you don't give enough credit to the process of natural selection in your deliberations. So many folks who argue against evolution focus too heavily on the random process of mutations, and not nearly enough on how natural selection (Darwin's contribution) slowly but surely allows one mutation's benefits to build on the last mutation's benefits in a non-random fashion. (I used this analogy before, but in case you missed it, the process of natural selection is similar to how every wave crashing on a beach randomly moves the pebbles around, but with enough time smaller pebbles get sorted higher up on the beach via a selection process -- and the forces produced by gravity and water pressure, a purely random process would never "accidentally" sort all the pebbles in this fashion).


SandyMcKean said...
For my post #3, you say:

"I said that Dawkins claims to tell us how life began. Then you say, 'How that first replicator formed may never be known.' Excuse me! What replicator? Do you see the materialist leap and assumption you make?"

As I've said over and over again, NO ONE knows what this first replicator was, nor the many other more complex replicators were that followed the first one over 100s of millions of years. All we know is what the replicators look like today (primarily DNA and RNA) after a long, long process of evolution over billions of years. This is not so unusual. Surely man's use of the wheel has sophisticated uses today even tho we have no examples of the 1st wheel nor do we know what it was used for.

"What is a replicator anyway? Has anyone ever seen one? And please don’t say DNA. DNA replicates, but only in conjunction with a whole cell’s replication."

Look back at my one of my previous comments, I already stated that DNA and the systems that support its replication could never have sprung up fully made. They evolved. What we see today is the final product of the evolution that started with the first replicators. The first replicator molecule and all the in-between ones form that first one to today's DNA are lost to science -- they are "extinct" if you like. There are no examples of sabre toothed tigers even tho their descendents still exist today. You'd have to do a multi-billion year experiment including the formation of a brand new planet to create all of that in order to "see" one of these long extinct forms. Just because no older forms exist today doesn't mean they never existed.....in the same way we have no examples of the 1st wheel today either, but we know there must have been one.


"....that suddenly a molecule will begin to replicate BY ITSELF! And not only will it replicate its material, but it will replicate in its progeny the same determination to replicate that continues to this day."
There is no determination. DNA just replicates with no more intent than water boils. The first replicators did no more and no less than DNA does today, they just replicated without the need for intent, just as iron doesn't need intent to rust.

"And where could that long, long evolution that Dawkins’ details where organic material in tidepools, or wherever, just happened to accumulate into a replicator; and where replicators just happened to accumulate into a cell; where and when could that have taken place?"

It all happened right here on earth over a very long period of time.....but you know that. It's possible, I suppose, that the initial primitive replicators came from space in some way.....just as all today's water molecules where deposited on earth by comets. The early earth has no, or very little, water.

Matt, I repeat, I don't think you are giving enough weight to the power of natural selection and how much can occur when you are talking BILLIONS of years. I know it all seems hard to imagine the world around us evolving without some "guidance" or other "life force", but that's just because we humans can't come close to imagining a million years much less a billion years. Don't you have the same sense of awe when you look at the Grand Canyon (a totally lifeless thing). We stand there in disbelief, but know at the same time that such a thing as the Grand Canyon is possible given enough time.



Matt Chait said...
Sandy,

I’m afraid this is getting tiresome. You are so inculcated in your beliefs that you cannot hear one thing I say.

“As I've said over and over again, NO ONE knows what this first replicator was, nor the many other more complex replicators were that followed the first one over 100s of millions of years. All we know is what the replicators look like today (primarily DNA and RNA) after a long, long process of evolution over billions of years.”

You don’t see that you are assuming that there were replicators; that replicators are at the center of your whole creation theory. You want to tell me that everyone agrees that they don’t know what kind of replicator it was, but they all agree that it was some kind of replicator. Why? What proof is there of that? As I have repeated to you, DNA and RNA cannot replicate outside of a cell; do not replicate except from signals received from a cell, and would not last for a minute without the protection of a cell. No one has seen an independently replicating molecule. No one has seen an organic molecule that could survive for these supposed billions of years through asteroid bombardments, volcanoes, boiling oceans, etc. which were all part of the hell hole that was early earth (If you want to get a sense of the delicacy of unprotected organic material, think raw eggs outside of their shells). Creating an imaginary replicator is a desperate attempt to avoid the obvious fact that life began with intelligence; with transcendent intelligence.

“ I repeat, I don't think you are giving enough weight to the power of natural selection and how much can occur when you are talking BILLIONS of years”

Again, this is the same drivel you repeat over and over. Natural selection does just that. It SELECTS. It does not create. It selects from choices that are already there. The only other path of change that you offer is accidental mutation, and you cannot create any new structure by swapping out an amino acid. A new creation requires a new plan, a new form, a new way of organizing and shaping and energizing proteins, not just a new amino acid. And again you repeat this nonsense of BILLIONS of years. I told you; this is a fact; the remains of ABUNDANT bacterial communities have been found that are close to four billion years old; right up to the time when the surface of the planet cooled to the point that all the water wasn’t boiling off. There are absolutely NO traces, NO evidence of tide pools of organic materials, of any organic material deposits, what so ever. DNA based bacteria, of the same structure as modern bacteria were here in abundance almost four billion years ago. I don’t care how many times Dawkins says otherwise; I don’t care how mellifluous his voice is, how crisp his diction, how erudite his vocabulary. There is no such thing as a replicator and there was no such thing as an evolution of replicators.

“There is no determination. DNA just replicates with no more intent than water boils. The first replicators did no more and no less than DNA does today, they just replicated without the need for intent, just as iron doesn't need intent to rust.”

Again, you don’t get it. Replication is not like boiling water which is explainable in terms of basic laws of physics and chemistry. Replication requires the use of extra energy, of borrowed energy, to overcome the laws of physics and chemistry. That overcoming and focus of energy requires intent.

"Don't you have the same sense of awe when you look at the Grand Canyon (a totally lifeless thing). We stand there in disbelief, but know at the same time that such a thing as the Grand Canyon is possible given enough time."


Over millions of years the Grand Canyon changed from a fairly shallow canyon into a canyon one mile deep. It didn’t change from a shallow canyon into a hippopotamus.

Matt



Matt Chait said...

You wrote:

“BTW, a molecule has no "intent" to replicate as you seem to imply in some of your writings, the replication would just be a mindless chemical reaction as so many are even today.”

Again you misunderstand me. The high and low frequencies in computer code have no intent to send a message; the letters of the alphabet have no intent to write a novel; and the gasoline in my car does not care if I get to my destination or not. These pieces of matter are organized by a being, me, that uses them to send a message, write a novel and get to my destination. The entire material universe including the imaginary universe of Santa Claus, tooth fairies and replicators, are created by beings for the purpose of providing an experience for beings. Matter and energy are the medium through which intentions are expressed, but they are never the origin nor the ultimate purpose of intentions.

“the process of natural selection is similar to how every wave crashing on a beach randomly moves the pebbles around, but with enough time smaller pebbles get sorted higher up on the beach via a selection process -- and the forces produced by gravity and water pressure, a purely random process would never "accidentally" sort all the pebbles in this fashion).”

If you were on a strange planet and stumbled across this beach, you could probably figure out, if you knew enough physics, why the pebbles were arranged as they were. But if you stumbled upon not stone pebbles, but a stone axe on that same beach, you would probably have a biological accident in your space suit. The level of organization of that axe would undoubtedly tell you that some intelligent being had been there who constructed that axe. So why, if you stumble across a sand crab here on earth, whose construction and organization is infinitely more complex than an axe’s, would you not suspect that it had to be the result of an intelligence also? In fact, a gargantuan, transcendent intelligence.

Peace!