Chance is not a creative force.

Discussion in 'Science' started by bricklayer, Nov 12, 2019.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't. It sounds like you think someone is a liar. But, you don't identify a lie or who might have told it.
    Progress by scientific method is very well documented, as those hypotheses that have lasted through independent testing and review are required to be very well documented. In fact, full descriptions must achieve being published by reputable journals that direct careful review by experts.

    I agree that smeone not working in science is unlikely to remember all that science has found on a topic, but every scientist working on a particular topic has full access to prior work and is fully expected to be aware of it - all of it.

    Without knowing how various natural processes work it does seem like fantastic magic.. In fact, many things we do not know seem magical. Procreation. Eating plants and animals lets ones legs work. We see stuff, and that results in physical changes in our brains that stay in place, allowing us to be able to envsion the event at a later date!

    The thing is, these questions CAN get answered. We know how these processes work.

    I'm not arguing that there is no god - science has NOTHING to say about god. And, science is limited to observation - so at prsent there is no way fot science to figure out what kicked off this universe, for example. There are lots of questions for which science can only say "I don't know" - exactly what one would expect from humans, as there are large numbers of questions in science and religion that can not be answered by mere mortals.

    So, let's be careful not to declare scinece categorically wrong about what HAS been determined by careful observation when there is no evidence suggesting that falsity.
     
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  2. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    How did mankind create modern day wheat, or apples, or every other food crop?

    What crop engineering has done for many, many centuries is to continually select the "best" plant specimens and then interbreed those. They picked the corn plants that had the large cobs well populated by kernels that are soft and tasty. Then they repeated for many generations of plants. They did the same with wheat, selecting for high productivity, etc.

    Over multiple generations, that selection along with mutations gives us the crops that we have today (at least before we started actually didling the genes of those plants - obviously a late developement).

    THAT is the backbone of evolution - mutations + selection. With food crops, humans provided the selection. In nature, selection comes from many sources that combine to determine what leads to success while eliminating those mutations that are detrimental to success.

    This year a new type of apple reached the marketplace. That was created by interbreeding apples, judging success by commercial criteria of taste, crispness, storage ability, size, consistency, hardiness to disease, etc.

    This is just one example of evolution today.
     
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  3. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The idea that the complexity that I can observe, measure and test came to be by chance seems far more like a "fantastic magic" than science to me.

    I'm not arguing that there is a "God". I don't come at it from that direction. I am arguing that nothing becomes spontaneously, randomly, and purely by chance, more functionally complex. Not even a little at a time over extraordinary periods of time. Nothing that I can observe, measure or test does that. Nothing. It's a theory, but it's a ridiculous theory.

    Selection is not direction. Selection is not design. Selection cannot be combined with chance to provide a selection that chance cannot provide alone. Selection is not evolution; it is extinction by degrees.
     
  4. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You're confusing selection with direction and design. None of the above would have come to be apart from direction and design in the selections made. None of the things you cite above came to be by chance.
     
  5. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    I gave you examples of evolution in practice by humans over history in guiding the evolution of food crops.

    Yet, you say that is impossible!!!

    Sorry - it is happening ALL THE TIME! It's a major factor in the ability of the world population to feed itself.
     
  6. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    No, those absolutely ARE the result of genetic mutations.

    And, the direction was provided by humans who had a result in mind - as seen by the fact that agricultural engineers have had very explicity goals in their selection process.

    It is certainly true that evolution does not have a human as an objective. We evolved due to the power of having large brains, communication, etc. - not by being huge or strong or stupendously fast or some other factor.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
  7. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    OK, to be more clear here -

    Evolution doesn't itself have some final goal. It merely selects what is "best" along the way. That is usually guided by ability to grow as a population. So, ability to eat what's available, ability to keep out of the way of predators, ability to reliably produce surviving adult offspring (or spread vegetatively), etc., are guides.

    Engineers (such as ag engineers) can have a goal and guid evolution by being the major selection factor.

    Humans came about not becase humans were a goal, but because having our set of characteristics turned out to be an advantage. Cheetahs grew light bones and small brains for speed - thus they can catch prey, but are somewhat fragile and not too smart. Other plants and animals filled other niches.

    Right now, humans continue to evolve, but not as fast as lots of other life forms do. The rate of evolution is not constant - environmental factors can affect evolution rate. In the last 20k years humans gained the ability to digest milk as adults (possibly timed with domesticating cattle), blue eyes, and we lost about one tennis ball's worth of brain size - probably made up for in increased brain complexity. Earth's humans are numerous and mix quite a bit, and that might slow the current evoltion rate.
     
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  8. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yours is not an example of evolution. Yours is an example of design. The things you cite did not happen by chance.
     
  9. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Evolution doesn't "select" anything. The selection process contributes nothing to what it is selecting from. You are attributing to natural selection a knowledge aforethought. Darwinian evolution proposes that natural selection chooses from among chance mutations. Are you going to attribute to chance mutations a knowledge aforethought also? Darwinian evolution is based upon chance mutations accumulating into ever increasing functional complexity. Natural selection plays no part in that. Natural selection only happens after the fact. Natural selection is not evolution; it is extinction by degrees.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
  10. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Then I suggest publishing your paper and claiming your Nobel prize. Disproving then entire field of biology would certainly be a big deal.
     
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  11. ChemEngineer

    ChemEngineer Banned

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    How IMMENSE the number of combinations is most people have NO IDEA.

    DNA instructs our cells to produce 5,000 or more proteins in complex, folded sequences of very precise sequences.

    There are "only" 10 to the 80th particles in the universe.

    How many possible sequences are there for titin, one protein in our muscles?
    20 to the 34,350th power.

    Random mutation will NEVER EVER produce 20 to the 34,350th different combinations of amino acids from which titin could be "selected" by Darwin's Magic Wand of *Selection*.

    A biochemist has multiplied the smallest unit of time, Planck Time (10 to the -43 seconds) times the number of particles times another factor to establish the universal impossible statistic, 1 chance in 10 to the -150th.

    10 to the -150th is tens of thousands of orders of magnitude larger than 20 to the -34,350. And that's just ONE PROTEIN! ! ! ! !
    Of 5,000 ! ! ! ! !

    Darwin's Case is Closed.
     
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  12. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The idea that all of this happened by chance is, by far, the most ridiculous idea that I've encountered yet.
     
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  13. Diablo

    Diablo Well-Known Member

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    You are the genius of the world! And all with your own IQ! LOL§
     
  14. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Combinations of intent. You attribute to chance intent and a knowledge aforethought.
     
  15. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    No, the mutations involved absolutely DID happen by chance.

    These are examples of actual genetic change, where humans selected the results they like and discarded the results they ddn't like.

    Nature supplies the same selection process - just based on other criteria.
     
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  16. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Selective breeding is not done by chance nor does it produce anything new other than perhaps a unique recombination of preexisting material. Mutations cannot accumulate into ever increasing functional complexity. Selection, by man or not, is extinction by degrees. Selection contributes nothing to what it selects from. Selection only happens after the fact. Nothing increases in functional complexity be chance. By chance, entropy increases everything.
     
  17. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Selecion is an critical PART of evolution.

    This includes NO "knowledge aforthought". Mutations that are crippling (or otherwise not advantageous) are selected against, as they lead to less survivability, less liklihood of breeding, etc.

    Those mutations that are not beneficial do not accumulate, as the selection process selects against them.

    For example, eyes developed from miniscule capability of detecting light. Predators and prey cast shadows, and detecting light ends up being a significant advantage. From there, improved sight is clearly something that would be advantageous, allowing for better predator avoidance, better food availability, greater breeding opportunity, etc. So, any mutation aiding sight would likely not be selected against.

    Your "extinction by degrees" thing is inexplicable.
     
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  18. ChemEngineer

    ChemEngineer Banned

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    Biochemist Douglas Axe has done experiments which demonstrate that a polypeptide of 150 amino acid sequences in length has only 1 functional protein out of every 10 to the 77th possible combinations. That's an impossibly small proportion of a very small protein. Up your game to just human hemoglobin, which has 528 amino acid residues. Then imagine titin, with 34,350 amino acid sequences...….

    The 747 does not fly from a junkyard. Not ever.
     
  19. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    It doesn’t matter how many times you make up random probabilities. You can not in any way substantiate the claims you keep making.
     
  20. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    The view from science is that there is NO "forethought" in evolution. That includes that evolution has no objective - none.

    Why do you think there has to be "forethought" in evolution in order for it to work?
     
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  21. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The above is a well documented example of the insurmountable odds against anything becoming more complex by chance.

    Most people grotesquely underestimate the number of mutations, or how precisely those mutations would have to align, that would be required to increase functional complexity. The idea that those mutations would each and every one along the immeasurably long path to hemoglobin or an eye would lend itself to selection is, well its ridiculous.
     
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  22. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Yes, the SELECTION is not by chance. But, the genetic mutations that give us better apples, better wheat, etc., etc. absolutely are chance.

    There are lots of other mutations, too - but they caused the selection process to discard them.

    What selection contributes is a determination of which muttions should survive, because of some benefit they provide and which mutations should be eliminated, because they don't help or are actually a detriment.

    That selection is a huge and indispensible part of evolution that is supplied by nature, but can also be supplied by humans.

    The entropy argument against evolution is totally bogus. If you want to discuss why, go for it.
     
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  23. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Because nothing becomes more functionally complex by chance. By chance, entropy always increases.
     
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  24. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Selective breeding is not mutation. It is the recombination of the preexisting material.
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
  25. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    The parts in a junkyard do not procreate, recombine, mutate or have a selection process. Suggesting evolution should be able to function without those features is just plain STUPID.

    Whowever came up with the junkyard idea just did not have a CLUE about the topic.
     

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