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LOL I see you don't understand what Epigenetics is.
Do you know that Epigenetics is the study of changes in organisms caused by modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself? i.e. it's a change in phenotype without a change in genotype — which in turn affects how cells read the genes.
It sounds a familiar recent "let's try this one" argument from the 'This is statistically impossible naturally, so it must be Jesus" stable of apologetics. It goes something like "There is no mechanism for genes adapting because they have no reasoning and cannot decide, and there is no part of evolution -theory that explains it so - 'Don't Know' will not do, It has to be God making it work (1).
Is that more or less, Mr jones? If not please explain how Epigenics disproves evolution. You will know that debunking the Goddunnit claim and saying that Evolution is the evidence has never been good enough for the believers, so just a scientific name and claim that is evidence of guided evolution isn't good enough an argument here.
(1) This is actually an excellent example of what Irreducible Complexity Ought to have been used to validate - guided evolution. So Kudos for thet. But it was always misused to try to prove that evolution cannot work, so never happened, so Genesis must be the default theory. So far as I can tell this was how Behe misused it. He didn't even seem to understand how his own theory worked.
^^^
When Michael Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box" released in 1996, every single one of the reviews of Behe's book in scientific journals by scientists thoroughly slammed his book and the ideas of irreducible complexity and "intelligent design" (ID) as unscientific and essentially worthless – a genuine argument from ignorance.
Here are a few reviews of Behe's book by peer scientists working in the field with a few snips from the review.
The goal of creationists has always been to replace the teaching of evolution with the narrative given in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. When the courts stymied this effort, creationists tried a new strategy: cloaking themselves in the mantel of science. This produced the oxymoronic 'scientific creationism', arguing that the very facts of Biology and Geology show that the Earth is young, all species were created suddenly and simultaneously, and mass extinctions were caused by a great world wide flood. The resemblance between this theory and the book of Genesis, was of course, purely coincidental. "Scientific creationism", however, also came to grief. Virtually all creation 'scientists' were religious fundamentalists without biological expertise, and American courts clearly spied clerical collars beneath the lab coats.
In many senses Darwin's Black Box has a flavor which is similar to many of the more traditional creationists books - an appeal to ignorance of the subject matter. To someone who knows only a little bit about biochemistry, (indeed, the intended audience) this book could sound like a devastating attack on Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Unfortunately, it was quite tortuous for me to read. The subject matter has the POTENTIAL for a very good book, but I was continually frustrated by his distorted portrayal of molecular biology. It is my own opinion that, upon closer inspection, his "biochemical challenge to evolution" vaporizes to essentially a restatement of the traditional creationist attack on Darwinian gradualism: life is so complicated - it HAS to have been created by a divine intelligence.
Irreducible complexity – one of the pillars that supports "intelligent design" – is an argument from ignorance. No real scientist would ever say, "this is so complex that it can never be explained by evolution, so I give up." Instead, a scientist would continue to formulate hypotheses to explain it and then test the hypotheses. Behe suffers from a very unscientific failure of curiosity, creativity, and nerve. Not only does he promote willful ignorance and pseudoscience, he encourages people to repress their intellectual curiosity – a moral lapse for a scientist!
This link has a lot of great information that shines the light on Behe's attempts at appealing to ignorance on the subject matter.
Indeed. He was effectively painted into a corner when he was obliged to assert that astrology should be taught in the science class as an 'alternative theory' as if he said it shouldn't, of course that was good reason to say that Genesis -literalist Creationism (which is what I/D and I/C is, though they try to say it isn't) should also not be taught in the science -class.
I shouldn't go on about this, but the extent of the planned and manipulative misinformation agenda that came out was ataggering. They planned to cheat from the first, having the case in another place where Creationists could pretty much stuff the court. As it was they expected that (Dubhya being president) he'd see that the Republican Judge would simply find for them on bias. In fact he did his job, Behe was made to look like a fool and since then, Creationism has been trying to fin away around the Dover ruling by redefining ID as not religion (which it is) and redefine science as whatever religion says.
That is, my previous post, while pointing out that Behe misused his own theory to debunk evolution, it would (if it was actually valid) only support Theistic evolution, and he did not even understand his own theory, should have emphasized that the discussion showed in the end that the theory was not valid.
And while we are at it, I came across (while checking that 'Open mindedness' was there there to be clicked on) this little talk which clears up quite a few ongoing misunderstanding and/or misrepresentations about evolution.
If you research a bit more you find that Genetic Information is Not correctly to be regarded as 'software' much less one written by an Intelligent designer, whichever god (if any) you may have in mind.
And while there is indeed signs of "Design" in the cosmos it is more correctly (by the atheist physicists that you reference)regarded as construct in a fairly ordered manner, and that is because of natural physical laws, not because some invisible human write the rules on invisible paper.
There are a few people who have at least worked within the acceptance of the evolutionary process, but have tried to insert an argument for the fingerprints of a designer in there, but it really isn't appropriate or needed.
There is nothing in the laws of physics requiring the constants to be what they are, if there was no freedom there would be no implied design.
On the other hand, what the constants turned out to be is what they are. If they had turned out to be something else, they would be that, too and probably presented as evidence of Design.
On the other hand, what the constants turned out to be is what they are. If they had turned out to be something else, they would be that, too and probably presented as evidence of Design.
The constants are the result of our unique capability to measure and thereby quantify aspects of our reality. Our consciousness takes quantum time to form into the "instantaneous" awareness we use to measure anything. That quantum time is why the constants exist in our measurements.
The constants are the result of our unique capability to measure and thereby quantify aspects of our reality. Our consciousness takes quantum time to form into the "instantaneous" awareness we use to measure anything. That quantum time is why the constants exist in our measurements.
I must confess that I am not au fait with all the constants -arguments. I have seen one or two, and they seemed to have nothing to do with what you said. They are recurring underpinnings, if you like, of physics, and a recurrent feature of the cosmos of matter.
They are what they are regardless of what method of masking scratches on rocks we use to convey the information to others, or indeed whether er are there to see it at all. We have done this before - two rocks is two rocks, no matter what language we use for 'two'. and just like occam's razor and other human conventions, the mathematics etc. are rooted in physical fact and are not mere human fancy or preference. We have done this before; please don't make me have to do it again.
I must confess that I am not au fait with all the constants -arguments. I have seen one or two, and they seemed to have nothing to do with what you said. They are recurring underpinnings, if you like, of physics, and a recurrent feature of the cosmos of matter.
They are what they are regardless of what method of masking scratches on rocks we use to convey the information to others, or indeed whether er are there to see it at all. We have done this before - two rocks is two rocks, no matter what language we use for 'two'. and just like occam's razor and other human conventions, the mathematics etc. are rooted in physical fact and are not mere human fancy or preference. We have done this before; please don't make me have to do it again.
::Sigh:: You simply do not know what you do not know, Arq. Everything we measure is based on "measurement events" using what we consider our instantaneous conscious awareness. But it is NOT instantaneous. Our consciousness takes quantum time to form into our awareness that we then use to measure time and distance and everything else. When we measure the distance from one point in space to another, we do it over time. But the time we use is itself dependent on the quantum time it takes for our awareness to form before each measured time. This makes the time interval dependent upon the constant time it takes for our awareness to form. That is why in Minkowski's Topological Constancy of the World Interval equation the time interval term is multiplied by the constant speed of light. In words, the spatial distance between two points is altered by the speed of light times the time interval. This reveals that the time to form our awareness is dependent upon the speed of light (EM radiation) suggesting that our awareness forms at the speed of light.
::Sigh:: You simply do not know what you do not know, Arq. Everything we measure is based on "measurement events" using what we consider our instantaneous conscious awareness. But it is NOT instantaneous. Our consciousness takes quantum time to form into our awareness that we then use to measure time and distance and everything else. When we measure the distance from one point in space to another, we do it over time. But the time we use is itself dependent on the quantum time it takes for our awareness to form before each measured time. This makes the time interval dependent upon the constant time it takes for our awareness to form. That is why in Minkowski's Topological Constancy of the World Interval equation the time interval term is multiplied by the constant speed of light. In words, the spatial distance between two points is altered by the speed of light times the time interval. This reveals that the time to form our awareness is dependent upon the speed of light (EM radiation) suggesting that our awareness forms at the speed of light.
I think you have lost sight of what the argument is about. Constants is about -surely - these basic physical laws that (it is argued) must be thought up by a creator.
The mental processes we go through in finding out about these things is irrelevant If we get a valid discovery in the end the mental process of thinking means no more than it taking thousands of years to find out that the earth is not the centre of the solar -system.
If on the other hand, you are proposing that we can be sure of nothing, then appeal to constants is meaningless, so I credit you at least with not arguing that one.
It seems hard indeed to work out what you are arguing, and I suspect that it is introducing a quite irrelevant argument about consciousness to try to peddle your God -hypothesis yet again.
::Sigh:: You simply do not know what you do not know, Arq. Everything we measure is based on "measurement events" using what we consider our instantaneous conscious awareness. But it is NOT instantaneous. Our consciousness takes quantum time to form into our awareness that we then use to measure time and distance and everything else. When we measure the distance from one point in space to another, we do it over time. But the time we use is itself dependent on the quantum time it takes for our awareness to form before each measured time. This makes the time interval dependent upon the constant time it takes for our awareness to form. That is why in Minkowski's Topological Constancy of the World Interval equation the time interval term is multiplied by the constant speed of light. In words, the spatial distance between two points is altered by the speed of light times the time interval. This reveals that the time to form our awareness is dependent upon the speed of light (EM radiation) suggesting that our awareness forms at the speed of light.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TRANSPONDER
I think you have lost sight of what the argument is about. Constants is about -surely - these basic physical laws that (it is argued) must be thought up by a creator.
The mental processes we go through in finding out about these things is irrelevant If we get a valid discovery in the end the mental process of thinking means no more than it taking thousands of years to find out that the earth is not the centre of the solar -system.
If on the other hand, you are proposing that we can be sure of nothing, then appeal to constants is meaningless, so I credit you at least with not arguing that one.
It seems hard indeed to work out what you are arguing, and I suspect that it is introducing a quite irrelevant argument about consciousness to try to peddle your God -hypothesis yet again.
Try this, Arq. The constants we measure are a function of the time and limiting functional processes that FORM the consciousness we use to measure them, NOT something inherent in what is being measured.
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