AuldSoul wrote:
: AlanF: ...that calling the self-evident tendency of all life forms to survive a 'goal' is simply a manner of speaking.
: I heartily disagree that this is what the evidence shows. The evidence shows exactly the opposite, the tendency of life forms is to die. Those life forms which survive beat the odds, they survive despite the trend.
This is among the silliest things I've ever read.
OF COURSE life forms have a tendency to live on. Have you never heard the phrases "will to survive", "survival instinct", "instinct for self-preservation", and the like? People don't use these phrases knowing that the concepts are non-existent. Every form of life, from the individual to collections of individuals, displays some form of "survival instinct" -- otherwise they would poof out of existence immediately upon popping into existence.
Governments, businesses, religions, nations, tribes and so forth most certainly have an "instinct for self-preservation". You go ahead and make an attack on the White House and see what happens.
Individual humans have a strong instinct for self-preservation. Let me go at you with a machete. Would you stand there dumbly, or would you take evasive/defensive action?
All animals have a survival instinct. What do you think is at work when an antelope is evading a pursuing cheetah? What do you think is happening when Japanese honeybees organize themselves to kill an Asian giant hornet that invades their hive? How about when an amoeba goes after a paramecium, and the paramecium feels the fatal touch and begins to flee? Is it not excercising a kind of will to survive? What is going on when a plant manufactures poisons or sticky gums that kill or stop bugs from eating them? Isn't that an obvious example of a built-in tendency to survive?
These life forms don't even have to be challenged to engage in survival. They simply have to avoid being killed or dying. They do this every second of their lives. The fact that they manage to exist for a time, eating, reproducing and so on, is self-evident proof that life tends to continue to exist.
I now understand where you're going with this, and why you refuse to acknowledge such a simple truth: You've already formulated an argument that depends on your claim that life tends to die rather than live. If your basic premise is invalidated, so is your argument. And so you fight on, trying to defend a bad premise.
What you're really doing here is badly confusing two completely different things: (1) The fact that life forms tend to continue to exist; (2) the fact that life forms are subject to all manner of influences that tend to rub them out of existence. I'll comment further on these as needed below.
: I will disregard the bulk of your reply sinece it was more of a rant on what ID or Creationists have wrong than it was direct response to anything I wrote.
Nonsense. What I wrote has a direct bearing on your arguments. You ignored much of it because you really have no answers to my arguments.
In particular, you've failed to consider the most important problem of all for those who argue that "intelligent design" does not necessarily have anything to do with the Christian God, or any other religious gods. I explained it briefly, in terms of "who designed the designer?" One simply cannot get away from this, if one invokes a generalized notion of "intelligent design". Again, more on this below.
: AlanF: In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins rightly observes that, if the origin of life from a "pre-biotic soup" is improbable, how much more improbable must be the origin of an intelligent designer grand enough to create life on earth.
: However, Richard Dawkins left out one vital piece of the contention I am making. The origin of life on earth from a pre-biotic soup is improbable (approaching impossible), however conditions elsewhere very well might have been much more conducive to the origins of life than were conditions on earth. Therefore, while the origin may be explained by a pre-biotic soup somewhere, it is highly improbable that the pre-biotic soup that originated life was an earthly one. Life originating somewhere else makes more sense than does insisting that it originated here.
LOL! I hope you're not advocating Fred Hoyle's notion of "Evolution from Space" (set out in his 1984 book by the same name)! Hoyle was pretty confident in his views on this, even writing a science fiction novel based on it (The Black Cloud, 1957). However, it might well be, based on the fact that amino acids and certain other organic substances have been found in meteorites, that the earth was seeded with some of the right materials to begin life. But no one really knows.
All you're doing here is postponing the "infinite regression of intelligent designers" problem. Remember that you started this thread off with this: "I will be arguing for intelligent design, and creation, which are concepts". This statement, and your argument in the above paragraph, both agree that the problem of "intelligent design" is not limited to the earth and its life forms. Indeed, to limit the notion of "intelligent design" in any way, without careful explanation of the whys and wherefors of your limits, is to ignore almost all of the notion.
Your argument is rife with speculation and assumptions. How do you know that the earth does not just happen to have the very best conditions conducive to the origin of life? How do you know that conditions elsewhere might be a whole lot better? Just what data lets you claim that "it is highly improbable that the pre-biotic soup that originated life was an earthly one"? Are you clairvoyant, or do you have a line to your assumed intelligent designers? Upon what basis do you claim that "life originating somewhere else makes more sense than does insisting that it originated here"? Just what is your 'in' in making these claims?
Can you say with certainty, or even some measure of probability, that your proposed and unspecified "intelligent designer" was not itself the product of another intelligent designer? Not bloody likey! And when you admit that, the infinite regression commences.
: In 1950, we didn't think we would be capable of mapping the human genome within 100 years.
References, please.
: It took us 50 more. Without greatly straining, we can now envision a time when Sci-Fi of Gattica may become reality.
The ideas of Gattaca are probably much farther off than even the most pessimistic promoters of genetic engineering imagine. I'm reminded of the sanguine expectations of Artificial Intelligence researchers in the early 1970s. They expected that they would fairly quickly duplicate human hearing, vision and even intelligence with computer software and hardware. They soon found out that these areas were far, far harder than they ever imagined. Today, they're not much further along than 35 years ago. That doesn't mean that people will never get there; indeed, I'm confident that, in the long run, something approaching human senses and intelligence will be developed, perhaps along the lines of what Isaac Asimov described in his I Robot series.
: We have endured horrible climatic burdens and a couple of near extinctions,
I assume you're talking about the climate disruptions of the ice age cycles of these last several million years, and extinctions such as seem to have occurred some 74,000 years ago in connection with the Toba blast. If not, please clarify.
: but not every planet (especially much older ones) would be as turbulent as ours.
Well, probably, in the statistical sense. But we simply don't know that. Again, for all we know, the "anthropic principle" may hold and we just might be at the top of the heap of the origin of life. Somebody's got to play first trombone, right?
: How many millenia head start would a planet need to produce life in order to be able to terraform planets and engineer life forms?
You tell me. Back it up with data and calculations.
This is pure speculation of the crassest kind and has no bearing on our discussion.
: Humans have already carried simple life forms to other planets.
And?
: AlanF: Necessary in what sense?
: In any sense.
Really. How about in the sense of our discussion here? It's pretty obvious that life is necessary for our discussion to continue.
How about in the sense of the interaction between galaxies at the edge of the observable universe? Obviously not.
You need to be a lot more precise in your thinking, your arguments and your challenges.
: Life is ultimately unnecessary in every respect, from a purely physical standpoint.
Ah, so you do have in mind a specific sense. Make up your mind, please.
: Also, it does not tend to survive,
Of course it does. The fact that you're typing this stuff proves it.
: it survives despite its tendency to die.
Again, you're mixing up two completely different things. The fact that you could kill me, with a bit of effort, does not have anything to do with the fact that I will go on living if you don't try, and if nothing else gets me.
: Next we can get into the coding, TGAC and UGAC. You, being an MIT grad, will probably enjoy my take on that.
Probably so. I'm not especially familiar with that stuff, so I might not be able to comment very well.
: AlanF: Well, you're way ahead of any origins researchers that I'm aware of.
: I disagree that it is pure speculation. There are enough knowns to rule out plenty of possibilities and to weight several theoretical probabilities.
Please list them. List all necessary parameters to prove your point.
: Either way, the overriding point is that it is not the tendency of life to survive, it is the tendency of life to die. The same goes for species, extinction is the norm, the usual.
This is abject nonsense.
All life originates with a new cell or pair of cells. A sperm and egg cell unite, and a new organism is born. A cell splits into two and two new ones, with renewed vigor, are born. Once originated, the life goes on until it dies, by any number of means, internal or external. In the meantime, it reproduces if it can.
Microorganisms that originated at least 3.5 billion years ago continue today in some form. All the cards are not yet in, since in recent years bugs called "extremophiles" have been found but not yet thoroughly studied. Such bugs are found in extreme environments such as the boiling, acidic ponds in Yellowstone Park, more than 2 miles below the earth's surface in cracks in near-boiling-temperature rock, and so forth. Are you really claiming that this 3.5 billion year old life does not have a tendency to survive?
And once again, the fact that all manner of external and internal influences cause all organisms eventually to die has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that, in the meantime, they do all in their power to continue to exist.
: Which leaves the question of why the first specimen of the first species beat the odds
What odds? How do you know anything about these "odds"? What data do you have? What arguments do you have? What source references can you cite about such "odds"?
: and survived long enough to replicate,
How do you know that conditions were not ripe to produce zillions of different kinds of reproducers, just one of which ultimately passed through the filter of bad odds and resulted in today's life? Or perhaps that the same thing happened on some other world, a long time ago and in a galaxy far, far away?
: then why did those two specimen beat the incredible odds against them and replicate, and so on. The first species should not have survived. The tendency is very much against that having happened.
Your misuse of "species" aside, this is pretty much the classic bad argument, "this result is so improbable -- it just couldn't have happened!" The odds that you "just happened" are astronomically low, given the number of possible gene combinations from your parents -- yet here you are, typing away. Can you explain why you, of all possible combinations, are alive? Can you explain why you've survived from birth long enough to be typing here?
Once again, your overall argument is self-defeating. Whatever "natural" conditions you can propose, for anywhere in the known universe, the odds against originating life in any form whatsoever appear to be pretty slim. That being the case, whatever "intelligent designer" you propose is going to suffer from the same huge improbability. So your argument, as I said above and in previous posts, does nothing to solve the problem of the origin of life, but merely postpones it. I will not allow you to postpone it.
: AlanF: I even stated that this "fuzzy 'goal'" is only a sort of goal -- obviously using these terms as a manner of speaking, as an 'if you will', 'at some level', 'in some sense' -- and that, however you want to view it, in line with the sense I've conveyed, it exists in place of a preset template.
: I have already stated my reasons for disagreeing in this post.
Yes, and I have shown why your reasons for disagreeing are invalid. You have not shown anything to the contrary, but have merely repeated your original arguments.
: However, to continue down this line I will need to have something more clearly defined than an 'if you will', 'at some level', or 'in some sense' because the facts do not match the assertion.
The seeds of doing this are already in my posts. I specifically stated:
Bottom line: The tendency of organisms to survive, or to continue to exist, is a self-evident observation and I don't need to prove it. Calling this result a 'goal' -- understood to be only in a manner of speaking, in an a posteriori sense -- is just putting a usable word on the result. If you want to suggest a better word, be my guest.
The floor is open to you to define the terms. When you do, keep in mind what I've said in this post. I say this specifically, because I get the feeling that you've not really read my posts carefully enough to understand what I'm saying and truly get the sense of it.
: Natural selection needs a sort of goal,
"A sort of goal" is correct, but a real goal -- no. Once again, a real goal must be something mapped out in advance by some intelligence. "A sort of goal" is just another name for "survival of the fittest", the "fittest" meaning "whatever organism lives long enough to reproduce in greater numbers than its fellows", and where the term also has an engineering implication that one can, in principle, analyze "fitness" upfront and predict what organisms have the greater probability of surviving.
: but nothing at all indicates that natural selection has a sort of goal.
Of course not. How many times do I have to say to you, "natural selection has no a priori goals"?
: It doesn't have survival as a goal.
Correct. Survival of individual life forms to the point of reproducing in greater numbers than life forms that don't survive so well is simply a result of all sorts of natural processes, none of which has a goal. That's why I've said that such survival is a sort of goal, a goal in a manner of speaking, a 'goal'.
: We have survival as a goal, we see survival as a good thing and death as a bad thing.
So you agree with my above assessments.
: We impute motive to a process we observe,
Who is "we"? Certainly not I. Certainly not any competent scientist I'm aware of.
Of course, many science popularizers use the metaphor that natural selection is an intelligence of some kind, but anyone who reads their works and thinks that they're really describing a real intelligence needs, at the very least, to take remedial reading comprehension lessons. Unless, of course, the writer is a creationist.
: it has no motive, no template, no goal, fuzzy or otherwise. It doesn't care.
Right.
: And the tendency of the process is NOT survival, the tendency is death and extinction.
Again this is abject nonsense. You're even switching what you're talking about in mid-sentence. The result of natural selection is indeed better survival -- that is its very definition, and we can observe it happening in all manner of circumstances. Therefore, the tendency of natural selection is to preserve life. A completely different thing is the tendency for life to fall prey to all manner of killing conditions. Individuals fall prey to predators, killing external conditions, and finally the built-in wearing out that forces one-celled life to reproduce, and macroscopic life forms to die, hopefully after they reproduce.
To see clearly why your statement is nonsense, let me set it forth clearly:
"The tendency of natural selection is death and destruction."
This is obviously a nonsensical statement, in view of the fact that natural selection is a long term process that demonstrably results in organisims better suited to their immediate environments. While by far the majority of organisims fall by the wayside, a few get through, reproduce, and improve the population as a whole in the long run. This is the whole point of the filter of natural selection.
: Natural selection doesn't care if we survive or not, or if anything living survives or not.
Right.
: I think some politicians are like that, too.
I completely agree. I wish that something like natural selection, or perhaps unnatural selection, could operate on them, with the proviso that the selection process be skewed toward honesty rather than self-aggrandizement.
AlanF