Why Do You No Longer Believe in God? (page 12)

Bonsai

Hey everybody! How about them Royals huh!? They haven't won a World Series since George Brett was blazing across the bases. Go Royals! I'll never forgive the Mets for what happened in '86. Billy ****ing Buckner.

bohm

EOM: Computer programs absolutely can evolve!
VIV: Awesome, name a computer program that evolved on it's own.

This is fairly easy. You can find many examples of evolving computer program within the field of evolutionary computing. To start you can go to google scholar and search for "genetic algorithm" (1.9mio hits), or if you prefer an ordering by application domain and specific programs check out the list on wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_algorithm_applications

if you prefer a single current example you can check out evolino, an application where neural architechtures are evolved for control tasks: http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/evolino.html

I notice you appended "on it's own" to EOM's statement. This would (strictly speaking!) make your statement true since a computer program "on it's own" presumably would be a computer program without a medium to run it, however this would clearly also be a strawman.

bohm

Cofty: DNA is not a programme, it has no information or instructions of any kind.

I agree with you on nearly anything related to evolution, but I have to disagree with you on this. That DNA is said to carry information or instructions is widely accepted vocabulary in genetics, check out a graduate genetics textbook. You are right that DNA just "does it's thing" (i.e. interact with the other cellular machinery), however the same can be said about a computer program (which is just magnetic anomalies on a spinning plate interacting with other parts of a computer) and this does not prevent us from saying the computer program contains information. "Intention" is not at this point a useful term and not well-defined.

bohm

Here is another way to look at it. Suppose a person accept evolution. In that case she accepts that evolution is a very powerful way to optimize organisms, that is, change the information in their DNA in order to make them more fit, and that person would predict that if we implemented evolution on a computer it should be able to optimize computer programs efficiently. As it turns out, this is true. Evolution works and works damn well.

Truthexplorer

yes your gravatar Viviane. Just had to say that's a lovely picture of you.....

LoveUniHateExams

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

I don't care. I don't care that I no longer believe in God, I don't care whether he exists ...

If it's that important, I'm sure he'll let me know

The Rebel

According to the bible God sacrificed his son to allow for the redemption of humanity....other times he just drowns us.

The Rebel.

Caedes

Nope. Lots of people are no such thing.

They are, it's why rational people don't walk out of second floor windows. I suggest you look up 'last thursdayism' as I think it applies to anything that comes from a study of epistemology.

I wasn't trying to convince you. Your opinion of epistemology doesn't effect me, one way or the other.

You bought it up, not me. If you don't want to discuss your own contribution to a discussion forum then why are you here?

TheWonderofYou

Once I had the opinion that it would be "better decision to belief" than "not to believe".

Granted that God existed, I would benefit from all blessings
(like surviving gods jugdment at the day of Armageddon)
if not I had not suffered a loss.

I think that many are following this logic. But considering that in many religious groups the individual choice is methodically limited by institutional rules, which manipulated persons freedom and reverse it in loyalty to an organisation, resulting in irrational and harmful personal patterns of behaviour, I now think that the loss of believing in a cult is bigger than the blessings.

__

In a modification of Kant I would agree to philosopher Ursula Pia Juach's (56), [University Zurich] statement in an interview published Oct.26,2015

"...We cannot prove that love exists, but we can act as if it existed.
We cannot prove that righteousness exists, but we can act as if it existed. This "as-if" is the maximum, what man can achieve. I know that outdoors govern envy and greed, but I can nevertheless act so as if humanity would be possible. That is a beautiful solution against the little desperation, that besets us sometimes".

So I cannot prove that god exits, but I could act as if.

___

Kant said in "Kritik der reinen Vernunft" that an idea or an imagination cannot be proved.

Ideas (like God exists) would be misinterpreted and falsely adapted if treated like physical fact. A constitutive use of an idea is false. Ideas are only valid relatively. If you treat an idea as fact than you get into contradictions. The basis of knowledge has to be considered.

Kant wrote about matters of reason and matters of idea. In the first case
I use terms with the aim to define a subject.

cofty

That DNA is said to carry information or instructions is widely accepted vocabulary in genetics, check out a graduate genetics textbook - bohm

Yes but it is still a metaphor.

If I write "My car is blue" in the sand those shapes convey information because we have agreed on the function of each of these shapes and the meanings of the words they spell out.

DNA isn't like that. It's just 4 nucleotides bumping and grinding away producing amino acids that join up in interesting 3-D shapes that happen to act as enzymes to assist other chemicals to get together and so on.

Even if there was not an intelligent being in the whole universe DNA would still do it's thing. On the other hand the words "My car is blue" would be meaningless squiggles in the sand. We can use the word information to describe the things that DNA will cause to happen but it is not information in the same way as this post is. Creationists try to pretend otherwise to make it look as if DNA needs a mind.

Why Do You No Longer Believe in God?

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