Fake News

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

8 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Evolution is a chance happenstance.  There is no purpose in it.  The idea that humans evolve to deal with future states yet to be instantiated has long since been discredited.  The evolutionary process that produced  our species was a crap shoot.  It is chance and odds in action.

Spoken like a true believer.

If you say so...

btw - Can you imagine a kind of universe where new existents that are not part of the universe pop into being? In other words, can you imagine a universe that exists and doesn't exist at the same time? Of course you can. That is your view of existence.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Now there's a hell of a statement.

 

Michael

It is not only a hell of a statement,  it is  also a true statement.   gene variations occur HERE AND NOW  and they interact by physical processes with conditions that exist HERE AND NOW.   The fact that the present  affects the future should not fool you or anyone else into thinking that the accident of selection is the result of a purpose.  Variation of the gene structure is  a chance event.  The wandering of organisms through design space is a random walk

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Just now, BaalChatzaf said:

Variation of the gene structure is  a chance event.

Prove it.

 

[BaalChatzaf]

1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Spoken like a true believer.

If you say so...

btw - Can you imagine a kind of universe where new existents pop into being like ghosts becoming material? In other words, can you imagine a universe that exists and doesn't exist at the same time? Of course you can. That is your view of existence.

Michael

No I can't. Happening in the Real World  are  the result of  physical interactions best  described by quantum mechanics.  If you want to know how the world works look to The General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Field Theory.  

[Brant Gaede]

We have tools to augment the senses.

--Brant

evolution--I don't need no evolution!

[Wolf DeVoon]

2 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

We have tools to augment the senses.

Always nice to be reminded of Frank Capra

the whole thing is fun to watch, but here are the tools to augment senses:
  4:20   electroscope - first clue to the existence of cosmic rays
  8:50   Eiffel Tower experiment - 1000 ft
10:00   hot air ballon - 15,000 ft
11:10   50,000 ft and deep lake measurements
12:00   uniform phenomena worldwide, day and night
13:40   geiger counter "mousetrap" proved cosmic rays are particles
20:20   the cloud chamber
  etc...

 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote:  Evolution is a chance happenstance . . . . The basic machinery of natural selection does not go away, but it’s effectiveness can be blunted by medical intervention or repair of the genome. end quote

Eugenics? Now that’s a dirty word. The Nazis have been beaten, disgraced, and relegated to a few countries and their numbers might be a few hundred worldwide. But human chromosome tampering will happen and it might be in the more totalitarian regions. Of course, the elimination of disease will be part of the process but genetically DOMINANT traits like faster, smarter, stronger, better looking, and other desired traits will be passed on. Why would they not? Because of Money and everyone’s desire to have perfect kids. You can make an argument that the heart knows what the heart wants, but mate seekers also look for success, wealth, smarts, and good looks in a partner. Men are hard wired to look for bountiful traits in a mate. Um, fellow cave man. She pretty. She could bear many healthy babies. Those breasts could feed twins. And she cook sabre toothed tiger like no one else.

Liberal, Progressive, nay say’ers will not prevail. Their political policies are demonstrably failing. And so are their social policies like Michelle Obama’s school lunch failure.

Peter   

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

If you want to know how the world works look to The General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Field Theory.  

Bob,

OK.

Can you point me to the part that explains how life happened?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm ragging on Bob a little, but he's very typical of scientists who claim as fact that free will is an illusion. These folks blank out the fact that their very speech means they are operating as an agent subject to the condition they deny.

The denier of free will so denies it by using his free will.

The denier of aspects of reality beyond current human awareness denies it from within his own current limited human awareness.

They take their agent-hood for granted--it apparently operates according to different conditions and principles than than the ones they posit for the rest of us and, for that matter, for the rest of the universe. They are mini-gods as agents. They are not subject to the universe, they determine it.

I came to a conclusion a long time ago that I will never know everything because I can't by my very size and other limitations, and that, anyway, the universe is a big-ass place. But I can know some things with certainty. Just not as many as I used to think I could.  

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Anyway, back to fake news:

Yeah, I already posted that.

But Bob made it all about Bob again and I fell for it.

So let's try again to stay on topic.

Michael

[Peter]

Is this keeping on the fake news topic? Michael asked Ba’al: Can you point me to the part that explains how life happened? end quote

But Doctor Bob Jekyll replied naught. Previously he had written: If you want to know how the world works look to The General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Field Theory. end quote

Since Ba’al’s persona is to be “literal” I would guess he is speaking strictly about “The Theory of Relativity.” And it does not explain life.

Scientists were doing experiments to create life but I have not heard about them lately. The experiments were with elements in an ooze duplicating earth a billion years ago. Add light and lightning. I think they duplicated the building blocks of early life but no new, (TRUE) duplicating life forms emerged. I found a couple of links below.

There are movements (emotional pleas with liberal gang mentality) to bring back extinct animals and that may happen, if it looks economically feasible. No dino’s please but a few mastodons and dodo birds would be nice.

Peter

From Wikipedia: The Miller–Urey experiment (or Miller experiment) was a chemical experiment that simulated the conditions thought at the time to be present on the early Earth, and tested the chemical origin of life under those conditions. The experiment supported Alexander Oparin's and J. B. S. Haldane's hypothesis that putative conditions on the primitive Earth favoured chemical reactions that synthesized more complex organic compounds from simpler inorganic precursors. Considered to be the classic experiment investigating abiogenesis, it was conducted in 1952 by Stanley Miller, with assistance from Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago and later the University of California, San Diego and published the following year. end quote

From Live Science in 2009: One of life's greatest mysteries is how it began. Scientists have pinned it down to roughly this: Some chemical reactions occurred about 4 billion years ago — perhaps in a primordial tidal soup or maybe with help of volcanoes or possibly at the bottom of the sea or between the mica sheets — to create biology. Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on. The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction. end quote

[BaalChatzaf]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

OK.

Can you point me to the part that explains how life happened?

Michael

currently there is no universally accepted explanation on just how life originated on this planet.  But we have some reasonable possibilities.  By the way, Craig Ventner sythesized a cell out of "non-living"  chemicals.  So the notion that life arose from non-living combinations of chemicals  has some empirical support.

While we do not have a rock solid theory on abiogenesis,  the transition from non-living to living,  the genetically based  modern theory of evolution  (quite advanced from where Darwin was in 1859),  admirably  accounts for how living forms  -change-.   We have a very well supported hypothesis or set of hypothesis that account for the changes in the genome of an interfertile breeding population.  The rates of mutation are now pretty well established so the theory is quantitative.    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate.

Mutation and  chromosomal cross linking are the two main engines of genetic variation.  Think of them as the shuffling of the deck of cards.  The result is the interaction of the organisms produced with these variations and the ambient  chemical and biological environment (aka the world at a given instant).  The interactions occur completely within the  operating modes specified by the laws  of physical nature insofar as they are known.

So to answer your question: no one knows exactly how life arose on this planet.  That happened over 3.5 billion years ago in conditions that no longer exist on this planet.  It may be that life originated elsewhere and was carried to earth by inbound bollides (asteroids, meteors)  but that only pushes the question back to where life originated Elsewhere.  Again, no one knows the answer to that question although there are several promising possibilities. Through Ventner's work and the work of his team we know some chemical -replicators- can by synthesized from non-replicating chemical complexes.  So the principle of life from non-life is supported empirically.  But we would need a Time Machine to see exactly how it happened on this planet   billyuns and billyuns of years ago.

The chemical machinery that arose from the first living things, the archea, to become photosynthesizing  plant life  is  describe pretty well in Falkowki's  book "Life's  Engines".  Please see  

https://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Engines-Microbes-Habitable-Essentials-ebook/dp/B00RKMZZW4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1495467495&sr=8-1&keywords=Falkowski

Again this does not say how the archea arose, but the book describes in some detail how the primitive acrhea  gave rise to the more complex cyano-bacteria which "learned the trick"  of synthesizing  its structure from CO2 in the atmosphere  using sunlight  or heat of undersea lava vents to produce the structure of their "bodies" and the ATP molecule that takes light and heat energy and transforms it into chemical bonding energy used by the organism. This trick of the cyano bacteria also  produces O2 as a waste product (O2 is a pollutant of sorts. It leads to the formation of acids. It is called Saurstuff in German). The O2 in turn enables the production of even more complex organisms than the cyano bacteria.  The atmosphere of the earth was transformed from a methane atmosphere to an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, the atmosphere we all love and breath today. Oxygen not only powers our body chemistry,  but rots our food and milk giving as cheese and beer  as a byproduct. 

 Think of  ATP (adanosine tri phosphate)   as  the batteries used by the energizer bunny in cellular chemical processes. They just keep going, breaking down and reforming.  That is how all living things on this planet transforms heat and light in environment and bonding energy of molecules into replicative activity.  One of the defining characteristics of living things  is that they replicate their structure while producing entropy.  High grade electromagnetic energy is transformed into structure and lower grades of chemical bonding energy and ultimately into waste heat.  In that sense all of us Living Things  are heat engines. We don't hiss and roar like  steam driven engines. We do it silently  by chemical recombination powered (ultimately)  by sunlight or the heat of cooling magma from the heart of the planet. 

[BaalChatzaf]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Prove it.

 

Wrong question.  In the physical sciences the only thing we can -prove- is that a theory or hypothesis is  incorrect.  In mathematics and logic we prove stuff is true.  In the physical sciences we prove stuff is false.  If our experiments support our  hypothesis by showing a prediction is correct we do not in so doing -prove- our theory or hypothesis  is true.  We have shown that particular experiment does -not falsify- the hypothesis. 

A person doing physical science can falsify a hypothesis  (i.e. definitely show something is false)  but at best he can only corroborate a hypothesis when the experiment show that a particular prediction was true.

In the realm of corroboration   the current set of hypotheses  relating gene structure to the structure of the resulting organism  and which describe how various gene combinations are replicated in the next generation  the theory is very, very, very   well corroborated.  But it is not complete.  We have discovered that genes do more than act as blue prints for proteins.  No indeed.  Genes also regulate the activities of other genes.  This is called epigenetic control and regulation. Epigenetics has become one of the hottest of the newer fields in biology.  

The underlying chemical and energy processes are described by quantum theory. Unfortunately the structures are so complicated that we cannot solve all of the mathematical equations so we are forced to use approximations.  Be that as it may,  We now can accurate edit gene structures using CRISPR-cas9 technology (see my posting on that subject).  We we do not yet have a complete characterization of the biology but we have techniques and technology that produce results  as anticipated and advertised.  Modern physical and chemical science are incomplete in many regards, but in the well defined parts they are producing the results that are expected.  There are many more question unanswered than answered so people in the physical sciences will never run out of work to do.

[BaalChatzaf]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Spoken like a true believer.

If you say so...

btw - Can you imagine a kind of universe where new existents that are not part of the universe pop into being? In other words, can you imagine a universe that exists and doesn't exist at the same time? Of course you can. That is your view of existence.

Michael

This believer is a believer primarily because several megatons  of empirical evidence  support  the beliefs that this believer believes.  Ultimately it is the empircal evidence and experimental results  that determine what we should be believing.  Even with millions of  rigorous experiments, the underlying genetic inheritance theory of descent with modification has not been falsified.   Which does NOT prove that the theory is true.  It definitely shows how hard it is to falsify theory.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

20 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Wrong question.

Bob,

To balance the certainty with which you present your dogmatic statements, it's the right question. The absolute right question. The perfect question. There is no better question. Which, by the way, is a challenge, not a question.

Why is it perfect?

Because you can't prove it.

You can't.

Changing the subject and saying the question is wrong does not prove your dogma. All this does is change the subject and try to sidestep the question.

And here we are again talking about Bob instead of talking about the issue.

 

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Bob,

To balance the certainty with which you present your dogmatic statements, it's the right question. The absolute right question. The perfect question. There is no better question. Which, by the way, is a challenge, not a question.

Why is it perfect?

Because you can't prove it.

You can't.

Changing the subject and saying the question is wrong does not prove your dogma. All this does is change the subject and try to sidestep the question.

And here we are again talking about Bob instead of talking about the issue.

 

Michael

I have spent some time telling you why physical science  not only does not,  but can not  say what general statement is true.  Asking for what cannot be delivered is not only NOT a perfect question.  It is a STUPID question. 

In order for a theory or hypothesis to be proven by exhaustive experimentation  every last possible fact  must be in hand.  But the cosmos goes on long after we who make theories and hypotheses  are long gone.  So every last possible fact not only is NOT in hand.  Every last possible fact  CAN NOT be in hand. And as long as there is a fact on the lose Out There,  there is a possible falsification of our best know and best loved theories or hypothesis. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

39 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

currently there is no universally accepted explanation on just how life originated on this planet.

In other words, there is no explanation about how life originated, merely dogma about how it did not.

Right?

I'm not talking about mythology, either. I'm talking about what we discussed where you said the future is irrelevant.

Besides, since when does truth have to be "universally accepted" to be a metaphysical fact? If a metaphysical fact had a personality, it would not give two hoots which humans believed it existed, much less how many humans.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

12 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Anyway, back to fake news:

Yeah, I already posted that.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Asking for what cannot be delivered is not only NOT a perfect question.  It is a STUPID question.

In other words, I have to accept the dogma you deliver on faith because it's stupid to do otherwise--asking for proof makes it undeliverable.

Some logic.

Sorry. I have an independent mind. I don't bow down to anyone.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

6 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In other words, there is no explanation about how life originated, merely dogma about how it did not.

Right?

I'm not talking about mythology, either. I'm talking about what we discussed where you said the future is irrelevant.

Besides, since when does truth have to be "universally accepted" to be a metaphysical fact? If a metaphysical fact had a personality, it would not give two hoots which humans believed it existed, much less how many humans.

 

Michael

That are lots of explanations.  But now none of them are overwhelmingly corroborated.   Craig Ventner's  team provided a possible explanation when they synthesized a complex  replicating  chemical structure from on-replicating chemical structures.  The problem is of all the possible explanations we do know know yet which is the right one (assuming of the possibles  is correct)  because we do not know exactly what the conditions on Earth were  over three billion years ago.  Virtually all traces of the initial conditions have been wiped out by wear and tear over eons.  It is not a lack of explanations, but a lack of corroboration of a particular explanation that is lacking. 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In case you forgot, your dogmatic statement was: "Variation of the gene structure is  a chance event."

Once again, I say prove it.

Or qualify it.

You want me to accept you on faith?

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

1 minute ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In other words, I have to accept the dogma you deliver on faith because it's stupid to do otherwise--asking for proof makes it undeliverable.

Some logic.

Sorry. I have an independent mind. I don't bow down to anyone.

Michael

I don't expect anything of you.  When an explanation is delivered (if ever, which I doubt) you can read about it in the journals. 

I learned long ago not to expect too much of others,  particular  I learned not to expect most other people will comprehend scientific and mathematical things very well.  I also learned the best way not to be disappointed is not to expect too much. 

I state what I state. What I state is sell supported in fact and well corroborated theory.   What you do with what I state is your business, not mine.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, BaalChatzaf said:

 It is not a lack of explanations, but a lack of corroboration of a particular explanation that is lacking. 

In other words, you don't know but want to sound like you do.

[BaalChatzaf]

Just now, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

In other words, you don't know but want to sound like you do.

I don't know exactly how life originated on Earth.  No one knows exactly.  But I do definitely know some possible explanations. 

[Peter]

Ba’al wrote: This believer is a believer primarily because several megatons of empirical evidence support the beliefs that this believer believes. Ultimately it is the empirical evidence and experimental results that determine what we should be believing. Even with millions of rigorous experiments, the underlying genetic inheritance theory of descent with modification has not been falsified. Which does NOT prove that the theory is true.  It definitely shows how hard it is to falsify theory. end quote

Thanks for sharing your advanced knowledge about the possible origins, evolution, and continuation of life. And thanks for your links. I think you meant to say, “It definitely shows how hard it is to falsify THIS theory,” and not every crackpot theory.

Empirically, we are alone in the Universe. I think you can be scientifically and rationally selfish and still want to spend the time and money to ensure life is spread throughout the galaxies. And if we could spread sentient human life it would be even better.

If there is data to support the theory that life should arise spontaneously everywhere in the Universe we have to use the knowledge we now have, which says it MAY NOT exist. I am not suggesting we squander wealth like we did building the pyramids but we should target some long term human projects like we did with the Human Genome Project and the American Apollo Program.   

Peter

George H. Smith wrote on page 77 of "WHY ATHEISM?": A contextual theory of knowledge, in my judgment, must strike a delicate balance between relativism and absolutism. And this is precisely why we should retain the traditional view that knowledge is justified *and* true belief. Justification is relative, whereas truth is absolute. That is to say, what counts as adequate justification for a belief may be relative to the available evidence and one’s context of knowledge, whereas the truth of a belief is absolute. A proposition either corresponds to a fact or it does not, and this matter has nothing to do with the relative justification for a belief . . . ."