Intelligent Design: Coming To A State Legislature Near You

MichiganGEL wrote:

just how can evolution be invoked when there are as yet no genes to mutate?

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Drew Smith wrote:

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An ironic comment coming from someone who fantasizes about life after death not because there is objective evidence for it but because that someone can't seem to handle the idea of their actual death. Can you say "wishful thinking"?

Evidence for what? Evolution? The production of life from non-life?

So long as replication *with variation* exists in a world of limited resources, how exactly are you going to get anything *other* than replication that heads in a direction of being more successful in its environment?

If they are not, then what *natural process* is responsible for their existence?

No, I'm arguing on the basis of natural processes that are actually observed instead of arguing on the basis of processes that are never observed, as you are.

Again, if it is not, then what are you proposing as its source?

How much longer do you plan to value something merely on the basis that it is "possible"?

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15th Dalai Lama wrote:

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When the simplest life is finally engineered, the whole god thing goes out the window.
What would Jesus split???

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Pokay1kaduB wrote:

<quoted text> I would venture to guess that most of our reality is not detectable as of yet.

Pokay1kaduB wrote:

<quoted text> ousness is emergent and nothing but? DO you have objective evidence that consciousness dWhat do you call it but fantasizing when you think there is objective evidence that conscioes not go on in any shape or form after death of the body? Why does it have to be objectively detectable to exist? I would venture to guess that most of our reality is not detectable as of yet.
<quoted text> Yea play dumb, Cmon, you know what's up.
<quoted text> Here we go again. Your idea of variation is not withstanding. When you can show me one single variation that leads to an increase in specificity, instead of just a different atom or molecule bonded to the corresponding site on the replicated molecule then you may have something. What specificity can come from any variation you have in mind? Again I remember your idea of replication. In actual spontaneous replication research there are no good examples of variation at all, but in your world you seem to think that the spontaneous formation of a lipid protocell (exactly the same idea as a soap bubble) is somehow representative of replication. I don't want to start that all over again, you are seriously disillusioned if you think that is replication. And even if one were to make that leap, where is your specificity? Nowhere! Yay I got tons and tons of soap bubbles. Look! Some of them have 12 carbon chains instead of 10, but they don't do anything different, they just keep making soap bubbles.
<quoted text> If they are not emergent then they are separate issues/entities. No one knows if they are emergent or not so how can I answer you as to what they would be? Isn't everything in existence "natural"? But we don't know the bulk of reality now do we. Does that bumm you out so terribly that you have to resort to prevarication? It bumms me out too but I don't resort to exclusions and conclusions based on wishful thinking. I am not concluding consciousness is separate I am thinking it very well could be. I am allowed to believe what I want as are you but you are not allowed to assume things that aren't proven.
<quoted text> are you ever going to get specific and tell me what processes exactly are observed to prove consciousness is this or that? Yay it SEEMS obvious that consciousness EFFECTS matter. That's all we know is that if affects matter we can't assume it is emergent of it.
<quoted text> You first if it *is*, then what are you proposing as it's source? No answr? Hmm I thought you said there was evidence.
<quoted text>Apparently as long as you continue to do the same on the opposite end.

shinningelectr0n wrote:

Hey! Why aren't there more people awake on Topix at 3:21 AM?

shinningelectr0n wrote:

Hey! Why aren't there more people awake on Topix at 3:21 AM?

Lil Ticked wrote:

<quoted text>only 2:35am here

shinningelectr0n wrote:

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You sound like a lawyer.

Sheila wrote:

<quoted text>You! Quit waking me up!

shinningelectr0n wrote:

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You bring up an interesting point. Consciousness affects matter in the brain and yet the matter affects the consciousness. It's a two-way street. "As you think, so you are" also has physical ramifications aside from the more commonly accepted interpretation of creation of ethics, personality, morals, etc.
We are like computers that can, at will, reroute our circuitry and programming to a limited degree and this will is derived from non-material sources. Fascinating.

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Pokay1kaduB wrote:

<quoted text>Yes I hope so. But until we can explain this quantum perpetual motion thing (for starters, and then on up to explaining existence itself) then we shouldn't assume. I would rather science left consciousness and abiogenesis as "unknowns" than trying to pin them down as emergent properties of matter and nothing more, with no concrete connection to the source/cause. Talk about premature. Then again it's not the fault of science but the ones that try to interpret it.
<quoted text>Can't prove it. Well truthist and CJ did follow eachother so it's possible truthist followed him to another forum. But it's very hard to believe they'd leave topix completely. They hardly missed a day and then all of a sudden no Jethro, then truthist would tell me how suspicious she was because of the wacky things going on with her posts remaining visible to her but no one else, and that CJ claimed the same before he disappeared, and how weird it was for CJ to leave on the spot, then truthist herself disappeared. They (well CJ started it) had their very own thread which is still available, entitled "economic blunders leading to the present".
I sense a professional hacker, not topix management. They must have really hit some nerves with the wrong people on those global warming threads. There are posters that cuss at the top of their lungs all day long at others but never seem to get banned by topix over the years. I don't see any justification for topix to ban them

Pokay1kaduB wrote:

<quoted text>Gotta love 'googlebooks'. I could get lost in that link. Good one, thanks. Very interesting perspective by the author. It was interesting to read about the possible crude catalytic activity of "multimers" (around 50 peptides long). And the idea that thioesters could have been the mechanism by which these polypeptides were put together since it is generaly accepted that condensation reactions that would normally be used to do this in lab are not plausible as part of a spontaneous process. But the theme was that there just is no plausible connection between the existence of crude replicators and or building blocks and the RNA world. And chance doesn't even make sense as there is no such thing when you have a bunch of multifunctional building blocks.
Any replicator is just a *part* of a larger working system/machine. I used to ask what good it is to have a single replicating protein or any single replicating molecule? How can it ever do anything more than it's "job description"? How can it ever replicate itself and then move on to replicate the next part in the chain of evolution? Assuming it can't (since we have no evidence it can) then what benefit is there to more of the same molecule? If we have a ton of coenzyme A from endless replication, so what? We have NEVER found a single case of any crude spontaneous replicator that is even remotely able to replicate to progressively more and more specificity, it is only able to repeat the same process over and over and over and.....and we have barely even found any working replicating "system" pathway at all. In a solution (under non spontaneous conditions) containing the right components and concentrations they have managed to get a polypeptide-like substrate to catalyze a duplication of itself, but what good is a duplication of something if there is no continuation of increasing complexity if there is no iota of a clue that it even possesses the ability to do such a thing? That in itself would be magical!
It's like you need the whole system (of life) to be spontaneously produced at the same time. I mean even if you invoke baby steps and natural selection and crude replicators, you would need a separate and basically *concurrent* evolution of all the different pieces of the machine. I personally think it is getting ridiculous to keep assuming that there will one day be an explanation consistent with a spontaneous 'just is' mechanism. Hope they find it but it won't be spontaneous IMO.
And if it was indeed spontaneous then you'd think someone would have stumbled on something in the last 75 years of research. Chimney mentioned there are continually increasingly plausible mechanisms being discovered, but that presupposes that it is indeed a spontaneous process. It may not be at all, and in the case that abiogenesis was not spontaneous then we will never find a spontaneous pathway and then tere is no such thing as increasingly plausible pathways.
What if we find a pathway but can't accomplish it without extensive intelligent manipulation? Will that be proof that there had to be some intelligence behind abiogenesis?
I used to ask how long before we consider it a definate possibility that there was a directing force behind abiogenesis? A hundred years? A thousand years? Ten thousand more years? If we can't recreate a lousy *spontaneous* pathway then it can't be too spontaneous. Can I get the scientific community to sign a statement as to a time limit on this? And can we make it very public so that in my future lives I won't have to think that science will never admit the possibility of a "life seed", a quantum consciousness? We are splitting protons for God's sakes and we can't come up with a single lousy spontaneous first replicator that is able to progress specificity? Cmon.

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Chimney wrote:

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After leaving the CoS, CJ has independently solo-audited himself to OT Level 32 and has transcended the physical universe entirely. He is now directly interacting with higher consciousnesseseses.
Soon he will tire of this and voluntarily accept temporary amnesia and re-emerge into a physical universe body under the illusion that he is vulnerable to "death". He won't come back to "learn more deep lessons", but simply to have a game, although unknown to him, part of the game may be to imagine that there are deep lessons to learn.
It gets pretty boring having no limitations. What's required are limits, uncertainties, desires, and challenges. Meat bodies are the perfect vehicle for a jolly good game. The are games like "quest", "conquest", "love", "discovery", "hedonism", "martyrdom" and so on.
He will be back.

MichiganGEL wrote:

<quoted text> But, just how can evolution be invoked when there are as yet no genes to mutate? Wouldn't the natural tendancy of that first chemical replication process be to be disrupted under changing environmental conditions, or at the very least to go from complexity to simplicity (entropy) rather than the other way round?

Pokay1kaduB wrote:

<quoted text>OK you should know by now that I am not advocating placing my ideas in a science classroom. But it does not hurt to speculate possibilities "out of class" and that's all I have been doing this whole time. And there is really no such thing as supernatural in my book, only unknown.