cypress

Really? Maybe you should look here before you say there are no known intermediary fossils

Are these unambiguous and true intermediary fossils? How can we be sure that there is a direct relationship? As I research the information about these examples I find there are very few researchers who claim any of these examples are direct intermediaries. I was quite careful in my previous description but you have offered a straw man in response since these examples are not confirmed direct intermediaries. This is not to say that direct intermediaries never existed, or that common descent is false, it is to be accurate about what is actually known about the fossil record.

So the kinetic energy enable change. Without the deterministic processes of density, hardness, buoyancy and such, do the random processes produce sorting and similarity of shape or is it the deterministic processes that perform the sorting and shape distribution?

Gamewizard,

I can only get -3.19 when I work the problem this way: t=(13.94-15.55)/((1.8410*(1/14+1/15))^0.5)

You have to work from the inside of the parentheses outward. Using standard math order convention exponents go first then multiplication and division and then addition and subtraction so this format works also: t=(13.94-15.55)/(1.8410*(1/14+1/15))^0.5 but the way you wrote it you would get -16.90.

Since the 1/14+1/15 are in parentheses you work that first in either case.

I've been beach combing for almost 40 years now, the ocean sorts out stuff by shape, size density, even species of shells. I've seen piles of telephone pole sized piling and patches of sand flour fine, to rocks as big as basket balls. Even dead creatures sorted out by size and shape, it's a fascinating process and never fails to amaze.

I've observed the same, the beach can be a place of amazement. What though do you attribute the sorting? Do you say it is random wave action or deterministic laws of density force and kinetic motion?

While i commend you for your debate abilities so far you have given nothing new to the ID idea, it still totally fails and just because we can use our intelligence to design a heart and carve that heart out of stone so can the ocean with random movements and lots of time and no intelligence what so ever...

Nice story. Do you think it was the random motion of the waves alone or deterministic physical characteristics of density and hardness and the interaction of buoyancy in the sand and water that caused the shapes and the sorting you observed?

 

McShane and Wyner do conclude that;

Using our model, we calculate that there is a 36% posterior probability that 1998 was the warmest year over the past thousand. If we consider rolling decades, 1997-2006 is the warmest on record; our model gives an 80% chance that it was the warmest in the past thousand years.

 

 

They also conclude (and I think this is quite important);

It is widely hoped that multi-proxy models have the power to detect (i) how warm the Medieval Warm Period was, (ii) how sharply temperatures increased during it, and (iii) to compare these two features to the past decade’s high temperatures and sharp run-up. Since our model cannot detect the recent temperature change, detection of dramatic changes hundreds of years ago seems out of the question.

 

Which speaks towards the rate of change.

 

And from their Conclusions section;

Consequently, the long flat handle of the hockey stick is best understood to be a feature of regression and less a reflection of our knowledge of the truth.

Right, and these of course being the primary conclusions of the study and resulting paper, that the reconstruction is primarily a feature of mathematical manipulation than a representative model of truth. reconstructions using other data sources including for example ice cores provide a very different picture as other graphs linked on this site demonstrate. Is there a good reason to conclude that the Mann reconstruction reflects reality? I don't see it.

I believe the term missing link is primarily due to the fact that no direct intermediary fossils, that is a fossil form that is in the direct ancestorial chain between one major form and another have been identified. In other words with respect to major divisions in discernible forms, the fossil record contains no known direct primitive species in the sense you mean. It is true that there are no known direct line intermediary fossils mutually agreed by experts. In the same way, these researchers seem to be overselling the idea that this human finger and the differences in the DNA represents a separate human species unless one chooses a less restrictive sense of what it means to be a separate species. A better term would be a different DNA line than that of the line of modern humans. Either way I don't see how this has any implications regarding common ancestor relationships from millions of years ago.

Well it looks like it was the development of highly specialized sense organs in humans which gave them the slight advantage to outcompete other Hominids rather than their brains. The highly specialized sense organs helped them to communicate with each other which is very crucial in the learning process.

What specific aspect of the theory accounts for differential development of advantages? if diverging paths both offer advantage, what aspect of the theory prevents both paths to develop simultaneously in the same population? They both of course are advantageous are they not? Furthermore because both occur stepwise and over a long period of time, what is to prevent the initial opportunities to initiate pathways previously not taken to occur over and over again? How can you demonstrate that your speculation has merit?

Guys, what I am trying to say is that there seems to be something impossible (perhaps I missed something?) in the theory as applied to the clock synchronization above. The two clocks are being synchronized by using light signal. According to Relativity, both observers are correct in their observations: the observer on the train (rest frame) observes both clocks to start ticking from 0-second. The observer on the ground observes the clock in the rear end of the train to start ticking from 0-second followed by the clock in the front after a time interval.

 

As the train comes to a stop, assuming both clocks are still separated by a distance, which observer has the correct synchronization observation (or results?) if the clocks are brought together for comparison? I mean is there still a time-interval between the two clocks? Maybe the observer on the ground is wrong?

The solution to your paradox is that you specified that the clocks and the observer are brought back together. Bringing the clocks and an observer together requires relative motion as well and that action returns them all to the same reference frame.

The methods of validation of claims (reliance on replicable experiments versus reliance on holy books) are different in these two area of knowledge. But some scientists are also deists and some deists are also scientists. Newton, for example, was active in both fields.

The sciences that come into question are primarily historical science. These sciences do not rely on replicable experiments, instead they rely in inference and a prior commitment generally driven by a world-view. The methods of validation are far more similar than you would have us believe.

It is primarlily due to the energy produced by nuclear decay.

There was also an interesting paper where researchers used information to gain energy, but the energy they gained was from random thermal motion. If they could have gotten that information for free it would be a perpetual motion machine, but of course there' an energy cost in measuring the system to get the information. Basically they use the information to lower entropy, so information as "free energy" (not free as in the stuff you hear from crazies, but as in it can be used, the same sort as the free energy you lose to friction), which is not quite the same as energy.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101114/full/news.2010.606.html

The information was not used to reduce entropy since even in tis example net entropy was not reduced. They may have reduced entropy of one subcomponent, but not of the entire system/apparatus. Instead information and a powered feedback controller was employed to isolate a particle and allow it to absorb high energy collisions while avoiding low energy collisions that would drain energy.

The information is not "free energy" in any sense as that energy carrier was actually an input into the system and contributed to the function. Information was not traded or transformed into free energy.

Refrigerators are imperfect devices, the less ideally they are designed the higher the tendancy for cold and warm spots. This tendancy is increased when the refrigerator is overfilled so that air cannot freely circulate, frequently opened, have large amounts of warm items put in it at once or if there is a leaking seal. Side by side refrigerators include a fan to circulate cold air from the freezer into the refrigerator and back. The controller and or fan may be malfunctioning as well.

OK, I'll completely analyze the issue of free will being incompatible with morality:

1) Suppose free will is incompatible with perfect morality.

Therefore, any morally perfect being (such as God, if he is morally perfect), cannot have free will. But most people say God has free will and is morally perfect, but per premise 1 such a god cannot exist.

 

2) Suppose free will is compatible with perfect morality

Therefore, free will cannot be used to excuse god creating beings with poor morality. God could have created us with both perfect morality and free will, but chose to make us with poor morality instead, which seems morally dubious to say the least.

 

As the above proves, either one agree that their god does not have free will, is not morally perfect, or must find some excuse other than free will for creating us with imperfect morality.

It's not that free will is or is not compatible with perfect morality, rather that free will provides the ability for individuals to choose to ignore their moral obligations in favor of behaviors that those individuals see as better for them personally. A perfect being would have an optimized set of characteristics including perfect choices in context with free will.

I'm not sure they can be isolated since ingress and egress comes to a pinch-point at the lung sac membranes largely driven by concentration gradients so they would be in competition right?

They generate complexity. In what way do you think the complexity of an element, composed of fundamental particles, differs significantly from the complexity of a molecule composed of atoms? Are you surprised that since the constituent components are different that there will be some difference in the natureof the complexity? Are you claiming this difference is significant? apparently so?

Is complexity in the sense you mean synonymous with low probability states? It does not appear to be the same. My argument is based on probability theory. I don't know one way or another about any significant differences in complexity in the sense you mean. I don't see any difference in molecular configuration and the probabilities of those discrete states and the probabilities of subatomic particle states.

Define then, if you will, the difference - in detail - of the functional information you say is present in molecules, but not in elements.

I don't think there is much of a difference since information is based on probability and elimination of alternative configurations. It would seem that information in some form is present wherever probability is less than 1. Information is available when the probability can be determined. This is why deterministic processes cannot import information since they cannot change the probability of a configuration.

See, this is more intellectual dishonesty. The bolded sentences do not match -- evolution is not talking about closed isolated systems.

The reference to closed systems was due to your attempt to suggest that your refrigerator was a closed system. Open systems still must adhere to probability theory and entropy laws, though one must consider and include the change in mass and all other relevant fluxes. When all inputs and outputs are included and only physical processes are involved, these systems cannot experience a net increase in order either. What I said about abiogenesis and evolutionary processes (with respect to accounting for all observed diversity) and the failure of the positet theories to account for the source of molecular and information order is correct.

You have been attempting to demonstrate that conventional and well understood systems including a heat pump and growth of plants undergo a drop in entropy (though only when relevant fluxes are conveniently ignored) despite the unscientific and incorrect treatment due to ignoring these heat, energy and mass fluxes. If you are suggesting that the modern synthesis is simply ignoring an incoming fux of low entropy molecular order and information please point us to that source and describe in real terms precisely how these sources act to generate functional prescriptive information in biological and chemic systems.

So are you saying that DNA cannot be randomly generated, or that once DNA is randomly generated it can't be rearranged in a specific pattern? In case it wasn't clear, I was saying there were two processes, one making random DNA (necessarily implicit in saying the DNA was random) and then the bacteria growing and turning it into nearly deterministic copies.

Your example was imagination. It was as fictional as a perpetual motion machine. If you could offer an actualized case we can talk through it. DNA contains low entropy functional prescriptive information superimposed on a high entropy backbone chemic structure. This low entropy signal requires a source of order to form, it would be a violation of entropy law to spontaneously organize by a random process without a pre-existing source of order. existing life has a source of order in the parent organisms. But where did the original order originate, and what is the source of new and additional order for new form and function posited by evolutionary theory in the context of accounting for all observed diversity?

(See, another example -- processes we know existed are causally inadequate, processes that there is no evidence for (an intelligent designer) are causally adequate.)

Design is known to be capable of organizing information into highly ordered patterns. It very much is an adequate explanation for the presence of functional prescriptive information. If you are saying that you personally reject the possibility that life on earth was designed and will continue to reject it despite the fact that design appears to be an adequate mechanism until you personally shake hands with the actual designer, I can't help you with that hang-up.

I am not failing to consider the inputs and outputs (incidentally, it's a closed system, not open, and not isolated -- look it up), which is why I'm talking about a closed system rather than an isolated system, but it just so happens that the entropy of the environment is irrelevant to the question. What is intellecually dishonest is to change the question when answering. But if you like, I'll restate the question to include all the inputs and outputs, so we're both happy:

 

Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Describe the changes that occur in entropy after the refrigerator is turned on in 1) the system, ie the 1 cubic meter of air, and 2) the environment (ie, everything else). Assume anything you like in addition as necessary to make the problem well-defined.

 

There, now you can consider the inputs and outputs to your heart's content, and still answer the question.

A fixed volume of air in a refrigerator is not a closed system, it is open because as the temperature changes, density increases so mass is moving into the system. In addition there is circulation in the refrigerator. My answer stands that including inputs and outputs, entropy rises slightly for the contents and the associated heat flux. While entropy of a non-reacting substance drops as temperature drops, it can only experience a reduction in entropy due to communication with other systems. Isolated, closed systems do not spontaneously drop in entropy. There must be a source for this increased order. Neither abiogenesis nor evolutionary theory (as an explanation for all observed diversity) offer a source for molecular and information entropy.

The info this includes is that the constant of integration is zero. (Incidentally, your concept of entropy as you described violates the third law of thermodynamics, unless deterministic processes result in perfect crystals only.) But the mistake you made is specifically in confusing dPilogPi with PilogPi. For example, I said the original DNA was randomly generated, so Pi = 1/4. After passing through a deterministic process, the Pi is 1, as you said. Therefore the change in entropy is S = ∑[(1/4)log(1/4) - 1 log 1) = ∑(1/4)log(1/4), clearly a decrease in entropy.

Your hypothetical case cannot happen. It is like the backyard engineer pedaling a perpetual motion machine. If there exists a deterministic process that changes from one occurrence of discrete states to another, those two occurrences of discrete states must have equal probabilities. It is possible that a random process does change from one occurrence to the other, but the probabilities must be unchanged.

Let's not be intellectually dishonest -- no amount of genetic engineering will ever show that intelligent design is a causally adequate process to explain life on earth. The only thing that would, would be to show that the odds of there being an intelligent designer are higher than the odds of it being done by known natural processes. But no amount of showing how smart people are will provide any evidence of pre-life-on-earth intelligences.

Design by engineers would demonstrate that design is a causally adequate mechanism, whether you accept the implications or not.

Cypress are you saying that the design for all modern organisms was already in the first organisms or are you saying that some design elements are added as time goes on by some outside source of design resulting in the complexity we se today and the gradual rise of that complexity over the last 3.8 billion years or so?

I am not saying either. There is insufficient information to know how diversity occurred. I do know that the modern synthesis fails to offer a causally adequate process, other processes must have been involved.

Yes public safety overrides private property within reasonable limits. the owner has an obligation to maintain the building. failure to maintain it forfeits property rights.

It is intellectually dishonest to fail to include inputs and outputs when speaking of open systems, because it leads to misleading conclusions. All of my training was done this way. Inputs and outputs are always included. We will simply have to disagree on methods if you continue to insist otherwise.

I asked you for the formula you said you used, could you provide that?

The change in entropy is dS = ∑dPilogPi , For deterministic processes Pi = 1 and dS=0

And if a random process increases entropy (changes a state to one of higher probability) but a deterministic process changes the state back to the original without decreasing entropy, that doesn't seem to add up. Hence why I suspected that you confused change in entropy and total entropy, and why I asked for your formula to verify whether that is the case.

Your hypothetical example can't happen, it is a form of a perpetual motion machine and there can be no real examples of this situation. A deterministic process has only one outcome possible and therefore cannot change the sum of entropy for the i discrete microstates. If the probability of the occurrence of particular configuration of a discrete microstate is a particular value and that configuration occurs but then that occurrence is acted on by a deterministic process and changed to another configuration, the probability of both configurations must be equal.

It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information.

 

It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that.

It is improper to treat the system in isolation since the DNA molecule is not isolated. It is an open system with many other systems acting on it, and thus inputs and outputs must be included. Failure to include them results in incorrect results just as failure to include inputs and outputs caused you to come to incorrect results with the heat pump and the lawn examples.

What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking.

Experimental biology can tell us what and how things actually happen. Speculating about what might have happened over the last 4 billion years will never tell us anything about how it happened or even how likely it was to have happened a particular way. It will remain nothing but speculation.

It's "created" if you consider the system in isolation, its "imported" if you consider the system with the surroundings and consider random interactions to be information.

 

It makes no difference to my arguments, since either way information in a system (eg DNA) can increase, and we can agree on that.

It is improper to treat the system in isolation since the DNA molecule is not isolated. It is an open system with many other systems acting on it, and thus inputs and outputs must be included. Failure to include them results in incorrect results just as failure to include inputs and outputs caused you to come to incorrect results with the heat pump and the lawn examples.

What is extremely likely to have happened anywhere on earth in 4 billion years does not necessarily translate to extremely likely to have happened while a human is looking.

Experimental biology can tell us what and how things actually happen. Speculating about what might have happened over the last 4 billion years will never tell us anything about how it happened or even how likely it was to have happened a particular way. It will remain nothing but speculation.

It is similar with evolution, you observe a limited subset of what happens to some of the millions of species over billions of years, and infer the rest.

But inference can never tell us how it happened. Let's be honest. We don't know and can't know how diversity occurred until we experimentally confirm a process that is causally adequate and validated to derived the posited changes. Genetic engineers are getting very close to confirming design is a causally adequate process. Evolutionary biologists have made almost no progress in demonstrating the capability of the modern synthesis to generate new form and function.

why?

Answered in the comment immediately following my statement in the post of interest.

I thought we were debating whether it is likely for evolution to have happened?

I am not debating that change occurred, I am debating how it occurred.

Well, that's rather a long and vague answer to a yes or no question. But it seems to me that you answered that yes, the entropy of the system I asked about dropped, and then further pointed out that this is still consistent with the second law of thermodynamics. Good, I think? Did I misunderstand you or did you agree that the entropy of a system can drop (at the expense of greater entropy outside the system, of course)?

 

Oh, and what happened to the part about please not analyzing irrelevant things? Your answer would have been much clearer if you had ignored the parts not relevant to the question as requested.

It would have been misleading and Begging the Question to answer the way you were pushing for the question to be answered, thus the explanation. For open systems including the heat pump example and the lawn, one must include inputs and outputs in order to come to an accurate and representative answer. Including heat transfer from the contents of the refrigerator, net entropy is greater or equal to zero as it must be for all open or closed systems when physical processes are involved.

No, I don't want you broadening the question to include things I haven't, neither in time nor in space. A system means nothing more than a part of the universe that I'm talking about, and everything else is the environment. I ask whether entropy can decrease in a system and again you answer that entropy will in increase in the universe. I'm not asking about the universe, I'm asking about the system. Please read and learn what a system is: http://en.wikipedia....Physical_system

 

But I'll try to be extremely clear. Suppose you have a system defined as such: a volume of air of 1 cubic meter, enclosed by the walls of a refrigerator, which is not turned on, all at room temperature and in equilibrium with the environment. You turn the refrigerator on. Does the entropy of the system (1 cubic meter of air) decrease within the next 30 minutes, or does it not? Please refrain from trying to include in your answer anything other than what I have specified, 1 cubic meter of air within 30 minutes of turning on the refrigerator.

I am trying to keep the scope of the questions in context and consistent with the topic. Questions that address straw man arguments don't add any understanding or clarity. All physical processes conform to the observed physical laws including those based on probability such as entropy. Entropy considerations define the direction of heat transfer, and molecular and information ordering on a macro scale over a large number of discrete events. The direction is invariably such that net entropy is zero or greater for closed systems and for open systems when inputs and outputs are included so long as these systems involve physical processes. Chemic and biological processes that are known, observed, and understood all conform to these physical laws at the macro level. Two posited processes that are not well understood are abiogenesis (life from non life by chemic processes alone) and evolution (the derivation of all observed biological diversity by known evolutionary processes alone) both of these processes as currently described by the respective theories lack causal adequacy because neither theory accounts for a source of low entropy molecular and information order that would be required by entropy considerations to drive previously disorganized systems lacking the molecular and information order to a state of higher organization. Existing biological systems do not have this problem because they do contain sufficient organization within them to account for observed biological processes and even allow for modest limited adaptation, but do not contain sufficient molecular and information order for observed evolutionary processes to generate new form and function.

The refrigerator example is a good opportunity to demonstrate these realities. A refrigerator is a heat pump that uses external potential and kinetic energy to transfer heat from the cool inside of the box to the warmer outside. Entropy considerations prevent direct transfer of heat from low to high since heat must flow in a way that causes entropy to remain constant or rise, and thus heat must flow from high to equal or lower temperature components. The heat pump delivers cold refrigerant to the ice box heat exchanger to allow for heat flow out of the ice box and into the refrigerant stream. The kinetic work energy is imparted on the refrigerant to raise the pressure and temperature of the refrigerant to a high temperature so that the heat energy plus the kinetic energy now transformed into heat energy will flow to warm area outside the ice box. Finally the condensed refrigerant is passed across an expansion valve where the pressure and remaining heat does work in the evaporator by expanding in volume greatly such that the refrigerant becomes very cold. The net effect for heat pump systems is that heat from the cool area plus input energy is expelled to the higher temperature area such that net entropy is increased.

To address Skeptic's question directly, treating the contents of the box as an open system as he requested, the entropy of the contents drop while an equal or greater measure of entropy is transfered out of the icebox into the refrigerant through the evaporative heat exchanger. Thus the net entropy including the inputs and outputs of the open system Skeptic described is zero or greater depending on the efficiency of the heat exchange process.

OK then, my proof: Take a plant, lets say with a mass m. Burn the plant in a heat engine and check how much work you get out of it; this will be proportional to the mass. Now suppose the plant were to grow to a mass of 2m. Burning the same plant would yield twice the work (assuming consistent composition). Thus after plant growth there is more available energy for doing work, proving that entropy has decreased. If you don't know what entropy is, you can read up on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy

No, skeptic you are wrong. Since there is twice the mass, thermal entropy of the plant prior to burning will have doubled as a result of the growth. Check the entropy tables and you will see that it is as I say for all matter, not undergoing a phase change, and at the same temperature and pressure. The net change including inputs and outputs will be positive as well. Biological growth, indeed all physical processes involve a net zero or increase in entropy. There can be no net drop in entropy for any macro level physical process.

Personally, I find it surprising that you would think that an isolated container containing plants and materials needed for plants to grow would result in plants growing despite lack of sunlight rather than decaying (ie entropy increasing in an isolated system as required by the laws of thermodynamics).

Straw man. I have not made this claim. You know perfectly well we were both speaking of a lawn actively growing. Your pattern of logical fallacies continue to add up. I will return to address your other errors later.

Why is that important? The argument stipulates a God who is morally perfect (i.e. perfect in A), not a God who is perfect in every attribute. The God in this argument does not need "absolute perfection" or perfection in B.

The OP stipulated that God was omni-benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. I take that to mean absolutely perfect, is this incorrect?

If two attributes are exclusive, it follows directly that maximizing both simultaneously is impossible, so achieving perfection in both should be impossible. Why is that illogical, or a problem?

Because if a perfect being is less than perfect at something then it would be illogical to speak of absolute perfection as a real entity since there could be no most perfect by your logic.

But this can't be because most perfect is considered more perfect than any other configuration and is thus most perfect is absolute perfection since nothing can be more perfect. So even with competing goods, there must still be perfection.

Is God bound by economic theory?

 

Again, suppose there are two competing goods, A and B. God may score an 8 in A and B, which is the "best" He can do logically, but it is logically possible for him to neglect B entirely and then score a 10 in A. Hence total perfection in A is possible.

But then absolute perfection would be impossible, which is illogical.

This is because neglecting B would mean that one is not totally perfect in B.

No. Competing goods being a logical possibility do not make them a necessity, so it is possible for absolute perfection to exist in those cases in which competing goods do not.

Competition does seem to be a necessity. First off it is self evident that competing goods do exist in the only world we know. Second, in economic theory, the fact of something having value guarantees competition. Competition is a necessary outcome of holding more than one independent good of value even if equally so.

Well, take that further. There may be competing goods, but their existence isn't a problem. It is a problem when I value those competing goods. If I neglect them, perfection is still possible.

But in this case absolute perfection would not be possible.