Evolution breakthrough: There are ONLY Miracles!

[bascule]

oldtobor, your argument would only be applicable to timescales below a Planck time. Since Planck time only affects objects at a Planck length (the distance light can travel in a Planck time) it wouldn't be possible for the transitions you posit to take place in the given timescale (i.e. a butterfly becoming a star becoming a computer) since these objects are several orders of maginitude larger than a Planck length.

 

So what is so sacred about cause and effect ?

 

Scientific, physical theories make predictions about causality which have been upheld in countless scientific experiments and have not yet been disproven. Perhaps the most notable of these are special and general relativity. These theories make statements about causal relationships which have been tested empirically and shown to be correct.

 

Your claims would posit a universe that is inherently acausal (i.e. miraculous) but countless scientific experiments do not find the universe to operate in such a manner.

[padren]

If I am to gather this right, evolution is in the mix because when someone argues creation vs. evolution, they are arguing our existance is miraculous and not a result of natural processes.

 

What you are saying is that since you think physics can only work if miracles are responsible...and that you feel that the evolution debate is really a debate if the universe is miraculous, and feel that this wins that debate.

 

Let me know if I am off on that.

 

 

Regarding the chaos you describe at very very very short intervals of time - isn't the fact that such random events (including spontaneous creation of ford trucks) really mess up the wonderful predictability we find in classical physics?

 

If a truck can "just" appear without any rules then why would there be any rules to make it go away before we noticed it? Why wouldn't any of these events throw off our very accurate models?

 

 

You can say at some level there is no connection and everything just changes "states" like frames on a movie screen that look connected but aren't...but if that was really true it would not make sense that the laws of physics are so consistent and good at making predictions.

 

 

It reminds me of the old paradox-ish question, where someone walks 10 feet towards the door traveling at 1 foot a minute, when you examine his progress in increments exactly half of the last. So at 5 feet he's taken 5 minutes, 7 and a half 7 and a half minutes, but you keep cutting them in half and half and half and it looks like he can never get there - there are an infinite number of increments of time to measure...and how can you add up an infinite series of numbers and get a finite value?

 

Of course, we know from experience that you can move 10 feet traveling at 1 foot a minute and it only takes 10 minutes, every single time. The formulas and emperical evidence tends to back this up very solidly.

 

I think you are getting lost in the same sort of mental issue - the question of what we can examine vs. what can (and is) happening.

 

 

On the definition of miracle, the closest I can come up with is an instance of "exception" to the normal rules, presumably where god intervenes and makes sure a baseball goes over the fence when physics says it shouldn't, or that a car's tires keep traction when they'd naturally slip.

 

So far, it doesn't look like there are miracles in physics of that definition - it looks like the same rules that appear to be in effect are the same ones that have been since as far back as we can measure.

When we wonder if something is miraculous, we tend to discover the miracle event is just the result of the same rules that have always been there getting a rare outcome because of a rarely introduced factor that just happened to effect that instance.

[oldtobor]

padren, yes you got it more or less right. The point is that the universe is within something containing it, or there must be something outside the universe, the laws of physics are a subset of a larger universe that is totally lawless. Or maybe MATTER IS INFINITE AND CONTAINS WITHIN ITSELF ALL POSSIBLE UNIVERSES AND LAWS OF PHYSICS.

 

We observe the first living cell and there doesn't seem to be such an easy sequence of cause and effects that can create this first cell. That is where the debate begins in creationism. The cell is something we cannot easily imagine using our physics as just MATTER SELF MANIPULATING ITSELF until a cell emerges. The earth seen from a far enough view is just a ball of rocks with some chemicals. Now let this ball of rocks manipulate itself and then you get a living cell and then a thinking mind. That is what seems so incredible. Take a look at the pictures of the surface of mars and say, hey this large ball of matter called mars will manipulate itself and create a thinking mind!

 

The debate between ID and Evolutionists is mostly a debate on "suspension of belief". When you go see a movie you perform what is known as a suspension of disbelief in the sense that you make believe that the fiction in the movie is real no matter how far fetched. Now what a person who believes in Intelligent Design does is the opposite, he performs a suspension of belief in the fact that matter can automatically evolve itself into a human. And the evolutionist does the same in not believing that a god can assign a human out of thin air.

 

Both can be seen as miracles or can be seen as not possible. It is an aesthetic choice. A person can say that it is not possible for a jet to fly and cross oceans since it is so heavy. He can say that he can never believe that possible and if it does happen it is a miracle, something the mind can't conceive. If we perceived the world with a time interval of a second equal to 100 years, we would see a computer pop out in front of us not having ever seen the intermediate events. It would look like a miracle. But then what is a miracle ? Anything can be seen as a miracle if you perform a suspension of belief. Even a particle that moves 1 cm can be seen as an absolute miracle, impossible to be true and happening.

 

Science tries to be coherent and honest and tries to explain things with what we see and know everyday, therefore the theory of Evolution is as close as science can get to a reasonable truth. Science always says : "I AM NOT SURE, I DON'T KNOW, I MAY BE WRONG." The religious ID proponents are always sure of themselves, they possess the truth, they have no doubts. But if ID is right, they don't know who the Intelligent Designer is. It could be a monster from a parallel universe, or an alien race, or we could all be in a computer simulation. We could be brains in a vat, the god could be any of a million possible things.

 

In case it wasn't clear, what I wanted to say is that the Intelligent Design proponents find it impossible to believe that MATTER all by itself can SELF EVOLVE into organisms as complex as human beings. This to them seems like a miracle or impossible or as they always say like a tornado that can build a new functioning car by pure chance by going through a junk yard of scrap metal. But this is just a subjective impression of theirs based on what seems possible and impossible.

 

No one can really know or measure what is or isn't impossible. We can only measure things according to what we already know and our everyday experience. Therefore science still does the best job in this even though it can never be excluded that supernatural events and items may be possible. Like a robot civilization that can travel through time and design humans.

 

Lets imagine that Intelligent Design is correct. Scientists agree that only some kind of intelligence could have designed the first cell and universe etc. Then you have to ask who or what is the Intelligent Designer ? You have 3 cases:

 

1) It is a religious God, then which one ? choose between Christian, Jew, Islam, Buddha, Tao or any of other many gods

 

2) Science Fiction Scenario: Alien Race, Brain in a Vat, robots, monsters from parallel universes etc. The wilder the scenario the more true it probably is.

 

3) Physical Laws are still valid only we don't know the whole story. Maybe some things happen at the center of stars that can connect to the first cells, maybe there are parallel universes or aliens (even though these seem to mix with point 2, they don't really deny science).

 

Maybe we can't perceive events happening at very small time scales like 10 to the minus 50 seconds. If our mind was made in such a way as to perceive events every 100 years, we would see lots of miracles, computers pop out of thin air, jet planes pop out etc. Maybe we are seeing the world through an analogous limitation.

Now science can see linear events down to 10 to the minus 20 seconds I think. But we are completely blind to events that occur at smaller time scales. So if physics does alot of complex interesting things at those time intervals, we simply can't see it and maybe the origin of the first cells has to do with what happens in those intervals. Even in this case the wilder the scenario the more true it probably is.

[oldtobor]

There are two other considerations that prove my point. First we perceive within intervals such that everything occurs in a smooth cause and effect fashion. If we perceived events every 10 seconds or 1 minute or 1 hour or any other interval, things would be choppy, would appear and disappear instantly, the world would not be a linear flow.

 

Now if you could have a dial that changes the perception intervals from plank times up to macroscopic times exceeding a few seconds, the entire range of intervals would always present miracle like perceptions of everything, THE CONSTANT LINEAR CAUSE AND EFFECT FLOW IS THE EXCEPTION not the norm.

 

Also in 100 years technology has been able to produce computers, if an advanced civilization in maybe a million years of technological evolution created minds that live within computer simulations, they would never know that there is a hidden level in their world. So like the fact that the first cell exceeds our understanding, it could be analogous to the minds in the simulator trying to understand things that origin from outside the alien's computer. So maybe the cell problem is trying to tell us that there is A HIDDEN LAYER THAT WE CANNOT PERCEIVE in the universe, MAYBE WE ARE ALL IN AN ALIEN'S COMPUTER, MAYBE THE REAL LAWS OF THE ALIEN'S WORLD WHICH IS THE REAL ONE are simpler and allow to easily construct living cells.

[padren]

The problem I have with your idea is that the "smooth fashion" is not subjective to our perception - the clockwork of everything will grind on in a very predictable manner regardless of whether we see the world every 1000 years or every nanofraction of a second.

 

While you can misread and see chaos where there is order, misreading as order where there is chaos consistently is a major statistical anomoly that is as safe to rule out as mice running the world.

 

I think, therefore, its safe to assume that any chaos we see in short increments (or long ones) is the illusion...not the well ordered world.

 

 

 

The other issue is that physics describe a universe where it is perfectly logical and infact likely for life to form, or matter to "self organize" as you put it. It doesn't make it likely for Mars to spontanieously reform, because it doesn't have the required conditions.

 

But remember, the formation of cells and life on Earth are by no means startling. It occured over a very long time, with countless bodies of water all over the world giving the possibility that the combining chemical patterns may at some point, be self replicating.

 

It may have been a long shot lottery, but there were enough tickets bought in enough places over enough time that it was closer to inevitable than to miraculous.

 

 

Now, when it comes to the issue of first cause, don't forget that any event capable of creating "time" must have created the very casuality that our brains evolved in to deal with....we may never understand what laws let time come into existance if there was no time beforehand in which something could occur that could make time.

 

This again, is a limitation of our perceptions, not the physical laws of the universe. Looking deeply at the universe until your mind is blown is not proof of maricles - just proof of your current incapacity to understand how the same rules running like clockwork everywhere could produce such effects.

[Edtharan]

There are two other considerations that prove my point. First we perceive within intervals such that everything occurs in a smooth cause and effect fashion. If we perceived events every 10 seconds or 1 minute or 1 hour or any other interval, things would be choppy, would appear and disappear instantly, the world would not be a linear flow.

We already have a solution to this. It is called "interpolation". Thi is s mathematical function that takes 2 (or more) data points and attempts to create a "smooth" transition between them.

 

Nearly every time you use a computer it is performing interpolations (especially with games). When a 3D accelerator graphics card uses the Anti Alising funtions it is useing an onterpolation algorithm.

 

An intelegent being could use such algorithms to interpolate between the different views. They could perform experiments to prove that times exist between their perceptions and so work out that "somthing" had occured inbetween them.

 

Knowing these things, the beings could then look for evidence of the occurances that happened between their "perceptions" and refine their interpolations of them (or even piece it together).

 

This is essentially what we have done with the fossil record. The fossil recod has many gaps that arn't filled (usually because the organisms that would have lived then didn't leave any trace - fossilization is a rare event that only occures under certain circumstances) and so scientits have had to interpolate what has happened in the thousands or even millions of years between fossils. These interpolations are based on the theory of evolution and do not take into account any miracles. So far the theory keeps giving very good answers.

[oldtobor]

I would look at the entire thing as MATTER CAPABLE OF SELF MANIPULATING ITSELF, or MASS-ENERGY CONFIGURATIONS THAT SELF EVOLVE AND SELF MANIPULATE INTO COMPLEX STRUCTURES. So granted that maybe on earth carbon chemicals got together and created thinking minds. Then what about in the nucleus of planets ? what about stars ? I wonder in how many other ways mass-energy could combine into complex structures and into configurations way past anything we can imagine.

 

After all if carbon chemistry can make a mind, what could organized electromagnetic fields in stars, soliton populations in stars or any other oddball configration of mass-energy "evolve" into, or more correctly stated, "SELF MANIPUALTE ITSELF" into something else. If matter on a ball of rocks like the earth can create a thinking mind, then who knows what else it can self create. Maybe matter is truly infinite and without any real bounds in its possibilities. The Technological Singularity arriving may show even more incredible possibilities.

[Mokele]

Ok, this is just moronic.

 

Closed before the bullshit level gets too high.