In chapter 11. (Into the meme pool) of 'The Information' Gleick shows himself to have been heavily influenced by the ideas of Richard Dawkins. We might say he becomes a Dawkins mime. Painful as it is, I need to respond to this chapter in quite a bit of detail.
Quotes and comments;
305. 'Rhyme and rhythm help people remember bits of text. Or: rhyme and rhythm help bits of text get remembered. Rhyme and rhythm are qualities that aid a meme’s survival, just as strength and speed aid an animal’s.
- The chapter has become a parade of stupid remarks. The pathetic fallacy marches on.
Just as? Hardly. The conflate a biological organism with an abstract object violates all we know about doing science. (The next thing we know, he'll tell us that memes also bleed. "Do I not bleed?" said the meme.)
Since Gleick is so big on science, maybe he can tell us how we could determine whether the meme idea is scientific. Obviously if one wants to, one can think of the meme as alive; but is it? and is that a scientific idea? Is it testable? Is it falsifiable? This is nothing more than an intellectual game (hopefully it's just a hula hoop type fad.)
We see in the meme idea how vitally important one's perspective is; ie. it determines what a person will make of the data. (If the meme idea is true, then anything can be true; all one has to do is claim that it's true. What couldn't be true if our standards for truth are set this low?
Are martians real because some people believe martians exist? Are aliens real because some people think they exist? Are aliens an invading virus? (i.e. is the meme alien an invading virus?)
Is time travel real because we have the time machine meme?
Is evolution true because we have the evolution meme? (I think m2m evolution is about as valid a concept as the meme concept.)
305. 'Like genes, memes have effects on the wide world beyond themselves: phenotypic effects.
- Like genes? I don't think so. There's a load of presuppositions embedded in that one small word. Memes aren't like genes at all... at least not in any real sense. This is poetic licence at best. Are memes made of code? do they produce proteins and cells? do they have error detection devices? Do they have code for writing code? Are they composed of chemicals?
If we want to bring at least a little common sense into this meme discussion we should take note of the fact there is no such thing as a generic meme. There are only memes created by human beings. Memes don't have an independent existence; but yet this is how dawkins speaks of them.
This is a deeply anti-human way of looking at the world. Dawkins likes the idea because it allows him to call god a virus. ie. people don't believe in god because of evidence, or reason, but because they (helpless victims) were attacked by a nasty virus. His meme idea is demeaning, degrading and offensive. It dehumanizes people. (The more offensive an idea is to christians the more dawkins is attracted to it. This focus seems to control what ideas he adopts or rejects in his so called 'science'. The direction his 'science' goes is controlled by his hatred of christianity. That this should be called neutral science is a farce.)
The reason some people are christians and some are not is due to the unknown vagaries of virus infection. No idea could be more demeaning, more uncivil... or more demented. (Does dawkins thank his lucky stars he never got infected? Why does he give himself any credit for his atheism if it's all dependent on not catching a virus?)
In dawkins we have the bizarre picture of a person who claims to be a Humanist, but who has formulated the most inhuman (anti-human) ideas ever dreamt of. (eg. the selfish gene scenario and the meme/virus scenario)
306. 'Memes can replicate with impressive virulence...'
- Nonsense. Things don't do anything with virulence. Good grief. Only people act with virulence (one of them is lurking in the background of this discussion.) This is another example of anthropomorphism and personification. (The whole meme idea depends on this bit of confusion.) Gleick is confusing science with poetry.
Virulent;
1. 'Bitterly hostile or antagonistic; hateful: virulent criticism
2. Very bitter or spiteful; malignant: as, a virulent invective
- it's true that people refer to diseases as virulent, but this is a metaphor. Matter has no will; it's impersonal. It has no feelings.
306. ''When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking...'' - NH
- It seems H. doesn't understand the meme project all that well. He should have written; "when a meme plants itslef in my mind, it literally parasitizes my brain...'' See the difference?
In just the way a virus? Not even close. This is more poetry.
A fertile meme? Only living organisms are fertile. Ideas are not fertile. They have no ovaries.
Yes Nick, this Is just a way of talking. (If it's not, prove it with a scientific experiment. Show me a way to falsify it. Show me a way to test it.
What a hopeless dead end this meme project is. Nothing good will come of it. It's just more of the dehumanizing project gifted to us by reductionism.
306. '...the pioneering ethologist W. D. Hamilton, reviewing the book [Selfish Gene]for Science, ventured this prediction:
"Hard as this term may be to delimit—it surely must be harder than gene, which is bad enough—I suspect that it will soon be in common use by biologists and, one hopes, by philosophers, linguists, and others as well and that it may become absorbed as far as the word “gene” has been into everyday speech.''
- Why would anyone have such a bizarre hope? He hopes to see the dehumanizing of man? (Of course people like Dawkins can only imagine the meme idea as a weapon to attack Christians (etc.) they don't foresee it being used as weapon against them. Make no mistake; the meme was invented as weapon to attack christianity.)
You can't define (limit) meme because it doesn't exist. A gene is real, and a meme is not. The gene can be an object of scientific study, while the meme cannot.
If these people love science so much, why are they favoring such non-scientific claptrap as the meme idea? (But perhaps it's only some genes at work; prompting them to make fools of themselves against their will.)
If dawkins is correct about his view of the gene (as master of its human slaves) he cannot be right about the meme. Why? This can't be a true idea, because there could be no truth in a selfish gene model of the universe. ie. if the only reason we think, say or do anything is the influence of genes, the concept of truth disappears.
307. '...for most of human history memes and language have gone hand in glove.
- Seems strange the meme was only invented in 1976 then doesn't it?
A meme is like a gene the way a hand is like a glove :=}
307. "Well, now, Walton’s own viral text, as you can see here before your eyes, has managed to commandeer the facilities of a very powerful host—an entire magazine and printing press and distribution service. It has leapt aboard and is now—even as you read this viral sentence—propagating itself madly throughout the ideosphere.'' - Hofstadter
- The meme idea is evidence for me that intellectuals in our day are not serious thinkers at all. They prefer playing games to seeking the truth; being silly to be serious; having fun rather than being logical; etc. (They sure haven't spent much time critiquing materialism or evolutuion theory.)
A meme has 'commandeered' the staff of a magazine! Oh what fun we're having now. Break out the beer and noise makers.
308. 'Hofstadter gaily declared himself infected by the meme meme.'
- My point exactly. (see comment above)
If he's been 'infected' by anything, it's silliness.
309. “The computers in which memes live are human brains.”
- The brain is not a computer for one thing; memes aren't alive for another. The man has been self-deluded into taking his reification as real. He's trapped within the confines of the pathetic fallacy. (But I guess we can't blame him, all this nonsense is only the work of his selfish genes after all, and what can a poor slave do but obey his masters?)
310. 'In bioinformatics, chain letters are an object of study. They are memes; they have evolutionary histories.
- Apparently the word evolution no longer has any meaning.
Maybe it's only as real as memes are; i.e. an invention of the human mind; simply a way of looking at things. People capable of treating memes as real and alive are clearly capable of inventing something as impossible as macro or cosmic evolution. It's clear to me that neither reality nor logic has any restraint on their speculations.
We've seen how the meme mavens don't mind engaging in personification and reification, so why would the darwinists have minded a few logical fallacies and inventions? Natural selection gets reified, and turned into a creative agent (rather than a banal weeding out process). Time is the hero of the plot sounds a lot like a meme doesn't it? Uniformitarianism is just a way of looking at things after all; it's certainly not true.
310. “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life” [Revelation 22:19].
- This is clearly proof the bible is a meme. It's a scientific fact, as real as the earth orbiting the sun.
Gleick just couldn't resist the temptation to disparage the bible and christians could he? You see, people don't believe the bible because they're convince it's true. Oh no. They believe it because they (poor helpless victims) were infected by a nasty virus. He might as well spit on them. (The motivation for this game is hatred, and a desire to attack christians and Christianity.)
I don't suppose evolution or atheism are nasty viruses attacking innocent victims are they? (I guess there's some scientific method that allows them to distinguish good viruses from bad ones :=} What a farce.
311. “These [chain] letters have passed from host to host, mutating and evolving,” they reported.
"Like a gene, their average length is about 2,000 characters..."
- Like a gene eh?
A letter is like a gene is it? That would mean that an intelligent agent composed it wouldn't it? These people are having so much fun they don't see what the implications of what they're saying.
I can't believe anyone takes this stuff seriously; but then again, it is academics we're dealing with here... and nothing is too silly for them to study and waste their time on.
311. "Like a potent virus, the letter threatens to kill you and induces you to pass it on to your “friends and associates”
- Like a potent virus? I don't think so. This 'equation' they've made exists only in their mind. There is no real identity here at all. There isn't any real similarity. These people have deluded themselves. This equation is not in the data, but in the (fanciful) interpretation of the data.
A letter doesn't threaten to kill someone, a person does. (These are the same people who claim it's guns that kill; apparently they mean it literally.)
312. "Like an inheritable trait, it promises benefits for you and the people you pass it on to. Like genomes, chain letters undergo natural selection and sometimes parts even get transferred between coexisting “species.
- Maybe some of the radical deconstructionists are correct, and words really don't have any meaning. That's the only conclusion I can make from this incoherent statement.
You can get an idea from this how loose the current generation is with their language and their thinking. Apparently anything goes... as long as people like it; as long as it's user friendly. This explains for me how so many people can believe in a materialist creation of the life forms on this planet. ie. they believe the impossible; they believe it because they want to. Cosmic evolution is just words on a page; that's the only 'reality' it has. If people can believe the quote above, they can believe anything.
313. “Memes have not yet found their Watson and Crick,” said Dawkins; “they even lack their Mendel.”
- We see a frightful example here of scientism; the idea you can study all subjects (even human experience) with the same methods you use to study a rock.
More anthropomorphism by the world's favorite mystic.
313. 'In the competition for space in our brains and in the culture, the effective combatants are the messages.
- There's a mindless stupidity in the claim messages compete (compete for brain space yet). People compete, messages do not. People may (and do) use messages to facilitate competition but that's a different matter. If a person can't realize a category mistake, there's not much you can say. (Maybe we should charge some memes with false advertising, and let the business owners go free. Maybe some memes should be charged with racism, and that great sin homophobism :=}
314. “The human world is made of stories, not people,” writes David Mitchell.
- It's hard for me to imagine a more stupid, absurd statement.
The human world doesn't have any humans in it? Good grief. I thought this man was supposed to be able to write.
I wonder if stories bleed. ("Do I not bleed when you stick me with a pin,'' the story said.)
This is more death of man theology. (When I first heard RJR say that the death of god theology will lead to the death of man theology I couldn't figure out what he meant. I've since learned.)
314. “The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.”
- That's clever David. It's also meaningless. (Only when people play with words do stories have selves.)
That's the whole point of the meme idea (as I said earlier) Memes mean never having to say you're sorry. Memes mean no one is responsible for their actions.
In that case why do we still have laws, courts and jails? We have them because you can't live in conformity with a false idea. e.g. materialism.
If people want to look at the world this way (and stand on their head to do it) I can't stop them. If people want to believe in materialist origin scenario I can't stop that either.
314. 'Margaret Atwood writes: “As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn’t imagine how it was that you hadn’t known it before.
- The biblical writers were well aware of man's propensity for self-deception. "And imagining themselves to be wise, they became fools." This isn't knowledge, it's a self-serving delusion. (Few things could be more comical than a 'science' of memes. I wonder if it will conform to the Dover judge's definition :=}
314. 'Fred Dretske, a philosopher of mind and knowledge, wrote in 1981: “In the beginning there was information. The word came later.”
- Is that empirical science I wonder. Anyone observe this? If by word he means intelligence, I disagree. There can be no information with an intelligent source. (This at least is what we observe, when we do investigation of the real world.)
Actually the information in the cell is many (many) times more complex and sophisticated than the human alphabet. There's really no comparison.
315. He added this explanation: “The transition [from molecule to man] was achieved by the development of organisms with the capacity for selectively exploiting this information in order to survive and perpetuate their kind.” Now we might add, thanks to Dawkins, that the transition was achieved by the information itself, surviving and perpetuating its kind and selectively exploiting organisms.
- There you have it; the world turned upside down... and all to defend materialism.
There isn't a molecule of real science in this view. This is merely metaphysical speculation. Dawkins has abandoned empirical science, and has become a kind of secular Swedenborg. Only he hears the true word, only he possesses the truth.
314. 'When a jingle lingers in our ears, or a fad turns fashion upside down, or a hoax dominates the global chatter for months and vanishes as swiftly as it came, who is master and who is slave?'
- In the PC world it's forbidden for man to be a slave master, but it's okay for him to be a slave. Apparently we're all robots being controlled by memes and by genes. This is surely the most bleak view of mankind that there has ever been.
Summary;
Ch. 11. of this book (Into the meme pool) is probably the stupidest, nonsensical, fallacious chapter I've ever read.
"Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools..." (Romans 1:22)
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick
2. Mime;
"a buffoon who practices gesticulations" [Johnson], c.1600, from Fr. mime, from L. mimus, from Gk. mimos "imitator, actor, buffoon," of unknown origin. The verb meaning "to act without words" is from 1610s; the transferred sense of "to imitate" is from 1733 (Gk. mimeisthai meant "to imitate").
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Richard Dawkins and the pathetic fallacy
Looking again at 'The Information by James Gleick. I want post some notes on the subject of personification. The subtitle is; the gene/meme machine runs off the road
Quotes and comments;
301. 'Natural selection directs the whole show.' - Gleick [1.]
- I see no evidence natural selection [NS] is a creative force. This isn't a fact, it's a claim. In my opinion it's a claim without a warrant. NS doesn't create new information or new organs or organisms; all it does is work on things already in existence. e.g. weeding out the lame and the weak isn't a creative process, nor is 'favoring' slight variations and 'disfavoring' others.
More personification on display here. NS is portrayed as the conductor of an orchestra.
301. "Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role
- Retained?
Ideas and organisms can't be spoken of in the same terms. They're radically different entities. (You'd think scientists would know this; aren't they big on classification.) This is nothing but poetry (bad poetry). This isn't science. We don't observe any of this. This is just giving the data a twisted interpretation.
I can't believe these people are serious.... I really can't. This is light years beyond silly.
To say ideas evolve is pathetic. This is just equivocation. (You'd think scientists would want to use words more carefully. Isn't precision a goal of science?)
This is an anti-scientific and poetic way of looking at things. I suppose we should have expected it; this is the nonsense that results when scientists try to take over all areas of life.
301. 'The American neurophysiologist Roger Sperry had put forward a similar notion several years earlier, arguing that ideas are “just as real” as the neurons they inhabit.
- I thought only the physical was real.
Gee; if ideas are real then god is real. How do these guys go on to deny the existence of god given this wacky metaphysics of theirs?
301. ''Ideas have power, he said.
Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other...''
- This is the sad result of reductionism. It's people who have ideas, people who have power, people who evolve' new ideas. It's people who interact with each other. We see here the death of man (the death of god theology morphed into a death of man theology) Under the reductionist rubric, man disappears from the scene... being replace by the brain, and by ideas, chemicals, information.
This isn't science, this a kind of dehumanizing religious view. (It's as if some people had a lust to degrade mankind; themselves being exempt of course.)
302. "And they [ideas] also interact with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the evolutionary scene yet.'' - Roger Sperry
- So; ideas are the cause of evolution eh? Hmm. Sounds a lot like saying ideas are the cause of creation :=}
This is more equivocation. ie. any change caused by human ideas (not ideas generic) is not (by any definition) evolution. We're told over and over that e. is a natural, undirected process. It's simply bad science (bad method) to call human intervention by the same name as darwinian evolution.
Ideas haven't caused technology (and its effects) it's been people who have done this. (What warrant does he have to strip credit from the real people who were responsible and to hand the credit to some phantasm called an idea?) This is a dehumanizing way to speak.
302. 'Richard Dawkins made his own connection between the evolution of genes and the evolution of ideas. His essential actor was the replicator, and it scarcely mattered whether replicators were made of nucleic acid.
His rule is “All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.”
- Scarcely mattered! Give me a break. Is it good science to equate biological actors with immaterial objects? Is that considered good method?
His rule? is this a rule he discovered looking into a microscope or a telescope?
This isn't a fact, it's just a claim. It's not an observation, it's just a spin on the data.
All life? how can a scientist equate a living organism with an abstraction called an idea? Do ideas breath? Do they excrete? (Well, maybe some of his do.) Is that good science? Is that good method? This is more reductionism. This is getting close to saying all things are just numbers, or it's all just math. (Or it's all just information.)
To conflate biological replicators (having DNA, etc.) with ideas is a confusion of categories. Is to do so considered good science? To say a cell and an 'idea' are both replicators is to spout nonsense. Such a statement has no meaningful content. Maybe this is truly how things appear to him, but if it is, he's deluded.
His claim isn't in any way scientific. (Am I at war with 'science' if I point out these absurdities?)
As usual dawkins is ignoring the problem of information; of where new information comes from. (Does he have a 'replicator' for that? Not that I know of.) In this fantasy version of the real world, you don't need a source of information.
302. “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this planet,”
he proclaimed at the end of his first book, in 1976.
- An idea isn't alive; not in any scientific sense of the word. It's merely a greeting card variety of metaphor that supports his claim. He's confused metaphor and reality.
302. 'For this bodiless replicator itself, Dawkins proposed a name. He called it the meme, and it became his most memorable invention...'
- A bodiless replicator eh? Sounds as real as his original replicators, or any of those dreamt up by the OOL crowd.
For someone who claims to be a defender of science, dawkins is awfully big on metaphors isn't he? In fact he depends on them. He's a kind of darwinian poet. He gives things new names, he invents names, he invents stories, puts spin on things, looks at things upside down, goes about standing on his head. It's all great fun I guess; but it's not science.
- I thought for the materialist only the physical was real. What's his foundation for calling ideas real?
Materialism;
1. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
- I don't know how a materialist can call ideas real, alive and evolving; not without betraying his own worldview. There's no way he reason consistently and logically from one to the other.
2. 'The metaphysical doctrine that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe.
3. 'The doctrine that all phenomena are to be accounted for by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, in connection with certain laws or tendencies toward laws...
- the materialist must contend that ideas are the product of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. e.g. the theory of e. must be explained purely by physics. (I think this is impossible, even for a word spinner like Dawkins.)
Here's a comical instance of dawkins defending materialism by denying materialism. ie. only if m. were untrue could his claim make sense.
302. “Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation,” he wrote. They compete with one another for limited resources: brain time or bandwidth.
- Is that a testable claim? If it's not, it's not science. This is typical Dawkins; giving his reductionist spin on things and calling it science.
Memes a leapin' - gee; must be spring. (Maybe the royals ought to make Dawkins poet laureate.)
I see that man himself has disappeared into the reductionist void gifted to us by scientism.
To say ideas compete is just plain silliness. Only people compete. Is this kind of equivocation (and reification) good science? Is this good method? (That Dawkins presents himself as a defender of scientific method is a farce. He believes in the poetic method to be sure; but not the empirical method.)
- see my post; Whatever happened to (real) science?
303. Speaking of memes in music, Gleick writes; 'This one,
a notorious though shorter-lived invader of brains, overran an immense population many times faster.
- Yes; we're back to yesterday's post and the replicator invasion [see the invasion of the replicators]. To speak of ideas as invaders of brains is both stupid and grotesque. (Man is the 'missing link' in this new anti-human theology of reductionism.) To speak of ideas overrunning a population is meaningless. It has no scientific content. This is poetry not science. I thought there was no place for poetry in science. (e.g. Genesis), but I guess it's only 'religious' poetry that's been banned. Apparently Darwinian poetry is permitted.
303. 'Even more pervasive and indelible are the smile of Mona Lisa, The Scream of Edvard Munch, and the silhouettes of various fictional extraterrestrials. These are memes, living a life of their own, independent of any physical reality.
- I have no idea how that makes sense in terms of materialism.
It's nonsense to speak of ideas as living. (I realize that biblical writers refer to scipture as the living word, but that certainly doesn't apply to so called memes - though this might be where the meme idea came from.) This isn't science. Empirical science has been abandoned; even as its great defenders claim to be defending it against creationism.
It's only a theist who has the right to speak of an entity existing independent of physical reality. (Here we have the irony of the materialist defending materialism by adopting, for the moment, the metaphysics of theism.) R. Dawkins claims that god cannot possibly exist, because nothing that doesn't have a physical form can exist. ie. god as spirit is an impossibility. Apparently a meme can do what god cannot. (This makes no sense to me, but then I'm not a physicalist.)
Memes are living a life of their own eh? I wonder if anyone's told them :=} Good grief. (Is the god meme alive and well and living a life of his own? Is that the new theology? Let's see; if the god meme is alive, does this mean he can communicate with me, and I with him? What would this mean? Does this mean prayer is valid after all?) This meme idea deserves only to be laughed at. (When I say that I mean it's replicators deserve to be laughed at.)
303. 'Memes emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go.
- We have 'memes' and brains, but no people apparently. (I wonder if James Gleick exists; maybe he's just a meme.) This is a horrid way to speak.
Travel outward? more personification.
Establish beachheads? more personification.
Establish a beachhead on paper and silicon? more poetry and personification.
- is personification good science? Is it good method? I thought science was all about depersonifying nature. I thought it was a great 'crime' to personify nature, or anything in nature. Whatever happened to that?
Personify;
1. 'To treat or regard as a person; represent as a rational being; treat, for literary purposes, as if endowed with the sentiments, actions, or language of a rational being or person, or, for artistic purposes, as if having a human form and nature.
- I thought personification was what religion did, and that this was its great crime. Whatever happened to that?
303. 'They are not to be thought of as elementary particles but as organisms.
- he means their complex ideas, not simple 'ideas' like numbers or colors. (As if those were simple.)
- This is more personification. I think he's been deliberately vague and confusing here; that he wants people to think of memes as living organisms.
303. 'The hula hoop itself is a meme vehicle. So, for that matter, is each human hula hooper—a strikingly effective meme vehicle...'
- This extends Dawkins' metaphor of the selfish gene; the model of man as a gene vehicle. ie. as man carries genes, he carries memes. As he's a plaything of some genes, he's a plaything of some memes. Man has been 'dethroned' by the gene and the meme. The lesser has become the greater. This is a dismissal of the idea of responsibility. Dawkins is trying to defend materialism by doing away with morality; as morality makes no sense in a materialist universe. In this model, man is a helpless victim of his genes. (He's a gene/meme machine I guess.) The christian critique of materialism has been that it has no basis for giving men a moral code. Dawkins deals with this critique by denying man is a morally responsible creature. Being a robot slave of selfish genes man doesn't need a moral code; such a code makes no sense since man has no free will, and can only do as the genes command.
304. “A wagon with spoked wheels carries not only grain or freight from place to place; it carries the brilliant idea of a wagon with spoked wheels from mind to mind.”- Daniel Dennett 'Hula hoopers did that for the hula hoop’s memes...'
- A wagon doesn't carry an idea. One might say it's an embodiment of an idea, but without a human being to see it, and to comprehend it, it's nothing.
G. speaks of as the hula hoop were a person, a person that possessed memes.
To say lula hoopers did something for the hula hoop meme is utterly nonsensical. This isn't science. This is a rhetorical interpretation of the data; it's nothing but spin. No one observes this. They observe hula hoops, and people using hula hoops. That's empirical descriptive science. The rest is spin; metaphysical speculation.
304. 'The meme is not the dancer but the dance
- Is that a scientific claim? I wonder if it's testable.
304. 'We are their vehicles and their enablers.
- We are their vehicles he tells us.
I almost wish I was making this stuff up, but I'm not. (The book I've enjoyed so much is transforming itself into some Lovecraft horror tale.) This is more from the new death of man theology. (e.g. you've no doubt read the claim man is just a bag of chemicals.) Dawkins is the high priest of this new religion, and apparently Gleick is an acolyte.
305. 'Memes may be stories, recipes, skills, legends, and fashions. We copy them, one person at a time. Alternatively, in Dawkins’s meme-centered perspective, they copy themselves.
- They copy themselves? This is an example of what we call the pathetic fallacy.
305. For Dawkins; 'selfishness is defined by the geneticist as the tendency to increase one’s chances of survival relative to its competitors.
- This is typical Dawkins; redefining concepts in a Richard friendly manner. i.e.winning the debate via definition. (He's responding to the criticism genes can't be selfish.) Selfishness has been turned from immoral human behavior (condemned by Christianity) into a amoral survival project. As usual his goal is to promote materialism. i.e. morals, not being physical, aren't real; therefore they're redefined as instincts or programs. His 'science' is teleological. The goal of all his 'scientific' writing is the promotion and defense of materialism. He turns everything to this end; even if it means badly distorting the data, inventing metaphors, or turning basic science upside down. He allows nothing to get in the way of the project.
305. 'Dawkins’s way of speaking was not meant to suggest that memes are conscious actors, only that they are entities with interests that can be furthered by natural selection. Their interests are not our interests.
- Only people have interests, and 'memes' aren't persons. To speak of 'natural selection' in this context is a travesty of real science. Natural selection is an undirected process of species conservation. To equate NS with the process of human idea transmission is ludicrous. You're comparing an undirected process to human beings. This is a wild category mistake. This is making nonsense of the English language.
To equate our interests with the 'interests' of memes is buffoonery. These people have reified an abstraction (or metaphor) and are acting as if it's alive and has personality. We need to ask if this has anything to do with science. (Is reification good science? is it good method?)
305. 'When we speak of fighting for a principle or dying for an idea, we may be more literal than we know.
- People aren't (as far as I'm aware) being literal when they say they're fighting for an idea. Good grief! What this means is they're willing to die for the embodiment of an idea; the idea as it's been expressed in society, in their homeland. It's means they're willing to die for the people who live according to the idea. I have no idea how Gleick can be so thick. (I've said it before; materialism destroys the mind... it renders people idiotic in their propositions.)
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/301.
2. 'Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person.[1]
The term "personification" may apply to:
* A description of an object as being a living person or animal as in: "The sun shone brightly down on me as if she were shining for me alone". In this example the sun is depicted as if capable of intent, and is referenced with the pronoun "she" rather than "it".
* An outstanding example of a quality or idea: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
- remind you of anyone :=}
- someone ought to tell Dawkins and his fan club that memes are an it not a he or she; that they're objects not persons.
Examples;
# Father Time
# Mother Nature
- Another example is natural selection; the 'tinker' who hobbles together the hodgepodge machinery we call a human being.
3. 'The pathetic fallacy or anthropomorphic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations.[1] The pathetic fallacy is a special case of the fallacy of reification. The word 'pathetic' in this use is related to 'pathos' or 'empathy' (capability of feeling), and is not pejorative.
- to treat ideas (memes) as alive and living is an example of the pathetic fallacy. (This is not exactly considered good science... or it wasn't at one time.)
Quotes and comments;
301. 'Natural selection directs the whole show.' - Gleick [1.]
- I see no evidence natural selection [NS] is a creative force. This isn't a fact, it's a claim. In my opinion it's a claim without a warrant. NS doesn't create new information or new organs or organisms; all it does is work on things already in existence. e.g. weeding out the lame and the weak isn't a creative process, nor is 'favoring' slight variations and 'disfavoring' others.
More personification on display here. NS is portrayed as the conductor of an orchestra.
301. "Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role
- Retained?
Ideas and organisms can't be spoken of in the same terms. They're radically different entities. (You'd think scientists would know this; aren't they big on classification.) This is nothing but poetry (bad poetry). This isn't science. We don't observe any of this. This is just giving the data a twisted interpretation.
I can't believe these people are serious.... I really can't. This is light years beyond silly.
To say ideas evolve is pathetic. This is just equivocation. (You'd think scientists would want to use words more carefully. Isn't precision a goal of science?)
This is an anti-scientific and poetic way of looking at things. I suppose we should have expected it; this is the nonsense that results when scientists try to take over all areas of life.
301. 'The American neurophysiologist Roger Sperry had put forward a similar notion several years earlier, arguing that ideas are “just as real” as the neurons they inhabit.
- I thought only the physical was real.
Gee; if ideas are real then god is real. How do these guys go on to deny the existence of god given this wacky metaphysics of theirs?
301. ''Ideas have power, he said.
Ideas cause ideas and help evolve new ideas. They interact with each other...''
- This is the sad result of reductionism. It's people who have ideas, people who have power, people who evolve' new ideas. It's people who interact with each other. We see here the death of man (the death of god theology morphed into a death of man theology) Under the reductionist rubric, man disappears from the scene... being replace by the brain, and by ideas, chemicals, information.
This isn't science, this a kind of dehumanizing religious view. (It's as if some people had a lust to degrade mankind; themselves being exempt of course.)
302. "And they [ideas] also interact with the external surroundings to produce in toto a burstwise advance in evolution that is far beyond anything to hit the evolutionary scene yet.'' - Roger Sperry
- So; ideas are the cause of evolution eh? Hmm. Sounds a lot like saying ideas are the cause of creation :=}
This is more equivocation. ie. any change caused by human ideas (not ideas generic) is not (by any definition) evolution. We're told over and over that e. is a natural, undirected process. It's simply bad science (bad method) to call human intervention by the same name as darwinian evolution.
Ideas haven't caused technology (and its effects) it's been people who have done this. (What warrant does he have to strip credit from the real people who were responsible and to hand the credit to some phantasm called an idea?) This is a dehumanizing way to speak.
302. 'Richard Dawkins made his own connection between the evolution of genes and the evolution of ideas. His essential actor was the replicator, and it scarcely mattered whether replicators were made of nucleic acid.
His rule is “All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.”
- Scarcely mattered! Give me a break. Is it good science to equate biological actors with immaterial objects? Is that considered good method?
His rule? is this a rule he discovered looking into a microscope or a telescope?
This isn't a fact, it's just a claim. It's not an observation, it's just a spin on the data.
All life? how can a scientist equate a living organism with an abstraction called an idea? Do ideas breath? Do they excrete? (Well, maybe some of his do.) Is that good science? Is that good method? This is more reductionism. This is getting close to saying all things are just numbers, or it's all just math. (Or it's all just information.)
To conflate biological replicators (having DNA, etc.) with ideas is a confusion of categories. Is to do so considered good science? To say a cell and an 'idea' are both replicators is to spout nonsense. Such a statement has no meaningful content. Maybe this is truly how things appear to him, but if it is, he's deluded.
His claim isn't in any way scientific. (Am I at war with 'science' if I point out these absurdities?)
As usual dawkins is ignoring the problem of information; of where new information comes from. (Does he have a 'replicator' for that? Not that I know of.) In this fantasy version of the real world, you don't need a source of information.
302. “I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this planet,”
he proclaimed at the end of his first book, in 1976.
- An idea isn't alive; not in any scientific sense of the word. It's merely a greeting card variety of metaphor that supports his claim. He's confused metaphor and reality.
302. 'For this bodiless replicator itself, Dawkins proposed a name. He called it the meme, and it became his most memorable invention...'
- A bodiless replicator eh? Sounds as real as his original replicators, or any of those dreamt up by the OOL crowd.
For someone who claims to be a defender of science, dawkins is awfully big on metaphors isn't he? In fact he depends on them. He's a kind of darwinian poet. He gives things new names, he invents names, he invents stories, puts spin on things, looks at things upside down, goes about standing on his head. It's all great fun I guess; but it's not science.
- I thought for the materialist only the physical was real. What's his foundation for calling ideas real?
Materialism;
1. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
- I don't know how a materialist can call ideas real, alive and evolving; not without betraying his own worldview. There's no way he reason consistently and logically from one to the other.
2. 'The metaphysical doctrine that matter is the only substance, and that matter and its motions constitute the universe.
3. 'The doctrine that all phenomena are to be accounted for by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, in connection with certain laws or tendencies toward laws...
- the materialist must contend that ideas are the product of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. e.g. the theory of e. must be explained purely by physics. (I think this is impossible, even for a word spinner like Dawkins.)
Here's a comical instance of dawkins defending materialism by denying materialism. ie. only if m. were untrue could his claim make sense.
302. “Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation,” he wrote. They compete with one another for limited resources: brain time or bandwidth.
- Is that a testable claim? If it's not, it's not science. This is typical Dawkins; giving his reductionist spin on things and calling it science.
Memes a leapin' - gee; must be spring. (Maybe the royals ought to make Dawkins poet laureate.)
I see that man himself has disappeared into the reductionist void gifted to us by scientism.
To say ideas compete is just plain silliness. Only people compete. Is this kind of equivocation (and reification) good science? Is this good method? (That Dawkins presents himself as a defender of scientific method is a farce. He believes in the poetic method to be sure; but not the empirical method.)
- see my post; Whatever happened to (real) science?
303. Speaking of memes in music, Gleick writes; 'This one,
a notorious though shorter-lived invader of brains, overran an immense population many times faster.
- Yes; we're back to yesterday's post and the replicator invasion [see the invasion of the replicators]. To speak of ideas as invaders of brains is both stupid and grotesque. (Man is the 'missing link' in this new anti-human theology of reductionism.) To speak of ideas overrunning a population is meaningless. It has no scientific content. This is poetry not science. I thought there was no place for poetry in science. (e.g. Genesis), but I guess it's only 'religious' poetry that's been banned. Apparently Darwinian poetry is permitted.
303. 'Even more pervasive and indelible are the smile of Mona Lisa, The Scream of Edvard Munch, and the silhouettes of various fictional extraterrestrials. These are memes, living a life of their own, independent of any physical reality.
- I have no idea how that makes sense in terms of materialism.
It's nonsense to speak of ideas as living. (I realize that biblical writers refer to scipture as the living word, but that certainly doesn't apply to so called memes - though this might be where the meme idea came from.) This isn't science. Empirical science has been abandoned; even as its great defenders claim to be defending it against creationism.
It's only a theist who has the right to speak of an entity existing independent of physical reality. (Here we have the irony of the materialist defending materialism by adopting, for the moment, the metaphysics of theism.) R. Dawkins claims that god cannot possibly exist, because nothing that doesn't have a physical form can exist. ie. god as spirit is an impossibility. Apparently a meme can do what god cannot. (This makes no sense to me, but then I'm not a physicalist.)
Memes are living a life of their own eh? I wonder if anyone's told them :=} Good grief. (Is the god meme alive and well and living a life of his own? Is that the new theology? Let's see; if the god meme is alive, does this mean he can communicate with me, and I with him? What would this mean? Does this mean prayer is valid after all?) This meme idea deserves only to be laughed at. (When I say that I mean it's replicators deserve to be laughed at.)
303. 'Memes emerge in brains and travel outward, establishing beachheads on paper and celluloid and silicon and anywhere else information can go.
- We have 'memes' and brains, but no people apparently. (I wonder if James Gleick exists; maybe he's just a meme.) This is a horrid way to speak.
Travel outward? more personification.
Establish beachheads? more personification.
Establish a beachhead on paper and silicon? more poetry and personification.
- is personification good science? Is it good method? I thought science was all about depersonifying nature. I thought it was a great 'crime' to personify nature, or anything in nature. Whatever happened to that?
Personify;
1. 'To treat or regard as a person; represent as a rational being; treat, for literary purposes, as if endowed with the sentiments, actions, or language of a rational being or person, or, for artistic purposes, as if having a human form and nature.
- I thought personification was what religion did, and that this was its great crime. Whatever happened to that?
303. 'They are not to be thought of as elementary particles but as organisms.
- he means their complex ideas, not simple 'ideas' like numbers or colors. (As if those were simple.)
- This is more personification. I think he's been deliberately vague and confusing here; that he wants people to think of memes as living organisms.
303. 'The hula hoop itself is a meme vehicle. So, for that matter, is each human hula hooper—a strikingly effective meme vehicle...'
- This extends Dawkins' metaphor of the selfish gene; the model of man as a gene vehicle. ie. as man carries genes, he carries memes. As he's a plaything of some genes, he's a plaything of some memes. Man has been 'dethroned' by the gene and the meme. The lesser has become the greater. This is a dismissal of the idea of responsibility. Dawkins is trying to defend materialism by doing away with morality; as morality makes no sense in a materialist universe. In this model, man is a helpless victim of his genes. (He's a gene/meme machine I guess.) The christian critique of materialism has been that it has no basis for giving men a moral code. Dawkins deals with this critique by denying man is a morally responsible creature. Being a robot slave of selfish genes man doesn't need a moral code; such a code makes no sense since man has no free will, and can only do as the genes command.
304. “A wagon with spoked wheels carries not only grain or freight from place to place; it carries the brilliant idea of a wagon with spoked wheels from mind to mind.”- Daniel Dennett 'Hula hoopers did that for the hula hoop’s memes...'
- A wagon doesn't carry an idea. One might say it's an embodiment of an idea, but without a human being to see it, and to comprehend it, it's nothing.
G. speaks of as the hula hoop were a person, a person that possessed memes.
To say lula hoopers did something for the hula hoop meme is utterly nonsensical. This isn't science. This is a rhetorical interpretation of the data; it's nothing but spin. No one observes this. They observe hula hoops, and people using hula hoops. That's empirical descriptive science. The rest is spin; metaphysical speculation.
304. 'The meme is not the dancer but the dance
- Is that a scientific claim? I wonder if it's testable.
304. 'We are their vehicles and their enablers.
- We are their vehicles he tells us.
I almost wish I was making this stuff up, but I'm not. (The book I've enjoyed so much is transforming itself into some Lovecraft horror tale.) This is more from the new death of man theology. (e.g. you've no doubt read the claim man is just a bag of chemicals.) Dawkins is the high priest of this new religion, and apparently Gleick is an acolyte.
305. 'Memes may be stories, recipes, skills, legends, and fashions. We copy them, one person at a time. Alternatively, in Dawkins’s meme-centered perspective, they copy themselves.
- They copy themselves? This is an example of what we call the pathetic fallacy.
305. For Dawkins; 'selfishness is defined by the geneticist as the tendency to increase one’s chances of survival relative to its competitors.
- This is typical Dawkins; redefining concepts in a Richard friendly manner. i.e.winning the debate via definition. (He's responding to the criticism genes can't be selfish.) Selfishness has been turned from immoral human behavior (condemned by Christianity) into a amoral survival project. As usual his goal is to promote materialism. i.e. morals, not being physical, aren't real; therefore they're redefined as instincts or programs. His 'science' is teleological. The goal of all his 'scientific' writing is the promotion and defense of materialism. He turns everything to this end; even if it means badly distorting the data, inventing metaphors, or turning basic science upside down. He allows nothing to get in the way of the project.
305. 'Dawkins’s way of speaking was not meant to suggest that memes are conscious actors, only that they are entities with interests that can be furthered by natural selection. Their interests are not our interests.
- Only people have interests, and 'memes' aren't persons. To speak of 'natural selection' in this context is a travesty of real science. Natural selection is an undirected process of species conservation. To equate NS with the process of human idea transmission is ludicrous. You're comparing an undirected process to human beings. This is a wild category mistake. This is making nonsense of the English language.
To equate our interests with the 'interests' of memes is buffoonery. These people have reified an abstraction (or metaphor) and are acting as if it's alive and has personality. We need to ask if this has anything to do with science. (Is reification good science? is it good method?)
305. 'When we speak of fighting for a principle or dying for an idea, we may be more literal than we know.
- People aren't (as far as I'm aware) being literal when they say they're fighting for an idea. Good grief! What this means is they're willing to die for the embodiment of an idea; the idea as it's been expressed in society, in their homeland. It's means they're willing to die for the people who live according to the idea. I have no idea how Gleick can be so thick. (I've said it before; materialism destroys the mind... it renders people idiotic in their propositions.)
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/301.
2. 'Personification is an ontological metaphor in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person.[1]
The term "personification" may apply to:
* A description of an object as being a living person or animal as in: "The sun shone brightly down on me as if she were shining for me alone". In this example the sun is depicted as if capable of intent, and is referenced with the pronoun "she" rather than "it".
* An outstanding example of a quality or idea: "He's invisible, a walking personification of the Negative" (Ralph Ellison).
- remind you of anyone :=}
- someone ought to tell Dawkins and his fan club that memes are an it not a he or she; that they're objects not persons.
Examples;
# Father Time
# Mother Nature
- Another example is natural selection; the 'tinker' who hobbles together the hodgepodge machinery we call a human being.
3. 'The pathetic fallacy or anthropomorphic fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations.[1] The pathetic fallacy is a special case of the fallacy of reification. The word 'pathetic' in this use is related to 'pathos' or 'empathy' (capability of feeling), and is not pejorative.
- to treat ideas (memes) as alive and living is an example of the pathetic fallacy. (This is not exactly considered good science... or it wasn't at one time.)
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
The Invasion of the replicators
Although I think Gleick's book [The Information] is informative, and well worth reading, I have problems with the approach he decided to take. When discussing the origin of life on earth he ignores the seeming unanswerable objections to this happening by some chance accident. I feel he's being dishonest here, as he just pretends it's no big deal. He doesn't even admit no one know how this could have happened. He simply pretends one of the many OOL scenarios is correct. End of story.
I don't feel ignoring problems is a proper way to write science. He just ignores the problem of where all the information (complex, specified) for living organisms came from. I find this odd to say the least, coming in a book about information.
Quotes and comments on 'The Information' by James Gleick;
1. 'The history of life begins with the accidental appearance of molecules complex enough to serve as building blocks—replicators.' [1.]
- Gleick accepts the idea that all life on earth is a chemical accident. Complexity happens by accident in this account. I thought science was supposed to be about finding laws. I don't see how anyone can believe living organisms 'emerged' from inert matter by accident.
He states this as a fact. It's not a fact, it's a story. No one was there. No one can know this. If this passage were written honestly it would read; 'according to the most popular and current neo-darwinian thinking, life began with the accidental appearance...'
The ability to replicate (reproduce) has it's source in random chance and accident in this scenario. This is an amazing miracle if true. Where does the information come from for this astounding ability? There's a great mystery here, and the average e. just skips merrily over it; pretending as if he's explained it, when all he's done is tell us it happened. (Apparently no explanation for this miracle is needed.) What we have here (in this scenario) is the accidental production of a complex molecule; a molecule that contains both information and information on how to replicate. Am I the only one who sees this as impossible? We don't get a hint (in the textbooks) of how this happened. Not a whiff. Writers just pretend it's all a simple matter and an undeniable fact. (Is this a good way to write science?)
Now I assume this mythical molecule contained DNA, so that it could replicate. So where did the DNA come from? Where did the code come from? What wrote the code? You'd think these would be questions that need to be discussed, but no, they're ignored. I guess this is all a rhetorician can do when they can't answer a question. You'd think any writer with integrity would at least admit they have no idea how this could happen, but I guess that's too much to ask in our politicized culture.
- I guess the idea is that some molecule emerged that didn't require DNA to replicate; but this still doesn't explain where DNA came from, where the coding system came from.
Replicate;
1. To reproduce or make an exact copy or copies of (genetic material, a cell, or an organism).
2. 'Replicators could exist long before DNA, even before proteins.' [1.]
- Could they? Is that a fact or another story? I don't see any way this can be proved. Certainly no one saw it.
Can you have proteins without DNA? I thought DNA held the code (instructions) for creating proteins?
The warrant for this 'fact' of evolution is a scenario dreamt up by
Alexander Cairns-Smith. So his story depends for its warrant on another story. Apparently this is how Darwinism works. (It's stories all the way down folks.)
He gives some alternate scenarios and then says 'either way' it all happened. ie. as if one of these stories Has to be true; as if there couldn't be another explanation (ie. ID) The idea one of a collection of scenarios has to be true is a simple fallacy. (Does Gleick not realize this?)
This whole OOL scenario requires huge amounts of complex, specified information, and the materialists never tell us how this information came about. It's a taboo subject apparently. (i.e. ''we know it happened, so it doesn't matter how it happened...")
- That Gleick doesn't deal with the problems in the materialist OOL scenario, makes this a dishonest book. Materialists seem incapable of discussing and admitting the huge holes in their theory. (They're certainly unwilling to do so.) Is this any way to do science? This is taking the coward's way out. ("Mankind cannot bear much reality," the poet said.) We can't answer the critics so let's ban them, we can't answer them so let's pretend they don't exist... pretend we know how it happened, pretend it's an undeniable fact, pretend we're doing science and not just inventing stories. ("I am the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well...") This is sad, stuff. Why is it these people can't be honest? Are they going to go to their graves telling these lies, never admitting the truth?
3. 'The body is a colony of genes.' [2.]
- Is it? This is the chicken and the egg story again. [5.] This isn't a fact, it's an interpretation... a way of looking at things. In my opinion it's simply false to say the body is a colony of genes. Even for an evolutionist it's obvious the animal is also a single unit... so it's simply a fallacy to say it IS a colony of genes. This claim is a denial of creation, where an animal is seen as having been designed.
E. theory claims body plans (different creatures) are accidental assemblages of once independent organisms... that somehow managed to find a way to work together. (God knows how; but we're certain it happened this way.) What the heart was before various parts came together (at some kind of heart conference I guess) I'd like to know. I find the idea the various organ systems in the body came together by chemical accident comical.
The above is not a scientific statement. (This is surprising for someone who's devoted themselves to writing on science.) We don't observe that a body is a colony of genes. What we observe, what the data consists of, are genes within the cell, within the body. The word 'is' in this sentence has nothing to do with empirical science. We don't see the 'is' part of this statement. The 'is' part is interpretation, and not scientific.
He talks as if genes were once independent organisms. I see no evidence for this. What we see today is that genes are never independent. I don't see any reason to believe things were ever any different. I believe genes were always dependent (body inhabiting) entities. I believe they were part of the original design of the original creation. ie. that animal kinds were created with genes (DNA) already intact. I can't prove it, but it's the only explanation that makes sense to me.
4. “Selection favors those genes which succeed in the presence of other genes,” says Dawkins, “which in turn succeed in the presence of them." [3.]
- More nonsense from the grandfather of personification. The word favors in this statement has no scientific content. What we observe is that some genes succeed. That's all the data that's here. The rest is Darwinian spin.
There is no entity called selection, and there is no 'favoring' going on. Selection has been reified and given a magic wand. This is not empirical science. (For someone who claims to be defending 'true' science against creationist non-science; Dawkins cares little for being empirical, to restricting himself to actual observation. Most of his writing isn't scientific at all; it's merely a Darwinian spin on things.
e.g. To claim man is a robot slave of genes isn't remotely scientific. In fact it's anti-scientific. That's not an observation, but a Darwinian interpretation.
5. 'To say that a replicator manages to survive for eons is to define the replicator as all the copies considered as one. Thus the gene does not “grow senile,” Dawkins declared.
"It is no more likely to die when it is a million years old than when it is only a hundred. It leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a succession of mortal bodies before they sink in senility and death. [4.]
- This is fantasy, not science. No one observes this. Isn't science supposed to be about observation? He's merely defined his 'master of survival' gene into existence. It has no existence outside his definition.
This is gross personification... really ugly stuff. A gene leaping from body to body; a gene with goals or ends. Pure piffle; nothing but Darwinian storytelling.
6. 'This is where life breaks free from its material moorings. (Unless you already believed in the immortal soul.) The gene is not an information-carrying macromolecule. The gene is the information. [4.]
- This is what the materialist has to say isn't it? This is the only way he can deal with information within a materialist system. Since m. claims that only the physical is real (and part of science) he must claim information is physical, not immaterial. What Dawkins is doing with his fairy story is trying to save materialism (i.e. from the new threat of information theory). As always, his goal in 'science' is to defend atheism.
To do so he concocts a view of information that goes counter to all other views. His view of information isn't remotely scientific. He's not trying to understand the universe; he's trying to defend materialism. (I guess we could say that Richard Dawkins is atheism's way of preserving itself :=}
I have no idea how a materialist can claim 'life' (a reification) breaks free from its material moorings. That makes no sense to me. That's incoherent as far as I'm concerned.
7. 'The physicist Max Delbrück wrote in 1949, “Today the tendency is to say ‘genes are just molecules, or hereditary particles,’ and thus to do away with the abstractions.” Now the abstractions returned. [4.]
- Abstractions aren't physical are they? Therefore (according to classical materialism) they can't be a subject of science. So we have the comical spectacle of Dawkins defending materialism by the use of abstractions (reifications, personifications, etc.).
8. 'The quavers and crotchets inked on paper are not the music. Music is not a series of pressure waves sounding through the air; nor grooves etched in vinyl or pits burned in CDs; nor even the neuronal symphonies stirred up in the brain of the listener. The music is the information. [4.]
- Really? I don't think so. Music isn't any one of these things, it's all of them. It's reductionistic and fallacious to say music IS the information. That's certainly not a scientific view. It's a limited and partial interpretation of music.
If you're going to say this about music, you'll have to say it about everything. You'll end up saying the world is information; the universe is information. Everything is information. This is a fallacy. You can't equate the universe with the information embedded in it. Life isn't that simple. The universe exists on many levels. There's the physical level, the level of energy, the level of information, the conscious level, the unconscious level, the microscopic level, the macroscopic level, the animal level, the human level, and so on.
If everything is information, then you have to say the universe consists of information replicating itself. This is a profoundly anti-human way of thinking. This is reductionism with a vengence.
Summary;
- If you know what Dawkins' goal is (to defend materialism) you can have a good idea what his take will be on any idea. It will be the take (spin) that best defends materialism. What he's done in his career is take the classic evidence for theism and try to formulate accounts of this evidence that make sense in terms of materialism.
e.g. take the subject of design; he defends materialism by saying what creationists think is design is merely the appearance of design. This isn't a scientific observation but merely a piece of rhetoric. (Something he's adept at.) You can't disprove his interpretation (at least not easily) and so he has what he considers a plausible account of design that defends materialism. (i.e. What appears to be design is simply the mechanical working out of natural selection.) He takes the concept of a (creative) natural selection from Darwin, and adds his bit of rhetoric to the mix.
These mythical replicators are more like the aliens in SF than they are real. They're products of the same culture specific imagination. The same kind of people who invent aliens invent replicators. There's a similar lack of rigor involved, a similar soaring on the wings of unfettered imagination. They invaded the earth and left behind a brood of monsters; monsters who have turned mankind into robot slaves. (So sayeth Richard Dawkins.)
Mike Johnson [frfarer at gmail.com]
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/p.294
2. p.295
3. p. 296
4. p. 298
5. According to Samuel Butler, a chicken is an egg's way of producing an egg.
6. I haven't finished the book so maybe he does address this issue later, but he should have addressed it in this section on Origins.
- There is quite a long list of materialists (within the scientific community) that have admitted that the origin of life remains a mystery, so Gleick can't claim he had no one he could quote.
7. I take the view genes don't propagate, organisms propagate. (You can't propagate if you don't have propagating equipment, can you :=} Neither this view, nor the view Dawkins espouses is strictly empirical, although mine is the more natural, the more intuitive.
8. When I'm talking of genes I'm referring to the human genes; the genes in the human genome.
I don't feel ignoring problems is a proper way to write science. He just ignores the problem of where all the information (complex, specified) for living organisms came from. I find this odd to say the least, coming in a book about information.
Quotes and comments on 'The Information' by James Gleick;
1. 'The history of life begins with the accidental appearance of molecules complex enough to serve as building blocks—replicators.' [1.]
- Gleick accepts the idea that all life on earth is a chemical accident. Complexity happens by accident in this account. I thought science was supposed to be about finding laws. I don't see how anyone can believe living organisms 'emerged' from inert matter by accident.
He states this as a fact. It's not a fact, it's a story. No one was there. No one can know this. If this passage were written honestly it would read; 'according to the most popular and current neo-darwinian thinking, life began with the accidental appearance...'
The ability to replicate (reproduce) has it's source in random chance and accident in this scenario. This is an amazing miracle if true. Where does the information come from for this astounding ability? There's a great mystery here, and the average e. just skips merrily over it; pretending as if he's explained it, when all he's done is tell us it happened. (Apparently no explanation for this miracle is needed.) What we have here (in this scenario) is the accidental production of a complex molecule; a molecule that contains both information and information on how to replicate. Am I the only one who sees this as impossible? We don't get a hint (in the textbooks) of how this happened. Not a whiff. Writers just pretend it's all a simple matter and an undeniable fact. (Is this a good way to write science?)
Now I assume this mythical molecule contained DNA, so that it could replicate. So where did the DNA come from? Where did the code come from? What wrote the code? You'd think these would be questions that need to be discussed, but no, they're ignored. I guess this is all a rhetorician can do when they can't answer a question. You'd think any writer with integrity would at least admit they have no idea how this could happen, but I guess that's too much to ask in our politicized culture.
- I guess the idea is that some molecule emerged that didn't require DNA to replicate; but this still doesn't explain where DNA came from, where the coding system came from.
Replicate;
1. To reproduce or make an exact copy or copies of (genetic material, a cell, or an organism).
2. 'Replicators could exist long before DNA, even before proteins.' [1.]
- Could they? Is that a fact or another story? I don't see any way this can be proved. Certainly no one saw it.
Can you have proteins without DNA? I thought DNA held the code (instructions) for creating proteins?
The warrant for this 'fact' of evolution is a scenario dreamt up by
Alexander Cairns-Smith. So his story depends for its warrant on another story. Apparently this is how Darwinism works. (It's stories all the way down folks.)
He gives some alternate scenarios and then says 'either way' it all happened. ie. as if one of these stories Has to be true; as if there couldn't be another explanation (ie. ID) The idea one of a collection of scenarios has to be true is a simple fallacy. (Does Gleick not realize this?)
This whole OOL scenario requires huge amounts of complex, specified information, and the materialists never tell us how this information came about. It's a taboo subject apparently. (i.e. ''we know it happened, so it doesn't matter how it happened...")
- That Gleick doesn't deal with the problems in the materialist OOL scenario, makes this a dishonest book. Materialists seem incapable of discussing and admitting the huge holes in their theory. (They're certainly unwilling to do so.) Is this any way to do science? This is taking the coward's way out. ("Mankind cannot bear much reality," the poet said.) We can't answer the critics so let's ban them, we can't answer them so let's pretend they don't exist... pretend we know how it happened, pretend it's an undeniable fact, pretend we're doing science and not just inventing stories. ("I am the great pretender, pretending that I'm doing well...") This is sad, stuff. Why is it these people can't be honest? Are they going to go to their graves telling these lies, never admitting the truth?
3. 'The body is a colony of genes.' [2.]
- Is it? This is the chicken and the egg story again. [5.] This isn't a fact, it's an interpretation... a way of looking at things. In my opinion it's simply false to say the body is a colony of genes. Even for an evolutionist it's obvious the animal is also a single unit... so it's simply a fallacy to say it IS a colony of genes. This claim is a denial of creation, where an animal is seen as having been designed.
E. theory claims body plans (different creatures) are accidental assemblages of once independent organisms... that somehow managed to find a way to work together. (God knows how; but we're certain it happened this way.) What the heart was before various parts came together (at some kind of heart conference I guess) I'd like to know. I find the idea the various organ systems in the body came together by chemical accident comical.
The above is not a scientific statement. (This is surprising for someone who's devoted themselves to writing on science.) We don't observe that a body is a colony of genes. What we observe, what the data consists of, are genes within the cell, within the body. The word 'is' in this sentence has nothing to do with empirical science. We don't see the 'is' part of this statement. The 'is' part is interpretation, and not scientific.
He talks as if genes were once independent organisms. I see no evidence for this. What we see today is that genes are never independent. I don't see any reason to believe things were ever any different. I believe genes were always dependent (body inhabiting) entities. I believe they were part of the original design of the original creation. ie. that animal kinds were created with genes (DNA) already intact. I can't prove it, but it's the only explanation that makes sense to me.
4. “Selection favors those genes which succeed in the presence of other genes,” says Dawkins, “which in turn succeed in the presence of them." [3.]
- More nonsense from the grandfather of personification. The word favors in this statement has no scientific content. What we observe is that some genes succeed. That's all the data that's here. The rest is Darwinian spin.
There is no entity called selection, and there is no 'favoring' going on. Selection has been reified and given a magic wand. This is not empirical science. (For someone who claims to be defending 'true' science against creationist non-science; Dawkins cares little for being empirical, to restricting himself to actual observation. Most of his writing isn't scientific at all; it's merely a Darwinian spin on things.
e.g. To claim man is a robot slave of genes isn't remotely scientific. In fact it's anti-scientific. That's not an observation, but a Darwinian interpretation.
5. 'To say that a replicator manages to survive for eons is to define the replicator as all the copies considered as one. Thus the gene does not “grow senile,” Dawkins declared.
"It is no more likely to die when it is a million years old than when it is only a hundred. It leaps from body to body down the generations, manipulating body after body in its own way and for its own ends, abandoning a succession of mortal bodies before they sink in senility and death. [4.]
- This is fantasy, not science. No one observes this. Isn't science supposed to be about observation? He's merely defined his 'master of survival' gene into existence. It has no existence outside his definition.
This is gross personification... really ugly stuff. A gene leaping from body to body; a gene with goals or ends. Pure piffle; nothing but Darwinian storytelling.
6. 'This is where life breaks free from its material moorings. (Unless you already believed in the immortal soul.) The gene is not an information-carrying macromolecule. The gene is the information. [4.]
- This is what the materialist has to say isn't it? This is the only way he can deal with information within a materialist system. Since m. claims that only the physical is real (and part of science) he must claim information is physical, not immaterial. What Dawkins is doing with his fairy story is trying to save materialism (i.e. from the new threat of information theory). As always, his goal in 'science' is to defend atheism.
To do so he concocts a view of information that goes counter to all other views. His view of information isn't remotely scientific. He's not trying to understand the universe; he's trying to defend materialism. (I guess we could say that Richard Dawkins is atheism's way of preserving itself :=}
I have no idea how a materialist can claim 'life' (a reification) breaks free from its material moorings. That makes no sense to me. That's incoherent as far as I'm concerned.
7. 'The physicist Max Delbrück wrote in 1949, “Today the tendency is to say ‘genes are just molecules, or hereditary particles,’ and thus to do away with the abstractions.” Now the abstractions returned. [4.]
- Abstractions aren't physical are they? Therefore (according to classical materialism) they can't be a subject of science. So we have the comical spectacle of Dawkins defending materialism by the use of abstractions (reifications, personifications, etc.).
8. 'The quavers and crotchets inked on paper are not the music. Music is not a series of pressure waves sounding through the air; nor grooves etched in vinyl or pits burned in CDs; nor even the neuronal symphonies stirred up in the brain of the listener. The music is the information. [4.]
- Really? I don't think so. Music isn't any one of these things, it's all of them. It's reductionistic and fallacious to say music IS the information. That's certainly not a scientific view. It's a limited and partial interpretation of music.
If you're going to say this about music, you'll have to say it about everything. You'll end up saying the world is information; the universe is information. Everything is information. This is a fallacy. You can't equate the universe with the information embedded in it. Life isn't that simple. The universe exists on many levels. There's the physical level, the level of energy, the level of information, the conscious level, the unconscious level, the microscopic level, the macroscopic level, the animal level, the human level, and so on.
If everything is information, then you have to say the universe consists of information replicating itself. This is a profoundly anti-human way of thinking. This is reductionism with a vengence.
Summary;
- If you know what Dawkins' goal is (to defend materialism) you can have a good idea what his take will be on any idea. It will be the take (spin) that best defends materialism. What he's done in his career is take the classic evidence for theism and try to formulate accounts of this evidence that make sense in terms of materialism.
e.g. take the subject of design; he defends materialism by saying what creationists think is design is merely the appearance of design. This isn't a scientific observation but merely a piece of rhetoric. (Something he's adept at.) You can't disprove his interpretation (at least not easily) and so he has what he considers a plausible account of design that defends materialism. (i.e. What appears to be design is simply the mechanical working out of natural selection.) He takes the concept of a (creative) natural selection from Darwin, and adds his bit of rhetoric to the mix.
These mythical replicators are more like the aliens in SF than they are real. They're products of the same culture specific imagination. The same kind of people who invent aliens invent replicators. There's a similar lack of rigor involved, a similar soaring on the wings of unfettered imagination. They invaded the earth and left behind a brood of monsters; monsters who have turned mankind into robot slaves. (So sayeth Richard Dawkins.)
Mike Johnson [frfarer at gmail.com]
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/p.294
2. p.295
3. p. 296
4. p. 298
5. According to Samuel Butler, a chicken is an egg's way of producing an egg.
6. I haven't finished the book so maybe he does address this issue later, but he should have addressed it in this section on Origins.
- There is quite a long list of materialists (within the scientific community) that have admitted that the origin of life remains a mystery, so Gleick can't claim he had no one he could quote.
7. I take the view genes don't propagate, organisms propagate. (You can't propagate if you don't have propagating equipment, can you :=} Neither this view, nor the view Dawkins espouses is strictly empirical, although mine is the more natural, the more intuitive.
8. When I'm talking of genes I'm referring to the human genes; the genes in the human genome.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Richard Dawkins stands on his head
Some more comments on 'The Information' by James Gleick. I want to deal with the idea of the selfish gene. Standing on his head, Dawkins imagines he's the only one who sees life in the correct way.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'We use DNA, just as we use lungs to breathe and eyes to see. We use it. “This attitude is an error of great profundity,”Dawkins wrote. “It is the truth turned crashingly on its head.” DNA came first—by billions of years—and DNA comes first, he argued, when life is viewed from the proper perspective." [1.]
- If all is matter in motion nothing can be an error of great profundity; nothing can be profound at all.
Dawkins claims DNA came first. This isn't a fact, this is a bit of theory; a bit of a theory if you will. No one observed this. The fact it's impossible for matter to write code apparently doesn't bother him.
His point is that DNA uses us. This makes no sense to me. The lesser doesn't use the greater. DNA makes no sense without living organisms; that's what it's for, for goodness sake. You don't say the saw uses the carpenter! i.e. we are the slaves of DNA because DNA came first. This isnt a scientific argument, nor is it a logical one. He can offer no proof of his idea. The idea is untestable speculation; a bit of metaphysics.
Truth? If all is matter in motion there is no truth. If DNA is the 'boss' and we have to look at ourselves in that light it makes no sense to speak of the truth. Truth is a human concept, not a 'concept' of DNA. There is no 'truth' in DNA... so why speak of truth then?
Proper perspective? How does he know what that is? That's another human concept by the way. There is no 'proper perspective' seen from the 'vantage point' of dna. Nothing is proper or improper to DNA. (Apparently dawkins had to stand on his head to see things in the proper perspective.)
2. "From that perspective [above], genes are the focus, the sine qua non, the star of the show." [1.]
- This is the idea instructions exist for themselves! This is akin to saying a blueprint for a house exists for itself, and not to build a house with. How Dawkins can get things so wrong is amazing. The man goes through life standing on his head.
3. 'In his first book—published in 1976, meant for a broad audience, provocatively titled The Selfish Gene—he set off decades of debate by declaring: “We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” [2.]
- If that's the case why do they need us?
If they (genes, DNA segments) existed for billions of years without us, why do they need us, why do we exist? It makes no sense to me. If genes existed before any animal why do they even need bugs or insects? This is a completely irrational notion.
How do molecules program creatures? This is an absurd use of language. Only intelligent agents write programs. His claim isn't scientific. It's not even science fiction; it's more deserving a place in the horror genre.
Why would a molecule care if it survives or not? Could it? How?
Blindly programmed? What's that when it's at home? Do people write code blind? Can code be written blind? (i.e. without intention, without a goal)
4. "'Genes, not organisms, are the true units of natural selection. They began as “replicators”—molecules formed accidentally in the primordial soup, with the unusual property of making copies of themselves." [2.]
- How anyone can believe this I don't know. Anything's possible in Dawkin's world I guess. (That no-god zone of his perverse imagination.)
Has he forgotten what genes are? Has he forgotten their usual definition?
Gene;
1. 'A hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. [AHD]
5. "They are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago." [2.]
- How's that for purple prose? Doesn't exactly sound scientific does it. Dawkins is engaging in personification (anthropomorphism) here. Again; why use this human language to describe the non-human?
Cavalier freedom? Come on. That's a bit rich even for Dawkins. What can it possibly mean? (Not that it isn't a scientific fact :=}
Cavalier; [from Cavaliers]
a. Showing arrogant or offhand disregard; dismissive
- Genes can be arrogant Richard? Did you see that through a microscope?
A cavalier was a soldier or a knight (a chivalrous man one dictionary says) How does this fit in with genes?
Cavalier freedom is such a strange conjunction... I'm not sure it makes any sense at all. A soldier isn't notable for having freedom.
Why would genes give up their freedom? (Assuming matter in motion can have freedom, or that it makes any sense in a non-human context.) How does he know this is what happened? I don't think he has a time machine.
What instructions did these mythical genes have any way? (Does he ever tell us this?) A gene to be a gene has to consist of instructions does it not? Or didn't these cavalier genes have instructions in those free and easy days? Why would they carry instructions they weren't going to use? why would they have instructions to compose other creatures?
- Could such a hypothetical creature even exist independently? I don't see how.
6. ''Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control."
- This sounds like something out of 'Astounding Stories' circa 1940. These 'genes' of his sound almost identical to some pulp descriptions of invading aliens.
Safe? Why weren't they safe before this? If they survived billions of years on their own they must have been pretty safe. Wouldn't they be safer in a world by themselves? Why bring in the danger of other creatures.
This isn't science it's twaddle; metaphysical speculation (of an extremely perverse sort).
How can a molecule communicate? Does it speak English or French? What does it mean to say a molecule communicates? Communicates what? Does oxygen have anything to say. ("If only the elements could speak! What tales they'd tell.")
Why did they create such torture for themselves? What does torture mean when applied to a molecule?
7. "They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence...'' [2.]
- This is crackpot theology, not science. If his scenario were true nothing would have a rationale. An entity that's not rational can't have a reason for anything. Without intelligence reason cannot exist.
This reductionism turned into a crackpot religion.
They? Doesn't he mean it? If he changed his purple pen for a grey one this would read; 'The gene is in you and me; it created us, body and mind...' It would still be nonsense, but a little higher class nonsense; having made the move from genre to literature as it were.
Let's see now. A molecule created the mind. I see... but wait; I thought materialists believe only the physical exists. He must mean a molecule created the human brain. That Is impressive isn't it? I wonder where a gene got the information from. Maybe there's a cosmic library that your average molecule can tap into.
8. 'Yet Dawkins’s book was brilliant and transformative. It established a new, multilayered understanding of the gene. At first, the idea of the selfish gene seemed like a trick of perspective, or a joke. Samuel Butler had said a century earlier—and did not claim to be the first—that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.'
- The selfish gene idea Is a joke. It's a joke and nothing more. (A very bad joke; a joke in very bad taste.) It wouldn't surprise me if he came up with the idea as a joke. (It would seem there has to be some reason for him to choose to see things in such a upside down fashion.) It would fit with his unflagging attempts to defame God, Christianity and creation. If he's correct, life is a bad joke... and if there's a god, it's he who has perpetrated this bad joke on us.
Summary;
The selfish gene idea isn't science. It's a bit of rhetoric that tries to convince people that everything the bible tells them about metaphysics is false.
Mike Johnson
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/291
2. ibid; page 292
3. Where's the proof a molecule has a will to survive? Where's the proof this is possible? How is it a molecule can have a will? This is equivocation at best. A molecule is deaf, dumb and blind, and has no mind... but Rich Dawkins seems not to know this.
4. I could play the Dawkins game (really the Butler game) and say Richard Dawkins is just the devil's way of slandering God.
5. The egg story is a good example of how the data and the story are not the same. Stories are interpretations of data. Theoretically there could be an almost limitless number of stories told about a set of data. eg. e.s like to say the fossil record proves evolution over time. It's simply a fact they say. This isn't true. The fossil record composes a set of data, while the idea this proves e. over time is an interpretation of the data. It's not the only interpretation out there, or the only one possible. This interpretation is as impossible to prove as Butler's story of the egg. We're talking about something we didn't observe.
6. DNA creates the cell, but needs the cell to exist... there can be no cell without DNA, but there can be no dna without the cell. More evidence for special creation.
7. Interpretation; or The story of the chicken and the egg
- Samuel butler said the chicken was the egg's way of producing an egg. His views on the egg are just as scientific as Dawkins' ideas on the selfish gene. i.e. neither is scientific.
What we observe is sperm and egg coming together and an egg being formed, and the egg coming out of the chicken. That's science; anything else is spin... story telling.
8. Speaking of eggs; the fact no one can answer the riddle which came first is (I believe) evidence for special creation. I see no other possible explanation. The evolutionist in my opinion, has no grounds for throwing out the best (only) explanation.
- the Biblical answer is that the chicken came first. i.e. special creation
Quotes and comments;
1. 'We use DNA, just as we use lungs to breathe and eyes to see. We use it. “This attitude is an error of great profundity,”Dawkins wrote. “It is the truth turned crashingly on its head.” DNA came first—by billions of years—and DNA comes first, he argued, when life is viewed from the proper perspective." [1.]
- If all is matter in motion nothing can be an error of great profundity; nothing can be profound at all.
Dawkins claims DNA came first. This isn't a fact, this is a bit of theory; a bit of a theory if you will. No one observed this. The fact it's impossible for matter to write code apparently doesn't bother him.
His point is that DNA uses us. This makes no sense to me. The lesser doesn't use the greater. DNA makes no sense without living organisms; that's what it's for, for goodness sake. You don't say the saw uses the carpenter! i.e. we are the slaves of DNA because DNA came first. This isnt a scientific argument, nor is it a logical one. He can offer no proof of his idea. The idea is untestable speculation; a bit of metaphysics.
Truth? If all is matter in motion there is no truth. If DNA is the 'boss' and we have to look at ourselves in that light it makes no sense to speak of the truth. Truth is a human concept, not a 'concept' of DNA. There is no 'truth' in DNA... so why speak of truth then?
Proper perspective? How does he know what that is? That's another human concept by the way. There is no 'proper perspective' seen from the 'vantage point' of dna. Nothing is proper or improper to DNA. (Apparently dawkins had to stand on his head to see things in the proper perspective.)
2. "From that perspective [above], genes are the focus, the sine qua non, the star of the show." [1.]
- This is the idea instructions exist for themselves! This is akin to saying a blueprint for a house exists for itself, and not to build a house with. How Dawkins can get things so wrong is amazing. The man goes through life standing on his head.
3. 'In his first book—published in 1976, meant for a broad audience, provocatively titled The Selfish Gene—he set off decades of debate by declaring: “We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” [2.]
- If that's the case why do they need us?
If they (genes, DNA segments) existed for billions of years without us, why do they need us, why do we exist? It makes no sense to me. If genes existed before any animal why do they even need bugs or insects? This is a completely irrational notion.
How do molecules program creatures? This is an absurd use of language. Only intelligent agents write programs. His claim isn't scientific. It's not even science fiction; it's more deserving a place in the horror genre.
Why would a molecule care if it survives or not? Could it? How?
Blindly programmed? What's that when it's at home? Do people write code blind? Can code be written blind? (i.e. without intention, without a goal)
4. "'Genes, not organisms, are the true units of natural selection. They began as “replicators”—molecules formed accidentally in the primordial soup, with the unusual property of making copies of themselves." [2.]
- How anyone can believe this I don't know. Anything's possible in Dawkin's world I guess. (That no-god zone of his perverse imagination.)
Has he forgotten what genes are? Has he forgotten their usual definition?
Gene;
1. 'A hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. [AHD]
5. "They are past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago." [2.]
- How's that for purple prose? Doesn't exactly sound scientific does it. Dawkins is engaging in personification (anthropomorphism) here. Again; why use this human language to describe the non-human?
Cavalier freedom? Come on. That's a bit rich even for Dawkins. What can it possibly mean? (Not that it isn't a scientific fact :=}
Cavalier; [from Cavaliers]
a. Showing arrogant or offhand disregard; dismissive
- Genes can be arrogant Richard? Did you see that through a microscope?
A cavalier was a soldier or a knight (a chivalrous man one dictionary says) How does this fit in with genes?
Cavalier freedom is such a strange conjunction... I'm not sure it makes any sense at all. A soldier isn't notable for having freedom.
Why would genes give up their freedom? (Assuming matter in motion can have freedom, or that it makes any sense in a non-human context.) How does he know this is what happened? I don't think he has a time machine.
What instructions did these mythical genes have any way? (Does he ever tell us this?) A gene to be a gene has to consist of instructions does it not? Or didn't these cavalier genes have instructions in those free and easy days? Why would they carry instructions they weren't going to use? why would they have instructions to compose other creatures?
- Could such a hypothetical creature even exist independently? I don't see how.
6. ''Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control."
- This sounds like something out of 'Astounding Stories' circa 1940. These 'genes' of his sound almost identical to some pulp descriptions of invading aliens.
Safe? Why weren't they safe before this? If they survived billions of years on their own they must have been pretty safe. Wouldn't they be safer in a world by themselves? Why bring in the danger of other creatures.
This isn't science it's twaddle; metaphysical speculation (of an extremely perverse sort).
How can a molecule communicate? Does it speak English or French? What does it mean to say a molecule communicates? Communicates what? Does oxygen have anything to say. ("If only the elements could speak! What tales they'd tell.")
Why did they create such torture for themselves? What does torture mean when applied to a molecule?
7. "They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence...'' [2.]
- This is crackpot theology, not science. If his scenario were true nothing would have a rationale. An entity that's not rational can't have a reason for anything. Without intelligence reason cannot exist.
This reductionism turned into a crackpot religion.
They? Doesn't he mean it? If he changed his purple pen for a grey one this would read; 'The gene is in you and me; it created us, body and mind...' It would still be nonsense, but a little higher class nonsense; having made the move from genre to literature as it were.
Let's see now. A molecule created the mind. I see... but wait; I thought materialists believe only the physical exists. He must mean a molecule created the human brain. That Is impressive isn't it? I wonder where a gene got the information from. Maybe there's a cosmic library that your average molecule can tap into.
8. 'Yet Dawkins’s book was brilliant and transformative. It established a new, multilayered understanding of the gene. At first, the idea of the selfish gene seemed like a trick of perspective, or a joke. Samuel Butler had said a century earlier—and did not claim to be the first—that a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.'
- The selfish gene idea Is a joke. It's a joke and nothing more. (A very bad joke; a joke in very bad taste.) It wouldn't surprise me if he came up with the idea as a joke. (It would seem there has to be some reason for him to choose to see things in such a upside down fashion.) It would fit with his unflagging attempts to defame God, Christianity and creation. If he's correct, life is a bad joke... and if there's a god, it's he who has perpetrated this bad joke on us.
Summary;
The selfish gene idea isn't science. It's a bit of rhetoric that tries to convince people that everything the bible tells them about metaphysics is false.
Mike Johnson
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/291
2. ibid; page 292
3. Where's the proof a molecule has a will to survive? Where's the proof this is possible? How is it a molecule can have a will? This is equivocation at best. A molecule is deaf, dumb and blind, and has no mind... but Rich Dawkins seems not to know this.
4. I could play the Dawkins game (really the Butler game) and say Richard Dawkins is just the devil's way of slandering God.
5. The egg story is a good example of how the data and the story are not the same. Stories are interpretations of data. Theoretically there could be an almost limitless number of stories told about a set of data. eg. e.s like to say the fossil record proves evolution over time. It's simply a fact they say. This isn't true. The fossil record composes a set of data, while the idea this proves e. over time is an interpretation of the data. It's not the only interpretation out there, or the only one possible. This interpretation is as impossible to prove as Butler's story of the egg. We're talking about something we didn't observe.
6. DNA creates the cell, but needs the cell to exist... there can be no cell without DNA, but there can be no dna without the cell. More evidence for special creation.
7. Interpretation; or The story of the chicken and the egg
- Samuel butler said the chicken was the egg's way of producing an egg. His views on the egg are just as scientific as Dawkins' ideas on the selfish gene. i.e. neither is scientific.
What we observe is sperm and egg coming together and an egg being formed, and the egg coming out of the chicken. That's science; anything else is spin... story telling.
8. Speaking of eggs; the fact no one can answer the riddle which came first is (I believe) evidence for special creation. I see no other possible explanation. The evolutionist in my opinion, has no grounds for throwing out the best (only) explanation.
- the Biblical answer is that the chicken came first. i.e. special creation
Monday, April 25, 2011
A preposterous universe
Some more comments on the book 'The Information' by James Gleick. (I recommend it to everyone.)
Quotes and comments;
1. 'By now the word code was so deeply embedded in the conversation that people seldom paused to notice how extraordinary it was to find such a thing—abstract symbols representing arbitrarily different abstract symbols—at work in chemistry, at the level of molecules. [1.]
- Apparently people still don't realize how 'extraordinary' this is. i.e. it's 'extra' ordinary, in the sense of being outside the ordinary realm. We might say it's meta-ordinary; which is to say beyond natural, which is to say supra-natural. (Not in the sense of being, necessarily, divine, but in the sense of being beyond the merely physical.... meaning when we look at DNA we're looking at intelligence.)
Here we have people admitting they've discovered something extraordinary... but don't even contemplate giving the subject serious thought. Their m. convictions are so firm that they refuse to consider the extraordinary implications of what they're looking at. They say they want a sign from God, but when they get one they deny it.
If all is matter plus physics how can anything be outside the normal order of things? Aren't physical laws supposed to be common and universal? How then can you get 'uncommon' results? How can there be any exceptions to the rules? (i.e. creating code is most especially NOT what chemicals do. How can there be a remarkable exception to the ordinary way they react?) Genetic code was both extraordinary and unexpected.
2. 'So DNA not only replicates itself; separately, it dictates the manufacture of something entirely different. [2.]
- That the information for X existed before X, is preposterous isn't it? Indeed it's so preposterous the materialist can't explain it.
Information comes first; it had to. The materialist contends that organisms came first and then information somehow evolved from them. The creationist contends that information came first, and from it organisms were created. The materialist has things backward. (He's got the cart before the horse as the old saying goes.)
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick p.285
2. Gleick/286
3. Extraordinary;
- early 15c., from L. extraordinarius "out of the common order," from extra ordinem "out of order," especially the usual order, from extra "out" (see extra-) + ordinem (nom. ordo) "order" (see order).
Extraordinary;
a. 'Beyond what is ordinary or usual:
b. Highly exceptional
c. Being beyond or out of the common order or rule; not of the usual, customary, or regular kind; not ordinary
d. Exceeding the common degree, measure. or condition
e. Employed or sent upon an unusual or special service
- There has to be a special agent to create something special. i.e. life forms on the earth. Mere physical laws won't do the trick. Everyone agrees that we need code; but the materialist has no explanation for this extraordinary entity (i.e. DNA)
f. Far more than usual or expected.
4. Synonyms;
Unusual, singular, extra, unwonted, signal, egregious, marvelous, prodigious, strange, preposterous.
- I find the idea chemicals can formulate code a preposterous idea :=}
5. Preposterous;
1540s, from L. praeposterus "absurd, contrary to nature," lit. "before-behind" (cf. topsy-turvy, cart before the horse), from prae "before" + posterus "subsequent."
a. Contrary to nature, reason, or common sense;
- DNA is indeed contrary to nature (if we define nature as inert matter) We live in a preposterous universe in a sense.
6. 'The genetic code performed a function with uncanny similarities to the metamathematical code invented by Gödel for his philosophical purposes. - Gleick/285
- I think this deserves the name extraordinary :=}
- How could this be the product of mere matter in motion? Are the people who claim this being serious? (I know they pull long faces, and try to Look serious, when they make the claim, but can they really believe that DNA is a chemical accident?)
7. “Nobody had ever in the least suspected that one set of chemicals could code for another set,” Hofstadter wrote.
"Indeed, the very idea is somewhat baffling: If there is a code, then who invented it? What kinds of messages are written in it? Who writes them? Who reads them?" - Gleick/285
- Given this quote, what right has anyone got to mock ID? Why is it okay for Hofstadter to write like this, but not Stephen Meyer?
Quotes and comments;
1. 'By now the word code was so deeply embedded in the conversation that people seldom paused to notice how extraordinary it was to find such a thing—abstract symbols representing arbitrarily different abstract symbols—at work in chemistry, at the level of molecules. [1.]
- Apparently people still don't realize how 'extraordinary' this is. i.e. it's 'extra' ordinary, in the sense of being outside the ordinary realm. We might say it's meta-ordinary; which is to say beyond natural, which is to say supra-natural. (Not in the sense of being, necessarily, divine, but in the sense of being beyond the merely physical.... meaning when we look at DNA we're looking at intelligence.)
Here we have people admitting they've discovered something extraordinary... but don't even contemplate giving the subject serious thought. Their m. convictions are so firm that they refuse to consider the extraordinary implications of what they're looking at. They say they want a sign from God, but when they get one they deny it.
If all is matter plus physics how can anything be outside the normal order of things? Aren't physical laws supposed to be common and universal? How then can you get 'uncommon' results? How can there be any exceptions to the rules? (i.e. creating code is most especially NOT what chemicals do. How can there be a remarkable exception to the ordinary way they react?) Genetic code was both extraordinary and unexpected.
2. 'So DNA not only replicates itself; separately, it dictates the manufacture of something entirely different. [2.]
- That the information for X existed before X, is preposterous isn't it? Indeed it's so preposterous the materialist can't explain it.
Information comes first; it had to. The materialist contends that organisms came first and then information somehow evolved from them. The creationist contends that information came first, and from it organisms were created. The materialist has things backward. (He's got the cart before the horse as the old saying goes.)
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick p.285
2. Gleick/286
3. Extraordinary;
- early 15c., from L. extraordinarius "out of the common order," from extra ordinem "out of order," especially the usual order, from extra "out" (see extra-) + ordinem (nom. ordo) "order" (see order).
Extraordinary;
a. 'Beyond what is ordinary or usual:
b. Highly exceptional
c. Being beyond or out of the common order or rule; not of the usual, customary, or regular kind; not ordinary
d. Exceeding the common degree, measure. or condition
e. Employed or sent upon an unusual or special service
- There has to be a special agent to create something special. i.e. life forms on the earth. Mere physical laws won't do the trick. Everyone agrees that we need code; but the materialist has no explanation for this extraordinary entity (i.e. DNA)
f. Far more than usual or expected.
4. Synonyms;
Unusual, singular, extra, unwonted, signal, egregious, marvelous, prodigious, strange, preposterous.
- I find the idea chemicals can formulate code a preposterous idea :=}
5. Preposterous;
1540s, from L. praeposterus "absurd, contrary to nature," lit. "before-behind" (cf. topsy-turvy, cart before the horse), from prae "before" + posterus "subsequent."
a. Contrary to nature, reason, or common sense;
- DNA is indeed contrary to nature (if we define nature as inert matter) We live in a preposterous universe in a sense.
6. 'The genetic code performed a function with uncanny similarities to the metamathematical code invented by Gödel for his philosophical purposes. - Gleick/285
- I think this deserves the name extraordinary :=}
- How could this be the product of mere matter in motion? Are the people who claim this being serious? (I know they pull long faces, and try to Look serious, when they make the claim, but can they really believe that DNA is a chemical accident?)
7. “Nobody had ever in the least suspected that one set of chemicals could code for another set,” Hofstadter wrote.
"Indeed, the very idea is somewhat baffling: If there is a code, then who invented it? What kinds of messages are written in it? Who writes them? Who reads them?" - Gleick/285
- Given this quote, what right has anyone got to mock ID? Why is it okay for Hofstadter to write like this, but not Stephen Meyer?
Sunday, April 24, 2011
A voice in the void
I want to post a few comments on an excellent lecture by John Lennox. (A matter of gravity) It's a response to the new book by Stephen Hawking; Grand Design, and is available online. [see notes]
Quotes and comments;
1. "Because there is a law of gravity the universe will create itself out of nothing." - Hawking [1.]
- And where did gravity come from? Did it birth itself? Doesn't there have to be a universe for there to be gravity?
2. Hawking declares philosophy to be dead (echoing Nietzsche, and his claim god is dead).
- I see this as evidence for Van Til's claim that the death of god is the death of rationality. i.e. of truth, objectivity, etc.
- as Lennox notes; this statement by Hawking, is itself a philosophical statement.
3. The idea the universe created itself is as nonsensical as me saying that I created myself.
4. Hawking claims universes (plural) arise from laws; but there can be no laws if nothing exists. He reifies law; law isn't a entity in itself; it's merely a description of what we see going on in the universe. It's too bad he thinks philosophy is dead; because he could learn something by studying it. He's making concrete what is an abstraction. There is no law over and above what is going on. Laws are descriptive not presciptive. What is a law if nothing exists? His view can only mean that laws exist independent of the universe... and this is a fallacy.
5. Lennox tells us that a scientist can describe how a jet engine works; but cannot account for how it came into being....
- Certainly the law of gravity didn't create the engine. But if you're a materialist this is what you'd have to say if you wanted to be consistent. (Being consistent is something no unregenerate person wants to do.)
6. H. when asked where gravity came from said, "M theory"
- In my view, this isn't, and cannot be science. Cosmologists like Hawking have abandoned empirical science. That he knows his math doesn't mean he's not a quack. There is No way he can know the things he claims to know.
In his delusions of grandeur he's confusing his speculations with reality. As Lennox points out a theory can't create anything. These guys have been smoking the materialist pipe so long they're high on the fumes... and have left the real world behind. This isn't science... it's science fiction (of a very boring sort.)
7. H. claims to know there are many universes. I find this comical arrogance. No one can know this. Once upon a time universe meant all that exists. If we take that definition there can't be many universes. (I notice that they never tell us how many universes! If it's all simply a matter of doing the math, why is it they don't know how many universes there are?)
I consider this burlesque; not science. Whatever happened to empirical science? As you can accomplish anything with statistics, so you can do anything with equations and mathematics. (Is H. aware, I'm sure he is, that many mathematicians consider math to be a human invention. If it is, it couldn't prove anything about the universe.)
8. An investigation of the physical universe can never disprove God; this is a juvenile idea. (Try reading a little philosophy Stephen) This is like saying if I study a jet engine, and don't see its human inventor residing inside of it, said person doesn't exist.
9. Some people claim that are an infinite amount of universes. How could they know? How can the infinite exist? An infinite number of universes came from nothing? We're a million light years past silly here :=} God is an impossiblity according to Michael Martin, but an infinite number of universes aren't?
If given an infinite number of universes anything can happen, why is it our universe could not have been created by god? His argument refutes itself.
10. H. claims that 'science' has killed philsophy (as it's killed god) One wonders what it will kill next. (Echoes of here of Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers?)
11. Roger Penrose has said the mulitverse idea is an excuse for not having a good idea (ie. why there is something rather than nothing; why the universe is so exquisitely fine tuned.)
12. "Free will is an illusion.'' - Hawking
- if that's the case why is he trying to persuade us of his views?
13. Lennox tells us many (including the editor of Nature) opposed the idea of the big bang when it came out. Why? Because it 'supported' the biblical view of a creation in time.
14. Since he accepts the idea of Evolution, I wonder if H. is aware of the creationist claim that matter (or the laws of physics if he prefers) cannot produce genetic code. Imagine looking at a computer and saying ''look, the laws of physics produced this thing... aren't the laws of physics incredible?"
If all is physical law, then his own book is a product of physics. His divorce from his first wife was a matter of gravity. Does he believe that?
To say something was created by the laws of science' (e.g. the universe) makes no sense to me. Did the 'laws of science' create the model T?
15. To say that 'science' can answer every question is to claim every answer boils down to physics, that everything can be understood in terms of matter in motion. This is nothing more than comical bravado.
Notes;
1. A matter of gravity - John Lennox [YouTube]
- His lecture is much better than my rough notes make it appear. Don't waste your time here; go straight to the lecture.
2. Ravi Zacharias Answers Stephen Hawking - Part 1 [of 3] YouTube
- Ravi Z. in conversation with John Lennox
Quotes and comments;
1. "Because there is a law of gravity the universe will create itself out of nothing." - Hawking [1.]
- And where did gravity come from? Did it birth itself? Doesn't there have to be a universe for there to be gravity?
2. Hawking declares philosophy to be dead (echoing Nietzsche, and his claim god is dead).
- I see this as evidence for Van Til's claim that the death of god is the death of rationality. i.e. of truth, objectivity, etc.
- as Lennox notes; this statement by Hawking, is itself a philosophical statement.
3. The idea the universe created itself is as nonsensical as me saying that I created myself.
4. Hawking claims universes (plural) arise from laws; but there can be no laws if nothing exists. He reifies law; law isn't a entity in itself; it's merely a description of what we see going on in the universe. It's too bad he thinks philosophy is dead; because he could learn something by studying it. He's making concrete what is an abstraction. There is no law over and above what is going on. Laws are descriptive not presciptive. What is a law if nothing exists? His view can only mean that laws exist independent of the universe... and this is a fallacy.
5. Lennox tells us that a scientist can describe how a jet engine works; but cannot account for how it came into being....
- Certainly the law of gravity didn't create the engine. But if you're a materialist this is what you'd have to say if you wanted to be consistent. (Being consistent is something no unregenerate person wants to do.)
6. H. when asked where gravity came from said, "M theory"
- In my view, this isn't, and cannot be science. Cosmologists like Hawking have abandoned empirical science. That he knows his math doesn't mean he's not a quack. There is No way he can know the things he claims to know.
In his delusions of grandeur he's confusing his speculations with reality. As Lennox points out a theory can't create anything. These guys have been smoking the materialist pipe so long they're high on the fumes... and have left the real world behind. This isn't science... it's science fiction (of a very boring sort.)
7. H. claims to know there are many universes. I find this comical arrogance. No one can know this. Once upon a time universe meant all that exists. If we take that definition there can't be many universes. (I notice that they never tell us how many universes! If it's all simply a matter of doing the math, why is it they don't know how many universes there are?)
I consider this burlesque; not science. Whatever happened to empirical science? As you can accomplish anything with statistics, so you can do anything with equations and mathematics. (Is H. aware, I'm sure he is, that many mathematicians consider math to be a human invention. If it is, it couldn't prove anything about the universe.)
8. An investigation of the physical universe can never disprove God; this is a juvenile idea. (Try reading a little philosophy Stephen) This is like saying if I study a jet engine, and don't see its human inventor residing inside of it, said person doesn't exist.
9. Some people claim that are an infinite amount of universes. How could they know? How can the infinite exist? An infinite number of universes came from nothing? We're a million light years past silly here :=} God is an impossiblity according to Michael Martin, but an infinite number of universes aren't?
If given an infinite number of universes anything can happen, why is it our universe could not have been created by god? His argument refutes itself.
10. H. claims that 'science' has killed philsophy (as it's killed god) One wonders what it will kill next. (Echoes of here of Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers?)
11. Roger Penrose has said the mulitverse idea is an excuse for not having a good idea (ie. why there is something rather than nothing; why the universe is so exquisitely fine tuned.)
12. "Free will is an illusion.'' - Hawking
- if that's the case why is he trying to persuade us of his views?
13. Lennox tells us many (including the editor of Nature) opposed the idea of the big bang when it came out. Why? Because it 'supported' the biblical view of a creation in time.
14. Since he accepts the idea of Evolution, I wonder if H. is aware of the creationist claim that matter (or the laws of physics if he prefers) cannot produce genetic code. Imagine looking at a computer and saying ''look, the laws of physics produced this thing... aren't the laws of physics incredible?"
If all is physical law, then his own book is a product of physics. His divorce from his first wife was a matter of gravity. Does he believe that?
To say something was created by the laws of science' (e.g. the universe) makes no sense to me. Did the 'laws of science' create the model T?
15. To say that 'science' can answer every question is to claim every answer boils down to physics, that everything can be understood in terms of matter in motion. This is nothing more than comical bravado.
Notes;
1. A matter of gravity - John Lennox [YouTube]
- His lecture is much better than my rough notes make it appear. Don't waste your time here; go straight to the lecture.
2. Ravi Zacharias Answers Stephen Hawking - Part 1 [of 3] YouTube
- Ravi Z. in conversation with John Lennox
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sending out an S.O.S.
I've been reading 'The Information' by James Gleick, and I want to make a few comments on a particular passage. (Fascinating book by the way.)
Quotes and comments;
1. 'His colleague Sidney Dancoff suggested to him in 1950 that a chromosomal thread is “a linear coded tape of information;
"The entire thread constitutes a “message.” This message can be broken down into sub-units which may be called “paragraphs,” “words,” etc. [1.]
- There are no messages in inert matter. Where do messages come from then? How do you go from no messages to messages? Matter doesn't need messages; nor is it capable of producing them. Even granting it could produce them, why would it produce something it didn't need. Matter has no needs; no desires, no thoughts and no needs.
2. Message;
- c.1300, "communication transmitted via a messenger," from O.Fr. message, from M.L. missaticum, from L. missus, pp. of mittere "to send" (see mission). The Latin word is glossed in O.E. by ærende. Specific religious sense of "divinely inspired communication via a prophet" (1540s) led to transferred sense of "the broad meaning (of something)," first attested 1828. As a verb, "to send messages," attested from 1580s. To get the message "understand" is from 1964.
- What message could matter possibly 'want' to send? how could it have any message. Only living organisms have a need or desire to send a message. Among animals messages are mainly concerned with matters of life and death (and are instinctual). You only desire to send a message if you care about something; i.e. if you care about being alive. Since matter isn't alive it doesn't care about anything, and therefore has no message to send. Matter has no messages, and is incapable of formulating any, or sending any. Matter cannot be the source of messages in the universe.
3. Message;
a. A usually short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person, station, or group to another.
- Matter doesn't send messages because it has nothing to say; it has nothing to say because it has no personality. Impersonal entities don't send messages. Messages are evidence of personality.
b. The substance of such a communication; the point or points conveyed: gestured to a waiter, who got the message and brought the bill.
- matter doesn't communicate because it has nothing to say; it just is... and that being the case it is silent... or less than silent. It can only dream about being silent :=}
- all true communication is in code. All code must have an author.
c. 'A communication transmitted; a notice sent; information or opinion or advice communicated through a messenger or other agency: as, a verbal or written message; a telegraphic message.
- A message informs, it transfers knowledge. Only living organisms need knowledge. Matter doesn't need knowledge; isn't capable of it, and doesn't even know what it is. Matter doesn't get hungry, and doesn't get lonely. It doesn't need to send out an S.O.S.
The idea that one day the answer will be found is an expression of faith. (It obviously won't be found if it doesn't exist.) One wonders how long the search will go on. (As long as gov. funding holds out I guess.) Evolutionists are spending a lot of money trying to defend their materialist worldview; to at least make it somewhat plausible.
d. 'Any concept or information conveyed by the use of (usually written) symbols. - Wiki
- Mere matter knows nothing of symbols. Only human beings make conscious use of symbols. Symbols require intelligence, personality and necessity. The symbol use we see in DNA could not have had a source in inert matter. It's impossible. Even if it were capable of such a thing, why would matter use symbols? does it have something to hide? something 'ineffable' to express? does it have some message it needs to encode for transmission?
5. Symbol;
- the meaning "something which stands for something else" first recorded 1590 (in "Faerie Queene").
- What could matter stand for (other than itself)? Matter is what it is what it is. If all is matter, what else is there anyway? There are no symbols in a universe of mere matter. Not one.
a. 'Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
b. 'Any character used to represent a quantity, an operation, a relation, or an abbreviation.
- the symbols used in DNA represent an operation i.e. the instructions that go into producing a protein. (In the realm of mere matter there are no symbols and no instructions. You only have instructions where you have a goal. As far as we know, the only source of goals are intelligent agents.)
The materialist must explain how you can have symbols before intelligence; symbols before persons.
The only way materialists can escape the dilemna posed by information is to equate information with its physical medium. This becomes the claim information is the same as brain cells, or ink on paper, or the same as hard drive it's configured onto. I see this as a ruse that attempts to escape the problem. To a strict materialist information cannot exist (ie. apart from its physical embodiment.) That information exists, is evidence to me that materialism is false.
Summary;
All the materialist can say to this is; ''well; it happened... so there. One day we'll know how this cosmic accident occurred but for now we must keep searching." If that satisfies some people (and apparently it does) what can I say. It doesn't satisfy me. I see the undirected 'emergence of 'life' from inert matter as inherently impossible. In my opinion (limited as it is) it's a desire to believe there is no creator god that prompts people to accept the m. view. If it wasn't for a desire m. be true, I don't think anyone would find the chance production of life forms a believable idea.
The space craft NASA (and Carl Sagan helped design) sent out into the universe to tell the whereabouts of human kind, can be seen as an S.O.S. sent out by materialists... seeking confirmation of their worldview. i.e. send us a message telling us we're right. Please.
We'll go out on a musical note; 'Message in a bottle' - The Police
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/280
- I especially enjoyed the chapter on Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. A whole book could be written on their unusual partnership.
2. Title refers to a song by Police [''Message in a bottle'']
Quotes and comments;
1. 'His colleague Sidney Dancoff suggested to him in 1950 that a chromosomal thread is “a linear coded tape of information;
"The entire thread constitutes a “message.” This message can be broken down into sub-units which may be called “paragraphs,” “words,” etc. [1.]
- There are no messages in inert matter. Where do messages come from then? How do you go from no messages to messages? Matter doesn't need messages; nor is it capable of producing them. Even granting it could produce them, why would it produce something it didn't need. Matter has no needs; no desires, no thoughts and no needs.
2. Message;
- c.1300, "communication transmitted via a messenger," from O.Fr. message, from M.L. missaticum, from L. missus, pp. of mittere "to send" (see mission). The Latin word is glossed in O.E. by ærende. Specific religious sense of "divinely inspired communication via a prophet" (1540s) led to transferred sense of "the broad meaning (of something)," first attested 1828. As a verb, "to send messages," attested from 1580s. To get the message "understand" is from 1964.
- What message could matter possibly 'want' to send? how could it have any message. Only living organisms have a need or desire to send a message. Among animals messages are mainly concerned with matters of life and death (and are instinctual). You only desire to send a message if you care about something; i.e. if you care about being alive. Since matter isn't alive it doesn't care about anything, and therefore has no message to send. Matter has no messages, and is incapable of formulating any, or sending any. Matter cannot be the source of messages in the universe.
3. Message;
a. A usually short communication transmitted by words, signals, or other means from one person, station, or group to another.
- Matter doesn't send messages because it has nothing to say; it has nothing to say because it has no personality. Impersonal entities don't send messages. Messages are evidence of personality.
b. The substance of such a communication; the point or points conveyed: gestured to a waiter, who got the message and brought the bill.
- matter doesn't communicate because it has nothing to say; it just is... and that being the case it is silent... or less than silent. It can only dream about being silent :=}
- all true communication is in code. All code must have an author.
c. 'A communication transmitted; a notice sent; information or opinion or advice communicated through a messenger or other agency: as, a verbal or written message; a telegraphic message.
- A message informs, it transfers knowledge. Only living organisms need knowledge. Matter doesn't need knowledge; isn't capable of it, and doesn't even know what it is. Matter doesn't get hungry, and doesn't get lonely. It doesn't need to send out an S.O.S.
The idea that one day the answer will be found is an expression of faith. (It obviously won't be found if it doesn't exist.) One wonders how long the search will go on. (As long as gov. funding holds out I guess.) Evolutionists are spending a lot of money trying to defend their materialist worldview; to at least make it somewhat plausible.
d. 'Any concept or information conveyed by the use of (usually written) symbols. - Wiki
- Mere matter knows nothing of symbols. Only human beings make conscious use of symbols. Symbols require intelligence, personality and necessity. The symbol use we see in DNA could not have had a source in inert matter. It's impossible. Even if it were capable of such a thing, why would matter use symbols? does it have something to hide? something 'ineffable' to express? does it have some message it needs to encode for transmission?
5. Symbol;
- the meaning "something which stands for something else" first recorded 1590 (in "Faerie Queene").
- What could matter stand for (other than itself)? Matter is what it is what it is. If all is matter, what else is there anyway? There are no symbols in a universe of mere matter. Not one.
a. 'Something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
b. 'Any character used to represent a quantity, an operation, a relation, or an abbreviation.
- the symbols used in DNA represent an operation i.e. the instructions that go into producing a protein. (In the realm of mere matter there are no symbols and no instructions. You only have instructions where you have a goal. As far as we know, the only source of goals are intelligent agents.)
The materialist must explain how you can have symbols before intelligence; symbols before persons.
The only way materialists can escape the dilemna posed by information is to equate information with its physical medium. This becomes the claim information is the same as brain cells, or ink on paper, or the same as hard drive it's configured onto. I see this as a ruse that attempts to escape the problem. To a strict materialist information cannot exist (ie. apart from its physical embodiment.) That information exists, is evidence to me that materialism is false.
Summary;
All the materialist can say to this is; ''well; it happened... so there. One day we'll know how this cosmic accident occurred but for now we must keep searching." If that satisfies some people (and apparently it does) what can I say. It doesn't satisfy me. I see the undirected 'emergence of 'life' from inert matter as inherently impossible. In my opinion (limited as it is) it's a desire to believe there is no creator god that prompts people to accept the m. view. If it wasn't for a desire m. be true, I don't think anyone would find the chance production of life forms a believable idea.
The space craft NASA (and Carl Sagan helped design) sent out into the universe to tell the whereabouts of human kind, can be seen as an S.O.S. sent out by materialists... seeking confirmation of their worldview. i.e. send us a message telling us we're right. Please.
We'll go out on a musical note; 'Message in a bottle' - The Police
Notes;
1. The Information - James Gleick/280
- I especially enjoyed the chapter on Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. A whole book could be written on their unusual partnership.
2. Title refers to a song by Police [''Message in a bottle'']
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Science and sin; or, whatever happened to science?
A popular book of years ago asked 'whatever happened to sin?" Now we need to ask; whatever happened to science? Scientists have become the great usurpers; they no longer seem to think in terms of limits. They don't seem to know the difference between rocks and people. Reductionism has become imperialism and given us falsehood and misunderstanding. (Empiricism has turned into reductionism; method has become worldview.) The idea matter is all there is, isn't an empirical observation, it's a philosophical claim. The idea reductionism can explain all things isn't empirical or scientific, but philosophical.
Quotes and comments;
1. '...McMaster University researchers decided they would find “scientific solutions to sin.” Is their solution theological? Are they suggesting moral teachings, or offering psychological counseling? No; their working assumption is that all sin has molecular underpinnings.
"Most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth – but could there be molecular solutions for this daily struggle between good and evil?" By getting students to think outside the box, the aim was to come up with the best molecule and design for a drug, or remedy, that counteracts sin.' [1.]
- This is more academic game playing and silliness. What's their definition of sin? Does it exist? (some say no) How can we know? How can we know what it is? How can we know we're right? Is sin one thing or many things?
Why are materialists accepting the Catholic church's definition of sin? Seems a tad odd doesn't it?
The pretense behind this project is the idea all problems have technical solutions; that since all is matter in motion, all problems have material solutions. (ie. man as a bag of chemicals.)
2. Definition of sin;
1. 'A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate. [modern]
2. Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. (Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism.)
- If there is no creator god there can be no sin in the biblical sense. So why do materialists need a remedy for sin, when sin doesn't exist? There can be no sin unless there are moral absolutes. It makes no sense for materialists to speak of sin. Their worldview, if it were to be consistent, would not contain sin.
Sin depends on a certain freedom of will. So does man have free will? The materialist to be consistent must say no. Again, to talk of sin makes no sense. (This would be a big problem if materialists were to take philosophy and consistentcy seriously... but of course they don't.)
If man is just an animal (as the judge in the Dover case insisted) then it makes no sense to speak of sin. Do animals sin? Again, the materialist can't be consistent. He must speak out of all orifices at the same time... with each giving a diffeerent message.
The key question here is who defines what is sin? The PC agenda insists that only our secular professors have the right to define sin. They also have the right to have the State enforce their (finite, fallible, fallen) views on the general populace. Is that a scientific idea? Was it discovered with one of the new powerful microscopes? Was it discovered in a Hadron Collider experiment?
What's at stake here is a view of man. My concern is that the PC crowd will define what a 'proper' person is, and then the scientists will be given the job of producing this person. They might use drugs, or they might use genetic engineering. (PC man is coming to a town near you folks. In fact he might already arrived; e.g. 40 percent of people living in montreal are on anti-depressants... or so I remember reading.)
So what happens to science without a sense of sin? Materialism can't offer anything but an arbitrary definition, and science can't offer any definition at all. Scientific enterprise is thus dependent upon non-scientific sources for its moral and ethical directives and ideals. This means that at bottom science is a moral enterprise; that it must have a moral foundation. If man is just a bucket of chemicals in a meaningless universe, it makes no sense to insist he must behave in a certain way. Ethics and morality aren't scientific, and they never can be.
Mike Johnson
Notes;
1. The science of sin; Creation/Evolution Headlines
Quotes and comments;
1. '...McMaster University researchers decided they would find “scientific solutions to sin.” Is their solution theological? Are they suggesting moral teachings, or offering psychological counseling? No; their working assumption is that all sin has molecular underpinnings.
"Most people are familiar with the seven deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed and sloth – but could there be molecular solutions for this daily struggle between good and evil?" By getting students to think outside the box, the aim was to come up with the best molecule and design for a drug, or remedy, that counteracts sin.' [1.]
- This is more academic game playing and silliness. What's their definition of sin? Does it exist? (some say no) How can we know? How can we know what it is? How can we know we're right? Is sin one thing or many things?
Why are materialists accepting the Catholic church's definition of sin? Seems a tad odd doesn't it?
The pretense behind this project is the idea all problems have technical solutions; that since all is matter in motion, all problems have material solutions. (ie. man as a bag of chemicals.)
2. Definition of sin;
1. 'A transgression of a religious or moral law, especially when deliberate. [modern]
2. Any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God. (Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism.)
- If there is no creator god there can be no sin in the biblical sense. So why do materialists need a remedy for sin, when sin doesn't exist? There can be no sin unless there are moral absolutes. It makes no sense for materialists to speak of sin. Their worldview, if it were to be consistent, would not contain sin.
Sin depends on a certain freedom of will. So does man have free will? The materialist to be consistent must say no. Again, to talk of sin makes no sense. (This would be a big problem if materialists were to take philosophy and consistentcy seriously... but of course they don't.)
If man is just an animal (as the judge in the Dover case insisted) then it makes no sense to speak of sin. Do animals sin? Again, the materialist can't be consistent. He must speak out of all orifices at the same time... with each giving a diffeerent message.
The key question here is who defines what is sin? The PC agenda insists that only our secular professors have the right to define sin. They also have the right to have the State enforce their (finite, fallible, fallen) views on the general populace. Is that a scientific idea? Was it discovered with one of the new powerful microscopes? Was it discovered in a Hadron Collider experiment?
What's at stake here is a view of man. My concern is that the PC crowd will define what a 'proper' person is, and then the scientists will be given the job of producing this person. They might use drugs, or they might use genetic engineering. (PC man is coming to a town near you folks. In fact he might already arrived; e.g. 40 percent of people living in montreal are on anti-depressants... or so I remember reading.)
So what happens to science without a sense of sin? Materialism can't offer anything but an arbitrary definition, and science can't offer any definition at all. Scientific enterprise is thus dependent upon non-scientific sources for its moral and ethical directives and ideals. This means that at bottom science is a moral enterprise; that it must have a moral foundation. If man is just a bucket of chemicals in a meaningless universe, it makes no sense to insist he must behave in a certain way. Ethics and morality aren't scientific, and they never can be.
Mike Johnson
Notes;
1. The science of sin; Creation/Evolution Headlines
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Knowledge, and the contradictions of Materialism
The irony of the assault on Christianity by the new atheists is that they have no epistemological foundation for their various critiques.
Quotes and comments;
1. 'To reason at all, the unbeliever must operate on assumptions that actually contradict his espoused presupposition - assumptions that comport only with the Christian worldview.' [1.]
- The materialist must use a Christian metaphysics to be able to reason, even to be able to voice criticisms of Christianity. He must assume he's capable of knowledge, that true knowledge exists, that truth exists, that good and bad, right and wrong exist, that evil exists, etc. Thus at the heart of the 'new atheism' is hypocrisy and contradiction.
For man to possess true knowledge, true knowledge must first exist. The materialist position makes true knowledge impossible. The reductionism inherent in materialism reduces all data into matter in motion. i.e. to physics. This destroys any possibility of rationality or meaning. [2.]
For man to possess true knowledge, he must be a creature capable of acquiring knowledge. The problem of the materialist is that (in terms of his own position) he is decidedly not an entity (organism) capable of knowledge. Materialists characterize man (homo sapien, sapien) in different (various) ways. For some man is just a meat machine; for some he's a bag of chemicals, he's mere matter; he's a 'souped up' (customized) ape; he's a robot being manipulated by his selfish genes; or he's an instinct driven animal.
It's difficult to deal with such a plethora of depictions. It's hard to summarize all these views. What they have in common is a rejection of the biblical portrait of man. Leaving such difficulties aside, we see that there isn't a basis for knowledge in any of these materialist views of man. This is the hopeless position of the materialist. He has no epistemological foundation for knowledge. When he claims to possess true knowelge he's not merely staning on a cloud, the cloud is floating in the void.
Remember this the next time Richard Dawkins gets up on his hind legs and starts spouting off against the 'evils' of Christianity - and gives you the 'truth' about origins. He makes the most foolish child look wise. Everything he says is contradicted by his own basic assumptions of who he is. If he's as wise as he imagines he is, why don't the various components of his worldview comport with each other?
e.g. He says man has no free will, but yet he encourages people to give up their belief in God and creation. This makes no sense. (Aren't ones views supposed to make sense?) Isn't science supposed to be about making sense? Is he so dull of wit (like an axe left for years under a tree) he sees no problem? Is it okay in science to ignore contradictions? Is it okay not to have any epistemological foundation for what you say?
Notes;
1. Van Til's Apologetic - Greg Bahnsen/p. 12
2. 'Van Til asks what view of man, mind, truth, language and the world is necessarily presupposed by our conception of knowledge and our methods of pursuing it." [p.6]
Quotes and comments;
1. 'To reason at all, the unbeliever must operate on assumptions that actually contradict his espoused presupposition - assumptions that comport only with the Christian worldview.' [1.]
- The materialist must use a Christian metaphysics to be able to reason, even to be able to voice criticisms of Christianity. He must assume he's capable of knowledge, that true knowledge exists, that truth exists, that good and bad, right and wrong exist, that evil exists, etc. Thus at the heart of the 'new atheism' is hypocrisy and contradiction.
For man to possess true knowledge, true knowledge must first exist. The materialist position makes true knowledge impossible. The reductionism inherent in materialism reduces all data into matter in motion. i.e. to physics. This destroys any possibility of rationality or meaning. [2.]
For man to possess true knowledge, he must be a creature capable of acquiring knowledge. The problem of the materialist is that (in terms of his own position) he is decidedly not an entity (organism) capable of knowledge. Materialists characterize man (homo sapien, sapien) in different (various) ways. For some man is just a meat machine; for some he's a bag of chemicals, he's mere matter; he's a 'souped up' (customized) ape; he's a robot being manipulated by his selfish genes; or he's an instinct driven animal.
It's difficult to deal with such a plethora of depictions. It's hard to summarize all these views. What they have in common is a rejection of the biblical portrait of man. Leaving such difficulties aside, we see that there isn't a basis for knowledge in any of these materialist views of man. This is the hopeless position of the materialist. He has no epistemological foundation for knowledge. When he claims to possess true knowelge he's not merely staning on a cloud, the cloud is floating in the void.
Remember this the next time Richard Dawkins gets up on his hind legs and starts spouting off against the 'evils' of Christianity - and gives you the 'truth' about origins. He makes the most foolish child look wise. Everything he says is contradicted by his own basic assumptions of who he is. If he's as wise as he imagines he is, why don't the various components of his worldview comport with each other?
e.g. He says man has no free will, but yet he encourages people to give up their belief in God and creation. This makes no sense. (Aren't ones views supposed to make sense?) Isn't science supposed to be about making sense? Is he so dull of wit (like an axe left for years under a tree) he sees no problem? Is it okay in science to ignore contradictions? Is it okay not to have any epistemological foundation for what you say?
Notes;
1. Van Til's Apologetic - Greg Bahnsen/p. 12
2. 'Van Til asks what view of man, mind, truth, language and the world is necessarily presupposed by our conception of knowledge and our methods of pursuing it." [p.6]
Friday, April 15, 2011
Naturalism and the undertaker; a tale of a hundred moons
I want to make a few comments that were provoked by reading a review of a book by John Lennox. (God's Undertaker; has science buried God?)
Quotes and comments;
1. ''The standard atheist or materialist position is that nature, the cosmos, or the physical world, is all there is. If nature is all there is (the philosophy of naturalism4), then science is the ultimate source of knowledge (a doctrine that has been called scientism). [1.]
- If nature is all there is, it should be possible to demonstrate how matter, plus physics, plus time can bring about the 'emergence' of living organisms and the eventual flowering of planet earth. The project so far, in my hopefully humble opinion, has been an utter failure. All we've been given is SF style speculation.... (without the humor or the drama.)
If naturalism were correct you would think people could point to some law that would bring living forms out of the void of inert matter... but I see no such law. Physical laws aren't creative; they're reactive. (We might be better off speaking of physical reactions rather than physical laws.) The reactions of matter aren't creative in the sense that they do the same thing every time; e.g. A+B = C (every time) The question materialists are struggling with is how do you get something new out of this? how do you get new answers (information) out of the same old equations? Aren't two and two always going to be four? I don't see any way matter can do any more than give you matter. Matter plus matter = matter. Matter times matter = matter. Matter divided by matter = matter.
Information isn't material, but yet it's what matter needs to create. The materialist is committed to the idea matter can provide information. I don't see it. Matter is a dull witted sort of fellow; he has no tricks up his sleeve... certainly nothing as grand as the specified complexity of genetic code.
2. ''He points out that “the statement that only science can lead to truth is not itself deduced from science” (p. 42), which means that as a matter of logic, scientism has to be false in order to be true.
3. 'It was the deification of nature itself that had the most detrimental effects on science, and it was the Hebraic, biblical doctrine of creation that de-deified nature and made real science possible (pp. 47–50). But, in a sense, nature is being deified again by the claims that the natural world is all there is, and this is again destructive.'
- To say that 'nature' is all there is, is to make nature the most important thing in the universe. It's to make living organisms the most important things in the universe, and ultimately it's to make man the most important (smartest, most powerful, etc.) entity in the universe. Naturalism therefore is a glorification of man. It actually transforms man into God. (ie. since man is the most important being, his views and desires are the ultimate authority in the universe... and that sounds nearly identical to what scripture tells us of God.)
To say there is no god is to say man is god. (No wonder so many people find naturalism attractive.) There are profound theological implications of adopting naturalism as a worldview. It's the most arrogant view that it's possible for a human being to take. To say nature is all there is, is to say all that matters (in the universe) is what man thinks.
I see evidence that some people are troubled by the implications of naturalism in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Materialists are seeking an Other as a way of discouraging the hubris inherent in naturalism. (Man wants to be god, but yet finds the prospect troubling.) The biblical view is that man needs God a lot more than he needs aliens. (I don't think human kind needs aliens at all.) Even if aliens were found they could not be the 'significant Other' that man needs. Humanity doesn't need a friend (or a foe) it needs a source of Truth.
4. 'Why are we able to understand and study the universe? Why does mathematics relate to the physical world?
“It is very striking that the most abstract mathematical concepts that seem to be pure inventions of the human mind can turn out to be of vital importance for branches of science, with a vast range of practical applications” (p. 60).
- The biblical answer to this question (why mathematics relates to the physical universe) is basic; the universe was created with man in mind. The universe and man were made to be a perfect fit for each other. (I don't believe that man's physical size is an accident, nor do I think the size of man's mind is an accident. Man's mind is 'big' enough to deal with a universe as large as the one we find ourselves in. Man was made capable of dealing with universe. (I wish I could be as eloquent as my subject, but find myself babbling.) Man was created to have (to be capable of) dominion over the creation. That is why there is a fit between the mathematics man 'invents' and the physical universe.
5. ''The naturalist worldview can provide, in the words of Eugene Wigner, “no rational explanation” for the intelligibility of the universe (p. 60). But the Christian theist has an explanation: “the intelligibility of the universe is grounded in the nature of the ultimate rationality of God” (p. 61).
- The biblical view is that man can understand the universe because he was created to be able to understand it. i.e. he can't have dominion over it unless he understands it (or; the better he understands it the more capable he is of having godly dominion over it.) There is no explanation from Darwinists that adequately accounts for man's intellectual abilities. Evolutionists like to brag about how often E. correctly predicts things; but evolutionary theory does not predict human intelligence, (this is rarely admitted.) nor anything even approximating it.
Human genius is (from the E. point of view) entirely superfluous. It should not exist. If evolutionists were honest they'd admit that human beings should not exist. If E. (M2M) were correct human beings wouldn't exist, (and wouldn't be writing books claiming god is a delusion and that evolution created all things.) Only biblical creation can give an account for humankind's genius. People who reject the Genesis account are left with no explanation at all.
6. 'Lennox defends Paley’s basic design argument as philosophically sound. Hume had criticized design arguments, suggesting that the only way we could know the world was probably designed was by comparing it to other worlds, designed and not designed.
- I wonder what the atheist's homeboy would have to say if he were alive today. We can make the comparisons he only speculated about. If we compare earth to the other planets we know of we can only conclude it was designed. e.g. if we compare mars and earth which one looks more as if it were designed or 'terraformed' ? Which one looks as if there's been intelligent intervention at some point? (I'm not hot on this argument, but I think it's valid.)
7. 'The method of abduction, or inference to the best explanation, is appropriate, and is entirely untouched by Hume’s criticisms of design. “An argument that does explain a given effect is always better than one that does not” (p. 83). The question, then, is whether Darwinian evolution defeats the design argument by providing a better empirical explanation.
- The materialists have no plausible explanation for how a rock (planet earth) turned into a professor; how inert matter somehow transformed itself into living organisms, including man. All they have are speculations... none of which even convince materialists. The only answer I see is creation. The fact our professors don't like this answer doesn't mean it couldn't be true. There's no logical reason some kind of creation can't be true.
8. 'Lennox writes, the “sheer vehemence” of the defenders of Darwinism “fascinates me”. Why, he asks,
“ … is it only in connection with this area of intellectual endeavour that I have ever heard an eminent scientist (with a Nobel Prize to his name, no less) say in a public lecture in Oxford: ‘You must not question evolution.’” (p. 93).
- I find this intriguing myself. I don't understand it. I once accepted the materialist idea of an 'evolved' universe, but I never had any hatred of creation, creationists or problem with critiques of Darwinism.
'You must not question evolution'... being translated (into honest lingo) means 'you must not question materialism' or 'you must not say there's a god.' Why? Because he hates the very idea of God and creation. Why? Because he's a fallen creature in rebellion against his creator.
9. 'Lennox clearly explains the Shannon definition of information, and then explains the difference between Shannon information and semantic information (a crucial distinction that anti-design writers often fail to appreciate13). Lennox also explains the important concept of specified complexity. Information content that has both complexity (mathematically measurable) and specification (conforming to some meaning existing independently of itself) is inexplicable in terms of chance or natural law.
- Materialism can't explain how matter can stand for something other than itself; how it can be something other than itself; how the physical composition of X is the least important thing about it.
10. 'As he moves into a final chapter on the origin of information itself, Lennox notes that information itself is both invisible and immaterial (even though it is transmitted by physical means). “How could purely material causes account satisfactorily for the immaterial?” (p. 168). In short, the information in biology gives evidence of intelligent design.
- The problem materialists have is that they claim that only material things exist. i.e. they have no explanation for the immaterial, and thus no explanation for information. (Rather a big problem in the Age of Information :=}
11. 'In contrast, Genesis presents us with a Creator God who exists independently of the universe, but speaks into it. The gospel of John informs us that this Creator is the Word, the Word that “became human, to demonstrate fully that the ultimate truth behind the universe is personal” (p. 178).
- The key issue is this; is this a personal universe? or is it an impersonal universe? (If it's impersonal how did it create persons? Apologists for e. like to claim there are no questions can't answer; but I don't see any answers forthcoming for this vital question. An impersonal universe doesn't not predict persons.
Notes;
1. Grand undertaking; A review of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John C. Lennox - reviewed by Lael Weinberger
2. “Aunt Matilda’s cake” serves to explain the limits of the scientific enterprise (pp. 40–42). The finest natural scientists in the world could analyze the cake and tell us much about its chemical makeup, nutritional content, and protein structure, but they could not tell us the purpose for which Aunt Matilda made the cake. [above]
3. The likelihood that naturalism is correct is about the same as your waking up one night, looking out the window and seeing 100 moons in the sky.
- This is apparently what Steve Tibbetts did. Sample his music at YouTube; 100 Moons
Quotes and comments;
1. ''The standard atheist or materialist position is that nature, the cosmos, or the physical world, is all there is. If nature is all there is (the philosophy of naturalism4), then science is the ultimate source of knowledge (a doctrine that has been called scientism). [1.]
- If nature is all there is, it should be possible to demonstrate how matter, plus physics, plus time can bring about the 'emergence' of living organisms and the eventual flowering of planet earth. The project so far, in my hopefully humble opinion, has been an utter failure. All we've been given is SF style speculation.... (without the humor or the drama.)
If naturalism were correct you would think people could point to some law that would bring living forms out of the void of inert matter... but I see no such law. Physical laws aren't creative; they're reactive. (We might be better off speaking of physical reactions rather than physical laws.) The reactions of matter aren't creative in the sense that they do the same thing every time; e.g. A+B = C (every time) The question materialists are struggling with is how do you get something new out of this? how do you get new answers (information) out of the same old equations? Aren't two and two always going to be four? I don't see any way matter can do any more than give you matter. Matter plus matter = matter. Matter times matter = matter. Matter divided by matter = matter.
Information isn't material, but yet it's what matter needs to create. The materialist is committed to the idea matter can provide information. I don't see it. Matter is a dull witted sort of fellow; he has no tricks up his sleeve... certainly nothing as grand as the specified complexity of genetic code.
2. ''He points out that “the statement that only science can lead to truth is not itself deduced from science” (p. 42), which means that as a matter of logic, scientism has to be false in order to be true.
3. 'It was the deification of nature itself that had the most detrimental effects on science, and it was the Hebraic, biblical doctrine of creation that de-deified nature and made real science possible (pp. 47–50). But, in a sense, nature is being deified again by the claims that the natural world is all there is, and this is again destructive.'
- To say that 'nature' is all there is, is to make nature the most important thing in the universe. It's to make living organisms the most important things in the universe, and ultimately it's to make man the most important (smartest, most powerful, etc.) entity in the universe. Naturalism therefore is a glorification of man. It actually transforms man into God. (ie. since man is the most important being, his views and desires are the ultimate authority in the universe... and that sounds nearly identical to what scripture tells us of God.)
To say there is no god is to say man is god. (No wonder so many people find naturalism attractive.) There are profound theological implications of adopting naturalism as a worldview. It's the most arrogant view that it's possible for a human being to take. To say nature is all there is, is to say all that matters (in the universe) is what man thinks.
I see evidence that some people are troubled by the implications of naturalism in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Materialists are seeking an Other as a way of discouraging the hubris inherent in naturalism. (Man wants to be god, but yet finds the prospect troubling.) The biblical view is that man needs God a lot more than he needs aliens. (I don't think human kind needs aliens at all.) Even if aliens were found they could not be the 'significant Other' that man needs. Humanity doesn't need a friend (or a foe) it needs a source of Truth.
4. 'Why are we able to understand and study the universe? Why does mathematics relate to the physical world?
“It is very striking that the most abstract mathematical concepts that seem to be pure inventions of the human mind can turn out to be of vital importance for branches of science, with a vast range of practical applications” (p. 60).
- The biblical answer to this question (why mathematics relates to the physical universe) is basic; the universe was created with man in mind. The universe and man were made to be a perfect fit for each other. (I don't believe that man's physical size is an accident, nor do I think the size of man's mind is an accident. Man's mind is 'big' enough to deal with a universe as large as the one we find ourselves in. Man was made capable of dealing with universe. (I wish I could be as eloquent as my subject, but find myself babbling.) Man was created to have (to be capable of) dominion over the creation. That is why there is a fit between the mathematics man 'invents' and the physical universe.
5. ''The naturalist worldview can provide, in the words of Eugene Wigner, “no rational explanation” for the intelligibility of the universe (p. 60). But the Christian theist has an explanation: “the intelligibility of the universe is grounded in the nature of the ultimate rationality of God” (p. 61).
- The biblical view is that man can understand the universe because he was created to be able to understand it. i.e. he can't have dominion over it unless he understands it (or; the better he understands it the more capable he is of having godly dominion over it.) There is no explanation from Darwinists that adequately accounts for man's intellectual abilities. Evolutionists like to brag about how often E. correctly predicts things; but evolutionary theory does not predict human intelligence, (this is rarely admitted.) nor anything even approximating it.
Human genius is (from the E. point of view) entirely superfluous. It should not exist. If evolutionists were honest they'd admit that human beings should not exist. If E. (M2M) were correct human beings wouldn't exist, (and wouldn't be writing books claiming god is a delusion and that evolution created all things.) Only biblical creation can give an account for humankind's genius. People who reject the Genesis account are left with no explanation at all.
6. 'Lennox defends Paley’s basic design argument as philosophically sound. Hume had criticized design arguments, suggesting that the only way we could know the world was probably designed was by comparing it to other worlds, designed and not designed.
- I wonder what the atheist's homeboy would have to say if he were alive today. We can make the comparisons he only speculated about. If we compare earth to the other planets we know of we can only conclude it was designed. e.g. if we compare mars and earth which one looks more as if it were designed or 'terraformed' ? Which one looks as if there's been intelligent intervention at some point? (I'm not hot on this argument, but I think it's valid.)
7. 'The method of abduction, or inference to the best explanation, is appropriate, and is entirely untouched by Hume’s criticisms of design. “An argument that does explain a given effect is always better than one that does not” (p. 83). The question, then, is whether Darwinian evolution defeats the design argument by providing a better empirical explanation.
- The materialists have no plausible explanation for how a rock (planet earth) turned into a professor; how inert matter somehow transformed itself into living organisms, including man. All they have are speculations... none of which even convince materialists. The only answer I see is creation. The fact our professors don't like this answer doesn't mean it couldn't be true. There's no logical reason some kind of creation can't be true.
8. 'Lennox writes, the “sheer vehemence” of the defenders of Darwinism “fascinates me”. Why, he asks,
“ … is it only in connection with this area of intellectual endeavour that I have ever heard an eminent scientist (with a Nobel Prize to his name, no less) say in a public lecture in Oxford: ‘You must not question evolution.’” (p. 93).
- I find this intriguing myself. I don't understand it. I once accepted the materialist idea of an 'evolved' universe, but I never had any hatred of creation, creationists or problem with critiques of Darwinism.
'You must not question evolution'... being translated (into honest lingo) means 'you must not question materialism' or 'you must not say there's a god.' Why? Because he hates the very idea of God and creation. Why? Because he's a fallen creature in rebellion against his creator.
9. 'Lennox clearly explains the Shannon definition of information, and then explains the difference between Shannon information and semantic information (a crucial distinction that anti-design writers often fail to appreciate13). Lennox also explains the important concept of specified complexity. Information content that has both complexity (mathematically measurable) and specification (conforming to some meaning existing independently of itself) is inexplicable in terms of chance or natural law.
- Materialism can't explain how matter can stand for something other than itself; how it can be something other than itself; how the physical composition of X is the least important thing about it.
10. 'As he moves into a final chapter on the origin of information itself, Lennox notes that information itself is both invisible and immaterial (even though it is transmitted by physical means). “How could purely material causes account satisfactorily for the immaterial?” (p. 168). In short, the information in biology gives evidence of intelligent design.
- The problem materialists have is that they claim that only material things exist. i.e. they have no explanation for the immaterial, and thus no explanation for information. (Rather a big problem in the Age of Information :=}
11. 'In contrast, Genesis presents us with a Creator God who exists independently of the universe, but speaks into it. The gospel of John informs us that this Creator is the Word, the Word that “became human, to demonstrate fully that the ultimate truth behind the universe is personal” (p. 178).
- The key issue is this; is this a personal universe? or is it an impersonal universe? (If it's impersonal how did it create persons? Apologists for e. like to claim there are no questions can't answer; but I don't see any answers forthcoming for this vital question. An impersonal universe doesn't not predict persons.
Notes;
1. Grand undertaking; A review of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? by John C. Lennox - reviewed by Lael Weinberger
2. “Aunt Matilda’s cake” serves to explain the limits of the scientific enterprise (pp. 40–42). The finest natural scientists in the world could analyze the cake and tell us much about its chemical makeup, nutritional content, and protein structure, but they could not tell us the purpose for which Aunt Matilda made the cake. [above]
3. The likelihood that naturalism is correct is about the same as your waking up one night, looking out the window and seeing 100 moons in the sky.
- This is apparently what Steve Tibbetts did. Sample his music at YouTube; 100 Moons
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
You've got to hide your love away
The Fermi paradox continues to befuddle people. Over the years many have suggested answers to this riddle. Today we look at one more attempt.
Quotes and comments;
1. Aliens who hide, survive;
'In order to explain the Fermi paradox, Kent [Adrian] turns to natural selection – and suggests that it may favour quiet aliens. [1.]
- If the grand theory of evolution (M2M) were true this 'real paradox' shouldn't exist. One wonders how evolution can be a fact while this paradox remains.
Is there any reason to believe these imagined aliens are any smarter or more prescient than humans. I mean we unintentionally revealed ourselves (with signals) long before Sagan did so intentionally. I would suspect any aliens would have done the same.
- can you use natural selection to 'analyze' imaginary creatures?
2. 'Has ET evolved to be discreet? An evolutionary tendency for inconspicuous aliens would solve a nagging paradox – and also suggest that we Earthlings should think twice before advertising our own existence. [1.]
- An evolutionary tendency? does that mean anything?
This doesn't explain why we don't see the aliens who don't hide. Don't all these cave cowering aliens have to be hiding from something?
Talking about an e. tendency in intelligent creatures doesn't make a lot of sense to me. We're told everyday that we're in the post evolutionary phase of our existence, that we need to take control of a random (natural) process and engineer our future e. in terms of rational goals. Wouldn't thinkers with the same views exist among the aliens?
If there really are billions of alien civilizations out there it seems quite a stretch to suggest they would all act the same way.
3. 'He argues that it's plausible that there is a competition for resources on a cosmic scale, driving an evolutionary process between alien species on different planets. Advanced species, for example, might want to exploit other planets for their own purposes.'
- I don't find that plausible at all. I don't see how advanced technology would require such a crude approach. surely in a universe as large as this there are an almost infinite number of unpopulated bodies to exploit if need be.
Summary;
I think this 'theory' is evidence of how badly the Fermi paradox bothers e. advocates. In my experience they take this far more seriously than any ID critique of evolution theory. They feel sure if E. theory is correct that there Has to be billions of aliens out there. If there isn't E. has been refuted. (Most, if not all Darwinists believe this... this is why they find countless ways to try and answer the paradox.
In the minds of most people; no aliens = creation. This is not so much a matter of irrefutable logic, but of feeling. i.e. until aliens are discovered (if they ever are) there will be doubt; doubt that evolution is true, doubt that creation isn't true.
With apologies to the Beatles, we'll end on a musical note.
"Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If they're gone I can't go on
Feelin' two-foot small." YouTube
Notes;
1. Exo-evolution: Aliens who hide, survive - Mark Buchanan - New Scientist
'As physicist Enrico Fermi argued in 1950, unless the evolution of life is unique to Earth, there must be many intelligent species out there. So why have they neither phoned home nor been detected by us?
"It's a real paradox," says Adrian Kent of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
2. You've got to hide your love away - Beatles
"Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone I can't go on
Feelin' two-foot small."
- in my scenario, the song gets sung by Seth Shostak.
Quotes and comments;
1. Aliens who hide, survive;
'In order to explain the Fermi paradox, Kent [Adrian] turns to natural selection – and suggests that it may favour quiet aliens. [1.]
- If the grand theory of evolution (M2M) were true this 'real paradox' shouldn't exist. One wonders how evolution can be a fact while this paradox remains.
Is there any reason to believe these imagined aliens are any smarter or more prescient than humans. I mean we unintentionally revealed ourselves (with signals) long before Sagan did so intentionally. I would suspect any aliens would have done the same.
- can you use natural selection to 'analyze' imaginary creatures?
2. 'Has ET evolved to be discreet? An evolutionary tendency for inconspicuous aliens would solve a nagging paradox – and also suggest that we Earthlings should think twice before advertising our own existence. [1.]
- An evolutionary tendency? does that mean anything?
This doesn't explain why we don't see the aliens who don't hide. Don't all these cave cowering aliens have to be hiding from something?
Talking about an e. tendency in intelligent creatures doesn't make a lot of sense to me. We're told everyday that we're in the post evolutionary phase of our existence, that we need to take control of a random (natural) process and engineer our future e. in terms of rational goals. Wouldn't thinkers with the same views exist among the aliens?
If there really are billions of alien civilizations out there it seems quite a stretch to suggest they would all act the same way.
3. 'He argues that it's plausible that there is a competition for resources on a cosmic scale, driving an evolutionary process between alien species on different planets. Advanced species, for example, might want to exploit other planets for their own purposes.'
- I don't find that plausible at all. I don't see how advanced technology would require such a crude approach. surely in a universe as large as this there are an almost infinite number of unpopulated bodies to exploit if need be.
Summary;
I think this 'theory' is evidence of how badly the Fermi paradox bothers e. advocates. In my experience they take this far more seriously than any ID critique of evolution theory. They feel sure if E. theory is correct that there Has to be billions of aliens out there. If there isn't E. has been refuted. (Most, if not all Darwinists believe this... this is why they find countless ways to try and answer the paradox.
In the minds of most people; no aliens = creation. This is not so much a matter of irrefutable logic, but of feeling. i.e. until aliens are discovered (if they ever are) there will be doubt; doubt that evolution is true, doubt that creation isn't true.
With apologies to the Beatles, we'll end on a musical note.
"Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If they're gone I can't go on
Feelin' two-foot small." YouTube
Notes;
1. Exo-evolution: Aliens who hide, survive - Mark Buchanan - New Scientist
'As physicist Enrico Fermi argued in 1950, unless the evolution of life is unique to Earth, there must be many intelligent species out there. So why have they neither phoned home nor been detected by us?
"It's a real paradox," says Adrian Kent of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
2. You've got to hide your love away - Beatles
"Here I stand head in hand
Turn my face to the wall
If she's gone I can't go on
Feelin' two-foot small."
- in my scenario, the song gets sung by Seth Shostak.
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