Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

Father, forgive me for I have sinned. Its been a coupla decades since my last confession and with the following sins I have offended Herald

1I cannot assemble a new operating system for my new computer. However, since I down- load a version of a Linux system it seems to grow by outside attachment of information almost unbeknownst to me as to how it gets its information. COuld there be some sort of vast neural web that is transmitting into my Linux and I am benefitting from this apparent growth mechanism? A I the benefactor of a supreme intelligence?

We have no idea WHEN the whole family of Ribonucleic acids first appeared on te planet. There is no fossil record of that. Avery and Chase experimentally determined that DNA was the genetic material that was shared between bacteria and that Viruses can transmit new DNA to be "Captured" by higher micro organisms. Fairbanks helped discover that new genetic material I created by several fairly mundane processes in the mitochondria and somatic cells of organisms (these"mutations" occur within individuals and either, cause the host to croak, or to benefit in some manner initially unrecognized)
When did it all develop and did life , as it progressed, gradually develop all its "life defining" properties including transmission of genetic material . From the fossil record, it appears that way since life didn't suddenly appear already fully formed at the base of the Proterozoic. We don't see fossils of lephants that are in the Isua Formation.
There are several lines of ribonucleic acids,(e call these XNA's) and DNA seems to be the pinnacle unit right now.
As scientists search for the keys and unravel the bases of how life began and whether it can be duplicated, we may never fully be able to do anything but provide a reasonable alternative to the CReationist mindset. As evidence piles up, the argument has gotten stronger and tronger these last 200 years.
To that Istipulate.
However, since the pattern of the developmet of life through the ages , clearly (at least to me) shows a steady, but often erratic pattern of ascendency, with no direction in mind , save that which we are able to place on it vua hindsite, Creationism has no valid place in a scientific mindset about how all the species got here.
Of that weve got several track records of information that don't jibe with a simple Biblical or any mythological based story. To try to parse scientific discovery nd force fit it into a religious myth is bad science and silly religion.

The basic building blocks of life and the key ingredient, water, seem to be in at last two planets and several satellites of this solar system. As we move forward in exploration Id like to be back to the "inevitability" of life on any planet with free water. As we explore Mars, and use its evidence of past water to guide our search for life, thatll help us define how ubiquitous life is (or at least is expected to be).

Sometimes cigar is just a cigar.
The problem with the computer analogy is that computers are not clever, "theyre too stupid to take over" as was said in an oped by a Stanford guy. Life, on the other hand, once it appeared, seemed to "work it out" and magae to grow its own pathway of ascendancy over almost 2 billion years BEFORE the CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION. Imagine 2 BILLION years when life was there. but in such a primitive form that it took such a long time to develop such things as symmetry,, apoptosis, the means of transmitting information of its own form to an offspring. From what we can see, it took that two billion years to accomplish ll this. No "let there be"... , no sudden appearance of species all formed and ready to go. Life had a very tenuous grip on its own future for about 2 Billion years before anything of a species radiation occurred and all these occurences seem to parallel some really well studied environmental happening or catastrophy. (eg, theCambrian explosion occurred about 400 million years AFTER the availability of enough free oxygen so as to allow the deposition of stuff like Calcium or magnesium carbonate to be incorporated into organismal structures (chlorophyll or clamshells). ALL this happened at a time that we can dig up evidence that supports the REASON of the occurrence.
Science could never be satisfied with "Let there be Calcium Carbonate in specific molar structure so as to allow adsorption desorption to occur"...

Do you know otherwise?

That's a stupid argument Herald. I'll bet you can't design and assemble the CPU on a modern computer if I give you a laptop without a CPU. That doesn't mean the CPU doesn't exist on other laptops. Your argument is fallacious.

Based on your logic I wouldn't accept a "hello world" program from you. It would likely be a huge waste of resources.

Yes. Such a Holy Grail is impossible. It's fun for fundsters. But not for suppliers of the funds the fundsters are playing with.

There is a twee naïveté about you self-appointed spokespersons for Science which speaks loudly of a lack of experience of the organisms who practice the real thing. Geology presents no difficulties to the average understanding. It is merely a matter of application.

I don't think it is a coyness about their all too human motives. It is an artless simplicity disguised in unusual verbalisations contrary to the explicit instructions of Bertand Russell.

To avoid accusations of employing baseless assertions, of the sort you poseurs of overly fond of, may I draw your attention to Chapter 17 of Professor Aidley's book The Physiology of Excitable Cells entitled The Vertebrate Eye and which runs to 54 pages of highly compressed scientific mind-boggling. At one point he admits being very far from any comprehensive explanation, as well he might, and the chapter ends with the sentence--"It is not always, in Science, that the paths of understanding run so straight." (Hollow laughter).

At the end of the book there are 44 pages of references, about 18 to the page, to the research of other scientists.

Geology is like shelling peas by the side of that book. And picking your nose beside some of the stuff I have read. As a standard for the determination of the causes and nature of life forms geology is on a par with wiping your arse unless that operation is seen in the context of irreducibly complex excitable cell functionings operating subliminally. As is usually the case.

You might hypnotise your fawning fan base with your pseudo-science but it won't work with me. The old Arab guy I saw who had got rich from telling geologists the best places to drill was not lost on me.

The pharmaceutical industries are posited on what jungle savages had discovered.

As it the case with refreshing and stimulating beverages.

says the guy who, as a self proclaimed chemist, didn't even know what Avogadro's number is used for.


I detect the overstuffed "self lauding" someone who failed Abstract math and applied differential equations by declaring themselves a genius nd not of a low enough mean intelligence to bother with the basics like geophysics, thermodynamics or advanced statistics. That's ok, It just implies that theres more for me.

Talk about naïve. Theres a huge difference between discovering that willow bark can cure a headache an then understanding WHY it works.
Get it?

WHY does evolution work?

And there is plenty for you fm. The CU has the wind in its sails because it sets free the propensity to uninhibited sexual expression. You can't go wrong. The orgiastic priestesses of the various Goddesses will reappear but you needn't worry. What you are laying the red carpet down for will only apply to future men.

Don't forget the gent in tha art gallery you told us about when you claimed your territorial rights to Mrs fm which were established by the Church.

Your inability to read the Bible iconotropically is a sad failing.

I don't 'know' - I make some plausible assumption to define properly the problem. Yes, I don't know - but you don't know either ... whether it has been full of amino acids and genetic laser printers.
If the pond is not sterile, this means that there has been biocode before you start creating life, which means that life has existed there before you have created it ... by your theory of evolution or whatever ... hence you haven't created anything.

The Avogadro number is 6.02214129(27)×1023 mol−1
FM, you are talking as if you have personally designed the laws of physics and chemistry, having in mind that you are not even the one who discovered them for the first time ... by observations ... and you are observing what the observers have observed ... and we are expecting from you to observe the quantum communications of the universe.

He didn't ask what it was. He asked what it is used for. It seems you still don't know.

anyway, the question was for spendi . Spendi had declared many years ago that he was a chemist. There are several calculations in which Avogadro's number is routinely used in chemistry. All I got from spendi was a spendi-smirk of"whatever"

Inventing a new discipline are we? You've just invented a cross between evolutionary biology and the genesis of life. (Two separate areas of deep inquiry)

But I suppose you knew that.

I'll tell you what happened, H, that fm is so obsessed about.

A French guy called Francis used the number in some form and with me not paying much attention and it being a few hundred years since I had come across it in my youthful studies I didn't immediately recognise it.

What a to-do fm has made about it. Not that I'm bothered mind you. Such things are nothing compared to an atheist standing on his dignity over the territorial rights bestowed upon him by Christian culture over his wife when a geezer in an art gallery gave her the eye.

As an atheist I define a wife as a female person attached to a chap by an invisible halter by which he leads her around and controls her. He admitted that the lady is his second attempt at the feat and thus he has a personal motive for attacking a system which so strongly disapproves of such things as to not recognise them.

No, no, FM, I am just following your reasoning.
When you start missing s.th. (like for example the bio-code for the green algae and cyanobacteria), and when you don't have even the vaguest idea of how much is the complexity of such things ... and how might the process of 'creating' and 'changing' bio-codes look like ... you take out of the sleeve some fossil and on the grounds of the present day preconditions (abundance of bio-code in the water and in the air) make some mind blowing inference that it appeared in the pond (3.8 Bya) just like it would appear nowadays.
BTW the genesis of life is the calibration of the theory of evolution. Without such calibration at 'point zero' your theory of evolution with no beginning starts outperforming your theories for measuring age without fixing and validating the initial points ... and the range. There is no such method, FM, that would be valid for any assumptions ... and with or without calibration.
In math you have assumptions, in physics you have assumptions ... even in chemistry you should have some assumptions for the test. It is only geology and evolutionary geology that are not bothering with such details.
Your theory of the things working in that way might have wide application – constructing buildings without fundamentals, making software without hardware platform ... writing on the web without validating the knowledge, etc.

You are making an underline claim yourself Herald, perhaps without your own knowing or intention. But claiming it "didn't happen that way" implies that you are making a comparison. What are you comparing to make the assessment that it didn't happen that way?

As I mentioned before they have successfully produced RNA in the lab using sterile equipment. They took ideas based on what the ancient earth atmosphere was like and the common base chemicals that make up RNA and subjected them to a process of heating, evaporating, condensing and solution. The process was so simple that it could have easily been how it happened. Would we know for sure this is how it happened? No but it proves that it can happen.

This statement shows me that there are a whole lot of things of which you have no idea. "Assumptions" and fixed scientific laws govern all of discovery based sciences.
Ive told the story many times of how the use of assumptions and "falsification" was built in to the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae


"Constructing buildings" without fundamentals? Have you ever heard of Geotechnical engineering and foundation analyses? How bout architectural engineering?
As far as geology, the finding of oil and gas used to be a hit or miss activity. In fact it was called "Wildcatting". Oil wells used to be like 5 to one "dusters" to one well that "proved"
Nowadays, with the applications of geophysical surveys, paleo analyses and structural analyses we are down to almost a 75% "Hit rate'.
WHen discoveries become the basis of a discipline we are still in the foundational times of the discipline. As knowledge progressed, certain rule and LAWs of evolution have proven themselves in being able to project for such things as medical research and crop genetics.
Incidentally, one thing that evolution research has taught us is that nature cannot be controlled . "Life will always develop a solution"

I can appreciate how your worldview would make you accept that. I do not. ADaptive Evolution has taken life almost from extinction extinction to blossoming of whole new classes at least 5 times in the earths history. This information comes from the discovery of how fossils represented mass extinctions (only paleontology, geology and statitics were involved).


Ps, pardon my obtuseness but what does s.th. mean? Maybe its an abbreviation you introduced but Ive lost any reference.


PS, heres a site on the discovery of Tiktaalik. Its the baseline of Neil Shubins book "YOUR INNER FISH" and the 3 part PBS special of the same name.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/04/your_inner_fish_book_and_pbs_documentary_on_tiktaalik_and_neil_shubin.html

"S.th." is a texting abbreviation for "something." Herald, as is the case with so many poor speakers of English who are not native speakers, gets alot of his "English" from international texting conventions, not realizing that native English speakers either don't use them at all, or don't use them other than when sending text messages. He shows many other flaws of the non-native speaker whose English is poor, while believing that it is good--one of them is a compulsion to use abbreviations, as though it were acceptable to just make yours up as you go along. Since he makes up so much of this BS as he goes along, which he pretends is science or mathematics, it shouldn't be surprising.

The obsession with tying the origins of life to evolution that one sees in creationist is understandable. The concepts of a deistic creation and evolution through natural selection are not mutually exclusive. For creationists who want to appeal to the broadest base of theists out there, it's best to avoid theological dispute, and focus on the origin of self-replicating life forms rather than the evolutionary process. That's what they consider their silver bullet. I've seen it with every creationist bumpkin who has come along here ranting against evolution--that they bring up life origins, ignoring that evolution can't take place until life arises, and is therefore not concerned with origins--and that's been true from "real life" right through to Herald here. His claim about "calibration point" is hilarious--a feeble attempt to insist that the origin of self-replicating life is inextricably tied to a critique of evolution as a theory. It's the desperation of the creationist who is fighting in the last ditch.

ahhh, thank you. Ive noticed early that his English skills have been the base of his inability to understand relatively simple facts. I was trying to be patient but I guess I lost patience a while back.