OT: Why are Engineers snookered by Creationism ?

[Kevin Aylward]

John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 19:47:47 -0000, "Kevin Aylward"
kevindotaylwardEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk> wrote:



Yeah, dream on. You know the one, extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence.

But this universe, and this planet in particular, are extraordinary.

In your opinion maybe, but not mine. Your argument is circular.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"quotes with no meaning, are meaningless" - Kevin Aylward.

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that The other John Smith <jocjo-
john@yooha.com> wrote (in <e5s8c.37604$%06.13085@newsread2.news.pas.eart
hlink.net&gt about 'OT: Why are Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on
Thu, 25 Mar 2004:

"Walter Harley" <walterh@cafewalterNOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:c3tebi$5qj$0@216.39.172.65...
"The other John Smith" <jocjo-john@yooha.com> wrote in message
news:THo8c.37061$%06.517@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Exactly. Water is composed of H2O. So given two H and one O, how will
they
combine? Well, the possibilities are OHH, HOH, and HHO. So 1/3 of all
H2O
molecules should be OHH, right? They're not. They are all HOH. They do
not
combine randomly. So why does DNA have to be a product of randomness?

The assertion "the possibilities are OHH, HOH, and HHO" is specious. It
is
an artifact of inadequate descriptive language, not a meaningful statement
of the actual set of possibilities. The relationship between the hydrogen
and oxygen atoms in a water molecule is angular, not linear; it is a
consequence of electrostatic forces between the atoms.


I paraphrased it from something Isaac Asimov had written. I wasn't trying
for accuracy, just trying to get an idea across. How would you describe the
same idea using the hydrogen and oxygen atoms?


Mr Harley is splitting hairs. This may satisfy him, but I doubt it.

Use Courier font:

H H H O O H
\ / \ / \ /
O H H
Water O-nonexistol P-nonexistol

The relationship between hydrogen and oxygen substantially depends on
their bonding capacities, which can be described in many ways, but one
of the simplest is to say that hydrogen just needs to share one extra
electron to complete its K shell, whereas oxygen needs to share two
electrons to complete its L shell. Hence the combination of two
hydrogens sharing with one oxygen is stable, whereas one hydrogen
sharing two extra electrons, and oxygen sharing only one, is not a
stable condition at all.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Roger Gt]

"Spehro Pefhany"

: Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
: And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
: That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
: A sun that is the source of all our power.
: The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
: Are moving at a million miles a day
: In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
: Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
: Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
: It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
: It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
: But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
: We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
: We go 'round every two hundred million years,
: And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
: In this amazing and expanding universe.
:
: The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
: In all of the directions it can whizz
: As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
: Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed
there is.
: So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
: How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
: And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
: 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
:
Monty python's "Meaning of Life" is ageless.

But the Answer is still "42"

&gt

 

[Walter Harley]

"The other John Smith" <jocjo-john@yooha.com> wrote in message
news:e5s8c.37604$%06.13085@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...

I paraphrased it from something Isaac Asimov had written. I wasn't trying
for accuracy, just trying to get an idea across. How would you describe
the
same idea using the hydrogen and oxygen atoms?

Well, I'm not sure what idea you're trying to get across. Personally, I see
no compelling reason to believe that DNA came about other than through
random processes.

The reason that water molecules form the shape of a triangle is, AIUI,
essentially the same as the reason that three balls connected by springs
would do so. It's because that's the lowest energy shape for them to be
arranged in, and there's no potential gap to keep them from finding their
lowest energy state.

I think that when people say "DNA may well not act purely by random
mutations," there are two things they might mean:

1) There is a Creator who takes personal interest in each one of the
gazillions of chemical processes happening in each of the gazillions of
organisms in the world, and influences them in order to achieve some desired
outcome.

While this is an entertaining hypothesis, it explains nothing, increases
rather than decreases the complexity of the system we have to account for,
and does not let us make any experimental predictions, so if we can find a
more parsimonious explanation it is to be preferred. If it is true, we
might as well give up on science; we are saying that any particular
observation might be swayed by the Divine for inscrutable reasons. However,
as far as I know most careful observations of ostensibly random processes
have shown the distribution that would be expected if there were no outside
influence, so if the Creator is meddling with its Creation, it is doing so
in a very subtle way.

Or, 2) Organisms containing DNA are able to predict which of several
possible mutations or recombinations of their DNA might result in a
desirable outcome, and influence their occurrence accordingly.

This is not much better than #1; we have to account for why this special
ability on the part of DNA-containing organisms might have occurred, and how
it is managed. What part of a cell is responsible for making this rather
abstruse calculation? How does the cell know what a desirable outcome might
be? It is extremely difficult to look at a piece of DNA and figure out what
its phenotypical consequence will be - it's hard just to know what protein
it will code for, but trying to predict how that protein will influence the
development of the overall organism in a particular environment, without
just trying it, appears to be damn near impossible. Attributing this
ability to cells does not make for a convincing theory.

There is a variant of #2 that simply says that organisms under stress
increase the frequency of mutation. This would require no special knowledge
and certainly seems plausible; but it is not at all obvious that it is
actually required in order for evolution to work. To me, it seems like an
implicit acknowledgement that natural selection can't work all by itself,
and I see no reason to add it to the theory until that is shown to be the
case.

The bottom line here is that I do not believe there is any reason why the
theory of natural selection needs to be embellished. The arguments against
it seem based on incredulity rather than logic. I fail to understand why
people who can't believe that natural selection works are nonetheless
willing to believe in omnipotent extraphysical entities.

 

[Roger Gt]

"Walter Harley" wrote
: "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote

: > I think one has to examine the teachings of the various
religions with
: > the intended audience of their time in mind. Questioning the
scripture
: > that says the world was created in 6 days isn't heresy. It was
a story
: > (whether made up or handed down from a higher power) that was
crafted to
: > be understood by people that wouldn't know how to handle the
age of the
: > universe being 14,000,000,006 years old.
:
: Genesis, and whatever earlier myths it was based on, far
predates any such
: knowledge of how old the universe, or earth, was. It is
interesting to
: speculate as to why the period of six days was chosen;

Actually it was 7. And 7 is a mystical prime number.

: but it is surely not
: just to cover up for 14 billion being too big. Indeed, at the
time Genesis
: was written, I don't believe the number 14 billion could even
have been
: expressed.
:
: Why suppose that the story was constructed by people with
superior
: knowledge? I would think an explanation that didn't rely on
that premise
: would be substantially more convincing. Perhaps at the time the
story was
: constructed, "six" was the biggest number they had, and they
knew it had
: taken longer than five. Perhaps "six" is a mistranslation of a
different
: word (in Sumerian or whatever creation myth was at the root of
Genesis).

No doubt the "educated" would seek to communicate with the less
endowed, or privileged by metaphor. But the Metaphor out lives
it's purpose and becomes the accepted answer for all who "Believe"
in the Old teaching. There are those who think the ancients
believed the earth was flat, yet the diameter of the planet was
deduced long before even the Egyptians devised Trigonometry.

 

[JeffM]

Evolution via natural selection is a theory.
Scott Stephens

Yup.
The "natural selection" part is theory, BUT as Stephen J. Gould points out,
the fossil record shows us evolution is a *fact*;
the *exact* mechanisms are open to conjecture.
To refute the fossil record says that you believe in a capricious god
who put it there as a grand practical joke.

(That the complexity of DNA increases proportioally
with increasing complexity of the organism in which it is found
is new reenforcing evidence.)

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Scott Stephens
<scottxs@comcast.net> wrote (in <LZo8c.85729$_w.1142251@attbi_s53&gt
about 'OT: Why are Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Wed, 24 Mar
2004:

Dave wrote:

Why are so many engineers snookered by Creationism?

Snookered is not quite accurate. Creationism is a theory.

No, it's a hypothesis. No experiments have been carried out to verify
its predictions (if any).

Evolution via
natural selection is a theory.

Yes. Experiments (some by men and some by nature, e.g. Galapagos) have
been carried out which confirm its predictions, so it is a true theory.

Some theories are better than others, in
this case, both theories have shortcomings their opponents justify their
own flawed beliefs on.

Random natural selection can't explain adaptive mutation.

There can be no such thing as random natural selection. The essence of
natural selection is that it is NOT random; mutations that are adaptive
survive and often flourish, whereas disadaptive mutations do not
survive. But a mutation may not be wholly adaptive or wholly
disadaptive, so it survives to some extent. The classic example is
sickle-cell anaemia, which confers resistance to malaria.

Compound,
random successive scrambling of ordered systems make them more
disordered. A proof would be to play the lotter, removing each winning
number from a set a random number generator produced. Or putting some
electronic parts or nuts and bolts in a million blenders and waiting for
a computer or wrist-watch to fly out, or dropping a bomb in a million
junk yards until an aircraft was created from the debris.

This is irrelevant; the processes in evolution are specifically NOT
random overall. Basic mutation is random, but then there is a filtering
operation (selection) which is very much not random.

On the other hand, Creationists are typically brought up in the faith as
children, believing the Bible is the very word of God. Every other
notion they hear, they must reconcile to the fundamental core of their
belief system - that the Bible is God's ultimate truth. A book that is
often literally interpreted as history, rather than as a profound
alagory about life. Creationists must reconcile what science they learn
with their Biblical understanding, or discount it as demonic deception.

That's about right.

[big snip]

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Roger Gt]

"Scott Stephens" wrote
: Dave wrote:
:
: > Why are so many engineers snookered by Creationism?
: Why are things so complicated?
:
: Why does the universe have 3 space dimensions and a compactified
charge
: dimension? Wouldn't Occam's razor suggest a simpler, more
compact, lower
: -energy universe be a simple singularity?
:
: Why are E0, Mu0, Planck's constant, Gravitational Constant, et.
all such
: that the chaotic complexity we observe exists?
: Scott
:

The universe IS simple, it is our comprehension which is limited!
Need to use more brain cells......

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Walter Harley
<walterh@cafewalterNOSPAM.com> wrote (in <c3u2sf$d8l$0@216.39.172.65&gt
about 'OT: Why are Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Thu, 25 Mar
2004:

Well, I'm not sure what idea you're trying to get across. Personally, I
see no compelling reason to believe that DNA came about other than
through random processes.

The word 'random' is being used with two different meanings, which is
why you appear not to agree. The structure of DNA is not random; it's
determined by the bonding properties of the constituent chemical units.
But the sequences of the nucleotide units are capable of substantially
unlimited variations, so could reasonably be considered as products of a
random process.

However, and this is crucial, not all of the possible sequences have any
usable function (our knowledge in this area is incomplete, so don't dig
for defects in that statement), and some sequences produce destructive
results, ensuring that a life-form that includes that sequence does not
survive.

So, superimposed on this random process, that could conceivably produce
all possible nucleotide sequences, we have a very strong selection
process; only life-forms that include non-destructive (or simply
inadequately efficient) DNA survive to reproduce.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Roger Gt <not@here.net> wrote (in
<2fw8c.28515$dc7.6021@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com&gt about 'OT: Why are
Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Thu, 25 Mar 2004:

And 7 is a mystical prime number.

What is that supposed to mean? 13411 may be another prime number. To
what extent is it 'mystical'?
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Richard Lamb
<n6228l@earthlink.net> wrote (in <406232A7.1AE8322F@earthlink.net&gt
about 'OT: Why are Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Thu, 25 Mar
2004:

Excellent sermon, Reverend Scott.

You cannot be serious. It's total gobbledegook. I chose not to comment
on it when I first read it, but your apparent endorsement compels a
response.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[John Woodgate]

I read in sci.electronics.design that JeffM <jeffm_@email.com> wrote (in
<f8b945bc.0403242356.7b50bbc3@posting.google.com&gt about 'OT: Why are
Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Wed, 24 Mar 2004:

(That the complexity of DNA increases proportioally with increasing
complexity of the organism in which it is found is new reenforcing
evidence.)

Where did you get that from? It's not true: some bacteria have immensely
complex DNA, while some higher life-forms have astonishingly simple DNA.
IIRC, this applies to some fish.
--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only.
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

 

[Al Borowski]

What a troll...

Al

 

[Bill Sloman]

Scott Stephens <scottxs@comcast.net> wrote in message news:<LZo8c.85729$_w.1142251@attbi_s53>...

Dave wrote:

Why are so many engineers snookered by Creationism?

Snookered is not quite accurate. Creationism is a theory. Evolution via
natural selection is a theory. Some theories are better than others, in
this case, both theories have shortcomings their opponents justify their
own flawed beliefs on.

Creationism has the fundamental flaw that it doesn't explain anything
in any useful way - "God wanted it that way" isn't all that helpful.
Evolution via natural selection is a very successful theory - if you
think it has any significant shortcomings, please list them. I could
use a laugh.

Random natural selection can't explain adaptive mutation.

Natural selection isn't random - it systematically eliminates
mutations that compromise the fitness (survival) of the organism
carrying that particular mutation - and most certainly can explain how
random mutations can lead to the evolution of organisms that are
better adapted to an environment than their ancestors.

<snipped the consequent ill-informed arguement>

----------
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

 

[Roger Gt]

"John Woodgate" <jmw@jmwa.demon.contraspam.yuk> wrote in message
news:wr6pcRCdSpYAFwvt@jmwa.demon.co.uk...
: I read in sci.electronics.design that Roger Gt <not@here.net>
wrote (in
: <2fw8c.28515$dc7.6021@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com&gt about 'OT:
Why are
: Engineers snookered by Creationism ?', on Thu, 25 Mar 2004:
: >And 7 is a mystical prime number.
:
: What is that supposed to mean? 13411 may be another prime
number. To
: what extent is it 'mystical'?

Sorry. I forget that the educational focus of individuals on the
net are as varied as their opinions.

Mystical like the "Seventh son of a seventh son"

There are several such numbers, but I don't think 13411 was one of
them...

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Walter Harley wrote:

"The other John Smith" <jocjo-john@yooha.com> wrote in message
news:e5s8c.37604$%06.13085@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
I paraphrased it from something Isaac Asimov had written. I wasn't
trying for accuracy, just trying to get an idea across. How would
you describe the same idea using the hydrogen and oxygen atoms?

Well, I'm not sure what idea you're trying to get across.
Personally, I see no compelling reason to believe that DNA came about
other than through random processes.

The reason that water molecules form the shape of a triangle is, AIUI,
essentially the same as the reason that three balls connected by
springs would do so. It's because that's the lowest energy shape for
them to be arranged in, and there's no potential gap to keep them
from finding their lowest energy state.

I think that when people say "DNA may well not act purely by random
mutations," there are two things they might mean:

1) There is a Creator who takes personal interest in each one of the
gazillions of chemical processes happening in each of the gazillions
of organisms in the world, and influences them in order to achieve
some desired outcome.

While this is an entertaining hypothesis, it explains nothing,
increases rather than decreases the complexity of the system we have
to account for, and does not let us make any experimental
predictions, so if we can find a more parsimonious explanation it is
to be preferred. If it is true, we might as well give up on science;
we are saying that any particular observation might be swayed by the
Divine for inscrutable reasons. However, as far as I know most
careful observations of ostensibly random processes have shown the
distribution that would be expected if there were no outside
influence, so if the Creator is meddling with its Creation, it is
doing so in a very subtle way.

Or, 2) Organisms containing DNA are able to predict which of several
possible mutations or recombinations of their DNA might result in a
desirable outcome, and influence their occurrence accordingly.

This is not much better than #1; we have to account for why this
special ability on the part of DNA-containing organisms might have
occurred, and how it is managed.

This is trivial in principle, and requires no supreme intervention. I
have already explained in another post.

http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/intelligence.html - Darwinian
Purpose.

What part of a cell is responsible
for making this rather abstruse calculation? How does the cell know
what a desirable outcome might be?

How do *we* know what a final outcome might be?

It is extremely difficult to look
at a piece of DNA and figure out what its phenotypical consequence
will be

Yep. But irrelevant.

- it's hard just to know what protein it will code for, but
trying to predict how that protein will influence the development of
the overall organism in a particular environment, without just trying
it, appears to be damn near impossible.

Arguing from ignorance is not particularly effective.

Attributing this ability to
cells does not make for a convincing theory.

There is a variant of #2 that simply says that organisms under stress
increase the frequency of mutation. This would require no special
knowledge and certainly seems plausible; but it is not at all obvious
that it is actually required in order for evolution to work.

I agree. It may or not be required. However, this is not irrelevant as
such an attribute is easily explained by natural selection. As noted in
my papers, random generation and selection of (selection) *algorithms*
can produce, in principle, algorithms (i.e. DNA machines) that are
better than other algorithmmic machines in aiding their own replication.

To me,
it seems like an implicit acknowledgement that natural selection
can't work all by itself, and I see no reason to add it to the theory
until that is shown to be the case.

Since it is a *fact* that humans make decisions that preferentially aid
in their Replication, it needs to be explained.

The bottom line here is that I do not believe there is any reason why
the theory of natural selection needs to be embellished.

We *must* account for what is apparently non natural selection, i.e.
human apparent choice, and show that it is indeed still "natural", that
is, explainable by the non random laws of physics acting on initial
random generation of traits. It needs to be pointed out that directed
action is fully consistent with natural selection of (initially) random
generated traits. Traits are not always generated in a pure random
manner. Evolution has evolved non random trait generators.
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/specialreplicators.html
http://www.anasoft.co.uk/replicators/intelligence.html

The question here, is at what level can such non randam trait generaters
act at. e.g. the DNA level.

The
arguments against it seem based on incredulity rather than logic. I
fail to understand why people who can't believe that natural
selection works are nonetheless willing to believe in omnipotent
extraphysical entities.

We need to be clear what natural selection actually means. It does not
prohibit, non conscious, "directed" action.

Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"quotes with no meaning, are meaningless" - Kevin Aylward.

 

[Kevin Aylward]

Roger Gt wrote:

"Walter Harley" wrote
"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote

I think one has to examine the teachings of the various religions
with the intended audience of their time in mind. Questioning the
scripture that says the world was created in 6 days isn't heresy.
It was a story (whether made up or handed down from a higher power)
that was crafted to be understood by people that wouldn't know how
to handle the age of the universe being 14,000,000,006 years old.

Genesis, and whatever earlier myths it was based on, far predates
any such knowledge of how old the universe, or earth, was. It is
interesting to speculate as to why the period of six days was chosen;

Actually it was 7. And 7 is a mystical prime number.

but it is surely not
just to cover up for 14 billion being too big. Indeed, at the time
Genesis was written, I don't believe the number 14 billion could
even have been expressed.

Why suppose that the story was constructed by people with superior
knowledge? I would think an explanation that didn't rely on that
premise would be substantially more convincing. Perhaps at the time
the story was constructed, "six" was the biggest number they had,
and they knew it had taken longer than five. Perhaps "six" is a
mistranslation of a different word (in Sumerian or whatever creation
myth was at the root of Genesis).

No doubt the "educated" would seek to communicate with the less
endowed, or privileged by metaphor. But the Metaphor out lives
it's purpose and becomes the accepted answer for all who "Believe"
in the Old teaching. There are those who think the ancients
believed the earth was flat,

Not at all. The ancients constructed the star gates, so they must have
had a few smarts.


Kevin Aylward
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk
http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

"quotes with no meaning, are meaningless" - Kevin Aylward.

 

[Daniel Haude]

On 24 Mar 2004 07:39:14 -0800,
Dave <galt_57@hotmail.com> wrote
in Msg. <5591d176.0403240739.20548844@posting.google.com>

Yes the universe is filled with unknowns. Shall every unknown be a
rationale for religious fervor until it is finally understood?

This is what a vested expert on unknowns had to say about this subject
recently:

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know
we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to
say we know there are some things we do not know. But there
are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't
know.

--Daniel

--
"With me is nothing wrong! And with you?" (from r.a.m.p)

 

[Roger Gt]

"Kevin Aylward" wrote in message
: Roger Gt wrote:
: > "Walter Harley" wrote
: >> "Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote
: >
<snip>
: >> It is interesting to speculate as to why the period of six
days was chosen;
: > Actually it was 7. And 7 is a mystical prime number.

: > No doubt the "educated" would seek to communicate with the
less
: > endowed, or privileged by metaphor. But the Metaphor out
lives
: > it's purpose and becomes the accepted answer for all who
"Believe"
: > in the Old teaching. There are those who think the ancients
: > believed the earth was flat,
:
: Not at all. The ancients constructed the star gates, so they
must have
: had a few smarts.

Har-Har.... Very funny. Depends on the universe you believe
in.....

 

[Daniel Haude]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 21:54:13 -0500,
Glenn Ashmore <gashmore3@cox.net> wrote
in Msg. <WXr8c.3123$pM.1875@lakeread04>

I have just skimmed this long thread but you guys must realize that the
scientific method is under attack not only by the religious right but,

Who is "the current administration"? This is an international newsgroup.

--Daniel

--
"With me is nothing wrong! And with you?" (from r.a.m.p)