what is the polite thing to say when someone's own citation directly refutes their key conjecture?

Read it closer, and not just cherry pick out the things that you believe only supports your position, and miss the point, before saying too much? That's what I'd do.

no, it doesn't. But you can't see that because of your need to defend god.

So although this has the form of an argument about biology, it is more an argument about magic sky people.

I would quote, but that's too hard to do on the iPhone. Take your own advice.

People love rendering the opposing position as ridiculously, and unbelievably as possible, they really love to learn fuck all.

No, the OP is about the miracle of aimless, infinite, possibilities. It's actually quite a good OP that almost anyone who has contemplated evolution most ultimately come to ask, how the heck does it all hold together. Biologically, we are speaking about my morphogenesis. Now, if you have evidence of how evolution explains morphogenesis, well the OP is there, go ahead and answer the question being posed.

I've often taken part in discussions of evolution in the past. They go around in circles for ever, neither side accepting what seems obvious to the other. So I'm trying something different, by pointing out that those on the side of teleology have a motive outside of mere biology.

It seems more honest, and cuts to the point.

I just showed that that is clearly not true. Basically all moderns are totes against teleology, and all over explaining it away in biology, and theorizing about a biology devoid of teleological language, and explaining it away, but none of that has actually happened. Biology is still ripe with teleological language. Even Dennett and Dawkins address their frequent uses of it, and attempt to explain it away, and rationalize it, but still do it.

yeah, Banno, explain all of morphogenisis or there is a god.

you say they don't. Funny, I say they do.

What next?

Oh, sorry, I thought you had something new to add, other than It Just Happens. I guess the OP has a point. Nice OP.

You mean that you say that they don't use teleological language? You're just uninformed then. You can posture against facts all you like, if you're just after persuasion, that may work for some.

yeah, banno, if you can't present the whole of evolution in a few dozen words, then evolution needs god.

I don't think that people grasp the implications of anthropomorphizing reason. To strip teleology from the cosmos. That leaves only chaos.

that's not what I said, and of course you know that.

So why did you need to switch?

Where we could go, and it would be more worthwhile, would be to talk about how underpinning beliefs determine what evidence we consider relevant.

I didn't know what you meant by you saying that they do, and me saying they don't. I wasn't purposefully misinterpreting you. I switched the dos and don'ts, because I thought that I was saying that people do stuff... I don't know what I said that people don't do.

Nah, I don't like to talk about things in a removed fashion, as if doing so renders me immune. We're all biased, and acknowledging that doesn't in any sense render us less so.

No, we don't need the 100,000 meaningless words, just the three words "It just happens". That's pretty much all of Evolutionary Theory. The rest is obfuscation. I think Peirce's calls it tychism, but he had only one, since Mind emerged from the first. Materialists, who can't stand that word (don't worry, I won't repeat it knowing the sensibilities of Materialists), have to resort to an infinite number of "It just happens". Unfortunately, for materialists, this doesn't count for a theory. It is only the Miracle of all Miracles. Even God would blush at this story.

It seems there may be a sharpshooter or two among us here.

If we suppose all kinds of monkeys typed away at random for who knows how long, then they might produce Much Ado About Nothing after a good long while (21157 words). They might equally produce all the same letters and punctuation in some other order, rendering gibberish in English, or maybe even something syntactically correct in some other language. And they might produce whatever other poetry or nonsense or a scientific masterpiece for that matter.

Yet, beforehand, each of all those productions had equal probability of being produced by the monkeys. It just so happens that we like Shakespeare (well, some do), and so we attribute some special significance to that particular production (which presently has a probability of 100% of existing). Of course Shakespeare wrote in a more specific context than our hypothetical monkeys. It's easy enough to find nonsense produced by humans as well.

If you had a 1000 monkeys, and typewriters, I think you would get a whole lot of broken typewriters with shit on them — Wayfarer

:D Comment made my day.

I think the puzzles you keep running into, Mike, come from an image of the lone organism, a person, struggling heroically against their environment. Now you've even taken to treating Life as if it were a single entity doing stuff like adapting and surviving. There's not a single rock falling down the well but trillions. Evolution is a statistical phenomenon. It's all about populations. — Srap Tasmaner

Hi Srap Tasmaner. Thanks for your reply.

The point you put forward is that we, at present, have so many variants and instances of life that at least some of them will continue to ring a mathematical harmony for billions of years as they fall. Some lifeforms drift out of mathematical harmony and are lost from existence, while others continue to randomly correct the drift and propagate. It's a strong evolutionary position to take.

I will try and use evolution and statistical phenomenon to reply.

If life arose out of nothing, unless the suggestion is that it did not have a single source origin, then in order to get to the point where there is a field of balls falling through a field of bells, quite of lot of population growth and differentiation had to happen. Life would have to pass through a long and sustained bottleneck of survivability due to a lack of variance, population, and refined systems.

A single arrow of life has been shot through time, not many. A system of molecules that just so happen to replicate themselves have formed a mechanical system so elaborate that not even the finest 'watch maker' on earth could match it for complexity.

The amount of successful and very difficult and often simultaneous steps required for this first lifeform to form are so numerous that even in the face of proof to the contrary, we would think that rational scientists should steadfastly refuse to believe in life’s existence, based on nothing more than statistical magnitude of improbability of this first step occurring.

If we grant that life did evolve naturally, and overcame the bottleneck of invariance, population and lack of exact specificity to the environment, so that it was perfectly adapted, then as the initial reactants that were driving life fell, life should have drifted out of existence. The system sustaining the initial populations should have disintegrated and returned to random motion. The statistical likelihood of such a response is extremely high.

To use an illustration: If, in our laboratory, we had a system of finely calibrated molecules dependent on each other and on a reactant we are adding to their environment, then we would not expect that removal of the reactant would cause a conformational or biophysical change in the molecules so that they now started using the glass of the test tube as the reactant in order to sustain their cycle.

However, such a change did occur, and more. Instead of drifting out of existence once the reactant was used up, a very fortunate coincidence, at this very instance in the evolution of lifeforms, occurred. Copying errors in the DNA underpinning their creation meant that flagella and chemoreceptors popped up and that allowed the ‘search’ for new reactants to occur. Life diversified.

Further mutations to the metabolic processing cycles and the specificity of transmembrane proteins as well as second messenger cascades, also allowed for an adjustment to new chemical environments.

All of this occurred without the primary molecular cascades being disrupted (for that would be death).

Statistically, there are several separate things to consider. The likelihood that such random mutations would give rise to such elaborate features, AND the statistical likelihood that such mutations would then occur at the exact time they were needed AND that these huge mutations and metabolic shifts did not destroy the initial chemical cycles that were defining life.

AND Of course, even before that is the statistical improbability that life would arise in the first place. Remember, there is no intentionality to life. It is all random.

And then there is the mathematical statistics I opened this OP with. Without intentionality or some type of invaginated terrain over which life is running, then mathematically speaking we would expect to see disorder punctuated every so often with order. This order would be nothing more than the expected anomalies from an underlying random motion – the monkeys on typewriters. Life, even if it did blow wide open for a while, should have narrowed and ultimately disappeared in the billions of years of its repeating pattern. Life should not have survived.

If we now move to the science of physics we see that life is statistically very improbable because it depends on the locomotion of a system through space to source reactants to support a system that is anti-entropic and dependent on random mutations matching precisely against a changing environmental terrain in order to sustain and propagate itself. Such a system is surely facing massive selection pressures against its existence. Survival of the fittest suggests that life should not survive.

So, at large, there's energy dispersion in the universe towards heat death (an equilibrium in an expanding universe), countered temporarily in some locales due to blazing suns that radiate energy (cf the fluctuation theorem), energy that can be temporarily accumulated (locally) due to photosynthesis. Great conditions to get some biological evolution going (while it lasts anyway). (Y)

But, when we look close enough, we find both chaos and order, and whatever in between, in the universe. Universality is a great example of a kind of emergence, with no particular intervention or guidance as such.

Still, we're not nature-omniscient. Atoms, for example, are not idealized bouncing billiard balls. We don't know atoms or whatever exhaustively.

Teleological evolution seems a bit like predestination (though more than 99% of all species ever having walked the Earth are now extinct). I find it oddly self-elevating to think of (what we know of as) life, or consciousness (as we know it) perhaps, as some sort epitome or pedestal of what might come about naturally in the universe. Why...?

@MikeL

I find your arguments the most convincing I've heard so far with regard to there being intelligent design in the universe. Do you have any thoughts as to the form and nature of that intelligence? Here is something I posted in another thread, as a rough possible description of whatever force exists:

"OK, so what if a semi-aware consciousness pervades all living things, and receives input from each entity's experiences, which it then uses to decide on periodic evolutionary changes to genetic programs? Genetic code is its programming language, but unlike computer code, it has a natural degree of chaotic behaviour, especially when subjected to various environmental factors (explaining things like cancer). The consciousness has a general sense of what is possible, and puts forth program changes that enable its entities to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Add to this a desire to expand its population of entities, a sensitivity to pleasure and pain, and a deep yearning for its children to achieve the limits of physical existence. With the evolution of humans, and seeing how they can be so self-destructive, it questions the benefit of introducing further evolutionary changes until the humans can get their act together. Voila! An explanation for everything that is evolution. :) "

In this scenario, environmental factors like gravity are constants - whether they were pre-existing (the computer hardware), or were programmed as such (the operating system).

Order from Chaos — MikeL

I have been thinking about this question lately as well. It's certainly one of the things that have been on my mind, especially with regards to philosophy.

What does order from chaos mean? How could order arise from chaos?

There is order – repetition of pattern - mathematics to the response. — MikeL

I think repetition and pattern don't really get to the essence of order. Repetition and pattern are only one kind of order, more specifically the order that arises by having separate things arranged in such and such a way. But, essentially, order is a determination. This means that absolute disorder or absolute chaos must be impossible, for it entails the absence of any determination, and the absence of any determination is just non-being, nothing.

You may think of absolute chaos as two balls moving in empty space absolutely chaotically, without any rhyme or purpose. But that too isn't absolute chaos, because the balls are still determined in-themselves as balls, and also in relation to one another. So all that we're dealing with in reality will be different degrees of order - we can never deal with infinite chaos, for such a thing is incoherent - the negation of all determinations is its own negation.

The table is black. There is order. The table is not white. This seems to be a negation, but every negation is ultimately an affirmation, for nobody actually saw a table that is 'not white'. They saw a table which has some determination with regards to color - but it wasn't the color they expected - so they say it's not white. This "not white" is an underhanded way of affirming its real color. Thus, there is no pure negation. Determination is always prior to negation.

Life is an order of moleculo-chemical processes that arises out of chaos — MikeL

Surely this "chaos" from which life arises cannot be absolute chaos, by the considerations that we mentioned before. Rather this "chaos" is a lower degree of order compared to the order that we call life.

It is the case of the 1000 monkeys typing on typewriters for a thousand years to produce the complete works of Shakespeare. The problem of the evolution of life from molecules seems settled. — MikeL

You see, for example this scenario presupposes that the monkeys will be typing in the first place. Something needs to constrain them, they should be typing, not smashing the keyboards, eating, etc. So even this simple system requires some kind of order for the works of Shakespeare to be produced.

The problem with both of these analogies though is that order would fall back into chaos. It would not last. The next words the monkeys typed after typing Shakespeare would be gibberish. The harmony of the bells would continue to fall back into a discordant cacophony. — MikeL

Yes, agreed. Without a teleological end that directs occurences towards the production of increasing complexity and order this would be impossible.

Surely the evolution of complex life from such a perfectly formed base of molecular and then cellular interaction points to intelligent design. — MikeL

Yes, the existence of this world does require an intelligence.

Hey almost everyone today thinks that life's a lottery, it's a cosmic crapshoot that just happened to turn us out. It is the accepted wisdom that 'if the tape of evolution was replayed the outcome could be vastly different'. Now, you don't have to be a creationist or 'god botherer' to have genuine doubts about that. In fact one of the frustrating things about this debate is that to even say there might be something other than chance behind it, is to then be categorised as creationist! Look what they said about Thomas Nagel, when he wrote a book in favour of some form of what he called 'natural teleology'. 'Ah, thrown in his lot with Ken Ham.'

What utter nonsense. I think the reason behind this, is we have a vested interest in the belief that it is crapshoot. We're conditioned to think that way, as something that 'science has revealed'. Actually science has 'revealed' no such thing. It simply must put aside questions such as 'intentionality' and 'purpose' because they're not in scope for the scientific method. But the ideological commitment to the notion of the Universe being purposeless, is now intrinsic to the Western worldview, when it's not a scientiific hypothesis at all, and can't be. It's simply a mind set.

The problem with the many materialists here is that they suppose that:

• (1) absolute chaos can exist.
• (2) progressively higher degrees of order could randomly emerge out of lesser degrees of order.

Both of these two premises are contradictory and false and entail ultimately that something can come from nothing.

But the ideological commitment to the notion of the Universe being purposeless, is now intrinsic to the Western worldview, when it's not a scientiific hypothesis at all, and can't be. It's simply a mind set. — Wayfarer

It is nothing but the preparation for the great darkness that is to befall the Western world. The West seems to be in the phase of its senility. It is too old, tired, and has lost all desire for life. This loss is expressed by the belief that everything is crapshot - otherwise you could not sleep well at night with who you are. But if everything is crapshot, that is now a justification for yourself.

when we look close enough, we find both chaos and order, — jorndoe

Every judgement presumes an order. Without order, science and reasoned inference couldn't even get out of bed. The conceit of science is that it can or might explain that order, when it first must assume it, to do any work whatever.

That is why evolutionary theory produces so much crap metaphysics - when it goes beyond its remit, which is, 'a theory of the evolution of species' - it then tries to apply those principles to questions it was never intended to solve. That is how it reduces so many issues of philosophy and ethics to banal just-so stories about 'how trait x helps survival'.

Apokrisis has been going around saying our impulse to order here is to dissipate heat, to increase entropy. At the molecular level, under certain stable conditions (an energy source, heat bath) matter orders itself to dissipate more energy and this puts the upward trend of evolution of matter into motion.

How much heat are you dissipating? — Nils Loc

Sure, but you realise that this doesn't solve much of the problem. Namely, the second law of thermodynamics is a statistical law. The real question is why are things (the universe) such that statistically, they will tend towards the fastest dissipation of energy? To say because there is a law is nothing more than to say that opium causes sleep because it has sleep-inducing powers - a tautology. And even worse, because this isn't even a law, it's just a statistic.

This loss is expressed by the belief that everything is crapshot - otherwise you could not sleep well at night with who you are. — Agustino

If Crapshootism were an effective sleeping aid there would be whole shelves dedicated to it in the self-help section.

Sure, but you realise that this doesn't solve much of the problem. — Agustino

I'm not sure what the problem is exactly. Maybe someone could state it in a single sentence for us cognitive plebeians. Intelligent design just gives us an infinite regress.

The chaos and order scheme hasn't been addressed or worked out at all. No one knows what this means.

Folks are talking about improbability of life but what are these claims or speculations really grounded in (Fermi Paradox?).

it might be worth noting that none of the the Catholic, Anglican and Orthodox communions endorse 'intelligent design', which is generally associated with American evangelical Protestantism. Likewise, Thomas Nagel, whom I mentioned previously, took issue with what he calls 'neo-Darwinian materialism' in his book Mind and Cosmos even whilst professing an overall atheist philosophy. I mention this, because the argument fall so easily into the 'scientific materialist vs religious fundamentalist' stereotype, when it's actually much broader than that.