Keith

I'm surprised you kept on reading this thread if you were convinced that I'm ignorant of science. What motivated you to continue? Are you so sure that God didn't design and create everything? If so, how do you know God didn't do it?

Keith

Keith

I haven't abandoned my argument that complexity shows purpose, and you have consistently misunderstood what I've said about individuals. If you disagree about the complexity of reproduction and that reproduction shows purpose, I'm looking forward to hearing your views on this, specifically on why you disagree.

Keith

Doubting Didymus

Ah, but we DO see it happening when humans set up only a few simple ground rules: heritability, mutability, and differential replication efficacy. Lobstrosities program is an excellent example. The only things he set up were the three factors I mention above. His ants can inherit traits, alter their traits from the previous generation, and some can become better at reproducing than others. Given only those three things, information can spontaneously increase. The evidence for this is right under your nose. If you download any of the evolution simulators I linked to you can see it happening for yourself.

This means that the only part of evolution you can say you disagree with is abiogenesis. The process of evolution CAN increase information content without any intelligent guidance, but the ground rules must be set up for it first. This means that all you need god to do is create the first strand of replicating RNA and you are convinced that the rest can happen on its own, right? Is this an accurate representation of your position?

Principia

In science, one does not "believe" in a theory as you would "believe" a God. Rather, one asks whether or not the scientific evidence supports the theory. Have you reviewed the scientific evidence for TOE, Keith? What piece of evidence, Keith, does not support evolution?

Principia

Sure there is. Why, most creationists would agree with me that an atom with more neutrons and protons and electrons is more complex than a hydrogen atom, which has just one proton and one electron. Yet, these heavy atoms are produced all the time. Nucleosynthesis. In the Sun. By the regular force of gravity which brings all of these fundamental particles to one location so that these nuclear reactions are favorable.

Keith

My argument isn't so much against the TOE as it is FOR the ID and purposefulness shown in nature, especially in regard to living things. But I do note that the TOE does seem to be a dead-end road without abiogenesis. Do you agree?

Keith

Keith

By "high information content" I meant living things at least as complex as a bacteria.

Keith

Doubting Didymus

You didn't answer the question, keith. It has been shown to you that evolution is capable of producing great complexity without intelligence or purpose given only the ground rules of abiogenesis. Do you, then, accept this evidence? If not, please be specific about the problems you have with it.

As for abiogenesis being a stubling block for evolution, no it isn't. It IS a problem that must be adressed by people who, like me, believe that only natural processes are at work in the universe. However, that is not an assumtion that you are forced to make in order to accept evolution.

Principia

Of course you do. But that is merely an argument by definition, or more commonly known as shifting the goal post. In other words you merely define the problem in such a way that it has no examples. Convenient, but insufficient as an attack on evolution.

How high is "high?" Is a virus not complex to you?

Doubting Didymus

You are right. Living things are of a much greater level of complexity that can be accounted for by ordinary natural processes. An explaination is required for how such complexity could form. Evolution is such an explaination, because by compounding chance increases in complexity atop still more complexity, an ever increasing scale of complexity is possible.

Edit: you will notice that principia and I have different takes on this issue. See this thread for an idea of why.