Intelligent Design and the Origin of Life (A Response To HonestTechnoAtheist)

[MrKnowItAll1985]

If there were no common ancestry with chimps, we should share few or no common viruses and should not expect to see them at the same insertion points in our respective genomes. Ultimately, you need to look at the consilience of evidence.1. The fused chromosome.2. The shared ERVs

3. Common morphology 4. Nested hierarchies. ID'ers need to face the fact that the same genetic evidence that shows beyond doubt they are their mother's child, shows they are an apes cousin.

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@MrKnowItAll1985

Hello,

I define the concept of biological intelligent design as the thesis that certain features of the biological world are more adequately explained by an intelligence. By that definition, common descent and intelligent design are perfectly compatible. All the evidence in the world for common descent wouldn't put a dent in intelligent design. Common descent is perfectly compatible with intelligent design. (continued)

[TheScienceFoundation]

@FirstFreedomFighter Except that biodiversity/common descent is only compatible with intelligent design in the same sense that gravity is compatible with invisible pixies who magick mass together with an unknown force.

Intelligent design is a completely useless non-answer with zero predictive power and zero testable mechanisms.

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@MrKnowItAll1985

What is NOT compatible with intelligent design is the idea that all features of the biological world are the result of purely mindless processes, like random mutation and natural selection. To be sure, many features of life are the result of random mutation and natural selection, yet we can be equally sure that certain features of life are NOT the result of random mutation and natural selection. (continued)

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@MrKnowItAll1985

Phylogenetic evidence (such as ERV's, nested hierachical patterns displayed by protein sequences, etc.) is not evidence that those features arose through mindless processes. Phylogenetic evidence is not evidence of purely mindless processes generating features of life like biochemical systems with a high level of functional specificity.

[gregrutz]

Sorry, but ID lost in court. Proven to be nothing but religious bull shit.

[ZZTheAtheist]

hello hon ;)

[Carnage2K4]

as tech said you don't really do the philosophical side of things and this is indirectly related to the topic at hand, but I would like to know how you attribute any possible intelligent architect to the Aramaic God of the Old & New Testaments specifically, as, as I see it you could just as well attribute it to any creation god, or even a deistic entity... I mean why Christianity specifically? (as that is what I assume you do)

[LucvdMortel]

I find the RNA World hypothesis more plausible than Intelligent Design. As intelligent design begs the question. Who is/was this intelligence that created life? Where did it come from? Who or what created this intelligence? What mechanism did this intelligence use to create life? Why don't we see any life being intelligently created today?

The RNA world hypothesis fits in the current model of the evolution theory nicely and it makes most sense.

[LucvdMortel]

@LucvdMortel

The RNA world would also explain how specified proteins could naturally arise (through rRNA). No intelligence needed.

[HonestTechnoAtheist]

Well your only reasons for using an intelligence are as follows:

1. It has never been observed.

2. It cannot account for...

3. It is better explained by...

4. The odds are to great gainst it.

In conclusion. Nothing but an argument from ignorance. Just like I knew it would be.

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@HonestTechnoAtheist

A lot of things could be said here. You asserted that artificiality is always the product of an intelligence. A very good case can be made for the concept that protein machines are artificial, as is the genetic code and prescribed information. And here's a quick-and-easy rebuttal of your argument:

Please explain how my arguments are an argument from ignorance while the notion that a book on Mars is indicative of intelligence is NOT an argument from ignorance.

[HonestTechnoAtheist]

@FirstFreedomFighter But proteins are not artificial structures, they are natural ones. Let me give an example of your request in addition to my four statements:

1. It has never been obeserved... so I will rule out it existing.

2. It cannot account for... so I will just say an intelligence made it

3. It is better explained by... an intelligence

4. The odds are too great against it... there is no way it could have happened, therefore...

Books are not from nature, but from humans.

[Theophage]

Also in this video, like your last video, your text slides go by too quickly (yeah, yeah I know, I can hit the pause...)

[4thcoming]

@Theophage FFF did a good job making this video and if the slides are too quick you can simply reply or slide the youtube play button back.

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@4thcoming

No I actually suck at making videos...

[4thcoming]

@FirstFreedomFighter lol at least their better then some of mine ;)

[Theophage]

..or hit the pause. Yeah I noted that in my comment above. My point wasn't that I couldn't figure out how to read it, I was just trying to help FFF make his videos a little better.

[4thcoming]

@Theophage Forgot the pause! Well actually no I didn't lol but almost did ;)

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

Duuuuuuuuuh apparently youtube didn't save my edits to the description and the title of the video. Just saying...

[Theophage]

In this video you say: "To my knowledge, never has information been observed to be generated from previously non-existing information..." Yet in our debate, IIRC, you said that you had no problem with the idea of genetic mutations increasing information.

Can you explain this apparent contradiction? Am I simply misremembering? Or perhaps all information increasing genetic mutation is the hand of the Grand Old Designer at work?

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

This apparent contradiction is very easy explain. Genetic mutations can increase information via gene duplication et al. However, that is information being generated by already existing information (genes are information, and information can give rise to an increase in information in terms of bits) -- this is not information being generated from previously non-existing information.

[Theophage]

@FirstFreedomFighter and yet gene duplication and subsequent mutation isn't the only way to generate new information in the genome. A frame shift mutation will do it was well. Do you also consider that information being generated from previous information?

Because it seems to me that you've set up a no-lose situation: any change to the genome that increases information would be acting on something which already carries information, thus not generated from non-existing information, right?

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

I said "Genetic mutations can increase information via gene duplication ET AL. By "et al." I am including all other mechanisms of increasing information in the genome of an organism. A frame-shift mutation that consists of an insertion would also be an increase in the information. And you are entirely correct when you say,

"Any change to the genome that increases information would be acting on something which already carries information." (contd)

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

The problem with your exposition is that in this video I am discussing the origin of new information from previously non-existing information, while you are discussing examples of new information arising from already existing information.

[Theophage]

@FirstFreedomFighter Yeah, I missed the 'et al'. One last question, if you don't mind: Is it possible for a stretch of DNA to carry no information? For example, a non-coding stretch, or a broken gene, etc.?

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

All DNA carries information. However, a non-coding stretch or a broken gene would not be *functional* information. For example, the random sequence "safhlweergfdjgnfghgotrvhtr" contains information. However, that information is not functional information.

[Theophage]

@FirstFreedomFighter So are you saying that intelligence is needed to create any (functional or non-functional) information from non-information, or are you saying that intelligence in needed to specifically create "functional information" from non-information?

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

In my opinion, intelligence is needed to generate any information from a state of non-information.

[Theophage]

@FirstFreedomFighter But that clearly isn't true. Information is contained in the arrangement of anything whether that is letters on a screen, leaves on a lawn, or rocks on the side of the road. All have calculatable information content in the Shannon sense of the word, and all can be created by non-intelligent processes. In fact, depending on how you define an arrangement, it would be impossible for there ever not to be any information content; no "non-information" states exist.

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Theophage

By that definition, then I concede that mere information can be generated by non-intelligence processes (there are various definitions of information though). In which case, it would be more accurate to say that prescriptive information can only be generated by an intelligence -- which was a bulk of the argument I advanced in this video.

[Theophage]

@FirstFreedomFighter Thank you. I'll do some more reading about "prescriptive information".

[Lawborn]

I even like the soundtrack!

[Lawborn]

First comment baby!!!!!! Who is the man! Woo hooooooo!!!!

[FirstFreedomFighter]

@Lawborn

Congratulations Lawborn for making the first comment! And I've updated the title of the video hehehe. In case you're interested, the soundtrack is:

"Clubbed to Death" - Rob Dougan.