Materialism

[webolife]

Flipping a coin and getting heads is extremely lucky, if what I have to flip to survive is 300 heads in a row, roughly the number of genes for working proteins in the simplest mycoplasm cells. Anything more complex than that (ie every other kind of living organism ever known) multiplies the improbability of viability by unbelievable orders of magnitude.

[altonhare]

I'm sorry web, I have not had the time in the past week due to work and other things to give this a proper response. I will as soon as I can, but I don't know when things will calm down here.

[junglelord]

When You get back, you should check the TT thread. Solar and Webolife have made sense of it.

[klypp]

Flipping a coin and getting heads is extremely lucky, if what I have to flip to survive is 300 heads in a row, roughly the number of genes for working proteins in the simplest mycoplasm cells. Anything more complex than that (ie every other kind of living organism ever known) multiplies the improbability of viability by unbelievable orders of magnitude.

Where did all this coin flipping came from?
Aaah yes, Dawkins!!!

Problem is, web and alton, you're both chasing a phantom!
Here's what Dawkins has to say about this in The Blind Watchmaker:

Darwinism is widely misunderstood as a theory of pure chance. Mustn't it have done something to provoke this canard? Well, yes, there is something behind the misunderstood rumour, a feeble basis to the distortion. one stage in the Darwinian process is indeed a chance process -- mutation. Mutation is the process by which fresh genetic variation is offered up for selection and it is usually described as random. But Darwinians make the fuss they do about the 'randomness' of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection. It is not necessary that mutation should be random for natural selection to work. Selection can still do its work whether mutation is directed or not. Emphasizing that mutation can be random is our way of calling attention to the crucial fact that, by contrast, selection is sublimely and quintessentially non-random. It is ironic that this emphasis on the contrast between mutation and the non-randomness of selection has led people to think that the whole theory is a theory of chance.

I might add to this that mutation is really another word for change. And, like I said before, change is fundamental to the universe. Everything is constantly changing. The universe is no xerox machine!
Not even identical twins (one-egged) are identical. They differ by weight, height, fingerprints, iris and - as suggested by recent research - even by their genes.
Mutations occur all the time in all organisms. No organism ever produced an exact copy of itself. Does this normally kill the offspring? Obviously not.
Diversity in a population is a good way to deal with a changing environment. And thus it should come as no surprise that life actually welcomes mutations. And not only that, in stead of just sitting around and wait for some cell to "malfunction", it has found ways to speed up mutations. Sex is one rather famous and pleasant way to do just that: Enforce change and diversity!

Where does luck come into all this?
The evolutionary race creates winners and losers. We have made it this far, the mammuts didn't.
And thus we might consider ourselves as lucky. Or even extremely lucky - by any "unbelievable orders of magnitude" we might choose.
It doesn't matter how exagerrated we get. We are really just expressing a simple observation: We are here now.

No big news there...

[webolife]

Klypp, you make the same leap that Alton, and yes, Dawkins, made, by simply saying, well...
here we are... doesn't matter how lucky this is.... must have happened... absence of mechanism, no problem... here we are... no evidence to support a materialistic process by which it conceivably occurred, ie selection of random mutations over eons of time, not an issue... here we are. And I'm sure you would conclude that this view is more scientific than one involving any element of design.
Dawkins emphasis on the non-randomness of selection is a total smokescreen for his belief that somehow [after all, here we are] all the necessary mutations [whether randomly acquired or not!] are available for selection, the complex environmental setting [ecosystem] is in place, all the life processes required for any of this to matter anyway are functioning, and the preponderance of negatively impacting mutations are magically swept away despite all experience, experiment, and observation [let's call that real science] to the contrary.
There are only three essential possibilities, as I see it, with minor variations conceded:
1. Life arose spontaneously by mechanisms unknown under conditions no longer present [at least on earth], and thereafter achieved unimaginable complexity and order through an eons long process of selection of undirected mutations.
2. Life has always/eternally existed at the level of complexity we currently observe.
3. Complex life originated by the action of a designer at some time in the past.
None of these is able to be reduced or solved by science, limited as it is to predictable, observable processes.

[webolife]

A word about "mutation just means change."
Sex and selection [and other reproductive mechanisms] only operate on preexisting information. Variations in that process such as recombination or crossover, epigenetic factors, or even horizontal infusion of information (eg.by viruses as per some recent hypotheses), can only result in selective improvement of the original genome. Truly transformational mutations, such as are allegedly responsible for all diversity of life from bacteria to man, in order to satisfy the requirements of the philosophy of materialism must be undirected, beneficial, and cumulative [and random], and this unlikely and unobserved occurence must persist for eons of time. If you believe this is what happened, that is your right.

[altonhare]

2. Irreducible --- No functionality in a partial state of construction, only with all parts, intact, assembled, and with other necessary elements present, eg;

Nothing special here. A see-saw is irreducible. Take away the center pivot point and it no longer functions to bob my kids up and down. A long stone falls onto a small round stone, here we have an irreducible entity without apparent direction.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg... sorry to disappoint, but both are essential at the most fundamental level or "beginning".

Neither came first because there is no "first". There is no first life, no first cause whatsoever. A first cause is acausal.

Determinism doesn't fill the bill by even an iota of imagination, as it operates "endlessly" without direction, yet cannot produce even one such "engineering feat" without very specific direction.

Unjustified claim. See-saws in mountain ranges around the world disagree.

5. Specified information --- not just some "inevitable" combination of undirected circumstances or collisions, but a "code" that unifies and organizes specific traits necessary for life or functionality, and without which that life or functionality cannot exist (eg. DNA , or a blueprint for building a computer). How do we know when we see this? I'm walking along a trail, admiring a host of different soil types, rock formations, even a crystalline mineral here or, there, or feeling the breeze or the sun on my face. A gleam catches my eye. At the base of a rock I spy a Rolex watch. Is it just one of many inevitable circumstances, or is it ....?

So when you state that something has "specific information" this is not your evidence of a Designer, it's a claim that it was designed. You're trying to use your claim as your proof. A dog comes along and pees on the watch, a mouse craps in it, a seagull scoops it up and drops it in the sea. So much for "specific information" being universal, it was just your personal opinion.

Again, Alton, you offer no actual mechanism.

atoms->molecules

I look at creation, I see immutable evidence of design, I conclude that intelligence was involved.

The dog pisses on your "immutable evidence of design". The watch, the DNA molecule, etc. all just look like "information" to you.

You are required by the rule of your "determinism" to offer a naturalistic, materialistic mechanism.

I am required to refrain from imposing my own personal bias on Nature as little as possible.

I am not so required, because I do not subscribe to determinism, though I am a scientist, and science teacher.

As a scientist you make an exception in this instance because you cannot handle an objective viewpoint.

So far, you offer only probability (100%), but no mechanism that even remotely is capable of achieving even a bit of a % of the product you are claiming is "inevitable", irrespective of the time allotted.

atoms->molecules

No first cause means that every physically possible arrangement happens.

What I am asking you to do is to actually visualize the stuff that is observable all around you, and tell me and everyone, aloud, that this is all a result of undirected collisions of atoms over time. This includes of course also my beliefs, my typing of this response, and all of your clever debate points you are thinking of as you read this.

Of course.

We assume that, in frame 1 of the movie, we simply have a bunch of fundamental constituents.

Just where and how did frame one come from?
100% speculation?

Frame 1 is the first frame in the movie illustrating a theory. In the Universal Movie there is always a frame preceding it.

Flipping a coin and getting heads is extremely lucky, if what I have to flip to survive is 300 heads in a row, roughly the number of genes for working proteins in the simplest mycoplasm cells.

Once you have flipped 300 heads, the probability that you DID flip 300 heads was 100%. If everyone on earth flipped coins someone would, eventually, flip 300 heads. We've gone over this probabilistic argument, it leads to nowhere because a future probability (guess) means nothing. Is 1% enough? .01%? A finite % means it's possible. Ultimately a probability tells us *nothing* unless it is 0% or 100%.

When You get back, you should check the TT thread. Solar and Webolife have made sense of it.

Solar integrated a lot of Gabe's comments, and I'm glad he saw what I did. But if Solar "made sense" of it why did he have to put so many words in quotes? I'll comment more in the thread itself when I get a comment.

Everything is constantly changing. The universe is no xerox machine!

Agreed. One result I realized from the definitions of motion etc. that I use is that it is impossible for an observer to conclude that anything is motionless. At best one can conclude that an entity is motionless relative to him/her, but never that it is absolutely motionless.

Mutations occur all the time in all organisms. No organism ever produced an exact copy of itself. Does this normally kill the offspring? Obviously not.
Diversity in a population is a good way to deal with a changing environment. And thus it should come as no surprise that life actually welcomes mutations. And not only that, in stead of just sitting around and wait for some cell to "malfunction", it has found ways to speed up mutations. Sex is one rather famous and pleasant way to do just that: Enforce change and diversity!

For once, I'm glad to hear your voice in here Klypp.

doesn't matter how lucky this is.... must have happened... absence of mechanism, no problem...

atoms->molecules

And I'm sure you would conclude that this view is more scientific than one involving any element of design.

Yes, because atoms->molecules is capable of producing DNA, protein, etc. Design is just a vague term you bandy about with no concrete connection.

None of these is able to be reduced or solved by science, limited as it is to predictable, observable processes.

atoms->molecules

This works with the philosophical rejection of a "first cause" Creation type event.

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Alton,
You wrote:

Nothing special here. A see-saw is irreducible. Take away the center pivot point and it no longer functions to bob my kids up and down. A long stone falls onto a small round stone, here we have an irreducible entity without apparent direction.

A see-saw is intelligently designed. A rock balancing on another rock is not a see-saw and is not intelligently designed, it is just the result of cause and effect.

Neither came first because there is no "first". There is no first life, no first cause whatsoever. A first cause is acausal.

This is pure speculation. Neither you nor anyone in science can say what 'life' is; you can only describe certain of its attributes or
characteristics. You (plural) cannot say where this life goes upon 'death'. If there is no first cause then where did the second cause come from? How does your statement that there is '...no first cause whatsoever.' tally with 'a first cause is acausal'?

So when you state that something has "specific information" this is not your evidence of a Designer, it's a claim that it was designed.

That's just an attempt at sophistry. Common sense and the rules of grammer dictate that you cannot have designed without a designer.

You're trying to use your claim as your proof. A dog comes along and pees on the watch, a mouse craps in it, a seagull scoops it up and drops it in the sea. So much for "specific information" being universal, it was just your personal opinion.

The actions of the dog, mouse and gull are all examples of cause and effect; there is nothing random there or in Webolife's Rolex in the rock.
I fail to see what relevance your dog, mouse, gull analogy has to specific information being universal.

The dog pisses on your "immutable evidence of design". The watch, the DNA molecule, etc. all just look like "information" to you.

Are you saying that they don't look like information to you? Or that information is only a human concept? The dog, mouse and gull can all extract information from their environment. Dog's for example can introduce information into their environment in the form of scent trails.

I am required to refrain from imposing my own personal bias on Nature as little as possible.

Your materialism and scientism are your personal bias.

No first cause means that every physically possible arrangement happens.

Say what? Would your care to explain how the absence of a first cause means every physical arrangement happens?

Frame 1 is the first frame in the movie illustrating a theory. In the Universal Movie there is always a frame preceding it.

100% speculation.

Once you have flipped 300 heads, the probability that you DID flip 300 heads was 100%. If everyone on earth flipped coins someone would, eventually, flip 300 heads. We've gone over this probabilistic argument, it leads to nowhere because a future probability (guess) means nothing. Is 1% enough? .01%? A finite % means it's possible.
Ultimately a probability tells us *nothing* unless it is 0% or 100%.

Webolife's point was, I think, that genes do not rely on probability, they work day-in, day-out consistently in every mycoplasm cell.

Yes, because atoms->molecules is capable of producing DNA, protein, etc. Design is just a vague term you bandy about with no concrete connection.

You have no evidence that atoms, molecules, DNA, proteins can produce life. DNA can only exists in living cells, it does not exist independently of living cells.
Science has been trying for years to create 'life' from chemicals, amino acids etc.
You discard the Big Bang and a designer and say that atoms have always existed. That position, to me, sounds like an article of faith.

This works with the philosophical rejection of a "first cause" Creation type event.

What works?

I take it that you haven't learned much from your reading of Aristotle then?

P.S. I might be getting out of my depth here, but if atoms have always existed, why haven't they all decayed down to hydrogen by now?

[altonhare]

Hi Alton,
You wrote:

Nothing special here. A see-saw is irreducible. Take away the center pivot point and it no longer functions to bob my kids up and down. A long stone falls onto a small round stone, here we have an irreducible entity without apparent direction.

A see-saw is intelligently designed. A rock balancing on another rock is not a see-saw and is not intelligently designed, it is just the result of cause and effect.

A rock balancing on another rock serves as a see-saw for my daughter, who enjoys it very much. It came about as a result of cause/effect. When one pieces is gone it no longer serves the function of entertaining my daughter. It came about as a result of cause/effect and is irreducible.

Neither came first because there is no "first". There is no first life, no first cause whatsoever. A first cause is acausal.

You (plural) cannot say where this life goes upon 'death'.

Life cannot "go" anywhere because it is a concept and not an object/entity. Life is what I understand and conceptualize, a living entity is something that goes here or there.

If there is no first cause then where did the second cause come from?

There's no second cause either.

How does your statement that there is '...no first cause whatsoever.' tally with 'a first cause is acausal'?

It tallies thusly:

All real events and causes are causal.

A first cause is not causal.

Therefore a first cause is not real.

So when you state that something has "specific information" this is not your evidence of a Designer, it's a claim that it was designed.

That's just an attempt at sophistry. Common sense and the rules of grammer dictate that you cannot have designed without a designer.

This is not sophistry. Web is saying that he sees something and thinks it has "specific information", which he defines as the result of "directed" activity, which he defines as the result of consciousness/intelligence. Web is using his observation to prove his claim, it is circular. He's saying that, because he sees something and decides it was intelligently designed, this is evidence for intelligent design. It is not evidence, his claim that it is intelligently designed is his opinion, not evidence.

You're trying to use your claim as your proof. A dog comes along and pees on the watch, a mouse craps in it, a seagull scoops it up and drops it in the sea. So much for "specific information" being universal, it was just your personal opinion.

The actions of the dog, mouse and gull are all examples of cause and effect; there is nothing random there or in Webolife's Rolex in the rock.
I fail to see what relevance your dog, mouse, gull analogy has to specific information being universal.

The point is that web's concept of "specific information" is subjective, observer dependent, i.e. it is his opinion that certain things could not have come about without "intelligent design" therefore the things he decides couldn't have are *evidence* for intelligent design. He is observing things, deciding they were intelligently designed, then saying that their mere existence (of a watch for instance) is evidence for intelligent design. This is just his interpretation.

The dog pisses on your "immutable evidence of design". The watch, the DNA molecule, etc. all just look like "information" to you.

Are you saying that they don't look like information to you? Or that information is only a human concept? The dog, mouse and gull can all extract information from their environment. Dog's for example can introduce information into their environment in the form of scent trails.

I'm saying that what appears to be information varies. Watches and such are, at best, evidence to him of intelligent design. He can points to and name something "intelligently designed". This is an assumption, i.e. part of the hypothesis. He is asking me to accept it. The point is that it's not "evidence", but he's claiming it is. He's using his conclusion (this was intelligently designed) to prove his hypothesis (this must have been intelligently designed).

I am required to refrain from imposing my own personal bias on Nature as little as possible.

Your materialism and scientism are your personal bias.

I am doomed to logic and reason.

By the way I read up on 2012. Sure it was "The Complete Idiot's Guide" but I learned a few things. I have trouble associating human sacrifice with an "enlightened" people.

No first cause means that every physically possible arrangement happens.

Say what? Would your care to explain how the absence of a first cause means every physical arrangement happens?

Every *possible* physical arrangement happens. By which I mean every arrangement consistent with each entity's identity. On the other hand one could imagine a cycle in which every entity goes through particular arrangements over and over, although it could in theory assume other arrangements, it simply can't "get there".

Frame 1 is the first frame in the movie illustrating a theory. In the Universal Movie there is always a frame preceding it.

100% speculation.

No, a statement of the sci meth and causality.

Once you have flipped 300 heads, the probability that you DID flip 300 heads was 100%. If everyone on earth flipped coins someone would, eventually, flip 300 heads. We've gone over this probabilistic argument, it leads to nowhere because a future probability (guess) means nothing. Is 1% enough? .01%? A finite % means it's possible.
Ultimately a probability tells us *nothing* unless it is 0% or 100%.

Webolife's point was, I think, that genes do not rely on probability, they work day-in, day-out consistently in every mycoplasm cell.

Nothing "works" on probability.

Yes, because atoms->molecules is capable of producing DNA, protein, etc. Design is just a vague term you bandy about with no concrete connection.

You have no evidence that atoms, molecules, DNA, proteins can produce life. DNA can only exists in living cells, it does not exist independently of living cells.

Yes, the fundamental question of science at this juncture is how all these atoms and molecules come together to form a cell. Much as Newton decided that God must keep the solar system in order but Laplace showed it was not necessary, many now think there must have been some kind of God to get the cell together but eventually God will be unnecessary. This is the standpoint of a scientist. God inhibits science rather than enriches it. Gods like Newton's say "Give up on that" or otherwise place limits on what can be scientifically explained.

Science has been trying for years to create 'life' from chemicals, amino acids etc.

Science is young GC! Only a few hundred years. Religions have been around for thousands upon thousands but they don't seem to have a unified agreement on this matter either.

You discard the Big Bang and a designer and say that atoms have always existed. That position, to me, sounds like an article of faith.

In science something cannot come from nothing nor vice versa. Of what worth is an "explanation" in which this and that can appear and disappear surreptitiously for no apparent reason? Such an "explanation" is no better than magic. If God exists s/he, too, has always existed. The fundamental constituent, whatever it is, has always existed. "Creation" is, objectively, just the rearrangement of already existing entities.

I take it that you haven't learned much from your reading of Aristotle then?

I gave up, there are some gems in there but everything else is so hard to get through I felt like I was wasting a lot of time and effort. I simply don't have the time in my life to wade through it. Maybe I'm a poor reader. You'd probably say I over-analyze.

P.S. I might be getting out of my depth here, but if atoms have always existed, why haven't they all decayed down to hydrogen by now?

Not sure what you mean here, the number of H atoms in the universe generally appears to be decreasing right now. In a more general sense there is no reason they cannot increase again later. The cosmic ball of thread probably is expanding and may eventually collapse back inward, only to erupt again. The mechanism for this under TT I've described before.

[Grey Cloud]

Hi Alton,
You missed your vocation - you really should have been a lawyer.
You'll get no citicism from me for giving up on Aristotle.
Re the human sacrifice. I'm guessing you mean the Aztecs who were medieval not ancient. The votaries of jenkul Jesus meek and mild were doing similar things on this side of the Atlantic at that time also. Both the Aztec and Christian priests had logical reasons for doing what they did, each according to their own understanding of things. The Aztecs believed they were giving the energy or life force of the sacrificed back to the Sun to stop it running out of fuel (if the Sun died then everything on Earth would too). The Inquisition saw a red-hot poker up the posterior orifice to drive out a demon a small price to pay for the saving of an immortal soul.
You are also judging the Aztec by your modern values. They may have had different views on life and living. Today is a good day to die and all that.
Enlightenment is a personal deal not a mass-market product - know thyself.
Scientists are still sacrificing animals in the search for profit. They too can come up with all sorts of logical reasons for doing so.

[altonhare]

Hi Alton,
You missed your vocation - you really should have been a lawyer.

I never could have been a lawyer, but not for a lack of ability I suspect. After the debate/presentation in science everyone goes home with either A) More reason to believe what they believed before or B) A new outlook. More importantly, everyone goes home whether they agreed or not. I'm too idealistic for lawyering. I also loathe the US legal system. Just make f*cking drugs legal already and do the entire nation a favor on so many levels. Quit creating criminals.

Re the human sacrifice. I'm guessing you mean the Aztecs who were medieval not ancient.

Pretty sure the Maya did too, although the Aztecs did it more I think. At least that's what my Complete Idiot's guide tells me. What's your opinion, are we all going to ascend to become Gods, serving as the creators of the next 5 ages? Will we continue as we are, but with some kind of telepathic collective connection? Just curious, there were a lot of differing opinions about what is "coming". I think the shit is going to hit the proverbial fan soon, too, but not in the same way.

The votaries of jenkul Jesus meek and mild were doing similar things on this side of the Atlantic at that time also. Both the Aztec and Christian priests had logical reasons for doing what they did, each according to their own understanding of things.

I don't ascribe to the whole "cultural relativism" excuse. Committing murder and thinking you "had a good reason" is still committing murder.

The Aztecs believed they were giving the energy or life force of the sacrificed back to the Sun to stop it running out of fuel (if the Sun died then everything on Earth would too).

The argument from fear. You can "justify" any behavior, no matter how atrocious, by claiming consequences which nobody can prove or disprove.

The Inquisition saw a red-hot poker up the posterior orifice to drive out a demon a small price to pay for the saving of an immortal soul.

This is a big problem for me. To me, this is the only life I'm guaranteed. It's the only life anyone is guaranteed. Everything else is pure personal speculation. If you want to live your life, in there and now, as though it were only a preamble that's your business. Maybe one or another religion is "right" in some sense, but all I know is that I'm here right now, and I'm going to live like this is all I've got. If there is "something" after then I'll enjoy that too, but I do not take it for granted.

I despise the Christian missionaries who knowingly brought disease, justifying it by saying they were "saving the people's souls", but killing them in the process. Mass murder "justified" by the mere hope and speculation that there is "something after" that somehow makes it "right". They took the only life those people were guaranteed on a bet, a gamble!


[

You said the key word, personal. Sacrifice your own damn self if its part of your personal enlightenment. The Christian missionaries could have prayed to their God to save all those people in exchange for their own lives, since they could not save them without knowingly killing them (committing murder). That would be more of an "enlightened" act than their atrocious barbarism.

I view religion has a personal matter. Each person comes to their own beliefs for whatever reason. No religion is or can be "Right" because there is no logical or rational way to evaluate religions in this way. Suppose an individual has no religion because of how s/he was raised and now needs to select one. S/he has no logical, rational basis for picking one over the other. The only way to pick is intuition or feeling, and it is likely the individual will pick and choose bits and pieces from here and there into a personal framework.

Therefore it makes no sense to debate religions because a debate is necessarily a rational, logical exercise by definition. An individual cannot change his/her religious beliefs based on a logical debate because those beliefs were not arrived at by logic in the first place. This is why I view religion as exclusively in the personal domain. And this is why it shouldn't be mixed into public schools.

And all this does not stop companies from trying to mass-market "enlightenment" and "religion". Bahahaha.

[StefanR]

More importantly, everyone goes home whether they agreed or not. I'm too idealistic for lawyering. I also loathe the US legal system. Just make f*cking drugs legal already and do the entire nation a favor on so many levels. Quit creating criminals.

F*, yeah!
Stay out of court, Alton.

Pretty sure the Maya did too, although the Aztecs did it more I think. At least that's what my Complete Idiot's guide tells me.

My Utter Fool's encyclopedia (dutch edition) says that humanity sometimes has problems with humanity.

I think the shit is going to hit the proverbial fan soon, too, but not in the same way.

I just called my investment bank and they told me everything is going up and up. Surely they know?

The argument from fear. You can "justify" any behavior, no matter how atrocious, by claiming consequences which nobody can prove or disprove.

Yes indeed and very actual too. It's the tourists!

You said the key word, personal. Sacrifice your own damn self if its part of your personal enlightenment. The Christian missionaries could have prayed to their God to save all those people in exchange for their own lives, since they could not save them without knowingly killing them (committing murder). That would be more of an "enlightened" act than their atrocious barbarism.

I view religion has a personal matter. Each person comes to their own beliefs for whatever reason. No religion is or can be "Right" because there is no logical or rational way to evaluate religions in this way. Suppose an individual has no religion because of how s/he was raised and now needs to select one. S/he has no logical, rational basis for picking one over the other. The only way to pick is intuition or feeling, and it is likely the individual will pick and choose bits and pieces from here and there into a personal framework.

Therefore it makes no sense to debate religions because a debate is necessarily a rational, logical exercise by definition. An individual cannot change his/her religious beliefs based on a logical debate because those beliefs were not arrived at by logic in the first place. This is why I view religion as exclusively in the personal domain. And this is why it shouldn't be mixed into public schools.

And all this does not stop companies from trying to mass-market "enlightenment" and "religion". Bahahaha.

I agree, but I would only change this bit:

...

[webolife]

Alton,
"Designed" implies a designer... nothing circular about that.
Irreducibly complex is not how I would describe a long rock resting on a smaller one.
Specified information is not about occasionally get 300 heads... it's about getting 300 heads every time because it is encoded in the DNA of your nucleus, and all the machinery required for its operation is in place.
You think that this is all inevitable based on there not being a "first cause". That is the most acausal position possible!
It just happened! After all here we are, so that's what must have happened!
And this is not an article of faith to you!

[bdw000]

Richard Dawkins:
But Darwinians make the fuss they do about the 'randomness' of mutation only in order to contrast it to the non-randomness of selection.

I disagree.

It is pretty much part of the record that the reason Darwinians, at least in the early days, "made a fuss about the randomness of mutation" is because they simply wanted to oppose Christianity. Evolution was seen as a way to oppose Christianity, plain and simple. Evolution was an arrow in the quiver of those who wanted to debunk Christianity (something I am not opposed to).

I am no Christian, and no friend (nor enemy) of religion, but in my opinion there simply is ZERO hard, physical evidence of evolution, and any claims that there is, are pure nonsense, as even a kindergarten-level understanding of "philosophy of science" clearly shows. What is really silly is that all the claims about evolution will NEVER be DIRECTLY "observable" (science, anyone?) unless someone invents a time machine. All the evidence is simply of RELATEDNESS, and the fact that a lot of the biology has changed drastically over time, which proves absolutely NOTHING about WHY all the biology on this planet is so related, or why/how it has changed over time.

As far as the "relatedness" of all biology goes, well, guess what, a "biological system" or biosphere as we have here on Earth simply WOULD NOT WORK UNLESS ALL THE ORGANISMS WERE RELATED. Do you think that a cat of the usual type could eat a mouse made up mostly of gold and silicon? I think not. If someone (or "some thing"), even aliens in lab coats, wanted to create our biosphere, guess what, all the organisms would have to be related BY DEFINITION. To claim that relatedness "proves" (or even just suppports) evolution is nothing short of an assumption without any evidence whatsoever. I am not saying I know evolution did not happen. I am just saying that the evidence held up to "prove" that it happened proves nothing of the sort.

I personally do not care why things are the way they are. I am not opposed to the idea of evolution at all: if it turns out that evolution is correct, fine with me. It is just the FALSE claims to knowledge that seem to permeate so much of modern science that concern me.

[bdw000]

The probability that life came about on earth is 100%.

Man, I sure hope you aren't saying that since there is life on earth, this is proof that evolution occurred (it is not clear to me if that is what you are saying, but it looks that way)?

I could just as well say that since there is life on earth, that proves that the Jolly Green Giant created all life on earth.

Evolution is possible. Anything is possible. But you can't simply point to the fact that reality exists and claim that proves your theory of WHY reality exists is correct, because everyone can do that and the discussion ends.

If you did not intend your comment to be taken the way I have taken it, sorry.