Who Made The Code? (page 10)

cantleave

I am sorry to say I agree with Dave S, it is a waste of time debating this topic with those who wish to remain ignorant.

Seems to me that this is the standard communication problem that results fom two different worldviews. The philosophical one doesn't really care about 'how' but wants to answer 'why' and the scientific one keeps explaining 'how' but doesn't really care so much about 'why' .

S&R has put together a superb scientific response (how) while Perry seems to be saying that the 'how' cannot explain the 'why' and is therefore deficient. The 'why' is of course speculative and so we get opinion but no substance as the 'why' has no explanatory power as to 'how' (the bible doesn't contain information on genetics for example.) Those seeking 'how' answers normally detest opinion based 'why' answers and those seeking 'why' answers cannot always fathom what is so special with 'how' answers and get frustrated when a 'how' contradicts an expected evidence for a 'why'. This paragraph will now explode as it is too horrible to read again.

Philosophers and lovers of why - you would do well to ask yourself if the how answers given here are really at odds with your decided why and then a lot of misguided attacks on the world of how knowledge can be avoided.

Scientists and lovers of how - thank you.

abiather

Qcmbr

I appreciated your simple way of putting things under HOW and WHY! It is very nice.

Yet if we apply the same logic to scientists and their inventions, your argument may waver!

You take a wonderfully working robot, and you can explain so wonderfully the “HOW” of it, as being purely made of material elements, and leave out the “WHY” of it—those intelligent scientists who painstakingly designed it and their VERY purpose. Yet the unanswered question of WHY will remain MORE PRONOUNCED than the answered question of HOW?

THE GLADIATOR

After cutting and pasting the work of clever scientific men, Perry’s cunning plan was to declare that such complexity must have come from his god. Proof that his god exists and created the universe. Due to the clever men on this thread, the plan has failed.

I have contributed nothing, preferring to follow the bible’s advice:

"Even a fool, if he stays silent, is thought wise; he who keeps his mouth shut can pass for smart."

Proverbs 17:28 (CJB)

prologos

Qcmbr excellent observations and I second the THANK YOU. to add:

there are still 'natural philosopers' around, that hope that through better and better research, not so much the WHY? but FOR WHAT PURPOSE? and BY WHOm? and yes

HOW? this all came into existence.

hoping that the finer and finer details will yield the light. hoping that not "the devil is in the details" , but the divine.

There is something special, very complicated about life, compared to the "natural philosopher" newton's domain:-- physics. But even there, the question of matter, via Higgs to mass, gravity via curving of space or gravitons are being probed.

It is not difficult to re-arrange the ( 4 symbol) term of the the question from

WHO? to HOW?

life does it's CODE with re-arranged 4 symbols too.

Since the universe, life,-- APPEARS to be self organizing, was that all present in, or before the 'big bang phase' or become active in the process of expansion into the void? the void that we LEARN now, is not as inert as previously thought?

konceptual99

S&R - "It doesn't mean anything you barn owl!"

This is my most favourite line from any thread on any forum in goodness only knows how many days, weeks and months.

Can I please have permission from you to use this at every available opportunity?

Just to add as well that although I can see the futility of trying to present an argument that simply will fall on deaf ears please don't under-estimate the power of these type of discussions. It is threads like this that have cemented in my brain the logical arguments for accepting evolutionary science. I spent years as a supposedly intelligent, free-thinking and slightly cyncial Witness putting my fingers in my ears and blurting out "I can't hear you" everytime I was faced with science that contradicted my view of how the world got here thanks to God.

The fact people like Cofty, S&R, cantleave and others have spent so much time explaining the arguments, detailing how basic physics, chemistry and biology works only to be answered with "you don't know, you weren't there" type of fallacies has wrecked my faith completely. I have nothing but thanks and appreciation for that.

galaxie

Should it not read "who made the god"?. All you theists , deists , close your eyes for 2 minutes picture your god, picture his realm of existence , picture his immediate surroundings, who is close to him/her . What exactly do you see in your minds eye..............????????

Did you picture ANYTHING not human like, or not an exaggerated human form , or human landscape?....EXACTLY everything you saw if you are honest!! was man creating god not vice versa. Do not delude yourselves

Apognophos

I just want to touch on a couple more points about complexity from nothing. I am not educated in biology, but I do know computers and I think this is an unfair comparison:

Perry wrote:

I think that it is fair to say that science has proven that there exists (and not just an illusion or perception of existence) incredibly complex coding languages as well as a biological storage capability that far excedes anything we humans have to date been able to come up with or even hardly imagine.[...]

Where did this vast information and complicated storage architecture come from?

It's misleading to say that there is complex computer code involved in DNA. The chemical processes which lead to cell division, and which allow for mutation, are extremely simple. These processes are the "code", the computer program. A real programming language has branching logic, registers for temporary variable storage, and supports at least the four basic math operations, among other things. I do not believe that we see any of these features in the DNA transcription "program".

What is complex is the data that the program is operating on. It's a bit like having a simple ten-line program that acts upon terabytes of data. However, this data was built up gradually from a tiny base. You want to know how so much data is stored in a small place? There's no particular answer to this, because it's just chemicals, molecules. All atoms are stored that compactly. The spiral coil of the DNA is a nice space-saving trick to allow cells to be smaller, but a coil is a simple regular shape, nothing amazing. Watch this chemical reaction form structures out of nothing.

Furthermore, the foundational cornerstone of CHANCE that underpines a naturalistic worldview just gets buried deeper and deeper under the new discoveries of the complexity of how we are existing.

The only real chance or "luck" that was required was having the right conditions for life, which no one disputes the Earth did, since we're still sitting on it right now. From there, the rest was just a matter of large amounts of time (try to imagine a billion years; I can't) allowing for enough permutations of the chemical compounds that formed naturally in places like sea vents to find a combination that worked.

If I could make you sit down, Perry, and learn a bit of computer programming and then show you how to draw a fractal on-screen, you would realize that it's quite easy to produce complexity from a simple formula and lots of data or iterations. I have a fractal program right here that I wrote in high school as a total novice, and the core routines are about 40 lines of C, and with enough computing time, this code produces an infinitely complex object that looks organic.

But nobody's going to force you to learn how math, biology, etc. work, you have to do the legwork yourself. Relying on a handful of historical figures like Fred Hoyle and Bill Gates to bolster your worldview is disingenuous, because there are many more equally smart people who think that those guys don't know what they're talking about in these particular areas.

Perry

Perry,

Very fine posting. Thank you for that.

Yet not surprising that many disagree with you!

" A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (philosopher - poet Paul Frederic Simon)

Truer words never spoken. I think the entire discussion can be summed up thusly:

Q: Who Made The Code?

A: What Code?

cofty

Perry gets excited about getting a compliment from Abiather who is here to recruit for his extreme cult.

Who Made The Code?

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