Re: religion and the brain
From: Phil Sherrod (phil.sherrod_at_REMOVETHISsandh.com)
Date: 10/20/04
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Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 14:45:22 GMT
On 19-Oct-2004, Paul Bramscher <brams006_nospam@tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> > Didn't you say earlier that you don't accept anything that can't be
> > demonstrated? As I recall, you won't even accept a mathematical proof of
> > QM
> > because it is not empirical. How does that jive with the hand-waving
> > you
> > presented above?
>
> This offers fertile ground for experimentation. Search for molecules
> and processes that exhibit this property and design experiments around
> them, as researchers are currently doing at the amino acid and other
> levels. Where's the magic between an amino acid and a chain of
> nucleotides? Aside from a scaling problem, I see no need to explain DNA
> by virtue of the supernatural.
I have no problem with experimentation at all -- go for it. But I will
point out that at least up to the present time, experimentation has utterly
failed to even come close to producing a self-replicating "machine" that
splits DNA, builds proteins, assembles them in the right order to make a
useful structure and passes on genetic information. That is an enormously
complex process; the more we learn about it, the more complex and amazing it
becomes. And without this functioning, natural selection and Darwinian
evolution is impossible.
My question on this issue was in response to your assertion that you
understood evolution. The point I'm trying to make is that at the genesis
of life stage neither you nor anyone else can offer any solution that comes
remotely close to actually going from minerals to a functioning and
self-replicating and self-building machine like a living cell.
I am not asking you to accept God as the creator: I am simply challenging
your confidence in being able to explain everything through purely physical
processes. Classical physics was believed at one point to offer a thorough
explanation of physical processes, but research and experiments kept finding
cases where it broke down. Hence the development of "modern physics" which
you are uncomfortable with. I think the theory of "classical evolution" has
about reached the same point as classical physics: now that we can see the
amazing complexity and interaction of multiple "machines" at work in a cell,
it requires increasingly convoluted (and less convincing) arguments to
explain the origin of life. Maybe a new approach of "modern evolution" will
develop that will explain this process, but the classical model of
incremental development just doesn't work to get you from minerals to
functioning cells.
-- Phil Sherrod (phil.sherrod 'at' sandh.com) http://www.dtreg.com (decision tree modeling) http://www.nlreg.com (nonlinear regression) http://www.NewsRover.com (Usenet newsreader) http://www.LogRover.com (Web statistics analysis)
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