Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem:
The #1 Mathematical Discovery of the 20th Century
In 1931, the young mathematician Kurt Gödel made a landmark discovery, as powerful as anything Albert Einstein developed.
Gödel’s discovery not only applied to mathematics but literally all branches of science, logic and human knowledge. It has truly earth-shattering implications.
Oddly, few people know anything about it.
Allow me to tell you the story.
Mathematicians love proofs. They were hot and bothered for centuries, because they were unable to PROVE some of the things they knew were true.
So for example if you studied high school Geometry, you’ve done the exercises where you prove all kinds of things about triangles based on a list of theorems.
That high school geometry book is built on Euclid’s five postulates. Everyone knows the postulates are true, but in 2500 years nobody’s figured out a way to prove them.
Yes, it does seem perfectly reasonable that a line can be extended infinitely in both directions, but no one has been able to PROVE that. We can only demonstrate that they are a reasonable, and in fact necessary, set of 5 assumptions.
Towering mathematical geniuses were frustrated for 2000+ years because they couldn’t prove all their theorems. There were many things that were “obviously” true but nobody could figure out a way to prove them.
In the early 1900’s, however, a tremendous sense of optimism began to grow in mathematical circles. The most brilliant mathematicians in the world (like Bertrand Russell, David Hilbert and Ludwig Wittgenstein) were convinced that they were rapidly closing in on a final synthesis.
A unifying “Theory of Everything” that would finally nail down all the loose ends. Mathematics would be complete, bulletproof, airtight, triumphant.
In 1931 this young Austrian mathematician, Kurt Gödel, published a paper that once and for all PROVED that a single Theory Of Everything is actually impossible.
Gödel’s discovery was called “The Incompleteness Theorem.”
If you’ll give me just a few minutes, I’ll explain what it says, how Gödel discovered it, and what it means – in plain, simple English that anyone can understand.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says:
“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.”
Stated in Formal Language:
Gödel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.”
The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness.
Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. (In other words, children can do math by counting their fingers, water flowing into a bucket does integration, and physical systems always give the right answer.)
Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete.
Syllogism:
1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete
2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system
3. Therefore the universe is incomplete
You can draw a circle around all of the concepts in your high school geometry book. But they’re all built on Euclid’s 5 postulates which are clearly true but cannot be proven. Those 5 postulates are outside the book, outside the circle.*
You can draw a circle around a bicycle but the existence of that bicycle relies on a factory that is outside that circle. The bicycle cannot explain itself.
Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove. Any system of logic or numbers that mathematicians ever came up with will always rest on at least a few unprovable assumptions.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language or philosophy.
And: If the universe is mathematical and logical, Incompleteness also applies to the universe.
Gödel created his proof by starting with “The Liar’s Paradox” — which is the statement
“I am lying.”
“I am lying” is self-contradictory, since if it’s true, I’m not a liar, and it’s false; and if it’s false, I am a liar, so it’s true.
So Gödel, in one of the most ingenious moves in the history of math, converted the Liar’s Paradox into a mathematical formula. He proved that any statement requires an external observer.
No statement alone can completely prove itself true.
His Incompleteness Theorem was a devastating blow to the “positivism” of the time. Gödel proved his theorem in black and white and nobody could argue with his logic.
Yet some of his fellow mathematicians went to their graves in denial, believing that somehow or another Gödel must surely be wrong.
He wasn’t wrong. It was really true. There are more things that are true than you can prove.
A “theory of everything” – whether in math, or physics, or philosophy – will never be found. Because it is impossible.
OK, so what does this really mean? Why is this super-important, and not just an interesting geek factoid?
Here’s what it means:
- Faith and Reason are not enemies. In fact, the exact opposite is true! One is absolutely necessary for the other to exist. All reasoning ultimately traces back to faith in something that you cannot prove.
- All closed systems depend on something outside the system.
- You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle.
- Reasoning inward from a larger circle to a smaller circle is “deductive reasoning.”
Example of a deductive reasoning:
1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
3. Therefore Socrates is mortal
- Reasoning outward from a smaller circle to a larger circle is “inductive reasoning.”
Examples of inductive reasoning:
1. All the men I know are mortal
2. Therefore all men are mortal
1. When I let go of objects, they fall
2. Therefore there is a law of gravity that governs falling objects
Notice than when you move from the smaller circle to the larger circle, you have to make assumptions that you cannot 100% prove.
For example you cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time. You cannot prove that the universe is rational. You can only observe that mathematical formulas like E=MC^2 do seem to perfectly describe what the universe does.
All predictions about the future are inductive. Outside the circle. In Gödel’s language they are “undecidable propositions.” It’s probable you’ll still have your job next week… but maybe you don’t.
Nearly all scientific laws are based on inductive reasoning. These laws rest on an assumption that the universe is logical and based on fixed discoverable laws.
You cannot PROVE this. (You can’t prove that the sun will come up tomorrow morning either.) You literally have to take it on faith. In fact most people don’t know that outside the science circle is a philosophy circle. Science is based on philosophical assumptions that you cannot scientifically prove. Actually, the scientific method cannot prove, it can only infer.
(Science originally came from the idea that God made an orderly universe which obeys fixed, discoverable laws.)
Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle possibly can – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too):
- There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove
- The universe as we know it is finite – finite matter, finite energy, finite space and 13.7 billion years time
- The universe is mathematical. Any physical system subjected to measurement performs arithmetic. (You don’t need to know math to do addition – you can use an abacus instead and it will give you the right answer every time.)
- The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself
- Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it.
- If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not matter, is not energy, is not space and is not time. It’s immaterial.
- Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system – i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible.
- Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect.
We can apply the same inductive reasoning to the Origin of Information:
- In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago (Or was it longer? Was information somehow present at the beginning?). It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.
- The information appears to have come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time
- All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.
- Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.
My book Evolution 2.0: Breaking the Deadlock Between Darwin and Design explores the Origin of Information question in depth. The Evolution 2.0 Prize offers a multi-million dollar award for Origin of Information.
When we add information to the equation, we conclude that not only is the thing outside the biggest circle infinite and immaterial, it is also conscious.
Isn’t it interesting how all these things sound suspiciously similar to how theologians have described God for thousands of years?
So it’s hardly surprising that 80-90% of the people in the world believe in some concept of God. Yes, it’s intuitive to most folks. But Gödel’s theorem indicates it’s also supremely logical. In fact it’s the only position one can take and stay in the realm of reason and logic.
The person who proudly proclaims, “You’re a man of faith, but I’m a man of science” doesn’t understand the roots of science or the nature of knowledge!
Interesting aside…
If you visit the world’s largest atheist website, Infidels, on the home page you will find the following statement:
“Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.”
If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all logical systems must rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the Infidels cannot be correct. If the universe is logical, it has an outside cause.
Atheists do have an “out” on this. Atheists still have the option to insist that there is nothing outside the universe. But if that’s true, then the universe itself is illogical. Therefore science itself is invalid.
So you can have atheism or you can have science – but you can’t have both.
This is why atheism violates the laws of reason and logic.
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem definitively proves that science can never fill its own gaps. We have no choice but to look outside of science for answers.
The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.
Euclid’s 5 postulates aren’t formally provable and God is not formally provable either. But… just as you cannot build a coherent system of geometry without Euclid’s 5 postulates, neither can you build a coherent description of the universe without a First Cause and a Source of order.
Thus faith and science are not enemies, but allies. It’s been true for hundreds of years, but in 1931 this skinny young Austrian mathematician named Kurt Gödel proved it.
No time in the history of mankind has faith in God been more reasonable, more logical, or more thoroughly supported by science and mathematics.
Perry Marshall
*Very important note to mathematicians: I am drawing the circle at the boundary between axioms and theorems, then asking whether the axioms make sense or not, as a scientist would. In pure mathematics, axioms are automatically taken as true and considered inside the system. If you define axioms as part of the system, then you have to accept tautologies (i.e. mathematicians say “A=A” – in other words “the axiom is true because it is true by definition”). If we exclude tautologies, then axioms lie outside the system. A new axiom falls outside the existing system of logic.
“Without mathematics we cannot penetrate deeply into philosophy.
Without philosophy we cannot penetrate deeply into mathematics.
Without both we cannot penetrate deeply into anything.”
-Leibniz
Further reading:
“Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel” by Rebecca Goldstein – fantastic biography and a great read
A collection of quotes and notes about Gödel’s proof from Miskatonic University Press
Formal description of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem on Wikipedia
Science vs. Faith on CoffeehouseTheology.com
Information Theory: “If you can read this, I can prove God exists”
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Tony Rush says:November 14, 2009 at 10:11 amPerry, it still looks to me as though several assumptions are being made. For instance, this topic is called “Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem”. It’s not Godel’s Incompleteness LAW. It’s a theorem. So, even though it describes what we might not know about something else….the fact that it’s a theorem says that we can’t 100% know for sure that Godel’s perspective is right. Take the first line: “Draw a circle around anything and you must go outside that circle to explain it.” That is certainly true with bicycles and gravity…..but just as you mentioned that the sun might NOT come up tomorrow (and that is taken on faith), it’s equally possible that Godel’s theorem doesn’t apply to everything. For instance, you stated that — if we draw a circle around the Universe (or all the possible Universes) — “there has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove” That’s not necessarily true. We might not even need to assume it. It’s quite possible that drawing a circle around everything all the known universes would include a perfect explanation and provide a Single Unifying Law. “The universe as we know it is finite – finite matter, finite energy, finite space and 13.8 billion years time The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself”. — Again, this is assumptive. How do you know that it cannot explain itself? This would only be a true statement if we actually had all the knowledge about the Universe (which we don’t). “Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless.” There is nothing outside the circle. By any standard definition of “universe” or “universes”, if it exists, you’ve drawn a circle around it. It’s bad math to say “Draw a circle around all the known universes” and then to refer to something outside the universe. If there were something outside the circle, you would have drawn the circle to include it! We can go on and on…but (with respect) this doesn’t seem to be a logical argument. It seems to be an argument based on certain presuppositions. And I’m not saying that’s good, bad, right or wrong….just that this argument has too many assumptions to conclude that there’s no possibility of a Unifying Theory.Reply
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Perry says:November 14, 2009 at 1:37 pmTony, If Gödel can be shown to be wrong, then you have something to stand on. 80 years have gone by and no one has demonstrated a flaw in Gödel’s logic. If Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem is true, then everything in my article directly and logically follows. Specifically, if we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and label it “Universe” then according to Incompleteness, there has to be something outside the universe that caused it. If Gödel’s argument is logical, then my argument is also logical. You are invited to demonstrate a flaw in Gödel’s logic if you can. And I will certainly be happy to post that argument here on my blog. Perry MarshallReply
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Steve says:December 23, 2009 at 10:28 pm“I am lying.” Before I can lie I have to exist, and not only exist but conceive of myself. To conceive of myself I must split “me” as the subject that knows whether I am lying or not, from the “me” as an “object” that is either lying or not lying. That split is an artifice of the mind – reality is not split. It just “is”. That reality is not outside the circle of “me” as the subject, or “me” as the object that may or may not be lying. The perception of intelligence is merely the illusion of “self” as separate from reality. It is a trick of the mind. All perception is the splitting of reality into a subject and an object. Maybe you want to define god as the indivisible sum of all that is real? A bit superfluous, but it has it’s uses.Reply
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Perry says:December 24, 2009 at 8:05 amSteve, A sum is divisible, so we can’t define God that way. We do have to define God as indivisible. God is one. I like your explanation of perception. If we define God as self-aware, then we automatically invoke a splitting like what you refer to. Which is where the Trinity comes from. Self, expression of self, and self-understanding (Father / Son = WORD / Holy Spirit).Reply
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Steve says:December 24, 2009 at 10:08 amIf you like my explanation of perception god cannot be self aware. I prefer god is just reality. This is my justification for my atheism. Full awareness is to be one with reality, one with god, and the self disappears. As a self we use science to explore objective reality and spiritual practice to explore the subjective reality. Both are lies, but by knowing the lies the truth is revealed. You cannot know it and survive, there is no split. You cannot know reality as there is no knower.
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Perry says:December 24, 2009 at 10:56 amIF there is no knower, then how do you KNOW that “you cannot know reality” and how do you KNOW that “there is no knower?”
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The Thinker says:June 3, 2011 at 11:43 pmI completely agree with Tony Rush that some ridiculous assumptions are being made on this page. I do not for a second doubt that the Incompleteness Theorem, if not necessarily true, is thus far unproven, and I cannot disprove it. The flaw that occurs on this page is not your explanation of the theorem, but the conclusions that are drawn are logically inconsistent. Using a complicated theorem as a premise for your logically flawed conclusions may be the simple result of over ambition. Second, in your antagonistic response to a logical challenge to your authority, you commit many logical fallacies. First, despite the fact that Godel had nothing to do with the construction of your illogical conclusions, you seem to label him as one of your supporters. And, even if he was a suporter, the fact that you are discussing a distinct theorem means that his association does absolutely nothing to bolster your argument. Also, you seem to have trouble understanding the concept of Infinity. The human brain has trouble understanding such a concept, and tends to limit Infinity to simply a very large finite number. You state, in your article, that the universe is finite. This is untrue, as it is proven that it is constantly expanding, and that it is already infinite in size. Uni- means one. There is absolutely nothing else. So, a circle cannot be drawn around it. You cannot create a circle that is larger than the largest. A circle is finite, but a universe is not. And even if the scientific understanding of the universe was as you declare it to be, as finite in nature, your conclusions would still be illogical. You say the universe is finite, and if the understanding of the universe is the encompassment of all things, material and immaterial, then there could be nothing outside of it. Also, in your list of material things that would be inside the biggest possible circle, you include time. Time is not material. Its nature is essentially beyond human understanding. Why could time not be the ultimate controller, the 4th dimension that causes the universe to have orderly structure? Godel was a brilliant mathematician, but his flaw was his theology. Even for a believer in God, he was unusually pious for a mathematician. In an attempt to balance his strict theology with his far reaching mathematics, Godel ended up stretching his theorems to a realm they could not reach, which degraded his arguments. You are amplifying Godel’s mistakes. There will never be a logically sound proof of Divine Existence, because that belief defies logic, especially when Divine Existence is limited by the strict religious sense of the concept. I personally do not believe in God in the religious sense, but have no problem with accepting the fact that people do believe in God. If they manage to get something out of it, then more power to them. But when theologians attempt to bring logic and mathematics into the picture, they are defying the physical extent of the human understanding. Coupling that with your personal logical fallibility makes this page a logical failure.
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Perry says:June 4, 2011 at 12:08 am1. All the mainstream scientific literature I have ever found says the universe is finite. When you said the universe is expanding you contradicted your own statement that it is infinite. Please provide empirical support for your claim that the universe is infinite. 2. I do not define the universe as the encompassment of all things material and immaterial. I define it as all observable matter, energy, space and time. 3. You ask, “Why could time not be the ultimate controller, the 4th dimension that causes the universe to have orderly structure?” It’s not my job to disprove your conjectures. Perhaps you could describe why and how time could be the ultimate controller. I await your explanation. 4. Please elaborate on Gödel’s mistakes. 5. You said, “There is absolutely nothing else.” Prove it. 6. It’s rather telling that almost every atheist who debates me here is anonymous or operates under a pseudonym. What are y’all afraid of?
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Richard says:August 11, 2011 at 10:04 amPerry said: “We do have to define God as indivisible. I like your explanation of perception. If we define God as self-aware, then we automatically invoke a splitting like what you refer to. Which is where the Trinity comes from. Self, expression of self, and self-understanding (Father / Son = WORD / Holy Spirit).” God is both indivisible and splittable? This would seem to be a contradiction. Dictionary definition of split: to divide into distinct parts.
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Perry says:August 11, 2011 at 2:47 pmGod is Love. Love is indivisible. This is why God is indivisible, because God is love. Self, expression of self, and self-understanding in a context of perfect love know no division. Jesus said, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”
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Greg says:May 7, 2010 at 1:14 pmLet me build you a universe that proves you don’t need anything “outside” in terms of assumptions. Imagine a fishbowl. Inside the fishbowl lives a little goldfish. Now, the goldfish can measure it’s lifespan, it can develop a philosophy on life, etc… Furthermore, it can measure the extent of it’s universe, the size of the fishbowl, it can measure the composition of everything inside it’s universe, the oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc… Now, for our purposes, erase the reality we perceive, outside of the fishbowl. The fish still exists within it’s universe, the outside world doesn’t need to exist for the inside world to exist (yes, you’ll argue the fishbowl and water, etc… had to come from somewhere, but that’s not the point of the argument, the point is that I can measure my universe without requiring anything on the outside of it). And, just like the fish we exist within our fishbowl universe, and there is nothing outside of it. Now, I can make ‘assumptions’ regarding where my universe came from, but that is my human nature to try and put things in perspective. The universe could care less about my perspective. This is the whole problem with your argument (and Godel’s), it is based upon perspective, human perspective through mathematics and logic. Worst thing we do as humans is when we validate our logic with mathematics to ‘prove’ our perspectives. We don’t know if the universe ‘began’ with a big bang, it’s just the best ‘theory’ we have based on observations. Furthermore, even if the current visible universe did begin with a big bang, that does not mean the universe has not existed in other forms before and even without time (since time is theorized to have been created with the big bang). So, in theory, the universe, in some state or other, could be infinite in age and have no beginning or ending. That being the case, if it has no beginning, than a creator become wholly unnecessary. Thank you.Reply
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Perry says:May 11, 2010 at 5:22 amIf reason and logic are not to be used to prove the superiority of one perspective over another, then what are they to be used for? According to what specific theory can the universe be of infinite age? Any such theory I’m aware of has to disregard the phenomenon of entropy, since an infinitely old series of universes would be cold and dead by now. I do agree that if you discard reason and logic then a creator does become unnecessary. In fact one of the subtler themes in this thread is, if you posit that the universe is irrational then atheism can be a valid conclusion. If you prefer that, it’s fine – let’s just be clear that you have chosen to embrace irrationality as the dominant lens for understanding the world. I choose to believe that the universe is rational, discoverable, measurable, and describable in mathematical terms. I believe that the discoveries and principles of science are real and not an illusion. This necessarily makes the universe incomplete and this is one of the many reasons I believe in God.Reply
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Greg says:May 11, 2010 at 11:46 amSlow down a bit, first, I never said reason and logic are NOT to be used. I only stated that the “worst thing we do as humans is when we validate our logic with mathematics to ‘prove’ our perspectives.” Key to this statement is that we are not using reason and logic to determine what the “evidence” shows us. Instead, we take a perspective we want to believe, than use reason and logic to try and prove that perspective. Second, there is no theory that currently even tries to explain what existed before the big bang. However, since “time itself” was created with the big bang, than by ‘reason and logic’ whatever form the universe existed in before than (singularity for example) would have existed outside of time, and the only way to even remotely explain that is to use the term ‘infinite’. So no, I am not disregarding reason and logic, and I hope my further clarifications will make my explanations easier to understand. By reason and logic, a creator is unnecessary. Through faith we embrace a creator. A lack of faith cannot be replaced by reason and logic, it’s like a bandaid over a mortal wound, it simply will not heal.
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Perry says:May 11, 2010 at 2:44 pmGreg, My position is precisely what you said: the only way to even remotely explain that is to use the term ‘infinite’. That which is outside of space and time is infinite. And indivisible. I believe that everything I stated in my article is entirely logical, and that which logic tells us has to be outside the universe bears a striking resemblance to God. Yes, faith is necessary. In some ways that’s what inductive reasoning is. I hope I have shown that all conclusions require faith, but that faith in God is a much shorter leap than the alternatives.
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David H says:July 21, 2011 at 7:57 amAtheists have a belief system. It is not just BASED on “no intelligence” is necessary for the creation of the universe and life. Atheists have to insist on something further: it is IMPERATIVE that “no intelligent cause” have created the universe and life, now, or ever, whether forward or backward in time. To be an Atheist you must INSIST that there is NOT an immensely powerful Mind or Being responsible for Creation — this Universe and its life. So, first of all, to become an Atheist you must adopt and enforce a psychological prejudice that systematically resists from logically following any theorem as to why an intelligent greater being might exist. So people who say they are Atheists are True Believers. They do not scientifically or philosophically allow any notions or explanations to the contrary. Some people who say they are Atheists are simply philosophically lazy. It keeps them from having to get up off their mental couch and actually investigate TRUTH wherever the quest may take them. But atheists, to offer a construction of a universe that does not include God or some supreme creative Being, must first CREATE their thought bubble. Even the “argument” of an atheist requires a thought to form until it becomes a mind creation that an atheist must then express in a pre-determined code that we will necessarily decode before we can examine the atheist’s construction. Greg, you propose a fish in a fish bowl. Never mind how the fish got there. Never mind how the water got there. Never mind how the bowl was filled with water. Never mind how the artificially crafted bowl got there. And then, in the final conceit, say, in essence, let’s pretend WE outside the bowl do not exist. Well, the “WE” outside of the bowl who supplied the water, the fish, and the bowl were absolutely NECESSARY. Our viewpoint and relative position would have been God’s position. But you say “And, just like the fish we exist within our fishbowl universe, and there is nothing outside of it.” But your “example” can only exist IF we allow you to PRETEND —- shhhh, don’t tell anybody our secret— that nothing, by necessity, exists outside of that bowl. And this is where science always must necessarily STOP for an Atheist. All atheists are the little fishes swimming blindly in this bowl. As soon as science and math provide some LOGICAL reasons to investigate outside of the bowl, the atheist fishes must retreat to their hiding places under plastic castles.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 21, 2011 at 9:52 pmI’m sorry, but you don’t understand Atheism or the purpose of science. I don’t pretend to know if there is or is not an intelligent designer. What I do know is, at this point, I have never seen evidence to support such an idea. Until that evidence arrives, I will continue to focus on learning things that are based in evidence and proof. I have no personal issue against a God or bias for not wanting there to be a God. I do however have a bias against drawing unfounded conclusions and drawing assumptions either for or against such a possibility. I take the default position of pondering all the options and waiting for evidence while focusing on what I can learn and what I can reason with the information available.
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Rick Kettner says:July 21, 2011 at 10:01 pmTo add to my last post… the vast majority of what you posted would be fair criticisms of people that are “certain there is no god”. Equally, it is fair of people that are “certain there is a God”. Both have a fundamental bias towards their pre-existing beliefs, and are suffering from the same confirmation bias rather than looking for objective evidence. Your criticisms regarding other people being “philosophically lazy” is fairly revealing. Stereotyping others, especially with a comment that could easily apply to people that agree with your ideas, is simply destructive. There are plenty of smart people on both sides of this debate… unfortunately, many are focused on proving ideas that simply cannot be proven at this time. Rather than start with a result and find ways to prove it… why not start from the default position of uncertainty, and focus on gathering objective information to see where it takes you?
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David H says:July 23, 2011 at 9:57 amRick Kettner, You reply– “Rather than start with a result and find ways to prove it… why not start from the default position of uncertainty, and focus on gathering objective information to see where it takes you?” Unfortunately, believers and nonbelievers will always be at an impasse despite all logic. As a non-believer you start and end at the same place, year after year, you don’t know where you have been, you don’t know where you are going, and you lead yourself back into the same circular path in the woods. The footprints you see are always your own. What God has said, to those that believe and take him at his word, “Start here, travel here, end here. I am the Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End.” You will waste your life pretending to be objective. Claiming yourself to be objective. Rick, you sound very reasonable. Many reasonable people see this as one of their chief virtues. My own experiences, direct miraculous experiences with the spirit of God who came down on me in seconds and spread through me such a gushing overflow of joy and UNDERSTANDING settle the question for me FOREVER. What happened in that minute, with no drug but a sincere questing prayer directed not to some spirit, but with all respect and humility to the God who has named himself Jehovah, then continued to overwhelm me hour after hour. It was beyond nature and beyond pedantic discussions and forums and comments. I received what are classically called “revelations”. The mind and spirit of God, not an Allah, not an elephant god, literally came inside me into my very core being and filled me in a split second with such enormous revelations and joy, JOY. He even gave me knowledge and opened my eyes to see so clearly how dense I was, how blind, how clueless my own intellect. So much so that these discussions here are somewhat vexing. The God who came to me and revealed himself to me was so far, far, inexorably far above mans’ reasoning that it makes this whole forum of “this and that and he said and he did not and yes he did” laughable in a way. Except that what Perry is trying to say over and over and over is that it is NOT ILLOGICAL to consider the existence of God. And this is important for you to know and believe. Even smart people such as Perry Marshall have no problem stating WHY they believe what they believe in the face of so many clamoring objections. To people such as Perry and yes, me, the objections we hear are so patently ludicrous when, for instance, you observe the blatantly, STUPENDOUSLY OBVIOUS pre-designed, pre-coded genetic instructions inside any, not just man, but ANY life form. To Perry and to me it is screamingly outrageously a NO-BRAINER as to how scientifically and mathematically the case states itself. The case STATES ITSELF in no uncertain terms that the processes of life and reproduction just involving DNA alone are scientifically irrefutable. Why so many otherwise “reasonable” scientists come to a screeching halt and run shrieking from the vast and unmistakable logical, mathematical, scientific EVIDENCE that our whole planet has been encoded internally with an unspeakably sophisticated and ELEGANT (“Godlike”) LANGUAGE. When you look at the encoding of DNA you are physically looking at a language that was created in the mind of God. Not in the “mind” of his creation, but in his own mind. You are LOOKING at the inside of God’s mind, not fancifully, but in a very direct peephole into just a tiny part of his Genius. Perry has given you over and over the reasons why you HAVE to believe and accept this. You HAVE TO not because Perry insists, but because science and math and common sense converge when you truly understand all of the pre-conditions for DNA and how it functions. But, what you “reasonable” people don’t understand is that MORE UNDERSTANDING scientifically will occur when you accept God as the beginning, not the end of your knowledge. If you are truly “objective” then you would have allowed the “hypothesis” that there is an Intelligent Design long enough, as you say “—to see where it takes you-” The truly objective person would have said, okay, let me start my investigation WITH the “theorem” that God is responsible for the things I see. For the next year I will take my examinations down that path with scientific rigor. Few scientists, apparently, are brave enough to buck the trend of their peers and follow such an enquiry to its honest end (and beginning).
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Rick Kettner says:July 24, 2011 at 2:10 pmI’m not saying it is illogical to consider the possibility of a “God”. However, there is absolutely no reason to consider it above other possibilities. We simply do not have the evidence to settle on either side of this equation yet. I’ve looked closely at the different possibilities and cannot see how anyone could conclude either way with honest certainty. Pretending to be able to validate such a view is a result of knowingly or unknowingly engaging in confirmation bias through selective inductive reasoning. “The truly objective person would have said, okay, let me start my investigation WITH the “theorem” that God is responsible for the things I see.” This statement betrays your overwhelming bias towards one specific option. There is no reason to start with “God” over another possible option other than to want to confirm an existing bias. I grew up religious and have no real issue with religion besides the fact it simply claims to know something it can’t. I’ve also considered the alternatives and see no reason to assume there is no God. Therefore, our only practical move is to further human understanding within an honest framework of knowledge. Simply flaming the fire of a propaganda war where both sides are pretending to know the unknowable is a destructive waste of time.
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DavidH says:July 25, 2011 at 9:49 amRick, Thank you for your last reply. Allow me to focus on two incredible statements you have made : 1) “I’m not saying it is illogical to consider the possibility of a “God”. However, there is absolutely no reason to consider it above other possibilities.” 2) “There is no reason to start with “God” over another possible option other than to want to confirm an existing bias.” Rick, pretty much from what I have read, seen, and heard over the past few decades, in a “scientific” “discussion” the DEFAULT Starting and Ending point is that there is NO God involved. That there is no God and no Intelligent Creator seems to be the default mantra when such matters are discussed. Hundreds of thousands of scientists and physicists and mathematicians and philosophers have been turned out of our leading higher institutions premising their rigorous scientific methods that, of course, as we “all know” a God element does not factor into what we think we see. This IS the BIAS, Rick. And you know this quite well. In fact, when scientists nowadays discuss “possibilities”, as you put it, ALL of their “possibilities” necessarily, right out of the gate, before the concept is pursued, specifically, if not outright states, more often accepted as implicit (unspoken) conditions, that God need not apply. Nowadays much of science and math are “mind models”. Thought experiments. Exactly that. Papers up the ying yang are regularly published and treated as revelations of the universe that are nothing more than some mathematician’s or scientist’s “creative conjecturing”. Most of them do not stand the test of scrutiny as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. And so science ranges far and wide, mathematics ranges far and wide, looking for explanations. But, studiously ignoring that right here on earth the clues are smacking us in the face if a true scientist will accept them (without this anti-God BIAS) that some one very like a God left his fingerprints and even his thoughts and his designs imprinted indelibly into this creation. And you supposedly have followed this whole forum and yet you make this preposterous claim — “There is no reason to start with “God” over another possible option other than to want to confirm an existing bias.” You have successfully framed your OWN BIAS, Rick. “NO REASON … other than to want to confirm an existing bias”. Stunning. So that is what scientific inquiry is to you, Rick. Just as I suspected. Then you can not truly believe in science, Rick. Since to you it is inextricably and automatically, to begin and end with, simply an exercise “..to confirm an existing bias.” Yes, and you are right. This is EXACTLY how science is being practiced today. That is Perry Marshall’s point.
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Rick Kettner says:July 25, 2011 at 11:25 am@DavidH I’m sorry, but you seem to have completely misquoted and misunderstood my point. You make the assumption that me stating “there is absolutely no reason to consider it above other possibilities” and “There is no reason to start with “God” over another possible option other than to want to confirm an existing bias” as asserting that I think other possibilities should be considered first. That is not what I said. I feel both should be considered, but neither should be asserted or assumed over the other. “Rick, pretty much from what I have read, seen, and heard over the past few decades, in a “scientific” “discussion” the DEFAULT Starting and Ending point is that there is NO God involved.” While I’m beginning to reach the conclusion that most people in this debate can’t imagine not fighting for one side over the other – my position is neutral. I do not have a bias against God or a bias for God. I have yet to come across an argument that makes the case for a God stronger than the case for no God – or vice versa. Furthermore, I see no practical advantage in forming a “belief” around either view, and even if I did – such whims do not advance understanding or knowledge.
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DavidH says:July 26, 2011 at 4:06 amRick, It is a facile game to “debate” with the standard insistence that you have been continually “misunderstood”. And by your doing so you also glide right past your own statements which you make so clearly and in English. First of all, to contend that your position is “neutral” is sophistry–superficially plausible, but a generally fallacious method of reasoning. A neutral position is neutral. A neutral position does not state, and I quote you, “Rather than start with a result and find ways to prove it… why not start from the default position of uncertainty, and focus on gathering objective information to see where it takes you?” That all sounds reasonable but you say this as if the vast majority of science done today is not already quite CERTAIN. The “uncertainty” you speak of is only used today to describe theoretical posturings that have already negated, from the outset, any quest to see the face of God, as it were. Calling a dog a cat never creates the vocal mechanics for the dog to Meow. Rick, I did not even make the claim that a person should START with accepting God as the reason for his or her scientific inquiry. I assume that this is what people are routinely DOING anyway. I am simply saying, why NOT consider the alternative? How about a few precious moments considering how science would progress if you started looking at the Intelligent Design as having some important answers to your riddles. You say, Rick, “Rather than start with a result and find ways to prove it..” But that ignores the present reality in science, does it not? Scientists have had hundreds of years now, Rick, to start with the results we all have readily at hand. And they have spent hundreds of years relentlessly, feverishly, trying to prove their suppositions. And, as you must know, Rick, not a single scientist has PROVEN his or her supposition that life and the universe simply started on its own with no intelligent causation. In fact, it has been accepted as “no longer under discussion” in major scientific circles that science already has the basic and immutable “facts”. That SIMPLY BECAUSE WE ARE ALL HERE IS IN ITSELF PROOF THAT A GOD IS NOT NECESSARY TO EXPLAIN OUR POSITION. My position is not neutral. Perry’s position is not neutral. It is you who have wandered in here and professed neutrality on “solving” the questions at hand. But this is all sophistry with nothing accomplished. Perry has stated that there are scientific reasons to investigate further. Every atheistic and agnostic and “neutral” argument to the contrary cannot counter the evidence that science still has many things to learn and to discover. Who are the scientists so bold, so brave, and so open, so scientific, truly scientific, that they will step into the fray and say, Send me. I will go and explore and not exclude the scientific possibility that an intelligent designer, a God, if you will, has written his clues into the Universe and that they are still open to be read. In my open inquiries of these mysteries I will not exclude their possible source, no matter the outrage and scorn my discoveries may provoke.
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Rick Kettner says:July 26, 2011 at 11:58 amI don’t suggest I’ve been continually misunderstood. I suggested you are intentionally misinterpreting my points as a method to distract from what I am actually saying. “A neutral position does not state, and I quote you, “Rather than start with a result and find ways to prove it… why not start from the default position of uncertainty, and focus on gathering objective information to see where it takes you?” Apparently you want to make this a semantics argument about your definition of “neutral” instead of making the obvious interpretation based on my next sentence “I do not have a bias against God or a bias for God”. By “neutral” I mean – I do not prefer one outcome over another, only that it is based on sound logic and doesn’t face obvious contradictions. I do not accept arguments that are flawed or can reach directly contradictory inferences using the same selective inductive reasoning. “I did not even make the claim that a person should START with accepting God as the reason for his or her scientific inquiry.” “The truly objective person would have said, okay, let me start my investigation WITH the “theorem” that God is responsible for the things I see.” It seems you aren’t keeping up with the statements you are making. You suggested it is “objective” to start with “God”. I don’t know what your unique definition of the word “biased” is, but that appears to be biased to me. The fact that you do not recognize and admit such a bias is unfortunate. “Scientists have had hundreds of years now, Rick, to start with the results we all have readily at hand. And they have spent hundreds of years relentlessly, feverishly, trying to prove their suppositions. And, as you must know, Rick, not a single scientist has PROVEN his or her supposition that life and the universe simply started on its own with no intelligent causation.” Once again, I suppose I must re-clarify my position that I don’t assert this has been proven – your arguments are starting to sound like a broken record. I have repeatedly stated that I don’t believe we have proof in a “no God” theory, just as we do not have proof in a “God” theory. There are very strong arguments to suggest a God is not needed in the equation, just as there are arguments that suggest a God is needed. For a reason that is beyond me, you and Perry seem more than willing to bypass the prime mover argument, and then somehow bring God back into the picture as if the rules that would prevent our direct evolution don’t apply to him. If he could exist forever or evolve in a natural way, why couldn’t the direct building blocks (laws, codes, forces) that guided our evolution have done the same? Whatever logical “trap door” you use to bring Gods existence back into the your argument of the origin of life – must also be considered for our own direct evolution. If you argue that God existed forever – you should also consider the idea that the fundamental rules of nature that lead to our direct evolution could have also existed forever. Perry and I have argued this back and forth in great detail… and I am awaiting his latest reply as we continue to discuss it. Your statement that “Scientists have had hundreds of years now…” seems to ignore the vast amount of progress that was made and is still being made. We are understanding significantly more year over year, and for some reason you suggest the scientific community has been wasting their time. Would you prefer that we didn’t decode the human genome, that we didn’t gain a further understanding about evolution, that we didn’t advance medical technology, or that we couldn’t speed up learning and knowledge through technological advancements like the computers we are using to communicate these ideas/arguments from different parts of the world? If you choose to simply assert that God exists through flawed selective inductive reasoning that bypasses fundamental arguments like the primum movens, go for it. However, don’t pretend it is based on sound logic or that we haven’t made significant advancements in understanding our origins since the days where man believed “God created us in 7 days, because it says so in the bible”. “But this is all sophistry with nothing accomplished. Perry has stated that there are scientific reasons to investigate further. Every atheistic and agnostic and “neutral” argument to the contrary cannot counter the evidence that science still has many things to learn and to discover.” This seems to insinuate I don’t want further investigation. I’ve made it clear that I am interested in keeping up with the latest information – that is the basis of my argument, that we still have much to learn. There is a dramatic difference between finding significant flaws in current theories and asserting we should stop learning all together. What statement did I make to even begin to suggest I was against further investigation? Please stop taking a single word (in this case “neutral”), filtering it through your own definition, ignoring context, and then basing your entire reply around your selective interpretation that one word. It is a waste of time if you are going to intentionally ignore context. Assuming your next reply continues to distract from the actual topic being discussed, I really don’t see a need to continue this further with you. There are far better ways to make actual progress.
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DavidH says:July 27, 2011 at 3:50 amRick, Have you caught on that this forum is NOT NEUTRAL. There can NOT be two universes in which you and I and Perry live in simultaneously. One universe without causation (intelligently caused) and one with God, yes, the Christian Jehovah, who has already stated His case all He cares to at this time. I have said several times that I, myself, am far from neutral. NO, there is no neutrality in what I claim is the Truth. Because of some definitely and persuasively powerful experiences that EXPANDED MY CONSCIOUSNESS I now see and perceive the universe in alignment with my faith, belief, and conviction, absolute conviction that God has proved Himself to me. Now when I look at such things as the structure and design of DNA and read of Communication Theory I say, yes, OF COURSE. It is all so PLAIN and obvious. So I look at your “neutrality” as, well, silliness. IF GOD exists then that is a HUGE thing to know. What is more important in any discussion of anything whatsoever than to know if God is behind everything we experience? But you will argue that it is just as important to discover that God is NOT behind everything we experience. Now ask yourself what are the consequences? Suppose you are studying at Stanford and your crusty curmudgeon of a physics professor gives you homework for the weekend and says “If you can prove ‘X’ I will reward you with a Visa Platinum Card with a ten-billion dollar line of credit repaid in full every year, but if you decide to solve for ‘Y’ you get nothing but the satisfaction of knowing that I will give you an A for your time”. Do you spend time in forums expressing your objectivity and neutrality over the issue? Or do you drop everything and spend the same time solving for X for a fabulous credit line that will last forever? So, the question is, Rick, is this not the most important question you have to settle for yourself before you take your last breath? Is this not THE Question that we must all with haste, with deliberate urgency, settle and resolve for ourselves? I will tell you why so many people are more concerned with professing an empty state of “neutrality” on this supremely important issue. Into our consciousness, yours as well, Rick, is a deep dread and fear of the consequences. When we facilely skim over the evident arguments FOR a God in favor of saying “I am neutral” on this issue, we are responding to a train of logic that we have already walked and stored away for such forums and discussions as this. What every scientist, mathematician, physicist, etc, knows intuitively is that if in his or her scientific pokings around he or she should accidentally stumble across another significant discovery that unmistakably by direct sight or statistical probability “strongly hints” that a superhuman power and intelligence set the universe and life in motion…. well, as they say, there would be hell to pay. There is not a scientist, mathematician, physicist, or astronomer who relishes the idea of standing before the world’s media to announce the publishing of a scientific paper that conclusively proves or even strongly makes a case for a supreme causative intelligence at the foundation of the universe. It is a fearsome nightmare to consider for so many scientists that they inwardly shudder at merely contemplating such a situation. The train of logic is this, the boogeyman behind all of these forum discussions that assert “neutrality” in the search of truth– uh oh, now all of those nagging Christians are going to rise up self-righteously and claim that it is THEIR GOD who made the world. These hypocritical Christians are going to have the last laugh, deride us mercilessly, and say, “See, we TOLD you so!” I would rather remain “neutral” and shut my eyes and ears to any such ugly, humiliating fate. So let Perry prattle on about God this and proof that and Communication Theory. I will debate him but I would never wish the humiliation of agreeing with his position. This negative consequences thing, if you will, is the most powerful motivator operating in atheistic and agnostic “debates”. It is a fierce thing to fear, that God might be proven. And such fear is more than capable of denying the existence of God towering over all. I myself understand the fear and the dread of God raising His head above the waters and saying, “Boo, here I am!” I have to confess that I would feel the same way if an Allah showed up on the scene and thundered out, “Did I not command you to KILL all the INFIDELS! Waste no more time!” As a believer in the God Jehovah and his son, Yeshua, Jesus Christ, I take comfort in knowing that I have already had conversations with them, have already discerned their hearts in their words and the promises Jesus made regarding the world now and the world to come. But, scientifically, mathematically I can not prove that I even believe, other than I say so. I cannot mathematically or scientifically prove that I have read the promises of Jesus and that I believe them as the Truth. I cannot mathematically or scientifically prove that I have, literally, literally, the Spirit of God within me. All of the IMPORTANT things in life mysteriously vanish before Math and Scientific principles. No wonder that I accept that Math is INCOMPLETE. Math is simply a tool to help humans construct what they must construct. The amazing thing to me is that as incomplete as Math may be, it already abundantly, generously TESTIFIES to an evident superhuman timeless all powerful intelligence. But, I doubt God needed what we construe as “math” to create this universe. Love that motivates my days and life has not one single formula that proves it even exists as a theory, let alone fact. They will elevate the level of collisions at the Hadron Collider underneath Switzerland and France looking for the “God particle” and not discover love or faith or self-sacrifice or mercy. These forums are but a diverting playground to keep yourselves busy proclaiming a “neutral, objective” viewpoint on the most important question you must answer soon. IF a God is discovered then, yes, the odds are very very high that it is the same God who proclaimed, we believe, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Which for you, should be the most exciting discovery of your life.
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Perry says:July 27, 2011 at 9:18 amDavid, Your tone is consistently abrasive and it’s not winning you any friends. I ask that you please be more respectful of everyone here. I do believe that one can, at least in theory, approach this question from a neutral stance. At least on paper, we can try our very best to set our raging emotions aside and say, “I’m not sure one way or the other. But I want to find out where the evidence leads.” If you believe the Bible then surely you have regard for Paul where he says in Romans, that God has made His divine nature and eternal power plain to everyone so that all are without excuse. For me, then, I believe that we can sit down and pencil it out, and starting from a neutral position clearly infer that God exists. For a couple of years I really wasn’t sure about this. I came rather close to becoming an atheist myself. My big moment of clarity came when I said, “OK If God does not exist, if atheism is true, then what else has to be true to make it all work?” I realized that there would have to be design principles in biology that they never taught me in engineering school. Darwinists say that Natural Selection is the only design principle that you need. I thought they very well might be right. So I started hunting for a set of basic principles that would prove that to be true. That you really would eventually get eyes and ears and changes and DNA necessary to make that happen, by random copying errors and natural selection. I found that there is no principle anywhere in engineering or science which shows that to be true. What I actually found was information entropy – that random accidents can only destroy information, and there’s nothing that natural selection can do about that. I found that cells use the same engineering principles human engineers use. That cells re-arrange their own DNA the same way advertisers re-arrange Google ads, in the war of natural selection. I believe that if Rick is open to following the evidence where it leads, he’ll find there is ample evidence for design in the universe and the only reasonable inference is a transcendent source. I’m in no rush and I’m not worried about it. Please give Rick space to explore and investigate.
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Rick Kettner says:July 27, 2011 at 9:46 am“So, the question is, Rick, is this not the most important question you have to settle for yourself before you take your last breath?” No, I think the question of life purpose, striving for personal growth and understanding, and resolving to be an honest and moral person (for the immediate and inherent benefits that result) is far more important. I have no fear that such a God would, if he exists, would punish me for my prudent, thoughtful, and logical approach to life. A thoughtful video on the subject is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iClejS8vWjo “Is this not THE Question that we must all with haste, with deliberate urgency, settle and resolve for ourselves?” No, nothing motivates me to jump to a conclusion without all the facts due to fear of hell or promise of heaven… for it is the very facts that will determine if either place even exist. If God does exist, he did not give us human intelligence for the purpose of discarding it in exchange for faith. My neutral position is not based in fear or in reaching a conclusion different than that of God… it’s merely out of uncertainty and seeking more information before reaching a definitive conclusion. “I will tell you why so many people are more concerned with professing an empty state of “neutrality” on this supremely important issue. Into our consciousness, yours as well, Rick, is a deep dread and fear of the consequences. When we facilely skim over the evident arguments FOR a God in favor of saying “I am neutral” on this issue, we are responding to a train of logic that we have already walked and stored away for such forums and discussions as this.” I’m sorry you feel this is a giant conspiracy theory, where everyone seems to secretly “know” there is a God but is running from him. I understand that is the message repeated throughout some bible stories, but it’s unfortunately that these ideas live on. You can believe what you want about me, my motives, and my reasons for remaining neutral – however, only I know how completely wrong your stated interpretations really are. I can only assume much of the scientific community feels the same way, but that is for them to know. I wish I could be more convincing, because clearly you are not accepting my words of intention at face value. “IF a God is discovered then, yes, the odds are very very high that it is the same God who proclaimed, we believe, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Which for you, should be the most exciting discovery of your life.” I see absolutely no reason to reach this conclusion. First off, I have never seen such evidence to even remotely make this connection… even if we assume there is a God, there is no evidence he would be the Christian god, or that he would even be capable of interacting with us in any meaningful way. Second, and perhaps more importantly, I have little reason to want (specifically) the biblical version of God to exist or to be “excited” about such a discovery. I find the biblical teachings of morality to be appalling, the methods by which he commands “love” to be disgusting, and his message of altruism to be proven destructive to human progress and prosperity. Is it possible for a God to transcend the biblical version and turn out to be a loving creator… yes, of course, but the bible gives us little reason to conclude that. If he turns out to be truly loving, I won’t need to chase after him or fear his punishment or to use flawed arguments in order to “prove” his existence and then worship him. Such ideas are silly and degrade the notion of a truly loving God that would likely be interested in a relationship with us regardless of our personal experiences, beliefs, and which religion we happened to be born into.
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Joe says:February 27, 2012 at 5:09 amThis is for everyone on this page: Suppose you create a comic book. The characters in your comic book are subject to and are able to measure only those things which you, as creator, subject them to and allow them to measure. If you do not force them to be subject to you and do not allow them to measure you, then they should have no understanding of you. Without understanding of you, it would be silly to have them discuss you, whether the discussion is the reality of your existence or the nature of your existence. As humans, without any certain knowledge of what is outside our greatest understanding, we would be silly to discuss that which is outside our greatest understanding. Perhaps we should try to focus not on absolutely proving either side of any religious or mathematical argument, but on simply furthering the story, so to speak, making it as pleasant a story as possible. It is not likely that there will be (in time enough for anyone now living to enjoy it) one unifying and indisputable idea of what this is all about. So live and let live. People will differ and that, I think, is what makes us people.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 28, 2012 at 10:47 amI must have composed this for you! “making it as pleasant a story as possible.” http://www.esnips.com/displayimage.php?pid=3018648 **** Live and let live makes for very hungry lions!
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Bob says:May 4, 2011 at 4:01 pm“If Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem is true, then everything in my article directly and logically follows. Specifically, if we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and label it “Universe” then according to Incompleteness, there has to be something outside the universe that caused it.” Actually, Perry, by your own demonstration, Goedel’s theorem proves that we cannot prove the existence of God. For the record, I am a theist, I believe in God, but it’s faith not fact. Now allow me to demonstrate how you’ve shown that God is unprovable. Goedel’s theorem proves that you cannot prove anything outside of a “circle” from within the “circle”, including the veracity of the circle itself. The universe is finite, as is the largest possible “circle” we can draw. Which you yourself assert God exists outside of. Therefore, using every available (and provable!) law, axiom, and rule in our universe, we cannot ever prove the existence of God. Sorry.Reply
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Ian says:May 29, 2011 at 12:39 amAn addendum to this (and to Godel’s theorem): to draw a circle around something implies that we know that something beyond it exists (i.e. bike and factory). How can we know to justify the existence of something if we do not know of anything outside its circle? I would venture to say that you cannot draw out the greatest circle you inhabit due to the fact that by being within that extent of existence, you don’t know how far it extends (defined in this case as an understanding of where one thing ends and another begins). If we had direct knowledge of a creator (like a bike having direct knowledge of the factory that made it), then we could draw a circle around ourselves, and the bike could draw a circle around itself and explain its own existence. However, this is not the case, and like the inanimate bike, we are locked within our circle, unaware of how far it stretches. This is essentially where Godel’s theorem breaks down. We cannot draw a circle around the known universe, namely because we are included in it and all that we know (and can draw on to explain what we see) IS the known universe. QED This is not a refutation of atheism or theism, it’s just a clarification of how we should interpret the Incompleteness Theorem.Reply
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Perry says:May 30, 2011 at 7:41 amYou ask: “How can we know to justify the existence of something if we do not know of anything outside its circle?” Gödel’s theorem says that if what is inside the circle is logical, there is necessarily something outside the circle. Gödel’s theorem justifies the ‘something’ that you refer to.
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Dave Simson says:August 3, 2012 at 8:45 amPerry, this therom applies only to one dimension because infinity can be physical. So you would draw circles in to infinity as long as there is matter and at the moment you come to a point where there is no matter to draw a circle around, the theorem ceases to exist. Then to say that something that out of the circle is the reason why the matter is in the circle is logically incorrect because you cant determine its location in time, space or dimension therefor its a assumption Also the theorem limit’s god because its impossible for him to draw a circle around himself according to Godel. It is possible for something to exist out of our reality but it does not necessarily mean that it is a god. This theorem does not prove the existence of god but rather one possibility of an assumption of that witch we do not knowt knowReply
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ed says:October 6, 2012 at 3:38 pm’80 years have gone by and no one has demonstrated a flaw in Gödel’s logic.’ except Gödel. the statement nothing is provable by its own admission cannot be proved.Reply
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John says:January 3, 2013 at 3:51 amYou are applying inductive reasoning and then claiming that the existence of God follows from logic and reasoning alone. This is false. As you mentioned yourself, there is not LOGICAL reason to say that the sun will rise tomorrow, rather it follows from the axiom that the laws of nature are rigid. In your case, you make the statement: “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” This statement does not imply that ‘codes’ as you call them must NECESSARILY be designed by conscious beings. In addition I don’t even believe the statement you made is true – you didn’t make any attempt to supply definitions for such abstract terms as ‘codes’, ‘information’ and ‘consciousness’. ‘Information’ for example is still an ambiguous term in modern mathematics that can mean several things. Also I want to make it clear that the parallel’s you are drawing between Goedel’s first (there are two, you know) incompleteness theorem and reality are not legitimate. For one thing, the theorem is talking about a THEORY with basic arithmetic not being able to prove its own consistency, however reality is a MODEL of a theory with basic arithmetic. That is to say, any well formulated statement about reality is either true or false. Also your analogy about drawing circles around things looks more like Goedel’s second incompleteness theorem, which isn’t proved using the liar paradox but a more interesting and subtle one. In any case, it again is referring to a theory not a model. Please leave mathematics to mathematicians, and logic to logicians. This beautiful result does not deserve to be twisted and simplified to fit your own belief system.Reply
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Perry says:January 3, 2013 at 8:50 amMy logic is inductive so you’re right – codes are not necessarily designed by conscious beings. What I’m saying is that we have no known examples of an exception. I most certainly did define codes in a rigorous fashion. See http://www.naturalcode.org. If you can supply an example of a naturally occurring code according to the spec, I’ll write you a check for $10,000. Reality is not a model of a theory. Theories are models of reality. Your statement: “Please leave mathematics to mathematicians, and logic to logicians” — This makes no sense. Are you saying that mathematics is illogical?Reply
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Alexander Savadelis says:August 17, 2012 at 4:16 pmI am not a man of faith, but I try to understand science. If we look at history it is simple to observe the fact that humans try to understand things beyond their comprehension at the time. for instance, people were hell bent on the fact that the earth was flat. As far as europeans were concerned, the facts lead to that deduction. Obviously they were wrong. The same thing is applied here. We are on earth and made it to the moon with humans and mars with robots. The universe is hopelessly to large to make any “final” conclusion to explain it. I guarantee both science and religion is horribly incorrect with any conclusions they try to come up with. We cant even make it to jupiter let alone other galaxies so to say God is the answer based on information 2000 years ago is childish. Cant we just understand were both wrong and try to go forward with innovative ideas?Reply
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Perry says:August 17, 2012 at 5:03 pmSomeone please correct me if I’m wrong, but in western civilization I’m not aware anyone insisted the earth was flat. The story of the queen thinking Columbus would sail off the edge of the earth was invented in the 1800’s by people who hated Catholics and wanted to make them look dumb. People in the east thought the earth was flat until fairly recent times but people in the Judeo-Christian world have known the earth was round for at least 2500 years. My blog post does bring an innovative approach to the question: It tells you what logic says must be true about the source of the cosmos. If you have innovative ideas of your own you are welcome to bring them forward.Reply
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Richard says:August 18, 2012 at 12:14 pmAccording to http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm the bible says the earth is immovable and flat, and a google search on “bible flat earth” reveals other sites with other bible references. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth mostly supports Perry’s view about western civilization. However, it does mention some flat-earthers, eg: In Brockport, N.Y, in 1887, M.C. Flanders argued the case of a flat Earth for three nights against two scientific gentlemen defending sphericity. Five townsmen chosen as judges voted unanimously for a flat Earth at the end. The case was reported in the Brockport Democrat. ‘Professor’ Joseph W. Holden of Maine, a former justice of the peace, gave numerous lectures in New England and lectured on flat Earth theory at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. His fame stretched to North Carolina where the Statesville Semi-weekly Landmark recorded at his death in 1900: ‘We hold to the doctrine that the earth is flat ourselves and we regret exceedingly to learn that one of our members is dead’. After Rowbotham’s death, Lady Elizabeth Blount created the Universal Zetetic Society in 1893 in England and created a journal called Earth not a Globe Review, which sold for twopence, as well as one called Earth which only lasted from 1901 to 1904. She held that the Bible was the unquestionable authority on the natural world and argued that one could not be a Christian and believe the Earth to be a globe. Well-known members included E. W. Bullinger of the Trinitarian Bible Society, Edward Haughton, senior moderator in natural science in Trinity College, Dublin and an archbishop. She repeated Rowbotham’s experiments, generating some interesting counter-experiments, but interest declined after the First World War.[138] The movement gave rise to several books which argued for a flat, stationary earth, including Terra Firma by David Wardlaw Scott. In 1898, during his solo circumnavigation of the world, Joshua Slocum encountered a group of flat-Earthers in Durban. Three Boers, one of them a clergyman, presented Slocum with a pamphlet in which they set out to prove that the world was flat. Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal Republic, advanced the same view: “You don’t mean round the world, it is impossible!Reply
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Bob the Chef says:January 20, 2013 at 6:38 amNein, Monsieur. While I don’t know that Earth’s roundness was known by ancient, pre-Christian Jews (or whether they even cared about such things, as most people did not), it was well known to the Greeks as well as Christian cultures (the myth that the Middle Ages were dominated by the views that the earth was flat is 20th century nonsense; it’s well documented, and it sufficed to realize that the heliocentric model held in the early part of that period dealt with a spherical earth, not a sheet being orbited by pancakes). Citing the bible does nothing to support your case, since it is a collection of theological works, not a scientific one. We still use figurative language today (the sun rises; Kansas is as flat as a pancake). Similar accusations of heliocentrism have been lodged by pundits against the Catholic Church, when the Church could not have cared less which orbited which. It was of no theological consequence, and those in the Church who harbored, in addition to their pastoral, academic, or administrative duties, interests in such scientific matters (Copernicus among them) rightly told an annoying Galileo to piss off because he failed to present a conclusive demonstration or proof that would prefer geocentrism over heliocentrism (may I remind you that at that time, there was no reason to prefer one over the other: both “saved appearances” just as adequately, given the knowledge of the day). It would be nice if people stopped repeating stupid myths invented to discredit institutions or people they hate. It’s petty and deceitful. You may not like the RCC, or more likely what you believe it to be, but what good is slander?
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Tony Rush says:November 14, 2009 at 1:58 pmPerry, I’m not making this an issue of “right” or “wrong”. It’s simply a matter of workability. Draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and label it “Universe” and you cannot definitively say that it is dependent on something else outside it. You can speculate that it might be….but there is where the line is drawn between theorem and law. Simply put, we don’t have enough information to say emphatically that Godel’s theorem is true. That’s why it’s a theorem. We can point to multiple ways that it IS true. But, it still makes its own assumptions in matters that cannot be observably demonstrated. Thanks for the dialogue! TonyReply
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Perry says:November 14, 2009 at 3:57 pmA theorem is not the same as a theory. Gödel wrote a formal proof of his theorem. You can read his proof here: On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems This is why we have enough information to say emphatically that Gödel’s theorem is true. To say otherwise is to reject the very process of mathematics, proof and logic.Reply
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Zach says:March 26, 2010 at 2:16 amIt seems to me that you’re applying logic ti everything but your own proofs. Unless I misunderstand, Godel’s Theorem as you apply it boils down to your explanation of inductive reasoning, in that, you have to make assumptions in order to prove something. My biggest issue with this is that, you cannot then prove your assumptions are any truer, because you have a never ending regression of assumptions. You have then, somehow, gone from Godel’s theorem which boils down to, nothing can be proven definitively, since all proofs are based on assumptions, to “proving” an existence of god. I miss that leap of logic. Some of your assumptions seems incredibly flawed, for example your assumption “In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.” How is this the introduction of information? The genetic codes are written using chemicals and enzymes. Those chemicals are just bits of information as well, made up of individual molecules and elements. Are not those molecules predating the genetic code? Take, for example, the classic argument for intelligent design. You come across a watch on a beach. You then make the assumption that someone must have created it, for in your experience you’ve never witnessed something so complex coalesce without intelligence creating it. But, and here is my central problem with your writing, how can you prove that assumption is true? And since you cannot do that without making another assumption, how can you prove the watch wasn’t coalesced, randomly, by nature and chaos? How can you prove anything at all, from a theorem which states nothing can be proven without that outside observer, without some set of assumptions that may or not be true themselves.Reply
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 5:41 amZach, You did not read my original article closely enough. My actual words: “The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a consistent model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” If you read my entire article very carefully you will see that I have made a 100% logical progression from Gödel’s theorem to an understanding that ultimately the universe and all logic inevitably regress back to ONE unprovable but necessary axiom. If I have made a leap of logic then I invite anyone to show me where it is. The closest thing to a leap in logic is the INFERENCE that the laws of mathematics, and therefore also Gödel’s theorem, apply to the universe. I cannot prove this. But if you do not assume this, all of science itself comes apart at the seams. Every science experiment in modern times assumes the universe is mathematical. And if it is then Gödel’s theorem applies to the universe just as it applies to pure mathematics. In other words I do not have the full authority of mathematical proof in saying this but I do have the full authority of science. If algebra, calculus, vectors, complex numbers and differential equations apply to the universe then so does incompleteness. As for information theory and chemicals, once again you have not taken the time to read the referenced links. You will need to go to http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq and apprise yourself of information theory as it relates to biology. I am using the definition of Claude Shannon information which is based on a complete communication system. Chemicals alone do not contain any information at all according to the Shannon definition. You have to have encoder, code and decoder to have Shannon information. All systems of encoder / code / decoder are created by conscious minds. No known exceptions. Have you ever seen a watch coalesce randomly by nature and chaos? Without making the same sort of unfounded presumption which you accuse me of, have you ever personally seen ANY machine of any kind coalesce randomly by nature and chaos? Any motor? Any pump? Any encoding / decoding system? Have you ever witnessed any such thing in your own personal experience? Ever? David Hume allegedly overturned Paley’s watch argument by pointing out that the analogy between a living organism and a watch was flawed. Information theory and Shannon’s model of communication put Paley’s watch argument back on solid ground and overturn Hume’s argument. The following statement is the reason why: “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005) If you can find one example of a naturally occurring code I’ll write you a check for $10,000. The specification for doing so is here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/solve/Reply
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Bob says:May 4, 2011 at 4:10 pm““The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a consistent model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.”” You didn’t read Goedel’s theory carefully enough. It is logically and mathematically impossible to construct a consistent model of the universe. Goedel’s theorem proves that any such model will either be incomplete or inconsistent. That is the very essence of the theorem. In fact, if you somehow manage to create a model of the universe that is consistent and complete, Goedel’s theorem shows us beyond all doubt that it is certainly and provably wrong.
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Perry says:May 4, 2011 at 8:28 pmBob, You didn’t read my statements carefully enough. I have not proven that God exists. I have inferred that God exists. How? By showing that the only way the universe can be consistent is to be incomplete. You get to decide between inconsistency and incompleteness. Which do you have more faith in? God, or irrationality?
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Jason says:March 2, 2011 at 5:28 amZach is right. Perry, perry, perry….. I appreciate the enthusiasm about Godel, he was an intelligent man and I do believe his theory to be correct. His logic flows very nicely from premise to conclusion. You, on the other hand, are a different story. From your very first premise, you contradicted yourself and then you followed with a set of valid but unsound arguments. You showed why inductive reason could not bring about a definitive answer and then you used it to definitely prove your point. That aside, you are logical, but the first premise is incorrect. You called the genetic code immaterial and symbolic. As mentioned by Zach, the code stems from enzymes, dna, and other molecules passing along information. Its not entered into the system from some higher being. Now that I look at your second point under your proof of a higher being,I see another flaw. Even if you assume your first step valid and sound, you can’t assume just because you don’t know something about the universe that it must stem from a higher power. We can still learn more about our universe and provide explanations to every immaterial source of information. Once we definitely know all about our universe and we are still left with something, which logically must stem from something outside the system, then we must look to something symbolic and immaterial. But Godel would need to be wrong in order for us to prove the entirety of our system from within the system and know all about our universe. So for your point, based on Godel’s point, to be on point, then Godel’s point would have to be off point, undermining your entire point. Get my point?Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 5:31 pmI used inductive reasoning to infer not prove my point. Because what I can prove is that the opposite conclusion demands an irrational universe.
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Rod MacKenzie says:November 14, 2009 at 4:46 pmI agree with your logic, Perry (and Godel’s), thanks for sharing. Any assumptions that are made when discussing where the universe came from seem to me to be related to the law of causality…anything that begins to exist has a cause. I think that’s a safe assumption. Philosopher William Lane Craig puts it like this: Premise 1): Anything that begins to exist has a cause. Premise 2): The universe began to exist. Conclusion: The Universe had a cause. 1) The ability of things popping into existence from nothing without a cause is not worth arguing. 2) Both science and philosophy support the idea that the universe had a beginning. Therefore…it must have had a cause. It doesn’t specifically point to the Christian God that I believe in, I have other reasons for that belief. However, based on Godel and a finite universe I don’t think one can argue that the idea of a god of some sort is illogical. What caused God? It’s not a coherent question. By definition God is eternal…uncaused…was always there, unlike the finite universe. So “What caused God?” becomes “What caused the un-caused being?” Doesn’t make sense. Always interested in this kind of discussion, though don’t usually have so much to say…thanks for posting! Rod MacKenzieReply
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Perry says:November 14, 2009 at 5:01 pmRod, you’re right. And if Gödel’s theorem applies to a rock then it applies equally to a planet and equally to all planets and to the whole universe. There’s nothing about zooming in or zooming out that suddenly changes everything.Reply
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Rod MacKenzie says:November 15, 2009 at 8:28 amPerry, I checked out your talk on Information Theory: “If you can read this, I can prove God exists” on the Cosmic Fingerprints site and found it excellent. I would like to offer a link to this talk in a Blog I’m working on re: the rationality of the Christian worldview…I had already planned my next post around the same topic. Do you mind? If not, should I just send readers to the Cosmic Fingerprints site, or do you have this talk available on one of your own sites that you’d prefer I link to? Thanks, RodReply
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Perry says:November 15, 2009 at 9:50 amRod, Use it in any way you want. Also there’s a link “Origin of Life Video” which is similar – that may be useful too. I salute your efforts – nice site you have! PerryReply
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Rod MacKenzie says:November 15, 2009 at 11:28 amThanks Perry, I look forward to reading more interesting stuff from you, and I’ll definitely be linking to Cosmic Fingerprints from my Rational Faith site. Rod
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graeme says:March 5, 2010 at 4:03 amIt’s also interesting that so many that have posted here can point to the universe and say that since it exists, it must have a cause, and if there is a cause then a god of some form must exist in order to cause it. If it is accepted as true that nothing can exist without a creator, then God CANNOT exist without being caused by something else. If you claim that God exists, and can do so without a cause since that is part of the definition of what it means to be God, then it MUST follow that other things (such as the universe) could do so without a creator as well.Reply
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Perry says:March 6, 2010 at 1:10 pmThe reason the universe cannot be uncaused is because of entropy. If it were infinitely old, there would be no available energy remaining. You can’t burn a candle twice. Modern cosmology has established that the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old and began in a single point expanding with the big bang. Gödel’s theorem shows that the cause of the universe has to be outside the universe, since the universe is by necessity incomplete.Reply
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Matt says:March 6, 2010 at 2:45 pmThe single direction of entropy and our perception of an “arrow of time” are closely bound together (we remember the past and not the future, and perceive everything as inexorably rolling from the past into the future, and at the same time from a low entropy state to a high entropy state) but it is conceivable that we may simply be in a region of a larger universe, where chance fluctuation created a (temporary) condition of low entropy, that is now returning to a ‘baseline’ level of entropy over billions of years. In this wider universe, without the steady progression of entropy there might equally be little in the way of an orderly flow of time, matter interacting in ways that are very hard to imagine intuitively (I don’t claim to be able to understand what that would be like, which I’m aware must sound frustratingly similar to the “it’s a mystery” so often put forward as a nonexplanation by religion, but the model is workable, and it would be a way to explain our universe without appeal to a truly unknowable supernatural force. The ‘outer’ universe would be an inhospitable place for our kind of life, but the idea would have some accord with the multiverse idea; relatively distinct universes expanding into their own pockets or bubbles of space. I’m not saying that’s how it happened, or that it’s how I believe it happened; my stance would be to file it under “maybe plausible, pending further evidence”.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 5:53 pmMatt, I think it’s significant that in order to avoid the obvious consequences of entropy you have to invoke an undetectable universe in which entropy works differently than it works here. I’d have a hard time calling such a theory parsimonious. Or scientific. Are you unconditionally committed to atheism as a worldview or are you willing to follow the evidence where it leads? On what basis do you assert that a supernatural force is unknowable?
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vijeno says:August 9, 2010 at 11:16 pmWhy do you define that which is outside the known universe as uncaused? How do you arrive at the conclusion that it is? If anything exists, then it is reasonable to assume that it is caused, yes. This seems to go for anything that has ever been observed. It is mere speculation to say that it does not go for a being that is outside the known universe. In fact, once we knew that being, it would instantly become part of the known universe, and thus, caused.Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 7:40 amInevitably you arrive at the necessity of an uncaused cause. Just do a Google search on “infinite regression” and you’ll quickly see why philosophers universally reject it. Christian theology has always defined God as NOT being part of the known universe, but a cause of it. This is entirely different from eastern religious views like pantheism and panentheism which see God as being part of the universe.Reply
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vijeno says:August 12, 2010 at 12:51 amPlease name your reasoning for rejecting an infinite regress. What christianity says about god is as irrelevant at what a few philosophers have said, since this is only an appeal to authority. In a discussion among adults, you show your logical deductions, and we can talk.Reply
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 10:39 amFrom Wikipedia: An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, and for any proposition in the series Pn, the truth of Pn requires the support of the truth of Pn+1. There would never be adequate support for P1, because the infinite sequence needed to provide such support could not be completed. A vicious regress is “an attempt to solve a problem which re-introduced the same problem in the proposed solution. If one continues along the same lines, the initial problem will recur infinitely and will never be solved. An infinite regress such as you are advocating only proliferates the problem you are trying to solve right here. It is a non-answer. I have showed entirely logical deductions. I have not appealed to authority, only Gödel’s theorem and logic. So far as I can tell, your only reason for rejecting my answer is that you don’t like it. Can you present logical explanation for the origin of the universe that doesn’t just go around in circles?
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Alasdair says:November 16, 2009 at 7:34 amVery interesting stuff. This is a bit off topic but I find myself saying, “Yep; something must have created the universe”, but then the next thing that pops into mind is “so what”? Why do people go to such extraordinary lengths to ‘prove’ it to others (like you do Perry :)? Even going as far as killing people. How does that faith help us or impact our lives? Obviously the answer to that depends on each person’s concept of what the creator is, but to me it doesn’t help and shouldn’t make a bit of difference to how we behave.Reply
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Perry says:November 16, 2009 at 9:44 amAlasdair, There is a huge battle in the marketplace of ideas regarding the existence of God. Look at how many books on this topic are bestsellers during the last few years. Yes, I have gone to great lengths…. Even to the point of writing an 1800 word summary of Gödel’s theorem :^> Actually I have done much more than just that, which you can see if you visit my other websites http://www.coffeehousetheology.com and http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com. I believe that no civilization rises higher than its idea of God. A lot of people consider faith to be a private personal thing which others should not be bothered with; but I think that idea is false. Our faith, whatever it may be, greatly affects what we do. The US Declaration of Independence says, “We hold these things to be self-evident, that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The very idea of human rights is a faith statement. It is not scientifically provable. It can’t be derived from Darwinism. It comes from a belief not only in God but God’s relation to mankind. These things matter a lot. A counterexample would be the abuses of communism in the 20th century. Is it merely a coincidence that the governments who killed more than 100 million people just happened to be officially atheistic? Atheist regimes killed more people in one century than religious wars killed in all centuries put together. Could that really be just a happy accident? A few articles I think might provoke more thinking on this: http://www.perrymarshall.com/merry-christmas-2008/ http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq To the average guy on the street it seems like people are good or bad simply because they’re either good people or bad people and religion has nothing to do with it. But I would challenge you to press further: WHY should I believe in human rights? WHY should we take care of sick people and handicapped people? WHY should we try to eradicate poverty? What happens when you drill down to bedrock on those questions? What do you find? PerryReply
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Rick Kettner says:July 14, 2011 at 5:44 pm“The very idea of human rights is a faith statement. It is not scientifically provable. It can’t be derived from Darwinism. It comes from a belief not only in God but God’s relation to mankind.” @Perry – A very strong argument against this point… http://bit.ly/oleLkm Morality, virtue, and concepts like “human rights” are objective. They are necessary for human survival, prosperity, and advancement.Reply
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Perry says:July 14, 2011 at 6:23 pmCan you explain, in your own words: Why is human flourishing objectively good? What is the objective standard of goodness? How is anyone duty bound to be self-made like John Galt or to embrace Ayn Rand’s virtues?Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 14, 2011 at 7:28 pmI can explain it in my own words, but note that its not a matter of me suggesting it (that would make the argument subjective). Rather, its the logic presented in such an explanation, and the objective outcome that results from following the principles. I hope you read the original link, as Rand is clearly more versed in her own views, but I’ll do my best here… 1. Human flourishing is objectively good because it protects the only objectively verifiable intelligent life we know of, and as beings our primary rational motivation is to sustain our own life and well being. 2. Goodness is that which sustains life and promotes happiness. I am not aware of any rational argument that objects with this idea? I understand some people make irrationally self-interested decisions (murder, drug use, self loathing, etc.) due to lack of education, lack of ability to identify how this act hurts their happiness/security/stability/etc., or lack of ability to use reason to promote their own well being. However, as this sort of thinking is grounded in irrationality, it is irrelevant. Objectively, goodness is not achieved by these acts. 3. We have free choice. We are not bound to be self-made or to even make rationally self-interested choices. This may be considered a downside to natural selection, random chance, and even the concept of choice. However, we are in fact “motivated” to embrace such virtues, as they objectively contribute to our own well being. As Ayn Rand would say “We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality”. That is how choice works, but the objective outcome is clear. We must exercise our reason and logic to maximize our happiness, prosperity, and advancement. — How do you objectively conclude God is moral? What authority does he report to, or how do you conclude that the only possible kind of “God” would by definition define morality? How is God bound to be virtuous, and moreover, how can we reconcile the idea of a moral God with the inherent destructive, torturous, and cruel process of evolution?Reply
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Perry says:July 22, 2011 at 2:01 pmRick, Allow me to play devil’s advocate. In principle I agree with much of what you’re saying and there’s even a part of me that likes Ayn Rand. 1. If human flourishing is objectively good because it protects objectively verifiable intelligent life, then what about humans that are not objectively intelligent? What about those that fall below a certain IQ level or whatever? How do you not end up with eugenics? 2. Goodness is that which sustains whose life, and promotes whose happiness? I agree that people do harmful things for stupid reasons but sometimes they do harmful things for very noble reasons. The Chinese have mandatory abortions and cruel laws to limit the population. There’s a very persuasive argument that this is necessary. Are they right? On what basis do you argue that this is right or wrong? if you say it’s right can you prove it’s not wrong? If you say it’s wrong can you prove it’s not right? 3. Yes we do have free choice, yet there’s almost universal agreement that some choices are very bad. Is this agreement just social contract or is it rooted in something objective? My argument for objective morality is metaphysical. Ayn Rand’s arguments are metaphysical too. Much of her thinking is philosophically incompatible with the New Atheism BTW. To your last question: How do you objectively conclude God is moral, what authority does he report to? In the theistic view, the morality of God is taken as an axiom. As I said to one guy several years ago, “I do not judge God, God judges me. I consider this statement to be self-evident, requiring no further explanation or justification.” If God as theists generally understand Him exists, then yes, this statement does require no further justification. I have already provided logical, mathematical and scientific inference to the existence of God. This conversation extends to moral questions about God. My logic is: 1) Science, math and logic infer the existence of God (which I am of course advocating here and on the other blog, as we converse) 2) The existence of God can then be logically taken as grounds for believing that objective moral values exist I have not proven that God is moral so far but I have shown that my own worldview is logically sound. I have rational reason to posit an infinite limitless being. In my opinion, “objective morality” only has any real meaning if there is judgment and consequences in the afterlife. Real suffering and real reward. Aside from that, even if God DOES exist, it doesn’t matter, because in theory you can mow down children at a daycare with a machine gun and get away with it. Western conceptions of God say you will ultimately never get away with that. Again that is the only definition of objective morality that has any teeth. (We could also consider eastern ideas like Karma of course. But that, too, comes back to consequences.) In my view of the world, science/math gives grounding for believing in God and from that point forward, moral questions are theological questions. In asking the questions you ask in the last paragraph, you are asking theological questions. Even your question about evolution being cruel is a theological question. Are you willing to consider my answers on theological grounds?
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Rick Kettner says:July 24, 2011 at 2:00 pmI’ll do my best to answer your questions based on my current understanding. As with most things – it’s a work in progress… 1. There is always room for charity and humanitarian efforts. Often times our happiness is in part derived from helping those we determine are truly in need (recognizing we could have easily ended up in their situation). On the other hand, I think our happiness is harmed by being forced to help those we feel are taking advantage of the system (through government or social obligation). This is just one of many examples of where constant individual thought and reason are critical to the achievement of happiness, and how there is no “fast food” philosophy that simply has ready-made answers to every question. I certainly wouldn’t derive happiness from watching people die due to inability to sustain themselves, and I sincerely doubt anyone driven by rational self-interest would either. What I am quite sure of is forcing people to give up prosperity to help others (some that need it, others that done) is a terribly short sighted approach to ensuring lasting prosperity of any kind. 2. This is a very complicated situation that is based on a wide range of fundamental issues. First off, I don’t agree with the vast majority of government regulations. The actual problem here stems from centuries of irrational thought – from people that have been given permission to act irrationally through both faith-based philosophies and government based handouts. When people are forced to truly think through the implications of their own decisions, based on knowing they will directly face the consequences, government regulation is not necessary. A very practical example, my wife and I have decided we won’t be having more than two kids – for the very fear of over-population. Reasonable and practical decisions cannot be forced by government mandate, and arbitrary rules that attempt to ban bad choices only create new problems (not to mention, promote a less rational society). History has proven that government central planning is simply incapable of efficiently solving anything. 3. Choices are only bad when people have limited understanding, reduced critical thinking, or don’t have a direct connection to the consequences of their choices. This is where I feel the message that “faith is a virtue” is simply one of the most destructive ideas in the history of mankind (here I make a fundamental distinction between blind faith in the unobservable and reasonable faith based on objective/observable evidence – many theists like to equate the two in order to minimize the advancement of knowledge and understanding). Furthermore, any attempt to place a barrier between an individuals decisions and the resulting consequences hurts mans ability to draw necessary connections within their mind. “If God as theists generally understand Him exists, then yes, this statement does require no further justification.” This entire concept is based on faith… of course it requires mountains of justification, evidence, and proof. We have been debating the existence of God separately from this, but that isn’t even the point. Assuming you still choose to use selective inductive reasoning to infer there is a God, I cannot imagine how you can connect this seemingly indescribable being with one very specific religion and one very specific understanding of his moral status. This entire idea strongly re-enforces my point that such beliefs are heavily rooted in pre-existing beliefs, confirmation bias, and selective reasoning. I don’t feel the need to convince you of this, but am simply sharing my outside perspective. “In my opinion, “objective morality” only has any real meaning if there is judgment and consequences in the afterlife.” This statement fails to address how God himself would be moral or how there is any proof whatsoever of an afterlife. Does God have no arbiter? Who is there to judge his actions? What consequences does he face? Who should conclude that evolution is a painful, destructive, and a tortuous method to bring about life – and that perhaps God should be punished as a result? Just as the prime mover argument suggests God would need a cause, my response is that God would need his own objective arbiter in order to be moral (based on the argument you are making). Furthermore, I have yet to see any objective evidence for anything resembling an afterlife, let alone a future existence in which we are reminded of our past “sins” and are punished for them. Therefore, I would strongly suggest that the only real arbiter is reality. When we steal, we risk being stolen from (or at least must then live with this fear). When we kill, we risk being killed (again, at very least live with this fear). Every action or choice has it’s consequences. When it comes to “God” being an arbiter, this doesn’t seem to actually affect change. Many people are irrational enough to believe they are doing good when they are doing evil, or perhaps simply don’t believe there is a God and therefore don’t fear punishment at all. In theory, their actions would not be affected by there simply being a God – especially one that makes his existence difficult, or perhaps impossible, to verify. Therefore, it is only the immediate and tangible effects of their decisions, tied with improved reason and logic to forecast such effects, that will direct positive change. The more we understand reality and dismiss irrational faith, the more likely we will be to make correct decisions and reduce negative consequences. Do I think we will even reach perfection? Not necessarily, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it in the correct direction – one that affects actual change. As far as me being willing to “consider (your) questions on theological grounds” – I fail to see how we need to step into the world of faith and mysticism to objectively verify morality. Again, even if you conclude there is a God, I see no path to determine he is moral, that a hell should/must exist, or that any form of punishment/reward beyond the real world exists. Such ideas seem to be overwhelmingly based in pre-existing beliefs, and don’t seem like efficient ways to deal with irrational decisions (if anything, theism erodes critical thinking by promoting faith and belief in many ideas – of which the existence of “God” is just one of many unprovable assertions). I accept reality as the final arbiter, because wither individuals accept it or not, there is no escaping it’s consequences. We don’t have to believe anything, be fearful of a mystical force, or ponder unknown implications in order to be exposed to the natural consequences of our actions. Just like a free-market economy is extremely efficient (even with some elements outside of the control of individuals), reality is extremely efficient at delivering appropriate consequences (even with some results being outside of individuals control). Both free-market economies and reality-based morals have disruptions based in irrationality, but as we move away from faith and towards reason, logic, and critical thinking – things improve exponentially.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 11:03 amRick, Every totalitarian regime in the history of man has applied individual logical thought and reason. In many respects the programs of Lenin and Stalin were entirely logical, from someone’s point of view. We need to think through these things, we need to apply rationality… I don’t see where you have added anything helpful here. Sounds like a negotiation to me, where the most powerful person wins. You haven’t told me whether it’s OK to force women to have abortions in China yet. I’m interested in your answer. “Choices are only bad when people have limited understanding, reduced critical thinking, or don’t have a direct connection to the consequences of their choices.” So choices are always good when people have unlimited understanding, expanded critical thinking, and have a direct connection to the consequences of their choices? Does anyone have unlimited understanding? Does anyone have direct connection to all the consequences of their choices? How does your statement help us make right decisions? What have you really added to the discussion? I’m looking in vain here for anything here which could be considered an objective set of moral values. It feels as though you’re trying to avoid doing just that. Actually the most interesting thing you said was this: “Therefore, it is only the immediate and tangible effects of their decisions, tied with improved reason and logic to forecast such effects, that will direct positive change.” This is precisely what’s wrong with a purely Darwinian worldview. Because all of us create consequences with our actions that are far, far removed from us. All you’ve said here is that actions have consequences. We all know that. So how does non-theism give us objective morality? You’ve spent some time insulting religious people but you didn’t answer my original questions. You asked, how do I know God is good? One source of knowledge is my own personal experiences with miracles and healing, as well as scientific evaluations of the same. See http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles/
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 12:52 pm“Sounds like a negotiation to me, where the most powerful person wins.” The “most powerful person” doesn’t win when someone else loses. A truly rational person would recognize any gain based on “power” comes at someone else’s expense. Are you truly happy when you feel you’ve taken advantage of someone as opposed to winning fair and square? Of course not. A truly rational person knows that the joys of accomplishment come from honest achievement – and this is often best accomplished through mutual gain. Even those that “lose” in direct competition gain in overall prosperity when the winning idea/product becomes clear to all. A rational person would understand that the other individual has a natural advantage in this area, and would move on to innovate or contribute in another way. A rational person recognizes that his own happiness is enhanced by the happiness of those around him. “You haven’t told me whether it’s OK to force women to have abortions in China yet. I’m interested in your answer.” I didn’t intend to dodge this. It’s never ok to force someone to do something against their will. The problem of overpopulation is one that solves itself in a rational society. What is the purpose in having children if you know their existence will suffer because of over-population? Reasoning people would see this issue coming from a mile away and would solve it rationally. Your example fails to identify the many factors that contribute to the original problem. Lack of education, lack of critical thinking and reason, and centuries of crippled technological advancement due to some of these multiplying factors. You can come up with tricky scenarios to challenge my views, but it is essential to ask questions like – where did the initial problem come from? I find it curious that you don’t blame your concept of “God” for the limited space we have here on earth, the limited resources, and the irrationality that contributes to women having too many babies in the first place. “So choices are always good when people have unlimited understanding, expanded critical thinking, and have a direct connection to the consequences of their choices? Does anyone have unlimited understanding? Does anyone have direct connection to all the consequences of their choices? How does your statement help us make right decisions? What have you really added to the discussion?” I’ve already addressed these points. I stated we may never have perfect knowledge, but we certainly do recognize that the more knowledge we have – the better our decisions are. We can choose to reject any personal responsibility of choice onto an imagined “all knowing God”… but that only supports my point that knowledge enhances decision making abilities while failing to prove the existence of such a being. Simply wanting perfect answers doesn’t mean there is a God ready to provide them. “This is precisely what’s wrong with a purely Darwinian worldview. Because all of us create consequences with our actions that are far, far removed from us.” In saying this, you are not contradicting my view that having more information, thought, and critical thinking is beneficial. You are simply asserting we will never have enough information to make perfect decisions. I fail to see how this changes the fact that a more rational world would be a better place… or to see how any theistic moral code or concept of God has been proven effective to date. Again, just because you want perfection now doesn’t mean there is a God waiting to provide it. “You asked, how do I know God is good? One source of knowledge is my own personal experiences with miracles and healing, as well as scientific evaluations of the same.” This is a clear example of selective reasoning. How and why do you dismiss blatant examples of world suffering, starvation, and the destruction of natural disasters? Your willingness to accept examples of good and dismiss examples of bad (or perhaps attribute them to a “devil”) is indicative of your overwhelming confirmation bias. Why do you arbitrarily assert “God” is good? Can you prove the devil exists? Is he responsible for natural disasters? If you say “sin” or “evil” is proof of the devils existence – how can these are not a direct result of “God”? What evidence do you have that objectively proves God is inherently good and therefore couldn’t also create destruction and suffering? The entire theistic belief system is based on indoctrination and acceptance of arbitrary ideas. If “God” is by definition “good”, why did he create the devil? If he didn’t create the devil, then God isn’t outside the existence of everything. If there is no devil – why is there evil/sin as you would define it? If there is no evil/sin… why is their heaven/hell or any form of post-life award/punishment? We need to blindly accept the entire theistic message in order for various definitions to hold any merit. God has to be arbitrarily defined as perfect/good in order to support the notion that your concept of evil/sin proves the existence of a devil. All of these arbitrary definitions break down when we start asking for objective evidence of their validity.
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James R Meyer says:November 17, 2009 at 7:13 amPerry says: ‘You are invited to demonstrate a flaw in Gödel’s logic if you can. And I will certainly be happy to post that argument here on my blog.’ Well, it’s not that hard to point out the flaw in Godel’s argument. It isn’t something that can be put into a few lines, but you can see it here: http://jamesrmeyer.com/godel_flaw.html and in simplified form, together with a simplified explanation of Godel’s proof here: http://jamesrmeyer.com/ffgit/GodelSimplified0.htmlReply
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Perry says:November 17, 2009 at 8:36 amJames, Q: Are you only seeking to show a flaw in Gödel’s original paper, or are you seeking to broadly show that the Incompleteness theorem in its various current forms is fundamentally incorrect? PerryReply
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Perry says:November 22, 2009 at 2:17 amJames, I am not sufficiently trained in formal mathematics to decide, myself, whether you are right or wrong. Perhaps I could with time but that would require a very significant time commitment from me. Readers can decide for themselves. What I will say is that based on reading the online debates about this for a couple of hours, I’m not persuaded that you’re correct. I sifted through these threads: http://mathforum.org/kb/message.jspa?messageID=6300764&tstart=0 and http://groups.google.com/group/sci.logic/browse_frm/thread/3fd9e2fe7b924c74/270a6b8f731207cf?hl=en&pli=1 and http://r6.ca/Goedel/FFGITReview.html and http://www.jamesrmeyer.com/ffgit/review-oconnor.html I believe everyone is being fair with you. Also I believe that if you are correct about this, you can get this published. There is surely a mathematics journal that would be willing to risk opposing the Gödel doctrine. Such a thing would be a newsworthy event. My own judgment is based on several things: 1) The conversations I see here are generally not vitriolic. There is real discussion happening here. I know what knuckleheads sound like when they’re in denial of losing an argument, and these people are neither knuckleheads, nor are they losing the argument. 2) This is not a shades of gray issue with dozens of difficult-to-quantify factors, like arguing about, say, the myriad causes of global warming. This is math and logic. 3) Gödel’s theorem has been scrutinized and obsessed over for decades. The Logical Positivists in particular had enormous motivations to disprove Incompleteness when Gödel first published his paper; yet they could not. I find it difficult to believe that Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell and even Hilbert would have been unable to find this flaw 50+ years ago if it were real. Not to mention thousands of others who have followed. Again, readers can judge for themselves. In my opinion there is a slim possibility that the mathematical profession has been wrong about Gödel for 80 years but it’s not a horse I’m willing to bet on. If you are right then I salute you and in any case encourage you to consider getting your findings published.Reply
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lvleph says:December 23, 2009 at 9:53 pmI am a mathematician, and I can tell you for sure that you have a basic misunderstanding of what the theory of everything is; the theory of everything is a grand unifying field theory. It has nothing to do with having a system that is entirely self contained, but rather a system that can describe the fundamental forces simply. Your assumption that a conscious being must be the external observer seems kind of ridiculous to me, and is a giant jump. You might as well be Descartes with his cogito ergo sum, ergo deus. What a ridiculous notion.Reply
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Perry says:December 23, 2009 at 9:58 pmA system that describes the fundamental forces simply is still a system, and still subject to Gödel’s theorem. You’re welcome to challenge any specific statement I have made. I maintain that everything I have said here is 100% logical and that the conclusions follow naturally from the premises.Reply
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Mark Widawer says:December 29, 2009 at 3:17 pmPerry, I thoroughly enjoyed your article, and the mental, logical, and theological exercise it plays in. There’s nothing like hangin’ out with smart people to make you smarter. So frankly, with all the smart people you attract, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this… Just as “I am lying” is a paradox, so is Godel’s theorem. All we need to do is draw a circle around all the things that Godel’s theorem applies to. Outside of that circle must be all the things that the theorem doesn’t apply to. Therefore, Godel’s theorem does not apply to all the things that Godel’s theorem applies to. Oh! (smoke coming from my ears) My head hurts! Is there a flaw in this application of Godel’s theorem? -Mark p.s. All my best wishes for a healthy, happy, giving and prosperous new year, Perry.Reply
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Perry says:December 30, 2009 at 10:36 amMark, Gödel’s theorem applies to all systems, statements, objects and propositions. The thing outside the biggest circle is not a system or statement or object or proposition. It’s real not imaginary; it’s axiomatic; it’s conscious; it’s boundless and immaterial. Which is to say, Gödel’s theorem does not apply to God. Rather, I would say that Gödel’s theorem is itself contingent on God. Consider how God identified Himself to Moses in Exodus 3:14: Simply “I AM.” Happy New Year to you too Mark! Great to hear from ya yesterday. Perry P.S.: There’s a lengthy conversation with a guy named Derek on my other blog about something very closely related to this, it’s at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/comment-page-1/#comment-3241 and http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/comment-page-1/#comment-3725Reply
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Jorge says:January 12, 2010 at 6:24 pmI loved the article until it stop being descriptive and tried to argument for the existence of god. You made some really big jumps there, pal. I liked your approach to explaining the existence of god, but you have to be honest with yourself. At least you are not the kind of christian who believes Jesus used to ride a velociraptor. cheers!Reply
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Perry says:January 12, 2010 at 9:53 pmYou’re welcome to explain exactly where, logically speaking, I made “really big jumps.”Reply
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Derek says:January 13, 2010 at 12:47 amIt seems that you have grossly misunderstood Godel. There are actually two theorems. Number 1: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true,[1] but not provable in the theory (Kleene 1967, p. 250).” Number 2 “For any formal effectively generated theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent.” (Pulled from Wikipedia.) These do not apply to all systems. They only apply to those that express arithmetic.Reply
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Perry says:January 13, 2010 at 6:45 amIf logic and arithmetic describe the universe, then Gödel’s theorem applies to the universe. If logic and arithmetic do not describe the universe, then scientific thought also does not apply to the universe. Everything I have said here is contingent on science and math being valid tools for studying the physical world. My conclusions here are therefore as valid as the practice of science itself. I do concede that the practice of science is based on, literally, FAITH, that the universe is rational. By the way, the notion that the universe is rational originally came from Judeo-Christian theology. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/#christianReply
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Derek says:January 13, 2010 at 4:43 pm“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.” My point was that this is not what Godel’s theorems say at all. The theorems say nothing about having to assume the existence of anything outside the ‘circle.’ What you have done is taken a metaphor and extended it far beyond its bounds, and the metaphor was incorrect in the first place.Reply
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Perry says:January 13, 2010 at 4:50 pmDerek, Quoting you, the theorem says: “…there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable IN the theory.” (Emphasis mine.) This means that is axiomatic. It relies on an axiom, which is something you know to be true or have to assume to be true but which is unprovable. If it is consistent it is incomplete. Anything that proves its consistency is outside the statement. Therefore there is something outside the statement.Reply
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Derek says:January 13, 2010 at 7:33 pm“This means that is axiomatic. It relies on an axiom, which is something you know to be true or have to assume to be true but which is unprovable. If it is consistent it is incomplete. Anything that proves its consistency is outside the statement. Therefore there is something outside the statement.” Perhaps some clarification will help. All formal systems are axiomatic. A proof is when you show some statement to be a result of the axioms. So such a statement cannot rely upon an axiom, per Godel’s theorem. Also you are assuming that there is something that does, in fact, prove it’s consistency, which Godel’s theorems do not assert. You also are confusing objects of language with the language itself. Just because parts of the universe can be described by mathematics, does not make the universe a formal system. It’s like calling a chair a noun. ‘Chair’ is a noun, but a chair is not; only words can be nouns.
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Perry says:January 18, 2010 at 7:38 pmDerek, If you don’t think the universe can be accurately described by mathematics – and that it is not a formal system – you are free to take that position. At the same time you are then taking a position that science is a questionable endeavor. If a statement is a result of an axiom then it relies on the axiom. And this is what Gödel is saying. Rolling with your chair analogy, I am not saying a chair is a noun. I’m saying that a chair is an object. The word “chair” is a noun. In mathematics, all systems rely on axioms – assumptions which must be taken to be true but cannot be proven. If the universe is a formal system then the universe similarly relies on *something* which must be taken to be true but cannot be proven. And the thing that the universe relies on is a something, not a nothing. Therefore the universe is not the only thing that exists. There is something outside the universe which is not a system.
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ChrispyK says:January 24, 2010 at 12:23 amWow, thought provoking post. It’s not often that I see proofs of Gods existence of such high quality. That said, I’m curious to know how your take on two points that didn’t quite jive for me. First, does Godel’s Theorem apply to itself? Can it truly ever be proven, if it’s making assumptions that it can’t prove? If it can, then the theorem is proven useless, and if it can’t, then how can anything in the universe ever be proven? (If nothing can be proven, what evidence for a god could we have?) Secondly, using the circle analogy, if there is something outside of the largest circle that it is possible to draw, then that something must be infinite. If it is infinite, then it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, how has evaded detection of scientists for so very long? If a creator is boundless, then science must have found evidence of its existence, and if not, it could be encompassed by a circle. Paradoxical… Again, thanks for a well thought-out post.Reply
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Perry says:January 29, 2010 at 5:55 amGödel’s theorem does rely on assumptions you cannot prove, in the sense that Gödel expresses his theorem in Peano axioms, a mathematical system which is not provable within itself. Incompleteness is proven in the same way that geometry proofs are proven. It is 100% consistent with all that is known. God IS everywhere. Judeo-Christian theologians have been saying that for 4000 years. Why does God evade detection? Because God is immaterial and we can only detect material things with the scientific process. But God is inferred in innumerable ways.Reply
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Matt says:January 27, 2010 at 7:40 pmDire misunderstanding of Godel’s theorem. It was all going so well until you took the metaphor you’d constructed around the maths and tried to apply it to the universe. As another commenter has said, the theorem applies only to mathematical systems. Specifically those systems that are complex enough to derive arithmetic from. The real “incompleteness” is that when working with the axioms of those specific formal systems, you will find there are either things that are true that you cannot prove, or things that are paradoxical that you can prove – the system is either incomplete or inconsistent. You insist on saying that the universe must be a formal system for it to be described by science, the truth is that science describes the world _using_ various formally phrased “laws”, but the universe itself is the “outside of the circle” (outside of our descriptive system) to point to in this case. Our formal systems don’t define the universe; they’re a best approximation to what we observe, and the self-justifying element at the foundation of it all is the bald fact of the way things are. Reality doesn’t derive from axioms, it just is what it is, and because of that it doesn’t in any sense match up to what the Incompleteness Theorem was about.Reply
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Perry says:January 28, 2010 at 9:22 amMatt, Gödel’s theorem applies to everything that reason and logic apply to. No, our formal systems don’t define the universe, they describe them. If the universe is complete it is inconsistent and thus not amenable to scientific analysis. If the universe is consistent and amenable to logical analysis, then it is incomplete and therefore contingent on something. I vote in favor of science. IF the universe is scientifically, mathematically and logically describable, then God exists. You are welcome to reject the God proposition. In so doing you also reject reason and logic and science.Reply
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Matt says:January 28, 2010 at 2:22 pm“Gödel’s theorem applies to everything that reason and logic apply to.” No, I believe you’ll find that it applies strictly to axiomatic mathematical systems; “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory” So if you start with a set of mathematical axioms, and those axioms are sufficient to express arithmetic, then it is also true that your system is either incomplete (there are truths that it can’t prove) or it’s inconsistent (you can prove things that are contradictory). Now say it with me, the universe is not an axiomatic system of mathematics. There are no axioms of the universe, and hence no logical derivation of other propositions from the universe and no Incompleteness. Empirical derivation of propositions, maybe (although that’ll run the risk of simple observational error), but I can’t repeat enough; the universe is not a system of formal logic. Further, it has no need to prove itself by formal logic – the universe just is. Its nature is a simple fact, that to some extent we observe. I also take issue with your talk of “The origin of information”. The genetic ‘code’ is not symbolic and immaterial, it’s carbon-based chemistry. Not even very complicated chemistry to be honest. You claim that ‘information’ had to come from the ‘outside’, which seems to miss the fact that randomly combined nucleotides have just as much genetic information in them as the same length of useful DNA. The only difference is that genetic material that is conducive to its own replication will do just that, replicating more than other such material until it dominates. “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings” is a barely concealed circular argument. It fails on the count that genes are not real codes (they are molecules – talk of information being coded into them is a convenient shorthand for talking about their chemical properties) and even if I let that pass, it fails on the second count that you use the assumption of all codes being consciously designed to argue that a specific code is consciously designed without any further evidence for your position. “Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it. If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all systems must rely on something outside the system. [..] Because the universe is a system, it has an outside cause.” Once again, the natural world is not an axiomatic system, and hence not something that Godel’s theorem is applicable to.Reply
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Perry says:January 28, 2010 at 2:54 pmMatt, Any system of logic (boolean algebra for example) is always definable in terms of axiomatic mathematical systems. You are free to reject the idea that axiomatic mathematical systems accurately model the universe. But in doing so you are rejecting the very premise of science, which is that the universe is weighable, countable, measurable, and that the activities of matter and energy conform to reason and logic and mathematical formulas. The pattern in DNA is a code. All you need to do to verify that fact is read a biology book very carefully. Study the history of the genetic code. Discover for yourself why GGG=Glycine and AAA=Lycine etc etc. The clearest explanation of this in my book collection is by Hubert Yockey. He says: “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521802938?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwperryc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521802938Reply
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Matt says:January 28, 2010 at 3:27 pm“Any system of logic (boolean algebra for example) is always definable in terms of axiomatic mathematical systems.” Agreed, but I don’t see the relevance. “You are free to reject the idea that axiomatic mathematical systems accurately model the universe.” I didn’t, I rejected the idea that the universe itself is an axiomatic mathematical system. To put it in your terms, the reason we can model the universe with logical systems is that we have an actual universe “outside of the circle” to “point to”. (Quotations used to express the fact that I dislike the terminology; it’s an oversimplification of the theorem and makes it too easy to misapply it) The universe as we know it acts as the ultimate axiom – if the model contradicts the universe, we know the model is wrong. It may be that some physical ‘laws’ that we think are true turn out to be incomplete or inconsistent in their description of the universe, but that means we need an improved model, not that the universe needs some external factor to be explained. As for genetic codes, it’s as I’ve said; even if I accept that it is a true code, you don’t have a valid argument. Saying that all known codes have a conscious origin, and that therefore a specific code has a conscious origin, is specious reasoning. To prove that all codes have conscious origin would require you to prove that genes have a conscious origin, which you have not done. I can accept Yockey’s assertion that “the origin of life is the founding axiom of biology” — biology being the study of life it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to talk about pre-biotic biology. Pre-biotic chemistry is another matter though; chemistry and physics do not depend in any sense on the existence or origins of life, and we can very usefully study the precursors of life in the form of non-living organic chemistry, and theorise on how such chemicals might become self-replicating and come to form something we recognise as living.Reply
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Perry says:January 28, 2010 at 9:05 pmMatt, The relevance of my first comment is that Gödel’s theorem applies to all things that are defined as systems. You are rejecting the idea that axiomatic mathematical systems model the universe. You are free to do that. But if math does accurately describe the universe, then the universe is just as axiomatic as the math that describes it. The universe cannot be the ultimate axiom if you believe in cause and effect. The universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. Something had to cause it. You are of course free to reject the principle of cause and effect. That is your decision. If we were to build a mathematical system that perfectly describes the big bang, it would rely on some initial conditions and axiomatic statements that are not provable inside the system. Therefore if we accept the principle of cause and effect, the universe is contingent on something outside itself. My statement that all known codes have conscious origin, therefore a specific code has a conscious origin, is not specious. Perhaps this conclusion is bothersome to you, but it’s straightforward inductive reasoning. You can choose not to accept that. If you reject it then you reject induction which is the basis of most scientific propositions. My statement is just as reliable as gravity and entropy. For example, the assumption that the law of gravity is the same 10 billion light years away as it is here is not proven and probably not provable either. (Formally speaking it is not provable at all.) We assume gravity is a consistent law based only on induction. Self replication requires a code to exist first, as John Von Neumann determined in his papers on self-replicating machines in the 1960’s. All codes we know the origin of are designed. Therefore we have 100% inference that the genetic code is designed and 0% inference to any other explanation. We understand codes every bit as well as we understand gravity. Maybe better. We create codes all the time. We can’t create gravity. Thus any conclusion other than “DNA is designed” is specious.Reply
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Matt says:January 29, 2010 at 12:11 pm“The relevance of my first comment is that Gödel’s theorem applies to all things that are defined as systems.” Mathematical systems and logical systems that are equivalent to mathematical systems, yes. I have never denied this. But the universe is neither; it’s a physical system. It doesn’t derive from axioms, it can’t be used to derive propositions, it doesn’t fit the bill. The closest you can come to ‘deriving a proposition’ from the universe is to observe its behaviour and formulate a mathematical statement to describe that behaviour. Maybe the model is subject to Incompleteness but, as you’ve said, that just means it needs something outside of the model to serve as an unproven given. The thing outside the model is the universe’s actual observed behaviour. We can take that as an absolute axiom with respect to what our models should predict. “But if math does accurately describe the universe, then the universe is just as axiomatic as the math that describes it.” The model has, as far as we know, been accurate up until now. I don’t take that as absolute/unshakeable proof that the universe will always be consistent with our predictions. If the two things diverge we’ll need to come up with a new model because they remain two different things. Using an axiomatic model to describe a thing, however accurately, doesn’t make that thing, itself, axiomatic. “The universe cannot be the ultimate axiom if you believe in cause and effect. The universe came into existence 13.7 billion years ago. Something had to cause it.” I’ll take this seriously when you can convince me that a) your god doesn’t equally require a cause and that b) the universe (or some n-dimensional ‘higher’ universe) can’t be self originating in the same way as you propose that god is. If you’re going to restate the Cosmological argument, I feel quite happy using the age old objections to it. (If you manage the first one, you’ll still need to prove that your first cause has any attribute other than uncausedness. I know you think you’ve done that, you even put it bold, but that’s a whole other argument to have). You don’t appear to have fully comprehended my point on the subject of “all known codes have conscious origin, therefore a specific code has conscious origin”. There’s no denying that the former implies the latter, but your argument is backwards – to boldly assert something about “all codes” you first need to prove that thing true of each specific code without reference to anything being true of “all codes”. To put it shortly, “all known codes have conscious origin” is dependent on each specific code having conscious origin, so when you introduce “all known codes have conscious origin” to your argument about a specific code, you’re implicitly assuming that which you’re trying to prove. It’s not “straightforward inductive reasoning” at all, just partially obscured circular reasoning. As a sidenote, I’m curious; why is a piece about Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem on a site that’s otherwise about Google-based marketing?Reply
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Perry says:January 29, 2010 at 4:03 pmMatt, Postulate: IF the universe conforms to reason and logic then it is subject to Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. The universe is finite. It came into existence 13 billion years ago. How could it give birth to itself? I think the burden of proof is on you to show that the universe CAN be self-originating. You can resort to an infinite regress of universes, but philosophers almost universally reject infinite regression as an adequate explanation of anything. I cannot prove to you that God doesn’t require a cause. I can only point out that at some stage in the past there is a necessity of an uncaused cause. The universe is not its own uncaused cause because everything physical is subject to causality. If you have empirical evidence to the contrary you’re welcome to present it. All codes we know the origin of are either direct derivatives of DNA (RNA, bee waggles, viruses, dogs barking, pheremone trails, animal instinct) or else they are created by conscious beings making deliberate choices (zip code, morse code, bar code, TCP/IP, every single file on your computer). My reasoning is not circular. It begins with an open question of not knowing where the genetic code came from and observing closely how all other codes came into being. The process of creating codes is well-known branch of science taught in CS departments in major universities all over the world. There is no other known process for creating codes besides sentient beings making conscious choices of symbols based on desires and priorities. DNA reflects all the same kinds of choices, from the 4-letter alphabet to the most complex genetic transpositions. If you examine them closely you’ll find that all arguments that DNA is not designed are in fact circular. I have a much more complete presentation on this at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm I really comes down to this: If you hypothesize that codes can occur naturally, then show me one empirical example that supports that hypothesis. Why an article about Gödel on this website? Because I’m interested in a lot more things in life than just search engines. PerryReply
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Jorge says:January 29, 2010 at 1:05 pmYou don’t have to prove scientifically that god exists. You can just be faithful, its a more gracious way of being a believer than trying to push your opinions in a semi-literate way to everyone else… I recommend Soren Kierkegaard. Something out of context: ” Thus, faith is united with the truth by serving as the most extreme expression of subjectivity, and by representing the only manner in which the existing individual can accept paradox.” http://www.schoolbytes.com/summary.php?disp=term&id=234 Check this site, i haven’t read it all, but it could be helpful to everyone like you. In some way, a more complex way you’re trying to do what every silly creationist tries to do in a more naive way, that is, trying to push a belief into science. Sorry for the errors, english is not my first language.Reply
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wm1 says:January 29, 2010 at 6:19 pmI think you are putting god outside the circle boundary everything that is real;)Reply
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Matt says:January 29, 2010 at 9:02 pm“My reasoning is not circular. It begins with an open question of not knowing where the genetic code came from and observing closely how all other codes came into being.” Allow me to analogise for a moment. Imagine I were to examine all of the cats I could lay my hands on, I would find that to an animal they would all have tails. I might hence conclude that all known cats have tails, and thus that I believe all cats to have tails. Then someone presents me with a Manx cat, to which my response is that we already know that all known cats have tails, so this cat must also have a tail. I think you are committing the same flaw of reasoning; hasty generalisation. All human designed codes have conscious design. That much is tautologically obvious. The other class of ‘codes’ we have are those in the natural world. We know of no designer for these things, and it is faulty reasoning to conclude that because “all known codes” (excluding the natural ones under consideration) have conscious design, that the codes of the natural world must also have conscious design. I submit, that the codes of the natural world, be they genetic, bee waggles, or any other, are the results of what I will term unconscious design. Brought into being by blind processes with no intent, no thought, no goal and no consciousness. I’m talking about, of course, evolutionary processes. Amino acids form spontaneously under a variety of conditions, RNA strands have been found to assemble, using cyanide or the checker-board patterns of charge in ice as a template. RNA is also known to be potentially self-catalysing, and self-replicating. Once we have replication (and mutation via faults in replication), we have evolution. Some RNAs go on to produce proteins and DNA, which turn out to be advantageous because they can improve the process of replication and help the RNA that produces them to dominate the available resources. That path may be hopelessly wrong; we may later find the evidence that shows it happened a different way, I entirely accept that possibility. But at the same time, having any plausible explanation that fits within the natural world without any awkward ‘nomological danglers’ hanging out is infinitely preferable to resorting to the supernatural as an ‘explanation’, because it does not really explain anything at all – no predictions to be made, no evidence to be found, no proof or disproof except the incredulous cries of “well how else could it happen”. In your other article you dismiss out of hand the idea of naturally occurring codes, without any reasoning presented beyond … well, actually I don’t see any reasoning except stating your position again in slightly different ways; “Chaos can produce patterns, but it has never been shown to produce codes or symbols.” is another example of your circularity – assuming the general case as a way to prove the specific case, when the general case is dependent on the specific case. Maybe chaos has been shown to produce a code, in the instance of naturally occurring codes. Nothing you can say about “all codes” can rule that out. [Sidenote: I would take exception to natural selection being characterised as chaotic; mutation is the only random step, everything beyond that is much more deterministic, except for true accidents of nature like the first carrier of a novel allele having the misfortune to be hit by a meteor or some such] If you could prove to me, without any reference to “all other codes” or other generalisations that are dependent on the specific cases, that DNA as an information carrying molecule could not possibly arise by natural processes, then I would be most impressed. (Note also, that stating “Information itself is a separate entity on par with matter and energy” as a premise, without some very strong supporting evidence for that extraordinary claim, will not get you very far). It’s late, I’m tired, but reply to this and the email notification will remind me to come back and say more about the universe as opposed to DNA.Reply
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Perry says:January 29, 2010 at 10:02 pmMatt, Code is defined as a system of symbols for communication between an encoder and a decoder (Claude Shannon, 1948). Show me a naturally occurring code. Of ANY kind. Just one.Reply
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BB says:January 30, 2010 at 12:35 amThe problem is that you’ve defined DNA as a code. You were going on about cause and effect; DNA is a series of molecules (physical things) that act in concert to produce/maintain/whatever else (effect) creatures. It’s not a code; it’s a chemical reaction. Second, you are squirreled down in semantics in a big way. 13.7 billion years ago, we SUSPECT that the big bang occurred because that fits the available data. We suspect, but don’t know. You say that something must have caused it. I ask why? In university, I used the reaction/proaction argument to “prove” the existence of something beyond what we can know — i.e. if everything is a reaction, and you go back far enough, there was a beginning, therefore a proaction, therefore that energy or whatever it was…et cetera et cetera. But it doesn’t prove anything. Here’s why: 1) I postulate that before the big bang, there was nothingness, and in that state of nothingness some energy (God?) acted on the speck that was our universe and caused it to explode into what we now see. I postulate it, but there’s nothing to indicate this is so. There’s no trace of this energy now, and there’s nothing to indicate it ever happened. or 2) I postulate that the “universe” is an ineffably vast concept that can barely even be perceived by our fallible minds and senses, much less understood to any great degree. or 3) I postulate that because thoughts are formed as words, and words can be traced back to some primitive articulation that was created by a fallible mind, all words are most likely wildly inaccurate at best, and completely fallacious. Therefore, any discussion about great concepts is like pissing into the wind. You feel good about yourself, you get it out of your system, but it ends up all over your face. If you accept the notion that we have an imperfect understanding of the universe, then you have to accept the notion that Godel himself was imperfect. You can’t state with equanimity that his imperfect theorem. based on a imperfect system, which imperfectly describes the universe can POSSIBLY be any type of legitimate proof for anything. You can say that it is a logical confirmation of something you would like to believe anyway. But I can say (more accurately) that what we think of as logic, is most likely flawed, inaccurate and wrong. It’s simply the best system we have, to date.Reply
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Perry says:January 30, 2010 at 8:34 amBB, The definition of DNA as code is the most fundamental definition in all of biology. If you want to throw everything we know about genetics in the dumpster, that is your choice. But a more anti-scientific statement could hardly be uttered. I can only urge you to study the history of the genetic code and find out why the pattern of base pairs in DNA is, in fact, a literal code. Your (1) is actually quite reasonable, and most importantly, pretty much matches the data we have on hand. But it still requires an antecedent event, namely an External Agent. Your (2) avoids (1) in favor of irrationality. It abdicates to confusion. It discards reason and logic. Which in my opinion is a huge step backwards. It tosses 3000 years of philosophy and mathematics in the dumpster. Now what I want you to notice is that your (1) and (2) summarize Gödel’s theorem perfectly. Either the universe is consistent, in which case it is incomplete (God is necessary). Or else the universe is complete (no God necessary) but therefore inconsistent. In other words if we take God as axiomatic, reason and logic and science are allowed to proceed. Then we successfully assume that we can study the universe and learn more and more. If we exclude the possibility of God then we have no choice but to assume the universe is an ineffable mystery. Correct me if I’m wrong but you appear to be saying, “You just gave me a logical set of statements that show the necessity of God. I prefer illogic.” I would invite you to open yourself to all the different possibilities and simply follow the evidence where it leads. Your (3) is an epistemology that we would expect Darwinism to produce. If we are the result of nothing but random copying errors filtered by natural selection, then we have no reason to suspect that our minds can accurately model the mysteries of the universe. If, however, living things have been purposefully programmed, we might rather expect that we were designed to comprehend our creator.Reply
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BB says:January 30, 2010 at 9:10 amNo, that was not was I was saying. My postulates were all statements that were equally valid (they have nothing physical to support them but they are logically sound). Any one is as likely as the other. With regard to my (1), it does not ‘pretty much match the data on hand.’ Do you know what the scientific consensus is for what happened “before the big bang?” We don’t know. Either the universe itself has always been, or it’s cyclical, or there is God, or the big bang never even happened, or or or… There is problem in saying things with certainty when there are so many unknowns and barely-knowns. But here’s one thing that is known: Godel’s Theorem isn’t a scientific proof. It’s a thought experiment. It’s an observation about the mathematical system; but it’s a THOUGHT experiment. It wasn’t that Godel went out and, say, observed anything. He simply observed that, in terms of arithmetic, there were unprovable assumptions made. The thing is, that assumption doesn’t necessarily hold true in a macrocosmic way. It’s like saying, “I’ve observed (x) about a piece of fruit, therefore (x) must be true about the supermarket, because the supermarket contains fruit.” It’s not necessarily true. People haven’t disproved his theorem because it’s a logically sound statement. But it doesn’t necessarily hold true as you scale up (similar to how Newtonian physics is true for a vast majority of all cases, but at extremes, it becomes inaccurate). If you want to dispute that by saying “logic is logic” or something similar, or dismiss this again by saying that I’m throwing out science, be my guest. But that’s not the case. Logic is a tool and not the bottom line. And science is filled with instances of microcosmic observations being true and macrocosmic observations being false (and vice versa).
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Perry says:January 30, 2010 at 9:25 amThe universe cannot be cyclical because of entropy. Once a candle is burnt you can’t light it again. There is no such thing as a scientific proof. Science can only infer. It cannot prove. Gödel’s theorem is a mathematical proof. In philosophy, a mathematical proof is about as close to an absolute truth as we can get. Getting hit by a bus and dying is an absolute truth. But it’s not a scientific theorem, it’s just an empirical fact.
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BB says:January 30, 2010 at 9:13 amAlso, DNA is described as a code, but is certainly not DEFINED as a code. Similar to the way many people call every bit of music “songs.” It’s a convenient way to be understood, but it’s not the most accurate.Reply
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Perry says:January 30, 2010 at 9:21 amBB, See “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” by Hubert Yockey (Cambridge University Press, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521802938?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwperryc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521802938 Also see http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faqReply
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BB says:March 26, 2010 at 12:50 pmA code is a member of the class ‘symbols’. A first level symbol is a label which is used in place of the thing which it identifies. For example, suppose a building with a sign over the window which bears the word ‘pharmacy’. We can use the symbol ‘pharmacy’ in language as a symbolic substitute for any real pharmacy. Suppose now that we invent a slang term ‘pill-farm’ to mean ‘pharmacy’. We now have a secondary label ‘pill-farm’ which is a second-level symbol for ‘pharmacy’. ‘Pharmacy’ in its turn is a first level symbol for a real building of a specific type. By convention, a primary symbol is a name, but any secondary symbol is a code: a symbol which stands in place of another symbol. For purposes of clarification, I will give another example. ‘And so forth’ is a primary label or symbol for an idea. By converting it into Latin, a language spoken by few speakers of English, we encode it as ‘et cetera’. We now abbreviate it to ‘etc.’, a second level coding. A code is not a symbol. A symbol is not a code. A symbol stands in place of an object or idea. A code stands in place of a symbol: it is a symbol for a symbol. In computer instructions, we start with the simplest possible representations of what is going on inside a computer chip. We observe that a location in a computer chip can be at one of two voltages. Taking these voltages as our idea we invent symbols for the two voltages: ‘1’ and ‘0’. These are our primary symbols and they can only be written as binary expressions. As a convenience, we can use a form of abbreviation which is easier for humans to handle than binary. The most common such abbreviation is hexadecimal code, or hex. As an example, the binary 1010 0101 can be written as A5 in hex. Note that hex, being a secondary symbol level is a code. When dealing with binary as computer instructions rather than as numbers it is convenient to use mnemonic codes. It may be that the binary string 1111 0000 1100 0100, or F0C4 in hex, is an instruction to the computer core, expressed as F0, to jump to memory location C4, but only IF a previously computed result was non-zero. We can write that as a mnemonic code: JNZ C4. Such mnemonics are called assembly language. The ‘assembly’ part of the name comes from the fact that this mnemonic code needs to be assembled into a package of binary numbers in order for the computer to be able to use it as a program. DNA is a string of molecules. There are four main components: guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine. Those names, the words ‘guanine’, ‘adenine’, ‘thymine’ and ‘cytosine’ are primary symbols invented by humans to identify the physical molecules which are found in DNA. For convenience, we often abbreviate these symbols to CAGT, so that we can more readily handle the huge volume of data which we have accumulated about DNA. Please observe: there exists a long molecule of a type which we label DNA. It has four major components to which we assign symbols as names. We next assign symbols to the name symbols as an abbreviating code. We humans have agreed to assign the four letters CAGT as a code for the symbols which in turn stand for the molecular components of DNA. A code is a symbol which stands in place of a symbol. The four letters CAGT most definitely form a code, being symbols for the names of the four major components of DNA. The names guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine are not codes: they are primary symbols. Primary symbols stand for real things and not for symbols. The real physical entities guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine are not codes. If anyone wants to call them codes, let them point to the symbols which might be replaced by these ‘codes’. A computer code is a set of numerical values sufficient and necessary to the production of an end state from an initial state. DNA is necessary but not sufficient to the production of an end state from an initial state. To claim that computer code and DNA are both codes is an abuse of the power of words. It is decidedly not scientific.Reply
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 2:14 pmDefinition of CODE: 3a: A system of symbols for communication 4: Genetic Code (Webster’s 9th collegiate dictionary)Reply
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BB says:March 26, 2010 at 2:23 pmQuoting Webster’s to prove that DNA is a code is about the weakest appeal to authority I have ever seen. It also shows that you didn’t even bother to read what I wrote. Appeal to authority is a classic fallacy that you’ve employed more than once by quoting specific authours and disagreeing with or ignoring others.
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 2:42 pmI am using Claude Shannon’s definitions as found in his paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” and Yockey’s definitions in his book “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” by Hubert Yockey (Cambridge University Press, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521802938?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwperryc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521802938. Both use the term code in the same identical way. The pattern formed by the four bases in DNA is a code in exactly and precisely the same way that TTL voltages in a computer are code, that magnetic domains on a hard drive are code, that pulses of light in a fiber optic cable are code, or pits on a CD-ROM are code. This is a standard engineering definition and usage of the term “code” and is universal in all literature on digital communications. Webster’s definition of code as “A system of symbols for communication” is 100% consistent with this usage. Again I quote Yockey (2005): “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005). In this conversation I must insist on using standard engineering definitions that are universally accepted in scientific literature.
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 2:47 pmBy the way if you want to argue about the definition of the word “code” then you need to be aware that whole conversation already happened four years ago, when my debate on the world’s largest atheist discussion board, Infidels, began. You can read all about it with links to all relevant conversations at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels. I’ll save you some time – you will get nowhere attempting to assert that the genetic code is a code by some strange definition that’s different than other contexts. Again, you can read the Infidels thread for an exhaustive discussion of the history of its discovery and why biologists have defined it that way for 50+ years now.
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vijeno says:August 14, 2010 at 2:13 amOn http://cosmicfingerprints.com/iidb.htm, in reference to http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=135497&page=1, Perry Marshall comments that “For Three Years and counting, I have successfully advanced the Information Theory argument for Intelligent Design on Infidels, the world’s largest Atheist discussion forum.” and that “The discussion continued for more than 4 months and 300 posts. At the end, nearly all participants dropped out, having failed to topple my proof or produce any new objections that had not already been addressed.” This is a rather interesting spin on reality. Just to give folks a balanced perspective, here are actual numbers taken frum just that discussion thread: Start of thread: August 30, 2005, 06:00 PM Total number of postings: 1398 Total number of postings by user pmarshall (on ALL of freeratio.org): 26 Last posting on thread: March 10, 2010, 05:56 PM Last posting by user pmarshall: October 26, 2008, 09:17 PM I’m leaving the conclusions up to the learned reader.
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tim says:February 3, 2010 at 12:00 amyou are using a theorem within a system to explain something beyond the system. whut using something we know to describe something which we cannot know is just faith. you jump from logic to faith when you use the incompleteness theorem to make a logical induction about something beyond “everything”. you “believe” that it applies to something beyond “everything”. in other words: beyond the scope of the universe you cannot with certainty apply knowledge that is within the universe (otherwise it would be describable by the universe and therefore part of it)Reply
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Perry says:February 3, 2010 at 5:19 pmTim, What you’re really describing is the inherent problem of induction. Induction can give you only so much specificity; that’s why when you apply Gödel’s theorem to “whatever is outside the universe” you get a list of what God is not, rather than a list of what God is. God is not material, not matter & energy, not time, not divisible, not a system. And by the way this list is remarkably similar to Aquinas’ 5 statements about God. This summary of Aquinas is from Wikipedia: Concerning the nature of God, Aquinas felt the best approach, commonly called the via negativa, is to consider what God is not. This led him to propose five statements about the divine qualities: 1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.[60] 2. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God’s complete actuality.[61] 3. God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.[62] 4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God’s essence and character.[63] 5. God is one, without diversification within God’s self. The unity of God is such that God’s essence is the same as God’s existence. In Aquinas’s words, “in itself the proposition ‘God exists’ is necessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are the same.”[64] If you sift through every single element in both my Gödel article and Aquinas’ statements with a fine-toothed comb, you can verify for yourself that it is all 100% logical. One of the realizations that you come to is that God is “outside of” reason and logic. This at first seems disturbing until you remember that God is not divisible, God is not made up of “moving parts” and since reason and logic are about relationships between separate parts, this therefore does not make God illogical. It just makes God superior to logic by virtue of being One. Many people have said, “Logical statements cannot be made about God.” But that statement itself is a logical statement concerning God, therefore it is self-contradictory, therefore it is not true. Logical statements CAN be made about God. And the most logical statement you can make about God is: God IS. Thus it makes perfect sense that Jesus, who claimed to be God, said: “Before Abraham was, I AM.”Reply
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tim says:February 3, 2010 at 8:17 pmwhat youre saying is that the same rules of logic that apply within the universe apply outside the universe. you cant say this with certainty. the applicability of the theorem ends with the “edge of the universe” because it is based on logic of the universe. in short:The universe and not the universe are not the same. “Universal” logic cant apply to outside the universe by definitionReply
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Perry says:February 3, 2010 at 8:26 pmWhich specific rules of logic do you think do not apply outside the universe? For example: If we draw a circle around all the matter in the cosmos and say that there is no matter outside that circle, are you saying that’s not a true statement?Reply
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starbucks says:February 14, 2010 at 4:10 amDear Perry, Thank you for the interesting read on Goedel. May I refer a small comment to your statement: “In 1931 this young Austrian mathematician, Kurt Godel, published a paper that once and for all PROVED that a single Theory Of Everything is actually impossible.” To my understanding Goedels incompleteness theorem can be stated in simple english as: A formal system of sufficient complexity is either or . I assume your above statement refers only to a contradiction-free systems, which is indeed incomplete according to Goedel. Am I correct? Well, my comment is the following: If you consider for a moment a contradictive system with the potential of completeness, would this not possibly allow the existence of a theory of everything? Of course such a theory would then include contradicitve statements… Here I do not want to think about such a contradictive system or discuss its usefullness. But refering to your above statement I would like to mention, that in my understanding of Goedel, there is the possibility of a single Theory Of Everything. Even so it would (according to Goedel) necessarily include contradictive statements. I might be missing a point or miss-understanding Goedel, but at least I do see this possibility of a contradictive theory. However I admit, that it might be never understandable by the human mind, because of its contradictions. Would be nice, if you could let me know your opinion on this comment. Thanks & Best regards, StarbucksReply
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Perry says:February 16, 2010 at 2:57 pmGödel is saying that if a system is complete, it is inherently contradictory. “This sentence is false” is a perfect example of a complete system that is contradictory. So yes a theory of everything is possible as long as it’s irrational. This is just an interesting way of saying that if we accept that the universe is irrational, then atheism might in fact be true. Atheism can only be true if the universe is irrational. Which is a very interesting conclusion, because the usual atheist argument is that religion is irrational and atheism is rational. Nobody prattles on and on about the superiority of their “reason and logic” more than atheists. Yes, if you are willing to be irrational then you can embrace atheism.Reply
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Starbucks says:February 19, 2010 at 3:24 amDear Perry, Thanks for your kind answer! I agree with you, I was just curious about the possibility of an *upside down* approach on Goedel theorem using a contradictory system that gains completeness. Best, StarbucksReply
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Matt says:February 17, 2010 at 3:45 amSo this is still sending me reminders… which is sort of useful; I’d forgotten about it. I wanted to jump back into the fray to say that you appear, once again, to be conflating the universe with our model of the universe. Let’s say I accept your premises (you know I don’t, but for the sake of argument) then the conclusion is that if we came up with a Grand Unified Theory, that described all the behaviour of the universe (was complete), then it would also be possible to derive a contradiction from that model, i.e. model a situation where our one model can be used to predict two (or more) mutually exclusive events. That is very much like self-referential statements like “This statement is false”, which tells you that the statement is both false and true at the same time depending on whether you take it at face value or think it through some more, and many other “paradoxes” where you look at it one way to get one result and then think through another line of logic to get a different, contradictory result. The difference with a model of the universe is that we can go and determine by experiment which of the contradictory results is the right one. The model may have included a contradiction as an artifact of being made complete, but we still have an external reference to go to – empirical observation of what really happens. I think I’m beginning to see that this is a little like the Cosmological Argument, dressed up for a new era in some slightly dodgy application of mathematics. If you’d allow me to paraphrase; “All systems must have something external to themselves, and an infinite regress of systems is impossible, therefore there must be a super-system with no external factors, and this all men call god” It’s a nice variation on the old ‘first cause’ or ‘unmoved mover’ arguments, but with the one tiny flaw that the universe is not a system of logical propositions. Godel said nothing about physical systems, and there’s nothing to stop a physical system (such as a universe) being self contained. Now I’ve been writing too long and made myself miss breakfast… must be off.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2010 at 8:32 amMatt, As I have said to others, you are welcome to reject the idea that Gödel’s theorem applies to physical things. You are free to say the universe is not a system of logical propositions if you wish. The only problem is, you kick the legs out from under science itself when you do that. Because science assumes the universe is rational and mathematical and logical. If E really equals MC2 and if F really equals MA then Gödel applies to the universe and the universe is incomplete. And yes, you’re right, there’s that tired old old prime mover argument again. Reason and logic are troublesome things, aren’t they? Whether you approach the question from a physical cause and effect perspective, or an information theory perspective, or from a philosophical perspective of regression of causes, or via moral argument, or from a mathematical perspective, you keep running into the implication of an intelligent First Cause. If atheism is true, then the universe has to be irrational and illogical. You can choose to believe that if you want. But don’t accuse Christians of being illogical. This thread has been going for months and nobody’s shown any flaw in my logic. I choose reason and logic. They lead me to God and I accept that. I likewise invite you to follow the evidence wherever it leads.Reply
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Hadi Al-Qahtani says:March 2, 2010 at 3:19 amYour logic is very close to flawless. I very much liked this article, and honestly, impressed. However, I do have an issue. I haven’t checked on the formal proof of the theorem yet, but I’ll take your word for it. You have an unwarranted assumption in your argument. You assumed that whatever is outside the universe is boundless, and that is the assumption. If the universe is explained by something outside of itself, then that thing is also explained by something outside of itself, and this process would never stop, and we have an infinite amount of causes, and not one single cause. You have no clue or proof that suggests that we should assume whatever caused the universe cannot have a circle drawn around it. If the universe is any clue, circles will be drawn infinitely. Maybe the universe is part of a finite multi-verse that is part of a multi-multi-verse ad infinitum. In summary: You proved that every ring of the chain needs a ring ahead of it, but then you assumed the chain we’re connected to is infinite, which is in no way a given. Looking at the ring we are, I say it is more likely that this chain is simply infinitely long, with finite rings.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2010 at 1:03 pmA process of cause and effect that never stops is called “infinite regression” and is almost universally rejected by philosophers. Look up “infinite regression” on Wikipedia for clarification and why that is not logical or acceptable. An ad infinitum scenario is not rational. If universe(s) are infinite, we have no evidence of them. Everything we know about cosmology says the universe is finite. And if the universe or even a past series of universes are finite, then they are incomplete and require a transcendent cause.Reply
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Ben says:March 2, 2010 at 2:37 pmPerry, Having done a rather extensive amount of research on the subject and having discussed the matter both with mathematicians and philosophers, the concensus is that you’ve extrapolated to beyond what Godel was doing in the first place. His First Incompleteness Theorem stated “Any adequate axiomatizable theory is incomplete. In particular, the sentence ‘This sentence is not provable.’ is true but not provable in the theory. What he discovered and formalized was – For any sentence s, (1) is in PROVABLE iff s is provable. Since the set of axioms is computably generable, so is the set of proofs which use these axioms and so is the set of provable theorems and hence so is PROVABLE, the set of encodings of provable theorems. Since computable implies definable in adequate theories, PROVABLE is definable. Let s be the sentece “This sentence is unprovable”. By Tarski (Undefinability of Truth Theroem), s exists since it is the solution of: (2) s iff is not in PROVABLE Thus (3) s iff is not in PROVABLE iff s is not provable. Now s is either true or false. If s is false, then by (3), s is provable This is impossible since provable sentences are true. Thus s is true. Thus by (3), s is not provable. Hence s is true but unprovable. Godel discovered that the sentence “This sentence is unprovable” was provably equivalent to the sentence: CON: “There is no with both and in PROVABLE”. CON is the formal statement that the system is consistent. Since s was not provable, and since s and CON are equivalent, CON is not provable. Thus — Godel’s SECOND Incompleteness Theorem: In any consistent axiomatizable theory (axiomatizable means the axioms can be computably generated) which can encode sequences of numbers (and thus the syntactic notions of “formula”, “sentence”, “proof”) the consistency of the system is not provable in the system. The theories of real numbers, of complex numbers, and of Euclidean geometry do have complete axiomatizations. Hence THESE THEORIES HAVE NO TRUE BUT UNPROVABLE SENTENCES. The reason they escape the conclusion of the first incompleteness theorm is their inadequacy, they can’t encode and computably deal with finite sequences. So… it’s a mischaracterisation AT BEST to try to use Godel’s theorem to extropolate the existence of god because, if math and science is correct, which we have every reason to believe, our universe HAS NO TRUE BUT UNPROVABLE FACTS. The notion of science is that at some point, everything is explicable. And scene.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 5:13 pmThe problem with your argument is your final statement: “The notion of science is that at some point, everything is explicable.” Gödel shows that if it is explicable (consistent) then it is necessarily incomplete. Science itself is incomplete. It cannot explain itself. Historically, science came from the theological proposition that the universe operated according to fixed, discoverable laws. Believe in God was necessary for science to even get off the ground. More at: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/#christianReply
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Ben says:March 15, 2010 at 2:47 pmPerry, You could take away the final statement and you’re still left with the one before it as a problem with your argument: “…if math and science is correct, which we have every reason to believe, our universe HAS NO TRUE BUT UNPROVABLE FACTS.” Science is based on the assumption that the universe is complete in and of itself. Similar to the way Euclidean Geometry, real numbers and complex numbers are not subject to Godel’s Theorem; if the universe is a complete system, it too is beyond the scope of Godel’s theorem. Godel’s theorem deals with the paradox inherent in an incomplete system. It doesn’t deal with labelling complete systems incomplete and then ipso facto, there’s something outside the system.Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 2:54 pmBen, Science does not assume that the universe is complete in and of itself. In fact science makes all kinds of unprovable assumptions, such as the assumption that the universe is logical. You cannot truly prove that, you can only demonstrate that it’s a workable hypothesis. And I’m sorry but you’re mistaken, Euclidean Geometry, real and complex numbers ARE subject to Gödel’s theorem. That’s the whole point of the theorem. That every system of mathematics is incomplete. Syllogism: 1. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem applies to all logical systems. 2.The universe is logical 3. Therefore the universe is incomplete.Reply
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Ben says:March 15, 2010 at 3:04 pmGodel himself postulated that his theorem did not apply to Real and Complex number systems as they contained no paradoxical statements. Are you suggesting that you have a better understanding of his theorem than he himself did? In addition, science DOES assume that the universe is a complete system. It also assumes that the universe is describable. Science is based on all sorts of assumptions. Fortunately, SCIENCE ITSELF is an INCOMPLETE SYSTEM that depends on THE UNIVERSE for completeness.
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 5:52 pmI need you to quote Gödel’s exact statement regarding real and complex number systems. If the universe is logical, then the universe also is incomplete.
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Arthur says:March 16, 2010 at 12:27 pmBen is right, Perry. Read “Gödel, Escher, Bach,” by Douglas Hofstadter for more on why real and complex number systems are not caught by Gödel’s Theorem. Gödel’s Theorem only deals with formulae derived from axiomatic systems of numbers. Basic addition cannot derive formulae. It is a complete system that can be proved in its entirety asin: You first define the symbols – In this case, they are the numerals 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and the two symbols + and =. Next we need to define our rules. In the case of addition, the rules are as follows: •All the basic results of adding two single-digit numbers together. e.g. 0+0=0, 0+1=1, …, 1+2=3, … 9+9=18. In other words, the basic addition table. •The rules of how to add together multi-digit numbers using the above rules. i.e. You start at the right-most digits, add those, determine if you need to carry a digit, etc. An important feature of this theory of addition is that you can then use the system to prove any statement of addition. “Prove” in this context has a very precise meaning. It means that you can take a statement written in symbols, like 79+3=82, and generate that sequence of symbols using nothing but the explicitly defined rules of the theory. How does one generate this sequence of symbols? The simplest method is to start with the numbers before the equals sign (79 and 3) and add them using our rules. That produces 82, and we know we can write the resulting sum as 79+3=82. That proves (using the rules of our theory) that the statement is correct. The important thing to note is that we are doing all of this merely by manipulation of symbols. We don’t have to think about, understand, or even know that there exist semantic meanings for these symbols. We don’t need to know that “79” can mean a number of objects. In other words, we could teach this sort of addition to someone without explaining to them that the symbol “3” means “three”. We can instruct a computer to do addition like this without the computer having any understanding of what it means to have three objects. All the computer is doing is manipulating a bunch of arbitrary symbols based upon a set of well-defined rules. If you set up a formal theory of mathematics correctly, you should be able to prove any true statement, and be unable to prove any false statement. This is true of our simple theory of addition. In fact, we can prove every true statement about the addition of two non-negative integers with nothing more than what I have described so far. To do this, perform the following steps: 1.Start with two numbers 0 and 0; remember these. Work out the addition of these two numbers according to the rules of addition, and write the result (in this case: 0+0=0). 2.If the two numbers we are remembering are equal, add 1 to the second number. But if the two numbers are unequal then check the second number: If it is not 0, increase the first number by 1 and decrease the second by 1. But if the second number is 0, set it equal to the first number plus 1, and set the first number back to 0. 3.Work out: (first number)+(second number) and add that to our list of results. 4.Return to step 2. This procedure works out the following sums in this order: 0+0, 0+1, 1+0, 0+2, 1+1, 2+0, 0+3, 1+2, 2+1, 3+0, 0+4, … Now, no matter what true statement of addition we can think of, say 75843+87249=163092, this procedure will eventually produce a proof that it is true. It may take a long time, but it will eventually get there. This is what the “computably enumerable” bit of Gödel’s theorem means: there is some procedure by which we can (eventually) generate any possible proof in the theory. For complete systems, Gödel’s Theorem does not apply. There are no contradictory statements. Not to mention this little bit of information: You said that philosophers reject the notion of infinite regression. I accept that. Philosophers also rejected the idea that Gödel’s theorem could apply even to the human MIND, much less the entire universe. So you extrapolated well beyond what philosophy and math had to say and you’ve made your own (inaccurate) syllogism. That’s fine. You’re welcome to your beliefs. Please just understand that your arguments are fatally flawed.
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Perry says:March 18, 2010 at 9:48 pmI’m not sure why you or Ben assert that Gödel’s relation to real or imaginary numbers then implies that the universe is not subject to incompleteness. You said, “Basic addition cannot derive formulae.” Science asserts that the universe operates according to a whole range of formulae. Gödel says, all formulae rely on axioms that cannot be proven within themselves. So I’m not seeing how you’ve escaped incompleteness. As for the mind, Alan Turing believed that the human mind was a Turing Machine and thus human brains are simply performing computation. Turing believed that free will is an illusion. Gödel believed that free will is real, that intuition and human thought is something beyond mere computation. Gödel also believed in God and he believed that human beings are spiritual creatures. As I understand, he starved himself to death to prove that he had free will that was not determined by the physics and chemistry of his body. I’m not aware that any philosopher has definitively proven one or the other to be right. So far as I can see it’s an unsettled question. It seems to me that this issue brings us right back to the age old mind/body problem in philosophy, and the question of free will vs. determinism. What do you think? Do you believe that you are a conscious volitional agent who truly has the ability to freely choose? Or do you believe that your own actions and beliefs are determined by a mechanical process?
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Arthur says:March 18, 2010 at 10:37 pm“I’m not sure why you or Ben assert that Gödel’s relation to real or imaginary numbers then implies that the universe is not subject to incompleteness.” Because you said that Gödel’s Theorem applies to all logical systems. Addition is logical. Gödel’s Theorem does not apply to addition. Therefore Gödel’s Theorem does NOT apply to all logical systems. QED “You said, “Basic addition cannot derive formulae.” Science asserts that the universe operates according to a whole range of formulae.” No. Science postulates formulae to explain the operation of the universe. The universe does not operate according to our formulae. Also, and more importantly, the UNIVERSE did not derive the formulae. We did. “Gödel says, all formulae rely on axioms that cannot be proven within themselves. So I’m not seeing how you’ve escaped incompleteness.” Gödel never said any such thing. He said, “When using an axiomatic system to derive formulae, it is possible to derive a formula within the system that is not provable using the system therefore the system is incomplete.” Again, we don’t use the universe to derive formulae. We use science to derive forumlae about the universe. “As for the mind, Alan Turing believed that the human mind was a Turing Machine and thus human brains are simply performing computation. Turing believed that free will is an illusion.” Yes, and many philosophers disagreed with him. “Gödel believed that free will is real, that intuition and human thought is something beyond mere computation. Gödel also believed in God and he believed that human beings are spiritual creatures. As I understand, he starved himself to death to prove that he had free will that was not determined by the physics and chemistry of his body.” All true, but you neglect to mention that Gödel didn’t use his theorem as an argument for God because he knew it did not prove the existence of God. Gödel instead built on the work of Descartes and Leibniz and tried to craft an ontological argument for the existence of God. “I’m not aware that any philosopher has definitively proven one or the other to be right. So far as I can see it’s an unsettled question.” Certainly. In fact, many things that are commonly accepted are frequently debated by philosophers. However, many many philosophers have rejected the notion that Gödel’s Theorem applies to the human mind simply BECAUSE of free will. Free will isn’t necessarily a consistent, axiomatic system, is their straightforward argument. “What do you think? Do you believe that you are a conscious volitional agent who truly has the ability to freely choose? Or do you believe that your own actions and beliefs are determined by a mechanical process?” This is a kind of straw man as it is so far removed from what we were discussing, but I was never one to shy away from answering. I believe in a combination of the two, of course. We make choices, certainly. But I also believe in chemical addiction, and chemical imbalance which skews our ability to make decisions and sometimes even prevents us entirely from executing free will.Reply
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Perry says:March 22, 2010 at 6:25 amArthur, I have a lot of thoughts about this. But first I would like you and/or Ben to reference exactly what Gödel said in regards to real and imaginary number systems being both consistent and complete at the same time, and exactly what Hofstadter said. Computable systems are deterministic. Free will is not computable, by definition not deterministic and not decideable in advance.
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Arthur says:March 22, 2010 at 8:49 amPerry, In “Gödel, Escher, Bach”, Hofstadter spends a number of pages discussing his arbitrary theory called “Typographical Number Theory” or TNT, “which is one attempt to represent all of math in an axiomatic way. I’m going to assume that TNT works–that is, assume that it really does encapsulate all of mathematics perfectly…And eventually, I’m going to be led to a contradiction.” He says, “…assumed that TNT is perfect, and proceeds from there to a paradox. In doing so, it crushes any system which makes similar claims of perfection.” He then spends the next several pages putting forth his system and discussing its incompleteness via Gödel. He addresses the sentence “Sentence G: This statement is not a theorem of TNT.” If sentence G is false, then it is a theorem of TNT. Then we have a valid theorem which is false, and the whole system falls apart. So it must be true. But if it is true, then it is not a theorem of TNT. Which means that “sentence G is true, but it is not provable within TNT. That is Gödel’s “incompleteness,” that TNT, although it may be perfectly consistent and always correct, cannot possibly prove EVERY true statement about number theory, there is always something which is true, which the system cannot prove. So we’re done! “Except that, as you may have noticed, this is totally ludicrous. After all, TNT makes statements about numbers, and sentence G is a statement about a statement (itself). So while writing a TNT-string for “100 is a power of 10? might be very difficult, it seems reasonable to grant that it’s possible; but translating sentence G into TNT seems about as likely as yodeling in sign language.” He then spends the next several pages doing just that, however. He expresses G in terms of the system itself in a computable way and discusses Gödel all the while. also, Read about Torkel Franzen and specifically his book “Gödel’s Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse” ISBN 1-56881-238-8 and also, http://www.ams.org/notices/200604/fea-franzen.pdf He spent most of his professional life speaking to common misconceptions or misapplication of Gödel’s Theorem.
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Perry says:March 25, 2010 at 10:07 pmArthur, If your point or Ben’s point is to demonstrate that there is such a thing as a system that is both consistent and complete, I cannot discern that either one of you has successfully done so. When I get to the end of GEB’s chapter on TNT, he circles back to the conclusion that “Any system that is strong enough to prove TNT’s consistency is at least as strong as TNT itself.” Which is just another way of saying that to prove what’s inside the circle, you need something from a bigger circle. Where I differ with Hofstadter is where he concludes on p. 230 “and so circularity is inevitable.” That is a misrepresentation of what Gödel says and of the progression of his own chapter on TNT. Logic is not a huge set of circular propositions. It’s a progression of inductions that ultimately rest on axioms that are known to be true but are not provable.
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Chris says:March 2, 2010 at 5:43 pmI think a significant problem with this discussion so far has been an ambiguity with the language used, which has meant a bit of back and forth with no real change in the arguments. There have also been some misunderstandings of Gödel’s theorem, which is understandable, as unless you have studied mathematics, analogies tend to obscure the strict meaning of it. Firstly we can agree that a non self-referential statement is either exactly true, or not exactly true. Secondly Gödel’s theorem refers to a set of statements, split into two groups, those we label “axioms”, and statements derived from those. The theorem essentially states that if the “axioms”, which are the statements we assume to be true, are true, then there are also other true statements that cannot be derived from those axioms, and that those axioms cannot be proven to be true without the addition of a new axiom. The corollary is that if a proof of the truth of the axioms is derived from the axioms, then the axioms are not true (in their entirety). I’m going to use a bit of an analogy for this next part, if you can forgive me for that, as I personally find analogies highly dubious. In mathematics sequences of numbers can be of particular interest, and these can be generated through formulae, or can exist independent of any formulae. Now what is particularly interesting is that for any finite sequence there are an infinite number of different formulae that can generate the same sequence, so when attempting to find the formula for generating a sequence you may have found one that matches all available data, yet not be the correct one. I guess that wasn’t particularly an analogy so much as a cut-down version of universal laws, however that is not the point I am aiming to make. Within this analogy the universe is the sequence of numbers, the formulae which determines it’s behaviour are the laws of the universe, and our estimation of the formulae are our current laws of physics. Now the point that Matt was making, and perhaps you misunderstood, is that the sequence of numbers, and the formulae are different things, he was not arguing that Gödel’s theorem did not apply, merely reminding you that it only applies to sets of statements i.e. the formulae, not the sequence, the laws of the universe, not the universe itself. He is not arguing against logic, merely stating that you have applied it in the incorrect place. Now as it happens I am an atheist, I believe that there is no God, however I am not so presumptuous as to claim it as a certainty, indeed I do not believe it is possible to know whether or not there is a God. I am merely arguing that this particular path of logic is invalid. With regards to causality, it can be broken down fairly simply, either everything requires a cause, in which case a being without cause does not exist by definition(granted this does not forbid a being with a cause which created the universe from existing), or not everything requires a cause, in which case the universe does not demand the existence of a God without cause(although one is possible). With regards as to codes, we really need to clarify what you exactly mean here in your argument, as if you define a code to be a message intended to send information, then all codes are the work of sentient minds merely by definition.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 5:24 pmGödel’s theorem is about systems of logic. I cannot prove that the universe is a logical system. However, the assumption that it is is the cornerstone of modern science. If the universe is logical then it is also incomplete. I define communication systems per Claude Shannon’s 1948 paper “A mathematical theory of communication” which applies to things like telegraphs, CD players, computers, cell phones, etc. All communication systems we know the origin of are designed. No known exceptions.Reply
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Bob says:March 2, 2010 at 6:22 pmSorry but ‘god’ must also have something ‘outside its circle’ Godel proved that you cannot have a god which explains himself. Atheism also says that. NOTHING can understand it all. God CANNOT exist.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 1:50 pmBob, If NOTHING can understand it all, how is it that you can then say “God CANNOT” exist? As for your first statement, you don’t appear to have followed the logic of my argument. You need to substantiate your statements with logic.Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 7:27 pmI think what Bob is trying to say is that, according to the incompleteness theorem, there is always a bigger circle, and a god cannot be totally on the outside of the system, there would have to be something outside that circle to explain god. Similarly, one cannot know everything, because that would put him outside the system, he can explain the whole system’s existence. That wouldn’t disprove a conscious entity being outside the universe, but that would indicate that he is not all-knowing or omniscient.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 8:10 pmBob didn’t read any of the 12 times I already addressed that objection.Reply
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Brandon says:March 3, 2010 at 2:57 amYea, so I have no problem with your logic in saying that “god” exists, but I do have a problem with the assumption that this god is the christian god. Every logical proof of “god” simply defines god as something undefinable. That does not, in any way, mean that the christian god is the god that created the universe. Religion is made up to answer unanswerable questions (or at least unanswerable at the time of its inception) and as a means of social control, and to give hope, and meaning and blah blah blah. Also, almost every response you’ve made to people goes along the lines of, “If you think that, you obviously reject science and are an idiot.” Not very classy…. But, yeah, christians are illogical for saying the god of the bible is the god that started the universe. The only conclusion you can come to is that something must have started the universe, assuming Goedels theorem applies (which, as has been stated, really doesn’t apply to the universe, go ahead and tel me I’m an idiot for saying that, it’s fine). Also, I would like to question, what is the significance of all of this? Does if affect anybody in anyway? I really don’t think it does. I’m just bored and want to get into this heated discussion, heh. I’m sorry for my choppy/poorly thought out comment. ADD is not my friend this night.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 1:49 pmLook out your front door. Turn on your TV. Look at this discussion thread. I invite you to answer your own question: Does the truth about God – do claims about God – affect anybody?Reply
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Matt says:March 4, 2010 at 6:05 pmStill getting those email reminders every so often… odd that they don’t seem to come through for all the replies, but then I suddenly get 10 at once. Oh well. Wanted to reply to this specifically: “Does the truth about God – do claims about God – affect anybody?” If god existed and had a measurable effect on the physical universe, it would bring it under the purview of science – god would be like the force of gravity; observable, measurable, predictable. Maybe not so predictable as gravity, but we could reason about the effects of god on the universe. Funny thing is, we haven’t observed any supernatural effects on the universe; nothing that can’t be reduced down to naturalistic physical principles. So in a very real sense, the existence or not of god has no effect. If god does exist, he’s not doing anything with any noticeable effect, so why care? We tend not to believe in the existence of things with no observable effects though; that’s the only way to keep obvious absurdities like invisible goblins and Russel’s teapot out of our belief system. Another sidenote; your website remembers my name and email perfectly, but seems to have complete amnesia on the question of whether I want your “free mini-course” delivered to my email. It’s the strangest thing, almost as if you’re hoping repeat-commenters will eventually forget to untick the box and inadvertently sign up for your mailing. But of course you wouldn’t do a sleazy thing like that, so I’m sure it’s just a bug in the server.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 7:56 pmMatt, We have observed supernatural effects in the universe. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq for a discussion on the lower half of the page. In any large public library you will find an entire section on documented cases of miracles. Just because they’re politically incorrect doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I describe my own personal experiences at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles Reason concerning the effects of God on the universe is a field known in academia as theology. I invite you to set aside the pejorative attitude and follow the evidence where it leads.Reply
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Ben says:March 3, 2010 at 9:37 amInteresting article, but Matt did a very effective job of demonstrating that the universe is a physical, actual system, not reliant upon abstract axioms to prove its existence. Sorry, but Matt is very clearly better informed on this issue. The language of the article oversimplifies the theorem so as to allow the author’s worldview to seem better justified. The comments made a nice read, though.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 1:46 pmBen, I have two questions for you: 1. Is the universe logical? 2. Can you name any law of physics that is not expressed as mathematical or logical statement?Reply
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Bizzare says:March 3, 2010 at 10:22 amI haven’t read all the replies above so I am probably repeating some people but below are the flaws or premises that I disagree with in your argument. 1) You define God as what is outside the largest circle. As the number of circles is infinite it is meaningless to talk about the largest circle. Gödel’s theorem suggests that all things depend on something else, if a god exists and is subject to our laws of mathematics then it is no exception, therefore by use of modus tollens if a god is subject to our mathematics then it must be dependent on something else to exist. The existence of a god is not necessary to explain how something can be true despite depending on an infinite chain of assumptions. It is clearly wrong to say that because each natural number requires you to assume that there exists a larger natural number that there must be a god that is larger than the largest natural number. The natural numbers and, if Gödel’s theorem is true, the ever increasing circles that depend upon things they do not contain are infinite 2) All codes must come from a conscious being. You are using a double meaning of the word code, its normal meaning is a message from one conscious being to another that has be altered to make it difficult for those who are not its intended reader to understand. DNA is referred to as a code because it contains information that is difficult to understand, the same could be said of many things that do not originate from a conscious being, pulsars (rotating neutron stars) are a simple example, we receive from them a brief burst of radiation which we can decode to gain information about the star. 3) A being can be conscious, boundless and without cause. To me conscious seems to cause problems when combined with the following properties; if something is conscious then it is aware of itself, if it is boundless then there is an infinite amount of itself that it has to be aware of, information from its farthest edges would have to travel with infinite speed to cover an infinite distance in finite time. If it is without cause then it must have existed forever, over an infinite quantity of time a conscious being would go through an infinite amount of thoughts and would end up unable to think anything new and robotically repeat through previous states, this is not a contradiction but is probably not how most would think of a god. The same problem occurs with an omniscient god as if truly omniscient it would know in advance what it was going to think and do and at the correct time would think and perform those actions like a robot. 4) In what little of the comments you mention the Holy Trinity so I shall assume you are referring to the Christian God. This is where your argument really falls to pieces, you go from trying to prove the existence of a potential creator to the existence of three very specific Gods. There is nothing in your debate on Gödel that applies to the Christian Gods and could not apply to Ra the ancient Egyptian Sun God or to the thousands of gods that humanity has worshiped throughout history, or to any of the millions that I could invent, name and create a back-story for right now. Assuming that all other points I have made are false and your argument is sound you have still proved nothing other than a vague conscious being outside our universe that somehow proves some things in our universe to be true. Finally I would like to thank you for the excellent quality of the first part of you argument, it is one of the best explanations of Gödel’s theorem I have ever read, I apologize for the length of this piece but may add more if I think of anything else.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 1:39 pm1. There is not an infinite number of circles, because the universe is finite. 2. I am using the exact same definition of code for biology as I am for computers etc etc. This is explained in extensive detail at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/information-theory-made-simple/ and elsewhere on my site. Pulsars are not digital commuication systems. 3. You are defining an infinite being in terms of space but I clearly explained that God is outside of space and time and I explained the logic behind this with care in the article. Got is not matter, not energy, not space, not time. Information does not travel from one end of God to another in packets. Please go back and read my statements with care. Your statements about infinite amounts of thoughts are self contradictory since any infinite sequence by definition never repeats itself. 4. The Trinity does not say there are three specific Gods. Please do not misquote me, and if you wish to critique the theology of the trinity then please avail yourself of theologians who have written about it such as Augustine, Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards etc. Or read exactly what I have written: That God is ONE and is in complete unity has three aspects: Self intent, expression of intent, and understanding of self.Reply
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Andrés says:March 4, 2010 at 2:08 pmBizzare: 1- Assume the whole universe is just: The concept of the number 1. The concept of the number 2. The concept of sum. We can draw a circle around the whole universe and safely say that 1+1=2 without the need for external reference. 2-I think not. You’re assuming that, using the same logic the article points as flawed (inductive reasoning). It reads “you cannot PROVE gravity will always be consistent at all times. You can only observe that it’s consistently true every time”, and while this logic can be used to reach some truth it can also lead to fallacies. It isn’t as safe to assume that all codes come from a conscious being as saying that gravity makes things fall. 3- You’re just trying to say god exists 4- You’re trying to hide the fact from #3.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 5:20 pm1. If you say 1+1=2 you reference numbers and symbols which are outside the universe you just defined. In your own description you are standing outside of the universe. The whole thing still depends on you. 2. Show me a naturally occurring code. Just one.Reply
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Quinn says:March 4, 2010 at 8:50 amThe “unknown” agent outside the circle always somehow seems to point to one’s favorite religion or metaphysics (the immaterial vs. material). The true incompleteness perhaps lies in the symbolic, linear conceptions human understanding is stuck with. This theorem FALSIFIES it does not give positive verification to speculations or personal convictions. It is much too easy and sloppy to interpret the limits of understanding as reflected by our greatest proofs as an excuse for thought termination and to fill in the cosmology of the unknown and unreachable with all too human answers. As for “code” the human mind has a tendency to see patterns everywhere, even in vacuum energy. Using this as proof of supernatural intelligence (since these things are everywhere in the universe) violates the very theorem you are misusing (the circle would prove itself). Intelligence is itself recognized through quite finite and definable parameters that are always experienced well within the circle. If human intelligence and the tragic world of crude matter and its pointless replication and destruction are really some positive indication of what lies beyond, a perfect God would have to be exchanged for a perfect monster, which would have to “inductively determine” from the very cruelty of nature. A cruelty, by the way, which intelligence only seems to make MORE insanely devious, not less. God should do us a favor therefore, to remain an Impersonality.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 1:44 pmCodes are not a subjective impression on the human mind, they objectively exist. DNA is decoded by the ribosomes whether we see it and acknowledge it and describe it or not. I suppose various people have tried to tell you that God is some kind of cosmic teddy bear, but you surely did not get that from me. Indeed, surely if nature tells you anything, it tells you that God can be wild and ferocious. If nature tells you anything about God, it also tells you that God can be soft, tender and beautiful. Open your eyes, look around you, and see. And as you do so, do not neglect to distinguish the difference between what God has created and what man has destroyed. I would invite you to open yourself to understanding God as God really is, and follow the evidence where it leads.Reply
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Matt says:March 4, 2010 at 6:21 pm“Codes are not a subjective impression on the human mind, they objectively exist. DNA is decoded by the ribosomes whether we see it and acknowledge it and describe it or not.” Their physical reality is precisely why describing the process as a code is flawed. Take a symbolic system like writing, we take information from our thoughts and ideas and encode it into letters, words, sentences, all according to the rules of our language. None of these odd little squiggles on paper or a screen make any objective sense, the information can only be retrieved by conscious understanding of the symbols and the language. DNA is different; the chemical properties of the molecule are what allow a ribosome to take a string of DNA as a template for building a protein. The base pairs quite naturally have some affinity for each other, and amongst the millions of chance collisions between molecules in cell chemistry that lets the ribosome find the right strand of tRNA to pull an amino acid from to build a protein. I’m not a molecular chemist, so I don’t know every detail… but if I remember rightly I think the ‘affinity’ stems from the shape of the amino acid being conducive to the formation of hydrogen bonding. It’s not too horribly complicated but it’s been a long while since I’ve had cause to think about it. The important part is that it all happens chemically; the ribosome isn’t required to understand what it’s doing, it isn’t “decoding” the DNA in any real sense – it’s just a protein that reacts with DNA and RNA molecules in such a way that some other protein is formed. The defining difference is that our symbolic codes have no objective relation to the information they represent. Nothing really links the letter A to an “ah” sound, or any of our words to their meanings, except for our minds and the associations they store as language. With the genetic ‘code’ the DNA molecule and the protein synthesised are related by deterministic chemistry. You could decide to redefine a word, you couldn’t redefine a DNA sequence.Reply
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Perry says:March 4, 2010 at 7:52 pmGGG is not Glycine, it is instructions for making Glycine. AAA is not Lycine, it is instructions for making Lycine. DNA has start bits, stop bits, error correction mechanisms, pointers, objects. CD players don’t “understand” what they’re decoding either but they decode just the same. If you want to debate this, you may do so on the Cosmic Fingerprints website. But you will need to do your research first – this ground has been thoroughly covered on my website for 4+ years now. See http://cosmicfingerprints.com/dnanotcode.htm, http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq. These definitions have been universal for 50 years. In short, you will get nowhere with this argument. DNA is just as much a coding system as your hard drive. In fact the list of similarities is long indeed.Reply
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Legion says:March 4, 2010 at 1:01 pmPerry, We think your main misinterpretation is that you believe Gödel’s theorem applies to the physical universe. You say, basically, that Godel’s theorem applies to science because science is made of logic. Therefore, science is either incomplete or inconsistent. We agree. But because humanity can change what it believes, science adapts to evidence to remain consistent. This leaves only the possibility that science is incomplete. We think you will agree with this. But you then say that Godel’s theorem applies to the Universe and/or Multiverse, because it can be described by science. Wait, didn’t We just say that science is incomplete? That would mean that science does not fully describe the Universe/Multiverse, and therefore is in some way wrong. So Godel’s theorem cannot apply to the universe, because we do not actually know it is a system. Even if we did, we would not know it’s limits. Additionally, Godel’s theory could be applied to itself if we use your ‘put something in a circle’ interpretation, which is wrong anyway. If we did this, it would prove itself wrong, meaning you entire argument is, in fact, invalid.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 5:17 pmYou need to pick an argument and stick with it. Gödel’s theorem does not prove itself wrong because his theorem is also based on axioms. For example the assumption that peano arithmetic is valid. He wrote his original proof in peano arithmetic. You’re right, science is also incomplete. No matter how much we know about science, if it is consistent it will require something outside of itself to verify its truth. There we go again – eventually we need Something that is outside the universe. Science ASSUMES that the universe is logical. It cannot prove this. If the universe is logical, it is incomplete.Reply
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Legion says:March 26, 2010 at 7:01 pmYou misunderstand. Science does not assume. If science were to say that an object will fall, due to gravity, at roughly 9.81 meters per second, minus the effect of friction from the air, there are no assumptions. Literally countless examples of evidence are available, and on the off chance that an object were to behave in a different way than expected, the scientific ‘laws’ we currently accept would adapt to include that to remain as accurate as possible. The thing that science depends upon is the Universe. Also, if the Universe is an axiomatic system that depends on a ‘god’ figure to have created it, the god would need a cause. Now, We know you will argue with this. But consider: If your ‘god’ created the universe, something must have happened to spur that action. And something must have spurred that, leading to an endless loop of logic. If we discard the endless loop, we come to the conclusion that your god is unchanging, having nothing to change it. An unchanging entity would not do anything other than what it is already doing, because it cannot change from that pattern. So the universe must have a cause, or not exist.Reply
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Perry says:March 27, 2010 at 8:59 amFrom Dictionary.Reference.com: in·fer·ence (?n’f?r-?ns) n. 1. The act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. (emphasis mine) Science INFERS that all objects on earth fall at 9.81 meters per second. Science infers that the law of gravity is the same everywhere in the universe. Science infers that the law of gravity was the same 1 million years ago and will be the same next year as it is now. An inference is indeed an ASSUMPTION that the specific can be applied to the general. You cannot deductively prove these things about gravity. You can only assume (HYPOTHESIZE), then do an experiment that confirms the hypothesis. A successful experiment is not a formal deductive proof. It is a confirmation of our own prior assumptions and a validation of inference as a way of knowing things. In this case, “knowing” is always provisional, because, as you say, if an object were to behave in a different way than expected, the scientific ‘laws’ we currently accept would adapt to include that to remain as accurate as possible. You are correct in putting the word ‘laws’ in quotations. Science is always provisional. You are assuming (there’s that word again) that because God’s nature is unchanging, that therefore nothing in God’s universe can change and that God cannot cause anything. That is a non-sequitur. You are conflating God’s nature with God’s actions. Let’s trace the logic: 1. The universe must have a cause, or not exist – that much is true. 2. The universe cannot be the result of an infinite regression of causes because that’s irrational. Also true. 3. Therefore there is a first cause, which is without prior cause. That is also a logical necessity. 4. Therefore the first cause caused all subsequent effects. 5. Therefore the first cause is capable of causing things outside of itself.Reply
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Legion says:March 27, 2010 at 6:50 pmClearly, you have thought this through for more time and in more depth than We have. So, We will close with this statement: We wish for you to remember that deductive reasoning is worthless without conclusive proof, just as experimentation is worthless without reason to support the conclusions. Furthermore, a lack of evidence for either argument is not eveidence supporting the other argument. In fact, We agree that there is a god, We merely wish to be clear that all we can do is speculate. There is no proof in this debate, and so none of Us can ever truly be ‘correct’.
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Andrés says:March 4, 2010 at 1:40 pmIf you draw the biggest circle around everything, you’re not leaving anything outside, you have from the explainable to the unexplainable inside, it doesn’t matter if it can be explained or not, everything is inside thus there will be no need for outside reference. What this theorem seems to do is first to expose some really good logic, it certainly is right in smaller scales and/or when using the adequate example (the bike for instance), once it has proved that this reasoning can work it proceeds to use the same statement with everything else, assuming that if it worked there it must always work. I have to admit I was agreeing with it, but the part about inductive reasoning clearly reveals a flaw. While it is true that inductive reasoning can lead to mistakes, it isn’t the case every time, because you can prove things, even if you start looking at the facts from the inner circle. Gravity being of those provable ideas. You also have to keep in mind that some things, when explained or researched upon, give more questions than answers, and this is another issue used to support this Incompleteness theorem, but it’s just a part of the search for an answer, and raising questions helps to nothing but to better understand everything, the more questions the closer to the truth we get. I believe this theorem can be both flawed and perfect depending on the circumstances. And that it suffers from the same misuse of general relativity Once I had a very fiery discussion with a friend who said that everything, from matter and energy to concepts are relative, to which I replied that concepts can be constant, as units like 1 meter, the concept of 1 meter can not be relative, maybe the tool used to measure differs, maybe it has shorter centimeters, but the concept will not change under any circumstances. Perhaps this is the case. I want to finish saying that I don’t reject the idea, humankind will probably never discover the secrets of everything (I’d bet to 42 tho), but I had to speak up because I think that some of the logic in the article is somewhat off.Reply
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graeme says:March 5, 2010 at 3:48 am“* Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect.” while this may be true, you can also always draw a circle around the CAUSE…therefore the cause cannot be outside the circle “* All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. * Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.” Oh, where to start? LOL 1) Information is a thing…maybe not in the physical sense, but it still exists, and is therefore IN the circle. 2)Just because all the codes THAT WE KNOW are the creations of conscious beings in no way shape or form implies that all codes must be such creation. It only suggests that there are codes that we are unfamiliar with. 3)once again, if someTHING exists outside of the circle to generate information, or anything else for that matter, logic would dictate that you could then draw a larger circle that would encompass that creator as well If you want to make a logical argument, it usually helps to actually USE logic and not just tiptoe around itReply
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Perry says:March 6, 2010 at 1:11 pmGraeme, You will need to read the other responses to other posts in this thread. Every issue you have brought up here has already been addressed.Reply
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Matt says:March 6, 2010 at 3:11 pmIn a loose sense of the world “address”. You’ve diligently responded to all my comments, but I’m not convinced you’ve really given a satisfactory answer. I and others have asked you to demonstrate that DNA really is a consciously designed code, without appeal to “all codes are consciously designed”, and “DNA certainly is a code” (I could accept either one of those, but not both at once, depending on whether you take ‘code’ to imply conscious design by definition or not) Fundamentally, you can’t assert something to be true of all codes, then use it as proof about a specific case; to make the general statement requires the proof of the specific case. And yet, your own “proof” of DNA being designed by a mind follows as: (1) DNA is a code (2) All codes we know the origin of are created by a conscious mind. (3) Therefore DNA was designed by a mind. Point 3 simply does not follow from points 1 and 2. You’re effectively trying to establish the origin of DNA _from_ now knowing the origin of DNA. If you have a way to demonstrate the conscious origins of what I hold to be a naturally occurring code (or a non-code if you really want to assume code to imply conscious origin) then I’d love to see it, but I’m still waiting. (And before you ask) my proposed origin for the system would be a very rudimentary genetic molecule, likely to be RNA, synthesised by prebiotic chemistry and having just barely enough complexity to get a copy of itself made. Once that foundation is in place, mutation and selection over vast spans of time could arrive at the much more efficient system we see now. Oh, and I may have made the mistake I’ve been hoping I wouldn’t and just clicked submit with the little box ticked. (If this is a duplicate comment via double-submission, please feel free to delete the first) No matter, a little gmail-fu will sort that one out.Reply
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Perry says:March 8, 2010 at 10:53 amNew codes are created all the time. Recent examples from the last 20 years include PDF, HTML, DLL, JPG, MOV, DOC, XLS. Each of these is distinctly different from the others, using in some cases radically different coding structures. All of the above are stored / transported on dozens of different kinds of media including CD-R, hard drives, laser light, voltage pulses etc. If the question is stated as: “Is there a natural chemical process that produces codes? Or do we have reason to believe there is some sort of Intelligence behind biology” then Point 3 naturally follows from points 1 & 2. In science this is called inference. Please support your proposed origin theory with an experiment. Preferably an experiment that is not designed. The ideal would be an example of biogenesis from some “warm pond” somewhere. Or show me ANY code created from scratch by any process other than design. All you need is one.Reply
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Mike says:March 14, 2010 at 2:51 am1) All known plates are designed by conscious minds. 2) The earth has tectonic plates. 3) The earth was designed by a conscious mind. This is what happens when you play fast and loose with semantics.Just because you’ve used the word “code” instead of plate people get all confused and mystified, but it amounts to the same thing. Now let’s see what happens when you abuse metaphors: 1) All known sandwiches are created with the intention of being eaten. 2) The solar system is sandwiched between other galactic formations. 3) Therefore the solar system (and the starry loaves in which it is nestled) is going to be eaten. Now let’s see what happens when you can’t tell the difference between a system (science, math, language, etc…) describing a thing and the thing itself (the universe). 1) “Apple” is a noun. 2) Nouns are found in the dictionary. 3) Next time you’re feeling hungry, open the dictionary up to Apple and chow down (with apologies to Gwyneth Paltrow). Now after seeing Matt’s point-by-point rebuttals of your arguments and your refusal (or inability) to understand the strength of his objections, I can’t assume this will have any effect on you (why, for instance, you are troubled by infinite regress but not by the idea of an immaterial god who sits outside of existence but still affects it and – what luck! – requires no cause, is a mystery on par with that of the big bang itself) But hopefully this is a simple explanation of just a few of the flaws in your reasoning for people who read your article and aren’t wearing god-blinders.Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 7:03 amThe word “code” is used in precisely the same way and with precisely the same meaning in both computer systems and biology. “Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005). See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/solve. All philosophers are troubled by infinite regress. An uncaused casue is not infinite regress. Which is exactly my point. At some point, one is required. Godel’s theorem shows why the universe cannot be its own uncaused cause. If you want to seriously take part in this discussion, you will need to apprise yourself of the definitions used and the details of the argument.Reply
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Mike says:March 15, 2010 at 8:41 amIt’s clear that it isn’t used the same way. The mere fact that human designed codes are self-evidently designed by humans and the genetic code isn’t is enough to show that. That there are resemblances does not make them the same. The fact that you are asserting that they are used in exactly the same way only serves to highlight your circular reasoning. “I can take quotes out of context and misapply them too.” – Me in a different conversation that had nothing to do with this. The fact that you would try to take Yockey and use his quotes to argue for intelligent design would be comical if it weren’t insulting. I won’t go into depth as to why it’s wrong here, because, thanks to the power and beauty of the internet, someone else has already done this for me. Here’s a teaser: “I’m told creationists have started citing this new book of his in defense of their own argument that God must have started life on earth. I’ve not seen this abuse myself, but it wouldn’t surprise me, and at any rate, forewarned is forearmed. If that’s their plan, Yockey throws a bucket of cold water on it.” — To find out why you’ll just have to read the article. Here’s the link – http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/11/yockey-on-biogenesis.html As for infinite regress and the uncaused cause, this is literally the kind of thing they do in intro to philosophy courses. I’m not going to reiterate the entire history of the cosmological argument and its objections, but you’re welcome to read a brief introduction to it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument#Objections_and_counterarguments I guess you think that by throwing Goedel in you can make an old dress new, but just like creationists attempt to rebrand themselves as “intelligent design,” it’s lipstick on a pig. Cute bit at the end there. If you want to seriously insult my intelligence while seeming dignified you’ll have to apprise yourself of more intelligently designed slams.Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 9:51 amMike, If you want to refute my argument about Godel, you will need to refute it line by line. Snide remarks about “lipstick on a pig” are no substitute for facts and logic. You will use 100% respectful language in your posts from this point forward or your posts will be deleted. Yockey on biogenesis: p. 176: “I have no doubt that if the historic process leading to the origin of life were knowable it would be a process of physics and chemistry. Thus the process of the origin of life is possible but unknowable.” “The reason that there are principles of biology that cannot be derived from the laws of physics and chemistry lies simply in the fact that the genetic information content of the genome for constructing even the simplest organisms is much larger than the information content of these laws” Yockey wrote this in his previous book (1992). “The existence of a genome and the genetic code divides living organisms from nonliving matter. There is nothing in the physico -chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.” Yockey states that the genetic code must be taken as axiomatic, much as we take Planck and Newton’s axioms, because it cannot be derived from the physics of chemistry.Reply
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Mike says:March 15, 2010 at 10:47 amPretty sure I’ve already addressed your use of Yockey as a pro-creationist source. I also think I’ve made it clear that I’m not trying to convince you personally of anything. The posts above already refuted your argument days before I even read it, the fact that you don’t see that speaks volumes. You have been refuted and you don’t see it, so you’ll forgive me if I choose not to waste my time any more than I already have. My commentary was hopefully just illustrative for anyone who didn’t see the plain flaws in logic. I don’t think I’ve said anything here or elsewhere to impugn you, as opposed to your arguments posted (and, as I said, refusal/inability to take any rebuttals seriously).. In terms of your arguments, arguments don’t deserve to be treated respectfully, they deserve to be attacked. Those that are strong enough will withstand the attack. Yours do not. You will use 100% non-condescending ultimatums from now on or I won’t post anything else — I probably won’t anyway, I just wanted to let you know in my own special way that I found that to be gratingly paternalistic. Since this is only 93% respectful, you are welcome to delete it.Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 11:07 amI quote Yockey precisely because he’s not a creationist. Same with Claude Shannon and others. 99% of the people and papers I quote are non-controversial mainstream peer reviewed research. There is nothing remotely controversial about the fact that the genetic code is in fact a code. I fully understand that Yockey disagrees with me philosophically. There’s no rule in science, philosophy or life that the person who produces the evidence you use in an argument has to agree with the conclusions you reach about that evidence before you can use it. Yockey makes the clearest case I’ve ever seen that the laws of physics and chemistry do not explain the origin or nature of the genetic code. Yockey stops right there and goes no further. I continue forward with the simple observation that all codes and coding systems we know the origin of are designed. Therefore we have 100% inference to design in biology. This is not proof, but it is scientific inference. As such it is just as reliable an observation as the laws of thermodynamics and gravity. The fact that Yockey doesn’t agree with this is no concern of mine. Yockey tells you there’s no other instance of a naturally occurring code, just the same as I do. I have taken every legitimate rebuttal seriously, as I have debated this particular topic online for 4 years now. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels for an entire history of this debate. You can attempt to argue that DNA is not a code in the same sense that ASCII is a code but that line of argumentation will get you nowhere. The literature is very clear on what the definition of a code is and both examples fit that definition 100%. Mike, if you can produce one example of a naturally occurring code I’ll write you a check for $10,000 and post your evidence on my website. The specification for doing so is http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/solve/ Until someone can successfully demonstrate a naturally occurring code, the only scientific inference we can make about the origin of the genetic code is that it’s designed. And note that in saying so I have not stepped outside the bounds of science at all. We don’t have to know who the designer is or the exact details of the design process in order for this inference to hold.Reply
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Mike says:March 15, 2010 at 11:57 am1. All types of rapid transit utilities (bikes, cars etc…) are designed by conscious minds and not naturally occurring. 2. Horses are a type of rapid transit utility. 3. Therefore, horses are designed by a conscious mind. I will give 10 million rubles to the first person to show me a naturally occurring rapid transit utility — keeping in mind that horses don’t count, donkeys, ponies mules, bulls, buffalo neither (Half credit for a midget riding a lasso apso). Seriously man, good luck with life and everything, but I am beyond done here.Reply
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Rod MacKenzie says:March 15, 2010 at 12:27 pmIn relation to this comment…I believe Perry’s point was that when you’re discussing codes, there is no example of a horse.Reply
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Eric says:March 15, 2010 at 4:39 pmHy folks. Nice debate. Roy, you stated “What caused God? It’s not a coherent question. By definition God is eternal…uncaused.” Ok, but by who’s definition? What if the nether that harbors the multiverse is what is really eternal and infinite. What if it has always been. No one can prove otherwise and and the proverbial circle cannot be drawn around it. If this were the case then God simply fades into one possible explanation as opposed to “the” explanation. What of time? We experience time on a liner scale but that is a function of the brain (as opposed to Brane…couldnt help it), and no necessarily how time exist in its own dimension. Can you draw a circle around time? Can you prove you can? No, you cant. Time may well extend infinitely in all directions unaffected by gravity, energy, velocity, expansion, or the boundaries of the multiverse. Does this prove that all things are begotten from time?…maybe. Or is time the true God? Either that or time doesnt exist and is an illusion according to the reasoning of this article. Thats been proposed before but not readily accepted by science, much less proven. I think what we have here is a creationist trying to prove his view through a very guided discussion using a single mathematical concept; Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. To truely understand the implications of that theorem we would all need to be doctorate level mathematicians. A single simple tenet of this theorem was put in even simpler layman’s terms. Then that was used to try to argue a point as absolute. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem does not “prove” the existence of a god (much less a Christian, Buddist, Muslim, Jewish, Egyptian, Greek, African, or any other god invented by mankind). Yes! I whole heartily agree that the possibility of a cosmic conscience exists and that it might be Godly. I believe this because there is no way to completely disprove it either. If time is finite, which we cannot prove, then there is always another circle. Keep in mind. Time was just one of many examples. Replace time with an infinite multiverse, or nether that cant be circled or just consider that the larger circles are also infinite once you break past the multiverse. We have NO way of knowing and many of the variables to this conundrum and God is just one of many…it just happens to be the one you favor. – Eric M.Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 6:01 pmMy assertions are based on the facts about the universe that are known at this time. The facts as we know them are: The Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago, that it expanded from a single point, and that it has finite mass and energy. Time and space are inseparably linked. No space = no time. Time itself begins with the big bang. Therefore time is finite. Yes, you can draw a circle around it. It has boundaries. There may be other dimensions of time and other universes but it is impossible for us to know anything about them. You are welcome to assert that time and even our own selves are illusory but I don’t know how you’re going to build any kind of epistemology from that foundation. You’re on your own if you want to embrace that view. If you want to posit an infinite number of universes, I’m going to ask you to provide evidence that they exist because invoking an infinite number of anything violates parsimony. God is defined as eternal and uncaused in Judeo Christian theology. Gödel’s theorem directly implies that whatever caused the universe is timeless, boundless and uncaused and not a system. Which does interestingly match Aquinas’ Via Negativa. No, Gödel’s theorem does not prove God. It only directly infers the existence of an axiom which the entire universe must rest – something which is not space, not time, not matter, not energy, not a system, conscious and boundless.Reply
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Eric says:March 15, 2010 at 9:02 pmI would like to thank you for taking the time to address my comment. Time and space affect each other proportionally but it has not been proven that time is relegated to this space only. We are learning more by leaps and bounds and these are exciting times indeed. Your arguments imho are logical and I respect them. I just think there is more to existence then we have discovered. There are unknown variables that we have yet discovered that need to be plugged into the known concepts of existence. I appreciate your comments. Live wellReply
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Perry says:March 16, 2010 at 8:49 amEric, I appreciate your comments too and I appreciate being able to disagree respectfully. Oh yes there is definitely more to existence than we have discovered. I’d like to address what is commonly described as “god of the gaps” arguments where God is invoked to explain things we can’t explain. I think this is often misconstrued. People often paint a picture that “God” used to be the default explanation of everything. And now that we have science that is no longer necessary. This is a mis-characterization of history, science and theology. The Judeo Christian worldview has never in the habit of saying “the wind just blew, gee I guess it must’ve been God.” You just do not find that kind of thinking in Christian theology. Or…. if you find it among simple peasants you certainly don’t find it in Augustine or Aquinas or Origen or Luther or Edwards! Rather it is asserted that God created the universe, that the universe operates according to specific discoverable laws. And that *sometimes* those laws are superceded by miraculous events; and that the creation of the universe itself is a miraculous event. And furthermore that if something is a miraculous event, you will probably know it. Because it was distinctly different from what would *normally* happen. (Like resurrection for example. Everyone knows that dead people normally stay dead.) From that standpoint, science is not one bit closer to “eliminating God” than it was 1000 years ago. Far from it! In fact with each passing discovery the we see that the universe is profoundly fine-tuned and highly ordered. And in the largest sense, the mystery only increases. We know know that there are dozens of universal constants (like gravity and nuclear forces) and if those constants were 0.000001% different the universe as we know it would be impossible. The mystery will be only that much greater in 20 years than it is now. Not because we know less, but because we know MORE. The more we know, the more questions are raised. Which is precisely the point of Gödel’s theorems. Gödel is essentially saying that the more you know, the BIGGER the gap is between what is necessarily true and what you can actually prove. In broad terms, Gödel was telling us the same thing the theologians were already saying 1000 years ago. Science is not about eliminating God. Science is about discovering how God gets things done. I would submit to you that it’s never been more reasonable to believe in God than it is right now, and there’s nothing in that at all that is weak or abdicates the search for knowledge and truth. Quite the opposite.Reply
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Brandon says:March 15, 2010 at 5:44 pm“Pulsars are not digital commuication systems.” Neither is DNA. You just proved to yourself that DNA is not a code by your definition…Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2010 at 6:04 pmBrandon I suggest you consult a dictionary, in which one of the very definitions of “Code” is THE GENETIC CODE. Hubert Yockey’s book should lay to rest any notion that DNA is not a communication system and I invite you to read it before continuing to make this assertion.Reply
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Hans says:March 16, 2010 at 8:57 amPerry, First please excuse any mistakes in grammer or spelling, English is not my first language, I accept Godels theory but only as a basic premise, it does seem to explain what “is” however as has been mentioned by you one needs to draw a circle around something to describe it and to refference something ouytside of that circle for a rational explaination of what it is. You use the word “God” to explain that which cannot be rationalised that which just is, but by doing so you necessarily draw a circle arround it. I think the answer which has been mentioned in some posts that perhaps the Universe itself is irrational. Take for example your circle (no matter the size or the object within), concentrate on the circle, the realationship of the circumfernce to the radius is (untill proven otherwise) incorporates an infinitly irational figure “Pi” in that it has no recursion. Although we have no problem seeing the circle as a whole? I think perhaps this is confusing to many but as we delve deeper into subatomic world we see more irrationality and duality. Is light a wave or a particle. It is as with the schrodinger’s cat thought experiment the act of measureing causes the breakdown in the paradox. So to return to your original premise that god must exist is your measurement and true for you untill further information is available to breakdown the paradox created by drawing the circle and breaking the Pi paradox that exists within that circle.Reply
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Perry says:March 16, 2010 at 9:36 amHans, You can eliminate the need for God if you postulate that the universe is irrational. I don’t see that this is helpful to anyone at all. Doesn’t that pretty much discard the entire foundation of science? For one thing it prevents any atheist from believing they have some kind of corner on “reason and logic.” Actually that would be an interesting reversal, wouldn’t it? A religious person says, “I’m religious because I believe in rationality.” An atheist says, “I’m an atheist because I believe in irrationality.” However odd it may sound I think it’s remarkably close to the truth. A religious person is likely to tell you that while they do not understand everything that happens in the world, they believe God has a plan and it will all make sense in the end. An atheist person is likely to tell you they don’t believe in God because of all the wars, bloodshed, disease, gloom and destruction in the world. One has faith that there is something outside the circle. The other, because of the inconsistency of what they see in world, insists there is not.Reply
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Anthony R. Mramor says:March 22, 2010 at 11:33 amAs a Buddhist I find this discussion very interesting. A concept called the Mystic Law refers to the unknown and inexplainable workings of the Universe, whether or not it is of a God or not, whether one believes this or not. I believe irregardless of an individuals beliefs, the workings of the universe are beyond our understanding; but this should not stop us from at least trying to explain us and our existence.Reply
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Rohit Nair says:March 22, 2010 at 11:59 amI’m not sure why nobody has said this so far. You’ve asked for a “naturally occurring code” multiple times. It seems to me that the answer is quite straightforward, especially as you’ve called it a code multiple times. DNA Is it not the product of natural processes? Why is it excluded from being considered a natural code? DNA is encoded and decoded every billions of times every day around the world as a consequence of the laws of physics which dictate the behavior of the molecules that make up DNA. Why is it not a suitable answer to your challenge?Reply
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Perry says:March 22, 2010 at 12:32 pmBecause nobody knows the ORIGIN of DNA. There is no known physical process that gets us from non-life to life, from chemicals to self-replicating nanomachines. It’s not a trivial problem, in fact it’s profoundly difficult. The #1 unsolved mystery in all of biology.Reply
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Cranston Hilton IV says:March 22, 2010 at 7:47 pmI feel like this is assuming time is an actual thing and not a perception. Time only exist because you need it to exist or everything would be all bunched up together.Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 6:35 amTime is an actual thing. “[Paul A. M. Dirac] appears to have shared much the same opinion as the Time Traveller in the 1895 novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, whose science-fiction novels he read: ‘There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.'” -from The Strangest Man, The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom by Graham FarmeloReply
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George Klein says:March 22, 2010 at 10:25 pmThis theorem says indirectly, that whatever we don’t know must be god’s work. But that’s how religion was born. There are certain things our brains cannot comprehend. One simple example: what is infinite? Or, if somebody believes in the bible I would ask him/her: What happened before the first day was created. What was there than? What/who created god? If nobody/nothing, then what? These things are impossible to comprehend. Our brains are not capable to understand. I simply accept those things and don’t try to explain them with an entity named god. That’s why I don’t believe in the entity named god. And I am very content with that. The main difference between me and religious people is, that I don’t say that in what I believe is the right thing, and try to persuade others to think like me. Religious people believe, that their view is the right one and keep trying to persuade others to believe in what they do.Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 10:31 amGeorge, In college I took a math class called “Matrix Theory” aka Linear Algebra. In Matrix Theory you create and analyze dimensions of space as easily as x’s and y’s in 9th grade algebra. You say, “H is a 27 dimensional space with 16 orthogonal vectors…” just as casually as drawing X and Y coordinates on a piece of paper. Even though it’s impossible to visualize 16 or 27 dimensions. I can’t say I really enjoyed the homework assignments in that class, it was all very abstract. But the concepts definitely expanded my mind. It made the concepts we’re describing here not so impossible to comprehend. We live in 3 dimensional space. Time is a 4th dimension, linked to the expansion of space. String theory posits 7 more dimensions in addition to those four. Those dimensions are just mathematical variables. Just a space that the universe operates within. This entire article is about the idea that all those dimensions and elements of the universe are necessarily contingent on something. And that something is outside of space, outside of time, outside of all dimensions, and boundless. That something is inherently similar to how theologians have always described God. “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” – Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow, a self-proclaimed agnostic. God may have created millions of other dimensions and other universes that we have no way of peering into. What happened before the first day was created? Only God could tell you. Maybe someday… He will.Reply
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Anthony says:March 23, 2010 at 8:16 amTime is real and I believe this can be proved through say the decay of carbon 14, or if I get out of a chair and walk across the room; and relative to my own consciousness, time exists.Reply
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Steven Jones says:March 23, 2010 at 9:51 amPerry; Thank you for this, I found it very engaging and enlightening. I do think, however, that you are making a logical maneuver that is not valid, yet I think there is an interesting dilemma posed… and perhaps a way out. Godel’s arguement is essentially one of epistemology: how can we know. If I were to live in my house, and all the doors and windows were eternally blocked shut, I could know nothing of the outside world. Yet, to truly understand, objectively, my predicament would entail stepping outside my house and seeing it from the outside. Yet, this ‘need to know’ does not necessarily say anything objectively about what is outside my house, it only illustrates that fulfilling my need to know would entail stepping outside. In a sense we are like lab rats. Can the lab rat know anything about the observer? There is an epistemological directionality that must be observed – the need to know does not necessarily prove that that need can be fulfilled. While God perhaps can draw a circle around my house, does not mean I can draw a circle around Him. Or does it? Seemingly, something from outside the sphere would need to reach back. Reading your article jogged my memory that Godel’s argument sounds suspiciously like something else much older. Many are familiar with Anselm’s Ontological Argument, and its over-simplification, but many are not aware that Anselm proceeded that argument in his writings with a clarification that runs something like this: The comparative goodness of any two things cannot be determined solely by comparing them to each other, invariably a third ‘ideal’ is needed to set a standard of comparison. This not only holds true for any ‘goodness’, but also any goodness one can think of, such as ‘greatness’. This applies when comparing any two commodities one can conceive, regardless how great. Therefore, for thought to be possible, a supreme ‘Ideal’, or ‘Greatness’, higher than any conceivable ideal, must exist or any comparison or description would be stymied. It is this supreme Ideal Greatness we call ‘God’. People have tried to criticize Anselm’s logic for centuries, yet it somehow bridges a gap that most don’t understand. His logic is often called Modal Logic. While this sounds very much like Godel’s argument, I think Anselm had provided something Godel hasn’t. If I am still locked in my house, I may wonder what about all these things in my house that don’t have sufficient cause for existing within my house alone. There are no trees in my house, yet my furniture is all made of wood, etc. Something from the outside is indeed reaching back. For Anselm, this ‘thing’ that is reaching back, bridging the gap between my circle and God’s is rationality itself. To Anselm, rationality is not a sufficient cause in itself and provides perhaps a unique case of ‘reaching’ that doesn’t have the same limitations as other things might have. While it appears that epistemology can only move one way, there does seem to be, according to Anselm, a certain capitulation in the act of knowing itself. Something ‘bounces back’ from the observed to the observer or the act of knowing would be stymied. While much of this might be an illusion or imagination (a movie about Avatars does not prove they actually exist), when applied to ‘knowing’ itself, it can’t be just an illusion or ALL knowing would just an illusion, a phantasm (certain ‘realities’ of the Avatars must exist such as existability or the movie would make no sense). Where Anselm succeeds and Godel fails is in the recognition of evidence needing to traverse the boundary in both directions. To Anselm, rationality itself is this ‘thing’. In Godel’s example, the question is not whether a circle can be drawn around us, it is can a circle be drawn around God.Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 10:16 amSteven, Thanks for your great post. You have actually provided the most understandable explanation of Anselm’s ontological argument that I’ve ever heard. In the manner that it is normally stated, it makes no sense to most people. Your explanation is very good. To your last point: I maintain that a circle cannot be drawn around God. This is the only way that my argument stands without any internal contradiction. The most important point is: God is not a system. God is not composed of individual parts and God is not divisible and God is not space. So God therefore must be boundless. My conclusions based on Gödel are remarkably similar to St. Thomas Aquinas’ Via Negativa: 1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.[62] 2. God is perfect, lacking nothing. That is, God is distinguished from other beings on account of God’s complete actuality.[63] 3. God is infinite. That is, God is not finite in the ways that created beings are physically, intellectually, and emotionally limited. This infinity is to be distinguished from infinity of size and infinity of number.[64] 4. God is immutable, incapable of change on the levels of God’s essence and character.[65] 5. God is one, without diversification within God’s self. The unity of God is such that God’s essence is the same as God’s existence. In Aquinas’s words, “in itself the proposition ‘God exists’ is necessarily true, for in it subject and predicate are the same.”[66] You might be interested in knowing that Gödel took Aselm’s argument quite seriously and in fact wrote a proof of it. You can read it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godel_ontological_proof I’ve thought about Gödel’s ontological proof but haven’t arrived at any definite conclusions. I think more can be done with it and hopefully I’ll get a chance to address it. (There are some other comments waiting in the queue right now and I’ll get around to those too, soon.)Reply
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Chris D. says:April 14, 2010 at 7:45 pmYou have said: “…Rather it is asserted that God created the universe” You obviously believe the judeo-christian god created the universe. If you are a Christian, then by definition you believe God has a plan for every individual on this planet. You also believe he made us in his image. My objection concerns our understanding of a being that can conceive of things on a linear time scale, ascribing properties, making plans, creating things… I haven’t seen anyone call you out on this yet, but if you believe God has a plan, “created” the universe, made us in his image, or just generally has any plan at all for anyone or anything, then you face the problem that any being that can conceive of a linear series of thoughts constituting a “plan” than this being must have a mind, a mental space, containing said concepts, and as such a being it would contradict your #1 assumption about God… “1. God is simple, without composition of parts, such as body and soul, or matter and form.[62]” He must have composite parts if he is to think in a linear series of events, such as having a plan for the universe. So not only does this contradict your most essential definition of God, but confronts you with the problem of “drawing a circle” around God to explain him and his workings. Infinite regress of explanations ensue…Reply
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Perry says:April 14, 2010 at 8:41 pmWhy does being able to think plan or intend necessarily require a composition of parts?Reply
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Chris D. says:April 14, 2010 at 10:33 pm“Why does being able to think plan or intend necessarily require a composition of parts?” By definition to think means: 1 : to form or have in the mind 2 : to have as an intention Where in nature do we find a system that plans, thinks or intends without a composite of parts (physical parts) or a mind? Secondly, “Since all known mental activity has a physical basis, there are probably no disembodied minds. But God is conceived of as a disembodied mind. Therefore, God probably does not exist.” http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/minds.html Forming a thought or intention requires a temporal series of physically causal events shaping said mind, therefore necessitating by definition composite parts.
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Perry says:April 15, 2010 at 5:30 amYou didn’t carefully read the article that this whole thread is about. When you apply Godel’s theorem to the universe the conclusion is that the axiomatic thing on which the universe depends (ie God) is IMMATERIAL. Read the article and walk through the logic step by step. This question goes back to the mind/body problem in philosophy, which is at least 3000 years old, and answers it: The mind is not necessarily a body.
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Chris D. says:April 15, 2010 at 8:12 pmI wonder, why doesn’t the logical fact that disembodied minds are improbable give you a sense of the enigma of creation instead of reaffirming a thesis (the Christian God) that has never been sufficiently proved with any kind of evidence? (which is why I assume your using a mysterious and complex logical theorem to argue your case then actual evidence that would be accepted by any good scientist) The disembodied mind case is contradictory to your Godel God conclusion, so why not see it for what it is, a logical mystery maybe best delegated to classroom/intellectual discussion so as to learn how to think properly and in turn focus on real world problems in which science can give a big helping hand. First, assuming your logic pertaining to Godel’s theorem is correct than I must agree that an axiomatic thing must describe the universe, being boundless and immaterial. But this far from proves the Christian God existence, but instead proves that a formless thing needs to be logically evoked to fulfill the requirements of Godel’s incompleteness theorem in application to the universe and the question of existence and creation. The implications of this proof are just as mysterious as our understanding of singularities and the matter that gets sucked into them at the center of black holes. Why am I wrong in this assumption about mystery and my accusation that you are logically wrong in the unwarranted conviction about the Christian God, instead of the innumerable amount of other God’s created by man? Why don’t people assume, in the same way you do in your argument, that an immaterial flying spaghetti monster must be evoked to explain the formal system of a black hole? Because it’s a farcically made up religion, not a millennial old religion based on concepts and rituals from previous doctrinal (and fundamentally irreconcilable from Christianity) religions. There’s evidence in this fact, that Christianity is one of many systems of thought to fulfill many of humanities evolved needs in response to our unique consciousness; hence one of many answer systems, but more importantly to notice is the logical consequence of this fact, that the Christian God does not logically follow as a unique or obvious divine being that best answers philosophic questions about existence, creation and morality. My main question for you is this; will you admit evoking the Christian God is a premature answer to this immaterial logical-necessity, which is only possible to defend in a theorem that gives many a sense of wonder and mystery, not logical certainty in the Christian God? The fact that a lot of people read your arguments, and see it’s evident sophistication, but nonetheless take it as an interesting anomaly in our constant struggle to discover our place in this universe (multiverse?) shows that the christian God is far from apparent and obvious; most importantly in the lack of evidence for his direct effect upon this world and people’s lives. All historic events, personal testimonials and claimed witnessed miracles have more logical evidence in favor of a naturalistic explanation. More on this later… Ok, so we agree on an axiom of immaterial cause for the universe stems from the logical consequence of your logic. We also agree (I’m assuming) on a disembodied mind being evidentially and logically a more probabilistically false assumption about the nature of minds than that of a disembodied mind that happens to be that of the Christian God, or souls etc. I’m sorry but you have not answered the mind/body question at all, as you stated in your last response. I have not read one thing in any of your debates that has you logically confirming a fact about the nature of disembodied minds. So this is how I see it. Your taking two mysteries, that are hotly debated topics throughout human history, ones that have inspired millions of great thinkers toward a cornucopia of conclusions (that give much to the world in their mysterious nature and the training it takes to shape ones mind to understand even a small portion of them and the debate as a whole), and fusing them into coherence when none is evident, instead only loose correlation based on the beliefs of one religion amongst many. You then argue further with a question: “I invite you to answer your own question: Does the truth about God – do claims about God – affect anybody?” Did the claims about Zeus affect anybody? Do the claims of mystics of all types, mediums, masters, gurus, lunatics affect anybody? How about the book “the secret”, it affects people positively, how do you explain this? Natural explanations can, very well actually. Psychology, cognitive neuroscience and evolutionary psychology do extremely well if we wanna get specific. and: “Just because they’re (supposed miracles) politically incorrect doesn’t mean they don’t exist…” Politically incorrect? I think more accurately they can be labeled as “conjectural claims, unsupported by robust evidence”, and subject themselves to naturalistic explanations, which are more wondrous and interesting then the claims themselves (not to be mention vast, as in volumes and hundred of years of theory, research, paradigm shifts and more accuracy of theory and result). You also said, “Reason concerning the effects of God on the universe is a field known in academia as theology. I invite you to set aside the pejorative attitude and follow the evidence where it leads.” I reply with this refutation that methodological naturalism does not rule out explanations that are a priori: “In utilizing methodological naturalism, science and history do not assume a priori that, as a matter of fact, supernatural causes don’t really exist. There is no conceptual conflict between practicing science or history and believing in the supernatural. However…methodological naturalism would not be as stunningly successful as it has in fact been if metaphysical naturalism were false. Thus the de facto success of methodological naturalism provides strong empirical evidence that metaphysical naturalism is probably true.” “methodological naturalism does not rule out any explanation a priori. To see why this is, let us recall that methodological naturalism is defined by the way a metaphysical naturalist trying to advance science would act. I think it is relatively clear that such a person would have to be a fallibilist with respect to even his metaphysical beliefs; …he wants to be as sure as he can that his explanations correspond to the way the world really is. Since he does not have all possible data, he cannot be sure that there is not some kind of evidence for the supernatural out there, so he would not want to trap himself in a routine that would ignore even blatant evidence for the supernatural in favor of a less plausible naturalistic hypothesis. The metaphysical naturalist who wishes to fulfill the aims of science cannot rule out the possibility that his metaphysical views may eventually be shown to be wrong – hence, he must be open to some degree to supernatural explanations. However, this degree is likely to be a very slight one, which is what gives methodological naturalism its naturalistic flavor – the methodological naturalist, in acting like a metaphysical naturalist devoted to science, will, while being open to the slight possibility of evidence for the supernatural, consider naturalistic hypotheses on average more parsimonious than supernaturalistic ones, and hence will give them more benefit of doubt. In short, his methodological commitments can tell him to examine all possible naturalistic explanations for a phenomenon first, and can assign higher prima facie probabilities to such explanations on average, but the least plausible naturalistic explanation will tend to have a lower prima facie probability than the most plausible supernaturalistic explanation.” “Of course, if naturalistic methodology can lead to the confirmation of supernaturalistic hypotheses, it can also lead to the falsification of supernaturalistic hypotheses. In fact, this is what has happened to a number of models offered by scientific creationists…But it is perfectly clear that a large number of hypotheses that appeal to the supernatural make sufficient empirical predictions to be falsified.” http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/ntse.html You must first refute the logical conclusions of these claims before you assert that theological evidence for God’s effect in the world is stronger than the naturalists evidence. and this is what you said about nature (the natural world)…. “Indeed, surely if nature tells you anything, it tells you that God can be wild and ferocious. If nature tells you anything about God, it also tells you that God can be soft, tender and beautiful…” How do you make this monumental leap in logic? Also remember it’s contradictory for God to be both ferocious and tender if he is also to be logical, which you said he was. “It tells you” is off the bat a wrong interpretation of our interaction with the world; “Science tells us” is more accurate, or if you want, “we tell it”, in that there was no written or thought about account of the world before homosapiens arrived on the scene. And if the world was somehow telling us anything how do you make the assumption there is the Christian God behind the curtains telling us? Why not instead try to really follow the evidence (countless pieces of logical, natural evidence) and see that your attempts at marrying God (immaterial and unknowable) to natural effects and stating it as if it was a ipso facto proof of your first premise that God Is, is an extremely premature leap in logic and certainty? The ever cohesive and well understood accumulated evidence, research and pragmatic effects on how we live because of science towers over the accumulated religious evidence for any of it’s wild creation myth/immaterial God claims. This is without question because the logic shows it to be. There is more evidence anyway you look at it for a naturalistic world than that of a supernatural one (one in which a Christian God intervenes on behalf of human, which you admit you believe). “…do not neglect to distinguish the difference between what God has created and what man has destroyed.” How about what man has created: science, logic, vaccines, peace treaties, constitutions, medical devices, academy’s of learning, language, art, music, meaning. Each one of those developments can be naturally traced along a historical time-line with varying degrees of cultural transmission between an innumerable amount of connections between individuals. This is the amazing natural world we live in, one where emergent properties exist from apparent chaos. The only way to distinguish between your two choices is by first making God self evident, which he is not, due to the fact that we are debating him, along with millions of other people right now. “I would invite you to open yourself to understanding God as God really is…” I would invite you to open yourself to understanding the natural world as the natural world really is. You say at the top of this web-page, “The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a consistent model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” Isn’t this exactly the leap I’m talking about? So, the theorem doesn’t prove God exists, only that the natural world needs something outside of it to explain itself…therefore a consistent model of the universe necessitates belief in the Christian God? You say “belief in God”, but can’t this be debated as to what “God” is? If so, then why aren’t you holding your tongue since no one has given us a definitive definition or evidence of God that stands up to all attacks of logic, evidence and reason, the same tools you use to argue your claims? Here is some new naturalistic/scientific research, so I must ask, how does this square with your conviction that there is more evidence for God’s presence than the opposite? These few are a drop in the bucket compared to all accumulated naturalistic observations and theories. “There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002).” 1. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html “We’re slowly chipping away at the structure of morality,” says Young. “We’re not the first to show that emotions matter for morality, but this is a more precise look at how emotions matter.” “The finding offers a new piece to the puzzle of how the human brain constructs morality, says Liane Young, a postdoctoral associate in MIT’s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences” 2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100324121008.htm God is not the Creator, claims academic 3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6274502/God-is-not-the-Creator-claims-academic.html 4. http://www.livescience.com/culture/081027-religion-altruism.html 5. http://www.livescience.com/culture/090109-kids-spirituality.html 6. http://www.livescience.com/culture/etc/090512-the-evolution-religion.html
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Perry says:April 15, 2010 at 10:17 pmChris, You have discomfort with the Christian God and I understand that. Nonetheless let it be clear that my logic regarding Godel is sound. If the universe is logical then it necessarily follows that the universe is contingent on something outside itself that immaterial and boundless. Such an assumption is axiomatic – not provable but necessary. This alone firmly establishes the validity of metaphysics. Naturalism itself presumes to somehow know that there is nothing outside the universe. Godel’s incompleteness theorem gives all possible inference, with the full authority of science, that there is something outside the universe. Therefore we can make a 100% logical conclusion that if science is valid, naturalism is false. Thus the core of the atheist argument is dismantled by Godel. Disembodied mind flows from the following syllogism: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. We can explore five possible conclusions from this: 1) Humans designed DNA 2) Aliens designed DNA 3) DNA occurred randomly and spontaneously 4) There must be some undiscovered law of physics that creates information 5) DNA was Designed by a metaphysical mind, i.e. God. I rigorously argue this case at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq and articles linked from this page. The implications of this are that information is not a product of physics and chemistry but rather that information is always created by top-down causation not bottom-up. The existence and nature of information itself likewise dismantles the materialistic worldview. Because materialism cannot explain the origin of information. Information is immaterial, therefore it has an immaterial source, therefore the Original Mind is immaterial. I do not believe the Christian God is a premature conclusion because if one embraces an essentially Darwinian time line and a secular understanding of the Big Bang (as I do), Genesis 1 matches this time line tit for tat. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/genesis1 for a detailed examination of the text. You may be unaware that there are many volumes of documented miracles. You can find links to many sources at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles, near the bottom of the article. You may also be unaware that the foundation of science, which is an assumption that the universe is governed by fixed discoverable laws, originated in Christian theology. It most certainly did not come from atheism. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/#christian Thanks for the quote from Mark Vuletic. I know him, I had extended conversations with him 10 years ago in Oak Park Illinois, we were good friends for awhile. I appreciated the mental exercise and challenge of having those discussions with him. One time we rode to Madison Wisconsin together to see Dan Barker. Yes I understand that supernatural hypotheses can be falsified, but you seem to be forgetting that my line of argumentation is Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Again, if the universe is logical and mathematical, then a metaphysical world necessarily exists. A mother bear can be wild and ferocious, and tender. If it is logical for a bear to be that way why is it illogical for God to be that way? Man did not create science or logic. Man discovered these things. “Emergent properties exist from apparent chaos.” True enough if you’re talking about snowflakes. Not known to be true if we’re talking about digital code, such as we find in DNA. You have presented a predictable atheist list of objections but you have not refuted any of my logic. If you want to talk about correlation between religious belief and social problems in the United States, fair enough. Then let’s also talk about the human rights track record of atheism. I’ve got a book on my shelf called The Black Book Of Communism. It documents in excruciating detail the genocide of 160 million people under mostly atheist regimes — in the 20th century alone. “Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.“ -Vladimir Lenin Is it merely a coincidence that more people were murdered by atheist governments in the 20th century, than by all religious wars in all centuries combined? You decide.
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Steven Jones says:March 23, 2010 at 10:06 am“Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is this: ‘There is no God and Dirac is his prophet.'” – Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize winner in physics.Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 10:19 am“God is a mathematician of very high order.” -Paul Dirac, theoretical physicist who predicted the existence of antimatterReply
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George Klein says:March 23, 2010 at 11:55 amNo. It will not. In my world god doesn’t exist.Reply
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Sam B. says:March 23, 2010 at 12:40 pmHey Perry, I really admire you for taking the time to respond to every single comment posted here… It is for this reason that I now find myself writing a comment when initially I did not have the intention to do so. I believe I have a slightly different take on the ‘DNA is designed’ argument from that of earlier commentators. Hopefully this new argument will interest you. I take it you believe that since all observed codes that we know of (putting aside DNA) are designed by conscious beings, then DNA can be inductively assumed to also have been designed by a conscious being. Now imagine, if you will (for just a few moments), that there was a world where it were possible that some codes occur without the input of a conscious being, and that they were around on that planet. And imagine, please, that in that world, we could thus divide all codes into two types: those created by conscious beings, and those not created by conscious beings. Person A believes that there exist both types of codes. Person B believes that only consciously created codes exist. How would person A, I asked myself, in that particular world, prove to person B that some codes exist without conscious creators? Perhaps he would take a code that has existed long before humankind, show it to person B and say, ‘Behold, this is a code not created by a conscious mind.’ But person B would merely say, ‘You have not proven that this is a code not created by a conscious mind – only that it is a code not created by humans. This only shows that a conscious creator of codes existed before humans, and that it was that creator who made this code. The same can be said of any code not created by humans.’ Of course, person B cannot be proven wrong, even in this world that we are imagining where some codes do exist without conscious creators. The simple fact is that no-one can prove that a certain code has no conscious creator, whether that is actually the case or not. Hopefully you will realise by now that it is impossible to distinguish, using logic or other means, this imagined world from our own. It may be true that all codes in this world were created by conscious beings. But to say that it MUST be so because we cannot prove it false is a logical fallacy. ( From Wikipedia: The argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam (“appeal to ignorance”), or negative evidence, is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or is false only because it has not been proven true. ) Once again, thank you for your patience and willingness to respond to the comments directed towards your article, and have a nice day.Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 4:33 pmSam, You ask: “How would person A, I asked myself, in that particular world, prove to person B that some codes exist without conscious creators?” Simple. You demonstrate that you can put chemicals in a tank that don’t have codes and open it up later and find that they do. Then you analyze the process by which it happened. In other words, simple scientific proof. Empirical evidence. The scientific community has never provided any kind of evidence that a structure such as DNA, or the information it contains, originates from chemicals. You cannot derive the properties of any code from the laws of physics and chemistry. We know more about codes in 2010 than we know about most other things in science. Every major university in the world has a Computer Science program. You can take 200 credit hours of classes that discuss the conceptual aspects of codes, objects, databases, storage, transmission and computation. My argument is not an argument from ignorance. It’s an argument from positive evidence. Based on exhaustive knowledge of the thinking process involved in data storage, processing and retrieval. It is the materialist / atheist position which is presenting an argumentum ad ignorantiam. I invite you to scour, in detail, the contents of http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels – read every single argument people have made against my thesis in the last 4 years. See for yourself if I’m not telling you the straight-up truth. They insist DNA isn’t really a code; they tell me rocks & snowflakes are codes; they tell me I’m not allowed to use inductive reasoning; they tell me that DNA was a happy chemical accident…. Not a single one of these arguments is scientific. The conclusion that DNA is designed conforms to everything we know about codes, and everything that’s taught in any accredited 4-year Computer Science curriculum.Reply
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DavidH says:July 26, 2011 at 7:11 amIn Jodie Foster’s film, Contact, she plays a scientist looking for radio signals from space that will prove that intelligent life forms exist far from earth. Eventually her scientific team receive a signal from the vicinity of a star named Vega. The signal is decoded to show that it consists of a series of prime numbers. The supposition is that prime numbers are universal values that first have to be discovered by an intelligence as least as high a level as ours. That prime numbers don’t just happen randomly in space and are randomly put into a self-evident sequence of separate prime numbers. And then, of course, transmitted repetitively into space by some sort of transmission device which must be also an intelligently discovered device. The assumption in this storyline (by agnostic/atheist Carl Sagan) is that such a massive device was put into operation for a purpose. There was, by natural assumption, a plan created inside an intelligent mind far away. And the plan seems to be to attract another intelligent species in the universe to hear. The assumption of the movie is that another intelligence is transmitting a code that must necessarily invoke a concomitant awareness that this is a deliberate communication from one intelligence to another. But, as exciting as that is, the meaning is further enriched when further analysis reveals beyond the prime number sequences several sets of packaged data with their own code. The code is further discovered to have its own decoder attached (like delivering a DVD along with a DVD player and monitor) that would be ultimately decipherable to mathematicians who have reached our present state of sophistication. Decoded from that help they discover a video source buried in the signal: Adolf Hitler’s welcoming address at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin which was actually televised with such television transmitters as existed in 1936 and which apparently travelled to the Vegan system. Then a third set of data was found in the signal; over 60,000 “pages” of what appear to be technical drawings. Later they are decoded to allow for 3 dimensions and this method now reveals a complex machine allowing for one human occupant inside a pod to be dropped into three rapidly spinning rings. Well, to sum up, we build, the Jodie Foster character travels, she returns, and is treated as a “religious nut” or hoax for making claims she cannot substantiate. We all of us, ALL of us, agnostic, atheistic, believers in God, quickly, without debate intuitively jump to the same conclusions when we are presented with such a storyline. Every single person of whatever persuasion or non-persuasion religiously on this earth accepts this premise. Some “intelligence” MEANS to COMMUNICATE with other intelligences in this story scenario. We ALL understand that we are begging the impossible to argue that a signal containing a sequence of prime numbers, where one long string of prime numbers has a start and a definable end before another long string of prime numbers is transmitted could just happen to be a random cosmic occurrence. We understand that we would instantly heap scorn upon ourselves to argue in the face of all these conditions — so WHAT? And when we discover more data in that signal that also helpfully and INTENTIONALLY gives us algorithms to decode that into a moving video signal that reproduces an old video transmission from our world, we are completely, absolutely convinced that another intelligence is deliberately speaking to US. And then when we discover a third set of data that has thousands of drawings done in a 3 dimensional model well there is NO argument. This PROVES intelligent life exists in the star system Vega. Even if the drawings build something that looks ridiculous and seemingly non functional we assume that we just got it wrong. The question of whether another intelligence exists is beyond a doubt, even if they are pranking us. When you follow every lead that Perry has provided explaining already accepted Communication theory and how it is inextricably demonstrated in the basis of all life as we know it, the DNA system of data storage, transmission, replication, repair — all in not just in 3 dimensions of space but also IN SEQUENCES of TIME, DNA also carrying the code for WHEN something is brought into play at the time that its manufacture or dissolution is optimal for life, then you have to face up to the inevitable. Some vast Intelligence created a code so complex, yet elegantly compact, and simultaneously from the very first moment of its existence already completely encoded so that its DECODING mechanism is completely as sophisticated, and its transmission of instructions to create tissues and enzymes (themselves staggeringly complex compounds) on a cosmic mathematical scale of deliberate INTENTION by a superhumanly vast intelligence and personal power. Ladies and Gentlemen, when will you allow yourselves to privately admit that what is ALREADY KNOWN, by itself, is far, far more than an electrical pulse from Vega?Reply
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Perry says:July 26, 2011 at 10:52 amDavid, Yes, DNA *is* like a DVD that’s encoded with instructions to build a DVD player. The SETI project is proof that even secular people know coded information is proof of intelligence. BRAVO. Couldn’t have said it better myself. PerryReply
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Perry says:July 26, 2011 at 10:53 amDavid, Yes, DNA *is* like a DVD that’s encoded with instructions to build a DVD player. It also contains error correction checksums based on a Fibonacci sequence. The SETI project is proof that even secular people know coded information is proof of intelligence. BRAVO. Couldn’t have said it better myself. PerryReply
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Sam B. says:March 23, 2010 at 5:12 pmPerry, Thank you for your reply. While I’m glad to hear that you would be convinced by empirical evidence, I hope you do realise that an experiment to display the random event of code coming together ‘randomly’ would be impractical – I hear that even computer models would be inadequate to show such an event, though I myself am a little confused as to why. Still, I suppose there’s not much room for manoeuvre on the ’empirical proof’ side of the argument, so I will say that I am defeated, when it comes to that, and will merely hope that one day science will once again come to understand something that only religion is be able to explain for now. I’ll go and read that Infidels thread you gave me the link to now, and perhaps I will return with more questions when I have finished. Thanks for your response!Reply
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Perry says:March 23, 2010 at 6:17 pmSam, A question I’m surprised people don’t ask more often is: “What if a physical process that creates codes is discovered? What would that mean? Would it destroy your ‘God argument’?” I think it’s a really great question. And I’m not at all opposed to such a discovery being made. That discovery would probably hold the key to our scientific understanding of consciousness, which so far is nearly a complete mystery. It would also be a giant breakthrough, a massive paradigm shift on the same level as the splitting of the atom or Einstein’s theory of relativity. It would be the Nobel prize discovery of the century. And by the way I don’t think it would destroy my ‘God argument.’ It would only stack the deck even higher at the beginning of the universe. It would raise even greater philosophical questions about how our universe came to be the way that it is. In 2010, science is no closer to “eliminating God” than it was 500 years ago. The ‘gaps’ that science has allegedly closed only grow bigger with each passing year. Meanwhile I think it’s dishonest of the scientific community to not simply follow the evidence where it leads. To simply admit what is a very obvious conclusion from the facts at hand: That intelligence appears to be behind the genetic code. We don’t have to agree on what that intelligence is or what it means. But once we acknowledge the exacting design and purposeful nature of DNA all kinds of other doors will open for biological discovery. We need to acknowledge the facts we do have before we can discover new ones.Reply
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Sam B. says:March 24, 2010 at 3:24 amHey Perry, I’m not a biologist, unfortunately, and even if I were, I wouldn’t necessarily know enough to understand the full workings behind this, but since I’d like to continue discussing this, I hope you’ll forgive me for my stabs in the dark and correct me where I contradict current evidence. I have read through the Infidel’s riddle section of your website, and found it quite interesting. I guess I would have to say that I’m not entirely sure that I understand your argument as to why DNA can’t have ‘evolved’ (I know I can only use the word as an analogy at this stage) from earlier, simpler biological or chemical components… And why those components could not have arisen by chance from other chemicals. After all, I hear the earth had a few hundred million years before any real complex stuff arose. If that sort of thing can happen, I don’t see how the whole ‘code/information’ bit is relevant. After all, that is only a consequence of what something like DNA consists of, surely? Again, I hope you’ll forgive me for my tentative guesses – if I had more time, I would look into the subject properly and try to see if I could understand papers on the subject, but I am a student with not long before my exams, so now is perhaps not the best time for that. (As for the ‘simplier biological/chemical components’ I mentioned, I believe the Iron-Sulphur world theory and the RNA world hypothesis are examples of this, though unconfirmed.)Reply
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Perry says:March 24, 2010 at 5:40 amAny argument for chance fails as soon as you try to apply some statistics to it. I talk about this at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/infinite-chasm/ The possibility of such a thing happening by chance is so vastly improbable that trillions of years and literal a universe of universes would not be even close to enough time. Most people have no comprehension of how bad the statistics actually are. A few hundred million years doesn’t even begin to be enough. Nowhere in any biological literature will you find any statistical model that shows this is favorable. Frankly the only people who believe this is possible are those who haven’t tried to do the math. Any proper definition of evolution means variation filtered by natural selection. To have variation you have to have replication and to have replication you have to have a code. Therefore a code is a REQUIREMENT for evolution to even be possible. So it is not possible that the code “evolved” from a non-code. The term evolution does not even apply. I have created a specification for discovering a naturally occurring code here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/solve/Reply
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Uygar Yuzsuren says:March 24, 2010 at 7:08 amThe very basic fallacy and the wrong premise made in this argument is information’s being a product of a conscious entity. You cannot make this presupposition since information may also thought to be an emergent entity, rather than being a designed one. For more about this you can read Daniel Dennet’s Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2573941/Daniel-C-Dennett-Darwin-s-Dangerous-Idea-Evolution-and-the-Meaning-of-LifeReply
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Perry says:March 24, 2010 at 8:20 amI have this book. Nowhere in this book does Dennett ever demonstrate that information is an emergent entity. For that matter, nowhere in science is there any hard evidence that this is true. “Emergence” in this context is a purely hypothetical construct. Dennett also asserts that all you need is self replication and evolution will occur automatically. This is also not true and there is no evidence for such an assertion in any of the literature. Evolution is an engineered process as I discuss at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/new-theory-of-evolution/Reply
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Anthony R. Mramor says:March 24, 2010 at 9:13 amI’m no scientist, (wish I was because I’d be rolling in the dough!) but I’ve come to the conclusion that DNA is the “Language of the Creator”. Once we become fluent we will be able to talk to God. Or, I look at it this way. If DNA is a language, the the Human Genome or any other creature’s genome is a book.Reply
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Steven Jones says:March 24, 2010 at 9:22 amTo be correct, and fair, Darwin actually ‘lifted’ the Theory of Evolution in an act of out-and-out plagiarism, shifting it into the camp of Uniformitarianism. Darwin had no real observational evidence from which to derive the Theory, nor did the Theory appear in the first editions of Origin of the Species. Darwin was Russel Wallace’s research contact person at home in England. Wallace was sending his overseas research to Darwin for safe keeping. Then Darwin saw Wallace’s Sarawak Law: “Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.” Darwin rushed to take credit for the finding (Wallace was overseas and could do nothing about it) leaving out Wallace’s conclusion: “Because man’s physical structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection, it does not necessarily follow that his mental nature, even though developed pari passu with it, has been developed by the same causes only.” Then this statement from Wallace: “these speculations are widely held to be far beyond the bounds of science — a superior intelligence has guided the development of man… and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.” See – ‘A Delicate Arrangement’, Arnold Brackman, (New York) Times Pub.Reply
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Sam B. says:March 24, 2010 at 11:17 amHey Perry, I have read your Infinite Chasm page and I understand where you’re coming from, mostly. I looked around for a while afterwards and came across this page with an article by Ian Musgrave (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html). It’s not too long, and tries to justify all his statement with references to scientific papers. Looking elsewhere, I found that the actual numbers used in that article were not accurate, since it was mostly to make a point, rather than to be 100% mathematically accurate. I found that the corrections for those numbers (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#notemusgrave) did not apparently negatively affect his conclusions. You have probably seen that article before, and since it seems to contradict your statements on your Infinite Chasm page, I was wondering if you’d be willing to explain what errors Musgrave has made (aside from the corrections found in the second link)?Reply
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Perry says:March 24, 2010 at 2:27 pmHe says: “The synthesis of primitive self-replicators could happen relatively rapidly, even given a probability of 1 chance in 4.29 x 10^40? This statement is not being made on the basis of any kind of empirical evidence. He’s playing a shell game. And that’s regardless of whether his math is right or wrong. Here’s why: Nobody has ever in any circumstances synthesized a self-replicating molecule, ever, anywhere. The only known self replicating machines are living organisms. No one has ever even designed one successfully, let alone seen one assemble by chance. (I am using Von Neumann’s definition of self replicating machines, not something else like salt crystals etc, which is not really self replication at all. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_replication) He is only giving you the probability that the chemicals allegedly necessary to make this molecule will arise under some particular circumstances. But he has not given you a probability that they will self assemble in the right structure. Thus there is no empirical basis whatsoever to the claims he is making. Frankly the entire Origin Of Life field is barely on the fringes of empirical science. This article contributes nothing to it.Reply
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Sam B. says:March 24, 2010 at 5:01 pmHey Perry, It’s true that he never precisely mentions how those self-replicators get together from their individual parts. I guess the text reads in such a way to make the reader assume the ingredients can randomly stick together somehow, through chemical processes… Well, I guess that’s the big question then, isn’t it? It’ll be interesting to see the progress that scientists make as they try to find the answer. It just goes to show how far we still have to go before we can fully understand life. There is one last thing I’d like to ask you, now. In an earlier comment, you said “once we acknowledge the exacting design and purposeful nature of DNA all kinds of other doors will open for biological discovery. We need to acknowledge the facts we do have before we can discover new ones.” This confuses me more than anything else, I must confess. Surely the only way to make progress is to keep probing, testing and doubting… What could be gained from accepting that DNA is designed? If you could explain what you meant by that statement, I’d be very grateful.Reply
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Perry says:March 24, 2010 at 9:58 pmThe proposition that DNA is NOT designed has led to all kinds of ridiculous theories. The most egregious being the “Junk DNA” hypothesis, which held for about 30 years. Many biologists actually believed, if you can even fathom it, that 97% of our DNA is “junk.” I’m absolutely serious. The term has not even yet been completely abolished – it’s still floating around. The entire human genome barely fits on a CD ROM. It’s surprising enough that 750MB of data is enough to contain all the plans for a human body. That alone is some sort of miracle. If humans designed DNA it would take 100 CD Roms. Microsoft Windows doesn’t even fit on a single CD ROM and it’s nowhere near as amazing as the human body. The Junk DNA theory would actually imply that all the plans fit on 22 MB. Outrageous. And: The idea that nature would waste 97% of anything has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of. There’s also “vestigial organs” – evolutionary leftovers that serve no purpose. Well, I’m sure there’s *some* truth to the idea but the vast majority of organs declared vestigial were eventually found to have important functions. At one time some people said the human body had 200 vestigial organs. Now the number is hovering at maybe less than 5. That number will continue to get smaller. And so it goes. When you read atheistic biology literature you constantly find descriptions about how “dumb” the “designs” are. This literature is written by people who for the most part have never designed anything, let alone designed an eye or a lung. As an engineer who designed products that were produced in quantities of hundreds of thousands, I have a particular appreciation for the complex tradeoffs involved in even the simplest devices. When I see living things I see incredibly elegant designs, and choices that involve tremendous subtlety. That subtlety is lost on people who deny purpose in biology. What happens if you reverse that assumption? You CANNOT study purpose-FUL things the same way you study purpose-LESS things. In other words you study a thermostat very differently than you study a rock. (There’s a whole book on this distinction called “Perceptual Control Theory” by Powers.) A rock has no goals, no programs, no intentions. It’s just a rock. A thermostat actively seeks to maintain temperature in a room. It has definite goals and it accomplishes those goals in certain ways. If you study a thermostat and you assume it has no purpose, it’s totally impossible to really understand it. That is the problem with reductionistic, materialistic biology. It denies teleology (purpose) and it denies design. If there is, however, a design, then materialism will inevitably come to wrong conclusions. If it’s true for a thermostat, it’s doubly true for a Toyota Camry and triply true for biology. The Junk DNA hypothesis is a prime example of the failure of that kind of thinking. If there’s not a design, it’s still better to assume there is one than to assume there’s not one. Because assuming purpose naturally leads to more detailed discovery and interpretation than assuming accident. It now turns out that the other 97% of the DNA is where all the INTERESTING stuff is. The 3% only codes for proteins. It specifies the raw materials. The 97% is instructions for how to assemble those materials. Well that part is a lot more interesting. 30 years of assuming it was “junk” prevented a whole bunch of people from ever studying it at all. 30 years of lost scientific process because someone whose ego was out of control proclaimed that something he didn’t understand was junk. Tragic. By the way, the 97% is also the part that controls evolutionary development. So the people who told us evolution was random and accidental were actually preventing us from finding out how evolution actually happens: That it’s a systematic, engineered process that is goal seeking and incredibly sophisticated. See See James A. Shapiro, “A 21st Century View of Evolution”: http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf for a paper on how the evolutionary process actually works. If we assume design in DNA then we can make all kinds of hypotheses – predictions – about what biology will discover in the next 3 or 10 or 20 years. I have made a series of such predictions here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/testable-hypothesis-id-1/ and in subsequent articles 2 3 and 4.Reply
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Arthur says:March 26, 2010 at 12:59 pmI proved mathematically beyond any question that the logical system of simple addition is complete in and of itself.Reply
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 2:08 pmEvery symbol you define in your system of simple addition has to be taken as axiomatic.Reply
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Arthur says:March 26, 2010 at 2:33 pm“Every symbol you define in your system of simple addition has to be taken as axiomatic.” No they don’t. Not even close. The symbols are arbitrary. They’re not bloody axiomatic, they’re just a convenient shorthand. Remember “computably generable?” A computer could prove addition with the FORM of my proof above. The symbols are irrelevant. You could use anything you wanted. The definitions are all INSIDE the system. What’s more, Gödel’s Theorem is discussed at length by Torkel Franzen and specifically in his book “Gödel’s Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse” ISBN 1-56881-238-8 He spent a lot of his life specifically devoting his time to discussing this theorem and common misconceptions applied to it. You would benefit from reading his work.Reply
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Perry says:March 26, 2010 at 4:21 pmArthur, Yes you are right, your addition system is computable and I stand corrected. So at this point the attribute in question is: “Non-trivial.” Gödel’s theorem says: “For any consistent, non-trivial, formal, computably enumerable theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory, can be constructed. That is, any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” If your system of addition is both consistent and complete, it is therefore “trivial” according to Gödel’s definition. Now the original question that brought this up in the first place was: “Does Gödel’s theorem apply to the universe?” I said yes: If the universe is logical [CONSISTENT] then it is necessarily incomplete. To make my statement completely accurate I have to say that if a theory is consistent and non-trivial then it is necessarily incomplete. What happens if I substitute the word “system” in place of the word “theory”? “For any consistent, non-trivial, formal, computably enumerable system that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the system, can be constructed. That is, any effectively generated system capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” I don’t believe the above statement is any less true than the original version. The physical universe is most definitely capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. I still stand by my statement that the universe is incomplete.Reply
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 2:57 pm“…any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” I hardly think you’ve come anywhere close to proving — or even creating a convincing inference — that the universe is effectively generated. You quoted the Wikipedia article to me, so let me do the same to you: “A formal theory is said to be effectively generated if its set of axioms is a recursively enumerable set. This means that there is a computer program that, in principle, could enumerate all the axioms of the theory without listing any statements that are not axioms. This is equivalent to the ability to enumerate all the theorems of the theory without enumerating any statements that are not theorems” That’s fine but you said: “What happens if I substitute the word “system” in place of the word “theory”?” Well you’ve made a bit of a mess, that’s what happened. A formal theory is necessarily incomplete. That’s what Gödel was referring to. No matter how clever my observations about a system, no matter how far-reaching my insight, my theory will always depend on the system itself which is beyond the theory and always will be. There is always the possibility of creating an axiom which is true but not provable within my theory. The system itself, in this case, the universe, cannot be proven by a computer program. It does not prove anything. The universe DOES nothing. It just is. It doesn’t derive arithmetic or theories. It doesn’t create formulae. It is the thing outside that we observe and try to explain. “For any consistent, non-trivial, formal, computably enumerable system that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the system, can be constructed. That is, any effectively generated system capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” The universe is neither effectively generated, not is it capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. “I don’t believe the above statement is any less true than the original version.” And yet it is. “The physical universe is most definitely capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. I still stand by my statement that the universe is incomplete.” Give me one example, just one example, of a naturally occurring expression of elementary arithmetic. Keep in mind, that pointing to the world and saying one apple plus one apple equals two apples doesn’t count. You have to show me one naturally occurring expression of elementary arithmetic and then we can talk some more.Reply
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 4:01 pmArthur, Are you saying that a computer can express elementary arithmetic but the universe can’t? That it’s OK to count 1’s and 0’s but it’s not OK to count apples?Reply
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 4:18 pm“Are saying that a computer can express elementary arithmetic but the universe can’t? That it’s OK to count 1’s and 0’s but it’s not OK to count apples?” Arithmetic is not naturally occurring. It’s a philosophical concept WE devised to try to have reference to plurality. I’m saying EXACTLY that. WE programmed computers based on OUR concept of arithmetic. Counting apples is HUMANS counting apples. Using a computer to count apples is HUMANS counting apples. There is no difference because they are both artifice. Give me one example of a naturally occurring expression of elementary arithmetic and we can have a serious debate about the applicability of Gödel to the universe. Until such a time as a naturally occurring expression of elementary arithmetic has been discovered, however, it’s a far cry to say that the universe derives its own formulae and theories.
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 4:44 pmIf a computer counts apples and no one is there to watch it, then are apples being counted or not?
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 5:19 pmOf course the apples are being counted. But given that a human created and programmed the computer to count apples based on a series of commands, it’s just humans counting apples. Unless, of course, you’re arguing that computers are naturally occurring, in which case I would use your own syllogism against you: 1. All computers are designed by humans. 2. A computer is counting apples. 3. The apple-counting computer was designed by humans.
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 5:44 pmI’m glad you agree that the apples are being counted. I’m also sure we both agree that the computer is not conscious that it is counting apples. Nonetheless it is counting. I don’t want you to forget the larger point which is that computers, not just humans, can perform mathematical expression. Is that not the whole point of the Turing Machine, which was inspired by Gödel’s work in the first place? Turing proposed a mechanized way of doing computations and showed that even computers can produce undecidable propositions. Everything mathematical that can be applied to a computer, also applies to the universe, because a computer is part of the universe. A falling object that accelerates due to gravity is expressing mathematics: The velocity is the integral of the acceleration and the position is the integral of the velocity. That’s the concept behind an analog computer. All things that obey the laws of physics express arithmetic. To be more precise, they express the laws of physics and so far as is known to science, all such behaviors are mathematical.
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Steven Jones says:March 27, 2010 at 12:18 pmWhile one could argue that there are several ‘things’ in the Universe, such as mathematics, that exist un-caused because they arise out of naturally occurring ratios etc., that in no way challenges the belief that those things whose existence is contingent, such as rationality and life, require a cause. Their existence is contingent on having been caused by something. As there is not sufficient reason within the bounds of the Universe for these ‘contingent things’ to explain their existence, it is very warranted to look beyond the bounds of the known Universe to explain their existence. While mathematics may have a certain ‘order of proportion and ratio’ within its own bounds, that order falls significantly short of explaining true order, the ability of an intelligence to recognize that order, and the ability to communicate the meaning of the order. While one rock plus one rock equals two rocks, what does either rock care about the other? Further, the fact that someone might extrapolate an infinite regression of causes from a speculated ‘First Cause’ in no way undermines the need for that Cause. One could say I am caused by my mother, who, in turn, is caused by her mother, and on and on. Just because I can create a hypothetical infinite regression of ‘mothers’ does not undermine the fact I, indeed, had a mother. In fact, it is this very infinite regression that demands a ‘First Cause’ at some point. “Each particular thought is valueless if it is the result of irrational causes. Obviously, then, the whole process of human thought, that we call Reason, is equally valueless if it is the result of irrational causes. Hence, every theory of the universe which makes the mind a result of irrational causes is inadmissible, for it would be a proof that there are no such proofs. Which is nonsense. But Naturalism, as commonly held, is precisely a theory of this sort.” – CS LewisReply
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Hans says:March 31, 2010 at 3:50 pmPerry I wish to add something which is off topic but of interest none the less. I have added comments before, and you have been kind enoughh to answer them. I have also stated hat English not being my first language may cause some confusion. I woud classify myself as an agnostic. Perhaps a cowards way out, however I have been invited to a bible study group consisting of people who in all but their unwavering belief in a christian god seem rational. I mainly take a back seat as I feel my scepticsm would be doing an injustice to their hospitality, however at a recent event (which they called the HOLLY SPIRIT night) I was privy to something that trully amazed me. I had heard that when invocing the Holy Spirit believers have been known to speak in tongues. At the particular event I attended one specific person seemed to go into a trance like state and started talking what seemed to me to be giberish (for reference the meeting was recorded!) after the meeting the person who had the experience was taken to one side and questioned by a mesianic jew who was also present it turns out she was talking in an ancient form of aramaic which he recognised part of. We are having the transcript of the meeting looked at by a scholar who hopes to be able to give a fuller explaination of exactly what she said, as she was as suprised as any of us. Had never learnt any arabic, latin or aramaic in her life… crazy no??!Reply
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 4:40 pmHans, I think it’s great that you’re doing that and I think you should feel free to lurk there as long as you like. It doesn’t surprise me that this happened. Mark 16:17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; Acts 2:4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues[a] as the Spirit enabled them. 5Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? 9Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Tongues is a normal and customary aspect of a healthy Christian community.Reply
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 6:07 pm“I’m glad you agree that the apples are being counted. I’m also sure we both agree that the computer is not conscious that it is counting apples. Nonetheless it is counting.” Agreed. But it never would have been counting without humans telling it to. So you really haven’t accomplished anything by pointing out what we already knew. “I don’t want you to forget the larger point which is that computers, not just humans, can perform mathematical expression.” In fact that’s the point of computers. A machine, designed by humans, to perform the operations we tell it to faster than we can perform them ourselves. “Is that not the whole point of the Turing Machine, which was inspired by Gödel’s work in the first place? Turing proposed a mechanized way of doing computations and showed that even computers can produce undecidable propositions.” Because branches of mathematics are incomplete systems and are by definition incomplete. Therefore, if you set a computer to computably generate the system, it will reach a paradoxical statement at some point. Again, this doesn’t do anything for your argument as the computers were created by and programmed by us. “Everything mathematical that can be applied to a computer, also applies to the universe, because a computer is part of the universe.” That’s a terrible leap in logic. I would almost call it obtuse. You might as well say, “Everything that applies to a banana applies to a supermarket because a banana is in a supermarket.” You’ll find that statement to be wildly inaccurate after a short while. “A falling object that accelerates due to gravity is expressing mathematics: The velocity is the integral of the acceleration and the position is the integral of the velocity. That’s the concept behind an analog computer.” A falling object is DESCRIBED BY US using our CREATED LANGUAGE of mathematics. Mathematics was created, derived from observation and thought, it was not created by the universe. “All things that obey the laws of physics express arithmetic. To be more precise, they express the laws of physics and so far as is known to science, all such behaviors are mathematical.” We, as humans, would argue that all things that obey the laws of physics can be expressed by arithmetic. But that’s not what we were talking about, even by leaps and bounds. We were talking about formal mathematical systems that can express elementary arithmetic. For example, Finite Mathematics. Finite math uses variables and symbols to express arithmetic functions within a closed system. Finite math depends on assumptions outside of it’s system to function. Hence finite math is incomplete. Although the fact that it is called finite should have been a clue. But if you accept basic arithmetic as true (which we do), you can then use the basic arithemtic functions to attempt to describe things in the real world. To suggest that the universe itself somehow derived these higher functions of math, though, and is therefore incomplete is a huge leap in logic.Reply
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 9:45 pmWhen we assign a symbolic meaning to states of a computer, the computer is formally understood to be doing arithmetic. This is the essence of the Church-Turing Thesis: “The three computational processes (recursion, ?-calculus, and Turing machine) were shown to be equivalent by Alonzo Church, Stephen Kleene, J.B. Rosser…Informally the Church–Turing thesis states that if an algorithm (a procedure that terminates) exists then there is an equivalent Turing machine, recursively-definable function, or applicable ?-function, for that algorithm. A more simplified but understandable expression of it is that “everything computable is computable by a Turing machine”.” Ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis The Church-Turing thesis means that formal mathematics can be expressed by physical devices as well by human beings. Likewise, as soon as we assign a symbolic values to the acceleration and velocity of an object, the moving object can be formally understood to be doing arithmetic as well. There is no difference. A well-accepted result of the Church-Turing thesis is that incompleteness applies to computation just as it does to pure mathematics. It makes no difference whether the symbol is imagined in your mind, written on a piece of paper, stored in a computer or represented by a physical object. Incompleteness applies to all four.Reply
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 9:57 pmThe Church-Turing thesis was the there is no difference in computation between humans and computers. Later it was postulated that there was a slight difference in the upper bounds of what a computor (with an o) is. Even so, the fact is that the computers are made by humans and are using human algorithms. Computers are not naturally occurring. Further, nowhere in nature will you find an expression of elementary arithmetic. Suggesting that because we analyze the acceleration and velocity of an object, that object is expressing mathematical truths is sophistry of the highest order. We are using math to describe the behavior of the object. It is observed. But it’s not as if the object suddenly derived a formula to allow you to prove simple addition. What exactly did you think “capable of expressing elementary arithmetic” meant? Definitely not “being describable by math.” If you have nothing of further value to add, I will thank you for an engaging conversation. But I consider the matter at rest until and unless you can show me anything remotely related to a logical counterargument in terms that is actually based on reality and not the misapplication of a thesis.Reply
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Perry says:March 31, 2010 at 10:59 pmThe Thesis says: “Every effectively calculable function is a computable function.” The words “effectively calculable” will mean “produced by any intuitively ‘effective’ means whatsoever” and “effectively computable” will mean “produced by a Turing-machine or equivalent mechanical device” Thus the mechanical system is mathematically equivalent to the mentally produced system. This is a statement of equivalence, not sophistry. The origin of the system is irrelevant, because both minds and mechanical systems are capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. It doesn’t matter whether I’m counting 1’s and 0’s, apples or rocks, I can use all of the above to prove simple addition.Reply
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Arthur says:March 31, 2010 at 11:55 pmThe origin of the device is highly relevant as WITHOUT HUMAN MANUFACTURE, NO DEVICE WOULD EXIST TO COMPUTE the apples or the 1s and 0s or what have you. There is no naturally occurring computer that is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. Suggesting that, because Turing machines and the human mind are semantically equivalent (or even if you say they ARE equivalent, it doesn’t matter) Turing machines are naturally occurring is simply wrong and other avenues get nowhere once you realize that humans are the impetus for the device. The universe is not capable of naturally expressing elementary arithmetic. That is a function of human construct, language, philosophy etc. The universe itself DOES nothing, it just is.
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Perry says:April 1, 2010 at 12:47 amYou’re continuing to ignore the wording of the Church-Turing Thesis. It says that a physical system expresses arithmetic just as legitimately as a mind does. An object accelerating due to gravity is computationally equivalent to human mathematical integration. The only difference is that a human is conscious of it and the physical system is not. Gravity causes unsupported objects to fall, does it not? The motion of a falling of an object exhibits mathematical properties. This is true regardless of what labels humans assign to those properties. It appears to me that the universe does more than ‘nothing’.
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Arthur says:April 1, 2010 at 7:36 amI’m not ignoring the wording of the thesis. You’re misinterpreting it and misapplying it. “A Turing machine is a theoretical device that manipulates symbols contained on a strip of tape. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside of a computer…Turing machines are not intended as a practical computing technology, but rather as a thought experiment representing a computing machine. They help computer scientists understand the limits of mechanical computation.” A Turing machine that can compute anything is called a Universal Turing Machine. “A more mathematically-oriented definition with a similar “universal” nature was introduced by Alonzo Church, whose work on lambda calculus intertwined with Turing’s in a formal theory of computation known as the Church–Turing thesis. The thesis states that Turing machines indeed capture the informal notion of effective method in logic and mathematics, and provide a precise definition of an algorithm or ‘mechanical procedure’.” So the Church-Turing thesis says that a Turing machine (which is a specific thing, by the way, and not ANYTHING that can be expressed mathematically like your physical example of falling) computes effectively and, further, that there is no effective computer that is substantively more powerful (more effective). Other computers may work faster or more efficiently. They may be faster or have fewer instructions, but they are not more effective. But Turing machines do not occur naturally. They consist of a Tape that is broken into cells with a finite alphabet and a blank symbol, a head that can interpret the tape, an action table, and a state register. Gravity does not have a tape, a finite alphabet, a blank symbol, a head, or a state register. In any case, neither Turing nor Church argued that a computer occurred naturally and expressed elementary arithmetic. They said that a proper Turing machine effectively proves an algorithm. Again, the fact that gravity can be expressed mathematically doesn’t mean that gravity itself is expressing math, and certainly, gravity is not a Turing machine and is beyond the bounds of your incorrect assertion.
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Perry says:April 4, 2010 at 8:05 am1. Calculus, differential equations, algebra and trigonometry apply to mathematical models of falling objects. 2. Therefore Calculus, differential equations, algebra and trigonometry accurately describe falling objects. By the same reasoning: 1. Incompleteness applies to all mathematical models of the physical world. 2. Therefore incompleteness accurately describes the physical world. To date no one has discovered an exception where mathematical reasoning fails to also apply to the laws of physics. Until someone finds an exception to this the only logical inference we can make is that the universe, like mathematics, is incomplete.
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Arthur says:April 4, 2010 at 11:00 am“1. Incompleteness applies to all mathematical models of the physical world.” No it does not. It only applies to formal mathematical theories that can express and derive elementary arithmetic. The universe is not a formal mathematical theory. Theories are used to describe the universe, not vice versa. That’s why we had that whole tangent about Turing machines and natural computers. You are wrong and every argument you have brought up has been flawed in some fundamental way. When that happens, you shift the goal posts or engage in a fallacy of relevance. If those prove ineffective, you resort to a burden of negative proof. When that proved ineffective you just restated your initial position with no regard to any of the problems that you failed entirely to address. This will be my last post as it’s clear that you simply believe what you believe and no amount of logic, mathematics, philosophy or education makes a difference to you. Fine. You’re welcome to believe what you like, but everyone who has read the entirety of the comments is aware of how very very wrong you are.
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Perry says:April 5, 2010 at 8:02 amArthur, As you have seen I cannot assert that the universe IS a formal mathematical system. I can only demonstrate that it exactly obeys mathematical laws. In other words it behaves like one. You stated that the universe doesn’t do anything, it just “IS.” I replied that it exhibits lots of behaviors. And that if we assign symbols to it, it performs computation. And I cited the Church-Turing thesis in stating that even a purely mechanical system can perform arithmetic. The salient issue here is that the universe exhibits mathematical behavior. And that mathematical descriptions and calculations give us true statements about the universe. So for example we can posit an electrical filter (LC circuit), mechanical filter (Mass/Spring) and acoustical filter (helmholtz resonator) and the three are isomorphic. All three oscillate. Each is described by an identical differential equation. The math equation itself is isomorphic to the three systems. The mathematical system, the idealized electrical system, the mechanical system and acoustical system are all conceptually identical. To solve the equation we can use any number of mathematical devices and there are many choices. We have integration, laplace transforms, numerical methods – and they will ALL accurately predict the behavior of the system. They all give us the same answer. We have all kinds of mathematical operations that apply to nontrivial arithmetical theories: differentiation, integration, algebra, matrix theory, differential equations, set theory, and ALL of them apply to the universe. Mathematical theories are used to understand the universe and theories about the universe are used to understand math. Knowledge travels in both directions. Therefore I don’t see how anyone can reasonably say, “But wait a minute, Gödel’s theorem is an exception. Sure, all that other stuff applies to the universe, but Gödel doesn’t.” That makes no sense. I can only suspect that the reason you insist on this exception is that it contradicts your religious views. I cannot mathematically PROVE that Gödel applies to the universe. But I do have 100% inference, based on all the other properties of mathematics that do apply to the universe. Thus I have the full authority of science in postulating that the universe is incomplete. Because science assumes that the universe is logical and mathematical. Are you unconditionally committed to the atheist worldview or are you willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads?
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Arthur says:April 5, 2010 at 9:45 am“As you have seen I cannot assert that the universe IS a formal mathematical system. I can only demonstrate that it exactly obeys mathematical laws.” Obeying laws doesn’t make something a formal mathematical theory or system. It’s a large leap in logic to go from one to the other, especially when a formal mathematical theory has such a specific form. “You stated that the universe doesn’t do anything, it just “IS.” I replied that it exhibits lots of behaviors. And that if we assign symbols to it, it performs computation. And I cited the Church-Turing thesis in stating that even a purely mechanical system can perform arithmetic.” The Church-Turing thesis doesn’t say that, though. It says that a Turing Machine performs arithmetic in a way that is not substantively different or less effective than a human. But as I said, a Turing machine is a specific thing which was created by human beings with that particular goal in mind. The universe is not a Turing Machine by the formal definition of a Turing Machine. The universe doesn’t perform arithmetic just because it can be described by it. You can argue that the universe “does” things by using language such as: Gravity acts on an object; but it’s a far cry from rephrasing, “We’ve noticed the following effects and we’ll call them gravity” for brevity, to suggesting that gravity is a system that derives its own formulae. “The salient issue here is that the universe exhibits mathematical behavior. And that mathematical descriptions and calculations give us true statements about the universe… We have all kinds of mathematical operations that apply to nontrivial arithmetical theories: differentiation, integration, algebra, matrix theory, differential equations, set theory, and ALL of them apply to the universe. Mathematical theories are used to understand the universe and theories about the universe are used to understand math. Knowledge travels in both directions. Therefore I don’t see how anyone can reasonably say, “But wait a minute, Gödel’s theorem is an exception. Sure, all that other stuff applies to the universe, but Gödel doesn’t.” That makes no sense. I can only suspect that the reason you insist on this exception is that it contradicts your religious views.” Because Gödel isn’t a system of calculation or a tool to solve or any of those other things you described. Gödel’s theorem is a philosophical truth about formal systems of math that derive and express elementary arithmetic. Nothing more. It’s only because you don’t believe that that you insist it applies to something else. But you’re wrong. It does not and it was never meant to. As to my religious views, I’m not an atheist, so nice assumption. I’m a theistic person. This avenue of “proof” is just wrong, though. “I cannot mathematically PROVE that Gödel applies to the universe. But I do have 100% inference, based on all the other properties of mathematics that do apply to the universe. Thus I have the full authority of science in postulating that the universe is incomplete. Because science assumes that the universe is logical and mathematical.” You do not have 100% inference because you still don’t understand Gödel. He himself didn’t use his theorem to postulate God. He used an ontological argument. He himself was fully aware that his theorem was true and useful, but that it didn’t apply to everything. Science assumes that the universe is complete and consistent, too, so Gödel wouldn’t apply. “Are you unconditionally committed to the atheist worldview or are you willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads?” I believe in God and I think I do him a better service by actually accepting knowledge and evidence as opposed to continually positing my own misguided views about something. But thank you for getting defensive and doing so much of what I said you do in my last post. Have a nice life.
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Perry says:April 5, 2010 at 10:34 amPlease accept my apology for assuming you were an atheist. I confused you with another person in this thread who was.
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Perry says:April 7, 2010 at 9:16 pmHello all, I’ve refined this further since my previous post. Gödel’s theorem says: Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. The Church-Turing Thesis says: A computer (Turing Machine) is also considered “effectively generated” and expresses elementary arithmetic. Mechanical computation is likewise incomplete. Postulate: All physical systems subjected to measurement express elementary arithmetic. Examples: 1. Children add and subtract with their fingers. 2. An abacus performs addition and subtraction. 3. A bucket of water & spigot does integration 4. A vibrating string solves differential equations in real time. In all the above examples the observer or measurement device did not do the arithmetic, the physical system did. Therefore incompleteness applies to all physical systems just as it does to mathematics.
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Jamie says:April 1, 2010 at 4:08 pmHi, is an assumption that conciousness is quantifiable made? By assuming that conciousness exists then god can be proved (according to your reasoning), but what if it doesn’t? The human brain and what we assign as being concious is only a complicated series of chemical reactions, giving the illusion of conciousness which allows people can go about their daily business without going mad. In essense the human brain is no different from a computer with an added element of randomness generated by interaction with surroundings. Would be interested to see what you make of this.Reply
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Perry says:April 6, 2010 at 6:12 amMany philosophers believe that consciousness is not quantifiable. If you’re aware of yourself then consciousness exists: “I think therefore I am.” If a brain was just a computer with an added element of randomness, then we’d add elements of randomness to computers and they would be able to think.Reply
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Sean says:April 1, 2010 at 4:53 pmYou are assuming that the universe is the grandest scheme available and there is nothing beyond it capable of having a circle drawn around it. Basically you are assuming that the universe is finite, and while it is true that what we can currently perceive of the universe is finite that does not mean that there isn’t more to it. If the universe were infinite Godel’s theorem would be true but there would be no necessity for some indivisible god. The process of drawing a circle is to limit the contents of the circle to a finite amount, no matter how large that amount is. But if the universe were infinite then by definition to take any finite amount of it would leave an infinite amount of something, however unimaginable, outside of amount defined by the circle. That would not mean that this infinity is indivisible, the opposite actually it is infinitely divisible, but no matter how you divide it there are still more larger “circles” that could be defined containing the previous circle. Even if you could theoretically make a circle that can contain infinity, infinity contains infinite infinities. pardon my overuse of the word but i dont know any other way of putting it. anyways those are just my thoughts after reading your article and some of the discussion. I hope the way i put it makes sense if not i could try rephrasing it.Reply
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Jamie says:April 6, 2010 at 7:20 amI do not feel educated enough to make any real contribution to this arguement. Perry if you have effectively proved that God exists while reason and logic holds would publishing this finding in a scientific journal not be more worthwile than arguing with people on the internet? If you have already done this i apologise.Reply
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Perry says:April 6, 2010 at 8:39 amThat’s a perfectly legitimate question. People like Arthur are helping me pound the slag off this argument (thank you Arthur) and that’s where the Gödel argument is for me right now. My DNA / information theory argument which you can find at “If you can read this, I can prove God exists” – http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/ifyoucanreadthis.htm is advanced far beyond that point and is in a stage where it is truly ready for academic publication. However the current state of scientific journals is that it is EXTREMELY politically incorrect to connect science and theology. Sternberg got thrown out of the Smithsonian for publishing just this sort of paper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternberg_peer_review_controversy The peer review process is normally a good thing but it is *highly* resistant to new paradigms – in fact it is designed to reject them. So I’m not taking that route, I’m going to the public with it. So for example I believe in evolution but I think the Darwinian theory is woefully inadequate and in fact blatantly and demonstrably wrong on major points. The general public knows that and there is no lack of books from even atheist biologists detailing the problems with Darwinism. I’m taking a similar path – the court of public opinion. With that in mind, don’t let journal committees do your thinking for you. Think for yourself.Reply
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Tim says:April 6, 2010 at 1:40 pmHello Perry, I don’t think it was Gödel’s intention that the undefined and unproveable rest outside the circle is called “god”. Most readers will associate many things (values, traditions,…) with this term and therefore it’s missplaced in this text. Besides you described a theorem but it actually seems that you take it as a law (with religious intentions?). That made me distrustful. TimReply
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Perry says:April 8, 2010 at 1:21 amGödel most certainly believed in God. Regardless of what his views on God were, the theorem is not subject to the intentions of the person who discovered it. The theorem is subject to the extent of its logical applications. Everything I have said here follows perfectly from the premises: Something immaterial, boundless, conscious and outside of space and time is a required axiom for the universe to exist. If you feel distrustful towards religion I’m OK with that. I just invite you to carefully comb through the logic and see whether this conclusion makes sense.Reply
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David Beck says:April 9, 2010 at 7:01 pmI appreciate your valiant attempt to invoke Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (actually two theorems) as a proof of God’s existence. You state, “He [Gödel] proved that any statement requires an external observer.” I believe others may have already pointed this out, but simply put the proposition that you claim to be proving is, “God exists,” and therefore must be included in your formal system of axioms and rules which would allow you to make such a statement, and, in turn, should your system meet the necessary conditions of a “formal” system, would be subject to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Gödel, as you aver, was a mathematical genius. He was also expressly interested in proving the existence of God. Don’t you think, if he could have figured out a way to use his Incompleteness Theorem to prove God’s existence, he would have done so? Instead, he pursued an ontological argument similar to that proposed by St. Anselm. Although it is rumored that he thought he was close to a proof, he apparently was never quite satisfied, and as a result we have no record of his efforts in this regard. By the way, I want to thank you for recommending to your readers Rebecca Goldstein’s scholarly and entertaining book, “The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel.” The irony of your recommendation cannot be missed as Ms. Goldstein is an atheist. For those interested, I would also recommend her recent novel, “36 Arguments for The Existence of God,” in which she satirically plumbs the contentious nature of faith and reason.Reply
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Perry says:April 10, 2010 at 7:34 amThe statement “God exists” is subject to incompleteness because it refers to something outside of itself. But God is not subject to incompleteness if God is indivisible, timeless and boundless. Logically, to avoid infinite regress, something has to be both complete and consistent and the only thing that can fit that definition is something that resembles God. Why didn’t Gödel use his theorem to prove God exists? I can only speculate. But I think it’s because you cannot formally prove that the universe is consistent, you can only assume or infer it. Pure mathematicians are never comfortable with this. The Church-Turing thesis is a thesis not a proof for example. I can also speculate that Gödel would have faced a wall of political correctness. Goldstein’s book describes how intensely political Princeton was and is. Academics are categorically among the pettiest people in the professional world. The Dean of Journalism at the University of Nebraska once told me that national politics was a cakewalk compared to what goes on with a university faculty. Gödel might have paid a heavy price for publishing a proof of God. Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, sure did. But I’ve been quite clear all along that while I cannot prove God. And I do not have the full authority of mathematics, I do have the full authority of science. Because the universe does computation, and the entire Western notion of science assumes that the universe is consistent. To assume anything else literally forces us to suspend reason and logic. So to the extent that math and science together can prove anything (which is 100% inference) we can be certain that the universe is incomplete. I am aware that Rebecca Goldstein is an atheist and she’s welcome to come here and comment. Her book is absolutely outstanding and both informative and entertaining. If Ms. Goldstein drops by, I want her to know I greatly admire her work.Reply
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David Beck says:April 11, 2010 at 11:15 amIt’s 4010 and scientists have discovered and formalized all knowable laws of physics. Yet to your delight, you can still apply Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and exclaim, “athiests are irrational.” It’s a small consulation, but I’m not sure anyone will be listening. Good luck on fine tuning your theories.Reply
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Perry says:April 12, 2010 at 5:43 amIt sounds as though you think history has been on a long path of marching towards the elimination of God. I would suggest to you that this is a very myopic view. Science itself rests on belief that the universe operates according to fixed discoverable laws (which is unprovable – an axiom precisely of the Gödel sort). Most people don’t know this idea first came from Christian theology. I talk about this further at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/#christian The idea that science and faith are inherently in conflict is mostly driven by Young Earth Creationists and Atheist Fundamentalists. In the history of science it’s a relatively recent development. The list of scientists and mathematicians who regard their work as somehow providing insight into the mind of God is long indeed, from Galileo to Newton to Einstein to Stephen Hawking. And yes, atheists are irrational. I have just demonstrated the same with straightforward airtight logic in this thread.Reply
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David Beck says:April 13, 2010 at 8:59 amWhat I was suggesting with the 4010 example is that even if science does create a formal system of all the “knowable” laws of physics, one can still appeal to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and claim that we don’t know everything. For some this may be a problem, but for me it opens a world of possibilities of free inquiry and liberal discourse unfettered by the “airtight” dogmatism of any ilk; religious, political, or even scientific. What you have demonstrated is the beauty of mathematics not only concerning questions of the physical world but also of the metaphysical. As you state above, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to the metaphysical statement “God exists” and by extension, I would add, “God is indivisible.” There is a delightful infinite regress in pursuing this course, which is something you feel is necessary to avoid although I think simply demonstrates the power and beauty of mathematics. Way back in the 6th century BC the Pythagoreans postulated that God is not a mathematician, mathematics is God. Your fascination with Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem may lead you to the same conclusion. By the way, I would like to recommend to your readers Mario Levio’s book, “Is God a Mathematician?” It touches on many of the discussion points throughout this thread.Reply
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Hans says:April 14, 2010 at 6:43 amPerry Can I ask is it the christian god you believe in? because I see some flaws with your argument (though I am not adverse to your basic premises) In believing in the Trinity you have drawn circles around three distinct identies and surely godels thoerum would then imply incompleteness..no? I have heard the explaination that the trinity are distinct parts of the same entity and equal, but biblical texts would seem to contradict in many places some examples. john 14:28 If you loved me, you would be glad that I’m going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I am. mathew 24:36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. How do you metaphorically square this.Reply
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Perry says:April 14, 2010 at 9:39 amHans, Whether this makes sense or not depends on how carefully you examine the Christian theology of the Trinity. Christian theology says Father, Son and Holy Spirit are indivisible and of one singe essence. They are never in disagreement or misunderstanding. At the same time they exist separately such that love exists between them and that they do manifest themselves in different forms. God the Father is the source of will, the Son is the expression of His will, the Holy Spirit is the understanding of his will. I liken this to a communication system at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/video5 in the video titled “Information, Communication, and the Trinitarian Concept of God”. A communication system has 3 separate elements – encoder, code and decoder but all three are necessary for communication to exist and all three must be in harmony. I see an analogy here as I describe in the video. In Mathematical terms I would say that the Trinity is plural but is not a system. Godel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” Where “effectively generated” means “not trivially simple.” In other words the three expressions of God are not an expression of elementary arithmetic. Tentatively (I could be wrong about this, still thinking about it) I’m reminded me of Arthur’s example of a system of simple addition being both consistent and complete at the same time. The reason it can be so is that it is trivial, i.e. it does not fully express elementary arithmetic. It does addition but it doesn’t do division or multiplication. The same can also be said of the Trinity because the Trinity cannot be divided. To newcomers the Trinity appears to be some crazy theory until you realize that you cannot say “God is Love” as an identity statement if God is simply unitary because love is always in relation between one and another. For God to be love, God must be plural. But because God is love, God is also indivisible. Which is another way of saying: LOVE IS BOTH CONSISTENT AND COMPLETE. If you understand love, you understand God and you understand how the infinite is the source of all things finite. This doesn’t mean that when the spirit of God is one with a human being (as was the case with Jesus) that Jesus the physical person knew everything that God knew. Scripture says “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” He set aside all his divine rights out of love for mankind. He really did have to learn to talk and he really did have to get potty trained. But even when he said, “My God My God why hast thou forsaken me?” that was the anguish of dying flesh. But he was always in essence God. God knows what it is like to experience death just as we do – because he loves us.Reply
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JM says:April 16, 2010 at 6:44 pmTo all the people who say that this article is intended, or in some way attempts, to prove the existence of God: it does not. It simply says that by applying Godel’s theory, the people who believe in God have a logical reason for doing so. They have merely specified what they think is “outside the circle”. They may have taken this idea to certain extremes, but the basic tenet is logical. Any other belief that says the universe was caused by something outside the universe is equally logical. Not only that, but you cannot logically DISprove God, and while that doesn’t mean he exists, it means that you can’t say for sure that he doesn’t exist. Basically, people should believe what they need to believe to understand the universe and their own existence, as long as it is not harmful to other people, and belief in itself is not harmful. Taking that belief to extremes and inferring things from it like “anyone who doesn’t believe this should die” is simply human error. And I apologize for this not being organized, but I addressed the issues as I thought of them.Reply
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Perry says:April 17, 2010 at 8:16 amJM, The article goes further than that. Materialism says “Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.” This article shows that materialistic atheism violates the laws of logic and thus cannot be true. And it also makes a number of logical conclusions as to what the thing outside the universe is and is not. Is conscious and is immaterial, and is outside of space and time.Reply
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David Beck says:April 17, 2010 at 2:15 pmA professor of mine told us, “You throw enough s__ up and some of it is bound to stick.” You make an awful lot of assertions so I’m wondering if you could simply state for your readers the one “airtight” proposition that you claim follows from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. If you’re interested in advancing your argument, I suggest this might be a way of staying on track. Could you also provide the source for your initial quote, “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove” and also, if you could, a citation for your statement that “He [Gödel] proved that any statement requires an external observer.” I find the “circle” and “external observer” analogies curiously provocative and would like to understand these quotes in their original context.Reply
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Perry says:April 17, 2010 at 10:31 pm“Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove” is my own plain-English rendering of Godel’s theorem. The formal version of the theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” The “circle” I refer to is the boundary between what is “in the theory” and what is outside of the theory. My plain-English rendering is sufficiently accurate, but you can use the formal version if you prefer. Regardless of which version you use, what it means is that if the universe is capable of computing arithmetic and if the universe is consistent (i.e. logical) then the universe is therefore incomplete. The external observer refers to the fact that when a person says “I am lying” (liar’s paradox) only an external agent can verify the truth or falsehood of that statement.Reply
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David Beck says:April 18, 2010 at 9:59 amIf you wish to be taken seriously, you shouldn’t ascribe to Gödel something he never said. It’s, of course, dishonest, quotation marks and all, and hardly a minor point. It’s the difference between what Gödel wrote and your interpretation of what he wrote. Others in this thread have strongly disagreed with your interpretation of Gödel’s Theorem, but your use of the “circle” and “external observer” metaphors, which, I believe, are in their very nature an expression of your belief, have rolled through the discussion thread. When you denude your argument of these images, you’re left with the reality of Gödel’s theorem and how do you get from it to your proposition: “if the universe is capable of computing arithmetic and if the universe is consistent (i.e. logical) then the universe is therefore incomplete.“ The connection is not at all clear as you have a herculean, if not impossible, task in defining your terms. For example, what do you mean by “universe? and what do you mean “capable of computing arithmetic?” Throughout history, these terms or concepts have confounded the most brilliant minds, which, in turn, have produced and continue to produce a diverse range of scholarly opinions, the depth and breadth of which takes my breath away. Even if you could climb this mountain, Gödel’s Proof would be there to tell you that you don’t know everything. Your use of “circles” and “external observers” are unacceptable shortcuts to the difficult task of climbing the mountain. You would do yourself and your readers a service by honestly stating your belief, which, in this regard, is simply that the universe is such that you can draw a circle around it and what’s outside the circle is God. You don’t need Gödel or the “authority” of science to make this statement. It’s your belief.Reply
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Perry says:April 19, 2010 at 6:28 amDefining Universe: Look it up in a dictionary. All known matter, energy, space and time. The same universe that the big bang physicists like Stephen Hawking write about. This is very well defined. Computing Arithmetic: Read the Church-Turing thesis. Or Godel’s paper for that matter. External observer: Ostensibly necessary to judge the truth or falsehood of the statement “I am lying.” I have stated my entire argument here on this thread. If there is a flaw in my logic you are invited to point it out.Reply
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David Beck says:April 19, 2010 at 10:58 amIf you actually cared to consider what others and I have said, you would have to concede you have no argument. But astonishingly your argument is also based on a lie – not some incidental or vague lie but a deliberately calculated one in bold colored lettering with quotation marks around it. A lie that you repeatedly come back to in various guises in your article and throughout the thread – the word “circle” appears over 100 times. This lie has nothing to do with Gödel or scientific inquiry, but is the very foundation of your theological beliefs, which, at this point, I’m sorry to report, couldn’t stand up to a good wind.Reply
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Perry says:April 19, 2010 at 11:55 amGodel’s theorems are explicitly about that which is “inside the theory” as opposed to that which is “outside the theory.” Any time there is an inside and an outside, there is a boundary. My usage of the word circle is appropriate. If you wish to show a fault in my logic based on Godel’s formal statement then you are invited to use that approach.Reply
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Hans says:April 19, 2010 at 12:56 pmPerry Having taken much time and effort to read and watch all of your work and cross referenced them with my own experiences. I find myself at odds with certain assumptions and conclusions that you reach. I suspect that this may well be my last corespondence with you but (and this sums it up both metaphorically and literally) anything is posible. As you try to reconcile logic and the acceptance of an uncaused eternal god I wish you good luck. I personally believe now that far from being irational atheists have a perfectly rational basis for their stance. Providing that the laws of physics at points in this universe can be “irational” Main Entry: ir·ra·tio·nal Pronunciation: ir-‘ra-sh&-n&l Function: adjective : not rational: not governed by reason, mental clarity, or >>>understanding<<< there will be at some scale or point where they will "appear" rational. We know so little about the universe from our tiny point of existence that even the circle you seek to draw around it is ireconcilable to its radius from here to the edge if it exists. without accepting irationality and taking an aproximation. From any point on the circumference to a central point we cannot even reconcile the smallest circle (Pi x r^2) where pi is a non recursive number. To reach that central point exactly is imposible we would have to start drawing a line and at some point slow down and down untill the line to all intense and purposes had reached that centre. But magnify it; and we would see we have a little further to go (or we had gone too far!) at some point we would reach a quantum level at which point we see all sorts of "irational" behaviour. time itself starts to interact with matter and vice versa. We may start to see particles which are split and are able to convey information of change even though they have no longer any known physical relationship/connection to each other. To state that DNA is too complex to have developed without a creator and even that this same creator must have created the universe we observe is an example of Dunning-Kruger effect. (which I fully accept I also am guilty of) We simply do not yet have enough information or the tools to be able to state catagoricaly that an omniscient, omnipotent being does or does not exist. I think that it is fair to infer it as part of our exploration into our own consciousness but to state it as fact, is like saying a+b=G it can have no proof untill all the atributes of a and b can catagorically be stated as complete. Thank you for the time you have taken to answer my corespondences and good luck in your quest for the "unknowable" Yours in Ignorance, HansReply
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Perry says:April 21, 2010 at 6:47 amHans, I think you are confusing two different meanings of irrationality. An irrational number is not illogical. And even if it takes us an infinite number of calculations to reach the center of a circle, do we not still know with absolute certainty that the center exists? Is it rational to believe that the universe appeared, caused by nothing and for no reason at all, as atheists do? Based on what we do know so far, is it rational to believe that a highly efficient modular redundant optimized self-repairing digital code occurred by accident? Based on what we do know, is it rational to believe that the fine tuning of the universe (ie the expansion of the big bang is fine tuned to at least 120 decimal places of precision) is just happenstance? Is there anything I have said regarding incompleteness that is illogical? Are you sure it is rational to say that the existence of God is unknowable? Is there any argument I have made regarding Incompleteness that is irrational? Also I’m curious, what was the result of the recording of the person speaking in tongues? Perry P.S.: Logic can infer but it cannot truly prove. So I believe that in your search for the truth, there is a point where you need to say, “OK God if you’re here, please show me.” And in your heart you need to be willing to put yourself in that place of emotional risk. It is a place of listening and watching and being open. It is a scary and rewarding place – I know. Ultimately though it is more rewarding than scary. Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. 9?Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 13:45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.”Reply
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David Beck says:April 19, 2010 at 11:53 pmYour “circle” requires evidence or a proof. Then we can talk about the merits of your argument. Lying about what Gödel says and then jumping from his proof regarding formal systems to the universe, I’m sorry, doesn’t count. Maybe you could find some other scientist, of the caliber of Stephen Hawking, who has used the circle metaphor to describe the universe – I wouldn’t bet on it. The Wikipedia’s discussion on the universe, which most people would say is just the tip of the iceberg, is eighteen pages long, 8,500 words, 72 citations, and there’s NOT ONE single reference to an “encircled” universe. However, I bet there are some religious sources that use this analogy, but as I understand it that’s not how you want to develop your argument. By the way, on your insistence that the universe is capable of computing arithmetic, I’d like to refer you to Sir Michael Atiyah, one of the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, who argues that a concept as basic as that of natural numbers was created by man. I mention this only to assure you that this issue is far from settled as you would like people to believe.Reply
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Perry says:April 20, 2010 at 7:53 amIf you wish to hypothesize that the universe is infinitely large or massive then that’s up to you. I am referring to the universe that is known and observable to science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Size Space itself is of finite size, that is a direct consequence of Einstein’s space-time theorems. It has finite mass and spans finite time. If the universe is finite then it has some outer boundary. If you wish to say that arithmetic is a human construction, that’s fine. This still has no consequence to the truth of Godel’s statement. Mathematics is incomplete and if the universe is mathematical then the universe too is incomplete. It is not necessary for me to invoke circles to prove my point. We can go to Godel’s original statement. Godel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness. Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete.Reply
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David Beck says:April 20, 2010 at 10:09 amAlthough I think your argument has been completely demolished, and ironically I think you should be happy for that, there’s just one last nail I’d like to hammer into its coffin. Let’s assume that somehow you can pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and prove that the universe is such that you can draw a circle around it, formalize all of its laws (past, present, and future), apply Gödel’s proof, find the universe consistent, but not complete, and conclude “there could be a God.” What I think you should find frightening about this scenario, is that in the process you would have created a completely formal, rational, mechanistic, universe – the very universe that you eschew – a universe in which miracles are no longer possible – Christ’s birth and resurrection explained away. You’re left with the possibility that there might be a God. You may want to be careful of what you wish for.Reply
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Perry says:April 20, 2010 at 10:36 amYou’re telling me that my circle analogy is invalid… then in the same breath saying it’s impossible to draw a circle around the universe because the universe is infinite. If you think the circle analogy is invalid, why are you using it to build your own argument? Mathematics is incomplete. The universe is mathematical. Therefore if the universe is consistent it is necessarily incomplete as well. Miracles are possible for the same reason coded information is possible – because the universe can be acted upon by an outside intelligence. If free will exists in the universe (free will by definition not being mathematical, mechanistic or deterministic) then that either means: (1) human free will is irrational, or (2) human free will has a metaphysical or spiritual origin. You’re free to embrace #1 and believe in an irrational universe. An irrational universe can be complete, freeing you from the necessity to believe in God. However there is no foundation for scientific or logical thought in an irrational universe. I choose (2) which allows me to embrace scientific belief in a rational universe. (This set of choices has come up earlier in this thread.) You can embrace a 3rd option, which is that our choices are deterministic, determined by mere physics and chemistry, and that human free will is an illusion. In that scenario, the universe is still incomplete.Reply
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Andy says:April 23, 2010 at 9:09 amGodel’s Theorem says there exists statements that are TRUE but unprovable within a system. It also states that there are statements that are FALSE but unprovable within a system. Therefore, the assumption that the universe has a cause may be TRUE or FALSE. The Containment Principle in cosmology states that the universe contains everything that is real and nothing else. Should a cause for the universe be proven that cause becomes part of the universe. Now there is a need for a cause for the cause, causing a infinite regression. See the book “Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid” by Douglas R. Hofstadter for a full explanation.Reply
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Perry says:April 23, 2010 at 12:52 pmAndy, The fact that there are false statements unprovable in the system is the trivial case. By definition it is impossible to prove ANY false statement, whether inside or outside any system. Gödel’s theorem says that there are true statements unprovable in the system. The statement “the universe contains everything that is real” directly contradicts Gödel’s theorem because if the universe is consistent there are true statements that are not part of the universe. Thus the Containment Principle violates the laws of mathematics. If you read the prior comments you’ll see that one of my primary concerns is to not invoke infinite regress. The existence of an uncaused immaterial agent outside of space and time satisfies this requirement. PerryReply
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Josiah says:April 23, 2010 at 3:54 pm“The very idea of human rights is a faith statement. It is not scientifically provable. It can’t be derived from Darwinism. It comes from a belief not only in God but God’s relation to mankind. These things matter a lot. A counterexample would be the abuses of communism in the 20th century. Is it merely a coincidence that the governments who killed more than 100 million people just happened to be officially atheistic? Atheist regimes killed more people in one century than religious wars killed in all centuries put together. Could that really be just a happy accident? Is it merely a coincidence that many of the men involved in the killing of more than 100 million people had mustaches? Yes, the answer is yes, and the same goes for their being “atheistic”–which, by the way, although they were officially considered “atheistic” (except for Hitler, who was a Catholic. Woops!) the leaders themselves are shrouded in gigantic cults of personality. Effectively, the leaders themselves are treated as gods, and followed by faith alone. The fact that we have a concept of human rights has nothing to do with faith. They’re completely arbitrary. They reflect the atmosphere of philosophy and morality that was popular around the time of their creation. Morality is entirely relative and fluctuates over time. According to the first half of the Bible, written in the Bronze age, it’s moral to own slaves, kill women and children under certain circumstances, etc. According to the same book, it’s entirely immoral to eat shellfish, wear clothing made of two different kinds of fabrics, etc. Obviously, things have changed since then. And who knows–maybe in 2000 more years, people will look back at our Constitution and be appalled that we left out things they find to be morally necessary, or laugh at us for deeming immoral things that are irrelevant to them. And another thing: I don’t have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. I don’t have faith that if I drop a weight, it will fall to the ground. I don’t have faith that I have an ancestor in common with the rest of the primates. I have a reasonable expectation of all of those things. No, you can’t ‘prove’ scientific theories–they aren’t meant to be proven. That doesn’t mean they’re just guesses, or random hypotheses. We have considerably evidence suggesting that things like a heliocentric planetary system, gravity, and evolution are true. The God hypothesis, however, has no evidence for it. The closest thing you have to ‘proof’ (and I use that term extremely loosely) is that if you see everything as being faith-based, then God is plausible. However, not many things ARE faith-based, no matter how many times you try to say they are. Additionally, I love the way this argument (both the original post and your replies to comments) turned out to be like every argument I’ve read regarding ‘proofs’ of god: “There are some things we just don’t know and can’t know! Like God! …but for some reason, we know that he’s compassionate, he gave us morals, etc!”Reply
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Perry says:April 24, 2010 at 1:23 amIs killing 100 million people right, wrong, or relative?Reply
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Mike says:May 6, 2010 at 2:13 pmsome food for thought. if you tilt your head, does the world around you appear to tilt as well? Doesn’t the universe we know relate directly to what we see, or sense? Godel claims the universe is conscious. Are we not conscious? to think that all that we observe is materialized first in our own heads picture an apple. now picture yourself touching the apple. you can feel it, cant you? maybe not with your eyes open, but i was born with my eyes closed.Reply
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Greg says:May 11, 2010 at 6:01 pmYou are again taking what I said and stretching it out beyond the meanings I originally provided. I described the universe as being infinite, I made no reference to anything being ‘outside’ of the universe, since there is no logical reason to have an ‘outside’. And the reason there doesn’t need to be an ‘outside’ was explained in my original post. That’s why conclusions about the universe do not require faith, it is self contained. We can theoretically measure everything about the universe because we are within the universe, like the goldfish in it’s bowl. Even the question of where and why spacetime began can be theoretically answered, we simply lack the technology to do so. btw: faith has nothing to do with inductive reasoning. From encarta – Faith, belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof; inductive, logic, reaching conclusion based on observation; reasoning, the use of logical thinking in order to find results or draw conclusions What does belief and devotion expecially without logical proof have to do with logical thinking to draw conclusions based on observations? Anyway, thanks for your time. It’s been a fun debate.Reply
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Perry says:May 12, 2010 at 6:23 amGreg, Einstein’s spacetime theorems indicate that even space itself is finite and has a definite outer boundary, which is expanding. Modern science only knows of a finite amount of matter and energy. To speak of an infinite universe is to go far beyond the realm of known science. If you wish to say the universe is infinite then you are making a blind faith statement. Based on the encarta’s definition of faith, Christian faith at many points does not conform to this definition. Christian theology is based on inductive logic and experience, not belief without logical proof. In Christian theology some characteristics of God are known through the order of creation (Romans 1). God has made himself known by raising his Son from the dead (Acts 17) and the resurrection of Jesus is still in fact the most parsimonious explanation for the explosive growth of the early church and the known facts at hand. Case in point: There is no 2nd theory that has gained consensus. Dozens of precise prophesies have come true regarding the Messiah etc as the dead sea scrolls definitively prove that Isaiah for example was written well before Christ fulfilled the prophesies in it. So what I am saying is that Christian faith is much closer to inductive reasoning than what you have assumed faith to be. No one is asking you to believe Christianity out of blind belief and devotion. My sites http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com and http://www.coffeehousetheology.com have extensive articles relating to these topics. Christian theology is not about blind belief at all. It is about reaching conclusions based on observation; reasoning, the use of logical thinking in order to find results or draw conclusions. Faith has everything to do with inductive reasoning. It is no coincidence therefore that modern science emerged from Christian Europe and not from Islam, China, Greece, Rome or Egypt. All those cultures had promising beginnings of scientific development but all stalled. Only in a theology that was based on inductive reasoning and experience could science develop as it has in the West.Reply
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Greg says:May 13, 2010 at 12:22 pmAgain, either you are misunderstanding me, or you completely refuse to even listen to anything I have to say. First of all, I never said our current spacetime was infinite. I said that if what existed before the big bag did not include time, then that form of our universe would have been infinite, since time would have no meaning when our universe was in that form. After the big bang, we have our current laws of the universe, which include a finite space. Yes, it is true that our weakness, as human beings, is that we are constantly relying on ‘proof’ for God’s existence. That does not define faith, that only defines belief. You can believe in God, but lack faith in God. There is a distinct difference. If you are trying to redefine faith to your own purposes than our discussion may as well end because it is pointless to discuss anything with someone who insists on personal meanings rather than actual definitions. You have to understand, without concrete definition we cannot communicate, I could never know what you are actually talking about, and vice versa. btw: at the following link http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christian_Credibility.htm , if you will notice the letter by Dr. Brown clearly states that Jesus did not fulfill Jewish messianic prophecy regarding his descendency, and that his descendency was historicized. If you read the full context of this website it would seem that this is the position of the Catholic Church. So again, logic and reasoning used to support a perspective. Like I said, nothing wrong with wanting to believe in God, but logic and reasoning has no place in that belief system. It is much better to just have faith.Reply
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Perry says:May 14, 2010 at 2:20 amEarlier you said “I described the universe as being infinite, I made no reference to anything being ‘outside’ of the universe, since there is no logical reason to have an ‘outside’. ” So you seem to be defining both our current spacetime which is finite and what existed before the big bang which is infinite as the same universe. universe –noun 1. the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space; the cosmos; macrocosm. I am defining our current spacetime as the universe. This is consistent with the dictionary and all modern scientific usage of the term and it’s consistent with everything I have said on the subject. If something is outside of time then it does not have any of the usual properties of matter, i.e. electrons orbiting atoms. And if it is outside of space then again it cannot be matter as we understand it, i.e. electrons orbiting atoms. I don’t see how one could define what was before our current spacetime as being the same. faith –noun 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability. 2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact. 8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved. The Christian theology understanding and definition of faith is distinctly different from yours. If you believe that it is the position of the Catholic church that Jesus did not fulfill Jewish messianic prophecy then you are using highly selective information sources to arrive at your conclusions. Any reasonably informed person knows that this is not the position of the Catholic church. And finally, you are using reason and logic to show that Dr. Brown, the Catholic Church and other theologians use reason and logic to form conclusions about Christian beliefs, including examples of reason and logic used within the Bible itself. Then you are somehow concluding that reason and logic have no place in Christian belief. You’re contradicting yourself every step of the way.Reply
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Greg says:May 14, 2010 at 10:53 amLet’s take a step back. When I stated: “I described the universe as being infinite, I made no reference to anything being ‘outside’ of the universe, since there is no logical reason to have an ‘outside’. ” I was reasserting my earlier comment, quoted below, because you were twisting my words around (which you are doing again): “Second, there is no theory that currently even tries to explain what existed before the big bang. However, since “time itself” was created with the big bang, than by ‘reason and logic’ whatever form the universe existed in before than (singularity for example) would have existed outside of time, and the only way to even remotely explain that is to use the term ‘infinite’.” So yes, I can have both a finite and “infinite” universe (note the quotes, since there is no better term to use) because, according to what we ‘know’ about our universe, time began with the big bang. If you have a better way of describing the universe sans time, then I’m open to suggestions, until then, “infinite” is as good as it gets. There is nothing in the definition you provided that contradicts my statements as long as you accept that spacetime and the big bang are both associated with the universe. But, to put it more simply, I’m not trying to define what existed before the big bang. I’m only pointing out what is possible, and that the possibility excludes the need for an ‘outside’ and therefore excludes the need for a God. Again, nothing in your definitions of faith contradicts what I’ve said. Your first definition is circular, the second reiterates what I said, since the third uses the term trust, and trust relies on confidence and confidence relies on faith, again, we have circular reasoning. So the only true definition you have is the exact one I gave you. You can’t pick and choose your definitions, you have to find the one that makes sense. (There’s a lot of definitions for trust, before you list them all, please make sure you’ve thought them through, I already have). What I’m saying is that the Catholic Church recognizes that Jesus did not fulfill messianic prophecy to the letter, but that that the fullfillment of those prophecies was bestowed upon him historically through the faith of his followers. That is the position of the Catholic Church. Just like that Catholic Church recognizes that the universe was not created in 7 days. It was pretty clear by that letter what stance the Catholic Church was taking on the position of certain messianic prophecies. Finally, yes, Dr. Brown uses reason and logic to form conclusions regarding belief. This has nothing to do with truth, fact, or faith, only belief.Reply
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Perry says:May 17, 2010 at 7:46 amYou are defining an immaterial timeless infinity before the big bang and the finite material universe after the big bang as the same universe. I don’t know how you can transform the infinite into the finite and call it the same thing. The former is metaphysical and the latter is physical. I don’t see your description as being all that different from pantheism or perhaps panentheism. The kind of faith that I personally espouse is akin to inductive reasoning and based on personal experience, reason and logic, not blind belief. If you choose not to believe me that is your decision. Dr. Brown’s faxes are not official documents of the Catholic church and they certainly do not reflect what the church actually says it believes.Reply
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Greg says:May 17, 2010 at 11:00 amThe universe, pre-big bang, be it a singularity or the collapse of a previous universe, was still all there was, just in another form. To reiterate, our current scientific theories state that spacetime was created with the big bang. That doesn’t mean that what existed pre-big bang was metaphysical, it’s just beyond what our current theories can predict. All I’ve said, and keep saying, is that if whatever form the universe existed in (singularity for example) did not include time (since that was created at the big bang) than the “best” way to define it is to use the term “infinite”, only because there is no time scale. This in no way implies a metaphysical universe. This is also based on what our current theories regarding the universe suggest. I understand that it is difficult to grasp a concept as bizarre as the existence of a universe without time. However, that is precisly predicted as what would happen to you by Einstein’s theories of relativity should you travel at the speed of light; time, in the universe, would stop ticking, from your perspective. So time is malleable, and a universe without time is theoretically possible, if difficult to comprehend. Now, as to your ‘faith’. I certainly believe what you espouse to; I just don’t see it as ‘faith’ but instead as ‘belief’. But, we can agree to disagree on this point since it is getting nowhere. As to Dr. Brown; all I can attest to is what is on the website. Accordingly, the website states that Dr. Brown’s position is officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church. When the authors of the website went to the Catholic Church for answers to their questions, they were referred to Dr. Brown, the logical conclusion is that Dr. Brown’s position and the Catholic Church’s position are one and the same.Reply
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Perry says:May 31, 2010 at 7:35 amYou are taking something (infinite, uncaused, outside of space and time) that has no resemblance to the universe we know (finite, inside of time, bound by cause and effect) and calling them the same thing. It seems to me you are just avoiding the metaphysical by conflating the definition of the physical and the metaphysical. meta·phys·i·cal Pronunciation: \-?fi-zi-k?l\ Function: adjective Date: 15th century 1 : of or relating to metaphysics 2 a : of or relating to the transcendent or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses b : supernatural 3 : highly abstract or abstruse; also : theoreticalReply
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Sideshow Bob says:May 20, 2010 at 4:02 pmLet’s draw a circle around Godel’s theorem. Something outside this circle must be assumed to prove this theorem. That is, of course, assuming this theorem is true in the act of drawing the circle. Oh wait. Outside this theorem’s circle…is this theorem? That doesn’t make any sense.Reply
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Perry says:May 20, 2010 at 9:15 pmGodel’s theorem is based on paeno arithmetic, which contains unprovable axioms. Those axioms are consistent but not complete. If we assume those axioms are true then Godel’s proof is valid. In other words Godel’s theorem is self validating.Reply
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Anna says:July 8, 2010 at 2:02 pmSo, let me get this straight: Gödel’s thereom can be self-validating but the universe can’t? Great. Way to dismiss that out of hand. Another thing, you accepted your premise in your proof. “Whatever is outside the universe must be boundless which means you can’t draw a circle around it.” Uh…wrong? The universe itself is boundless in the sense that it contains EVERYTHING and it is EXPANDING. Before you try to postulate anything, try explaining what it’s expanding into. I realize that’s a silly question with an assumed answer, but the point is that you’ve taken a leap and you’ve justified it with language as opposed to logic. It’s like that silly joke people tell about three guys who each pay $10 for a room. Once they pay, the owner says there’s a deal of 3 rooms for $25 so he hands the bellboy a fiver to give back to the guys. Now the bellboy does some quick thinking and says, “5 doesn’t go into 3, so I’ll keep 2 bucks and give them each 1.” The guys each paid $10 and get $1 back so effectively they’ve paid $9 apiece. The bellboy has $2. But wait, 3 x 9 = 27 and the bellboy has 2, where’s the other dollar? Did it magically disappear? Of course not. Obfuscatory language doesn’t change the facts. There are a lot of unknowns, Gödel depends on something outside of itself which depends on something outside itself and even if there’s something beyond the universe, if Gödel’s theorem is a law, as you’re purporting, (as in, ALWAYS true) then whatever is outside the universe depends on something outside itself. And lest you think that’s not possible in the terms by which you defined whatever that thing is, let me assure you that just because it’s outside our purview, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.Reply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 2:31 pmAnna, Gödel’s theorem relies on Peano arithmetic, which is universally accepted as valid but which does have axioms which cannot be proven. To the extent that mathematics can prove anything, Gödel is proven. But yes it still relies on axioms. Similarly the universe is incomplete, just as mathematics is incomplete. Please explain to me how the fact that the universe is expanding makes it boundless. Sure seems to me that the fact that it has an outer boundary is hard proof that it is finite. Maybe you can explain your POV to me again. It’#8217;s clear to me that you have not understood what I have said: You cannot have an infinite regression of incomplete entities. Something has to be complete and that something by definition is infinite, boundless. If you go back and read my article I think I have made this sufficiently clear.Reply
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Greg says:July 8, 2010 at 3:24 pmYou wrote: “Similarly the universe is incomplete, just as mathematics is incomplete.” I am baffled by this statement, what do you mean the universe is incomplete? Also: “Please explain to me how the fact that the universe is expanding makes it boundless. Sure seems to me that the fact that it has an outer boundary is hard proof that it is finite.” According to current scientific observations and theories, the universe is finite and boundless. In other words, it is finite because there is a specific amount of mass in the universe. But it is boundless because there is no edge to the universe. Just wanted to help with some clarification.
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 4:36 pmI mean that the universe cannot explain itself, just like your fish cannot explain itself. It has to come from something. It is not self-existent. So far as is knowable to modern science, time itself began with the big bang. Einstein’s spacetime theorems indicate that if there is no space, there is no time. Time is not infinite and never at any measurable point will become infinite. Time is finite. There is a finite number of seconds in the past and that will always be the case in any rational system of time measurement. And yes there most certainly in an edge to the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size_of_the_universe Everything we know about the universe indicates that everything about it is finite.
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Nick Palmer says:May 25, 2010 at 4:04 pmPerry, As a student of philosophy, I found this article to be very interesting. Your explanation of Godel’s theorem is clear enough for the layman, and the direction you take it is wonderful. However, I do have one criticism with regards to your conclusion that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem can be used to explore the existence of God, or sumsuch being (pardon me if this has shown up earlier in the comments). Going back to the theorem, so we can get a clear picture of it, we cannot prove anything to be true or false outside of the axiomatic system. This is to say, in order for a logical system to be fully consistent, it must sacrifice completeness. To me, this sounds an awful lot like the conclusions Immanuel Kant gives in his Critique of Pure Reason: because of the finite, limited nature of the mind, we cannot extend our knowledge to the things-in-themselves, to the noumenal reality. This is to say, while the mind is entirely rational (consistent), as it operates in the realm of reason with a priori concepts, what Kant terms the Transcendental Categories of Understanding, these categories, the mind itself, cannot discover knowledge of anything outside of possible experience (it is non-complete, as it were). The consequences of this is that, as Kant claims, we cannot discover the existence or nature of God, the origin or first cause of the universe, or the nature of the soul, as these objects are outside of possible experience. This is not to say that there is no God, or that there is no first cause to the universe. What Kant argues is that we cannot determine the validity of these claims: God may or may not exist, but we simply cannot determine which is the case, giving the nature of our rational minds as being fundamentally limited. Similarly with Godel’s theorem, whatever is outside the circle, so to speak, we cannot prove exists. So to speculate as you do that what is outside the universe is immaterial, that the information within the universe was designed by some sort of intelligence, is purely unprovable. You may be right, but you may also be very far off the mark. In short, all we may conclude from the application of Kant’s transcendental philosophy or Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to religious issues, and if we take these philosophies seriously, is the position of religious agnosticism. Nevertheless, despite my criticism, I enjoyed the article. Best, Nick PalmerReply
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Perry says:May 31, 2010 at 7:30 amYou’re not the first to point out that this lines up with Kant’s writings. It also lines up with the Christian assertion that human understanding of God must come through the grace of God revealing Himself. It also lines up with Aquinas’ Via Negativa. Note that we cannot *prove* the information within the universe was designed by some sort of intelligence, just as you said. However you cannot formulate a coherent explanation of the universe without it. When I infer that what is outside the universe is uncaused, infinite, conscious and outside of space and time, my description is 100% logical and consistent with everything we know. I have yet to see anyone propose an alternative explanation that is logical. What this does is lend complete validity to the idea that there is something transcendent. And it shows that the atheist point of view is irrational. So religious agnosticism is a rational starting point. But then when we incorporate information theory and biology into our understanding – everything we know about the nature of codes infers a conscious intelligent decision. All that we do know decisively takes us beyond agnosticism to a transcendent being who has intervened in the history of the world at least once.Reply
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Greg says:May 27, 2010 at 10:16 pmI’m sorry I don’t have more to contribute here, but I must thank you for writing this out. It has truly opened my mind (as an atheist) to more possibilities than I had previously conceived. I had known of Godel in some respect, but not in the manner in which you have described his ideas. Curiosity sparked…Reply
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Perry says:May 28, 2010 at 7:26 amGlad to hear it. I’ve got some comments in the queue I haven’t had time to respond to. Nice to know thoughts are being provoked here.Reply
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Greg says:June 16, 2010 at 4:28 pm“You are taking something (infinite, uncaused, outside of space and time)” No, I am taking what science says about the big bang (that all matter, energy and Time were created at that moment) and extrapolating what would have been beforehand. Hence, sans Time, the best word to use would be infinite. That’s all. Our current Universe, as far as we know, is infinite along the Time scale, it will go on and on forever, there is no evidence to contradict that theory. “that has no resemblance to the universe we know (finite, inside of time, bound by cause and effect)” Of course not, I was extrapolating a state of the Universe, pre-big bang. “and calling them the same thing.” Be it pre-big bang or post-big bang it’s still our Universe, that’s all I was saying. Sorry to confuse you. “It seems to me you are just avoiding the metaphysical by conflating the definition of the physical and the metaphysical.” Nothing metaphysical about any of this. Anyway, what happened to the fish in the fishbowl. That fish still doesn’t need an outside to exist, so why are we arguing about pre- and post- big bang Universe descriptions when the question of the fish was never answered? btw: good job on coding the website, hit submit comment before entering my name/email info and even though it took me to another page and I had to hit the back button I didn’t lose the comment I typed up as a lot of forms tend to doReply
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Perry says:June 17, 2010 at 7:59 amGreg, The proposition that time will continue to go forward interrupted does not make our universe infinite. Case in point is the care mathematicians take to say things like “limit of y as x goes towards infinity” rather than “y when x is infinite.” By all normal definitions, pre Big Bang is most emphatically not our universe. I am not confused about any of this. You appear to be losing sight of my original statement which was Gödel’s theorem. It says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness. Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete. If the universe is incomplete then there is something outside the universe. The finite is contingent on the infinite. The fish does need something on the outside to exist. Is that not fairly obvious?Reply
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Greg says:June 17, 2010 at 11:39 am“The proposition that time will continue to go forward interrupted does not make our universe infinite. Case in point is the care mathematicians take to say things like “limit of y as x goes towards infinity” rather than “y when x is infinite.”” You can’t apply that equation to Time. In your example it would also be possible for x to have a negative number, yet Time does not go backward, ever. Time is unique. So yes, Time, as far as we know, will be infinite. “By all normal definitions, pre Big Bang is most emphatically not our universe. I am not confused about any of this.” Fine, the pre-big bang state of our Universe will now be defined as La-La Land. La-La Land, in theory, did not contain Time, it was, in theory, a singularity of infinite mass and energy; or, it was the collapse of one Universe only to form another Universe; or whatever other theory is out there about the Pre-Bang state of existence. By the way, since you can pick and choose definitions, here’s webster’s: the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated. Key word, postulated. So La-La Land, by my postulation, IS part of our Universe. I’ve already explained why. Let’s put it the simplest and most foolish way. You draw a circle around the Universe and outside of that is God. I draw a circle around God. Outside of that is what? And drawing a circle around that other thing, outside of that is what? I can always draw more circles and therefore, replace your God with a higher level of existence. The most basic form of addition is both complete and provable. If I have 2 apples and you give me 2 apples I now have 4 apples. If I eat 1 apple I now have 3 apples. Nothing unprovable about that. Once you start thinking there is more to the world than your 2 apples worth, you start to confuse things by trying to over complicate them.Reply
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Perry says:June 17, 2010 at 12:31 pmAccording to all observations I’m familiar with, mass, energy and space are all finite. As for time, far we’re at 13.7 billion years and counting. In my book, that’s finite. I’m not seeing anything in the universe that’s inifinite. Tell me – at what precise time in the future does time become infinite? You said: “Let’s put it the simplest and most foolish way. You draw a circle around the Universe and outside of that is God. I draw a circle around God. Outside of that is what?” If you’re even asking that at all, then you haven’t read anything I’ve written in the article above. Please go to the top and read the article. Addition all by itself (with no multiplication or division or other operations) is what mathematicians classify as a “trivially simple system.” When Godel stipulates “effectively generated” he means not trivially simple. From Wikipedia: “Gödel’s incompleteness theorems is the name given to two theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1931. They are about limitations in all but the most trivial formal systems for arithmetic of mathematical interest. The theorems are very important for the philosophy of mathematics. Most people think they show that Hilbert’s program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all of mathematics is impossible. This would give a negative answer to Hilbert’s second problem.”Reply
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Greg says:June 17, 2010 at 2:08 pm“at what precise time in the future does time become infinite?” Only Time will tell. “Please go to the top and read the article.” I read it, when I wrote the first time. That’s been a while now. I’ll take those comments back if they have already been addressed within your article. “Addition all by itself (with no multiplication or division or other operations)” What is multiplication and division except simplified ways of doing addition and subtraction. And isn’t that true for all mathematical formula’s? In the end, all formula’s can be done as a form of addition and subtraction, it may be difficult and crazy to do it that way, but it is possible. What is very clear though, beyond anything else, is no matter what anyone says in any post, you will never accept any argument but one that awknowledges your belief in god. Do you find that to be a true statement? I believe it is.Reply
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Perry says:June 17, 2010 at 6:04 pmGreg, I will accept any and all statements that are logical. I have yet to encounter an atheist who could produce a logical response to the direct implication of Godel’s theorem that the universe necessarily has an infinite metaphysical source. Let me know exactly when “Time will tell”. You have not at any stage in this discussion dealt with the logic of Godel’s incompleteness theorem. When you are willing to do so you are welcome to present your arguments.Reply
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Rudy says:June 17, 2010 at 11:55 pmMoot points all, that I read anyway. You’re making a huge leap by saying that the origin of life is the origin of information. Then go on with inductive reasoning to say that it takes intelligence to create information therefor god must exist. Energy, matter, time and it’s different configs, including a clump of atoms or what we perceive to be thought, are merely configurations of our universe. Why must people be so vain as to believe that our intelligence is supreme and personify this into a being in order to explain those things that are outside the circle? This theory states, along with many modern day improvements, that we will never know everything. That’s all. Although, assuming god exists this theory also says he will also never know everything. So now this god isn’t god anymore. Perry, you’re reaching buddy, but whatever makes you happy. Just read some more. Many good responses you’ve very clumsily ignored. Don’t walk around under your guise of logic please. That is how religion hurts people.Reply
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Perry says:June 18, 2010 at 9:59 amYou ask me to use logic and in the very same statement reject inductive reasoning. If you have an argument or evidence to present, present it.Reply
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Greg says:June 18, 2010 at 4:00 pmWell said. It is the arrogance of man to place himself in such a position of superiority to actually believe that his thinking being is in any way significant within the Universe. Does the Sun, our solar system, our galaxy, etc… care at all that this insignificant creature on an insignificant little planet swam out of some primordial ooze, learned to crawl, then to walk, and finally had some neurons happen to shoot off in specific sequences to produce logic?Reply
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Perry says:June 18, 2010 at 7:16 pmIs man arrogant simply because he believes he’s important? Or could it be that the definition of arrogance is to assert that the force that gave birth to the universe is mindless, is less personal, less intentional and less intelligent than ourselves?Reply
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Greg says:June 21, 2010 at 12:32 pmWhat is arrogant is to assume that intelligence holds any value in the greater scheme of things. Even evolutionarily speaking, it is the simpler forms of life that are more successful in the long term. Intelligence just happens to be successful right now, but humans have been around for a blink of an eye in the timescale of the cosmos. Therefore, if intelligence holds little value in the cosmos, then what value is there in having a supremely intelligent being. That’s like saying I am the most uselessly talented individual out of a group of uselessly talented individuals.Reply
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Perry says:June 21, 2010 at 12:57 pmThat’s pretty misanthropic view of humanity, isn’t it? An insulting way of seeing yourself, Greg. You’re more than that. You’re better than that. The fact that you are using your intelligence to discuss an important question is by itself proof that your intelligence is worth more than the above sentence gives you credit for. You are talented, you are USEFULLY talented and all of us are useful and talented and valuable in the eyes of God. Perry Marshall
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Greg says:June 21, 2010 at 2:30 pmI am not insulting in my view of humanity, I am simply humbled by the vast universe around me and recognize how fragile and insignificant my life is in comparison to that universe. I do not stand on top of a mountain of arrogance and proclaim my greatness, especially not when I see how foolish I, and the rest of humanity is on a regular basis. And I’m not talking about how we waste our planet, I’m talking about regular every day foolishness, white lies, silly games, attitudes towards each other, prejudices (non-racial or religious), etc… Not one of us is a perfect human being towards his fellow human beings yet most of us know how we should act towards each other, but we still don’t. Our intelligence can’t even overcome basic instincts and fears. Many of us still need to believe in an almighty creator because we are afraid of the unknown and unexplainable things in the world. Because we are afraid of death.
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Perry says:June 21, 2010 at 11:36 pmGreg, The value of intelligence itself and the moral failures of man are two different things. I fully acknowledge everything you are saying, but I do not devalue intelligence or wisdom because all of us lack it. Is not intelligence required to judge that this or that action is foolish? Perhaps some of us believe in an almighty creator because we sense that if so much is wrong – and yes, we do somehow *know* in our very bones that it is wrong – that somewhere there must be something greater that is right.
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Perry says:June 22, 2010 at 6:52 am2nd comment, might seem peripheral but it’s directly related. I completely embrace an evolutionary framework, but I do so from the perspective of a communications engineer. In other words, evolution most definitely happened, and I understand that evolution is a process of modifying digital code. Neo-darwinism says that random copying errors of that code, filtered by natural selection, is responsible for all that we see. That’s a bottom-up materialistic framework. In communications engineering there is no principle whatsoever to support he idea that this could be true. Digital codes only evolve as a function of discrete modular re-arrangements. Not copying errors. In digital communication theory there is no such thing as a % of the time that noise or a copying error is beneficial. It is *always* damaging, never helpful. Therefore, for evolution to happen it has to be designed to happen. It cannot happen accidentally. Nowhere in any of the massive volumes of scientific literature is there so much as a single paper that demonstrates that the path between species A and species B is random. Believe me, I know, I have tried very hard to find even one such paper. I have challenged people for 5 years to produce one and no one has ever produced it. On the other hand there are enormous volumes of literature that show that evolution DOES proceed by non-random, episodic re-arrangements of DNA. Genome doubling, transposition, symbiogenesis. These are incredibly orderly and beautifully elegant and sophisticated. Furthermore they are governed by a “fractal checksum matrix” that Jean-Claude Perez describes in his French book “Codex Biogenesis” where every re-arrangement follows very specific linguistic rules that are tied to the Fibonacci sequence.. As a communications engineer, I know that information is always created and organized top-down, not bottom up. This is prima facie evidence that living things and evolution itself are both proof of a designer. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/new-theory-of-evolution/ On the site http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com I have defended this thesis for 5 years, including the largest atheist discussion forum in the world (www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels) and no one has produced any evidence to the contrary. There is no way that the random copying errors, materialistic paradigm of biology will survive the 21st century. 21st century DNA research has already demolished neo-Darwinism; the only problem is, it’s taking some time for the rest of the world to hear about it. I submit to you that yes, we have evolved, and the fact that such a thing is even possible without additional outside input from new programmers only serves to show that the original design was profoundly ingenious. If DOS 1.0 evolved into Windows 7 in 30 years or even 3 billion years with no programmers necessary, you’d want to talk to the guy who designed the original program. You’d definitely have some questions. And I submit to you that our moral failures and disasters serve to show that we are not nearly as wise as our creator. Yes, there is merit to being humbled in the face of the universe; but outside of earth, your own body is more complex than the whole rest of the universe, combined. But most of all we must be humble before the one who set the physical constants and fine tuned the big bang to 120 decimal places. http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/big-bang-precisely-planned/ You said something about belief in a creator being needed because we are afraid of death. Well yes that is true. But belief in a creator is also necessary to explain the extraordinary ingeniousness of the genetic code and the existence of a self-modifying digital program. And, as I explain here on this page, the very incompleteness of the universe itself.
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Hans says:June 19, 2010 at 8:35 amI felt it time to write again, having followed the various threads wither they have lead. And have taken time to read more in various forums and academic papers. Not sure it has made any more impact as proof of a devine creator. But I do now accept that Goedel would seem to hold true for all “curently observable” quantfyable systems however I tried to put into words in a previous post the problem which i now know to be ireducible complexity and the idea of the halting probability omega and the fact that some mathematical proofs are true by accident http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/mjm.pdf. (As humans we are bound by our language and understanding for my lack of understanding of the English language and ignorance I apologise) We place the bounds of the axiomatic system and say that is all there is within that system, but as we look forwad to discoveries in QM and QED we may yet find that we know less than we imagined. I think that you should conscider that the universe may hold surprises and pockets of irationality that balance the scales. To understand all that can be known that is a gift we may never achieve. and so Godels curse may never be lifted.Reply
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Brynn says:July 7, 2010 at 9:07 amNow I didn’t read every single thread going all the way down, but I did read a great deal of them. The point people are missing, even though you continuously restate it, is that your construct is based on the preconception that everything is orderly. You abhor the idea that there is such a thing as randomness. You believe everything to be pre-coded by God in some logical fashion. If you continue to believe this you just won’t be keeping up with the modern science that is Quantum Mechanics. You’re stuck on Einsteinian science that is, frankly, incomplete. Your flaw is that you believe the universe cannot work logically with any sort of randomness in the system. The problem is that the universe does work this way. We can predict that randomness will be present, we can predict how much the processes inherent randomness can possibly affect the end result, and therefore we can create a functional theory as to what the end result of any process might be. Unfortunately, as you try to theorize as to the end result of a highly complicated process that randomness compounds upon itself yielding more and more unpredictable results. We’re left with an infinite string of If Then statements that are far to complicated to fully grasp. We can work with them, but only if the circumstances are right.Reply
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Perry says:July 7, 2010 at 11:24 amWe associate randomness with disorder but the existence of randomness is not the same as saying something is illogical. Quantum states are statistical which means they still exhibit predictability and regularity, as any physics professor can assure you. The light from the sun is full of random fluctuations but it still adheres to very definite patterns. If I were to apply your statement generally to science, I might conclude that it’s impossible to construct a coherent set of physical laws. But we know that nothing could be further from the truth. The whole point of this is that the string of if-then statements is not infinite, it’s finite.Reply
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Greg says:July 7, 2010 at 12:02 pmThe problem is not with QM or randomness. The problem is that you are dealing with an Intelligent Design proponent who, contrary to what he says, will never awknowledge any proofs or arguments that disagree with his belief system. Just look at his reasoning on drawing circles around things, it’s convenient to be able to say that the universe is the biggest thing to draw a circle around and that outside that circle it is boundless. How do we know it is? Says who? It’s a belief system, but he will never accept it as only a belief system. He wants you to believe in it as if he has found some holy grail, but he doesn’t provide proof, and he doesn’t provide any reasonable logic to sustain his arguments. Unfortunately, this is what you have to deal with when you come across Intelligent Design proponents. They pretend they are open minded to other ideas when all they really are interested in doing is pounding away at you with their belief system. And, you cannot win; they know their arguments better then you do; they can dance circles around you because they are fanatical while you and me, and the other skeptics who have reached this site, are just here as casual observers. And by the way, I have nothing against Godel’s mathematical proofs, I only had a problem with the way the logic was being presented to reinforce a belief in a supreme being. Because that is just plain silly.Reply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 7:35 amGreg, You sound as though you haven’t attempted to present any proofs or arguments, or as though I have just dismissed them. I have responded to everything you have said and in every case your argument has had a hole in it. Even to the point of you trying to argue that time is infinite because at some infinite point in the future, an infinite amount of time will have passed. If you have a legitimate argument to present then go ahead and present it. But don’t pretend I haven’t responded to opposing arguments. Everyone here is free to read every single post in this thread and see for themselves that I have.Reply
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Greg says:July 8, 2010 at 2:58 pmYour basic logical argument is (of many): “You can draw a circle around a bicycle but the existence of that bicycle relies on a factory that is outside that circle. The bicycle cannot explain itself.” I showed you a perfect example of a fish in a fishbowl that can explain itself. It can measure it’s entire existence, and no outside elements are necessary. This was to draw a parellel with our own existence; that we can ourselves measure our existence without needing to have anything “outside” of our universe to explain our universe. You’ve never responded with any arguments to contradict this example. The only thing you did was state that Godel’s proof has never been proven wrong. Mathematically, that’s saying one thing, trying to translate that into logic to prove your God theory is completely different. This is the fallacy of Intelligent Design. However, this is also why this discussion is pointless. As I stated in my previous post, it’s a losing battle. It doesn’t matter what I say, you will always have something to disallow my argument in favor of yours because you have no interest in listening to anybody else. As for time being infinite; until further notice, in other words, until time stops and the universe comes to a screeching halt, time, as far as we can tell, has been and will continue to run indefinitely. Hence, time is infinite. Unless you have some proof to the contrary, this is the case for now. Let me ask you, can you even imagine a Godless universe? Is it possible for you to do so? What would that universe look like? What would existence be like in that universe? What would intelligent life be like in that universe? Lacking a God, would the intelligent beings still develop religion and a belief in an almighty creator? Can you honestly ask yourself any of these questions?Reply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 3:18 pmGreg, I have a question for you. There’s a fish in the fishbowl. Where did the fish come from? Does the fish have parents? Are you telling me that the fish explains itself? Thus far in the history of the universe, an infinite amount of time has not gone by. As of any definable point in the future, an infinite amount of time still has not gone by. Therefore time is finite. You are welcome to demonstrate that time is infinite in whatever way you choose. You have not thus far but I await your response. Can I imagine a godless universe? Yes I most certainly can. About 7 years ago I seriously, seriously entertained the possibility that God did not exist. To the point of seriously asking myself, what new set of propositions and presuppositions would have to be true in order for that to make logical sense? I put on the atheist hat and shoes and took them for a walk for an extended period of time. I seriously evaluated the Darwinian evolutionary model. I asked: since DNA is digital code, is there a principle in communications engineering that’s equivalent to random mutation + natural selection = evolution? The answer to that question is a resounding NO. Nowhere in information theory is there any such thing as the % of the time that noise improves a signal. I asked other hard questions. I saw that there is no such thing as a statistical model anywhere in the literature that supports evolution by random chance. Evolution has to be programmed in order to happen at all. I found that most atheists get spitting mad as soon as you start talking about math, statistics and probabilities. They are trained by their leaders to give an evasive explanation as to why probabilities do not matter when discussing evolutionary theories. That was when I finally saw that atheism simply fails to obey the laws of reason and logic, cause and effect. I saw that coded information always and without exception originates from consciousness. No known exceptions. (see http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/proof for extensive discussion of this). I found that evolution is indeed true but I saw that evolution is not random but algorithmic. I continued to explore and saw that atheism as defined on the Infidels website violates the very laws of mathematics and Godel’s theorem. If the universe is a closed system there has to be something outside of it. Here we are with 260 comments on this thread and nobody has exposed a flaw in my logic. So Greg this is my question for you: Have you ever examined the logic of a godless universe? So far you have tried to tell me that time is infinite when it is clearly not. So far you have tried to tell me that a fish in a fish bowl can explain itself. Please explain. So far your approach is the same as many other atheists: You start to lose ground and then launch personal attacks and accusations that I am not listening, that I have no imagination, etc. I will leave it to the others following this thread to judge for themselves who is listening and who is not; who has an argument and who does not.
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Greg says:July 8, 2010 at 4:21 pm“I have a question for you. There’s a fish in the fishbowl. Where did the fish come from? Does the fish have parents? Are you telling me that the fish explains itself?” Yes, the fish can explain itself, just as we can explain ourselves. It’s called evolution. Just because we haven’t cracked all the nuts yet, doesn’t mean we won’t. And I won’t even go into all the evolutionary mistakes that go on that prove evolution is random, or are two heads really meant as an evolutionary advantage. “Thus far in the history of the universe, an infinite amount of time has not gone by.” How do you know how far back time goes? Says who? “As of any definable point in the future, an infinite amount of time still has not gone by.” Unless you have a valid argument that says there is a reason for time to stop in the distant future, time will continue indefinitely. Why is this so hard to grasp? Pose the argument that time, and therefore the universe, will stop at some point in the future for some specified reason. Unless you can do that, there is no logical reason to believe that time will not continue indefinitely. Sure, I can look at my watch tomorrow and say, nope, time isn’t infinite today, but my argument is clearly not about any definable point in the future, but about a continuous flow of time into an indefinite future. The point being is you can define a point in the future but there will always be a point in time after that, hence, infinity + 1. “since DNA is digital code” What? “random mutation + natural selection = evolution?” You do know that random mutations and natural selection leading to evolution has been proven in many labratory experiments and has also been observed in nature. “trained by their leaders to give an evasive explanation as to why probabilities do not matter when discussing evolutionary theories.” How can you possibly offer probabilities? I’m not an evolutionary biologist, but even I can see the flaw in that logic. You’re asking me what the probability is that a random mutation will occur in a given population. That’s crazy. It could be 1 in 1 million, it could be a freak population that experience 50% population mutation, most of which would probably be unsuccessful traits. “That was when I finally saw that atheism simply fails to obey the laws of reason and logic, cause and effect.” Because you looked at things from an Intelligent Design perspective and found exactly what you were hoping to find. Don’t blame evolutionary biology, you never cared to find the truth anyway. You want a good read on Evolution, read Stephen Gould’s books, dry reading, but truly informational. “Here we are with 260 comments on this thread and nobody has exposed a flaw in my logic.” Based on your rose colored glasses, of course not. “So Greg this is my question for you: Have you ever examined the logic of a godless universe?” Of course. It’s the only way the universe makes any sense whatsoever. “So far you have tried to tell me that time is infinite when it is clearly not.” Your opinion. I’ve offered a final explanation, perhaps that will lay this one discussion to rest. “So far you have tried to tell me that a fish in a fish bowl can explain itself. Please explain.” Same as us, evolution. “So far your approach is the same as many other atheists: You start to lose ground and then launch personal attacks and accusations that I am not listening, that I have no imagination, etc.” Start to lose ground? I never had any ground to stand on with you. You’re still twisting the fishbowl argument to get any bits you can onto your side. When I referred to the pre-bang state of the universe as part of our universe I was forced to defend that statement for several posts until I finally gave you an official definition that allowed me my wording. So am I launching a personal attack when I call you an Intelligent Design proponent, only if that wasn’t the truth. Am I personally attacking you when I say you are not listening; well, if I have to defend a single word for several posts just to get a simple point across, then no, I am not making a personal attack, you in fact do not listen. Do you lack imagination? Now, don’t go putting words in my mouth, I never said you lack imagination. In fact, I think you have a vibrant imagination. I think you are close-minded when it comes to your belief system, but your imagination within that belief system is very strong.Reply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 4:33 pmThe fish has parents. Thus the fish does not explain itself, it’s contingent on what has come before. The fish has not even begun to explain itself until the origin of life question is solved. Show me one successful origin of life experiment. Which still doesn’t explain the origin of the matter & energy that the fish is made of. The fish doesn’t explain itself, Greg. DNA is a digital code. Look up “genetic code” on Google, wikipedia or the dictionary. Nowhere in any of the biological literature is there any such thing as a paper that demonstrates that positive evolutionary changes come from random mutation. If you disagree, then give me a link to a paper that proves that any known evolutionary path was generated by random DNA copying errors. “Many ways to induce mutations are known but none lead to new organisms. Mutation accumulation does not lead to new species or even to new organs or new tissues… Even professional evolutionary biologists are hard put to find mutations, experimentally induced or spontaneous, that lead in a positive way to evolutionary change.” -Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, “Acquiring Genomes” The changes that cause positive evolutionary progress are structured reordering of genes through transposition, symbiogenesis, genome doubling and horizontal gene transfer. Not randomness. Greg, show me one statistical model that shows evolution by random mutation is likely. Show me some math, my friend. Not a hand waving description of some freak population. Science please, not wild speculation.Reply
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Greg says:July 8, 2010 at 5:49 pmHere, read a little about what evolution really is: http://evolgen.blogspot.com/2005/06/random-mutation-and-natural-selection.html http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/history_19 Unfortunately, I’m not about to go on a hunt for scientific research, just like you knew I wouldn’t. I don’t have the time or energy to do so. I believe they exist because I believe the scientists. On the other hand, give me a link to any peer reviewed scientific paper that proves there is a God. I know that nothing like that exists, because again, I believe the scientists. Once you understand what you are talking about when it comes to evolution we can get back to the discussion. Until then I’m done. And as for DNA being a digital code; seems like the ID community is really behind the theory. That’s great Perry, back up ID ideologies with ID idiologies and idiologists.Reply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 9:33 pmGreg, Where do any of these articles offer any form of demonstration or proof that random mutations create positive change in DNA? Please cite literature that supports your claim. These websites assert but do not demonstrate. They just offer another hand-waving description with no backing evidence to support the hypothesis. If you believe that only ID people believe that DNA is a code then ostensibly you’ve never studied DNA, you’ve never studied the history of the discovery of the genetic code, you’ve never inquired as to why it is called “the genetic code” or studied in the field of genetics. Again that is your decision. But the information in question is readily available in any biology book and on literally 1,000 secular websites. If you refuse to read scientific literature then there is nothing I can do to help you. Greg, I extend an invitation you to start to think for yourself rather than letting “them” think for you.Reply
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Chris D. says:July 8, 2010 at 7:39 pm“Nowhere in any of the biological literature is there any such thing as a paper that demonstrates that positive evolutionary changes come from random mutation.” – You I think this is what you “were” looking for (when you wore your atheist hat and shoes) but didn’t find. http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/ “Many ways to induce mutations are known but none lead to new organisms. Mutation accumulation does not lead to new species or even to new organs or new tissues… Even professional evolutionary biologists are hard put to find mutations, experimentally induced or spontaneous, that lead in a positive way to evolutionary change.” -Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, “Acquiring Genomes” Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. “show me one statistical model that shows evolution by random mutation is likely” – You again – http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair Also, here is a reply to your proposition that DNA cannot have formed naturally… http://tinyfrog.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/proof-that-mutations-can-create-information/ I also uploaded this book for you to read. http://www.easy-share.com/1911269188/The Intelligibility of Nature.pdfReply
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Perry says:July 8, 2010 at 9:25 pmChris, I completely and fully agree that evolution happens and that the experiments with e coli are documented evidence of evolution. But nowhere does this site demonstrate that the evolutionary changes are a random walk. Nowhere in ANY biological literature has it ever been proven that evolutionary progress comes from random mutation. I know you think that it has and I know that you think I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m not convinced you even understand the question to begin with. You did not read what I wrote before, therefore you are trying to make an argument that is irrelevant to what I am saying. You think I am denying the existence of evolution. No I am not. I completely agree that evolution happened. I am denying that it is random. Evolution is driven by the following processes: Mobile Genetic Elements Transposition Horizontal Gene Transfer Symbiogenesis Genome Doubling not random copying errors. Your “proof that mutations can create information” isn’t any kind of proof at all. It’s a made-up “let’s suppose” scenario with optimistic assumptions. Your tinyfrog website has nothing whatsoever to do with the origin of DNA. It starts with the assumption that DNA is already there and has 90 nucleotides. Did you actually read this article? Did you read any of the questions that I raised? You are wasting our time with irrelevant links and arguments. When you have apprised yourself of the content of this conversation you are welcome to join it. The first place to start is to go to wikipedia and to the scientific literature and study the 5 different evolutionary mechanisms I listed above and form an understanding that cells re-arrange their own DNA in an exactly ordered fashion. The second thing to understand is that cells militantly guard against random copying errors: See James A. Shapiro, “A 21st Century View of Evolution”: http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf PS Oh, and I forgot one other major non-random evolutionary mechanism: epigenetics. PPS The article says: “It’s important to understand that when biologists say the mutational process is random, we mean that it is not directed. There is nothing determining definitively that a mutation will occur at a particular nucleotide.” This is utterly and completely false. Every one of the six mechanisms I just described is well known. Some of them have been known for 50-80 years. Boris Kozo-Polyansky described symbiogenesis in the 1920’s. Barbara McClintock described Mobile Genetic Elements in the 1950’s. An unfathomable disservice has been done to you, telling you that these forces are undirected. If your article was telling the truth it would say: It’s important to understand that when biologists say the mutational process is non-random, we mean that it is directed. There are many mechanisms that definitively determine that a mutation will occur at a particular nucleotide or group of nucleotides – or even large portions of chromosomes being cut/pasted or copy/pasted to other regions of the genome. Again, read the literature for yourself. It’s all there. You’ve been lied to, my friend. This is pure atheist dogma. And it’s scientific fraud. But don’t trust me. Search out the truth for yourself. Read the secular peer reviewed scientific literature such as Shapiro’s paper above, and see with your own eyes that I’m speaking the truth. Wasn’t it Jesus himself who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” ?Reply
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Greg says:July 9, 2010 at 10:50 am1. Terao, Y., Miyamoto, K., & Ohta, H. (2006). Improvement of the activity of arylmalonate decarboxylase by random mutagenesis. Applied Microbiology & Biotechnology, 73(3), 647-653. doi:10.1007/s00253-006-0518-z. 2. Mark T. Stanek; Tim F. Cooper; Richard E., L. (n.d). Identification and dynamics of a beneficial mutation in a long-term evolution experiment with Escherichia coli.(Research article). BMC Evolutionary Biology, (9), 302. Retrieved from Gale: Academic OneFile (PowerSearch) database. 3. Ananthaswamy, A. (2002). Random noise gave vital boost to primitive life. New Scientist, 176(2370), 19. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.Reply
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Perry says:July 9, 2010 at 2:45 pmGood articles for discussion. Comments on your (1), (2) and (3) respectively: #1. In this experiment the researchers are using “site directed mutagenesis.” I quote: “saturation site-directed mutagenesis was performed with the same kit. The sequences of the oligonucleotide of the mutated parts are shown as the underlined position: 5?-GCCCTTCATTGCNNKCGGGCTGGGGCTG-3? and 5?-CAGCCCCAGCCCGMNNGCAATGAAGGGC-3? (N: A,T,C, or G; K:G or T; M: C or A). The mutant was identified by DNA sequencing of the plasmid.” “Based on these suppositions on the reaction mechanism, we expected that changing the location of the key cysteine residue might bring about the inversion of the enantiose- lectivity of AMDase. Thus, we introduced two mutations, i.e., cysteine instead of glycine74 and serine instead of cysteine188. As expected, the….” Site directed mutagenesis, if it is random, is selecting very specific sections of DNA and randomly mutating them. The procedure is described at http://escience.ws/b572/L4/L4.htm To use an English analogy, it is like taking a sentence the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and choosing one word, for example the word “brown” and randomly mutating it – WHILE KEEPING ALL THE OTHER LETTERS THE SAME. Obviously it wouldn’t take very long before “brown” became “blown” or “grown” or “growl” or who knows what else. Undoubtedly you could form other valid English sentences this way. This works just fine if you’re isolating a very small section of the code and keeping the rest the same – which is what the author described in my quote above. Biologists do this to produce novel protein structures that prove useful in various circumstances. This experiment had the objective of increasing the production of an enzyme. (Along the same lines, there’s another paper from Caltech that describes something pretty similar, it’s called “Why High-error-rate Random Mutagenesis Libraries are Enriched in Functional and Improved Proteins.” http://www.che.caltech.edu/groups/fha/drummondJMB2005.pdf ) The Caltech paper discusses the statistical distribution of mutations generated by PCR mutagenesis and how often the resulting protein turns out to be useful. First of all they discuss that as mutation rates increase the usefulness of the mutation drops exponentially, and they show the math for those computations. Furthermore they conclude: “Exploration of distant regions of sequence space by random mutation alone appears highly inefficient, reinforcing the role of other search processes such as homologous recombination in creating sequence diversity.” (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homologous_recombination – it’s similar to the structured mutation processes I described – horizontal gene transfer and transposition.) They note that the method of mutation used by the researcher greatly affects the results. Greg, neither of these scenarios is a reasonable representation of neo-Darwinism. They produce useful results, but from a Darwinian perspective they’re cheating. They’re inserting specific human-engineered selectivity into the experiment. Yes, if you restrict the random activity to just a certain section of the genome you can get it to work. Of course you can. But if the mutations are operating indiscriminately across 1 million or 1 billion base pairs in the genome then it’s just like the random mutation generator: TEe q6ick brown fGx jumped over the lyzybdog Not useful. Especially if your sentence is 1 million characters long instead of 65. You have to focus the mutations in order for them to be useful. That’s not what Neo Darwinism theorizes. These experiments reinforce the design hypothesis, not the Darwinian hypothesis. #2. Show me where in this article does the author prove that the mutations in question were random and not a function of transposition or horizontal gene transfer. #3. “When life began in the hostile conditions of early Earth, so many random mutations and errors would have plagued the first molecules struggling to copy themselves that explaining how longer or more complex forms ever evolved has been tough. But it seems that the right combination of random events or “biological noise” counteracted the high mutation rate, speeding up evolution.” This is entirely speculation. I don’t see any proof of randomness here. Good effort. But your #1 reinforces my thesis that productive mutations are from cellular engineering and not random copying errors of DNA; your #2 and #3 do not reinforce your thesis. None of these papers demonstrates that the path from one species to another is a random walk. Rather, they show that you can create interesting new proteins, very inefficiently, by selectively randomizing very small sections of the genome. Remember what the article said that was posted yesterday? “It’s important to understand that when biologists say the mutational process is random, we mean that it is not directed. There is nothing determining definitively that a mutation will occur at a particular nucleotide.” Mutagenesis of specific regions of DNA doesn’t match that description.Reply
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Greg says:July 9, 2010 at 4:53 pmFirst off, stop using an english sentence like: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” and changing it to: “TEe q6ick brown fGx jumped over the lyzybdog” and saying this is the same as random mutation. It is not. This is where you are either deceiving yourself, or trying desperately to deceive your readers. That is why I added my previous link to explain what random mutation really is. Here is the link again: http://evolgen.blogspot.com/2005/06/random-mutation-and-natural-selection.html As the article clearly defines, random mutation occurs when a sequence such as: GCCCTTCATTGCNNKCGGGCTGGGGCTG randomly mutates to something like: ACCCTTCATTGCNNKCGGGCTGGGGCTG that would be a random mutation in the DNA strand. That random mutation may do something positive, negative, or nothing at all. Usually it is negative and gets corrected or dies off, sometimes it does nothing and ends up dormant, other times it is positive and ends up providing a positive evolutionary step through natural selection. Here is a final article. Sniegowski, P., & Lenski, R. (1995). MUTATION AND ADAPTATION: The Directed Mutation Controversy in Evolutionary Perspective. Annual Review of Ecology & Systematics, 26553-578. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
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Perry says:July 9, 2010 at 9:57 pmGreg, I cannot discern from anything that you’ve said, that you actually read and understood the papers you quoted. I read this paper. Did you? Greg, what is the difference between Xhe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog and ACCCTTCATTGCNNKCGGGCTGGGGCTG Are not both a random mutation of one letter? The former has a 26 letter alphabet, the latter has a 4 letter alphabet. If you feel like 26 letters is too many and you want to convert the English sentence to binary and randomly mutate one bit, then that’s still random mutation of one character. Or you can convert English to a quaternary alphabet and mutate. Either way, it’s a point mutation. Nowhere in the biological literature is there a paper that shows that the path from one species to another is undirected random copying errors of DNA. Research now shows that it’s block re-arrangements of genes and chromosomes. Now, to Lenski’s paper: “The Directed Mutation Controversy and Neo-Darwinism.” Summary of his argument: -There are many peer reviewed papers that document directed mutation -He questions their methods and conclusions -He doesn’t find the evidence persuasive -No one understands the operations of the alleged mechanism that drives directed mutations -The idea of directed mutations directly contradicts the anti-teleological position of neo darwinism -He happens to think that randomness is still an adequate explanation Here are the problems with this paper: 1. This argument is out of date. It’s 17 years old and there’s an entire genre of new papers that thoroughly document directed mutation. I already gave you a link to one, from 2005: James A. Shapiro, “A 21st Century View of Evolution”: http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf. If you want a whole bunch more, just read the footnotes in this paper. All you could ever ask for. 2. Lenski’s paper doesn’t breathe a single word about transposition or mobile genetic elements, even though Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for discovering these things in 1983. Her research was done in the 1950’s. So even when it was written it was ignoring 40 years of peer reviewed work. This is an inexcusable omission. 3. Epigenetics firmly establishes Lamarckian ideas as having validity. This is possible because of the enormous amount of human genome research today, which was not available in 1993 when this paper was written. 4. Lenski is still insisting mutations are random in the following paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899 even though his own research within this very paper shows bacteria making the same adaptation multiple times. I discuss this with another reader at http://www.perrymarshall.com/3118/10-predictions-2010/#comment-21274. 5. I went to a lecture at Fermilab in Batavia Illinois in January 2010. The speaker was James Shapiro, a biologist at the university of Chicago. In the Q&A a guy was asking Shapiro if mutations are random. Shapiro said “No, because when we starve bacteria their mutations rates go up by a factor of 10,000.” He described how repeatable and reliable this is. Shapiro’s research firmly addresses the questions that are unanswered at the end of Lenski’s paper. He has exhaustively documented the genomic re-arrangements bacteria make in order to adapt to stress. They are non random. They’re algorithmic. 6. An algorithm hypothesis is an inherently more scientific theory than a randomness hypothesis. Why? Because science is the presumption of underlying order. Any time you can offer a systematic explanation instead of random accident, that’s pro-science and pro-progress. Any time you resist systematic explanations tooth and nail and prefer random accident, that’s letting your personal emotional preferences and religious prejudices block the progress of science. 7. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve debated this topic a few times before. I consistently observe how vehemently opposed atheists are to the idea that evolution is non-random. They HATE this idea. Even though it’s a beautiful, well supported scientific theory. Why? You know why. I don’t have to tell you. As I said before, check it out for yourself: Mobile Genetic Elements, Transposition, Horizontal Gene Transfer, Symbiogenesis, Epigenetics. All non-random, all documented mechanisms of macro-evolution.
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Greg says:July 9, 2010 at 5:17 pmI don’t know why I even bothered answering your post again. You’ll just pick some 1 or 2 sentences out of the article I provided and you’ll say “see” it means this and not random mutation after all. It’s what ID proponents do. You do it every day of your life. You could care less that the article is supported by many other research articles. You could care less that this is accepted by scientists and biologists because IT IS proven in laboratory expirements all the time. All you care about is your ID ideology which teaches you how to pick apart arguments 1 sentence at a time until people get so frustrated with you they just walk away. And then you think you’ve won. You haven’t won anything but a first prize in your own little world. You’re not open minded at all, you are deceitful when you suggest that you are. I’m tired, and I’m done. Go on to your next victim.
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Perry says:July 9, 2010 at 10:05 pmGreg, You’re only a victim if you choose to be. In any case you’re not a victim of me, you’re a victim of fraudulent atheist dogma which is parroted constantly yet unsupported by empirical evidence. As I said, nowhere in the entire body of scientific literature is there a single experiment that proves that the path from one species to another is random. Quite the opposite. What’s most intriguing of all is that in mathematics there exists no formula that can prove that a sequence of letters or numbers is random. In other words, the central claim of neo Darwinism – that random mutations and natural selection drive evolution – is inherently unprovable because randomness is unprovable. So neo Darwinism itself is mathematically unprovable and therefore inherently unscientific. It is, however, possible to show high probability that a sequence of letters or numbers is NOT random. The sequence aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAbbbbbbbbbBBBBBBBBBB is obviously not random and it’s easy to statistically show that the odds that those letters were generated by a specific pattern is 99.9999%. For identical reasons, we know that the modular re-arrangements of DNA are non-random. Read the literature, my friend. Think for yourself. Walk away from your victim status. The truth will set you free. I wish you the best in your journey.
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Anna says:July 12, 2010 at 11:58 am“As I said, nowhere in the entire body of scientific literature is there a single experiment that proves that the path from one species to another is random. Quite the opposite. What’s most intriguing of all is that in mathematics there exists no formula that can prove that a sequence of letters or numbers is random. In other words, the central claim of neo Darwinism – that random mutations and natural selection drive evolution – is inherently unprovable because randomness is unprovable. So neo Darwinism itself is mathematically unprovable and therefore inherently unscientific. It is, however, possible to show high probability that a sequence of letters or numbers is NOT random. The sequence aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAbbbbbbbbbBBBBBBBBBB is obviously not random and it’s easy to statistically show that the odds that those letters were generated by a specific pattern is 99.9999%.” The theory of evolution isn’t “randomness = new species! Hooray!” and it’s a lot more like “chaos + environmental feedback = gradual change and adaptation” No one said that DNA sequences were random. Obviously even if someone believed that small, random changes added up over time in DNA, the sequences would still be in a non-random pattern that worked. That’s the best thing about evolution is that evolution does NOT equal abiogenesis. Evolution has been observed and proven, the origins of life are definitely up for debate simply due to lack of possible knowledge if nothing else. But what IS accepted, and indeed, proven, is whether or not there are precursors for mutation (as in your case) the MUTATION is the random bit. And there are ideopathic mutations, as well that lend credence to randomness. What you seem to be missing is that randomness is not the only mechanism. The most important mechanism is environmental feedback (as in the E.Coli + Citrine study). There exists a PREPONDERANCE of literature dealing with this. Another problem that you have is that you are treating several things as either/or suppositions when they can easily be both or, some synergy of both. You look at evolution as occurring through five or six specific mechanisms which is fair since those are the driving, visible force for evolution. How those mechanisms themselves are predicated is something that you haven’t addressed. Stimulus = response over and over again. That’s very true for genetics as well. Response to a particular stimulus in individuals is not the same as a group’s response or adaptation to the same stimulus over time. Horizontal Gene Transfer, for example, is obviously predicated upon external influence and reaction therein. It’s a confluence of factors that lead to the situation wherein HGT might happen, but if maybe 2% of the population has a predisposition to HGT in this specific case, and further, that the HGT allows them to be more resilient in their environment and further, that this allows them to have an appreciable advantage over their fellows (statistically significant), then, over time, assuming the stimulus continues, the 2% population with the MUTATION that predisposed them to this HGT will thrive over their fellows. And your bit about your random generator doesn’t hold weight either because it’s a mischaracterisation in the extreme. With DNA you’re not substituting sequences with one of 44 characters trying to write a new sentence. You’re having stimuli act on pre-existing chemical reactions and random substitution and rearranging of small parts of DNA. It’s like take-a-penny-leave-a-penny: if you take a penny or leave a penny, it doesn’t really affect your net-worth, but if you did it a couple thousand times a day and it was random whether you took or left the pennies, you would either become rich or broke, live or die, you might say. The environmental factors are what determine whether you’re taking a penny or leaving a penny (and sometimes both) and that’s feedback. And scientists don’t think it’s “random” random. Scientists just aren’t aware of every mechanism and every equation to every reaction/mutation that’s ever been and most consider it (when this comes up) practically unknowable, or random. Similar to how people try to predict how gusts of wind will cause ripples in the leaves of a tree. It’s an ongoing problem.Reply
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Perry says:July 12, 2010 at 12:08 pmIf you open the typical evolution book and find the explanation of how it works, here’s what you’ll find: “Mutations are the random changes in genes that constitute the raw material for evolution by non-random selection.” -Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009 “Mutations are Random. The mechanisms of evolution—like natural selection and genetic drift—work with the random variation generated by mutation.” -University of California-Berkeley “Evolution 101” web page, March 2010, Evolution.Berkeley.edu “On the basis of many laboratory experiments, scientists have concluded that mutations occur randomly. The term “random” here has a specific meaning that is often misunderstood, even by biologists. What this means is that mutations occur regardless of whether they would be useful to the individual. Mutations are simply errors in DNA replication. Most of them are harmful or neutral, but a few can turn out to be useful. The useful ones are the raw material for evolution. But there is no known biological way to jack up the probability that a mutation will meet the current adaptive needs of the organism.” -Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 2009 That’s just 3 easy examples. Most of the atheist books parrot this dogma and it is simply not true. Randomness only destroys information. I’m a communication engineer, I wrote an Ethernet book, I know digital codes cold, and there is no principle in information technology that would suggest that anything these 3 sources said is actually true. Random mutation is noise and noise always degrades a signal. The truth is: Evolutionary mutations are systematic and algorithmic, not random. My random mutation generator does to English precisely what Dawkins, UC Berkeley and Coyne are saying happens to DNA – random substitutions of letters. Nope. That’s not what drives evolution. It’s systematic re-arrangements of genes, in response to inputs from the environment. You are definitely right when you say “scientists don’t think it’s “random”. Real biologists who do real research and understand this at a deep level know that mutations are directed. This is all over the 21st century literature. But Dawkins and Coyne and even UC Berkeley aren’t giving you real science. They’re giving you a Dick and Jane version of evolution that’s not true. They’re giving you the version that matches their anti-teleological philosophy. Yes, environmental feedback changes organisms. And that’s not random. It’s systemic and it’s called epigenetics.Reply
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Anna says:July 12, 2010 at 2:01 pmMy point was that random mutation is accepted as playing a role in evolution. In the HGT example, the bacteria with the random mutation that made them more susceptible to HGT, (provided the HGT produced some advantage/resilience and didn’t preclude reproduction) would be the successful group and, over time, would replace the previous group (provided the non-HGT group suffered as a result of lacking advantage/resilience). A small random mutation, all else aside, is often the deciding factor of species variegation and change. You’re a communication engineer so you’re educated, but you mistake yourself if you think that randomness is the same across all fields of “communication.” Reason number 1: In communications, you don’t WANT change. You have your perfect signal and you want it to remain that way. Feedback is bad. Maintenance the only goal. In biology, feedback, adaptation and change are the greatest predicators of survival whether through gene transfer, successful mutation random or not, loss of a predator or any of the other myriad of things that can produce change and/or success. The reason your random generator doesn’t work is because of the nature of change in biology as opposed to what you’re doing. Biological change doesn’t occur in a 1-for-1 substitution of information for information. Missing information due to random mutation or mutation that yields a benefit happens all the time. The LPL Ser447-Stop mutation, for example, has a shielding effect against the development of atherosclerosis and subsequent CAD. That’s an ideopathic mutation from normal functioning in humans that produces a beneficial effect.Reply
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Perry says:July 12, 2010 at 3:15 pmAnna, Please show me a peer reviewed scientific paper that demonstrates that a small random mutation, all else aside, is often the deciding factor of species variegation and change. I maintain that such a paper does not exist. In 5 years no one has ever demonstrated otherwise. You are welcome to be the first. Digital communication is digital communication and an accumulation of random mutations is an accumulation of errors. The idea that random mutations drive evolution is the biggest lie in the history of science. It does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny. Again you are openly invited to show me a peer reviewed scientific paper that documents new organs and new species being generated by accumulated random mutations. Many papers assume it but none demonstrate it is so. In both engineered systems and biology, feedback is systematic not random. There are random mutations that are accidentally beneficial such as sickle cell anemia which protects people from Malaria. But there’s a reason sickle cell anemia is classified as a genetic disease. There are all kinds of control systems where you DO want change. Those systems are categorized as stochastic state space control systems and the positive change does not come from the stochastic element. The stochastic element is the enemy of better performance not the friend.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 6, 2010 at 1:26 pmHi Perry, I agree with much of what you are saying here, but I think there are a few gaps in your logic. For example, you say the universe is just as incomplete as mathematics, but they aren’t in the same class. Mathematics is a language and has things to say and using that language you can deduce things, describe things, prove things, etc. However, the universe says nothing, deduces nothing, describes nothing and proves nothing. Your idea that God uses math to describe the universe doesn’t exactly ring true for me because God created the universe by words and not by numbers. I’m totally on board with you regarding proving God exists because of DNA and that, undoubtedly, God speaks through the universe in terms of beauty and truth and goodness. I also don’t really get the idea that you have that the universe is either complete or not complete. Aren’t these mathematical terms? Is a rock complete or incomplete? Well, it would reason to say that it depends on the observer describing the rock. If a chunk of a crystal is broken then you would say it’s an incomplete crystal, but is a rock with a part broken off not a rock? It’s still a rock. Not to split hairs on this, but the answer as to whether the crystal is a crystal with a part missing or if a rock is a rock if part of the rock is chipped away is a matter of the speaker’s expression and interpretation of facts. Logic can prove statements to be true or not, but they also do not leave room for interpretation and that is why math is profound and art is profound. Art and interpretation give the sense of complete or incomplete without the need for either to be true; either can be true depending on the observer. Great conversation. And thanks for your responses.Reply
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Perry says:August 6, 2010 at 3:15 pmJoseph, The universe does not say anything in the formal sense of communication theory. As for deduces, describes and proves I disagree. Any physical system subjected to measurement does computation. The Church-Turing thesis says a great deal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church–Turing_thesis . The universe performs computation and logical operations. It solves mathematical problems for which no formal mathematical solution exists. Countless mathematical solutions and formulations have been derived from problems posed by physical systems. The universe describes the laws of physics. And as it does logic, yes it does prove something. The fact that two atoms cannot occupy the same space at the same time proves that it’s either one or the other, not both. My conclusion that incompleteness applies to the universe and mathematics equally is a natural consequence of the Church-Turing thesis. You’re on to something very significant in your recognition that the universe is not linguistic but that living things are. I think the correspondence to John 1:1 is not accidental. Incompleteness isn’t about broken pieces of matter, it’s about contingency. If you believe in cause and effect (which is a necessary condition of assuming a logical universe) then you believe that something had to cause the rock. If you believe that the rock is consistent (i.e. logical, obeys mathematical rules) then the rock is also incomplete, i.e. something outside of that rock has to be invoked in order to ultimately judge that consistency. Just as with the Liar’s Paradox, somewhere there has to be a higher external standard to judge its truth. Finally, even the universe is subject to interpretation. And so is logic, because in logic you can never prove everything. But even in the apparent subjectivity of that, there is the implied truth that there is an external, objective truth that we are attempting to grasp. Thank you, sir, for participating in this conversation.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 8, 2010 at 11:01 pmHi Perry, Thanks for the fast response. I didn’t pick this up until tonight. I follow part of what you are saying, but I’m kinda lost on some of it. For example, where you say that the universe deduces, describes and proves things, I don’t quite get that. What are some examples of this? If you mean that because the events of deducing, describing and proving are inside the universe and thus the universe is the actor, then I can understand that because there isn’t anything outside the universe doing it, but I’m not sure how even that fits into what you are saying. Pardon me for being so dense, but if deducing, describing and proving are things that can only be done inside of language, then how does it happen independent of observers or actors who are carrying out these activities? When you say the universe describes the laws of physics, then I think you mean for me to understand that it is the observer as well as the observed that is implicitly involved? Well, science does bear out that an object is affected by the observer, but I don’t quite get the it’s both the observer and the observed that are doing the describing unless you are saying that they are one-in-the-same and that one cannot happen without the other. This goes back to what I was saying about the universe not being linguistic because language is not something the universe needs to simply be. Language arises as a necessity but the universe doesn’t need it in the way that the people who speak it do. On going back to the issue of incompleteness, I think I get what you are saying in that, like Gödel describing mathematical concepts, you can always draw a bigger circle around the universe, but I’m not really sure what this observation creates. Maybe you can provide some examples of what it is that you feel that this insight can illuminate? I’m sorry I feel very dense about this. Great conservation, though.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2010 at 3:07 pmJoseph, Physical objects can do all kinds of incredibly complex math for you and all you need to do is be able to count. You don’t have to know anything about how to do the computations. Why? Because the universe obeys mathematical rules. And when subjected to measurement (counting), the universe expresses mathematics. Water flowing into a bucket is doing real-time integration. No different than a person doing calculus with symbols. Both can give you the same answer. Back before computers they used to build analog computers which would solve math problems with analog circuitry, ie resistors and capacitors. Gödel says any system that does non-trivial computation is incomplete, ie it is contingent on something outside the system. The Church-Turing thesis acknowledges what I just said above, which is that a physical system can express mathematics. So physical systems are also incomplete. Physical objects do not ask these questions, but we do as observers. Without an observer there would be no symbolic mathematics, only the expression of mathematical laws within physical objects. We use reason and logic to infer that our symbolic systems for manipulating mathematics are incomplete and the same logic applied to the universe says it’s incomplete too. Again it goes back to contingency. The universe is contingent on something. The something could be a regression of prior universes. But eventually you have to get back to one Original cause and there can’t be two because two is a system which is then contingent on some other system. Eventually you get back to one original indivisible source.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 9, 2010 at 3:24 pmWhat is an example of a computation that a rock can do? I’m just trying to understand this from my own literal sense of words. Is this literal or is this anthropomorphism?Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 7:38 amA rock flies through space. Any alteration to its velocity is the integral of accelerations due to outside forces and F=MA. Any alteration to its temperature is the sum total of received and dissipated heat. All of its behavior with respect to velocity, position, acceleration, momentum, temperature, blackbody radiation is all a dynamic expression of fixed mathematical laws. Whatever it does obeys mathematical laws and whatever measurements you make is a consequence of the initial conditions and the behavior of those natural laws.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 10, 2010 at 8:18 amHey Perry, I think I’m getting what you are saying now. It’s not like you are making the universe anthropomorphic and giving it attributes that make it a person. In Eastern philosophy, the universe is everything and that is the only equivalent to what we call God. If you read the Tao Te Ching, it says the same thing as the Bible: the universe was created by the word. In the Western world, we see God as some gigantic man in the sky who throws dice or plays chess or sits around a ring of clouds looking down on the earth like one big Greek god. Paintings depict a powerful gray-haired man as God. This is one of the reasons why atheists have so much ammunition to use against the idea that there is A god or that God exists. But getting back to what you were saying, if I understand you correctly, the universe does prove these things as you were saying that a rock proves laws of thermodynamics and motion and such but isn’t there something more to it? Scientists say that it’s very likely that in other locations in the universe (and much of this depends on if the universe is open or closed) that the same rock does not prove the same thing as it would here. The “laws” are written differently. Does that support what you are saying? Perhaps the universe is proving the idea that the laws are different in other places if that is what we can prove with math? And, by the way, scientists have been trying to prove if the universe is incomplete for some time now by trying to figure out if it is open or closed. If it’s closed then it will eventually collapse back upon itself and probably will have another Big Bang right after and all the rules may or may not be rewritten. If it is open then it keeps expanding forever and there would be infinite varieties of laws that could be shown to be true and different in different locations. So, here’s the interesting thing. If it’s open and you know the shape of it and can measure it, then you draw a circle around it and–OOPS–it has expanded beyond your circle! You then recalculate that and–OOPS–it has grown beyond your circle! The same expanding boundary applies for a closed universe where it is in expansion mode. But if it’s closed and it’s shrinking then you can draw a circle around it and–WAIT!–there isn’t anything THERE where you draw that circle any more. The universe has shrunk just a tiny bit. And I think maybe there is a problem with the idea of drawing a circle somewhere around the universe if there is “no there” there–no “somewhere” to draw the circle. I think Godel meant that you can only draw a circle if there is somewhere TO draw the circle–either it’s a hypothetical or simply mathematical theorem but it may not apply to space-time where there is no space-time yet. Or does the universe expand once we chart a place outside the edge of the universe which would fit with much that we know about quantum mechanics for the “observer-role” phenomenon?Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 2:12 pmYou’re right, I’m not making some anthropomorphism with the universe. The “God depicted as old man with beard” image is funny in a far side cartoon but in any serious context, Jews and Christians consider it blasphemous. The atheist depiction of God is straw man. *Some* scientists speculate that the laws of physics are different elsewhere, but *most* scientists assume they are the same everywhere. It’s the only way to build a coherent model. If they are different elsewhere, there has to be a systematic explanation behind that – otherwise it implies an inconsistent and illogical universe. The bedrock of science is the predictability of physical laws. This is actually crucial to what I am saying. If the universe is illogical or inconsistent, then according to Gödel that means it could also be complete, ie there is nothing else outside of it. In my mind the expansion or contraction of the universe is irrelevant to the “size” of the circle because I’m not really talking about diameters here; I’m talking in broad conceptual terms about the boundaries of a system. Even if the universe is expanding it has an outer boundary. Gödel’s theorem speaks of “within” the system and “outside” the system so I use a circle simply as a visualizing device. I have not thought carefully enough about the observer-role phenomenon in quantum mechanics to comment on that. Glad having you in the conversation.Reply
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vijeno says:August 10, 2010 at 11:01 amPlease show your argument, instead of pointing to anonymous “philosophers”. “God is simply defined that way” is an argument from authority at best. Why would it make any difference whether god is called “inside” or “outside” the world? The moment you try to prove his existence, you have to assume he is something, or else you have to show how something that is not something can be reasonably said to exist. In both cases, you will have to show how god can exist without being caused. Simply going “na na, I define it this way” is hardly going to do the trick.Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 1:32 pmVijeno, What caused the universe is necessarily outside of the universe because of Gödel’s statement: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” When we’re talking about the universe, there is a logical statement that is true, but not provable in the universe. The universe depends on an axiom outside of itself. In this case the distinction between what is inside the universe and what is outside the universe is vital. Logically, *something* has to exist without being caused, and that something is not the universe. Gödel’s theorem says that – and the Big Bang says that too. If you believe in cause and effect then the universe has a cause which is not itself. My point is that we are forced to assume, and yes, cannot prove, that God is uncaused.Reply
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vijeno says:August 10, 2010 at 11:20 pm“Logically something has to exist without being caused.” I can see no reason for that. You didn’t provide any. Two obvious problems with your argument: 1. While an infinite regress does pose obvious problems, you would have to show why we should stop asking for the cause at some random point (e.g., the universe, or god). If you already go one step outside the universe to show that god exists, then you cannot simply stop there. There is no reason for not asking who or what caused god. We cannot dismiss infinite regress only because it makes us uncomfortable. 2. God does not solve any problem. With infinite regress, nothing is ultimately determined – neither does a first cause determine anything, since it’s completely undetermined itself. The result is exactly the same, and since we cannot determine any point at which to stop asking for the next cause behind that point, this solution is to be favoured.Reply
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 10:42 amWhat problem does infinite regress solve? Some peoples’ discomfort with the idea of God, maybe?Reply
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vijeno says:August 13, 2010 at 12:11 pmInfinite regress does not solve any problem. Please, please don’t try to shift the burden of proof. You are trying to prove god, therefore you need to show that the proof is solid. That’s the rules. I didn’t invent them. God doesn’t solve any problems either: If there is a first cause, this means that this first cause is totally free, not bound to logic and reason. Therefore, any effect following that first cause is just as arbitrary as with an infinite regress, and nothing is ultimately determined. It is exactly the same dilemma as with an infinite regress – only with the additional disadvantage that you now have set an arbitrary endpoint of causes, totally up to your own whim. The only reason you say that god is the first cause is because you define god that way – that is circular logic. I can’t reply to your other posting, there seems to be some limit to the levels of replies, so: Another problem is that causation will never reach the universe – something inside the universe is caused by something else inside the universe, but there will never be any point where something inside the universe is caused by the universe itself; and therefore, since we always have to start with some effect inside the universe, no chain of causation can ever lead us to god.
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pmOK, let’s talk about burden of proof. You are misquoting me. This is what I said: “God is not formally provable either. But… just as you cannot build a coherent system of geometry without Euclid’s 5 postulates, neither can you build a coherent description of the universe without a First Cause and a Source of order.” I have backed up every statement I have made. Now let’s talk about you. You have said there is an infinite regress. An infinite regress of…. what? Where is this infinite series of things you speak of? Do you have pictures of them? Do you have evidence of any kind? Is there anything about your infinite regress of causes that is NOT arbitrary? You’re trying to tell me “since we always have to start with some effect inside the universe” — where did you get that rule? Did you just make it up? You said, “If there is a first cause, this means that this first cause is totally free, not bound to logic and reason.” Hold on just a second, my friend. You are now making theological statements. Before you go down that road, you might want to respectfully read what others have said. I’m going to expect you to back up everything you say, just like I do. And please do not misquote me.
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vijeno says:August 13, 2010 at 4:29 pmPlease show how you can create a coherent system using a first cause. Please show how a first cause would be determined, so as not to make the effect of that cause, and the effect after that, and so on, completely arbitrary. Please explain why you want to stop asking for the previous cause exactly one step outside of “the universe”. (Not using the words “it’s in the definition”). Please show how a chain of causes inside the universe does suddenly hit “the universe itself”, so that it can then move on one step further back. Please show how a system that has a first cause is more coherent than a system that has an infinite regress. By the way, IIRC I was not the one who brought up the term “infinite regress” in this discussion. If you’re not trying to prove god, then what exactly do you mean by “whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being”? Whom are you referring to?
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Perry says:August 14, 2010 at 11:03 amI have not proven God. Rather I have shown that God is a necessary assumption to posit a logically coherent universe. Your refusal to answer ANY of my questions is telling. You’re still asking me why infinite regress is unacceptable. I have answered this question three times. If you refuse to read then you will have to argue this point elsewhere. You ask: “Please show how a chain of causes inside the universe does suddenly hit “the universe itself”, so that it can then move on one step further back.” I refer you to the big bang itself, which is the ignition point of matter, energy, space and time. I’ve already said this and I’m not going to say it again.
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vijeno says:August 15, 2010 at 12:15 amFair enough. I didn’t answer your questions starting with “An infinite regress of what” because they strike me as a joke. I didn’t think I would have to explain tose basic concepts to someone who is so used to working with concepts such as mathematical proofs and the causation of the universe – but okay, here you are: philosophy 101. I will take you step by step, and I won’t let go of your hand, so you don’t have to be afraid of tripping and falling. So: I am assuming that when I start wit my typing this as the most current effect, and move back to its cause, and go all the way back to the big bang, I arrive at “the universe”, and can then go back one more step. (I doubt that, but it seems you’re supposing it, and it’s not the point now.) 1. Either there is causation, or there isn’t. Do you agree so far? 1.1. If there is no causation, then we can stop talking because we cannot convince each other of anything. Still agree? 1.2. So – either there is an ultimate cause, or there isn’t. Agreed? 1.3. If there is an ultimate cause, this cause is uncaused. Can you see that? 1.4. If it is uncaused, then it is undetermined. Are you able to concur? 1.5. If the ultimate cause is undetermined, then every effect of that cause is just as undetermined, because its cause was undetermined. Do you follow? 1.6. Therefore, if there is an ultimate cause, the universe and everything in it is undetermined. We still don’t know why the world exists, because, in christian terms, there was no reason for god to cause the world. Can you see that? Let’s examine the other road: 2. The universe is caused, that cause is the effect of another cause, and so on infinitely. Since you asked, that is the definition of an infinite regress. Now you know. Have you learned something now? 2.1. If that is the case, obviously no cause is ultimately determined. Do you agree? 2.2. Therefore, if there is an ultimate cause, the universe and everything in it is undetermined. We still don’t know why the world exists, because, in christian terms, there is no god who could have had a reason to cause the world. Can you see that? It might have occurred to you… 1.6. and 2.2. look surprisingly similar. Do you agree? So, if you were able to follow so far, I am now asking the question you never answered (and therefore, I was never obliged to answer any of your questions): Why would we favour one over the other? Oh wait, I know – because in case 2, we could not do science. However, I think I have shown that that’s not really a good reason, since the same problem occurs in both cases. The ultimate cause doesn’t help us. So why favour it? So if that is the case, how is it not special pleading to simply define god as the ultimate cause and leave it at that? That is the first of many, many issues with your argument which you never properly addressed. Instead, you have given me “Look it up on wikipedia”, “Most philosophers disagree, so you’re wrong” and “You don’t want to go into theology, buddy, so leave it”. Can you agree that this is not the way to have a proper discussion? So please, if you want to have a discussion among adults, explain to me how the uncaused cause solves anything, or where you see a flaw in my logic. And no, I don’t want your free mini-course.
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Perry says:August 17, 2010 at 5:52 pmYou invoked an infinite regress of causes. Where did you get the idea that you are excused from describing the previous cause, and the previous one, and so on? You have not answered a single question about this. 1.5 does not follow from 1.4. I do not agree with 2.1. It’s a non-sequitur. “in christian terms, there is no god who could have had a reason to cause the world.” Where did you get that idea? Did you make it up? It is the position of infinite regress that is anti-science because it gives us no way to drive a stake in the ground about anything that is past. Modern science was born out of theology in Western Europe 500-1000 years ago. Science got started in ancient China; in ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome; and in Islam. But it never went anywhere. In those cultures, it sputtered and coughed and died. Why? Because those cultures did not have a theology to support it. I think it is especially interesting that science was obviously not born in atheism. Science rests on faith that the universe is governed by fixed, discoverable laws. That it operates without the need for constant intervention by the creator and that the creation has a degree of freedom to follow its own course. Islam does not teach this; Greek and Roman mythology did not teach this, and neither did the Egyptian or Eastern religions. Wisdom of Solomon 11:21, which was written 3,000 years ago, says, “Thou hast ordered all things in weight and number and measure.” This is found in the apocrypha, i.e. the books of the Catholic Bible. This is the first statement of its kind in ancient literature. If you like science, thank a theologian.
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vijeno says:August 12, 2010 at 12:47 amThere are two issues here: 1. When you follow the rule of causation, you will never actually arrive at “the universe”. It is purely an abstraction – an invention even, perhaps. I was caused by my parents which were caused by theirs…. caused by some dinosaur… caused by the beginning of the earth… the sun…. back to big bang. (At which point we currently cannot say anything reasonable.) But saying that “the universe” was caused is, strictly speaking, nonsense. Causation only ever leads to things that are inside the realm of being, i.e., the universe. 2. You cannot show why whatever might be “outside the universe” is supposed to be the ultimate cause. You can always ask what caused it, and there is no reason why you should stop here, (and not, say, at the big bang or at the dinosaurs). It is purely a decision you make to rescue monotheism.Reply
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 10:40 amThe universe is just an abstraction? What does that mean? Just an invention? By who? Why is saying the universe was caused nonsense? What part of cause and effect do you not agree with?Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 10, 2010 at 2:46 pmPerry, I think it’s a really assumption on your part that the Western idea that God is outside the universe. What if God WERE the universe as it is understood in Eastern culture? Or are you also saying that God is incomplete? Certainly, if God is outside the universe then we must be able to draw a circle around Him? It could be instead that what we call God is, just as the universe is, intelligent, ever-expanding, self-creating, etc. and that WE are created in His image: intelligent, ever-expanding, self-creating, etc. Understand that the universe is what it is and that what we call God is ascribable to the universe makes perfect sense even to an atheist. Atheists don’t believe that if God exists that he is some man in the sky. Believing that God is a man or human or humanoid is like believing Santa Claus. For God to create the universe, he would have to create it from something, yes? Where did all that mass and energy come from? Did he reach into his pocket? It just makes more sense that God IS the universe and is a self-created intelligence and that we recognize that God is everywhere, inside us as well, and that we see Him for who He is: everywhere but not outside of the observable universe.Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 4:08 pmGodel’s theorem supports the idea that what the universe is contingent upon is outside the universe. Logically (go to the top & read my article) whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless and infinite and not contained within the circle. Logically, God is not the universe because the universe is caused. We are not self-creating, we are all created. All of us came into existence at a point in time.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 10, 2010 at 2:55 pmBy the way, God was depicted by Michelangelo on the Sistene Chapel, so maybe the idea of an old man with a flowing beard is really not as blasphemous as you say?Reply
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Perry says:August 10, 2010 at 4:06 pmPoint taken.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 10, 2010 at 5:05 pmI’m not so sure that Godel’s theorem supports this idea that the universe is contingent upon something outside the universe. He says that a system is contingent on something outside of itself; someone who designed it and built the system or at least created it as an idea/theorem/law is. This is certainly true. It is even more true that without someone (the builder or the creator) that it never would have existed. This is a tautology, yes? It’s perfectly logical. Everything about it is true and not disputed. However, to say that the universe is contingent upon something outside itself assumes that there is nothing outside the universe. Godel doesn’t say this (as far as I know he never explicity said this but it would be interesting to know his thoughts on this), so we can’t assume that his theorem supports this idea. I understand that it is your conjecture that if Godel’s Theorem is true and that the universe was created by God and that God is outside the universe that this is all true, but again, it is an assumption to say that God is outside the universe. Where is He then? Why does he have to be outside the universe? If he were outside the universe, then how can He hear my prayers? How can He have any influence on anyone’s life or assist in creating miracles if he weren’t everywhere? If He is everywhere, then why isn’t it possible that He isn’t outside the universe? It’s also a big assumption on the part of Westerners to think that God is a man but not a woman and that he is white and not black. After all, if you saw Jesus walking down the street as he looked thousands of years ago you would say he looks Arab or black but he would definitely not be white. But why does he have to have skin color at all? Why can’t he be in the monitor? In the air around you? In your finger on the mouse? Why can’t he be someone other than outside the universe? Now, as far as people not being self-created, I am saying that, just as God is “I am ‘THE’ I AM” as He is, there is a point in everyone’s life where they understand they are alive, they have responsibilities and they can hurt people or help people and that is when they “ARE that they ARE” and they are created in this, which is in God’s image. We are just as God but we don’t have the power to create the universe from more than one perspective. Certainly, I can create a universe in my writing (e.g., Gene Roddenberry) and people can create that same (Star Trek) universe for themselves but I can’t physically create one from more than my own perspective. If we aren’t self-created after we are born and have self-awareness then we are just as animals and what makes us separate from animals is language and the ability to cry “I AM!” [the chair is silent on this one]. I think it would be far more logical and less problematic to form a mathematical and physics-based understanding of things with God inside the universe to consider that, as far as what is measurable and provable, that the universe is what produces the energy necessary to create the universe and the God is the intelligence behind the intelligence we see occur naturally (DNA, for example). There doesn’t need to be something outside the universe for there to be a perfectly logical understanding. Godel’s theory regarding closed systems is accurate, but who said that the universe is a closed system? What proof is there of that? What if, as scientists have pretty much proven, that if the universe is infinite that you can simply not measure one end of it to the other without it continuing to expand beyond those points after you measure it? It’s just like an electron where you can’t know both the speed and the location at the same time but once you know one of these then neither is true any longer.Reply
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 10:33 amI hope to answer a few of your questions here. If the thing that created the universe is boundless, then it is not subject to the boundary of the edges of the universe. So God can be inside the universe as well. There could be all kinds of other universes and things outside the universe. But those things also have boundaries and are systems. And if they are rational they are also incomplete. Your 2nd to last paragraph touches on something that I’m surprised more people haven’t mentioned. Which is that a conscious being with free will is not subject to the laws of logic. On both a micro and macro scale, a free being can do irrational things. Which is another way of saying that consciousness is an entirely different category of thing than anything that’s purely physical. It reinforces what the philosophers and theologians have been saying for thousands of years, which is that human beings are wholly different and distinct from inert objects. We cannot rationally say that the universe is the thing that produces its own energy. It has to have a starting point and it does – the big bang, the beginning of matter energy space and time. We have no reason to believe it created itself. The current scientific consensus is that matter, energy, space and time are all finite. I am asserting that in the grand scheme of things, the universe is not a closed system. The materialist view says it is a closed system and that there’s nothing outside of it. The materialist view contradicts Godel, contradicts our notions of cause and effect and has no ability to explain consciousness or free will.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 13, 2010 at 10:55 amAgain, more interesting ideas. I think we’re both kidding ourselves if we think we have all the answers, but I really like interesting questions as an access to coming up with new answers rather than trying to be right that my view is the only one that can be true. I contract the Eastern and Western views of God merely because it yields interesting answers to questions with more variables and thus can yield answers that haven’t been thought before and, in turn, could be answers that make more sense logically than if the questions hadn’t been asked. I question the notion that the universe is not all there is and I ask why it is that God isn’t all that there is as well. It’s just a question, but what an idea! And with quantum physics and other branches of theoretical math applying string theory to the real world, they say that parallel universes (and it’s interesting that they come in many magnitudes of parallel or likeness to our own), that it is more likely that there is only one universe which may become part of parallel universes once we can observe and detect parallel universes: we will truly not be alone. There will be more than one Perry Marshall. If there was ever a chance that Perry Marshall would have dropped out of high school or had become a doctor, then there would be parallel universes where one dropped out and the other became a doctor. It’s all based on probability. And there is always a place for God in all this because, if anyone would know everything, He would know what you are doing in those parallel universes and would certainly know you more than you know yourself. I’m not asserting that the universe is closed, but in the view of quantum mechanics and applied string theory that it’s very likely that it is infinite and that it is also infinite in its variety. This is proven, which is nice. But I wonder what Godel says about this. If a model exists with infinite variety exists in infinite parallel universes, then how do you draw a circle around that? This comes back to the definition of infinity. You could say it’s N+1 where N is any number you can imagine (Godel, right?). But you could also say that it’s a property rather than a number because it’s not a number. N+1 isn’t a number!! It’s a variable equation; plug in the variable and you can solve it. However, that defeats the purpose of an infinite property. If I drive from LA to Chicago, then it is 1 trip and I have an infinite variety of ways to get there including going around the moon, to Alpha Centauri and back, etc., but it’s still 1 distance. In the same way, there may only be one God and one universe and each has an infinite variety, infinite expression, infinite size, etc. Even if the edge of the universe increases and then decreases and eventually collapses on itself and then explodes again (which is one of two prevailing models as I mentioned before in a closed universe), it will still explode again with all the information wiped like a hard drive but the intelligence of God is still there. I just think this idea of God outside the universe watching us is just the same as saying that God lives in the sky watching us. He doesn’t have to watch you, He is IN YOU because HE is the energy/matter and the intelligence that organizes and destroys as well. He survives just as we survive because our souls arrive and they go back to where they came, which is IN HIM. (I really am getting tired of saying He and Him. So boring and sexist, really. The universe doesn’t have a penis and neither does God, so why the Hell and we saying HE and HIM anyway?) Really, if there is no place that God is not then why would he need to be outside of anything if he is in everything? Well, it’s an interesting conversation, Perry! No conclusions here. I’m pretty comfortable with my logic and wanted to share it with you. I appreciate yours and where it comes from. Thanks!!Reply
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Daniel says:August 12, 2010 at 12:15 pmThere is no such thing as an incomplete universe, just incomplete models for that system. Godel is describing models (such as certain maths) and how they fall short of self-contained description. It’s sort of like the whole paradox with Zeno and his “half, but half first, but half of that first” reduction when describing how it should be technically impossible for anyone to get anywhere, having to first go halfway. What Zeno and Godel pointed out, and what all paradoxes point out ,in fact, is that our models and conceptions of the universe are limited. It’s an illustration of the folly of certainty. Using a paradox of any kind to PROVE something is to completely lose the point. But certainty seems to be something you need, so please: continue with the post-hoc . . .Reply
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Perry says:August 12, 2010 at 12:20 pmDaniel, Why isn’t a statement like “There is no such thing as an incomplete universe” itself an example of the “folly of certainty”?Reply
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vijeno says:August 12, 2010 at 1:30 pmEven if it were a folly, the point stands that incompleteness of the model can never imply incompleteness of reality.Reply
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Daniel says:August 15, 2010 at 1:18 pmGood point. I think you’re right: that could be seen as on over-certain statement. I guess what I was getting at was that the universe needs no explanation.It is complete, because it exists. We, the curious people are the ones who would like to superimpose an explanation onto it. The quest of science has not been to nail down a loose and wiggly universe with declaration of fact so much as to bring an already crisp and functioning reality into a more lucid framework that our minds can more easily conceive of. Science just brings us more accurate descriptions of what already is;what is real in spite of us. (right?) When we start using logic to make predictions, we’ve gained a pretty powerful lever. It works quite well, most of the time. But what’s nice about semantic paradoxes or mathematical leaks is that they illustrate for us that our logic is not perfectly sound. Our logic is like a program that we’ve written. Things like the Liar’s Paradox and the Incompleteness Theorem show us screwy output, so we know that there’s a bug in the program – faulty logic. We’ve missed a detail. Saying that we can draw a circle around everything that we know, and then infer that there must be something outside of it that is necessary for explanation is true (enough). It’s a beautifully eloquent way of illustrating an idea. The idea that it seems to represent though, is not that there must be a god, but that we’ve not yet learned how to draw our circles large enough. It is a commentary on the limits of our computation. Paradoxes, logical absurdities, mathematical impossibility, etc: these tell us more about the yardstick than the yard.Reply
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Perry says:August 17, 2010 at 5:41 pmDaniel, you said: “The universe needs no explanation” This has to be one of the most anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge, anti-free-inquiry statements I’ve heard in a long time. This notion sorely deserves to be challenged. My friend, the universe DEMANDS an explanation. It’s like you’re saying “Hey there, logic is useful and all but let’s not suppose that God exists or anything like that, folks. Everybody go home, nothing else to see here. Run along, run along…” Are you an atheist? Is atheism killing your curiosity?Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 12, 2010 at 12:35 pmTruly the universe is just as unknown as God is. We can only observe what we say is the universe or God. Are you so sure that these unknowns are not the same unknowns? Why does one have to be outside the other? And is there such a thing as a place where God is NOT? If so, then where is that place? It’s kinda hard to argue that it’s somewhere outside the universe if we don’t know that there is such a thing as outside the universe.Reply
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Perry says:August 13, 2010 at 10:43 amTry this: God and the universe are the same. The universe came into existence 13 billion years ago. Therefore God came into existence 13 billion years ago too. So what caused God and the universe to come into existence?Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:August 17, 2010 at 6:08 pmHey Perry, Thanks for replying back on that previous comment. You raise an interesting question and I’m not sure you’re going to like my answer. I’m completely borrowing this from the Tao Te Ching and also from Genesis in the truth that things are created in language. In other words, things don’t exist unless they are created in language. For example, road rage didn’t exist as a thing until someone first said it exists and then others heard about it and now when we see someone jumping out of their car waving a golf club we go “road rage” to ourselves. The same is true for every single word out there. Now this is not to say that the sky wasn’t there before someone said, “This is the sky.” In fact, the bible even says that Adam named the animals and the animals were certainly there before he named them, but again, man named the animals. God created the universe using the word (or by using language). Now it would be really un-Christian of me to say that God only exists by virtue of people saying that there is this almighty, all-knowing power called God and he doesn’t really exist but we say he does. No, I say that there is this thing we call the universe and all that is God is the body of the universe and we call the universe God because God is everywhere the universe is and so that must be his body. The mind of God is in the details, the DNA, the spark of life, the soul of the child just conceived, the soul of the man who died of cancer just now and so on; surely all knowledge is in all things and not somewhere else. To test this idea, consider what would happen if every last human died tomorrow on Wednesday. Would God still exist if we are the only intelligent form of life in the universe? Where would he exist? What is the difference between the existence of God with people saying he exists and without anyone around to say he exists? It doesn’t change God either way, does it? Now, I’m going to take this back to your idea about Gödel because it is very important in this discussion. It is what started this long string of ideas. Gödel’s language he is speaking in is math, true? Math is a representational language. There aren’t ones and twos and threes growing on trees because these things represent the number of things. I can hold up two fingers and say “two” to my daughter who is two-years-old, in fact, but she looks at it and says “one” or “four” because she doesn’t know what these numbers represent. In other words, because math is a representational language, just as we know that the word “chair” is just the sound we make when we describe a seat with legs, what if there is just simply a difference between what God is and the word “God” as a representation. What if it’s just not realistic to have something knowable that we say is “God” because the word simply can’t prepare us for what it is that we are invoking when we say “God” because we are not prepared as human beings to describe God in complete terms; some would argue that we can’t scratch the surface. If you speak with some who say that it is blasphemous just to write the word “God” and that if you must it has to be spelled G-d then there is a reverence for something that must not be contained inside of a mere word. It is to say that God cannot be represented by the utterings or scribblings of humans because we are so far away from understanding God that we must show some reverence. What if Gödel is speaking in representational terms and saying that math is incomplete because it is a representational language? Maybe he is saying in non-representational terms that the representation is not the thing itself and is incomplete without the representation. The representation 4 is incomplete without the thing it describes; it is dependent on something real for it to have any truth. In the same way, the word “God” is incomplete because it doesn’t represent “God” because “God” is not knowable. “God” is not incomplete because “God” doesn’t rely on something to function. The universe may certainly be incomplete because it may rely on something to function, but I don’t think we’ll know definitively until the universe is understood better. Perhaps when we discover if it has boundaries and not walls/membranes that it is either infinite or finite with just nothing outside of it. But we won’t know that in my lifetime as far as I can tell. So, what caused God and the universe to come into existence? Since you are asking in a representational language, I would say that representational language is what gave us the word “God” and “universe” and until then they were just mysteries that needed to be understood. God created the universe, yes, but it was only because of representational language that we can say that or agree or disagree. If we could ask this question without representational words or language or math then we would have the best answer. It would sound like God is “the I am that I am.”Reply
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Perry says:November 14, 2010 at 1:09 amGodel’s theorem is not about the limitations of symbols, or the difference between the territory and the map. It’s about the relationships between symbols and the logic that governs their behavior. Math is more than a representational language. It has an existence independent of physical things. That’s why we can have mathematical constructs that so far have no known correspondence to the physical world. Christian theology actually deals with unknowability (hidden-ness and mystery) of God and the representation and expression of God. This is done through the Trinity: John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. Hebrews 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. This verse indicates that the very laws of physics and the structure of the universe are held together by the command of Jesus Christ. God exists in three beings: Father / Son / Holy Spirit. This is alluded to in Genesis 1 where God says “Let us make man in our image.” Even most non-Christian Jewish theologians affirm that God is one, yet plural. Father is the will, the essence, not knowable apart from the Son, which is the WORD, the expression of His Nature. The WORD in turn is not understandable apart from the Holy Spirit which is the manifestation of understanding, the fulfillment of His Nature. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) This is curiously analogous to encoder / code / decoder in information theory, which I talk about extensively at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com. And isn’t it interesting that the following conversation transpired between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in John 8, where Jesus echoes the words of God to Moses at the burning bush: 57 “You are not yet fifty years old,” they said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!” 58 “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!”Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:October 4, 2010 at 10:56 amSorry I didn’t know you had replied to my last post. Yes, if God and the Universe are the same then what created them is the phenomenon of language. They did not have names until we gave them names. They weren’t even things until someone said they are things. Language creates everything. There was nothing (the Void) before anything was created. This is basically Chinese philosophy (according to the Tao Te Ching) and it’s fundamental as well. If you have no language, then there can be nothing that exists as things; you would just be babbling goo-goo at the pretty lights and shapes and objects until you know what those things are.Reply
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Perry says:November 14, 2010 at 1:10 amWords and language precede all creative acts. The universe did not create language. Language created the universe. “In the beginning was the WORD.”Reply
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Perry Hotta says:October 22, 2010 at 1:26 pmThe answer, however you put it, is plain and simply: We do not know. It is only a few cults that try to hide that fact by claiming some supernatural knowledge. But everyone who can think straight, is actually enabled to see through those lies.Reply
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Perry says:October 22, 2010 at 3:57 pmWhat did I lie about? Can you tell me what is wrong with using inferential reasoning in science? Do you have evidence supporting any answer other than design?Reply
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Perry Hotta says:October 23, 2010 at 8:49 amWhere exactly did I say that you lie? Of course, I could easily borrow your logic regarding DNA: All self-proclaimed internet marketing gurus are scam artists, you are a self-proclaimed internet marketing guru, therefore you are a scam artist. Or maybe: All proponents of ID are idiots; you are a proponent of ID; therefore you are an idiot. The answer regarding design still is: You claim an intelligent designer for DNA. You cannot show any evidence. Case settled.
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Perry says:October 23, 2010 at 8:59 amYou said, “But everyone who can think straight, is actually enabled to see through those lies.” I do not claim physical evidence for a designer. I claim 100% inference to one. I’ll leave it to others to comment on the truth or falsehood of the statements “All self-proclaimed internet marketing gurus are scam artists” and “All proponents of ID are idiots.”
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Perry Hotta says:October 23, 2010 at 9:46 amSo you see yourself as a cult member? You use witty words to cover up the fact that 1) you can’t fathom how science works 2) you have not a shroud of evidence for a designer As I said, internet scammer is as internet scammer does.
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ragazzo says:August 13, 2010 at 12:39 amInteresting stuff here. Sadly, I’m not mathematician enough, but since god is true, the proof must be solid. ?Reply
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brian says:August 23, 2010 at 3:52 pmmost of this seems to be working towards the first cause argument. good stuff. the statement “The universe needs no explanation” looks a bit like an axiom: a proposition that defeats its opponents by the fact that they have to accept it and use it in the process of any attempt to deny it. to assume something outside of the universe hinges upon no known knowledge. it only requires an imagination.Reply
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Dagwaging says:September 26, 2010 at 1:59 pmThe fundamental flaw in your so called ‘proof’ of a god is the assumption that traditional logic, entropy, and Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem apply outside of the universe. For all we know, logic works differently or not at all outside of our universe. Perhaps the laws of logic stem from a fundamental property of the Universe. Entropy could also be a phenomenon that arises from other mechanisms present only in our Universe. Who is to say that, outside of the universe, matter and energy can’t be created or destroyed? Maybe they can. Maybe this is how the universe came into being, through a spontaneous creation of matter due to a lack of laws preventing its occurrence. There simply isn’t and cannot be enough information to prove this.Reply
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Perry says:September 28, 2010 at 6:57 amYou’re right. In fact we could speculate endlessly about what’s outside the universe. We could make up pretty much anything we want to, and just assume it’s true. We could assume that outside the universe, 3+3=5 or that matter and other universes are endlessly created. My question for you is: Is there anything we DO know that actively supports any of those assumptions? Is there anything I have said here that contradicts *known* facts? Note that I have not claimed to prove God here; I have inferred based on the available facts.Reply
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James says:October 4, 2010 at 6:59 amHi Perry, I have only recently began looking into the use, by Christian apologists, of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem as a way of trying to demonstrate the existence of ‘God’. I am an atheist, but I enjoyed your article, and the debate that has ensued in the comments section has been VERY insightful. I have definitely learnt a lot (from both sides). Please keep it up, Perry & everyone.Reply
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Rod Hamilton says:October 18, 2010 at 4:56 amI don’t have a problem with some sort of “prime cause” of the physical universe which somehow lies outside the universe and was responsible for the universe. But I am really struggling to equate that idea with the testosterone-filled chest thumping alpha male tribal control freak described in the Old Testament and the Quran. “God” as described by Mohammed and Moses is obviously a social god. Such a god is definitely responsible for the creation of the “tribe’s universe”. The idea of linking such a tribal god (who is obviously just an abstract social construct) with the god who brought about the big bang is where I have a problem. Within each of us lies our very own personal (immanent) creator of our personal universe…the heart.Reply
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Perry says:October 18, 2010 at 4:16 pmI would encourage you to read the book of John in its entirety which I think gives a more nuanced understanding of the Christian ideas about God.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:October 20, 2010 at 1:59 pm“Until someone can successfully demonstrate a naturally occurring code, the only scientific inference we can make about the origin of the genetic code is that it’s designed.” You can only get by with making these wild claims because you’ve arbitrarily excluded DNA itself from being representative of a “naturally occurring code”. Your only justification for this seems to be to state that since every OTHER “code” is the result of intelligence, therefore DNA must have been engineered by some intelligent agent as well. Hate to bust your bubble, but this represents nothing more than a hasty generalization. Even if we accept your proposition that every OTHER source of “information” and “code” is the product of intelligent engineering, it certainly does NOT follow that the genetic code necessarily must be as well. That must be established through independent lines of inquiry and evidence. And to claim that it must be because no one currently knows for CERTAIN how DNA developed is nothing more than an argument from ignorance.Reply
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Perry says:October 21, 2010 at 5:59 amEverything we know about digital communication indicates that a deliberate conscious process is always involved in developing the rules of a communication protocol. This is positive knowledge. Do you have any positive evidence to present to the contrary? Why is your position not an argument from ignorance and mine is?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:October 21, 2010 at 1:42 pmEven if we allow for the poor analogy and accept that is not just somewhat similar to a “digital communication protocol”, but actually IS one; that doesn’t by default mean that it therefore must be the invention of some intelligent agent as well. Even if we could absolutely, positively, without a DOUBT know that there are no OTHER sources of “code” or “information” naturally occurring in the entirety of the universe, that doesn’t by default mean that DNA could not be the only example in existence. Yours is an argument from ignorance because that is the gap in our knowledge in which you arbitrarily choose to insert interference by an intelligent entity. Mine is not because I’m simply pointing out a fundamental flaw in your reasoning, not making any positive claims of my own. I’m readily admitting my own ignorance; I can’t elucidate the exact process by which DNA in it’s present form could develop naturally, the data to satisfy your rather lofty demands simply does not exist yet. The fact remains however, that this does not justify the claim that because every OTHER source of “information” (however you choose to define it) comes from an “intelligence”, DNA must have been “designed” as well. It could very well be that DNA is a “black swan” so to speak, and you know it.Reply
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Perry says:October 22, 2010 at 8:04 amIt’s not a poor analogy; it’s not even an analogy in the casual sense of the word. The comparison between DNA code and computer codes is an isomorphism, which is a formal exact analogy. Definition: 2. Mathematics A one-to-one correspondence between the elements of two sets such that the result of an operation on elements of one set corresponds to the result of the analogous operation on their images in the other set. My choice to insert intelligence is not arbitrary. It’s based on thousands of other codes. I am making an argument from knowledge. The naturalistic view, that it somehow emerged from the ‘soup’, is an argument from ignorance. We have 100% inference to design and 0% inference to any other explanation. If you wish to claim another explanation, then you are welcome to present evidence.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:October 22, 2010 at 1:30 pm…and the Old World presumption was that all swans must be white, because all of the existing historical records reported that all swans had white feathers. That is until 1697, when Vlamingh discovered black swans living in Australia. The fact that a given number of observations have indicated “all codes we KNOW THE ORIGIN OF were created by intelligent agents”, does not mean the one we DON’T KNOW THE ORIGIN OF necessarily must as well. What you are (incorrectly) attempting to do, is establish a universal rule based on an incomplete set of instances. “100% inference” does not equal “100% true”. The data regarding the development of the structure of DNA is incomplete, past observations do not necessarily predict the outcome of future events, and simply ignoring obvious errors in your reasoning, glossing over fundamental limitations like the most BASIC problem with inductive reasoning, doesn’t mean you are “successfully debating”. In fact, quite the opposite.
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Perry says:October 22, 2010 at 3:51 pmAt what point did I say that 100% equals 100% true? Besides induction, what other kind of reasoning do we have for establishing universal scientific laws? What existing scientific law is NOT based on an incomplete set of instances?
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Perry Hotta says:October 22, 2010 at 9:12 amYou’re basically saying the following: 1. It walks like a duck and looks like a duck, therefore it is a duck. 2. Because it is a duck, it must quack. It is pretty obvious why this does not work. The answer is quite simple, really: It quacks when we hear it quack. Not a second before that.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:October 22, 2010 at 8:49 pmI said you were trying to establish a universal rule (all “codes” come from conscious beings), not a scientific law. I have no interest in digressing into semantic games with you, so please restrain yourself from taking such liberties. But this once, I will indulge you. Firstly, there are laws which are derived deductively, such as the Law of Detachment and Law of Noncontradiction. There are no inductively derived “universal” scientific laws. Almost every single scientific law you could put forward has well known exceptions and only applies under certain conditions. Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation for example, only applies in weak gravitational fields. We simply refer to something as a “law” if it has been observed to be true UNDER THE SAME CONDITIONS enough times. Since we don’t know under what conditions DNA originally formed, we couldn’t say if a law that applied to things we DO know were created under certain conditions even applied to it or not.Reply
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Perry says:October 22, 2010 at 9:51 pmYour own statement that “Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation for example, only applies in weak gravitational fields” is derived inductively. As are the laws of thermodynamics, electromagnetism, and almost every aspect of the theory of evolution. All of the “well known exceptions” to scientific laws are determined inductively. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science: Biologist Stephen J. Gould maintained that certain philosophical propositions—i.e., 1) uniformity of law and 2) uniformity of processes across time and space—must first be assumed before you can proceed as a scientist doing science. Gould summarized this view as follows: “The assumption of spatial and temporal invariance of natural laws is by no means unique to geology since it amounts to a warrant for inductive inference which, as Bacon showed nearly four hundred years ago, is the basic mode of reasoning in empirical science. Without assuming this spatial and temporal invariance, we have no basis for extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, therefore, no way of reaching general conclusions from a finite number of observations.” Induction is the basis of nearly all scientific knowledge. If you reject induction then you reject the scientific method itself. In all conditions that are known and documented, codes are designed. I propose to you that in scientific matters the best course we can chart is to accept the patterns and the inferences that are available to us and follow the evidence where it leads. If we accept the origin of the genetic code as an act of design then that implies other inferences: For example the design paradigm is inherently resistant to ideas like “junk DNA.” “Junk DNA” was embraced for 30 years by people who reject the design hypothesis and in fact was used as “proof” that there is no design in nature. Then scientists began to study it anyway and it turns out that’s the part of DNA where all the most interesting stuff happens. History thus shows us that a design paradigm is in some respects more conducive to scientific discovery than the materialistic paradigm. Science itself came from a belief that the universe operated according to fixed, discoverable laws and that was originally a theological proposition.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:November 15, 2010 at 8:16 pmNowhere did I even remotely imply that I rejected induction. You quite literally willfully ignored the entire point of my argument. And I’m going to completly ignore the rather woefully misinformed tirade on “junk DNA” for the time being as it seems to me to only serve to obfuscate the lack of any relevant content in your response. The point, Perry, is that even if we accept the proposition that DNA is a “digital code” in the most literal sense, even if we further accept that all codes we know the origin of are the creation of intelligent agents, this does NOT logically extend to a code we DON’T know the origin of. This would only be accurate if we could demonstrate that DNA was “created” under the same conditions as every other code we DO know the origin of. But we CAN’T say that, can we?Reply
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Perry says:November 16, 2010 at 11:57 amHow is your statement “this does NOT logically extend to a code we DON’T know the origin of” anything other than rejection of induction? DNA has redundancy features, just like Ethernet and TCP/IP. And data repair mechanisms, nested data structures, modular components, and error detection and correction, just like Ethernet and TCP/IP. All such things without exception are designed. By very smart people. As I asked you earlier, what existing scientific law is NOT based on incomplete knowledge or an incomplete set of instances?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:January 31, 2011 at 3:10 amThis is not a rejection of induction. As I just pointed out in my most recent post, the most induction allows you to say is that codes are the product of HUMAN intelligence. Perhaps if we allow for other types of language and codes found in the animal kingdom; we could allow for the more general statement, “all codes are the product of ANIMAL intelligence”. Since the genetic code was created by neither of those things, it is an exception. A “black swan” event. Since DNA is the only code we know of that is not the product of animal intelligence, the inference does not apply. This is not a rejection of induction, merely pointing out it’s obvious limitations. Like it or not, in the case of DNA inductive logic alone gives us no reason to prefer one explanation over the other. Therefore, Perry, you need to provide some line of reasoning or evidence that indicates DNA was created as the result of supernatural agency that DOESN’T generalize from other examples of codes. You need some sort of evidence BESIDES inductive reasoning to support your assertion. So what other evidence do you have to support the notion that DNA was created by an invisible, supernatural, intelligent agent?
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Landothedead says:October 26, 2010 at 2:24 pmSo… What happens when you draw your magic circle around any god(s)? Do they then need to base their existence on an even bigger god? And an even bigger one after that? Where do you draw the line at infinite regress?Reply
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Perry says:October 27, 2010 at 10:39 amI invite you to read any one of the replies to the dozen other people who asked the same question.Reply
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Landothedead says:October 27, 2010 at 6:11 pmI don’t really have time to wade through all of that, but I would point out a couple of things to do with this line of reasoning: 1. The only things we know of that are intelligent have differentiated, connected parts (ex. neurons, possibly computer hardware). (I’m basing this on our current knowledge. As soon as someone finds something intelligent that does not have connected parts, please let me know and I’ll revise this). 2. Whatever is outside the circle doesn’t have parts (#7). 3. Therefore whatever is outside the circle is not intelligent. Or if you prefer: 1. In order to contain information a medium must have at least two distinguishable forms. (the simplest code we know of is binary which requires 1’s and 0’s to convey information). 2. Whatever is outside the circle has only one form (it is indivisible, has no parts and therefore is conceivably an infinite homogenous whole). 3. Therefore whatever is outside the circle contains no information.Reply
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Perry says:October 29, 2010 at 11:16 pmThis is by far one of the best arguments that has been advanced. Thanks for your thoughtful post. Your logic is correct so far as what it does consider; what it doesn’t consider is where codes come from, which I have written about extensively here and elsewhere. The creation of codes requires intelligence. To create a code with freely chosen symbols requires free will. Syllogism: 1. Material objects obey the laws of physics. 2. Free will by definition extends beyond the laws of physics, because a “self” can choose to act. Choice is by definition behavior not dictated by laws. 3. Therefore free will is immaterial. This is reinforced by the fact that living things have free will and inert objects do not. Free will is not a known property of matter or the laws of physics. This is further reinforced by the fact that the laws of codes, the semantics of languages, and all the principles of mathematics are immaterial concepts, not physical objects. The existence of information requires the existence of intelligence in the metaphysical plane. To your second syllogism, I reply that since information and consciousness are immaterial, then this further confirms that whatever is outside the circle is likewise conscious and immaterial – in addition to being indivisible. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 where the conclusions I reach via information theory and Gödel’s theorem are essentially identical to those of Descartes and much earlier thinkers.Reply
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Mitch says:October 26, 2010 at 10:25 pmTo begin with, I would like to apologize if what I am about to say has already been mentioned. I found your article quite interesting, but I don’t have the time to make my way through all of the discussion. I will now attempt to prove you wrong. (I would like to say however, that I personally do believe in a god, however, I just disagree with your method of proof. My belief in good is exactly that, a belief) First, I would like to say that I do have a math background, and I did read through Godels proof. Needless to say, it is quite difficult and I only skimmed it, but, we will assume it is completely true since, as you say, it hasn’t been proven false for 80 years or so. Firstly, you state that there has to be something outside the circle. This is not true. Godel does not show the existence of things outside of a system, rather, he showed that in a system, there will be things that you cannot prove. Even if we do assume your interpretation is correct, which, i don’t see why it should be, then, a system with a god would still have things we cannot prove. So, the notion of a god does not clear up those problems. The next issue I have is with your notion that the universe as we know it is mathematical. This is something that I must say I vastly disagree with. Look at the Banach-Tarski paradox. It says that we can take a sphere and, using only rotations and translations, create two spheres of equal size. Obviously, this is not possible in our world, but, is possible in the mathematical world. This leads us to conclude that our world is not mathematical. Mathematics is merely a model in which we can describe our universe. To say our universe follows the laws of mathematics however, is very very false. However, let us now assume, for arguments sake, that your above arguments do in fact hold. So, we now have a system which, from your conclusions has a god. But, according to Godel, your system still has statements that cannot be proven. So, your inclusion of a god does not actually fix any of the problems that arise form the incompleteness theorem in the way you applied it to the universe. So, there is really no reason to conclude that a god exists. All we can conclude is that we, as humans, will never be able to fully understand all there is to understand. This doesn’t imply the existence of a greater being. It just states that our capacity to understand the universe is limited, or, that logic as we have created it, is flawed. Anyway, I would love to hear what you have to say regarding what I have wrote as I find you do bring up some very good points. Have a good evening!Reply
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Perry says:November 14, 2010 at 12:48 amI’m not convinced that the Banach-Tarski paradox means the universe is not mathematical. It just means that not all math has known application to the behavior of physical objects. If you want to say the universe is non-mathematical, you need to show that the universe violates mathematical laws. The closest you can come to that is free will of human beings, which I believe is real and by definition is not law-like. Yes, a system with a God still has things we cannot prove. However if you postulate the existence of God it is theoretically possible for God to be the only thing that is not ultimately provable. Remember: If a system is complete, it cannot be consistent. If God does not exist then the universe is not logical. If God exists then it is possible for the universe to truly be logical. We can never ultimately prove that the universe is logical but positing God gives ground for that assumption.Reply
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Mitch says:November 14, 2010 at 2:37 pmI am not convinced that by letting god exist, it would be the only thing that is not ultimately provable. Let us consider the logical system (set of axioms if you want) that encompasses our universe. Let us call this system S. Clearly, you agree that, due to Godel’s theorem, there are statements in S that are unprovable. So, we now take our logical system and add a new axiom to it. This new axiom is the existence of God. We will call this axiom G. So, we now have a logical system S + G. However, due to Godel’s theorem, in this new logical system, where we included the existence of God, there must still be things that cannot be proved. So, I fail to see how including God in our universe solves our problem.Reply
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Perry says:December 4, 2010 at 9:10 amThe value of assuming G lies in the virtue that there is nothing else outside of G. The virtue lies also in the assumption that G itself is not a system. G is absolute and indivisible. G gives ground to the unprovable assumption that the universe is logical and obeys rational laws. G allows us to assume that even things like induction are potentially reliable ways of determining truth. Note that David Hume, in his rejection of God, also concluded that induction was not a reliable method of reasoning. The assumption of G leads to the smallest number of unprovable statements. Does not theology itself assume that God knows the reason for everything, even if humans don’t; and that if humans knew everything that God knows, there would be no unanswered questions? Thus belief in God not only allows but invites us to step outside of the limitations of our own perspective, and posits that there is an answer to everything. From the perspective of G, everything could eventually be proven. How can a rational person reject that proposition and still remain consistent with the aims of mathematics and the sciences?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:November 16, 2010 at 9:17 pmWhich are all things that we can elucidate in great detail the exact process and conditions under which they were designed. You can’t say the same for DNA. Induction only allows for you to extend this reasoning to other things that you KNOW were created or developed under the same conditions. This is a LIMITATION of induction and acknowledging it as such is FAR from a rejection of it altogether.Reply
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Perry says:November 17, 2010 at 9:48 amI prefer inference to the best available explanation, following the evidence where it leads based on what we do know about codes. You are entirely free to come to no conclusion at all.Reply
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Stian says:January 22, 2011 at 5:05 amIsn’t the word ‘code’ in ‘genetic code’ ment as an illustrating metaphor?? Not the other meaning of the word, that is, human made code??Reply
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Perry says:January 22, 2011 at 8:42 am“Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005)Reply
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Jason Devlin says:November 19, 2010 at 10:59 pmDNA wasn’t created like any ARTIFICIALLY developed code invented by mankind. It is a code that appears in the NATURAL WORLD and of UNKNOWN ORIGIN. That ISN’T inference to the best available explaination, but merely to your own personal preferences.Reply
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Perry says:November 23, 2010 at 10:16 amDNA has redundancy features, and it is optimized for error minimization to better than 1 million to one. Look up “Genetic code is one in a million” on Google, it’s a well known paper. Based on what we do know, where do redundancy features in codes come from? A: We have no evidence of other coding tables being tried by nature. The inference is this is from conscious choice based on examining the possibility of errors and trying to optimize the correction of errors. DNA has a 4 symbol set with symbols grouped in threes, to make 64 characters. What is this similar to? A: ASCII, which has a 2 symbol set with symbols grouped in sevens, to make 128 characters. In pure physics and chemistry, does anything else like this exist? A: No. “There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences.” – Hubert Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” (Cambridge University Press, 2005) Do we have other examples of codes? A: Of course we do. UTF. TCP/IP. HTML. The list is as endless as the number of file extensions in your own computer – RTF, TXT, DOC, XLS, MP3, etc. How are such codes created? A: By conscious decisions to match symbols and referents together for the purpose of efficiently communicating with language. Did any of those other codes come from anything other than a conscious intelligent choice? A: No. If you deny that this suggests a conscious choice on the part of someone or some intelligent entity, what counter evidence do you have, Jason? Can you show that your dismissal of these inferences is anything other than your own personal preferences?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:November 30, 2010 at 8:12 pm@Perry Error minimization in the genetic code is NOTHING at all like the redundancy/error-correcting features built into the symbolic arrangements of data in computer programing languages. Literally. Nothing. At. All. Alike. This is a false equivocation of the highest magnitude, a verbal bait-and-switch that serves only to highlight an EXTREME vacuity of knowledge in molecular genetics, or a blatant disregard for intellectual integrity and honesty. Error correction in computer language is realized by detecting errors and establishing a means by which to reconstruct the original, error-free data (generally through ARQ, FEC, or hybridized schemes). With even a cursory knowledge of molecular genetics it is absolutely laughable, hilarious even, to think that this is in any way analogous to the manner in which biosynthetic relationships between amino acids affect the assignment of codons to reduce the effects of point mutations and mistranslations. The mechanisms you are attempting to equivocate to error correction in computer science are in reality, as I said, nothing at all alike. There are molecular components that, due to their physical properties, exhibit certain chemical affinities for one another. Which in turn affects the manner in which they are distributed, which in turn tends to produce amino acids with properties very similar to the properties of the amino acid which WOULD have been produced had the error not occurred. Thereby reducing the phenotypic effects of the error. You seem to have come about a very confounded state of knowledge, in which you have made a loose connection that they both have something to do with errors, but have completely ignored or glossed over the fact that each respective mechanism is in reality NOT the same AT ALL. Your analogous reasoning is very superficial, inaccurate, and misleading. Upon investigation these analogies fall apart at the seams, and serve only to expose the fundamental differences that highlight the absurdity of attempting to extend inferences about the development of computer codes to the development of the molecular structure of DNA. I maintain, for the above reasons, that the process of inference does NOT extend from the development of computer codes to the development of DNA, and that this is nothing more than a grandiose and rigid display of personal preference. Repetition may make an uninformed, casual observer somewhat more likely to believe you, but it does not make you even remotely close to correct.Reply
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Perry says:December 3, 2010 at 12:09 amJason, The genetic code is 2/3rds redundant, mapping 64 combinations to 20 amino acids; ie GGA, GGG and GGC all code for Glycine. This is a form of Forward Error Correction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_error_correction. I quote from “Nanoscale Communication Networks” by Stephen F. Bush, p. 51: “…Forward error correction (FEC) techniques which are clearly used in biological systems such as DNA…” DNA uses parity to detect errors as well. From the same book, further down in the page: “Each of the DNA bases has a sequence of three connecting structures, either hydrogen donors or hydrogen acceptors. Thus, each nucleotide base can be considered a sequence of three binary values. The fact that the base is either a pyrimidine or a purine appears to serve as the final parity bit.” Another form of error detection found in DNA is checksums. In most chromosomes of single-stranded DNA, the total number of times each codon appears is controlled to within 0.1% by a checksum matrix. The cell adds up the total number of codons and checks for errors. Each character in DNA occurs a precise number of times, and each has a twin. TTT and AAA are twins and appear the most often; they’re the DNA equivalent of the letter E. This pattern creates a stair step of 32 frequencies, a specific frequency for each pair. The number of triplets that begin with a T is precisely the same as the number of triplets that begin with A (to within 0.1%). The number of triplets that begin with a C is precisely the same as the number of triplets that begin with G. This is discussed by Jean-Claude Perez in his 2010 paper “Codon Populations in Single-stranded Whole Human Genome DNA Are Fractal and Fine-tuned by the Golden Ratio 1.618? at http://metapress.com/content/f564350073g75444/fulltext.pdf I summarize the results of Perez’ research at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/mathematics-of-dna/ Barbara McClintock discovered in the 1940’s that if she damaged the chromosomes in corn maize, the plant would copy sections of DNA from undamaged parts of the genome and repair the missing data. She won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of genetic transposition. This is a very sophisticated form of repair, much more advanced than Forward Error Correction. This is well documented and is not unlike what your DVD player does when it encounters a smudge or scratch – it interpolates with an estimate of what it thinks the missing data might be, based on previous frames and the image content near the damaged area. Quoting from “How repeated retroelements format genome function” by R. von Sternberg, J.A. Shapiro: “As we increasingly apply computational metaphors to cellular function, we expect that a deeper understanding of retroelements and other repeats, the integrative fraction of cellular DNA, will lead to increased understanding of the logical architecture inherent to genome organization. In the era of biocomputing and systems biology, the study of cellular information processing promises to revolutionize not only the life sciences but also the information sciences. We anticipate learning powerful new computational paradigms as we come to understand how cells use myriad molecular components to regulate millions of biochemical events that occur every minute of every cell cycle. Our expectation is that, one day, we will think of what used to be called “junk DNA” as a critical component of truly “expert” cellular control regimes.” I must take exception to your analysis. You said: “There are molecular components that, due to their physical properties, exhibit certain chemical affinities for one another. Which in turn affects the manner in which they are distributed, which in turn tends to produce amino acids with properties very similar to the properties of the amino acid which WOULD have been produced had the error not occurred.” This is incorrect. The reason it’s even possible to have a genetic code with 64 different codons is that none of the four base pairs ACGT has any particular chemical affinity for any one over the others. If they did, a code would be impossible. It’s not a chemical bias that reduces phenotypic effects of errors, it’s the Forward Error Correction redundancy scheme, parity, checksums and cellular genetic engineering as described by McClintock and Shapiro – See James A. Shapiro, “A 21st Century View of Evolution”: http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/Shapiro.2005.Gene.pdf You said, “Upon investigation these analogies fall apart at the seams, and serve only to expose the fundamental differences that highlight the absurdity of attempting to extend inferences about the development of computer codes to the development of the molecular structure of DNA.” From Answers.com: bioinformatics n. The use of computer science, mathematics, and information theory to model and analyze biological systems Science Dictionary bioinformatics information technology as applied to the life sciences, especially the technology used for the collection and analysis of genomic data. “Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular-biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal.” -Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden, page 17Reply
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Perry says:December 4, 2010 at 8:33 amJason, I was raised a Christian but by nature I am the sort of person who questions everything. (Ask my wife.) I went through multiple phases of putting my beliefs on the chopping block between age 18 and mid-30’s. About 7 years ago I was entertaining serious doubts as my younger brother was teetering on the edge of atheism. He is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and he had a master’s degree in theology from one of the most conservative seminaries on the West Coast. He was asking very penetrating questions. I reached a point where I said, “I am willing to completely discard my belief in God if that gets me closer to the truth. I just want to know the truth. If God does not exist then what has to be true in biology in order for the world to make sense?” One of the key planks of my investigation was biological evolution. I floundered for quite awhile reading all the familiar arguments, feeling like both sides made excellent points and that both sides also had their fingers in their ears. I asked this question as a communications engineer who had written an Ethernet book in 2002. It’s called Industrial Ethernet and it’s in its 2nd edition. You can find it on Amazon. I had a major epiphany one day when I suddenly realized for the first time that because DNA was a digital code, nearly every concept in that book *potentially* applied to DNA. So I started trying to connect the dots. Sure enough, nearly everything in DNA had a direct parallel in digital communication theory. In fact what I’ve told you so far about Forward Error Correction, checksums, parity and even more sophisticated error correction mechanisms only scratches the surface. Even the simplest bacteria is a treasure trove of digital communication techniques, mechanisms and elegant design concepts. The more you know about communication systems, the more impressive it is. And as Hubert Yockey says, these comparisons are not analogies because the word code in biology is not an analogy, it’s literal. The best thing the people who design your cell phone can do is study bacteria. I would like you to notice that because of your atheist worldview, you are literally mocking me for making these observations. And instead you are claiming that everything DNA does is simply a function of naturally occurring chemical affinities. My friend, that is like saying the reason your computer recognizes your camera when you plug in the USB cable is that there are negative charges in the camera that are attracted to the positive charges in the computer, and that it’s just as simple as that. No, the handshakes of the USB protocol go vastly deeper than hand-waving explanations of voltage on a wire. In fact most origin of life theories based on chemicals are saying the equivalent of “We discovered the origin of copper wire and plastic, therefore we have almost explained USB.” They don’t understand that the cable [i.e. the chemistry] is only the first, most shallow layer of the onion. It’s like failing to notice that an engineer also spent six months writing a software driver so the camera would recognize the computer when it got plugged in. That’s where all the big discoveries lie. I have been debating this online for six years. This is the subject of the longest running most viewed thread on what was originally Infidels, the largest atheist discussion board in the world – see http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels. And what you see there is dozens of atheists ridiculing a trade published engineering professional speaking within his field of expertise about the most fundamental, non-controversial discovery in biology, the genetic code. I invite you to consider that the atheist worldview literally has FORBIDDEN you to see order and levels of organization that are right in front of your face, because of its refusal to acknowledge the possibility of a designer. When you become willing to follow the evidence where it leads, when you are willing to learn from any discipline that has something to teach you, a whole new layer of discovery awaits. Please be reminded that in the history of the world, science got started about a half dozen times. In ancient Egypt, in China, in India, in Islam, and in Greece and Rome. It coughed and sputtered and died in all those places. Only in Western Europe did the match light a fire that continues to burn to this day. Why Europe and not the other places? Because Christianity had a theology to support the idea of a God who created a world that obeys fixed, discoverable laws. WIsdom of Solomon 11:21 says “Thou hast ordered all things in weight and number and measure”. This was written 3000 years ago and to my knowledge it’s the first such statement ever to be made. It’s the foundation of modern science. The other cultures had no such presupposition. Obviously science wasn’t born in atheism either. It was born in Christianity. Notice how many hugely influential scientists were deeply religious. Science has gotten so large now that you can divorce it from its original source and get lost in it and perhaps never reach its limitations. (Which is why atheism exists now yet had negligible influence prior to the 1700’s.) But when you get to the edges of scientific knowledge, in order to move forward you always have to assume there’s another yet-undiscovered level of order. Notice the parallel to Gödel here. This literally has to be taken on faith. It is perhaps the most rewarded hypothesis in the history of philosophy. Earlier in this thread, you had been making fun of me for discovering order. I invite you to follow the evidence where it leads and reach a place where you too can begin to make these new discoveries. You will find that the edges of science are a frontier of great beauty.Reply
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Stian says:January 22, 2011 at 5:12 amWhat possible difference does it make that christianity made the assumption of a universe guided by laws first? If the norse had done it first it would still be accurate and the norse religion would still be myth. There is no ‘right by association’, 2+2=4 even if hitler was the first to discover it. Finding a fact does not give any credibillity to other aspects of the finder than that fact.
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Perry says:January 22, 2011 at 8:45 amYou’re right. Edison shouldn’t get credit for discovering the light bulb, Newton shouldn’t get credit for discovering gravity and calculus, Einstein shouldn’t get credit for discovering relativity and Alexander Graham Bell gets no accolades for inventing the telephone. And we certainly shouldn’t grant them any street cred for happening upon those discoveries. Oh, and by the way not only was Solomon the first person in ancient history to say that every created thing is quantifiable, St. Paul was the first to say that men and women and all races of people are fully equal.
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Ellas Typhon says:January 23, 2011 at 1:18 am1. Wisdom of Solomon wasn’t written 3000 years ago. More like 2100. 2. Don’t reclaim jewish books for chrisitanity, it doesn’t go well with people who know better. If anything, judaism must get the credit here. 3. Are you saying that the ancient greeks, the hindus and the buddhists never thought of the universe as ordered? 4. Are you saying that Paul never said that everyone who was not of his opinion was an evil heretic who deserved to die? 5. “Test it and take what’s good”. We should apply that to christianity. And leave the rest.
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Perry says:January 25, 2011 at 5:51 amEllas, 1. You may very well be right about the dating of Wisdom of Solomon. 2. All Christians claim Jewish books for Christianity. It logically follows because Jesus was the Messiah. 3. You’re welcome to find a quote where any of the ancient Greeks, Hindus or Buddhists explicitly say, as Wisdom does, that all things in the cosmos are measurable, weighable and countable. 4. Paul said, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He also said, in Romans 9: 2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, 4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. 5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised![a] Amen. He bitterly mourned their rejection of their Messiah, much as Jesus wept over Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Paul didn’t want anyone to die, and neither did Jesus. But Israel chose to drink the judgment of the all those who murdered the prophets, as Jesus says in Matthew 23: 34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation. All this came true in 70AD when Jerusalem was decimated by Vespasian. In the next verse Jesus says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
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Richard Morgan says:November 25, 2010 at 4:36 amThe research scientist asks, “How does this work?” The engineer asks, “How can I make this work?” The philosopher asks, “What is the significance of this working at all?” The psychologist asks, “Why do you need to know?” There is a problem with determining the “inference to the best available explanation” because four different mind-sets will likely require different kinds of explanatory power in order to infer with any confidence. Everything Perry posits is perfectly coherent within a particular world-view. However I must chide Jason for this rash assertion :”DNA wasn’t created like any ARTIFICIALLY developed code invented by mankind.” Since you admit that the origin is unknown, you can’t even say what DNA isn’t, pal! Perry is much closer to a process of understanding when he suggests that artificial, man-made codes look suspiciously like the codes/languages being discovered in DNA. If you, Jason, prefer to think, like Matt Ridley, that DNA is a “simple molecule… a frozen accident”, the unknown exception, the mystery outside the circle, then you need to know that you are sounding a lot more like the “God-did-it” brigade than Perry.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:November 30, 2010 at 9:07 pm@Richard Morgan Inference is based on repeated observations and it’s “explanatory power” is rooted in the ability of it’s predictions to remain consistent with continual observation. This process of continued observation is primarily carried out through both observation and experimentation. In simple terms, the fundamental problem with inference arises when we attempt to generalize from a given number of observations (a series of singular existential statements, such as that every swan observed thus far has been white), to a UNIVERSAL existential statement (such as that ALL swans are white). The problem with “mind sets” is that they tend to project BIAS, it is NOT a problem within the framework of inductive reasoning. This is why the current system of exploring and uncovering truth and knowledge about nature (SCIENCE, you may have heard of it) implements a system of checks and balances to remove personal bias as much as possible. Yes, everything Perry says is perfectly consistent within his worldview, THAT is how his personal preference to have a creator, rather than not have one, manifests itself as BIAS. It is not consistent with what we observe in REALITY, but only consistent within the limited framework he personally prefers. Just because I can’t elucidate step-by-step the precise sequence of events and circumstances under which DNA developed, doesn’t mean I can’t say very confidently and accurately that DNA is NOT a computer code and WASN’T developed by humans. I can also say with equal confidence and accuracy that the process of inference does not extend from the development of computer programming languages to the development of DNA. I therefore must chide YOU, kind sir, for the arrogance in which you ‘chide’ others based on your own intellectual vacuity. Perry is not closer to a “process of understanding”, he is vehemently and rigidly engaged in a process of denialism and irrationality that has never led to a better understanding anything, ever. If you, Richard, prefer to think that I think “like Matt Ridley” because it makes it easier for you to dismiss me with a wave of the hand and gloss over the glaring flaws in Perry’s reasoning, then you aren’t just sounding a lot like the “God-did-it” brigade; you, like Perry, are most likely part of it.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:December 2, 2010 at 7:29 amJason – I am happy to note that there are many things about which we agree. “DNA is NOT a computer code” (though I’m not sure why you felt the need to make this point, since nobody has claimed that DNA is a computer code. Still, if it makes you happy….) “DNA WASN’T developed by humans.” Er, yes. Excellent point. (Though I suspect that most of us have already realized that.) My “arrogance”. Yep. And you don’t know the half of it! Fortunately being arrogant doesn’t make me wrong, just unpleasant, and I can live with that as, clearly, you can. “you aren’t just sounding a lot like the “God-did-it” brigade; you, like Perry, are most likely part of it.” Allow me to confirm that I am, indeed, part of it. A fully paid-up member of the family of Christ. But even that doesn’t make me wrong, however much your own anti-God bias would make you want to believe that. Now, I’m checking your post again to see where we disagree… Ah, yes, “THAT is how his personal preference to have a creator, rather than not have one, manifests itself as BIAS.” You’re wrong. He does not have a “personal preference” to have a Creator any more than you have a personal preference for the force of gravity. We discover what is, and we act accordingly. Your mind-reading abilities have let you down badly there, as far as Perry Marshall is concerned. You were a lot more accurate when you were talking about my intellectual vacuity. Oh, and thank you for teaching me a new word – “SCIENCE”. I must try to slip it into my posts more frequently. I’ve noticed that atheists tend use it when they’ve run out of arguments. It’s called scientism, and reveals a certain, shall we say, BIAS?Reply
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Chris says:December 2, 2010 at 1:02 pmHow does your theory about the origins of DNA fare with this recent discovery? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/02/AR2010120203102.html?hpid=topnewsReply
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Perry says:December 2, 2010 at 10:17 pmThis discovery does seem to be consistent with the idea that bacteria are smart and purposefully adapt to their environment. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/intelligent-bacteria/Reply
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Richard Morgan says:December 3, 2010 at 2:51 am“Our findings are a reminder that life-as-we-know-it could be much more flexible than we generally assume or can imagine,” said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, 33, the biochemist who led the effort. Perry! You’ve been saying this for at least five years! In fact I’ve noticed that real discoveries made by real science consistently confirm the basis of the your ideas. Indeed truth and reality are not always politically correct, are they? Design Not Allowed?Reply
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Evan says:December 28, 2010 at 11:54 pmHey, great article, first of all. was surprised at how easily it explained a theory as complex as Godel’s. But I have three primary objections. You state in your above article that “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle.” You take this proof, and assume that, because you can draw a circle around the universe, that there must exist something outside of it. My first objection is your assumption that this “something” must be a divine creator. We’ve established already that the concept of “infinity” can exist in other contexts, such as an infinite progression of time, or a never-ending void. A creator only becomes necessary if the universe cannot present its own causality. (That’s my next point) My second objection is the fact that you assume that the universe is not infinite, and that therefore an infinity must exist outside of it. This claim is certainly contestable. We have not yet seen the edge of the universe in any direction, and will most likely never do so (because it’s expanding faster than light can reach us). The universe may very well have existed for all eternity, as multiple theories (such as the big bounce, quantum fluctuation, multiple universes, and temporal isolationism) suggest. Each of the above postulate a continuous universe, in which a “reset” button is continually hit, or bursts of low entropy are continually created. My last objection is that you state that Godel’s theorem applies to all things, but you then ignore what happens after we “draw a circle” around he universe. If existence is indeed based upon infinite regression, then what created god? On what does god owe himself? What defines him? This seems like a double bind for you. Either: A) All things must be defined by a “larger circle,” or are at least subject to causality, and therefore there are infinitely more things than god, or B) Inductive reasoning has its limits and can only apply to things that do not explain themselves. The consequence of this assumption is that, if we can provide an origin story for the universe, then god cannot exist.Reply
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Perry says:December 29, 2010 at 6:45 amI have already answered every one of these objections multiple times in this thread. Read the comments and you’ll easily find my responses to each point.Reply
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Andrew says:January 10, 2011 at 12:03 amPerry, I would like you to know that i stumbled upon this article and thread and have never had more thoughts in my mind solidified. I am twenty-four and have went through a college drug phase in my life. I have always been a thinker and analyzer and that was always at the forefront of my mind when using, I couldn’t help it. In my observations of the multiple times I have used the drug, Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), I began to see a trend. (This is in assistance to taking drug effects on the human body class at Western IL Univ, therefore Ive been educated on how these natural substances work) The basis of human thought and problem solving will revolve in a circle. To make more clear in what I experienced, I truly tried to discern what my thought consisted of. Every time I asked myself a question, I would begin to go through the process of answering it and I would arrive at the question. Everytime. This has happened in others as well. Closing of eyes and entering deep thought and eyes would rotate in circles without the subject being aware. Many times. Not the solid experiment by any means, but if you know of anything like this, I would be interested. We as humans take pride in our ability to think “outside the box” of creativity, but we are always in this circle. Whether we get creative with our cyclical thought or not, history continues to repeat itself and self actualization cannot be achieved. Seasons, migratory habits, planets rotation around the sun, air patterns, galaxies. I personally like to look at it as a sphere. There are multiple spheres, and everything in each sphere contains that of the smaller. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 11 spheres in this model. I have read some in string-theory and believe in that theory. If that theory could support this theorem in some way, that could be be quite effective I would think. haha. I appreciate your article and will continue to read up.Reply
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Andrew says:January 25, 2011 at 3:06 pmI want to thank you for responding to my comment in such a timely manner…Reply
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Alan McKenzie says:January 23, 2011 at 1:26 pmHi, Perry I’ve just come across your website (using the Google search terms “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem” together with the word “multiverse”. (The relevant page from your website appeared as the second citation – very impressive – although, oddly, I couldn’t find the promised reference to “multiverse”.) I have to admit to you that, as a professional physicist, I started to read your discussion on Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem assuming that it would turn out to be just another site with jargon phrases connected by steps of questionable logic (sorry!). However, I was surprised – delighted, even – to see that your own thinking is very close to my own, as are the conclusions of your train of thought. Like you, I deduce from Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem the existence of a higher system, outside of the one in which the original “Gödel sentence” is expressed. I was a little more obsessive (nerdy), perhaps, in defining the conditions for this to be applicable to our universe, and also to addressing the apparently infinite series of meta-universes that results upon continuing to apply the theorem at each higher level. I was astonished when it turned out that the series stops, however, because you get to a point where the increasingly sophisticated mathematics of each meta-universe is finally able to prove the Gödel sentence (which, of course, cannot be proved in the mathematics of our own universe). In addition, as you come to the end of the series of meta-universes, you find that you end up with a system that not only explains all the universes below it (including our own) but is also a complete explanation of itself! (In my website, somewhat irreverently, I have called this the God Equation.) I realize by now that I sound a complete crackpot! However, please don’t judge me before you check out my website http://www.godel-universe.com where these ideas are explained more fully. (How do you have time to do this with all of the other work you do for your business?) Alan McKenzie Bristol EnglandReply
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Perry says:January 25, 2011 at 5:53 amGlad you found this! Fascinating discoveries you are making. How could I not squeeze this between the business activities? This is the important stuff. A pleasure to meet you, and best of success with your book. PerryReply
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Davide says:January 28, 2011 at 8:00 am“Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove” is simply not true; and there’s many other things you wrote that are higly approximated or just false. Articles like this one are dangerous as they spread pseudo-science. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is one of the most misunderstood ones though; and, unfortunately one of the most misused to prove just anything and its contrary. Ex falso sequitur quodlibetReply
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Richard Morgan says:January 29, 2011 at 6:35 am“simply not true”? OK. Maybe you would be good enough to enlighten us, Davide? Thank you.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:January 30, 2011 at 10:28 pmPerry, For the sake of argument, I will concede that DNA carries out many of it’s error correcting functions in much the same way as codes that have been developed by humans. I regret even engaging you on this point because your knowledge in coding languages obviously allows you to elucidate the similarities between the two codes on a more technical level than my own limited knowledge of the subject will allow for. Because it is completely besides the point in the first place, the problem with your inference is much more fundamental, and I hope I can elaborate further at this time. All known codes, except for DNA, were in fact created by…human minds. It seems to me to be very unlikely, to me at least, that DNA was created by a human mind as well. Therefore, it is the EXCEPTION. There aren’t any examples of non-human created codes other than DNA. It does not logically follow that because DNA wasn’t created by a human mind, it must have been created by an intelligent, invisible, supernatural entity instead. “All codes are created by human minds” is the only conclusion we can arrive at with inductive logic based on our experience with codes, and DNA is the exception to it. Based solely on inductive logic alone, there is nothing we can say about the origin of the genetic code, because DNA is the exception to the rule. Given the historical track record of supernatural explanations failing dismally to explain naturally occurring phenomena, it makes it all the more absurd to extend your inference beyond it’s logical boundaries. What this means for you Perry, is that in order for your preferred explanation for the origins of DNA to hold, you need to offer up coherent evidence that explains why we should accept this explanation WITHOUT using this inference, since as we’ve established, DNA is the exception to the rule. So my questions to you are: What evidence BESIDES inference can you provide that indicates DNA was created by an intelligent, supernatural agency? Why should we reject all possible natural explanations and prefer a supernatural one?Reply
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Perry says:February 1, 2011 at 9:46 amJason, Let’s not lose sight of the original question. The original question is: “Does science give us reasons to believe that life is designed, or do purely naturalistic explanations do the job?” No one is claiming or expecting to pull back the curtain and say “Hey look, there God is.” Everybody already understands that. So what does science say? DNA is a code, and all codes we know the origin of are designed. DNA has checksums and all checksums we know the origin of are designed. DNA has recursive programming and all recursive programs we know the origin of are designed. Microsoft Windows Vista takes 25 Gigabytes of memory. The human genome compresses all the plans for a human body, along with its growth and development, into 0.75 Gigabytes of memory. And every cell fits that data in smaller physical space than any hard drive man has ever designed. The human body is vastly superior to Windows Vista. The code in DNA is vastly superior to human code. Both in terms of data compression and storage mechanisms. Therefore, to conclude that humans designed DNA would be utterly silly. Craig Venter’s lab designed a cell from mostly borrowed parts and it cost them $40 million. Something incomprehensibly greater than humans is directly and unambiguously implied. “Evolution produces such a strong illusion of design it has fooled almost every human who ever lived.” -Richard Dawkins. Evolution itself requires code to exist first. So far as we know, code always requires design. In science, is it valid to reject an inference because you have not directly observed the thing that was inferred? How about dark energy and dark matter in the universe? We haven’t seen those things, but many scientists believe them. Why? How about black holes? We haven’t seen those either. How about string theory? Has anyone actually seen the strings? How about our assumption that the laws of physics were the same 1 million years ago as they are now? Have we actually tested that? Science relies on inference to the best explanation, does it not? Don’t we hypothesize dark matter and black holes because they best explain what we see? If you accept the high probability of dark matter then why would you not also accept the high probability of God? Jason, have you not had dozens of conversations with theists where you said, “Show me the evidence and I’ll believe you”? I am now showing you the evidence you demanded all along. Are you willing to follow scientific evidence where it leads? You had been unwilling to consider the possibility that there was any kind of designer besides humans. Therefore you concluded that we could know nothing about the origin of DNA. You reject inference of God = you know nothing. I accept inference of God = I know something. What do I know? I know that DNA is a fabulously crafted code with fractal data compression and recursive programming. I know that it has an incredible checksum mechanism that is only barely understood at this time. I know there is no Junk DNA. (The atheists popularized that view. The ID people would never say something so slanderous and anti-scientific as that. How can you find order and organization in something you’ve declared to be junk?) The atheists tell us about vestigial organs. Those who are skeptical of atheist doctrines discover that those organs perform useful functions. The world must never be allowed to forget how much damage atheism has done to science in the 20th century. The God hypothesis gives me ground for always expecting another layer of ORDER and REGULARITY in nature. And in the codes of DNA. Why are so many atheists scientists not practicing real science? Why are they vandalizing it with anti-scientific claims such as “evolutionary mutations are driven by random copying errors”? Where’s the experimental evidence to back up that claim, Jason? Has anyone ever shown you an experiment where that turned out to be true? Jason, belief in God has been in the very foundations of science since it began. Science didn’t grow out of atheism, it grew out of Christian Western Europe. Christians don’t automatically assume that the finger of God is actively behind every whim of nature. Christians believe what Solomon said: “Thou hast ordered all things in weight and number and measure.” That the universe obeys rules, that it has lawlike behavior. Christians believed that long before Isaac Newton. Consider 1 Kings 19 and what it implies about the relationship between God and nature: The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. I’ve been showing you the wonders of DNA and thus far you’ve been fighting my observations tooth and nail. Jason, you don’t have to fight anymore. You don’t have to embrace atheism anymore. You don’t have to cling to this dogma of randomness and accident and purposelessness that has marred the practice of science for 200 years. Because today we have given you every reason you could ever ask for to infer, based on real scientific evidence, that the universe has a Designer.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:February 1, 2011 at 10:00 pm“DNA is a code, and all codes we know the origin of are designed.” The set of codes you describe refer to codes that were ‘designed’ by human beings. That is the fundamental qualifier in this dubious line of reasoning that you’ve conveniently left out. The conclusion does not follow from a valid induction, your induction leaves out a critical qualifier and is invalid as well. The genetic code cannot be part of the set of codes you have defined as having been “designed” unless you also allow that they were “designed by human beings”. Codes that were designed by human intelligence are the only class of codes that you have defined as being part of this set. DNA clearly was not designed by human beings, and the class of codes you have defined only allows for codes that were designed by human beings. Therefore, it is inappropriate to use a class of codes that DNA is clearly not a part of to make an inference about the purposeful “design” of DNA. The “designed” codes you are referring have only been defined as those designed by human beings. Perry, the class of codes you have defined includes only those “designed” by human beings. It does not extend to the genetic code because as you have agreed, the genetic code is not a code that was invented by human beings. Therefore, it does not follow by inference that the genetic code was “designed” at all, this is an inappropriate use of inductive reasoning because we can only generalize from codes that have been designed by humans. Develop a model that shows how an intelligent entity that is not a human being can purposefully develop a functioning code. You cannot infer design without also inferring human design. Unless you can show how something besides a human can design a code, you have nothing significant to say about the genetic code at all.Reply
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Perry says:February 2, 2011 at 12:08 amJason, DNA is a communication with encoder, coded message and decoder according to Shannon’s definitions (1948) as described by Yockey (2005). See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/solve for a formal outline of these definitions and links to sources. None of the formal definitions of code specify a designer. It just happens that all codes we know the origin of are designed. There are millions of communication systems. All but one were designed by humans. There is one that remains, DNA, and we do not know the origin of it. We are asking whether science provides us with good reasons for concluding that DNA was probably designed. You said: “The genetic code cannot be part of the set of codes you have defined as having been “designed” unless you also allow that they were “designed by human beings”.” We do have examples of genetic code designed by human beings: The cell recently engineered by Craig Venter and company. They got DNA to do something different, something that they wanted to do, by designing it and assembling the genes and chromosomes as they saw fit. We know of no other way to accomplish such a feat. Thus we can construct the following logical statement: 1. DNA has every appearance of being designed 2. It cannot have been designed by human beings 3. Therefore it was designed by some other being or beings. This is every bit as logical as the SETI project which searches for codes transmitted by some race of beings far across the cosmos. It is founded on the exact same line of reasoning. Your own reasoning excludes, at the outset, the possibility of anything other than human intelligence. You’re trying to call foul but you have not given us any good reason to deny the possibility of non-human intelligence. I’m still waiting for you to offer a valid reason why such an inference is forbidden. The only way to forbid this inference is to declare the original question invalid. You have not provided any reason to do so. Meanwhile not only have I inferred from information theory that DNA is designed, I’ve also shown that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem infers an infinite, immaterial conscious being as a necessary axiom for a logical universe. The two conclusions match perfectly. Jason, you and any and all of your atheist friends, I challenge you to come here and offer a logical, mathematical or scientific proof that God does not exist. When you have done so, you can then forbid me from reaching this conclusion that you are so uncomfortable with. Until you do that, I have the full backing of science in reaching this conclusion. We can be every bit as certain that DNA is designed as gravity, entropy and the laws of thermodynamics. Because the genetic code gives us 100% inference to design in biology and 0% inference to any other explanation. Finally I saw your response to Richard about the difference between simple codes and complex codes. He said: 1. A simple form of intelligence can create a simple code; 2. A smart intelligence can create a smart code; 3. the intelligence that would have been required to produce the code in DNA is inordinately superior to any known human intelligence” You said, “I will concede to none of this tripe.” Is Richard pushing your buttons? I think we can all agree that a six year old can understand Morse code and create something similar. Morse code is a simple code. I think we can likewise agree that it takes a team of Ph.D.’s to design TCP/IP. TCP/IP is a smart code. I’ve never seen a six year old do something like that. Have you? DNA is vastly smarter than TCP/IP. Earlier in this thread you were mocking me for making statements like this. If you think what I’m saying is tripe, then demonstrate your credentials for discussing codes. Meanwhile I’ll make a prediction: We’ll be unraveling the wonders of the DNA protocol for hundreds of years to come. Remember, Windows is 25Gig and Human Genome is 0.75 Gig. Which actually contains more information? It’s so elegant it makes the PhD’s who designed TCP/IP look like orangutans with screwdrivers. Jason, show me a code that’s not designed. All you need is one. Then you will have grounds for rejecting scientific inference.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:February 2, 2011 at 3:00 am“Jason, show me a code that’s not designed. All you need is one. Then you will have grounds for rejecting scientific inference.” I have shown you a code that isn’t “designed” by the criteria you are putting forward. The criteria for design you have put forward only includes codes that were the invention of human intelligence. DNA cannot be said to have been “designed” at all, since human intelligence is the only intelligence in which we have observed this cognitive ability. This is not a “scientific inference”, in fact, it is not even an inference at all. As we’ve established, induction only allows us to extend this line of reasoning to codes designed by humans. “Your own reasoning excludes, at the outset, the possibility of anything other than human intelligence.” My reasoning does not exclude this possibility, and I’ve never stated as much. It simply asks that you provide convincing evidence for me to consider such a claim. If you propose that a non-human intelligence exists, awesome. Define what a “non-human intelligence” is. Describe how we can perform a test to distinguish it from human intelligence. Construct a model of this disembodied intelligence and use it to make accurate predictions about future observations and the results of experiments. If you have yet to put forward anything other than errantly applied logic, then there is no reason to consider such a thing. “You’re trying to call foul but you have not given us any good reason to deny the possibility of non-human intelligence.” I’m not asking you to deny it. I’m asking you to provide evidence for it. “I’m still waiting for you to offer a valid reason why such an inference is forbidden.” I’ve given you a valid reason, you’re free to strangle the logic to death if you feel that is “forbidding” it. I’ve explained why it is not a logically consistent application of inductive reasoning, in turn you’ve offered no valid reason why we should accept it. “The only way to forbid this inference is to declare the original question invalid.” The inference is invalid because it is not logically consistent. It relies on a set of codes to make a generalization about human intelligence, that human intelligence is required to make a code. To infer the existence of an immaterial, non-human intelligence in the particular instance of a code that was not the product of human intelligence is absurd unless you can show that some other form of intelligence exists. If you wanted one example of a code that wasn’t designed, this is it: DNA. Unless you can provide evidence of the existence of a non-human, non-biological intelligence there is no reason to accept your inference in the first place. So in answer to your question: “We are asking whether science provides us with good reasons for concluding that DNA was probably designed.” No, it most certainly doesn’t. You still cannot infer design without also inferring human design. Since the genetic code clearly cannot have been designed by human intelligence, we cannot make inductive generalizations about it based on examples of codes designed by human intelligence, because it wasn’t designed by human intelligence. This means we cannot even infer that it was “designed”, unless you can not only show that an immaterial, non-human intelligence exists, but describe how it could “design” anything. Otherwise it does not logically follow to even infer “design”. “We do have examples of genetic code designed by human beings: The cell recently engineered by Craig Venter and company.” I wasn’t arguing that we don’t have examples of genetic code designed by human beings. You clearly did not even remotely comprehend what I was arguing. What I was stating is that the genetic code itself obviously was not designed by human beings, and if the set of codes you are defining only includes examples of codes that were designed by human beings, then DNA is not part of this set. This means you cannot inductively derive an inference of “design” because the set only allows you to generalize to “design by human intelligence”. It is not a logically consistent example of inductive reasoning because “human intelligence” is the only context in which you have defined “design”. DNA does not fit within this definition, consequently it is inappropriate to imply “design” since design is contingent upon “human intelligence”. Again, I’m not rejecting the possibility that an immaterial, intelligent, creative agent could have created the genetic code. I’m simply asking you to provide me with evidence for it. “1. DNA has every appearance of being designed” No, it doesn’t. You have only provided examples of codes designed by human beings, therefore DNA cannot have “every appearance of being designed” unless it was designed by human beings. But since you establish with the following: “2. It cannot have been designed by human beings” Then we cannot infer that it was “designed” since our only definition of “designed” refers to codes designed by human beings. It is illogical to conclude: “3. …it was designed by some other being or beings.” It does not inductively follow that “some other being or beings” must have “designed” it. The only thing we can logically conclude is that the genetic code is a truly unique code that was not designed through the action or influence of human cognition. But we don’t have any examples of any other intelligent entity with the same or greater cognitive abilities. So it cannot even be said to have been “designed” at all. “We can be every bit as certain that DNA is designed as gravity, entropy and the laws of thermodynamics. ” No we can’t, actually. We can’t be certain about it at all because generalizations made from specific instances of codes designed by human beings do not extend to codes that weren’t designed by human beings. If it wasn’t designed through the action of human cognition, then we can’t assert that it was “designed” at all. Unless you can provide an example of some other form of intelligent cognition that designs codes, then we don’t have any reason to accept that the genetic code was “designed”. “Because the genetic code gives us 100% inference to design in biology and 0% inference to any other explanation.” We’ve already discussed why this is not a valid inference. It does not make more sense the more times you repeat it. Since it would be absurd to suggest that human beings “designed” the genetic code, it is absurd to suggest the genetic code was “designed”. What sort of intelligent cognitive entity designs codes other than human beings? “I think we can all agree that a six year old can understand Morse code and create something similar. Morse code is a simple code.” I think we can also agree that Morse code is a code created by the action of human intelligence. “I think we can likewise agree that it takes a team of Ph.D.’s to design TCP/IP. TCP/IP is a smart code. I’ve never seen a six year old do something like that. Have you?” Naturally, we could agree this is also an example of a code designed through the action of human intelligence. “DNA is vastly smarter than TCP/IP.” It does not fall under the same category because it was not designed by human beings. Any generalizations you can make about a group of codes that only includes codes designed by human intelligence may not apply to a code that wasn’t designed by human intelligence. Including the inference that it was “designed”. You still need to show that another type of intelligence exists to design it otherwise you can’t even say that it was “designed” at all.
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Perry says:February 2, 2011 at 7:34 pmI said: “You’re trying to call foul but you have not given us any good reason to deny the possibility of non-human intelligence.” You said: I’m not asking you to deny it. I’m asking you to provide evidence for it. Jason, would you consider immediate healing of blind and deaf people through prayer, documented and published in a peer reviewed secular scientific journal with statistical data on before / after hearing and vision tests, to be valid corroborating evidence of divine activity?
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Richard Morgan says:February 2, 2011 at 7:29 amI will never forget the look of amazement and wonder on those children’s faces when they saw cows for the first time in their lives and I told them that that was where milk came from. Later, they were able to actually see milk spurting from the swollen udders. (One little girl exclaimed, “Yuk. I’m never going to drink milk again”!) It was in 1965. I was teaching in a Primary School in a very poor (socially deprived) area of Nottingham. Most of the pupils in my class of 8 year-olds had never been outside the city, never seen the countryside, farms, the sea etc. They had only ever seen milk in bottles, usually delivered to their doorstep when finances permitted. I suppose their reasoning could have been : “The only milk we know about is delivered in bottles, therefore any milk that is not delivered in a bottle comes from an unknown source.” Telling them that it came from a large, doe-eyed, dribbling animal called a “cow” would have been ludicrous for them. Fortunately it only took a day’s outing to a milk-producing farm in order to change their ideas. That raised their lactic Zeitgeist. Jason, your entire reasoning seems to be based on an attitude, “You haven’t shown me a cow, and I won’t go to the farm.” I understand your need for an uninterrupted series of verifiable phenomena before being able to accept an inductive “proof” or even an inference to the best explanation. You want an unbroken, straight line. Everything you say would be valid and irrefutable except for one fatal flaw – the nature of codes/languages. The starting point of this whole subject. Before going any further, would you be good enough to tell us what you mean when you use the word “code”. Perhaps we are using the same word, but entirely different concepts. I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but if, for example, you prefer to say that the structure of DNA just gives it a code-like appearance, then continuing this discussion would be futile. So – over to you, pal. Oh, and I am holding my breath. This is all extremely interesting. I love, and am open to, being proved wrong.
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Jason Devlin says:February 2, 2011 at 10:00 pmPerry, The question you asked is as follows: “Jason, would you consider immediate healing of blind and deaf people through prayer, documented and published in a peer reviewed secular scientific journal with statistical data on before / after hearing and vision tests, to be valid corroborating evidence of divine activity?” My answer to you is that I couldn’t confidently say anything about any research until I had actually seen the research. You’re asking me to accept something I haven’t even seen yet, which defeats the whole purpose of “peer review”. The authors of this research would have elucidated their methodology in their article, including the sample size, demographic, whether or not this was compared to a control population and whether or not the control was blinded. I would also want to see their was accurate source literature cited in the article, and see how the whether the work itself has been cited favorably or unfavorably in other journals. I would also ask you to define what “devine” means and how this relates to intelligence because previously we were talking about intelligence as it relates to codes. I personally would not consider “devine” as analogous to “intelligent” but I want to know how YOU define the two simply to figure out how they even relate to one another in your mind. If something “devine” happens I want to know how you understand this as something “intelligent” happening because up until now I didn’t realize they were interchangeable terms. But first, I would like to see you respond to my most recent post to Richard as this was directed at you both. Please explain how your inference is even logically valid in the first place without being circular.
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 8:59 pmJason, Here is a scientific study of hands-on healing of blind and deaf people in Pemba, Mozambique. Published in Southern Medical Journal, September 2010. 24 people were tested; hearing of deaf subjects improved by 10-60 decibels. Vision of some of the blind subjects also improved, ranging from none to 15X. Further documented instances of healing prayer are available at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles/
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Jason Devlin says:February 6, 2011 at 3:36 amPerry, I’m going to just dive right in: “1. The pattern in DNA is a code.” Perry, as I’m sure you are aware, the “code” part of “The pattern in DNA” you are referring to is the “Genetic Code”. Your subject (genetic code) is already a member of the set your predicate (codes) refers to. Thus, in stating that the genetic code is a code, you haven’t made a useful categorical proposition about anything. You’ve merely restated what was implicit in the subject to begin with. Perry, this is not even a valid categorical proposition. This is a useless repetition of meaning known as a “tautology” and it means your first premise is utterly useless. In order to provide a useful categorical proposition, your copula needs to either affirm or deny something useful about your subject. In this instance, you’ve simply substituted “pattern in DNA” for “genetic code”, but “genetic code” is already a member of a subset of “codes”, so you’re not affirming or denying anything that wasn’t implicit in the subject in the first place. You aren’t stating anything more useful than X is X. What this statement SHOULD be saying is something useful about the Genetic Code. For example, since we’ve previously agreed the Genetic Code is not of “known origin”, premise 1 should correctly state that “the Genetic Code is not of known origin”. This way it will actually say X is Y rather than simply saying X is X. “2. All codes we know the origin of are designed.” “All codes we know the origin of…” is important because previously we have established the Genetic Code is NOT of known origin, so the Genetic Code cannot be part of this subset. Thus, we first establish with our first and second premise two subsets of C; those of KNOWN origin, and those of NOT KNOWN origin. “All codes we know the origin of are designed.” We noted that our subject is a subset of codes, those of known origin. This proposition makes a universal affirmation in which “design” is predicated upon the set “codes of known origin”. From here, it IS possible for us to construct logically valid statements to make true inferences from the categorical propositions we’ve made so far. For instance: 1. ASCII is a code of known origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. Therefore, we have “100% inference” that ASCII was designed. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it? Let’s try another: 1. HTML is a code of known origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. Therefore, we have “100% inference” that HTML was designed. Now let’s take a look at a conclusion that ISN’T arrived at as a logical consequence of our premises: 1. The Genetic Code is a code of unknown origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. Therefore, we have 100% inference the Genetic Code is designed. What I think you completely missed the bus on is that the only kind of “100% inference” is a form of DEDUCTIVE reasoning in which the conclusion is shown to be a LOGICAL CONSEQUENCE of the premises, stated as a syllogism. In order for your inference to be “100%”, you have to arrive at the conclusion as a logical consequence of your premises. This argument falls flat on it’s face in the very first premise. In fact, it could also be true that: 1. The Genetic Code is a code of unknown origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. The Genetic Code was not designed. The conclusion of this argument could also be true; since the Genetic Code is of unknown origin, it could also be the case that it wasn’t designed. But it isn’t arrived at by way of our premises, and we have no reason to believe it any more than we have reason to believe “design” because in every instance “design” is predicated on “known origin” and the Genetic Code is not a member of that subset. At the very most Perry, you could proclaim, “I have asked a question!” if the conclusion of your “argument” was simply to ask “Was the Genetic Code designed?” and to seek out some means of testing your inference. But instead you provide nothing but sloppy syllogistic sophistry and “testing” your inference amounts to nothing more than referring back to the inference itself.
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Perry says:February 6, 2011 at 4:51 amJason, You still don’t understand my syllogism. Re-wording it: 1. All codes we do know the origin of are designed; there are no counterexamples of codes that are not designed. 3. The pattern in DNA is the one code that we do not know the origin of. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. You said, “Your subject (genetic code) is already a member of the set your predicate (codes) refers to.” Apparently you feel it’s necessary to misquote me in order to attempt to prove my logic is flawed. I have already made it clear that the origin of DNA was the question from the outset. I have made it perfectly clear that my subject (genetic code) is not a member of the set my predicate (codes) refers to. There are a million codes. We know the origin of 999,999 of them: Design by conscious agents, no exceptions. The origin of 1 is unknown. The only available inference is that it was also designed by a conscious agent. Since we know that conscious agent wasn’t us, we logically infer that we are not the only conscious agents. Your “syllogisms” about ASCII and HTML are not syllogisms. They are just inaccurate statements. We don’t have to infer, we know the specific origin of ASCII and HTML. Once again you make “syllogisms” that tell us nothing, vs. my real syllogism that tells us something. You say: In fact, it could also be true that: 1. The Genetic Code is a code of unknown origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. The Genetic Code was not designed. Yes, this could be true. But you have not yet presented any facts which infer that this could be true. To reach this conclusion you have ignored known inferences and not provided one that supports your case. Jason, show me a code that you can demonstrate is not designed. All you need is one.
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Jason Devlin says:February 6, 2011 at 11:37 pmPerry, Previously I provided you with syllogisms about ASCII and HTML which stated that ASCII and HTML belonged to a subset of codes herein referred to as “designed” codes. In this case, we were making a proposition about ASCII called a “categorical proposition”, which provides a “100% inference” that ASCII belongs to subset of codes herein referred to as “designed”. You incorrectly stated that these were “not syllogisms” and they were “just inaccurate statements”, so I think that the most pertinent matter at hand be to go over some fundamentals as clearly you are encountering some confusion. A “syllogism” is a form of deductive reasoning that makes a proposition (conclusion) and shows how it is inferred as a logical consequence of two other propositions (premises). If the conclusion is shown to be a logical consequence of the premises, then the argument is said to be logically “valid”. In short, if the premises are true then the conclusion can be said to be true as well. This is the only type of inference that can be said to be a “100% inference”, and it is a form of DEDUCTIVE reasoning. In this example, our conclusion makes a categorical proposition about ASCII that is derived from two other categorical propositions about codes: 1. ASCII is a code of known origin. 2. All codes of known origin are designed. 3. Therefore, we have “100% inference” that ASCII was designed. A “categorical proposition” contains two categorical terms (subject and predicate) and employs a “copula” to affirm or deny the former or the latter. For example, the copulas “is” and “of” can be used to affirm that a term or an object is a member of a set or class. Consider again the following statement: 1. ASCII is a code of known origin. Here we make two important categorical propositions that affirm our subject “ASCII” is a member of the class “codes” of the set “known origin”. Substituting A for “ASCII” , C for “codes”, and K for “known origin” we can now state: 1. A is a C of K Isn’t this fun! We can see clearly how we’ve made a valid categorical proposition about ASCII; we’ve assigned it membership in a class and a set! As we can see our first proposition obviously follows valid form and is certainly true. Moving on: 2. All codes of known origin are designed. This is our next important categorical proposition. It makes a “universal affirmation” about all members of our class “codes” within the set “known origin” possessing the property “design”. Assigning D to our new property, we can thus state: 2. All C of K are D Now we’re really heating up! Let’s take a look at our conclusion: 3. Therefore, we have “100% inference” that ASCII was designed. Our conclusion simply states: 3. A is D So if we now look at our abbreviated syllogism, it looks like: 1. A is a C of K 2. All C of K are D 3. A is D You find it useless because you have FOREKNOWLEDGE about the conclusion. Perry Marshall already knows the conclusion is true. But the point of a syllogism is not whether or not it provides Perry Marshall with something he doesn’t already know, it’s whether or not we can derive a conclusion that isn’t implicit in any of the premises. THAT is what makes it valid, true, and useful. I’m going to give you a bit to let this all sink in before we move on Perry, then I’m going to go over the new syllogisms you’ve posted. As an aside, inserting a semicolon before making a new categorical proposition is not considered “valid form”. This would be a “new premise”. So in the meantime I’d appreciate it if you could take care of that and we’ll chit chat some more soon.
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Richard Morgan says:February 1, 2011 at 7:46 amYou make some excellent points, Jason. Allow me to extend them somewhat. You seem to agree that DNA is a code-bearing molecule. You also agree that every code we know has been a) created, and b) created by a human intelligence. You correctly point out that DNA is an exception to (b) but you seem to accept (a) still applies. So far, so good. Let us agree that we do not know the source of the code in DNA. That is, self-evidently, one aspect which makes it unique among all other (known) codes. But there is more than that. Can we concede that: 1. A simple form of intelligence can create a simple code; 2. A smart intelligence can create a smart code; 3. the intelligence that would have been required to produce the code in DNA is inordinately superior to any known human intelligence (including my mother-in-law, and that’s saying something!) So, we’ve established that the agent that created DNA is unknown and vastly superior to human intelligence. Where the comparison with human intelligence falls down is in the fact that our double-helix molecule preceded human intelligence. In fact human intelligence is an expression of the potential intelligence present in the earliest form of DNA. Now things are getting complicated: a) a unique, unknown (invisible) source; b) a vastly superior intelligence; c) a creative intelligence that existed long before homo sapiens. This is all beginning to look a bit, er, supernatural, don’t you think? PS If we are able to recognise intelligence as a source, it is clearly because our intelligence is capable of recognising similarities – while remaining vastly inferior. How strange that ignorant, bronze-age goat-herders were able to say that God created man in his own image. Must have been a goat-herder who took night classes, huh?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:February 1, 2011 at 11:10 pmYou seem to be missing the point Richard. Allow me to further elaborate since we’re apparently not on the same page. “You seem to agree that DNA is a code-bearing molecule” That’s not generally how I would define it, no. “You also agree that every code we know has been a) created, and b) created by a human intelligence.” No, I do not agree at all. Every example Perry has provided to define a code is an example of a code created by a human intelligence. Consequently, I cannot accept (a), because we have not established that we can have (a) without (b) using these examples. Therefore, a code cannot be said to have been “created” unless it can also be said to have been created by a human intelligence. “You correctly point out that DNA is an exception to (b) but you seem to accept (a) still applies.” No I don’t. I have not accepted (a). If we cannot say that DNA was created by a human intelligence, then we cannot say it was “created” at all. “Let us agree that we do not know the source of the code in DNA.” Okaaay… “That is, self-evidently, one aspect which makes it unique among all other (known) codes. But there is more than that.” Oh joy! “Can we concede that: 1. A simple form of intelligence can create a simple code; 2. A smart intelligence can create a smart code; 3. the intelligence that would have been required to produce the code in DNA is inordinately superior to any known human intelligence (including my mother-in-law, and that’s saying something!)” I will concede to none of this tripe. 1. First define what a “simple form of intelligence” is and show me a simple code it has created. Are there any examples of simple coding languages created by simple intelligences that you can think of? 2. Define what a “smart intelligence” is and define a “smart code”. Provide an example of a smart code being created by a smart intelligence. 3. We haven’t established that DNA required an “intelligence” to be produced, because the only intelligence we’ve established is human intelligence, remember? “So, we’ve established that the agent that created DNA is unknown and vastly superior to human intelligence.” We haven’t even established that an intelligent agent had to ‘create’ DNA. “Where the comparison with human intelligence falls down is in the fact that our double-helix molecule preceded human intelligence.” When “human” comes down, “intelligence” falls down with it, because human intelligence is the only kind of intelligence we know of that can produce codes, and the codes from which Perry is drawing his fallacious inference have only been defined as such. “In fact human intelligence is an expression of the potential intelligence present in the earliest form of DNA.” Human intelligence can be said to be no such thing. I don’t know how you are concocting these dubious definitions. In general human intelligence is simply a property of the mind comprised of many related cognitive abilities. It certainly is no “expression of the potential intelligence present in the earliest form of DNA.” That doesn’t even mean anything. There are tests for intelligence, tell me how we would even test for an “expression of potential intelligence”. This is ludicrous reasoning. “Now things are getting complicated:” Things are getting downright absurd. “a) a unique, unknown (invisible) source b) a vastly superior intelligence; c) a creative intelligence that existed long before homo sapiens. This is all beginning to look a bit, er, supernatural, don’t you think?” I think not. Not until you or Perry can provide a non-human based example of an intelligence with the cognitive capacity to produce a code. “If we are able to recognise intelligence as a source, it is clearly because our intelligence is capable of recognising similarities – while remaining vastly inferior.” You haven’t recognized any intelligence other than human intelligence. “How strange that ignorant, bronze-age goat-herders were able to say that God created man in his own image. Must have been a goat-herder who took night classes, huh?” How strange that a highly superstitious, largely illiterate population of people were able to invent supernatural explanations for things they didn’t understand? You’re right, that is strange. That has never, ever happened before.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 2, 2011 at 5:31 amHi Jason. 1) If you do not define DNA (‘describe’ would be a better verb here, but anyway…) as a code-bearing molecule, and since this is a description that I have learned from real scientists and not invented myself, could you suggest a better description? I’m open to new perspectives on this. 2) You do not agree that DNA was “created”? Not even by inexplicable (or unexplained) natural processes? That is a coherent position to take, since you don’t even agree that DNA is a code-bearing molecule. And, in a sense, that marks the end of the discussion. Having denied the essential quality of DNA, you can then say anything you like about it. If we are not talking about codes, would you like to discuss Mahler’s third symphony, perhaps, or evidence of Shakespeare’s unresolved Oedipus complex in the characterization of MacBeth? Or the upcoming Six Nations Tournament? (Don’t be offended by my frivolity – I have more spare time than is good for me, I suspect.) 3) Having evinced the idea of a code from DNA, strangely, you then go on to talk about Perry’s examples of codes. I don’t see why you would need to do that, though I’m sure you have your reasons, which I would be delighted to discover. 4) You said : ” I have not accepted (a). If we cannot say that DNA was created by a human intelligence, then we cannot say it was “created” at all. You very wisely protected the word “created” with quote marks. Because “created” implies a “creator” and we can’t be having that, can we? How would you prefer to describe the origins of DNA – “emerged”? “arose”? “appeared”? Just three suggestions to comfortably eliminate the worrying need for an intelligent agent. Maybe you have a more appropriate one. Again, I’m open to new ideas. 5) You said : I will concede to none of this tripe. 1. First define what a “simple form of intelligence” is and show me a simple code it has created. Are there any examples of simple coding languages created by simple intelligences that you can think of? My reply : You still want to talk about codes, after what you said at the beginning? That’s nice. My six year-old grandson has invented a fairly sophisticated code for communicating his desire for cookies to me, without his mother being able to realise what is going on. But it’s still a simple code 2. Define what a “smart intelligence” is and define a “smart code”. Provide an example of a smart code being created by a smart intelligence. My reply : By using the words “simple” and “smart” I was just trying to use accessible language. When I look at a score for a Beethoven Symphony, I see a very smart code. It will be a while before my grandson is up to that standard. 3. We haven’t established that DNA required an “intelligence” to be produced, because the only intelligence we’ve established is human intelligence, remember? My reply : OK, you’re back to accepting code-like nature of DNA. That’s a relief. I can always respect a person who is prepared to reverse his position within the same post. The only intelligence we know is human intelligence. But you’re not going to do a Black Swan on me, are you? You haven’t ruled out the possibility of a superior intelligence and, to be more accurate a “human-like” intelligence, which is why you need to wriggle out of the possibility that DNA was “created”. I’m sorry, Jason, but it is so flagrant that you really don’t want to allow for any other intelligent agent at work in the universe, that you are grasping at straws. I promise you, I am trying to keep up with you. I’m doing my best. You said : We haven’t even established that an intelligent agent had to ‘create’ DNA. My reply : Correct. That’s not what we’re trying to do in the last analysis. We’re trying to determined the origins of the codes in DNA. (You’re OK with that now? I can talk about codes again? Good. Thank you.) I’m sure that Perry, like me, will be more than happy to drop the Intelligent Agent theory if anybody comes up with something better, which is what science is doing all the time. But for the moment, the Super(natural) Intelligence hypothesis is doing pretty well – much to the dismay of you and other atheists. You said : When “human” comes down, “intelligence” falls down with it, because human intelligence is the only kind of intelligence we know of that can produce codes, and the codes from which Perry is drawing his fallacious inference have only been defined as such. My reply : Oh dear, the idea of a superior intelligence does upset you, doesn’t it? I said : “In fact human intelligence is an expression of the potential intelligence present in the earliest form of DNA.” You said : Human intelligence can be said to be no such thing….. This is ludicrous reasoning. My reply : I was worried you might have a problem with that sentence. It was simply my rather elegant way of describing the straight line from the first (?) DNA molecule to your brain. I take it you do accept the reality of evolutionary mechanisms? You do? That’s a relief. You said :I think not. Not until you or Perry can provide a non-human based example of an intelligence with the cognitive capacity to produce a code. My reply : But you won’t read the Gospel of John, will you? Pity… God is a “non-human based example of an intelligence with the cognitive capacity to produce a code.” We’ve got what he produced – the codes in DNA, for example, but you resolutely refuse to look at the evidence pointing in his direction. You’re not a fundamentalist, by any chance, are you?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:February 2, 2011 at 8:52 pmRichard, This response is directed at you and Mr. Perry so I think first we could all agree that what you have referred to as “the Intelligent Agent theory” could be correctly stated as the idea that the genetic code has an intelligent designer based on an inference from our previous experience with codes. Henceforth, I will refer to this as your conclusion (C1). We will accept the previously established definition of a code using the set of codes you and Mr. Marshall have provided examples of (ASCII, Morse Code, TCP/IP, etc.), because as we will see this will prove to be important in illustrating this “100% inference to design” is mere sophistry and illusion. We need to begin by making a logically valid proposition that will allow us a “100% inference” to C1. Thus, in order to show that this is a logically valid inference, we need to form a syllogism in which we can show the truth of the conclusion is inferred from both of it’s premises. We therefore state (S1) that: P1) All codes have an intelligent designer. P2) The genetic code is a code. C1) Therefore, the genetic code has an intelligent designer. S1 is a logically valid syllogism showing that it’s conclusion is inferred from both P1 and P2(100%). Logically, if P1 and P2 are true, then C1 is true as well. This is a valid inference. It is in this way, in the plain language of logic, that we can show how an inference to C1 is true. What you and Mr. Marshall would apparently rather ignore is the egregious abuse of logic and sophistic shifting of syllogisms from which we actually arrive at C1. S1 simply states that P1=P2=C1 therefore P1=C1. It is nothing more than a tautology to begin with. It simply assumes C1 is true and tells us nothing. Once we begin defining the sets used in our terms we start having fun, because we see how in fact the only way to show that C1 is true is to simply assume it is. This would explain the circularity of this argument since all you’re doing is assuming it’s truth in the first place. We start to see this when we start defining the set we’re using to make our generalizations about what you have described as the “nature of codes”. We have previously agreed that our knowledge about codes is drawn from a pool of codes we know and have experience with. Therefore our knowledge about codes only extends to codes of known origin. So we have to modify P1 to reflect this. Our new syllogism (S2) thusly must state: P1a) All codes of known origin have an intelligent designer. P2) DNA is a code. C1) Therefore, DNA has an intelligent designer. We still have a conclusion that may be inferred from our premises IF DNA is a code of known origin. So we have to see how we know the origin of the codes P1 is referring to. As it turns out, you and Perry have defined them as the very codes that we human beings have created, so that’s how we know where they came from! Since the codes we know the origin of are of human origin and DNA is not of human origin, we need to change our syllogism yet again. Our new syllogism (S3) should state: P1b) All codes of known origin have an intelligent human designer. P2a) DNA is a code that does not have an intelligent human designer. C1a) Therefore, DNA has an intelligent non-human designer. S3 is our most important revision of the syllogism so far, because this is where the circularity of the entire argument starts becoming apparent. In revising P2, we had to revise C1 to assert the existence of a non-human designer in order for our syllogism to remain valid. The problem is that P1b does not allow for that. C1a can be true if and ONLY if P1 allows for codes designed by non-human intelligence. Naturally, we absolutely would allow for such a thing, and even DID allow for it in P1a of S2. So, in order for C1a to be logically valid, we need to replace P1b with P1a. Let S4 state that: P1a) All codes of known origin have an intelligent designer. P2a) DNA is a code that did not have an intelligent human designer. C1a) Therefore, DNA has an intelligent, non-human designer. This presents big problems for you and Perry because although S4 appears to be logically consistent, in order to infer C1a from the premises, P1a as to assume that C1a is already true to begin with. We can only justify generalizing to C1a by including examples of intelligently designed, non-human codes. S4 assumes it’s own conclusion in the first major premise because C1a must be true in order to include DNA as an example of an intelligently designed code. But since C1a is what you are trying to prove in the first place, you cannot simply assume it’s truth in P1a. Thus, we are restricted to using P1b. Therefore, the only logically valid inference we can make will now be seen in S5: P1b) All codes of known origin have an intelligent human designer. P2a) DNA is a code that did not have an intelligent human designer. C1b) DNA is not a code of known origin. S5 is valid because it is not assuming any conclusions and arrives at the only logical conclusion that can be inferred from both of the premises. It is what Perry would refer to as a “100% inference”. You on the other hand, can only infer your conclusion by assuming the conclusion to be true in the first major premise. You’re not even using “logic” in any meaningful sense. You’re simply declaring “all codes have an intelligent designer” over and over again. You said I possessed a “need for an uninterrupted series of verifiable phenomena before being able to accept an inductive “proof” or even an inference to the best explanation”, which I found to be somewhat confusing considering I’ve taken painstaking measures to explain why your conclusion does not follow from a valid inference because the argument for it assumes it’s own conclusion. All I’ve asked you to do is justify C1a without assuming C1a is true in P1, because so far your argument is nothing more than a loud proclamation dressed up in fallacious philosophizing.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 3, 2011 at 3:02 amJason, I want to thank you for the time and thought given to posting this reply. However, it is difficult to respond for two reasons: 1) You have made the mistake of assuming that Perry Marshall and I have identical points of views with identical references. I’m sorry, Jason, but you should never do this. You should address the points that Perry raises, or the points that I raise, but not conflate the arguments of two people into one, overall, general argument. In other situations I would have accused you of using a “strawman”, but in your case I honestly believe that you have made an inadvertent dialectical error. 2) I asked you for your definition of the word “code” and you replied by giving examples of codes. If you had asked me for a definition of the word “automobile”, and I had replied “A cabriolet, or an S.U.V. or a van or a truck,” I would not have answered your question. The correct answer could have been, “An automobile is a wheeled vehicle that carries its own engine. ” Since I am interested in linguistics, I was careful to ask you an even more pointed question, which I repeat here : would you be good enough to tell us what *you* mean when you use the word ‘code’. Unfortunately, at this stage,there is no point in my refuting your use of syllogisms ( which is very flawed), since we have to be sure that we agree on the terms of reference (what is a code,) You will see how important it is to reach agreement on the use of words if I give you an example of a silly-gism: P1 : All scientists do science. P2 : My father-in-law is a scientist. C1 : Therefore my father-in-law does science. There, that was a pretty useless exercise, wasn’t it? And I didn’t even need to say “All known scientists do science.” You will have noticed that on his site, Perry Marshall has gone to great lengths to give his definition of “codes” and “languages”. Then, and only then, does he to go on to give examples. We do need to be very clear about the definitions we attribute to words. I realised this when I was 12, and I told an American visitor to England that he should “always walk on the pavement”! Fortunately he survived the misunderstanding. Please don’t imagine that I am indulging in a gratuitous exercise in pedantry. Give us your definition of the word “code” and all will become clear. Thank you.
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Perry says:February 5, 2011 at 11:23 pmJason, You have accused me of assuming DNA is designed from the outset. You said: “It simply assumes C1 is true and tells us nothing.” This is a false statement. Never in any of my work do I assume the origin of DNA. My original statement: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. Your “new” syllogism S2 is simply what I have been saying all along. But then you say, “We still have a conclusion that may be inferred from our premises IF DNA is a code of known origin.” By making this statement you have demonstrated that you do not understand syllogisms. Maybe this will help: ~~~ From http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/deduc/syllog.html A universal syllogism is a syllogism composed of universal claims. The first claim, or major premise, describes all of one class or group, X, in terms of some other class or group, Y. The second claim, or minor premise, places a third class or group, Z, either within X or not within Y. The paradigms for a valid universal syllogism are as follows: All X are Y. Z is X. Therefore, Z is Y. –or– All X are Y. No Z is Y. Therefore, no Z is X. These are the only two valid forms for a syllogism with a major premise in the form “All X are Y.” ~~~ You have invented a requirement that a syllogism is invalid unless we know in advance that Z is Y. Jason, the whole point of a syllogism is that you do NOT know in advance that Z is Y, and we are INFERRING that Z is Y. This is inductive reasoning and it is at the core of the scientific method: Reasoning from the specific to the general. You go on to say: Our new syllogism (S3) should state: P1b) All codes of known origin have an intelligent human designer. P2a) DNA is a code that does not have an intelligent human designer. C1a) Therefore, DNA has an intelligent non-human designer. S3 is our most important revision of the syllogism so far, because this is where the circularity of the entire argument starts becoming apparent. In revising P2, we had to revise C1 to assert the existence of a non-human designer in order for our syllogism to remain valid. The problem is that P1b does not allow for that. C1 does neither asserts or assumes a non-human designer. C1 infers a non-human designer. C1 asserts the earmarks of a design process: freely chosen symbols, fixed thereafter. In computers, the free choice that 0=off and 1=on. In DNA, the free choice that GGG=Glycine. Could just as easily have been something else and there is much literature that discusses this. Including Yockey. You said: “C1a can be true if and ONLY if P1 allows for codes designed by non-human intelligence.” It does allow for that. I have been inviting such evidence as long as I’ve been making the argument. And so has SETI. You are twisting my words, Jason. No one here has ever assumed in advance that DNA is designed. The origin of DNA has always been presented as an open question. The inference to a definite answer is obvious to everyone. Then you say: Therefore, the only logically valid inference we can make will now be seen in S5: P1b) All codes of known origin have an intelligent human designer. P2a) DNA is a code that did not have an intelligent human designer. C1b) DNA is not a code of known origin. This is a 100% false statement. Why? Because the fact that DNA is *not* a code of known origin is exactly the thing that I have been assuming all along! It’s intrinsic to my syllogism: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. Your statement C1b tells us nothing. In fact your S5 is not even a syllogism. It does not make an inference. It’s nothing more than a three statements. As such it only says what we already knew. If you disagree with me, then head down to the nearest university and take your S5 to any freshman logic or philosophy class. Ask the professor whether I am right or wrong. You demanded that I show that another kind of intelligence exists. I refer you to the article at the very top of this thread. I showed that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, when applied to the universe, infers a non-physical boundless entity that is a necessary axiom for a logical cosmos. I have never claimed deductive proof for the existence of God. Rather, I have shown 100% inference from both mathematics and information theory. I have given you two entirely logical arguments inferring the existence of God. You have retorted with fake syllogisms and demands for evidence that I neither have nor need. My friend, you are free to reject induction and inference. You are free to misunderstand inductive logic. That is your choice. You are free to be an atheist if you want to. But you cannot at the same time claim to embrace mathematics or science because atheism contradicts both of those disciplines.
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Jason Devlin says:February 4, 2011 at 2:11 am“Please don’t imagine that I am indulging in a gratuitous exercise in pedantry.” Dearest Richard, It shall then be delightful for you to know that I envisage no such thing. On the contrary, I don’t believe that every distracting didactic dialogue is mere pageantry and pedantic squabbling. It is only through such meticulous dissection that we can expose any important “dialectical errors” and correct them when they arise. Which is why I would agree when you stated: “We do need to be very clear about the definitions we attribute to words.” I agree, the pertinent matter be to resolve these disastrous disputations in dialectical matters occurring during the previous commentary with the utmost expediency. You will therefore be relieved to know that when I previously stated, “We will accept the previously established definition of a code” before I cited the examples you and Mr. Marshall provided, what I meant is that it is up to you to define what a “code” is. I don’t care how you define a “code” so much as I care that you define the form of the argument that supports your conclusion; that the genetic code was created with actionable intent by a non-human intelligence. Previously you have stated that you would like me to accept “an inductive “proof” or even an inference to the best explanation”. Mr. Marshall has also gone so far as to loudly proclaim this is a “100% inference”. Thus, I have not “made the mistake of assuming that Perry Marshall and I [sic] have identical points of views”, because in this manner you and Mr. Marshall have indeed both attempted to advance the same conclusion by the same method of argumentation, specifically by providing a “proof by inference”. As I’m sure you are aware, an “inference” is a type of argument in which the truth of the conclusion is established as a logical consequence of two or more premises. If the premises can be said to be true, then the conclusion must necessarily be true. Which is why I was glad we agreed when you said “there is no point in my refuting your use of syllogisms” since these syllogisms are valuable in establishing that we are following valid form, and it would be rather futile to attempt to refute the rules of the logical system that you yourself have defined. I was however, somewhat confused when you said my “use of syllogisms” was “very flawed”, since you’re the one who defined your argument as an inference in the first place and I was merely stating it as such in valid logical form. I’m glad you provided us with your very own “silly-gism”, because all simplistic spoonerisms aside, this inference will prove to be of indispensable utility in showing the poor state of comprehension with which you approach the subject. This is an example of a logically valid inference. If it’s premises are both true, then it’s conclusion will also be true. It is “useless” because P1 is merely a tautology so the conclusion doesn’t tell us anything new. As an anglophone professing to be “interested in linguistics”, I’m sure you are aware that the suffix “-ist” already denotes “one who makes use of”, so it is redundant to say that a scientist does science. Thus, the statement that “all scientists do science” doesn’t tell us anything except that one who does science does science. This syllogism tells us nothing new about your father-in-law because in P2 it is already stated that he does science, so your conclusion does nothing but repeat P2. A formalized version of what this argument is actually saying would look like: P1) Everyone who does science does science. P2) My father-in-law does science. C1) Therefore, my father-in-law does science. So yes, I can agree that this particular “silly-gism” is obviously useless, but this is a consequence of the useless tautology in the first major premise. This does not imply that a syllogism is a “useless exercise” in this argument, because you have specifically stated that the conclusion of your argument was arrived at by process of inference. Mr. Morgan, this is what an inference looks like in formal logic. We can infer something useful about your father-in-law if P1 actually makes a categorical statement about scientists. For example if P1 states that “all scientists have PhDs”, we can then state that: P1) All scientists have PhDs P2) My father-in-law is a scientist C1) Therefore, my father-in-law has a PhD As we can see, this allows us to infer something useful about your father-in-law. The form of this inference is logically valid, so if both of it’s premises are true (assuming you’re not lying about your father-in-law), then the truth of the conclusion necessarily follows. What I have been trying to do here is understand your argument within a logical framework that allows us to infer from the premises to the conclusion that the genetic code was designed with actionable intent by a non-human intelligence. The only thing I have understood so far is that the conclusion is supposed to be “design”, and somehow we are supposed to be inferring to it. I have yet to see you even attempt to perform such a feat, and will ask you to do so now at this time. Use whatever definition of “code” you’d like, but please do take care to define the type of argument you are attempting to use and stick to proper form.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 5, 2011 at 2:13 pmJason, Just two points: 1) I don’t know who you paid to write that comment for you, but you should ask for your money back; 2)You correctly pointed out that, by definition, scientists do science, which is why my silly-gism was silly. Alas, when I ask you what codes do ( which is essential for understanding Perry’s syllogism) you wriggle out of your responsability with this pathetically weak : “I don’t care how you define a “code”…” and quickly shift the goalposts to “form”. If you are unable to define your use of the word “code”, then sadly that means that you don’t know what you’re talking about (which I doubt, because I’m a kind person, and have spent many years working with children with learing difficulties); or, for some obscure reason you do not wish to share with us your definition. That’s called copping out of the argument when you sense imminent defeat. What a pity. And I really thought you had something interesting to say.
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Jason Devlin says:February 5, 2011 at 9:55 pm“Observe all men; thyself most.” -Poor Richard’s Almanac Dear Richard, I looked with languish upon your latest linguistic disquisition, a puerile fulmination I found to be of rather insufficient formulation. The bellicosity with which you bellowed brainless abrasive embattlements left me feeling baffled about your basis for stating, “your argements are dying all around you”. If you will kindly review my preceding posts I have simply tried to help you define a coherent, logically valid framework to understand the “inference” that supports what you have dubbed the “Intelligent Agent theory”, and I haven’t advanced any arguments of my own. From what I understand, you have asked me to hear a “proof by inference” to support said theory. In this instance we are using an “inference” to make a categorical proposition about whether or not the genetic code can be part of a subset of codes you have referred to as “designed” codes. This categorical proposition can be said to be the “conclusion” of your argument in which it states that if the premises can be said to be true, the truth of the conclusion necessarily follows. Perry would (hopefully) recognize this structure as something like an AND gate in digital logic. We look at our premises as the “inputs” of our AND gate, and the conclusion as it’s “output”. Let true=1 and false =0. C1=1 only if P1=1 and P2=1. So you see, we “infer” a true conclusion as a consequence of the truth of the premises. As I noted previously, I’ve only attempted to hear out the premises of your argument as you requested, and have only attempted to encourage you to provide your own definitions for your own terms used in your own argument while putting forward no arguments of my own. After all, we are establishing the definitions used in YOUR argument. It has certainly proven to be quite an overwhelming ontological overload, and it pains me to continue to partake in such a pedagogic procession. Fear not dear Richard, for I will proceed with painstaking precision in order to avoid any more prospective phonological pandemonium. Previously you have stated “Perry Marshall has gone to great lengths to give his definition of “codes””I would like to thank Mr. Marshall for providing the reference to Shannon’s communication model found at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Shannon_communication_system.svg and Yockey’s isomorphism found at: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/dna_isomorphic.JPG In information theory a “code” is simply an algorithm that represents symbols from a source alphabet by “encoded strings”, found in some other target alphabet. So a (C)ode would be derived from a (S)ource alphabet {a,b,c} and a (T)arget alphabet {0,1} as follows: C={a–>0, b–>01, c–011} The encoded string 001010011 could be grouped into codewords 0-01-01-0-011 and decoded into the sequence of source symbols abbac. The “code” would be described as the total function mapping each symbol in our source alphabet, over a sequence of symbols in our target alphabet. Shannon’s theory of communication describes a model of a “communications system”. From this diagram we describe that a communications system must be comprised of a source of information, a signal between a transmitter and receiver, to a destination. So from our dialogue, we can now state: code – the total function mapping each symbol from a source alphabet over a sequence of symbols in a target alphabet. communications system – A system in which information from a (S)ource is sent on a (C)hannel between a (T)ransmitter and (R)eceiver to a (D)estination. I sincerely hope that you will find this rather detailed dissertation acceptable, and ask that you move forward with advancing your argument.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 6, 2011 at 3:26 amJason, Thank you for finally providing the defintions I requested. I am traveling between Tououse, Paris, London and Exeter at the moment, but look forward to replying to your post on Wednesday. I retain this : code – the total function mapping each symbol from a *source alphabet* over a sequence of symbols in a *target alphabet*. communications system – A system in which information from a (S)ource is sent on a (C)hannel between a *(T)ransmitter* and *(R)eceiver* to a (D)estination. Have a nice Sunday.
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Jason Devlin says:February 6, 2011 at 5:00 am“Jason, Thank you for finally providing the defintions I requested. I am traveling between Tououse, Paris, London and Exeter at the moment, but look forward to replying to your post on Wednesday. I retain this” Richard, Thank you for finally retaining something. I would recommend some light reading during your travels: “Introduction to the Philosophy of Science: a text” http://bit.ly/ijQNucReply
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Tim says:February 1, 2011 at 3:19 pmI don’t see any problem with Godels Theorem. The issue I have with your article is when you start using inductive reasoning to prove that “belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” You make several assumptions that are certainly not the only explanation for the universe’s existence. 1st off, you are assuming that the first information was genetic code. This is based on assumptions as well since no one was around when it was created. 2nd, “…since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time.” The key words here are “not known.” 3rd, “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” Again… key words “we know”. Why is it not possible that information spontaneously created itself in some fashion that we may never know? In my experience, just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean that God is behind it. God WAS the explanation behind the moon eclipsed the sun or that the waves crash on the beach or how humans came to be and many other things that have been proven(except evolution but it is generally excepted and makes a ridiculous amount of sense as well) to be caused by something else. Science keeps replacing God because it actually explains things instead of saying a magic man in the sky did it. It seems many others have proven you wrong in the comments but you have chosen to ignore the part of their comment that proves you wrong. Although I know this comment will not change your mind because you seem as stubborn as I am, I hope that you at least CONSIDER the possibility of there NOT being a governing consciousness of the universe.Reply
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Perry says:February 1, 2011 at 4:47 pm1. Please show an example of known scientific evidence that some other code existed before dna. 2. Ditto for your 2nd point. 3. Please explain why I should accept your explanation of something “we may never know” and why you think this approach follows the scientific method. Explain why you think “spontaneously created itself” is a scientific concept and not just an appeal to wild freaking magic and fanciful mysticism. Do you consider this to be scientific thinking? 4. Explain how science has ever gotten us around the need for an orderly First Cause. 5. Please specify what objection on this page I have failed to address with known facts and valid logic.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 1, 2011 at 6:41 pmTim, please allow me to make a few comments here. You said : 1st you are assuming that the first information was genetic code. This is based on assumptions as well since no one was around when it was created. My comment : One characteristic of the codes in DNA is the instruction for replication. Apparently DNA has been doing that ever since it “appeared”. It’s still with us. Maybe there was other information around before DNA, but either it was not specified for replication, or it was and it had a serious bug and the system crashed. Why is replication important? Because it happens to be a characteristic of Life/DNA, and that is what we are talking about in the last analysis. So unfortunately your allusion to a hypothetical “prior information” is irrelevant. You said : 2nd, “…since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time.” The key words here are “not known.” My comment : Science always starts with what is known, and endeavours to seek explanations in order to expand our understanding and knowledge. In so doing, it reaches out towards the “not known” but generally, by definition the unknown can not be factored into the research paradigm. You are trying to imply that Perry is using an “argument from ignorance”, whereas in reality your picking up on “not known” makes no sense in this context. If I said, with a knowledgeable air, “Boeuf Bourguignon is not known to appear on any Starbuck’s menu,” you would start backing away from me nervously, looking for the door. No, I can’t prove that no Starbucks serves Boeur Bourguignon-flavoured coffee, but I doubt that I would find financial support in order to do the research. No, I can’t prove that information is not an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time, but… I’m sure you get my point. Perry was politely stating the obvious. You said : 3rd, “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” Again… key words “we know”. My comment : Obviously “we know”! See my comments on point n°2. All the scientists we know do science. And you can’t evoke the “Black Swan” fallacy because a hypothetical scientist who didn’t do science, by definition, wouldn’t be a scientist! If science didn’t make this kind of assumption, then every scientist would have to start anew every time he walked into his laboratory! (Which would work wonders for coffee sales.) You said : Why is it not possible that information spontaneously created itself in some fashion that we may never know? My comment : Sorry, Tim, but I get the impression that you accidentally dropped your prayer beads as you were writing that. Nothing has ever spontaneously created itself (out of nothing), so there is nothing to know about the “fashion” – either today or in a thousand years. In fact, “created itself” is just very bad grammar! Unless you consider that “it” and “self” are two different, separate entities. If you do, then I’m backing towards the door nervously myself. You said : In my experience, just because we don’t know something doesn’t mean that God is behind it. My comment : Yeah, well, that’s not rocket science, is it, pal? You said : God WAS the explanation behind the moon eclipsed the sun or that the waves crash on the beach or how humans came to be and many other things that have been proven(except evolution but it is generally excepted and makes a ridiculous amount of sense as well) to be caused by something else. Science keeps replacing God because it actually explains things instead of saying a magic man in the sky did it. My comment : I’m sorry, but “generally accepted” didn’t help the flat-earth theory, and it won’t help neoDarwinism. Scientific knowledge keeps replacing ITSELF. That is the nature of science. Understanding the predictable relative movements of the Sun, Moon and the Earth and the laws of gravity which determine those movements, does not eliminate the need for a first cause, that we call God. Understanding the Creation does not make it uncreated.Reply
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brandon says:February 2, 2011 at 3:22 pmok, so ive been following all these comments for a long time now, and it blows my mind how stubborn everyone is. nobody is willing to really look at either side of the arguments put forth. it becomes a word game of faulty logic. its just like philosophy, its a joke. nobodys opinion on anything is going to be changes because you cant prove anything on either side because we exist in a universe that we cant understand because we werent around to see how it was “created” further more, by created, I mean how it started. someone referenced the idea of a first mover being god. While, logically, we can call the first mover god, we cannot logically say that this god was the christian god. we cannot logically say it has any generally accepted god like qualities at all. All we can say is that something unknown happened and now we are here. Also, what Perry says about the need for something outside the universe makes sense, but it does not logically follow that the something outside the universe is the christian god. for all we know, whatever started everything could have been a huge accident, or a random occurence. but that doesnt solve the problem of SOMETHING existing, and how it came to be. Someone also mentioned something about the universe “creating itself” and someone had a problem with this idea, but they had no problem with god existing. Well where did god come from? The explanations are always 1) God always was, or 2) God created himself. If one can accept either of these premises, why cant they be applied to the universe itself? Just replace the word “god” with “universe” and all differences are settled. All this arguing proves absolutely nothing on either side. Logic is limited in trying to explain the universe, because it really isnt a logical universe. Since when was it logical to divide by zero? This is what a black hole is, if you try describing it mathematically. So theres an argument against Perrys idea of needing godels theorem because we live in a logical system. Obviously, this is all bull shit, because its just a word game. Meaningless words that can follow one another with skewed meanings attached that every person interprets differently. By the way, through all the comments ive read, nobody has proven anything. It really makes me laugh when people say “ive proven this, or proven that” when all you can really do is say, “its my personal preference to believe this aspect of reality” and thats how it should be. Everything is personal preference. You cant prove there is a god, and you cant prove there isnt a god, logically, you cant even prove that YOU exist. Do you see the problem with logic? Again, its just a word game and a way to make other people feel like imbeciles. Very elitist if you ask me. Nothing real, nothing meaningful. Sorry for the broken thoughts, I have ADHD and dont feel like putting the effort into making my thoughts flow, because, as ive stated, its a meningless word game and doesnt matter anyway.Reply
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Perry says:February 2, 2011 at 3:43 pmCan you point out whose points I have ignored and what they said? Please be extremely specific and make sure you’ve read my responses. And before you go down that road, consider that if you really believe the universe is illogical and meaningless then maybe there’s no point in trying to have a meaningful discussion. But given that you’re this interested so far, I have to wonder if you truly believe that.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 3, 2011 at 11:21 amThis is why random mutation can fuel evolution. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873266/?tool=pubmed DNA breaks and reforms, sometimes at random. It is damaged by natural UV light from the sun, and natural and artificial chemicals, sometimes repaired, sometimes not. Some people have a disease where they can’t repair this damage and have to stay inside their whole lives. If DNA was indeed designed the designer did a piss-poor job of designing it for life on Earth. Finally, I want to hear the following sentence from your Richard Dawkins quote. The one directly following the one you give so disingenuously.Reply
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Perry says:February 3, 2011 at 12:09 pmIf you only knew. Seriously, if you only knew. Anyone familiar with communication theory knows that all codes are subject to irreparable damage. That’s the most basic fact you could know about information theory. It’s called noise. Noise is always bad. It always destroys, it never helps. What’s not so easily appreciated is that it’s even possible to have mechanisms that reconstruct the data after it’s been damaged. This is no easy feat. DNA is subject to all kinds of destructive forces, yet cells repair it and maintain the integrity of the data. They have elaborate systems for detecting copying errors, random mutations and UV damage. They have been doing this with extraordinary competence for 3.8 billion years. Have you ever designed anything and sold it to a customer? Have you ever designed a communication system? Have you ever studied genetics? YOU design a self-replicating database that not only preserves its data for 3.8 billion years but continuously incorporates inputs from the environment to continually adapt and refine its functions so as to actually EVOLVE into higher organisms (something which computers almost never do) – you do that and then you’ll be in a position to critique DNA. But I will not permit you to say such an utterly informed, misleading statement as “Indeed designed the designer did a piss-poor job of designing it for life on Earth.” What a hopelessly arrogant and uninformed statement that is. Actually it’s Exhibit A of atheistic scientific vandalism. This is how atheists see the world. This is the kind of misinformation they spew all over the Internet. The people who say this kind of stuff should be stripped of their credentials and ejected from the academy. It’s not science. If you only knew. Interestingly, this paper you linked to tells you part of the story but you’re looking at it through the wrong lens. Cancer is evolution run amok. Cancer is what happens when the mathematical matrix that drives evolution is broken. Then cells evolve tumors instead of adapting cooperatively. If you read this paper with the understanding that cancer is caused by noise and is an interruption of the normal healthy evolutionary process, this paper is a huge help to understanding the proper function of cellular adaptation. I wrote about the self-repairing capabilities of cells and DNA in these articles: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/mathematics-of-dna/ http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/intelligent-bacteria/ http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/evolution-untold-story/ I hope you will begin reading actual scientific literature instead of parroting this corrosive atheist dogma. Like I told Jason, the world must never be allowed to forget the damage that atheism has done to science during the last 100 years. I hope that you can come to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of nature. I hope you can return from the land of the dead and live among the living. I urge you to listen to people who do not have a hate-God agenda. You will find the world to be a wonderful, beautiful place. Which way do you want it? Perry P.S.: This really is a great paper if you can look through the microscope from the right end and not the wrong end. I’m going to use it and reference it in the future. For that, I thank you.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 6, 2011 at 8:10 amUh, I’m a grad student, I’ve worked in the field of cancer research for over eight years. It’s my job to understand the literature. I think you misunderstood my point. I was commenting on an earlier post where you asked how random mutation could contribute to evolution. The idea is that cancer is destructive to the body, but if you look at the body as merely an environment in which cells evolve, obtaining a selective advantage (by ignoring death signals or cell cycle checkpoints because the genes for these things have been disrupted) allows those cells to out-compete their neighbors. Great for the cells, not so good for the environment. If noise is always bad, never helps, then in this case it is not actually noise. I think you’re defining something (noise) and then insisting that evidence to the contrary must not exist because it defies your definition. Also, I haven’t seen the rest of your Richard Dawkins quote.Reply
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Perry says:February 8, 2011 at 5:59 pmWhich cells produce more offspring that continue to reproduce and multiply and prevail in the Darwinian competition: Cancer cells, or healthy ones?Reply
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Landothedead says:February 6, 2011 at 7:04 pmUm, well I’m a grad student in cancer research so I’m willing to bet I’ve spent a lot more time studying DNA than you have. Especially since the references you gave me lead me to believe you think bacteria are wandering around (even the non-motile ones?) trading plasmids like they were pokemon or something. Can bacterial economics be far behind? One point in particular from the mathematics of DNA thing. “DNA is able to re-create destroyed data by computing checksums in reverse – like calculating the missing contents of a page ripped out of a novel.” This is not only demonstrably false and contrary to even the most basic undergrad level experiment, the entire landscape of genetics today would be completely different if it were true. There would be no knock-out studies, the human genome project would have been impossible and we wouldn’t know half the gene functions we do. Also, with regards to your reply to my last comment: “Anyone familiar with communication theory knows that all codes are subject to irreparable damage. That’s the most basic fact you could know about information theory. It’s called noise. Noise is always bad. It always destroys, it never helps.” With cancer you can have loss of a gene killing a cell or loss of a gene that would keep the cell from dividing (like p53, a famous tumor suppressor). So you can’t say that ‘noise’ in the genetic code is always bad. Deletion of a tumor suppressor would in fact increase the ‘reception of the code’ (ie more copies of the cancerous genome). These words you keep using. I don’t think they mean what you think they mean.Reply
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Perry says:February 8, 2011 at 6:06 pmIf we have a sentence The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and a word is deleted: The quick fox jumps over the lazy dog Then It is very unlikely that this is caused by “noise” nor would it be classified as such normally, especially if the deletion still follows the rules of grammar. I am saying that DNA is no different than English in this regard. That in the real world, no version of J0e WuiXkhbrowb foxPjumpeK over the lrzy d2g is ever better for the organism as a whole. You seem unfamiliar with the work of McClintock and Shapiro. McClintock found that if she damaged a chromosome in corn maize, the plant would replace the damaged material with comparable sections of another chromosome. From http://shapiro.bsd.uchicago.edu/21st_Cent_View_Evol.html: In addition to proofreading systems, cells have a wide variety of repair systems to prevent or correct DNA damage from agents that include superoxides, alkylating chemicals and irradiation (33). Some of these repair systems encode mutator DNA polymerases which are clearly the source of DNA damage-induced mutations and also appear to be the source of so-called “spontaneous” mutations that appear in the absence of an obvious source of DNA damage (34). Results illustrating the effectiveness of cellular systems for genome repair and the essential role of enzymes in mutagenesis emphasize the importance of McClintock’s revolutionary discovery of internal systems generating genome, particularly when an organism has been challenged by a stress affecting genome function (Fig. 4; 5). In repair responses, we know that DNA damage triggers the activation of mutator polymerases and non-homologous end joining activities. Sometimes, much larger multiprotein assemblages are involved, like the apparatus for carrying out homologous genetic recombination or for repairing severed DNA molecules by non-homologous joining of broken ends (36). Among the most important systems are those called “mobile genetic elements” (MGEs; 7, 8), which make up about 43% of the human genome (21). These MGEs include the transposable “controlling elements” discovered by McClintock, and they comprise integrated systems of proteins and nucleic acids that interact to mobilize DNA to new locations in the genome. See the illustration next to this text of segments of DNA being re-arranged via transposition. Are you trying to tell me that cancer cells are more fit in the macro Darwinian sense than healthy ones? Are you saying that cancer is an example of increased fitness?Reply
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Landothedead says:February 8, 2011 at 9:57 pmI’m not sure why you included that whole thing about mobile elements. It doesn’t add anything to the argument. Any your analogy: “I am saying that DNA is no different than English in this regard. That in the real world, no version of J0e WuiXkhbrowb foxPjumpeK over the lrzy d2g is ever better for the organism as a whole. ” – is completely false. There are fusion proteins (PET/PTC in thyroid cancer and c-myc/immunoglobulin, you should be able to check wikipedia for these) which cause uncontrolled cell proliferation. In this case “The quick brown fox juSee Dick run” is better for the cell than either sentence on its own. Anyway, in this case there is no difference between micro and macro evolution. It’s the same for a fibroblast in melanoma as it is for a protozoan in a pond or a human on planet Earth. If they overgrow their environment, whether by acquiring a mutation to grow faster or by losing a gene that tells it to stop growing then its trouble for the environment (pond or body or planet) true, but that’s beside the point. Single cells (or even whole organisms) don’t think ahead and say ‘maybe this mutation isn’t so good. I should slow down here!’ Cells are just responding to their chemicals interacting. This points to the idea that there is no overarching plan for life. It’s all just random.
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 12:59 amYou appear to be unaware of it but you’re making a huge sleight of hand here. Yes, I do agree with you that a random mutation causes a cancer cell to out-survive the other cells in the body in question. The sleight of hand is that none of the instance of this have ever resulted in a new species, or even the survival of a species. By species I mean the same thing Darwin meant in his title “origin of species.” Every single instance of cancer results in a mutant that goes extinct. This is not ‘beside the point.’ This IS the point. In my book that’s a pretty big sleight of hand, Landothedead. (By the way I’m using my real name. If you’re a knowledgeable cancer researcher why don’t you use your real name instead of hiding behind a screen name? ) Cancer is caused when teleological selection (as opposed to ‘natural selection’) called apoptosis fails to kill mutant cells the way it should and those cells become a runaway train. This apoptosis, or programmed cell death, detects and corrects copying errors and kills cells when they get out of hand. As I said, it’s teleological. The existence of apoptosis points to the idea that there is an overarching plan for life. It’s not just random. Your example “The quick brown fox juSee Dick run” is an example of improperly executed mobile elements. By the way I’ve asked you a ton of questions and you’ve answered almost none of them. I’ve posted a lot of reading for you to do and you’ve read almost none of it. So long as you think cancer is just a less workable version of randomness than healthy organisms, you’ll search in vain for any kind of cure for cancer. You cannot define something as wrong if you deny what is right.
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Richard Morgan says:February 3, 2011 at 4:02 pmLand of the dead : before posting, I spent quite a few minutes wondering how I could avoid humiliating you too drastically. In fact, it’s not possible. You are clearly another one of these young, hot-head, mindless atheists who believe that a swift Google search for a clever-sounding article will deal the death blow to any Christian. You say : “This is why random mutation can fuel evolution.” You then give us a link to a very erudite article which demonstrates : “somatic cellular Darwinian evolution in cancer”. His theory is that random mutation leads to cancer, sickness and death. This is something that Perry has said and published about a zillion times, and to prove him wrong you give a link to an article that proves him right???? Is he paying you or something? You didn’t even read with synopsis, which I reproduce here in full: *The biology of cancer is reviewed and evidence adduced that it can be modelled as a somatic cellular Darwinian evolutionary process; evidence for involvement of genomic instability is also reviewed.* How on earth do you expect to be taken seriously when you do asinine things like that? And as for your trying to be clever with Richard Dawkins quotes, Perry quotes Dawkins as having said something that a thousand other cleverer people have said, viz, when you look closely into the DNA molecule, biology has to borrow from I.T. – very heavily. The next sentence, which you again imagine is going to strike a death-blow to Perry’s arguments is just Dawkins giving his shrill, atheist interpretation which he doesn’t even attempt to back up with evidence. because he can’t. *Among many other consequences, this digital revolution at the very core of life has dealt the final, killing blow to vitalism—the belief that living material is deeply distinct from nonliving material.* You call that science?Reply
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YWH says:February 5, 2011 at 1:28 pmThe truth shall set you free??!. Proof negates the need for faith. Digging for gold in the etymological playground sandpit does nothing to negate the worthy desire to seek the truth. Perhaps the questions one should ask ones self before embarking on any quest for proof is what are you without faith. can one avoid being subjective on the objective?Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 6, 2011 at 5:35 amYou make a very important point when you say : “This is a useless repetition of meaning known as a “tautology” and it means your first premise is utterly useless.” Tautology was the deleiberate mistake I introduced in my “silly-gism” about scientists doing science. This is why a clear definition of “codes” was so important. We needed to milk out all the information implicit in the use of this word in order to avoid tautologies and misrepresentations. Can we agree that codes are meaningless without communication? If so, let us look at the definition of “communication” that you have accepted: *communications system – A system in which information from a (S)ource is sent on a (C)hannel between a (T)ransmitter and (R)eceiver to a (D)estination.* You seem to agree that a Transmitter, a Channel and a Receiver are necessary. I would be interested to know how you conceive of communication without the prior existence of mutually “undertood” codes, and some form of intention behind the act of communicating? When you have answered this question, we can safely return to our syllogism, fully aware of all that is implied, once we accept the use of the word “code”. Maybe this could help us avoid the tautology : “All codes are intelligently-made artifices which enable communication between… intelligent entities. Therefore all known codes etc etc” Do you think this is a useful way of looking at the problem…differently?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:February 6, 2011 at 9:34 pmRichard, I’m so glad we are finally making some progress! I too think it is important to be specific when defining the terms put forward in an argument, which is why I was rather disappointed when you found it so difficult to define your own terms. I was worried for a minute that you might not value the same strict syntactic style as myself. Now that we’ve cleared everything up, you closed by asking: “Do you think this is a useful way of looking at the problem…differently?” I do indeed think this is a way of looking at the problem…differently. It is useful in the sense that it allows us to discuss some of the more patent perversions of philosophy that have preceded. I was glad you agreed that a “clear definition of “codes”” was important”, and I’m overjoyed to hear you also agree we should “milk out all the information implicit in the use of this word'”. With that being said, let’s review: “Can we agree that codes are meaningless without communication?” I think I would agree this seems to be a reasonable proposition. Without a communication system to make use of a code, the code itself is just a useless mathematical formula. It doesn’t do anything but sit there on paper and look all mathy and stuff. I’m glad we’ve made this very useful observation! Moving on: “If so, let us look at the definition of “communication” that you have accepted: *communications system – A system in which information from a (S)ource is sent on a (C)hannel between a (T)ransmitter and (R)eceiver to a (D)estination.* You seem to agree that a Transmitter, a Channel and a Receiver are necessary.” I agree this is indeed the definition I provided. We’ve established that the fine art of “copy and pasting” has been perfected! I’m excited! Let’s continue: “I would be interested to know how you conceive of communication without the prior existence of mutually “undertood” codes” I found this particular nugget of folk-science gobbledygook to be particularly amusing. I never said we could have “communication” without the “prior existence of mutually “undertood” codes”. Do you even know what you’re trying to say here? I think what you are trying to say is that we need a “code” in order to have a “communication”. In that case, I would agree with whatever you’re trying to say here. Indeed, we need to have a code for our “communicator” to communicate. Thank you Dr. Morgan. “…and some form of intention behind the act of communicating?” Richard, apparently you are encountering some confusion. The Genetic Code “communicates” information without “intent”. Let me help you understand better: The (S)OURCE of information is the GENOME. The (T)RANSMITTER of the information is an RNA POLYMERASE which READS a DNA sequence called a ‘transcription unit’ and TRANSCRIBES it into a complementary antiparallel RNA strand. If we are coding for a PROTEIN, the result of the transcription is MESSENGER RNA. The (R)ECEIVER is a ribosome that facilitates “decoding” by binding TRANSFER RNA molecules with complementary anticodon sequences to that of the MESSENGER RNA to produce a POLYPEPTIDE (this proceeds in four phases; activation, initiation, elongation, and termination). The (D)estination of the information is a POLYPEPTIDE that will later fold into a PROTEIN. Now that “we can safely return to our syllogism”, we can see that we have a model of a communication system in which “communication” occurs without a conscious agent “sending” the information. Information from the genome is “communicated” or “sent” by mRNA to tRNA to form a protein. It was rather revealing when you said: “fully aware of all that is implied, once we accept the use of the word “code”.” What seems to be the case here is that your accepted “use of the word “code” is just a slippery way of inserting “design” into your definition of “code”, therefore your entire argument amounts to nothing more provocative than assuming your own conclusion. As I’m sure you know this is also called “begging the question” so I’m glad you’ve put enough effort into philosophy of science to make a logical fallacy. Seriously though, some people don’t even get that far. Don’t get me wrong I do agree here Richard, most communication systems are produced by intelligent agents sending information from a source to a destination, and it is important to note that in each and every case they are material, animal agents. However as we can see, genetic “communication” occurs between the genome and biological components such as proteins. I was rather disappointed when you made the the statement: “All codes are intelligently-made artifices which enable communication between… intelligent entities” I think this is profoundly misleading in that genetic “communication” does not occur between “intelligent entities”. It is therefore incorrect to say that “all codes” posses this property when the genetic code clearly does not “enable communication between… intelligent entities”. The best induction you and your lackey could possibly put forward is: “I think the genetic code may have been designed.” “The genetic code may or may not be designed.” These are examples of valid INDUCTIVELY DERIVED STATEMENTS you could put forward as an “inference to the best explanation”. There is no such thing as a “100% inference” by inductive reasoning, Perry is just off his rocker if he thinks that’s the case. The only inference that could be said to be “100%” is a DEDUCTIVE inference which I’m sure you are aware by now is expressed as a “syllogism”. One thing I think you and Perry are confused about is that induction never gets to the “best explanation” and then STOPS. Because even our strongest inductively derived statements are known to be false under certain circumstances. Newtonian mechanics are an example of a “strong induction”, probably one of the strongest you could make, but even then we know that at speeds approaching that of light, Newton’s induction is not accurate. So how do we assign a percentage to the “truthiness” of Newtons induction? How can it ever be said to be “100%”? Do we tally up the number of observations we’ve made in which the induction holds vs. the number in which it hasn’t and the resulting percentage value is it’s “truth percentage”? What if Perry were putting forward any other inductively derived scientific model? Let’s see what it would look like if the induction describing Newtonian mechanics were being put forward according to the Marshall Method: Perry: “The gravitational force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the masses divided by the distance between them squared.” Jason: “Actually, I don’t think this will extend to X and Y. X and Y are traveling at close to light speed, and this statement doesn’t appear to be true.” Perry: “Jason, in all observed instances, the gravitational force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the masses divided by the distance between them squared. Therefore, we have 100% inference this will be true for X and Y as well.” Jason: “Okay I get that, but X and Y are traveling at close to light speed. I understand this has always been true for “observed instances”, but X and Y are not “observed instances”. I think we should actually go out and OBSERVE X and Y and come up with a way to test your inference.” Perry: “Jason, this is a 100% inference.” Jason: “I get that Perry, but there is no such thing as a “100% inference”. Deductive inferences are the only type of inferences that can be said to be “100%”, and this conclusion cannot be derived by way of deduction because X and Y are not “known instances”. Because X and Y are not “known instances”, our only choice is to make more observations. Science never reaches a conclusion and just stops there. This is absurd. How can you test the validity of your inference?” Perry: “Jason, this is a 100% inference. It is valid because it is valid. In all observed instances, the gravitational force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the masses divided by the distance between them squared. Therefore, we have 100% inference this is true for X and Y.” Jason: “Okay you’re just repeating yourself. I’m leaving now my head hurts…” This hypothetical does nothing more complicated than put Newtonian mechanics in place of Perry’s “100% inference” and we can see the utter vacuity with which this whole line of argumentation is constructed. Perry would have to put forward a way to test it, this is how “scientists do science”. In this case, we would simply go out and make an observation of X and Y or perform an experiment. You and Perry have accomplished nothing more meaningful than insisting his inference is “100%” over and over again without even that great of an idea what you’re even talking about.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 8, 2011 at 6:47 amJason : You said : “I was rather disappointed when you found it so difficult to define your own terms.” My reply : Where on earth did you get that idea from? I simply asked you to give your definition. How you could have interpreted that to mean that I was unable to give you my definition is quite beyond me. Where I come from, what I was doing is called “making every effort to understand what the other person in saying.” You said : What seems to be the case here is that your accepted “use of the word “code” is just a slippery way of inserting “design” into your definition of “code”, therefore your entire argument amounts to nothing more provocative than assuming your own conclusion. My reply : I am going to be indulgent with you, and assume that in the USA there probably are many Christians who knowingly seek to insert “Design” or “God” just about everywhere and anywhere. I am sure that this must be very irritating, but it does not give you the right to assume that I am doing that. I am not, and I never have done. I am an interested and curious observer. If somebody spots something that seems to point to ‘design’ I am willing to take a look. When somebody else contradicts the observation, I listen to their argument with an equally open mind. Speaking for myself, let me state quite clearly, once and for all : I do not believe that science can prove the existence of God. In fact, I consider it pure folly to hitch one’s faith to science, for obvious reasons. (Science is always changing etc) Unlike you guys, I have the advantage of being an expert in nothing – not science, not engineering, not philosophy…nothing. In these discussions I think I can say that I arrive with no bias and no expertise. Unlike some of you guys, I am happy to be shown where I am just plain wrong. So, please – do me a favor, and drop the “slippery way of inserting design” accusations. Obviously, as a Christian, I am thoroughly intrigued when someone claims of have seen a “signature in the cell” or a “cosmic finger-print”. However, I have noticed that in fact I am a lot more open-minded than many on-line atheists who seem to have an aversion to anything that might prod them out of the their intellectual comfort zones – God, for example. I accuse them of obtusely refusing to see the supernatural anywhere. That is a form of intellectual dishonesty. I see them happily accept an “inference to the best explanation” except when that might point towards God. In those conditions, there is no true discussion possible. We can throw syllogisms back and forth for as long as you want – as long as you insist that we are trying to squeeze “design” into every fact of the material world, whilst blindly refusing any other vision of the same material world than your own, there will never be any effective communication. The codes are not functioning because there has been insufficient prior agreement between the Transmitter and the Receiver.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 8, 2011 at 1:57 pmHere’s dramatized Ken Miller, a noted biologist and practicing Catholic, to explain why you can’t have supernatural explanations in science. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJnlwW1ozJg&feature=related (the relevant part starts at exactly 7:00)Reply
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Perry says:February 8, 2011 at 6:19 pmI respect Ken Miller. I like his book “Finding Darwin’s God.” I agree with many and possibly even most of his views. But you don’t get off so easy, my friend. Did you read the article at the top of this post? It’s about the fact that there are always axioms in any field of knowledge that have to be assumed and cannot be proven. Do you recognize that evolution itself is by definition incapable of telling us the origin of the genetic code – because code has to exist first before evolution can take place? I am using simple logic. All codes are designed therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed. Do you have any examples of codes that are not designed? 1 minute later in this video Eugenie Scott says “ID = Evolution doesn’t work therefore the designer did it.” Does she understand that you have to have code before evolution is possible? Then she asks, “What does ID tell you about nature? Does it tell you what the designer did? Does it tell you what the purpose was?” Information theory and cryptography definitely do tell you what the designer did. Do they tell you the purpose? No. That is by definition outside the realm of science. It’s a philosophical question. Does evolutionary biology tell you the purpose? Or does it just deny purpose in the first place and pretend the question doesn’t need to be answered? Where in this does Eugenie Scott ever acknowledge that the scientific method is unable to answer philosophical questions? Yet she makes fun of ID because she implies that it can’t answer those questions either. Is philosophy banned from the science classroom? How can it be banned if science itself cannot operate without an underlying philosophy in the first place? Do you recognize that Ken Miller’s argument is a philosophical argument not a scientific one? I am willing to acknowledge that there are axioms in every field that have to be assumed that cannot be proven. I have presented an axiom, above, and I have told you how to disprove it. Where’s your disproof? Your disapproval of the designer who in your opinion did a “piss poor” job of making something? Is that it? Where’s the life that YOU created? Shall we talk about the life the Craig Venter created? Shall we discuss the $40 million of investment and the level of expertise that was required to borrow parts from existing cells and build a new one? What does that tell us about intelligent design? Is Craig Venter intelligent or not?
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Landothedead says:February 8, 2011 at 9:24 pmHere’s Bertand Russell about the burden of proof. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AXBvmd-xcw And your axiom is outdated. You should listen to Jason above. Over a hundred and fifty years ago people thought things like the hand and eye had to be designed because everything they knew that had a function was designed. Then Darwin clobbered them. Then they got smaller. Michael Behe claimed that molecular things were too complex to not have been designed. And people like Ken Miller clobbered him. Your argument is the exact same ‘God of the Gaps’ but cloaked in the language of information. Also, evolution never claims to know where the genetic code came from. That’s the theory of the origin life and it’s more a question of chemistry than biology. So I guess you’re right about it being outside of evolution. It just doesn’t matter.Reply
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 1:03 amLandothedead, I have provided 100% inference to a designer. You have provided 0% inference to any other explanation, chemical or otherwise. You said: That’s the theory of the origin life and it’s more a question of chemistry than biology. Show me a chemical reaction that produces codes. Then you will have inference that chemistry is capable of solving the problem of information in biology. So far all you’ve done is claim the existence of an imaginary teapot. Show me your evidence.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 13, 2011 at 10:31 amWell, the translation of DNA to protein and then the protein catalyzing replication of DNA is pretty much the same as autocatalytic reactions, which are abundant in nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_reactions_and_order_creation There is a prominent theory in the field of early life studies called the RNA world. The formation of RNA can happen spontaneously when uncatalyzed. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/full/nature08013.html And the products of these spontaneous reactions can catalyze the same reaction to create even more RNA. http://www.springerlink.com/content/k84710318l244777/ The same thing (albeit simpler) happens all the time in chemistry in things like tin blight and the degradation of aspirin. Because we have models and real life examples for these things happening we can infer that they happened in the past (it only had to happen once) to create the beginning of life.Reply
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 11:56 amNothing you have said addresses my question. The “RNA” you speak of contains no instructions. Show me a code that’s not designed.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 13, 2011 at 3:11 pmAll right, this will be my past posting here because I got around to reading the rest of your website. Especially the marketing stuff and I’ve come to the conclusion that this whole thing is a trap to hold my attention and run up hits on your website. At first I was a little annoyed, but now I’ve got to say: Pretty clever. Good on ya. You win the lying for God/gold award. Anyway, RNA absolutely does contain instructions. There are many viruses that use it instead of DNA to convey information, including HIV, which you’ve written on before. But that was not my point. My point was that autocatalytic reactions fit your definition of code. The reactants produce products which go on to catalyze the reaction. It’s exactly the same thing as DNA-protein-DNA, except their products aren’t as complex. In this case, complexity is irrelevant because DNA-protein is just a series of simple reactions that make up a large autocatalytic cycle. So, good luck with the website. If you have any comments about this you have my e-mail, but I will not be back. I urge anyone reading this to do the same.
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 5:53 pmOf course Real RNA contains instructions. But the artificially synthesized RNA that people refer to in “RNA World hypothesis” experiments does not. Again, sleight of hand. If you disagree then draw the encoding decoding table and label the symbols. Real cancer research deserves as much.
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Richard Morgan says:February 14, 2011 at 7:12 amLandothedead : you have just announced your intention to disappear, never to return. I respect this decision – it is the best you could have taken in order to put an end to your continuing series of howlers. In order to prove Perry wrong, you cited “autocatalytic reactions”. As I have mentioned before, I am an expert in nothing, so I had to call upon Google to help me out. I found a link to an absolutely fascinating article on an ultra-atheist site: http://www.edge.org/documents/life/lloyd_index.html For a layman like myself, I found this article extremely enlightening, and inadvertently, highly supportive of Perry’s theories! Let me whet your appetite with some quotes: “… there is an intrinsic capacity built into the laws of nature: this ability to process information in an open-ended fashion. And once things start doing that then they’re very hard to stop. I call such things “complexors” — because they generate complexity automatically. From the mathematical or physical perspective, complexors are actually rather simple, because all they are is something that can compute, which is systematically exploring a wide variety of, or all, possible computations. Once you have such a thing, once such a thing gets popped into existence, set into motion, then it will produce complexity, whether you want it to or not.” “Gets popped into existence”. We have just discovered the “Pops of the gaps” argument! “One of the things I find life so extraordinary at is self-correction — of chemical reactions as moving around certain pathways that are fairly predictable, they go a certain way — not that this would define life, but it’s part of many lives, which is it will go down a pathway and it can sell-correct. The most dramatic one is when DNA errors are corrected. There’s a directionality there that isn’t easy explained just by a chemical reaction. I don’t like to anthropomorphize either, but it is as if life has a behavior — I shouldn’t say a direction — but it’s moving along a direction that may not be easily explained by ‘if-then’.” (Ting Wu) ”There’s a directionality there that isn’t easy explained just by a chemical reaction.”(Ting Wu) “Evolution runs on rails.” (Perry Marshall) What a pity you atheists are so allergic to teleology. You are missing out on so much. I do hope your world-views are not determined by your need to stay in bed on Sunday mornings!
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Perry says:February 14, 2011 at 9:18 amTo that I would add “It’s all random” is the ultimate anti-scientific cop-out. As soon as you declare that something is “Just Random” you have forfeited any possibility of defining or describing it any further. It’s WORSE than “God of the gaps” because at least a God of the gaps argument presumes some sort of order or structure. “It’s all random” is just throwing up your hands and giving up. Any scientist who settles for that is not doing his job and should be fired. Especially if they’re trying to solve one of the worst health problems there is, namely cancer. Landothedead, your career as a scientist will cease to be disappointing and become fruitful and exciting when you accept the #1 premise of science: That events happen for discernible reasons and not by accident. It is questionable whether anything in the universe is actually random at all. It’s entirely possible that every interaction is defined by fixed physical laws and that randomness is only a word that describes the limits of our ability to measure.
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Richard Morgan says:February 13, 2011 at 2:02 amLandothedead : “That’s the theory of the origin life and it’s more a question of chemistry than biology.” You say that as if our discussion about the origin of codes in DNA is somehow different from the origin of Life issue. Is that the case?Reply
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Igor says:February 10, 2011 at 4:35 pmInteresting article, a bit dissapointing though. The idea falls short under it’s own assumptions. Humans invented systems and circles work only with things that act like systems. Since we didn’t invent the universe it sort of can’t participate in the circles game. It’s nice how the existence of a supreme being is implied, much better than religions I must admit. At least it makes you think.. There are many theories about the existence of the Universe that show no need for a creator though. For example some Croatian guy in his 12 disertations long reserch caled PUSA says that there are 2 main properties of the universe and those are concreteability and manifestability. in the manifestability area which he calls ‘potential’ there are ‘waves’ that follow a straight line and are faster than the speed of light. the waves colide, slow down and form matter. which represents the manifestability area. the matter then proceeds to radiate waves outside of itself in all directions and the universe pulsates like that. he only admits the present time and he defines it as the state of the universe within a planck’s constant time. the guy proceeds to explain how basic units of potential and matter came to be, he explains density, temperatures, einstein’s relativity, and it all makes sense. -if you assume that there are things that can travel faster than the speed of light and that from those all matter is formed. It’s shaky, like the theory discussed in this article. Perhaps George Carlin’s attitude about the world is healthier, how come we humans always think that we are so important. Haven’t Orwell and Huxley ilustrated well enough that our perfect systems are everything but perfect?Reply
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Perry says:February 10, 2011 at 5:39 pmAre you saying that since logic involves man-made systems, we can’t have any confidence in the ability of logic to arrive at truthful conclusions?Reply
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Landothedead says:February 10, 2011 at 6:39 pmIt’s a trap.Reply
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John says:February 10, 2011 at 7:20 pmOur daughter is a Freshman in college and taking a course in logic and another in Catholicism. I told her about your website. In response she sent me the following, which I think makes a lot of sense: According to Perry: S1 (1) Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to all logical systems.?(2) The universe is logical? (3) Therefore the universe is incomplete S2 (1) Belief in an incomplete system is not rational (2) Per S1, the universe is incomplete (3) therefore belief in the universe is not rational My Rebuttal: S1 (1) All formal systems of logic are incomplete (2) Perry posits a formal system of logic (3) therefore Perry’s formal system of logic is incomplete S2 (1) Belief in an incomplete system is not rational (2) Perry’s formal system of logic is incomplete (3) therefore Perry’s belief in God is not rationalReply
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Perry says:February 11, 2011 at 12:55 pmWhere on earth did she get her S2?Reply
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Igor says:February 11, 2011 at 6:23 amI would like to say, yes, precisely. But, my reasoning is suffering lately because of my inability to find any better way of drawing conclusions instead of the standard binary computation; which leads me only to true vs false, cause-effect, action – subject that performs it. I’m convinced that the laws of nature can’t be explained so easily, let alone laws of the Universe. Also if we(humans) were to explain things in a way that, to us, might seem true, the explanation does not have to be true for anyone else except for us. For example enviromentalism. If we were to prove that our behaviour is in some way fatal to functioning of the planet. The statement would only be true about our own existence on the same planet. If we were to trigger a form of armageddon on Earth, say icecaps melt completely or we cause a nuclear winter. It might mean the end of our existence but not all existence.. I apologize for poor grammar and straightout typing errors; I often err without even being aware of it. ‘the waves colide, slow down and form matter. which represents the concreteability area.’ I don’t like skepticism or cynicism very much because they didn’t get me anywhere closer to understanding anything but sometimes it does seem, to me, that we should take a deep breath and try to find better ways of comprehension than pure logic and faith.Reply
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Perry says:February 11, 2011 at 12:58 pmSo is what you’re saying true for all of us or is it only true for you?Reply
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Igor says:February 11, 2011 at 2:31 pmThere is a chance that it is true in a similar manner for many perhaps, even all human beings but I wouldn’t dare to go any further. Nature, Universe, other species perhaps have their own logic which is a bit different from ours..Reply
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Igor says:February 11, 2011 at 3:05 pmI didn’t even notice the semantical trick in your first reply. “since logic involves man-made systems, we can’t have any confidence in the ability of logic to arrive at truthful conclusions?” No, it’s just that I wouldn’t dare to conclude that the rules of man-made systems can be applied to anything else but man-made systems. The ‘non here and non now’ ability in forming ideas is wonderful but it can’t be used for generalizations about things that are, to a large extent, unfamiliar, except perhaps for entertainment purposes. It is very ambitious to make a circle around the Universe and to claim that we know how it works.Reply
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Perry says:February 12, 2011 at 10:10 amSo you don’t believe that logic applies to the universe?Reply
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John says:February 11, 2011 at 9:31 pmShe’s a busy camper, so if you could indicate which S2, and which part of that S2, you’re having trouble with, she’ll try to relate it back to some of your earlier comments.Reply
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Perry says:February 12, 2011 at 10:08 amHer first one where she says I said belief in an incomplete system is irrational. When did I ever say that?Reply
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John says:February 12, 2011 at 12:30 pmOkay, here you go – S1 (1) Perry states, “The Incompleteness of the universe IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” (2) From this it follows, for a system to be rational it must be complete. (3) Therefore, if a system is incomplete, it is not rational. S2 (1) Perry States, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to all logical systems.” (2) Perry states, “Belief in God is 100% logical.” (3) Therefore, from S1-3, Perry’s “Belief in God” is not rational.Reply
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Perry says:February 12, 2011 at 8:43 pmSir, you have it exactly backwards. For a system to be rational, it must be incomplete. The universe is rational and incomplete. Therefore God is necessary and God is not a system.Reply
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Igor says:February 12, 2011 at 3:16 pmLogic is a tool not a wishmaster, it can not be applied to everything. Especially to things that are vastly unfamiliar. I am not certain that logic applies to the Universe, because the data that the human race has collected, about the Universe, is not sufficient to support such a claim. Furtheron logic fails to explain many things regarding human nature. For example in a war situation not many things seem to follow logical paths. The ideas of crime and adequate punishment seem to slide pass logic also. Human tendency to follow the line of least resistance wherever it may take us also doesn’t strike me as very logical. A perfectly logical idea that things like pacifism and democratic socialism may actually work sort of failed miserably, why?Reply
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Perry says:February 12, 2011 at 8:48 pmIt appears then that you only believe in logic when it supports your purposes. So then is it your wishmaster? Does this then excuse all of peoples’ irrational behavior?Reply
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John says:February 12, 2011 at 11:27 pmOur daughter says she’ll take her C for effort and move on, although she doesn’t understand where she went wrong since she used your words to build her syllogisms. She also added, it’s not God who’s a system, as interesting a thought as that might be, but your “logical” belief in God that she was calling into question.Reply
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 12:44 amShe did not use my words to build her syllogism. I suggest she read this article much more carefully. Sorry if this sounds bombastic but she’ll probably learn more about logic and its limitations by scouring this thread very carefully than she will from a semester of classes.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 13, 2011 at 1:49 amI am being deliberately provocative here, but I hope that people from both “sides” of the discussion will take up the challenge, and destroy my syllogism. If you are unable to do so, might I suggest that you have a … problem? Perry develops Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in order to apply it to the Universe, asking us to draw a circle around the Universe. Perry uses language which defines the Universe as everything that exists – “all matter, energy, space and time.” Therefore, by definition, anything outside the circle does not exist. If it exists it should be inside the circle! So – P(1) Everything that exists is inside Perry’s Universal circle. P(2) Perry’s God is not inside the Universal circle. C(1) Therefore Perry’s God is non-existent. This could also be expressed thus: P(1b) Everything that is knowable is included within Perry’s circle. P(2b) Perry’s God is not included within Perry’s circle. C(2) Perry’s God is un-knowable.Reply
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Igor says:February 13, 2011 at 4:04 am“is it your wishmaster?” It’s not my wishmaster, it’s my tool. And I have no choice but to use it because I am unfamiliar with anything better. Many times I have seen it fail to explain things for example the issue of understanding in heterosexual relationships. It only seems to work well when applied to a man made system based on logic.Reply
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Perry says:February 13, 2011 at 6:49 pmPeople have free will. People are irrational and illogical. No doubt about that. This fact itself strongly suggests that people are not purely physical, because if they were they would just obey the laws of physics. The ability to make a basic choice like “1=on, 0=off” instead of “1=off, 0=on” is proof of free will which is immaterial. This cannot be derived from the laws of physics. We can use this to propose that from a materialistic standpoint, human beings, like the universe, are incomplete. I essentially already said this when I pointed out that the existence of code infers a designer outside the universe. Making declaration about matter and energy and the universe is different from making a declaration about conscious beings. But you raise a good point. Now what if you argued that humans are irrational, therefore humans are complete? That would be logical, except that human beings are contingent on their parents and so on and you still have the need to explain the origin of information. I don’t see any way to argue that the irrationality of human beings makes them complete. Just free to choose.Reply
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Alan McKenzie says:February 13, 2011 at 11:40 amHi, Richard May I reply to your post of February 13? I have to agree (see my post of January 23) with Perry Marshall’s conclusion about there being “something outside the circle”, although our routes to that conclusion are not identical. My thesis, though, depends upon accepting that our universe is mathematics only, and I know that may be too much to swallow! If so, I understand that the rest of this post will appear to be nonsense, and I take that in good heart. As an example of reducing the universe to mathematics, if you consider an electron, it has spin, and it interacts through the electromagnetic, gravitational and weak interactions and with the Higgs field. That’s it. There’s nothing else – no substructure. Mathematics doesn’t describe the electron – the electron is mathematics. Properties such as charge and mass follow from its interactions. All the richness and complexity of our universe – atoms, molecules, cells, neural networks, neural modelling, self-awareness – follow. Most people, including Perry, I believe, will not subscribe to that model. Nevertheless, let’s see where this takes us. Consider the first proposition – everything that exists is inside the circle. In a mathematical universe, any property that can be logically deduced from the simpler axioms (the basic truths, if you like) may be thought of as “existing”. From Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, it must be possible to construct a mathematical statement that says that it, the statement itself, cannot be proved in the universe in which it was constructed. Indeed, if you happen to stumble upon that very statement and write it down, you would not be able to prove that it was the statement you were seeking! The statement is said to be “undecidable” – you can prove neither the statement nor its negative. However, that statement can be proved in a higher mathematical system. By “higher” system, I mean one that cannot be deduced logically from within our own system – our universe. In other words, in the higher system, you can prove that the Gödel statement cannot, indeed, be proved in our universe. But it took a higher system to do this! This is what Perry was saying at the beginning of this website. So the significance of the first proposition is this – from our perspective in our universe, “everything that exists” means every property that can be logically deduced from within our universe, and so “everything that exists” is almost tautological – it is, indeed, within the circle. What is important here is that the higher system cannot be logically deduced from within our own universe. To take a simple example, if your world is based only upon positive integers, you cannot logically deduce a world of complex numbers. However, if you start from complex numbers, you can certainly deduce the properties of positive integers. Similarly, if you start from our universe, you cannot logically deduce the properties of the higher system in which the Gödel statement for our own universe can be proved. You may guess them, but you cannot prove them. But, from the point of view of the higher system, our own universe is transparent. Of course, you may then think that you could apply similar reasoning to the higher system and, in this way, generate a never-ending chain of higher and higher-level Gödel statements. However, that sequence ends when you get to a mathematical system (a high enough universe!) in which “generalized natural numbers” are part of the system, and which permit the negation of the Gödel statement to be admitted as an axiom. Sorry about the jargon, but the take-home message is that the sequence of undecidable statements stops, as does the hierarchy of universes. Whether you call that final meta-universe “God” or not is (almost) a matter of faith! While trying to avoid being too self-promoting, I would nevertheless encourage you to look at http://www.godel-universe.com for the beginning of further discussion.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 13, 2011 at 12:45 pmAlan, I am a fairly emotional old fella, so the only response I can provide at the moment is : YES! Since my conversion from atheism to Christianity three years ago, I have had two overwhelming “epiphany” experiences. Already, I sense that reading your post will be a third. You talk of mathematics, but what I discover is pure beauty. Literally, the only word I have at this present time is : YES! How can I not order your book? I trust I will have something more coherent to say tomorrow. Alan – thank you.Reply
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Alan McKenzie says:February 14, 2011 at 6:06 amThank you, Richard. I didn’t think my post would be received very well, and so I am delighted if it struck a chord. Your discovering pure beauty in mathematics reminds me of Keats’s words: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”. In a consistent universe, mathematics is, indeed, truth, and many find this beautiful.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 16, 2011 at 6:21 pmOkay. I was fine with walking away, but you had to imply that I’m a bad researcher. I can’t allow that to stand. Here’s how good of a researcher I am: I read the transcript of your presentation in 2005, posted on Cosmic Fingerprints upon which most of your comments to me seem to be directed. It’s a slightly lamer, slightly less technical derivative version of a book published in 1994 called “In the beginning was intelligence” by a German engineer named Werner Gitt. Let’s see how the two stack up side by side, but first let’s see what you said about the revelation of this idea to you: “I got pulled into this about a year ago because of a discussion I was having with a friend. You know this whole Intelligent Design versus Naturalism debate? Or if you want, you can call it the creation versus evolution debate. I had never really delved into it to really get to the bottom of things until about a year ago. I started investigating this and I had this eureka moment one day. I think it was April of last year and I discovered some things about information theory linked to DNA.” – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 A comparison of the two works: The title refers to the first verse of the Gospel written by John: “In the beginning was the Word…” – “In the beginning was information”, German ed. 1994, page 10 I think it’s prescient that they said language was the formation and creation of what we know today. It wasn’t light or movement or anything else, it was language. And then in 90 A.D., John wrote “In the beginning was the WORD.” In the beginning was words and language. In the beginning was information. The idea preceded the implementation. That He was in the beginning with God and He was God. Very prescient don’t you think? – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Theorem 2: Information only arises through an intentional, volitional act. – “In the beginning was information”, German ed. 1994, page 48 Information cannot be created without intent. There are no examples of information that is created without intent. – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Theorem 11: A code system is always the result of a mental process (see footnote 14) (it requires an intelligent origin or inventor). – “In the beginning was information”, German ed. 1994, page 67 Because all codes, all languages, all encoding, decoding systems come from a mind. No exceptions. – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Theorem 26: The information present in living beings must have had a mental source. – “In the beginning was information”, German ed. 1994, page 98 …exists in a symbolic form before it’s physically built. An idea, in order to exist, has to be represented by a language. Even to have an idea in your mind you have to talk to yourself and have images in your mind of what you want to do before you do it. So we know this: • Ideas always precede implementation, always, no exceptions. • All languages come from a mind. No exceptions. • There are no languages that do not come from a mind. • So we know that DNA was designed. • A mind designed DNA, therefore God exists. – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Oh and by the way, Gitt like Godel as well: N1: The Laws of nature are based on experience. It is often asserted that the laws of nature are proved theorems, but we have to emphasise that the laws of nature cannot be proved! They are only identified and formulated through observation. It is often possible to formulate conclusions in exact mathematical terms, ensuring preciseness, brevity, and generality. But even though 26 numerous mathematical theorems (except the initial axioms) can be proved 4, this is not the case for the laws of nature. A mathematical formulation of an observation should not be confused with a proof. We affirm: the laws of nature are nothing more than empirical statements. They cannot be proved, but they are nevertheless valid. 4 Provability: The German mathematician, David Hilbert (1862 – 1943), held the optimistic view that every mathematical problem could be resolved in the sense that a solution could be found, or that it could be proved that a solution was impossible, for example the quadrature (squaring) of a circle. He therefore said in his famous talk in Königsberg (1930) that there were no unsolvable problems: “We must know, we will know.” Kurt Gödel (1906 – 1978), the well-known Austrian mathematician, rejected this view. He showed that, even in a formal system, not all true theorems could be proved. This statement, called the first incompleteness theorem of Gödel, was quite a revolutionary result. Because of the far-reaching effects for mathematics and for science theory, Heinrich Scholz called Gödel’s work “A critique of pure reason from the year 1931”. – “In the beginning was information”, German ed. 1994, pages 26-27 The keypoints of both are nearly identical. And it’s interesting to note, that you don’t credit Gitt anywhere in the presentation. It’s possible that you were unaware of his work, but as your marketing website states, you’re an expert at “the Google” and I find it hard to believe that a smart guy like you could be that intellectually lazy. Now I want you to think about this carefully. How much did you ‘mutate’ the code in Gitt’s work? Did you create any new information? (By the way, common refutations of Gitt’s work are at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/gitt.html). Did you pass it off as your own? Did you make a profit off of the presentation? This is important because Gitt has a pre-existing relationship with another creationist organization, Answers in Genesis (who have a big Ark project in the works in Kentucky and are looking for money by the way). In fact, they put a copy of his book on the web for free download, along with terms of use: “The copyrighted work will be used for non-commercial, personal purposes only. You may not prepare, manufacture, copy, use, promote, distribute, or sell a derivative work of the copyrighted work without the express approval of Answers in Genesis. Approval must be expressed and in writing, and failure to respond shall not be deemed approval.” -http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/itbwi You may have permission for all I know, but then I have to wonder: Why no credit? You may also have already received a cease and desist order from them, but then why does your website still have links to the Cosmic Fingerprints website? Are you still profiting from this? You may have formulated the presentation before the book went up on the website, but, why still no credit? It was at this point that the scientist in me got a little curious and started asking questions. How could I find out exactly which one of these hypotheses was correct. So I decided to make a cache of all relevant web file, send them to AiG and ask them. It was the only way my limited naturalist mind could come up with to figure out what was going on. Anyway, in the future I suggest you remember commandments 8 & 9. You don’t need me to tell you what they are. The lesson I’ve decided to take from this is best summed up in your own words: “Most companies just imitate their competitors, and everyone gets dumber every year.” – http://www.perrymarshall.com/guerrilla-marketing/ Oops, looks like that one might be plagiarized too! http://marksuter.wordpress.com/Reply
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Perry says:February 16, 2011 at 10:29 pmI give considerable credit to Gitt and mention his work numerous times, for example when I say in the very first talk I ever posted on this topic at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/intelligent_evolution.pdf “The German professor Werner Gitt, in his landmark book In The Beginning Was Information provides a rigorously formal presentation of most of the concepts I …” You can find every reference to Gitt that I make on my website via this Google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22in+the+beginning+was+information%22+site%3Acosmicfingerprints.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a At http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/books/ I say: In the Beginning was Information by Werner Gitt (link is a free PDF ebook) – Possibly the most profound science book I’ve ever read. The most concise and productive way to understand living things is that they originate first as information in DNA. As a communication engineer and author of an Ethernet book, I was amazed to discover everything I already knew about communication sytems – 1?s and 0?s, noise reduction, error correction, data compression and transmission – applies to DNA. Because DNA is a digital communication system, the tools of the information age unlock its secrets and lead us to form testable hypotheses. Gitt makes a rigorous, airtight case for an intelligent designer based on Claude Shannon’s information theory. I’ve run across a number of people and websites who say they’ve overturned Gitt’s theorems, but to a person, every single one of them violates Shannon’s work at some key point. This book brings more clarity to complex subject material than almost any I’ve ever read. My argument is simpler than Gitt’s; his thesis consists of 8 statements; mine, 3. My material extends far beyond his into multiple mechanisms of evolution; Gitt doesn’t believe in evolution. He’s YEC; I’m Old Earth. Given that I have said so much about Gitt and you didn’t know it, and given everything you’ve said about cancer, thus far I am not at all impressed with your research skills. You didn’t even get the title of Gitt’s book right, which by the way is “In the Beginning was Information.” If you think you’re a good researcher, then demonstrate a flaw in my argument. And show me a code that’s not designed. By the way TalkOrigins counter to Gitt’s argument misrepresents crucial aspects of both Gitt’s statements and Shannon’s work and if you rely on it you’ll soon find out why. P.S.: Mark Suter used my copyrighted work without permission. The article he copied, dated March 24, 2009 was first published by me in March 2002. P.P.S: You’re not the only cancer researcher to weigh in on this. Here’s one who sees things rather differently from you: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/ironcurtain/comment-page-1/#comment-3786Reply
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Landothedead says:February 17, 2011 at 6:06 pm“I give considerable credit to Gitt and mention his work numerous times, for example when I say in the very first talk I ever posted on this topic at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/intelligent_evolution.pdf “The German professor Werner Gitt, in his landmark book In The Beginning Was Information provides a rigorously formal presentation of most of the concepts I …” – Irrelevant. The matter at hand is that you didn’t give credit during your presentation. If you want to play science you have to give references everytime. – But this is just a little side point. “By the way TalkOrigins counter to Gitt’s argument is incorrect and if you try to use it you’ll find out why.” – I was under the impression that I had used it. If you have a problem with it, you can try contacting the author. I believe this is his homepage http://www.graduateinstitute.ch/ctei/home/ctei_people/baldwin_home.html. – But, “By asserting that data must have an intelligent source to be considered information, and by assuming genomic sequences are information fitting that definition, Gitt defines into existence an intelligent source for the genome without going to the trouble of checking whether one was actually there. This is circular reasoning. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/gitt.html” Seems pretty solid to me. – Here’s an additional one: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB180.html “My argument is simpler than Gitt’s; his thesis consists of 8 statements; mine, 3. My material extends far beyond his into multiple mechanisms of evolution;” – Unfortunately two (and arguably all)of those mechanisms are STILL stolen from Gitt (see below) Really? Gitt doesn’t deal with evolution? He doesn’t believe in it so he addresses it in an attempt to knock it down, even Christian friendly evolution. “In addition there is the idea of THEISTIC EVOLUTION where God just set the evolution ball rolling and supposedly guided it during millions of years. This latter view cannot be refuted by means of the information theorems, but it contradicts biblical revelation.” – “In the beginning was information”, 1994, p 136 (caps are mine) His section here: “Cumulative selection (Latin cumulare = gather): Richard Dawkins, a British neo-Darwinist, revives the historical example of the typewriter-thrumming monkeys (see Appendix A1.5) and replaces them with “computer monkeys”. As shown in Figure 21, he begins with a random sequence of 28 letters [D2 p 66 – 67] and seeks to demonstrate how a pre-determined phrase selected from Shakespeare, “Methinks it is like a weasel”, – “In the beginning was information”, 1994, p 102 Is quite close to your section here: “2. Random Mutation + Deliberate Selection + Time = Design An example of this would be a game of Scrabble. In Scrabble, you get a bunch of letters and you reach into the pile. You get your letters and then try to spell something with them. That’s deliberate selection out of a random mutation.” – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 He even deals with the same Dawkins problem you do later on (making the Scrabble allusion again). Here’s why you’re both wrong about that. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF011.html Also, his section here: “Genetic algorithms: The so-called “genetic algorithms” is yet another way of trying to explain how information could originate in matter [F5, M4]. The combination of words is deliberately chosen from biology and numerical mathematics to suggest that evolutionary events are described mathematically… The sample is then modified (mutated) by allowing various genetic operators to influence the bit string (e. g. crossover). A “fitness function”, assumed for the process of evolution, is then applied to each result.” – “In the beginning was information”, 1994, p 104 – Reference F5 here refers to an article titled ‘Genetic Algorithms: Principles of Natural Selection Applied to Computation’ Is analogous to your section here: “1. Deliberate Mutation + Natural Selection + Time = Design An example of deliberate mutation combined with natural selection and time is business and technology. Five guys start a company and they are all going after the same market. Four of them fail, one of them succeeds. That’s evolution right?” – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Of course he uses the example of airplane connections and you use advertising. These are the mechanisms of evolution you were talking about, weren’t they? (Also, here’s why your conclusion of ‘design’ in these three points is wrong http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI100.html) The fact that the ideas you subscribe to (OEC) are slightly less crazy than Gitts (YEC), meant that aesthetically you could just take the conclusion that Gitt says ‘cannot be refuted by means of the information theorems’, say ‘I love things that can’t be disproven! And I’m not a literalist!’ and shove it in at the end. You didn’t even really do anything to develop this, you just grafted on the definition of theistic evolution along with work done by others. “Q16: Can new information originate through mutations? A16: This idea is central in representations of evolution, but mutations can only cause changes in existing information. There can be no increase in information, and in general the results are injurious.” – “In the beginning was information”, 1994, p 104 “Random mutations violate the whole nature of how information is created. Language can only be improved from the top working down to the bottom. You can’t randomly mutate a sentence into saying something more meaningful.” – Perry Marshall’s talk at Willow Creek Truthquest, South Barrington, Illinois, June 3, 2005 Here`s why you`re wrong about that: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html In fact, the only part I could find that might be original was that mutations are noise, which one could argue is implied by Gitt`s use of Shannon`s theories, or that you lifted that one from a second creationist source. Ironically it`s the single weakest part of the argument since it completely invalidates the rest of your analogy as I mentioned earlier. If mutations are noise and they can increase information(see above link) then the rest of your analogy is false. The whole thing is like me screening Star Wars and claiming I wrote it because I stuck fifteen minutes of Empire at the end. Let`s have a look at some more stuff and get away from Gitt. In your presentation: “Was it Divine intervention? Well the fossil record does match the Genesis story better than it matches Darwin’s theory. You can read all about punctuated equilibrium and the sudden changes of the fossil record. The Cambrian explosion, is that divine intervention? I think it certainly could be.“ Wrong: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH561_1.html Wrong: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html “Dobzhanski’s Fruit Fly Mutation Experiments: A Total Failure” – Debatable: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910_1.html While we’ve been talking: Horizontal gene transfer somehow accounts for evolution: – Overblown: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB822.html A few weeks ago, you claimed that cancer was a break down in the mathematical matrix of evolution, or something like that. Here`s why you`re wrong about that: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract This is just one paper, but it’s pretty famous, and there are lots more. Please note that if there was some larger order within the genome that accounted for evolution, all of Lenski`s bacteria would have evolved the ability to use citrate at the same time.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2011 at 7:11 pmNowhere has any researcher proven that the mutations that generated new features were random. In all the literature I have ever been able to find, like Lenski’s, such genetic changes involved some form of genomic re-arrangement, transposition, or horizontal gene transfer etc. The talkorigins article about random mutations and noise does not add any direct evidence to your case. If you disagree then show an experiment where mutations proven to be random produced new features. Show me an example of a fruit fly radiation experiment that produced new features or speciation. The data in the Lenski paper never demonstrates that the changes that produced the ability to digest citrate were actually random. He says they were random but he never proves this. Meanwhile the changes noted are concentrated in specific genes, not distributed evenly across the whole genome. He notes several times where different bacteria mutated in the same ways. Your claim that ALL bacteria would mutate the same way ignores the fact that when organisms re-arrange their genomes they do so in response to their environment. No two bacteria are ever in 100% identical environments so your proposition would not hold. You still haven’t shown me a code that’s not designed. And you don’t appear to have read Jean-Claude Perez’ research on the mathematical structure of DNA. It also sounds like you’re unfamiliar with Chargaff’s rules – both observations show that it’s impossible that evolutionary change is driven by random mutations. Evolution is driven by transposition, horizontal gene transfer, symbiogenesis, genome doubling and epigenetics. Not randomness. If you disagree then prove that the path between one species and another is random.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 17, 2011 at 6:13 pmGood night! I was just rereading some of your older posts. You claim that apoptosis is some kind of ‘telological selection’… Wow. At first I just thought you were maybe just forgetful about your references or at the worst dishonest. But… I have to digress into the emotional realm here for a second. Up until you decided to impugn my ability as a researcher I was enjoying a spirited argument. That annoyed me, but reading this… This honestly makes me sad. There’s something I want you to do. Next time you’re at a hospital, find the cancer ward and find a terminal patient. Tell him or her that they are going die because god decided not to intervene with his ‘telological selection’. Tell them that god ‘selected’ them to suffer and then die. He did a poor job of designing their DNA. Then tell them that we have to waste time and resources that could have found them a cure to start looking for ghosts and goblins that may or may not exist, that we have to respect do-nothings like Dempsky, Gitt and Behe who try to define god into science instead of producing concrete results. Seriously. ‘Cause if you’re right about this (and I’m 99.99% sure you’re not, because I know the pathway) then your god is a really terrible person. Like, ridiculously terrible. And if you still think that this is an entity you still want to pay homage to then… you’re pitiful, small and arrogant, scrambling after crumbs left by other small people like Gitt who never did anything, just stood in front of society and demand that it stop because they’re uncomfortable going on without their god. … Holy crap. Do all creationists think this way? I used to think that people like Dawkins were exaggerating, but… I don’t even know what to say. Just… screw this.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2011 at 6:55 pmApoptosis is defined as “Programmed cell death.” All programs are teleological. Just because your theology is incoherent and insulting doesn’t mean mine is. You are free to entertain whatever misconceptions you wish to have about such matters. If the best that you can do is call people names then that says a great deal.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 17, 2011 at 7:53 pm“Evolution is driven by transposition, horizontal gene transfer, symbiogenesis, genome doubling and epigenetics.” – Dude! Look how far you’ve come! – If you throw in mutation (whose causes could be environmental effects, as you alluded to above with your response to the Lenski experiment) and gene duplication (which can be done by transposons which you clearly know about) then we are in complete agreement! Congratulations! You no longer need god to do anything with regards to biology. And, after you talk to the cancer patients, THEN you can be ‘holier than thou’ with me.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2011 at 8:44 pm“Look how far you’ve come!” ????? Where have you been? I’ve been saying this for years. If you were listening you would know that’s what I’ve been saying all along. Scroll up and read the thread. http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-31305 for example. You’ll find discussions of all of these things. And none of that stuff is random. It’s all systematic and orderly. And by the way, my dad died of cancer when I was 17. Our family went through the whole 3 year ordeal. The roller coaster of emotions, the gut wrenching treatments, the ghastly expenses, the plane trips, the works. And finally his last day on earth when he was laying in the hospital bed arching his back to take every last gasp of air. If you want to talk about cancer wards, I’m qualified to participate. But stop your insulting behavior and your belittling remarks, because I don’t enjoy delving into private personal matters and sensitive topics with rude disrespectful people.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 17, 2011 at 9:16 pmI’ve had relatives affected by cancer too, fortunately no one has died though so, I’m sorry about your dad. So, really,it’s not the mutation part, but the random part that you’ve got issue with? I see. I see. Then I have to ask; what’s with all the ‘And yes, atheists are irrational.’ and ‘Actually it’s Exhibit A of atheistic scientific vandalism.’ stuff you’ve got going on here?
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Perry says:February 17, 2011 at 10:25 pm1. Belief in a closed rational universe violates Godel. 2. Belief that random copying errors drive evolution violates information theory. Belief in random evolution is scientific vandalism because it obscures the crucial fact that extremely systematic mechanisms drive evolution. Science always prefers system to accident. I have backed these statements with painstaking detail and thorough explanations. Read the above text, follow the links and you can confirm it all item by item. I respectfully submit to you that once you accept that evolution is highly mathematical and algorithmic you will begin to find a cure for cancer.
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Richard Morgan says:February 18, 2011 at 4:36 amLand of the Dead : I am happy that you have felt able to express your highly emotional anti-God feelings, because that is at the root of your issue – not science and not logic. I would like to thank Perry for allowing you to use his discussion board as a sort of therapy. It’s good to get personal pain out of the way, then hopefully you can start getting things the right way round. (Sorry about sounding pompous and condescending, but there’s no gentle way to say it.) You and I are both confronted with the problem of suffering. On-line, anonymous atheists tend to say, “Either your God is a sadist, or more likely He doesn’t exist. Look at all the pain and suffering, for crying out loud!” The Christian says, ” There is so much pain and suffering. What is my responsibility in all this, and what can I do about it with God’s help?” Do you see the difference? Land of the (spiritually)Dead says, mockingly, ” Your so-called God really screwed things up. Stop looking for him in DNA and let real scientists get on with finding a cure for cancer. But we’ll have to factor ‘random’ in somewhere.” Perry Marshall says, “Get rid of the criminally unscientific ‘random’ mythology, learn the lessons from Nature, and Nature’s true mechanisms in evolution (even if we have to admit that God-did-it). Once you accept that evolution is highly mathematical and algorithmic you will begin to find a cure for cancer.” Do you see the difference? Oh, and if you still doubt the importance of the role of mathematics in all of that, just check out the work of Arkhat Abzhanov at Harvard, where he is rediscovering D’Arcy Thompson.Reply
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Igor says:February 18, 2011 at 6:35 am‘I don’t see any way to argue that the irrationality of human beings makes them complete. Just free to choose.’ I agree. By becoming dominant species on Earth we opened up alot of options for ourselves. One of them is the freedom of choice, which is healthy when it is driven by will to live. But since we are on the top of the food chain we can choose to do various stupid things and still survive. I like the discussion about how systematic the evolution is. I agree. But, for example I can’t understand how homosexuals fit into the story. I have nothing against gay people or anything, I just, don’t understand the natural necessity for the phenomenon. For the sake of argument I would dare to assume that in the far past, while humans still had to battle for survival, there weren’t many gay people walking around. With freedom of choice in mind, why is god necessary, except to justify some of the choices that we make but don’t like?Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2011 at 4:55 pmI’m not sure where you got the idea that existence of God justifies choices. In my mind it implies accountability to make wiser choices, not license to make dumb ones. God is necessary as an explanation for why we live in a logical universe. That’s what Gödel’s logic indicates. For theories about homosexuality, I refer you to others wiser than myself.Reply
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Igor says:February 19, 2011 at 6:40 am‘I’m not sure where you got the idea that existence of God justifies choices.’ From a chatolic priest. For every ‘bad’ choice the believer has to repent by saying he’s sorry to the priest, the priest then produces a cost for forgiveness, the modern currency is – prayers 2, 3, 5, 10, and the gates of heaven are wide open once again, providing that the repentance was sincere. ‘God is necessary as an explanation for why we live in a logical universe.’ Yes, but if we are not always behaving rationally or logicaly and we invented logic, how can we claim that the Universe is logical, since we are a part of the Universe.Reply
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Perry says:February 19, 2011 at 7:30 amIgor, Insightful answers. Well first of all I have to say that “the priest introduces a cost for forgiveness” is not a concept you find anywhere in the New Testament. Jesus and the NT authors taught GRACE not cost of repentance or penance. This is, in my mind, just so much Catholic baggage. I am not anti Catholic but I am definitely not in favor of what you experienced. Humans did not invent logic. Humans observe and discover logic. Christianity has taught this for thousands of years – just read the Wisdom literature in the Bible. Mathematicians have taught the same thing. Ask any math professor anywhere whether humans invent mathematics, or discover it.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 18, 2011 at 8:49 am*Facepalm* You know what. I apologize for my earlier vitriol. I didn’t know I was talking to a bot. So, here’s a summary of my points so far: 1) Your arguments are stolen from Gitt, so all the criticisms of his argument apply to yours. They are located here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/gitt.html and here: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB180.html 2) We’ve established that you believe in all the elements of evolution, you just substitute god in place of natural laws, which from a theological standpoint is acceptable, but it hardly has any place in science. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA301_1.html This is confirmed by the way you attempt to use Godel to remove god from the universe (and therefore from scientific study.) 3) Your challenge ‘Show me a code that isn’t designed’: By definition codes are designed, therefore any complex, self-replicating pattern that I showed you that wasn’t designed would not be a code. This challenge is a tautology, like asking me to show you a stallion that is not a horse. 4) Though I can’t show you a code that isn’t designed in reality, let’s take a ride on the inference express using your own logic (with appropriate sarcasm thrown in). i. The only things we know of that are intelligent have differentiated, connected parts (ex. neurons, possibly computer hardware). (I made this argument a few months ago when I first stumbled on this site, at that time you said it was sound) ii. Differentiated parts can be expressed symbolically (binary code uses 1’s and 0’s, language uses an alphabet, DNA, if we use your logic, uses A,T,C,G) iii. Therefore all intelligence can be expressed as a code. iv. If god is intelligent, god must have differentiated parts, therefore god can be expressed as a code. v. All codes have designers (this is your own logic here) vi. Therefore if god exists and god is intelligent then god is designed. vii. Whatever designed god must be intelligent… Oops! 5) Your shaky grasp of biology (you like to quote Nobel prize winners, but seem to have little idea what their works mean. Ex. McClintock)has led you to propose apoptosis is ‘teleological selection’ (which is impossible if god exists outside the universe by the way). This isn’t really a scientific argument; it just means that you worship a non-present being who’s sitting outside the universe with a logic-defying sniper rifle. That makes you not only ignorant, but in my book, some kind of death worshipper as well. If you can answer criticisms 1-4 satisfactorily, without deflecting the argument, then we can continue to talk. If not, keep on botting!!Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2011 at 10:22 am1. If you will present the talkorigins arguments here in your own words I will respond to them point by point. I have already addressed every one of these objections in some form or another at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/infidels. 2. No I do not substitute God for natural laws, because natural laws do not create codes, programs or algorithms. An intelligent agent is ostensibly necessary for such things to exist, and directly inferred by what we observe in biology. I model evolution as a capability originally programmed into cells. Evolution is organized by a protocol that can be understood and replicated if its existence is acknowledged first. It cannot be studied so long as evolution is attributed to “random copying errors.” 3. Incorrect. The fact that all codes are designed is a plain observation, not a tautology. In theory a counterexample should be EASY to produce, if there is any principle in science that supports your worldview. If we received codes from outer space tomorrow (like SETI has been watching for for many years) then that would show that codes can come from somewhere besides humans. Furthermore, DNA is proof that codes CAN come from somewhere besides humans – because we can be pretty sure that humans did not design DNA. So if normal natural laws created codes then you will be able to find other encoding / decoding systems that humans didn’t create. Where are they? 4. This is just a loosely connected assembly of statements, culminating in an admission that everything does in fact require a First Cause. And sarcasm will get you nowhere. Let me know when you’re ready to provide a serious argument. 5. Apoptosis is teleological, just like you writing comments on my blog is teleological. God’s constant intervention is not needed for either to happen.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 18, 2011 at 11:22 am1. Shan’t! Do you have a phobia about talkorigins or something. Seriously, it takes 5 minutes to read these things, unlike all your forum posts (which still don’t credit Gitt) that are like 300 pages long. You have your own website. Surely you can organize all the points you make into something that’s a little easier to read. 2. No, this is what you infer from looking at DESIGN. In your reasoning you observe design in designed things and then apply it to biology, NOT the other way around. You’re just replacing chemistry with supernatural causation, which has no place in science. 3. “If we received CODES from outer space tomorrow (like SETI has been watching for for many years) then that would show that CODES can come from somewhere besides humans.” – Which would be DESIGNED, because they are CODES. Guess that alternative isn’t too easy to come up with after all. Go go gadget circular logic. 4. What?!! Loosely garbled together sentences that collapse into tautology and circular logic aren’t serious arguments? Holy crap, I just won the argument!!!!! – What I’m trying to say is that if my logic fails then so does yours. I’m using the same line of inference as you with one extra point #1 that you’ve already admitted was sound. – If everything has a first cause, then so does god. 5. “Apoptosis is teleological, just like you writing comments on my blog is teleological. God’s constant intervention is not needed for either to happen.” – Which is fine theologically, but it’s not science. If god never gets of his duff and sets foot inside the universe to intervene then we can’t study him, can we?Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2011 at 12:02 pmLandofthedead, 1. I’m still not convinced you understand my argument let alone theirs. Copy/paste if you want but you have to be extremely specific. You post a question here and I’ll answer it. 2. Gödel’s theorem shows that science relies on axioms and causes that lie outside of science. Therefore neither philosophy, nor metaphysics nor supernatural causation cannot in principle be ruled out of scientific discussion. All scientific worldviews make metaphysical assumptions. I am positing an axiom that the origin of life was a singularity event. 3. If you could demonstrate that chemistry alone makes codes then signals from outer space wouldn’t infer design. Until then, it does. For this reason, DNA infers design just as much as signals from outer space would. This is not circular logic, it’s standard inductive inference. You’re trying to make the same argument Jason Devlin failed to make. See his argument and my response at http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-37405 4. Your logic is not the same as mine. See #3. 5. I never said God doesn’t enter the universe. I said the universe is incomplete without God, and I said the active intervention of God is not necessary for the ongoing function of biology.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 18, 2011 at 12:46 pm1. I don’t need to copy and paste, that’s what the links are for. Here they are again. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/gitt.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB180.html http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CI/CI131.html I’m reasonably sure you have an internet connection. Keep on botting. 2. You’re just agreeing with me here. I agree. The supernatural is by definition outside of science because science deals with the natural world. It is by definition untestable and you can never know anything for sure about it. Without data you can never differentiate a hypothesis from a null hypothesis and never reach any useful conclusions. Theologically okay, scientifically bad. Keep on botting. 3. Chemistry alone DOES make hundreds of self-replicating patterns, here’s my favourite example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg (prediction, you will take the title as proof for your own views, even as the video shows otherwise )but you can’t call them codes, because codes are, by definition designed (World English Dictionary, Code, n, a conventionalized set of principles, rules, or expectations) You need evidence of convention (read: design) to call them codes, NOT the other way around. And when you and Dembski get that, go claim your Nobel Prize. In the meantime, keep riding that carousel. 4. If my logic is so flawed you should be able to knock it down pretty easily. Find me an example of intelligence not made up of differentiated parts that can be represented symbolically. Good luck! 5. This is theology, I have nothing to say about it.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:February 19, 2011 at 6:58 amThat Youtube presentation was absolutely delightful. Just imagine – in millions of years, when those polymers have evolved sufficiently to become intelligent, they will be calling Dr. Jack Szostak: “God”, and having debates about his existence. No? That’s not how it works? OK.Reply
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Perry says:February 19, 2011 at 9:20 amLandothedead, I have taken your three TalkOrigins articles and responded to them point by point in a dedicated blog post. The full text is here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/talkorigins-gitt/ The TalkOrigins articles are of inexcusably bad quality. For example TalkOrigins claims DNA is a cipher and not a code. That is an uninformed and bizarre statement. This contradicts all standard biological literature since the 1960’s. Atheists willingly contradict even the most basic scientific discoveries to avoid teleology. Summary: 1. TalkOrigins says that Gitt can’t infer meaning from codes because randomness cannot be proven. Non-randomness CAN be proven and the presumption of all cryptography and linguistics is that meaning can be inferred. Information theory is all about the non-random statistical profiles of codes, is it not? Actually the fact that randomness cannot be proven is precisely why Neo Darwinism is by definition not a scientific theory – because Neo Darwinism proposes that evolution comes from random copying errors. Your own repeated insistence that “it’s all random” is as anti-science as you can get. 2. TalkOrigins claims that information theory is concerned with symbols originally generated randomly. This is patently false. Warren Weaver addresses this in the introduction to Shannon’s book, 1998 edition, U. of Illinois Press. 3. TalkOrigins says that information theory is only concerned with the statistical nature of codes. This is a half truth at best. Mathematics can only *quantify* statistics but information theory is explicitly concerned with statistics, syntax, semantics and pragmatics. 4. Just like you and Jason Devlin, TalkOrigins accuses inference to design as a circular argument. I have already shown above that I am using normal linear inferential reasoning. 5. TalkOrigins says DNA is not a language because it doesn’t obey Zipf’s law. This is a prime example of the poor quality of TalkOrigins scholarship. First of all, it does follow Zipf’s law. And secondly, Zipf’s law has nothing to do with the definition of a code or language anyway. By most criteria of defining language, DNA is language. My criteria by the way is: A series of symbols containing Statistics / Syntax / Semantics / Pragmatics. 6. TalkOrigins uses a hopelessly vague definition of machines to suggest that since inclined planes occur naturally, cellular Turing machines occur naturally too. A useful definition of machine is a Turing machine or any equivalent that processes algorithms based on symbols. According to that definition there is no such thing as a naturally occurring Turing machine that produces code, that is known to science. Read my full article at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/talkorigins-gitt/Reply
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Landothedead says:February 18, 2011 at 3:09 pmI’m about to go on vacation for the long weekend, so I’d like to clarify my #3 from earlier. Your inductional inference is wrong because it’s backwards. If you look at something and see it has long legs, gray skin, flappy ears and a trunk you can infer it’s an elephant. You can’t look at a cat, call it an elephant and then infer it has long legs, grey skin and a trunk. That’s silly. You’re looking at something, calling it a code and then inferring it is designed instead of finding the design and then inferring we should call it a code, which is what you have to do if you want this to actually have any meaning. Dempski has been failing spectacularly at it for a while now.Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2011 at 4:27 pmBy what criteria would we infer that SETI space signals are designed and not likewise infer DNA is designed?Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 8:30 amWe can infer that any signals we receive from deep space are from intelligent beings, because they’d have to be, especially if we established two-way contact. While it is theoretically possible that random forces could create what appears to be intelligent conversation, it’s remarkably improbable. We can verify that the SETI signals are designed, we can empirically prove this. Furthermore, we already have reason to think that they are designed. We do not, however, have any reason to think that DNA is designed. The existence of DNA can be explained by chemical and biological processes.Reply
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Jdevlin says:May 17, 2011 at 10:58 pm“By what criteria would we infer that SETI space signals are designed and not likewise infer DNA is designed?” That’s a good question Perry, too bad you aren’t asking it, because it’s a really terrible analogy. The SETI program actually has to make a number of major foundational assumptions in order to even justify it’s existence. In a general sense, these amount to first assuming that at least some extraterrestrial civilizations would evolve along the same developmental track that humanity has, thus we would recognize their electromagnetic communications by the simple fact that they would be very similar to our own. So I think it goes without saying why we wouldn’t make the same assumptions in bio-chemistry as we would in the SETI program. But I digress, really I just wanted to ask: What is it that you think the genome of a given organism is communicating, Perry?Reply
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Perry says:May 18, 2011 at 12:44 amThe genome communicates instructions to build physical structures. The communication is decoded by RNA Polymerase and Ribosomes. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/solve/ or chapter 5 of “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” by Hubert Yockey (Cambridge University Press, 2005) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521802938?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwperryc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0521802938Reply
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Jason Devlin says:June 4, 2011 at 6:09 pm“The genome communicates instructions to build physical structures.” So then the genome itself is completely arbitrary right? After all it’s only there to store and communicate the instructions, just like the SSD in my iPhone stores the instructions to play my music collection, but I could also store it on an HDD or a CD or even holes punched in cards if I really wanted to get crafty. Since the genetic code is exactly like the codes designed by humans, I’m assuming we could store it and communicate it with any arbitrary medium, right?
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Perry says:June 4, 2011 at 7:32 pmIs the SSD slot in your phone arbitrary? If the SSD slot in your phone does not accept CD-ROMs, is the data on your SSD card a code?
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Jason Devlin says:June 4, 2011 at 8:13 pm“Is the SSD slot in your phone arbitrary? If the SSD slot in your phone does not accept CD-ROMs, is the data on your SSD card a code?” The SSD in my phone is arbitrary, yes. It literally does not matter at all. Apple uses an SSD simply because it is most efficient, but the code could be stored on a CD-ROM or a HDD instead. The storage medium doesn’t matter, the code stored on it does. This is true for any digital code ever created in the history of mankind. The instructions to play my favorite Jay-Z album are stored on my phone’s SSD, but I could store it on a mountain of hole punch cards instead if I really wanted to prove a point. I could bake cupcakes and arrange them on a grid the size of Florida and read the code from space, I could feed black and white marbles into a hopper, it doesn’t matter. The code will always produce my favorite Jay-Z album. So, why can’t we transcribe a sequence of DNA from say, an optical disk, and still produce a protein? After all, if it’s truly like any code we know the origin of, then the medium shouldn’t matter.
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Perry says:June 4, 2011 at 9:35 pmWe can. Genetic engineers do it every day.
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Jason Devlin says:June 4, 2011 at 10:57 pm“We can. Genetic engineers do it every day.” No Perry, this isn’t even remotely close to what genetic engineering does. Genetic engineering does not transcribe the genetic code to a new storage medium, it uses DNA no matter what it’s intended purpose is. We do things like introduce a novel genetic sequence into a bacteria to manipulate it to produce insulin. This is more analogous to taking bits of data on a magnetic drive and rearranging them to produce a new output. I am talking about taking those bits from the magnetic drive, transcribing them onto an optical disk and still getting the exact same output. With digital code, i.e. every “intelligently created” code in existence, the medium is entirely irrelevant. It literally does not matter one bit what we store the code on, we can still read it and produce the same output no matter what. With genetic code, the code does not function without DNA as the medium. No DNA, no output. This is one very important aspect in which it doesn’t function like a code at all, because it isn’t as simple as just “instructions” stored on a medium, we can’t store the instructions on anything but DNA and still get the same output, like we can store the code for a piece of music on any medium imaginable and still produce the same piece music. A wax cylinder full of holes can produce Beethoven’s 5th the same as a spinning magnetic disk can. But a neither a wax cylinder nor a magnetic disk can produce a protein. Why?
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Perry says:June 4, 2011 at 11:19 pmWe can take data from anywhere stored in any medium and transfer it to your SD card in your phone. But for your cell phone to read it, it has to be on the SD card. We can take data from anywhere stored in any medium and transfer it to your DNA. But for your cells to read it, it has to be on the DNA. The two systems are isomorphic. In both situations, the data is read from the storage medium (SD Card/DNA), transcribed into a different digital format (electrical impulses/messenger RNA) and translated into yet another form (images or sound / amino acids). This is the very definition of digital communication. DNA transcription and translation is digital communication. Read Yockey’s book and he will set you straight on this matter. Craig Venter produced a quasi-synthetic cell by arranging genes on a computer, then producing a strand of DNA with the desired pattern, then implanting it into a cell. Yes Jason, he most certainly did transcribe the original code to a new storage medium – a hard drive. You said, “I am talking about taking those bits from the magnetic drive, transcribing them onto an optical disk and still getting the exact same output. With digital code, i.e. every “intelligently created” code in existence, the medium is entirely irrelevant.” That is false. In every specific instance of any specific system, the medium is crucial. CD players don’t play floppy disks. Your cell phone doesn’t read data from magnetic drives, it reads SD cards. If we translate the code, we can store the instructions on any medium. That’s why it’s meaningful and accurate to use English to say “In DNA translation, GGG codes for Glycine.” Jason, if you think you can counter my syllogism by arguing that DNA is not a code, or that cells don’t employ digital communication, then you have failed to understand the very definition of “bioinformatics.” I suggest you look it up in a science dictionary, or consult one of the many journals.
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Perry says:June 6, 2011 at 7:20 amJason, something I would like to add: I don’t know your story. You’re welcome to tell it if you want. My experience based on 15 years of conversations with hard-core atheists, both in person and online, is that for the most part they are *very* spiritual people who experienced a profound disappointment with God. Perhaps an unanswered prayer or a deep loss. They came to a point where they felt duped, exposed, ashamed, foolish for ever seeking or believing such a “silly childish thing” as a God who loves them. At some point they abandoned their belief, realizing that entirely natural explanations for everything are possible, that the human mind tricks itself by assigning purpose to things that have no purpose. They trade their former hope in God for “tough guy” rationalization that shit happens and they’re now finally man enough to accept it. The problem with this approach is that you now have to dismiss anything that smacks of ultimate purpose in the universe. Which means that anything in science which suggests ultimate purpose in the universe – including any sort of teleology – has to be rejected before being examined. To examine such evidence is to put one’s atheism in peril. Which means re-evaluating, again, a carefully constructed worldview. CS Lewis was an Oxford professor, an atheist for many years who became a Christian later in life. He said, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” The other problem with this approach is deep down they’re still angry. Angry at themselves for wanting something they can never, ever have; and angry at religious people for happily deluding themselves into thinking they have an Imaginary Friend. Angry that the world is seething with religion and irrationalism. My friend Richard Morgan was a card-carrying atheist and rabid Richard Dawkins fan for 25 years. At one point someone asked him what it would take for him to believe in God. As he began to ponder that question, the Holy Spirit came to him with a scripture: “We love Him because He first loved us.” It was at that moment that the lights turned on and a black and white world changed to color in an instant. Jason, I pray the same for you. You can read Richard’s story at http://www.christianpost.com/news/former-dawkins-atheist-richard-morgan-continues-to-praise-god-49558/
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Landothedead says:February 18, 2011 at 4:56 pmI don’t know. I’ll leave that for linguists to worry about, but William Dempsky has been trying to find “CSI” in life for years and failed. Maybe he’ll succeed tomorrow, I don’t know. But in the absence of compelling evidence I’m going to accept the null hypothesis; we haven’t come into contact with aliens, life was not designed and god is not part of science. What exactly you do with god is up to you, but he stays out of science. Are we done here? Because your arguments just completely fell apart earlier this morning. If so, good luck in the future.Reply
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Landothedead says:February 21, 2011 at 7:32 pm1 down, 3 to go. Although: “In all communication systems it is possible to label the encoder, the message and the decoder and determine the rules of the code.” http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/faq/ You’re labeling this a communication system and then assuming the presence of the encoder which then indicates to you that this is a communication system. Keep elephanting those cats. If any new commenters are reading this, I’ve summarized most of the arguments here to prevent repeat posting. I’m sure no one likes reading over the same technical stuff again and again. The simplified and overly sarcastic article is here: http://www.thinkatheist.com/forum/attachment/download?id=1982180%3AUploadedFi58%3A534706Reply
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Perry says:February 21, 2011 at 7:43 pmAu contraire, Landothedead. You don’t read things very carefully, do you? The encoder is the transcription of DNA, the code is messenger RNA and the decoder is the translation from mRNA to proteins (Yockey, 2005.) No encoder is assumed here. Yockey’s diagram is reproduced on http://cosmicfingerprints.com/dnanotcode.htmReply
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Richard Morgan says:February 22, 2011 at 12:37 amLandothdead : I checked out your “simplified and overly sarcastic article “. After mocking Perry Marshall’s incompetence as a philosopher (he’s never claimed to be a philosopher but, hey-ho, anything goes when you want to insult and vilify someone, right?), you makes this interesting confession : “This is called a Reductio Ad Absurdum, or the reduction to the absurd. Normally they’re not considered to be good arguments, but I like to play around with it to see what results I can get. The object is to take a line of reasoning far beyond its breaking point, into the realm of the crazy.” So someone we’re supposed to take seriously, admits that he “likes to play around” with arguments that are normally not considered to be “good” and push them into the “realm of the crazy”. Well, OK. If the “realm of the crazy” is where you feel at home – enjoy yourself, pal. Come back to our discussion when when you’ve got a handle on the “realm of the sane”. Not offence intended, but Perry and I call “not good arguments” – bad arguments : we don’t employ them, neither do we play with them. That said, you must admit that it’s pretty telling that the best you can do to invalidate Perry Marshall’s arguments is to resort to intellectually masturbatory (you’re alone in your pleasure) flights of fancy. Yep – you said it : “simplified and overly sarcastic”.Reply
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Landothedead says:March 2, 2011 at 8:16 pmThank you for your constructive criticism of my summary of the arguments listed here. I have made a couple of corrections based on your suggestions. You can find the latest version at: http://noxpopuli.blogspot.com/p/profiles-in-crazy.htmlReply
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Ralphie says:March 1, 2011 at 5:39 pmIs this a joke? All of the things you said “If the universe is logical, it has an outside cause.”, There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove, you don’t realize you’re using the analogy on the real world in a way its not supposed to go. There is no circle around the universe! The circle was an analogy. THERE IS NO CIRCLE AROUND THE UNIVERSE! Ninety percent of what you said on this thing was based of an imaginary boundary in the universe. You would have to first PROVE that the boundary was there. and you can’t do that, Because of this Theorem.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 1:36 amEinstein’s space-time theorems indicate that even space itself is finite. Everything we know indicates that the universe is limited in size and mass and even space itself has an outer boundary.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 2, 2011 at 5:24 amRalphie, I understand your irritation, but please forgive me for saying that it is more due to your underestimation of Perry’s intelligence than any flaws in his reasoning. Nobody has ever said that the Universe is actually round. Nobody has said that if you get on your bike and pedal for a very long time, one day you will hit a point with a sign saying, “The Universe stops here.” You have reacted the way you did on account of a conceptual problem – the human mind simply can not conceive of “non-existence”, but that doesn’t prevent us from being aware of the difference between “existence” and “non-existence”. It is simply a useful analogy to talk about the limits as a “circle”, it conveniently helps us to distinguish categories. In certain forms of schizophrenia, the individual has great difficulties in sensing where his own body “stops” and another person’s “begins”, which is why he finds physical contact so invasive and terrifying. The new born baby learns this process in the first months of life – where he “stops” and his mother “begins”. If you accept the idea of Planck units (which, apparently, not everybody does) then you accept that there is a finite number of these units that could theoretically be “counted” in the universe. (Though it would take even longer than waiting for the plumber to arrive!). Sure, even Planck units are based on that which is observable and measurable by the human mind, and any metaphorical “circle” should be considered as unstable in that it could be ever-growing. The Bible, Christianity and Perry Marshall (in that order)are not saying anything different, pal. I would have thought that we would all take it as given that the “circle” is a conceptual device and, yes, an analogy. But such analogies are essential for useful conceptualization and, more importantly, verbal communication. So take it easy, loosen up a bit, accept the inadequacies of analogy-based language, and let’s all move on together, ok? Bing Crosby understood the difficulties of distinguishing between “blue” and “gold” when he sang: “Where the blue of the night Meets the gold of the day Someone waits for me” Nobody can draw a line where the blue of the night sky actually becomes gold under the influence of the rising sun, but that’s the way we talk. Or sing. You and I can communicate because of the differentiation between “you” and “I”. We can, and do, differentiate between “known” and “unknown”, “existence” and “non-existence” and Gödel keeps us humble and hopeful. There. I hope you feel better now.Reply
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David Johnson says:March 2, 2011 at 5:05 amI confess I haven’t read through all the comments but this article feels a little misleading. At no point did mathematicians expect to be able to prove their self-evident truths (axioms) using the results based on those truths. This is a clear case of circular reasoning. Rather Godel showed that there would always be propositions which cold be stated using an axiom system which could neither be proved nor disproved within that system. No mathematician would ever describe these results as “obviously true” since proof can be the only method for deciding this, and adding these results as further axioms would only lead to more unprovable statements. This is a far more subtle problem and is very far reaching. In short it means that no mathematical system can be taken to its ultimate logical conclusions. I find it odd that this appears as a religious article I must say. I think some of the conclusions drawn from this by you and some commentators are speculative in the extreme.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 5:33 pmAre you saying Euclid’s 5 postulates are not obviously true?Reply
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Fabian says:March 2, 2011 at 7:49 am# All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. # Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being. Thats wrong. A few lines above that, you mentioned the genetic code as a sort of information. The genetic code evolved. It’s information without any conscious being behind it. Naturalism is wrong? So, something, that isn’t part of the nature does affect it? The sun is part of the nature in a way, the stars are also. But the spaces in the universe, which are that far away, that they can’t be seen, yet (because the light hasn’t reached, yet). Have they really ever influenced the world? – Sorry, that I prove you wrong, but you are… If a councious beeing a “god” (thats an allegorie for that) would really existed, it would be a part of the universe. And nature hasn’t been created by an intelligent, reasonal, logical, concious being, so it is a infomation, created by accident. (intelligent design etc excluded)Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 7:56 amI rather enjoyed your explanation of Godel’s theorem, up until you tried to use it to prove God. If information is not an inherent part of the universe, then how can the universe be mathematical? What makes you think that in order for a genetic code to exist, it had to be intelligently designed? The Miller/Urey experiments show that amino acids can spontaneously be formed, and from there, those acids can form proteins, and the basics of life. I don’t understand how you think that DNA couldn’t have just happened, like all the countless other things in our universe. It’s like hydrogen and oxygen bonding to make water, having a genetic structure just makes sense, if life were to exist, it would have to have some way of carrying the information that makes it. The sugars in DNA just happened to fit together in a particular way that they could store information if ordered in a certain way. You have to understand that in an infinite universe, everything is possible. An infinite series of random factors could have just created the first strand of DNA. Nothing I’ve ever seen implies that there has to be a conscious being outside of the universe, I don’t know where you could have gotten that assumption.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 5:16 pmYou seem to think that codes come from chemistry. It’s an understandable misconception. It’s like saying that hard drives spontaneously produce software. Please show me one experiment that shows this is true. The criteria is at http://www.naturalcode.org.Reply
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Landothedead says:March 2, 2011 at 8:19 pm1. All elephants that we know of are mammals that have four legs, tails and long trunks. 2. This cat is a mammal, has four legs and a tail. 3. Therefore this cat is an elephant. 4. Therefore this cat has a long trunk. Sweet logic my friend.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 2, 2011 at 5:21 pmRexxar : “The sugars in DNA just happened to fit together in a particular way that they could store information if ordered in a certain way.” In a way it’s rather endearing to see that “it-just-happened” theories are still alive and well. In the same category as the “God-did-it” explanations. Kipling became famous with his “Just so” stories. Maybe you can find a market for your “Just happened” theory. It’s worth thinking about. However you got one thing right : “You have to understand that in an infinite universe, everything is possible.” Including God. Glad to see you have acknowledged that, pal.Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 7:20 pmIt’s been a few years since I’ve studied biology, and I’m not sure how DNA is thought to have originated, but my explanation made the most sense to me. Much of what we observe can be attributed to the random nature of the universe. I’m of the opinion that nothing is impossible, there’s just such abysmally small probabilities of ‘impossible’ things happening, that we tend to round to 0, and say it will never happen. Pigs very well may sprout wings tomorrow and fly off, even though common sense says they shouldn’t. Welcome to the chaotic universe.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 8:05 pm“Much of what we observe can be attributed to the random nature of the universe.” That is an explicitly anti scientific statement. The scientific method is predicated on the exact opposite: Much of what we observe can be attributed to the orderly systematic nature of the universe.” I am sorry that they taught you randomness in biology. Your professors didn’t do their job.Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 2, 2011 at 3:08 pmGödel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves that there cannot be a God. You wrote: “If you know Gödel’s theorem, you know that all logical systems must rely on something outside the system. So according to Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem, the Infidels cannot be correct.” I’m sorry, what it really means is that according to Gödel’s theorem, the concept of a God cannot be logical! Here’s the “short” reason: The existence of a god cannot be explained except by something “outside” itself which we must assume to be true but cannot prove. Whoops! Either Gödel’s theorem is false, or God requires something outside itself for which its existence depends. Is this not perfectly consistent with Gödel’s theorem? If you start with the assumption that a god exists “outside” of the material world, and then subject it to Gödel’s theorem, then it is the material world that is the “outside” of god which is required to explain the god upon which its existence depends. (Unless there is a “nother” outside outside, all of which destroys the idea that a god is the final ‘outside’.) You have simply arbitrarily exempted God from the theorem. Notes: /The “circle” is a metaphor which means: We cannot define the “thing” inside the circle without ultimately relying on something outside the circle, assumed to be true, upon which the thing inside the circle “depends” for its existence./ Agreed? You wrote: “You can always draw a bigger circle but there will still be something outside the circle.” (note: there will still be something “outside” the circle.) — Here is a major flaw in your reasoning: You wrote: “Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle [we] possibly can – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too): * There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove” — Error! if there HAS to be something outside that circle… then we in fact did NOT draw the biggest circle! In fact, you inputted a common logical fallacy at this point called “god of the gaps.” Here is the correction to your error: The biggest circle we can possibly draw is the circle around ALL THAT EXISTS. The ONLY circle, at that point, that can be conceived larger (again, metaphorically), is in fact ALL THAT DOES *NOT* EXIST. (Can you see intuitively how the sum of all that does not exist must inherently be greater than the sum of all that does? All that does not exist is inherently infinite, because once we conceive it we can subtract it from the pool of nonexistence and still never diminish the pool.) Good Sir, I’m afraid you’re confusing a metaphor (God) with an actual thing; but no matter. If God were an actual “thing,” a circle can be drawn around it. For example, what specifically is a God? Love? A Being? An omnipotent, omniscient spirit? A primal cause? Notice all these descriptions “depend” on other things for their meaning (a circle can be drawn around them). We can draw a circle around “Love” because it depends for its meaning, on other things “outside” of love, (i.e., emotion). Same for “God,” (i.e., omni-this or omni-that). Both are concepts, or ideas, still within the realm of “things.” The circle around ALL THINGS, by definition, includes everything. To leave out “god” on purpose is intellectually dishonest, though I do not think you are doing it on purpose. Your concept of a god is that it actually ‘does’ fall outside of every thing. The problem is that this would make it non-existent ‘by definition.’ Long story short: if a god exists, a circle can be drawn around it. According to Gödel, with which you agree: If God exists, it cannot explain itself except by something outside itself which we must assume to be true but cannot prove. That there is something outside of God, upon which God depends for its existence, annihilates the concept of God itself (having been the product of something else). === I conclude that Gödel’s theorem proves that a god (outside of which there is nothing) cannot exist. AcesLuckyReply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 5:20 pmDo you know the difference between something and nothing? It sounds like you think you can count nothings. I have addressed all your other objections multiple times here in the comments.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 2, 2011 at 5:45 pmAces etc : “Long story short: if a god exists, a circle can be drawn around it.” The truth is somewhat simpler : if a circle can be drawn around it, it ain’t God. You have simply defined God out of existence. Well, no, actually, because you have said nothing about God. You have just highlighted the limitations of mental constructs. It’s a sort of “I can’t imagine it, therefore it doesn’t exist” kind of argument. “There are more things in heaven and earth, AcesLucky, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (My apologies to Shakespeare)Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 6:55 pmOk. Here’s a thought. A program is simply a string of bits, information encoded in binary, right? When a person looks at the raw binary, it’s very difficult to notice there’s a pattern unless you’re actually looking for it. Now, I have this program, it’s really simple, really, all it does is output every possible permutation of a string of 800,000 bits, or 800KB. Given enough space, and enough time, this program will eventually output a text file containing the cure to cancer, your commenter thumbnail, -anything- that can fit into 800KB. I did not create these files, they emerged from randomness.Reply
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Perry says:March 2, 2011 at 8:12 pmShow me 1 communication system that came from randomness. None of your examples do.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 3, 2011 at 1:27 amRexxar : “Given enough space, and enough time, this program will eventually output a text file containing the cure to cancer,…” How do you know? Or is this just another bald assertion, identical to the much-criticized “God-did-it” argument? PS I didn’t construct this post – it just happened. We’ve reached that point in infinite time and space where it was bound to happen. If you don’t believe that statement, prove it wrong.Reply
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Rexxar says:March 2, 2011 at 8:07 pmPerry, you’ve said several times here that the universe cannot be infinitely old because of entropy. Forgive me for being naïve, but I’ve never really understood entropy. As I understand, entropy states that all the energy in the universe must dwindle to zero, right? It seems to me that unless you throw out thermodynamics, this means that all the energy is now matter. All that matter must be affected by gravity, and be attracted to a central point, resulting in a ‘big crunch’ that would lead to a big bang. I’m not trying to make a point here, simply trying to understand.Reply
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Perry says:March 3, 2011 at 2:37 amNo, entropy means that energy goes from usable to unusable forms. The reason that gas inside the piston of your car can do work is it’s heated up to 1000 degrees. Since it’s only 70 degrees outside, you can do work with the difference. But once the piston cranks and the pressure exits out of the exhaust pipe, the exhaust cools to 70 degrees and will not push a piston anymore. Even though there is still energy in those 70 degree air molecules. Entropy is the fact that energy always flows that way and never in reverse.Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 2, 2011 at 9:20 pm@Richard You wrote: “You have simply defined God out of existence.” Not I. This is what it appears Perry is using as the definition of a god (can’t draw a circle around it). Two things wrong with this: 1. how is it that the concept of a “thing” around which a circle cannot be drawn equals a god? (it’s a god of the gaps argument) 2. if a “thing” has existence it requires (according to Godel’s theorem) that there exist something else outside that thing to which it owes its own existence. Perry has simply arbitrarily created a God, and then removed it from these requirements. Nothing more. I repeat: The circle around ALL THINGS, by definition, includes everything. To define a Being that exists “outside” of ALL THINGS is simply dishonest, as it is itself a thing. — You wrote: “Well, no, actually, because you have said nothing about God.” That’s right, I have not assumed one, Perry has. —Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 2, 2011 at 10:20 pm@ Perry You wrote: “I have addressed all your other objections multiple times here in the comments.” A few date references might be in order. In the mean time, as best I can tell… 1. You have asserted that you can define something outside the Universe by calling it a god. This is a fallacious argument. God is not defined by “all things outside of the Universe.” You’re attempting to form-fit a god to be excluded from the theorem. 2. You are also asserting that something exists outside of Gödel’s theorem and labeling it “God”. To suggest that Gödel’s theorem does not apply to a God is to assume a). that there is a God, and b). that (without merit) Gödel’s theorem fails upon finding a one. Why? Isn’t a god also a “thing”? 3. I am sorry, but you are simply asserting a God of the Gaps argument. Even if something DOES exist outside of the universe, you have no knowledge by which to call it a god. 4. And finally, to insist that something exists outside of the Universe (according to Gödel’s theorem) is moot. Because the question is not about everything in the UNIVERSE, but about EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS! And if a god exists, it includes Him.Reply
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Perry says:March 3, 2011 at 2:34 am1. My actual words, in the article: # Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it. # If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not matter, is not energy, is not space and is not time. It’s immaterial. # Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system – i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible. # Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect. Notice I never said “All things outside the universe.” You continue to misquote me. Before you continue to reply, please read the original article. 2. God is not physical, God is not a system, and God is not finite. God is not a “thing.” 3. This is not about a gap. It’s about causality. Do you believe in cause and effect or not? 4. You haven’t read.Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 3, 2011 at 7:14 am@ Perry, You wrote: # “Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it.” I agree. You wrote: # “If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem,…” Error! Why the limit of matter, energy, space and time? This is arbitrary and exclusive. Herein lies the dishonesty. You are attempting to define a “something” by separating from it all things you don’t want this “something” to be a part of, so you can then label what’s left “a god!” This is shameful. But even if such a concoction had existence, it goes INSIDE the circle of all that exists, because the LARGEST circle goes around ALL THAT EXISTS, not just the things you arbitrarily pick. — You wrote: “Notice I never said “All things outside the universe.” You continue to misquote me. Before you continue to reply, please read the original article.” My good Sir, On May 11, 2010 you responded to Greg and said: “That which is outside of space and time is infinite. And indivisible. I believe that everything I stated in my article is entirely logical, and that which logic tells us has to be outside the universe bears a striking resemblance to God.” But let us no longer focus on irrelevant diversions. There is only ONE thing that matters. The set of EXISTENCE is the largest circle. Would a god belong inside of it, or outside?Reply
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Perry says:March 3, 2011 at 10:19 amWhy limit matter, energy, space and time? Because we know empirically that all of these things have limits, that’s why. It’s not arbitrary and exclusive, it’s factual. I said “Anything you can draw a circle around….” There is categorically only one sort of thing that you cannot draw a circle around. You cannot draw a circle around something that is infinite. So if existence is infinite and God exists then God meets the criteria of something that does not require something else for its explanation.Reply
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Joseph Dowdy says:March 3, 2011 at 11:02 amI think this brings a good point in the logic… Can you draw a circle around something that is defined (or finite)? “If existence is infinite” is an odd proposal because existence (human existence) can be defined and so it is not infinite. Human existence has limitations. Existence (with a capital E) is supernatural and outside of existence (with a little e). It’s pretty safe that so that we are talking about two different domains here, but I’m not so sure you can apply math (a human invention) to nature in a way that makes the reality supernatural. In other words, human measurement (and the mathematics the goes with it) can’t be useful beyond what can be measured. Just saying, “Well you can just add another one inch or draw a circle around it.” is insufficient to describe anything in real terms. You are engaging in measuring rather than mathematics. In the same light, you can’t take this idea of drawing a circle around the biggest circle and declaring that to be anything but a bigger circle. The number 3 is an idea. The number is not reality. A description of reality is not reality. A description of reality is not reality and using an idea to draw a bigger circle is not reality. There is simply no reality to this idea to draw a bigger circle; it’s just an idea. You can’t do it so it doesn’t prove anything except that maybe you can get an a-ha out of it. Is this a mental exercise for pleasure or are you actually trying to prove something that you know that you can’t prove and what’s the difference?Reply
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Perry says:April 23, 2011 at 8:42 amExistence vs existence is an important distinction. This question comes down to the NLP concept of the difference between the territory and the map. Two different things. That said, you seem now and have always seemed confused about this. For example you say “You are engaging in measuring rather than mathematics.” I acknowledge there is a difference but in science the two always match if you are doing things right. 3+2=5 in both math and in measurement. At the end of the day mathematics inevitably infers that the source of the universe and the ultimate axiom everything rests on is infinite. At the end of the day, math and logic demand something bigger than math OR logic themselves as a source of everything. How many ways can I say, “Math proves it can’t explain its own self, it requires something on the outside that is boundless”? Joseph, I fail to see what is so hard to grasp about this.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 3, 2011 at 11:39 amAcesLucky : When I read : “Why the limit of matter, energy, space and time? This is arbitrary and exclusive.” it almost sounded like you had a valid point, but since the probabilities of this happening are vanishingly small, I decided to look at it a little more closely. Once again it’s a problem of language. You seem to think (and you are not alone) that as soon you/we put a word/label on “something” it becomes “some thing” which has a “thinginess” existence, and must therefore come within the circle of the “set of EXISTENCE”. (This is called artificial reification.) It is no coincidence that “matter, energy, time and space” are things that we are able to conceptualize, observe and measure. I have a concept (a mental construct) of a distance of 100 yards. I have a less clear concept of 100 miles. I have real problems with conceiving 6,000 miles, but I can get round it by imagining an uncomfortable, 11-hour flight from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. I personally find it quite impossible to form a structured concept of a distance of 100 light years, but by extension of my concept of 100 miles (a “distance”) I can still talk about it. Now, for those who have not noticed it, my brain is limited but infinity is not. “Infinity” can never be more than a word for me. It is literally inconceivable. Infinity, eternity, the time it takes to find a plumber who will fix my tap, these can not be captured or modelled by the limited capacities of my mind. Putting a name on something does not magic it into becoming a member of the The Largest Circle Club. The largest circle goes firmly around anything that can be defined as “matter, energy, time and space.” Eternity and infinity are part of the impossible definition of God. That is something that was understood by (revealed to?) “ignorant, Bronze-age goat-herders” a long time ago. In his way, Perry is strictly correct. The circle encircles the “encirclable”. The rest is semantic silliness. It sounds valid – but not for long.Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 3, 2011 at 3:56 pm@ Perry You wrote: “Why limit matter, energy, space and time? Because we know empirically that all of these things have limits, that’s why. It’s not arbitrary and exclusive, it’s factual.” I’m not asking “Why limit matter, energy, space and time” I’m asking “Why THE limit of matter, energy, space and time?” — as your selection of things inside the circle? I don’t care if each are limited or limitless, factual or conceptual. The point is that YOU got to choose what goes in the circle (the limit) in order to tailor what stays out — thereby crafting your idea of a god. This is dishonest. You either take the set of all that exists or admit that you do not have the largest circle. (You have yet to address this most important point!) Since you clearly do not have the largest circle, your comment “Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless..” remains inapplicable to your example, thereby making your selection moot. But let us no longer focus on irrelevant diversions. There is only ONE thing that matters. The set of EXISTENCE is the largest circle. Would a god belong inside of it, or outside?Reply
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Perry says:March 3, 2011 at 7:27 pmI can just as well include “dimension x” or “entity x” that we have no knowledge of. I can include alternate universes and whatever else. But if it’s finite, it’s contingent on something on the outside. That’s what Gödel’s theorem says. In order to avoid an infinite regression we cannot avoid the conclusion that the something on the outside is itself infinite and indivisible. Existence: existence with a lower case e describes what is inside the circle. Which necessitates that what’s outside the circle is Existence with a capital E.Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 3, 2011 at 4:40 pm@ Richard Getting to the crux of all that you wrote: “The largest circle goes firmly around anything that can be defined as “matter, energy, time and space.” I am sorry, but this is capricious and slightly arrogant. Might there be more perfectly natural dimensions part of the MEST system that we just do not perceive? The Largest Circle Club consists of all that exists, not all that we perceive to exist as limited by our perceptions in MES&T. The Largest Circle is the set of ALL THAT EXISTS; such a definition is clean, precise, and honest.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:March 4, 2011 at 12:01 amAcesLucky : Today will be remembered as a very special day in the history of this thread. I earlier remarked that the probabilities of your making a valid point were vanishingly small. In spite of the odds being stacked against you, today you have, actually made a valid point: “this is capricious and slightly arrogant.” I fully recognise this as an accurate description of my style of commenting, so, congratulations. Alas, it doesn’t make the rest of your points valid, as Perry has demonstrated. You ask : “Might there be more perfectly natural dimensions part of the MEST system that we just do not perceive?” Well, since I only have five senses, I am humble enough to admit that there could be a whole pile of stuff that I can’t perceive. As I have published elsewhere, if one day I find myself on a planet where everyone has ten senses, then at the very best, I’m only going to have half as much fun as everybody else at the party. And, yes, all that other stuff will be square dancing in the circle. Oops – Circle. But you are still letting yourself become ensnared by the trap of artificial reification (also known as linguistic cognitive gap-filling). As Christians, we have but a paltry and tenuous notion of God the Infinite, the Eternal, the Uncaused First Cause, but what we do have changes everything, I can promise you. And you’ll never get a circle around God’s love. Since a circle is a human concept, by definition God is outside that circle. Perry is far from being perfect (ask his wife!) but his verbal construct “existence” as opposed to “Existence” is refreshingly “clean, precise, and honest.”Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 4, 2011 at 8:55 am@ Perry You wrote: “I can just as well include “dimension x” or “entity x” that we have no knowledge of. I can include alternate universes and whatever else.” Why wouldn’t you? You did say in your article, “Now please consider what happens when we draw the BIGGEST CIRCLE [we] POSSIBLY CAN – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around ALL of them too)” Are you changing your mind now? I dare not admonish you to read your own article. So I’m just asking. You wrote: “Existence: existence with a lower case e describes what is inside the circle. Which necessitates that what’s outside the circle is Existence with a capital E.” Sorry. Now you’re just trying to salvage the gap by dividing existence into parts. The set of ALL THAT EXISTS remains the largest circle. Compartmentalize it into bite size morsels if you like, but the circle remains. This being the case, what is left outside ALL THAT EXISTS? Easy answer: all that does NOT exist. And wouldn’t you know it… you cannot draw a circle around that which does not exist! Son of gun. Gödel’s theorem stands! Because, you cannot explain “existence” (a form of ‘to be’) without at some point answering “as opposed to what?” God of the gaps, as usual, fails. Because, if you insist that such a being lies outside the largest circle… I would tend to agree. But then it wouldn’t exist, would it? AcesLuckyReply
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Perry says:March 4, 2011 at 10:51 amWhere did you get the idea that I changed my mind? Let’s go back to the formal language: Gödel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness. Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. (In other words, children can do math by counting their fingers, water flowing into a bucket does integration, and physical systems always give the right answer.) Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete. Syllogism: 1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system 3. Therefore the universe is incomplete You can substitute multiverse for universe if you want. There is a logical fallacy in your argument. You said: “Sorry. Now you’re just trying to salvage the gap by dividing existence into parts. The set of ALL THAT EXISTS remains the largest circle. Compartmentalize it into bite size morsels if you like, but the circle remains.” You don’t seem to understand that Gödel said that if a system is “effectively generated” and logical it’s incomplete. If it’s incomplete it depends on something else. You can draw a circle and proclaim that it encircles all that exists – and that there is nothing else – as long as you accept that what’s inside the circle is illogical. But if you believe in a logical universe, you necessarily believe in something infinite. There logically has to be something that you cannot draw a circle around. Are you willing to follow the evidence where it leads, or are you unconditionally committed to atheism?Reply
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AcesLucky says:March 4, 2011 at 4:13 pm@ Perry You write: Syllogism: 1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system 3. Therefore the universe is incomplete You can substitute multiverse for universe if you want. — Yeah, I don’t deny any of that. But then none of it addresses anything that I said. By the way, I’m glad you didn’t change your mind. You wrote: “You don’t seem to understand that Gödel said that if a system is “effectively generated” and logical it’s incomplete. If it’s incomplete it depends on something else.” So? The largest circle (the set of existence) is effectively generated and logical, AND incomplete, because it cannot explain itself without reference to the concept of “non existence” which, by the way, is outside itself. Like I said above, “you cannot explain “existence” (a form of ‘to be’) without at some point answering “as opposed to what?” Shiver me timbers…man. You write, “If it’s incomplete it depends on something else.” Hey Perry. It depends on something else outside the circle for its EXPLANATION!!!! As somebody noted before, you are confusing metaphor with literal. You wrote: “You can draw a circle and proclaim that it encircles all that exists – and that there is nothing else – as long as you accept that what’s inside the circle is illogical.” Nope. As long as you accept that what’s inside the circle is INCOMPLETE since it ultimately requires something outside the circle to explain it. You wrote: “But if you believe in a logical universe, you necessarily believe in something infinite.” Really??? Alright. (moot) You continue: “There logically has to be something that you cannot draw a circle around.” Can you draw a circle around that which doesn’t exist? I’m sorry, but… 1. you have failed at every turn to generate a “largest circle” by excluding arbitrary items to your liking in order to construct a god from leftovers. 2. you have failed to honestly answer if your constructed god would exist inside the largest circle or outside of it. 3. you have failed to acknowledge that ALL THAT EXISTS is the largest circle. 4. you have failed to acknowledge the “gap” filler in your argument that anything outside of ANY circle must therefore be a god. 5. you have asserted without merit that Gödel’s theorem, upon finding a god, suddenly doesn’t apply. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem proves that there cannot be a God as you describe, as such a god could not be explained without resorting to something outside of its own system for that explanation, or… as you admit, its existence would have to be illogical. I’m afraid those pesky Infidels are correct. Either Gödel’s theorem is false, or God requires something outside itself on which its explanation depends. I concur with Gödel.Reply
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Perry says:March 5, 2011 at 12:33 amYou have done a most amazing thing: You have somehow turned “nothing” into an axiom which “something” depends on. It’s as though you don’t know what nothing is. It’s as though you think nothing is really something! I refer you to the nearest dictionary. Modern geometry rests on the axiom of Euclid’s 5 postulates. And according to “AcesLucky” (yet another faceless anonymous atheist who, like “Jason Devlin” and “Landothedead” and so many others here, won’t even use his real name) the universe itself rests on the axiom of nothingness. Responding to your points: 1. Explain to me how you think you can draw a circle around something that is infinite. 2. I am surprised that I should have to explain this to you. Do you have a piece of paper? Draw a circle and imagine something infinite in its relationship to the circle. God is everywhere. God is both inside and outside the circle because God is boundless. 3. All that exists, that you can draw a circle around, is inside the largest circle. 4. I didn’t say it “must therefore be a god.” I pointed out that something that is infinite, immaterial and conscious sounds an awful lot like God. Does it not? 5. I have asserted that Gödel’s theorem ALWAYS applies. Stop twisting my words Overall, however, I have to salute you for faithfully adhering to the core principle of atheism, which is and has always been “Something for Nothing.” In Nebraska where I come from, “something for nothing” is a con.Reply
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Hi. says:March 23, 2011 at 10:37 amNeat article. The only thing that I’ve ever had a problem with was that if God is a logical system –if He weren’t, why would He want us to seek truth?–, wouldn’t that have made Him incomplete Himself? Of course, thanks to your article, I know that God is complete because He’s a single thing; singularity. Because logic and knowledge require a series of assumptions that need to be true, and all those assumptions will spawn off of a single one, we’re left with the only logically consistent model being monotheism. The statement that everything that exists must be in the circle that others have made… I’m not going to ask how they messed that one up: The truth is that things that can be PROVED are in the circle, not things that EXIST. Everything that exists is in a circle that can’t be drawn? If that’s the case then the theorem still applies, because it’s impossible to draw a circle that is infinite. So either a multiverse exists, or God. And because a multiverse would itself be illogical without God, the fudge-factor of fine-tuning undermines science. Atheism, as such, is dead to me. Thank you. (don’t respond to my message, I’m not going to reply back)Reply
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Michael says:April 26, 2011 at 4:05 amIt makes sense intuitively. Either a theory has to rely on external concepts, or else it is self-proving (uses circular reasoning) which is logically means that it holds no weight anyway.Reply
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Bob says:May 4, 2011 at 3:53 pmJust an observation, I’m a theist, but the way you use Goedel’s theorem to prove the existence of God is absolutely wrong. I could go into specifics, but I’m going to use a much broader argument. Goedel’s proof proves, as you yourself pointed out, that there is no way of completely proving the veracity and consistency of any given circle from “within” the circle itself (because any proof will have either contradictions or loopholes), and also then no possible way to prove the veracity and consistency of a larger circle from within a smaller circle within the larger circle. So there is absolutely no way to prove something outside the bounds of whichever “circle” you choose. In our case the circle is the entirety of the universe and all it’s existence. Which God exists outside of. Therefore, by Goedel’s incompleteness theorem, it is absolutely mathematically and logically impossible to prove the existence of God. Again, I’m a theist, but God is about faith. Sorry.Reply
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john says:May 4, 2011 at 5:43 pmWhy are we assuming the universe was created again? I’m pretty sure that I’ve never witnessed matter or time being created in the manner in which you make your analogy. You say you have come across a watch on a beach, this watch is very complex(it’s structure symbolizes a watch to us). However, A watch isn’t made so to speak, it’s sub-parts are just arranged and organized in such a way that it has become, what we call, a watch. It seems to me that the planets and stars have organized according to the laws and forces of physics. My questions is how these laws are enforced. What makes these laws apply to matter-energy, and space-time.Reply
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Perry says:May 4, 2011 at 8:29 pmYou don’t have to assume the universe was created. You can assume it’s illogical instead. But if the laws are enforced – and are consistent – then there necessarily has to be something outside the universe.Reply
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john says:May 6, 2011 at 12:02 amI don’t understand why I can assume it’s illogical. Doesn’t everything exist inside the universe, by definition?Reply
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Perry says:May 6, 2011 at 9:56 amAccording to Gödel’s definition, if the universe is logical, there has to be something outside of it. Read the formal syllogism on the right side of my blog article at the top.Reply
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brendon says:May 17, 2011 at 11:46 pmHere is a proof that logic and faith cannot coexist(it can also be seen as a proof that belief in God is illogical(in fact, it is probably a much stronger proof for the latter)): Proof: Assume logic and faith can coexist. Draw a circle around the universe. By Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, we cannot explain what is inside this circle without what is outside this circle. By your argument, faith is what is outside this circle that is essential to explain what is inside this circle. Extend the circle to include God and faith. Now, by Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, there must be something outside this circle that explains what is inside this circle. By your argument, faith is what is outside this circle that is essential to explain what is inside this circle. However, since we have reached a logical fallacy(circular logic, ie using faith to explain faith), and since by our assumption, logic and faith coexist, we have reached a contradiction. QED The reasoning behind this is that faith and reason together leads to a fallacy. In reality, logic and faith are both fallacious human constructs used to estimate the functioning of our universe. Here is another argument, if you don’t like my “proof”. Let logic and faith coexist. This means that faith can be examined with the scientific method. God and faith are both abstract concepts which have never been proven and have never been tested, but have never been disproved. Therefore, they are hypotheses. In contrast, mathematics is a tool which has been used countless times to explain many millenia of scientific occurrences with amazing degree of accuracy, and, like faith, it has never been disproved. Therefore, mathematics is a theory. So, even assuming logic and faith coexist, mathematics is still much more useful to us. Finally, I still do not see how logic cannot exist without faith. Maybe your definition of faith is much broader than my own, but I take it to imply belief in a creator. If it is the former case, then yes, you do need a certain amount of presumptuous belief in logical axioms. However, if you actually do mean it to imply the existence of God, then you are mistaken, as whether the universe was created by one being, created by many beings, or has simply always existed would yield the same logical axioms.Reply
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Perry says:May 18, 2011 at 12:42 amBrendon, It is clear from what you have written that you have not read my original article sufficiently to understand the core argument. I explained why you cannot draw a circle around God. You missed this major point. You also seem to have not understood the entire point Gödel’s theorem which says that all systems of logic rest on axioms which have to be assumed but cannot be proved. Yes, had you read what I had written here you would understand that my definition of faith is broader than your own. I suggest you read first, then offer your opinions. We don’t need more straw man arguments.Reply
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Jason Devlin says:June 4, 2011 at 5:43 pmPerry, “1. All the mainstream scientific literature I have ever found says the universe is finite. When you said the universe is expanding you contradicted your own statement that it is infinite. Please provide empirical support for your claim that the universe is infinite.” The academic consensus as to whether the nature of the universe can correctly be described as finte or infinite is currently undecided. There are some interesting proposals, all of which entail untested hypotheses, but the point is that we simply don’t have enough information to say anything with certainty one way or the other. Is the universe finite or infinite? We don’t know. One thing we can be certain about however, is that dressing things up in circles and making silly arguments isn’t a serious inquiry at all. It’s just more “God of the Gaps” reasoning with an authoritative name attached to it. Here is a brief interview with Professor Joseph Silk that I think will be a bit easier for you to understand: http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMR53T1VED_index_0_iv.html “2. I do not define the universe as the encompassment of all things material and immaterial. I define it as all observable matter, energy, space and time.” Then you are aren’t talking about the entire universe, you are only talking about the observable universe. By the way, where are we observing from anyway? From Earth? From somewhere in Andromeda? “3. You ask, “Why could time not be the ultimate controller, the 4th dimension that causes the universe to have orderly structure?” It’s not my job to disprove your conjectures. Perhaps you could describe why and how time could be the ultimate controller. I await your explanation.” I don’t know what The Thinker meant by “ultimate controller”, but it is your job if you want to defend your own argument, which is in itself nothing more than a silly conjecture. He was correct in pointing out that time is currently beyond our understanding, so it is rather presumptuous to try and neatly tuck it into one of your circles. “4. Please elaborate on Gödel’s mistakes.” It seemed to me that he was referring to Godel’s ontological proof. I’m sure you are perfectly capable of doing the homework yourself. I doubt you will find that necessary considering you’ve managed to elaborate on Godel’s own work to prove God’s existence in a manner that Godel himself managed to overlook. Who knew it was as simple as just drawing circles around stuff all along? “5. You said, “There is absolutely nothing else.” Prove it.” This was a pretty obvious one, I don’t know how you managed to completely misunderstand the context. He was defining the universe as everything that exists, thus there is nothing else. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure there can’t be anything else besides “everything”. “6. It’s rather telling that almost every atheist who debates me here is anonymous or operates under a pseudonym. What are y’all afraid of?” The vast, VAST majority of people who post in online message boards do so anonymously or under a pseudonym whenever they are allowed to do so. This is by FAR one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen you say, especially as the owner and admin of a website with an active comment thread. It’s a lot more telling that you actually thought you were making a point here.Reply
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Perry says:June 4, 2011 at 7:41 pm1. What do you mean, we don’t know? Joseph Silk says: “The expanding Universe theory says that the Universe could expand forever [that corresponds to a ‘flat’ Universe]. And that is probably the model of the Universe that we feel closest to now. But it could also be finite, because it could be that the Universe has a very large volume now, but finite, and that that volume will increase, so only in the infinite future will it actually be infinite.” According to him, in the infinite future it will be infinite. Since the infinite future is infinitely far away, it’s finite now and for all measurable points in the future. Thanks for the quote. And by the way, the torus he describes is also finite. 2. We can observe from anywhere in space as far as I’m concerned. Does your own definition of universe include or exclude metaphysical beings? 3. I think all of us understand more or less what time is. Einstein’s Spacetime theorems indicate that time began at the moment that space started expanding with the big bang. The point being that time is also finite. Thus if time is logical, it is contingent on something outside of itself. 4. Please explain, in your own words, what the problems are with Gödel’s ontological proof. 5. If the universe is everything that exists, and there is nothing else, then Gödel’s theorem says the universe is irrational. Thus overturning the underlying premise of science and mathematics. You can have it that way if you want it, but you forfeit your right to use logic from that point forward. 6. Most of the other people on my blog are not anonymous. Many of them give links to their websites. In all the debates I’ve engaged in on the Internet, such as http://www.infidels.org, my identity is plain. I have nothing to hide. Why don’t you use your real name?Reply
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Jason Devlin says:June 8, 2011 at 6:25 pm“1. What do you mean, we don’t know? Joseph Silk says:” You claimed that all of the “mainstream” academic literature says the universe is “finite”. The academic consensus is that WE DON’T KNOW whether the universe is finite or not. You intentionally left off the one sentence that preceded the quote you provided. You know, the one where the first thing Professor Silk says in response to the question as to whether the universe is finite or infinite is “We don’t know”. He then goes on to use examples of what COULD be the case, not what IS the case. He then goes on in the very next response to reiterate, “We do not know whether the universe is finite or not”. “Thanks for the quote. And by the way, the torus he describes is also finite.” You mean the one you stripped of it’s context and vomitted back out onto your comment thread without any regard for the context or meaning originally intended by the speaker? Perry, what you are doing right now, at least in my book, is exactly the same as flat-out lying. For example: Professor Silk presents the torus as one example of two distinct possibilities, neither of which we are certain about to any degree where we can reliably say one way or the other. He is only claiming that the torus is one possibility, and he is pretty clear in presenting both of these possibilities. Perry Marshall comes along and declares himself the victor, stating proudly that “the torus is also finite”, and intentionally neglects to mention that the torus was merely one possibility out of two uncertainties. He argues with intent to deceive, giving the false impression that Silk’s statements support Perry’s arguments when in fact, they do nothing of the sort. Would you consider Perry Marshall an honest person? I wouldn’t. It seems to me that Perry Marshall tossed honesty out the window a long time ago.Reply
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Perry says:June 8, 2011 at 6:57 pmSo Jason, Other than wild speculation and completely hypothetical conjecture on Mr. Silk’s part, where is the evidence that either the space or the time or the matter in the universe is anything other than finite? Do we have any inference to any specific mathematical models or physical measurements that indicate infinite size or scope? Please be specific. PerryReply
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Jason Devlin says:June 8, 2011 at 8:19 pm“Other than wild speculation and completely hypothetical conjecture on Mr. Silk’s part, where is the evidence that either the space or the time or the matter in the universe is anything other than finite?” Perry, it seems that you are somewhat confused: We are responding directly to your claim that all of the “mainstream” academic literature states the universe is finite. This claim is provably false. There isn’t a very large body of literature supporting this notion at all, because the academic consensus is that the jury is still out on this one. We simply don’t, and CAN’T know at this point in time. That was the point I was trying to illustrate by providing the link to the interview with Professor Silk. Whether or not you feel comfortable with “we don’t know”, or whether you actually agree with the literature is a separate issue. You claimed the literature supported the notion of a finite universe. It doesn’t, and you’re wrong. Secondly, Professor Silk was not speculating about anything. He was simply saying “we don’t know”, and using specific examples of what the universe COULD look like IF it were infinite or finite, he used examples of BOTH, and refrained from speculating either way. He said if very clearly and I don’t know why you have such a problem understanding this simple statement: We don’t know. Regardless of if you believe that saying one doesn’t know amounts to “wild speculation”, that doesn’t give you the liberty to strip quotes of their intended meaning and use them disingenuously to give the false impression that an authoritative source supports your position when it in actually doesn’t. That is LYING.
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Perry says:June 10, 2011 at 12:53 amJason, You’re invited to bring whatever evidence you have that the universe is infinite. All I’m asking you to do is back up whatever statements you make with verifiable data and logic. Perhaps I’ve missed something but I don’t see where Dr. Silk has done this. I only see that he has speculated that the universe might be infinite. I don’t see data to support this hypothesis. You have stated that it’s not possible for us to know whether the universe is finite or infinite. How do you know this? If the universe were infinite how would you know it? Maybe you’re unaware of the reasons for the Big Bang model and the failure of the Steady State model during the last 80 years. Yes, 100 years ago many scientists believed the universe was infinite and eternal. That view has been all but abandoned. Your statement that “the academic consensus is that the jury is still out” is false. The academic consensus is that: -Dozens of different types of data converge on an age of the universe of 13.7 billion years -An infinitely bouncing universe violates entropy -Space can only expand so far in 13.7 billion years -Only so much matter fits in that space -We have no ability to verify the existence of universes outside our own All that is very finite. I should have clarified what I meant when I said “mainstream scientific literature.” I didn’t mean articles where guys with PhD’s muse about what might be. I meant refereed journals. I encourage you to look for peer reviewed scientific papers that conclude that the universe is infinite. Please post a link to such papers and we can discuss the evidence they use to support that assertion. If I have lied about Dr. Silk please articulate what evidence he has presented that I am ignoring. You’ve said an awful lot of disingenuous things about me since this thread started. Not so long ago you were mocking me for saying that DNA had error correction mechanisms very similar to TCP/IP. You’ve attempted to tell me that DNA isn’t really a code. You’re advocating an infinite universe hypothesis, thus far with no indication of how this might be tested or even modeled. Are you sure that atheism is really helping you in this discussion? It seems to me that at every turn it has made you hostile to the actual facts of science. What are you fighting? What was done to you by religious people? When I was 13 my mom went bipolar – which was total bedlam in our house for a year and a half. My dad, who was a pastor, got demoted and publicly humiliated because his wife was “rebellious” and “out of control.” It was freakin’ ugly. The axe came down when my dad ‘crossed the line’ and took her to a psychiatrist. That whole saga did a lot of damage, as my therapist would happily assure you. It was totally wrong. But it doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. It just means that some people use religion to bully, demean and control other people. And just because some people abuse religion doesn’t mean you have to be the victim of it, or justify it, or anything of the sort. Spirituality is just like technology. It can be used for immense good or it can be used for pure evil. It gets used both ways. Scientists make vaccines and they also make atomic bombs. Christopher Hitchens in his crusade against religion is really no different from some Luddite who would have us believe that all scientists are evil.
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Jason Devlin says:June 8, 2011 at 8:39 pmI also found it outright hilarious that when you are allowed to take “artistic liberties” with an authoritative source, you confidently assert that a sloppily butchered quotation supports your argument and do nothing short of thumping your chest and declaring yourself the victor. When I point out that you’re blatantly lying, demand that you be honest and preserve the context of the speaker, all of the sudden you claim it’s nothing more than “wild speculation”. So here in one thread we’ve seen: 1. Perry makes a claim about “mainstream” literature that isn’t actually supported by the literature. 2. Perry is called out on the fallacious nature of this claim and provided with a reference to a source to show he is incorrect; academic literature, “mainstream” or otherwise, isn’t actually saying what Perry says it does. 3. Perry resorts to lying to avoid admitting he’s wrong about what the literature says. He sloppily selects quotations from the reference provided to purposefully give the false impression that the researcher being interviewed is saying something that he’s actually not. 4. I openly point out to Perry that the speaker is not saying what Perry is trying to give the impression he’s saying. 5. The source that Perry confidently (and fallaciously) cited as supporting his argument, and even thanked me for, is now all of the sudden “wildly speculating” when Perry is forced to actually be honest. This is all cartoonishly absurd.
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Ian says:June 5, 2011 at 2:53 pmThis is getting a bit ridiculous. Lots of people are throwing big words around and quoting both well-known and obscure references to try to defend or refute an argument which, either way, to prove or disprove its validity, involves some seemingly intensely convoluted, roundabout logic. I think we should get back to what Gödel originally said (which, I believe, is accurate if the quote in the article is): “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” First off, let’s drop the idea of circles. Gödel makes no mention of circles in his formal statement, and we shouldn’t introduce anything as an analog for anything unless there is a clear equivalence that we can rely on. Here’s the bike example again: according to Gödel, there is no mathematical formula that can describe the bike that is both consistent and complete. What does this mean? All we can really say goes along these lines: the observable validity of special and general relativity means we cannot hold indices of space and time absolute for all reference frames, so not all equations/formulas are guaranteed to accurately describe the bike’s dynamic behavior; additionally, we cannot apply statistical particle behavior to that bike as a whole, even though it is made up of innumerable quantum particles to which that system very consistently applies. We CAN have a nearly exact measurement of the bike’s momentum and position in any given frame, but not for any of the individual particals that it is made of, even though both exist in the same frame. That takes care of the first part, the incompatibility of two valid mathematical statements applied simultaneously, thus their incompleteness despite the consistency of each. The second part is a bit trickier: there first must be a concession by mathematicians everywhere that the whole of variable arithmetic is self-proving. Allow me to explain. We start with the identity axiom, x=x. Every formula in mathematics works only if this is true. If x is equal to two things at once in the same equation (e.g. x=2, x=3 –> 2=3), then the math breaks down, and indeed this can happen IF you do the math wrong. It can thus be said that because you work the math according to the rules (or at least according to consistent rules), that x always equals x, forever and ever, amen. This ought not be taken as absolute, however, because there could possibly come a day when something somewhere violates this axiom. The most likely explanation would be that somebody just did the math wrong, but we can’t totally rule out the variability of x either. What that situation might call for is a reinvention of the fundamental laws of mathematics that remains consistent with everything else for which x=x is a valid statement, a manipulation similar to Einstein’s laws of relativity: they agree with classical measurements taken at low velocities to such a high degree of accuracy that many truncating calculators won’t show a difference between the two systems, but at speeds near that of light, its predictions, though drastically different from Newton’s, are observably correct. This may not be an appropriate analog to use for direct argument, but hopefully it can show that we can alter our understanding of fundamental laws of nature if we need to. Alright, home stretch now. I won’t keep you much longer (congrats, though, if you’ve made it this far). I don’t know of any animal besides humans that has expressed or can express belief in God. Maybe some smarter species of apes, though I doubt it. I will go off on a limb and say that the idea of God is a human invention. We have the unique cognitive qualities that lead us alone to attempt to understand the world around us in its totality. The thirst for knowledge, it seems, tends to go hand in hand with the desire to have everything be complete. Take, for example, the desire many jilted lovers have for closure or many a card player’s refusal to use an incomplete deck (myself included), even that frustration we feel when we can’t for the life of us find that last jigsaw puzzle piece (guilty again). I’m not by any means saying this applies to every human individual, just that it does to enough of us to think that maybe this is a pretty significant trend. Is it possible that cave-dwellers long ago, frustrated with their inability to explain why the wind blows or why the sun rises and sets every day, invented an ad-hoc “creator” to fill in the gaps? We can’t prove it completely, but odds are that’s how it went down. Believing in God is strictly a matter of faith. We can neither prove nor disprove God’s existence, but certainly our ability or inability to draw a hypothetical circle around the known universe won’t get us any closer in that direction, plus it bears no relation that I can see to Gödel’s theorem. You can choose to believe in God or not, but we can’t say anything one way or the other unless we are told so explicitly. And even then, reality as we know it individually is only what we allow ourselves to experience. Do I believe in God? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. What my gut tells me about God is the only thing I feel I can trust, and that is to let others alone regardless of their beliefs (as long as they aren’t trying to harm me or others). Perry, I admire the work you have done in attempting to prove the existence of a creator; the problem I have, though, is that you have assumed too much and read too deeply into Gödel’s theorem, and I feel like we are all being dragged down the rabbit-hole. I have, on the other hand, learned a good deal thanks to you both about myself and about philosophy in general; for this I thank you. I feel like it’s about time for this discussion to come to an end, knowing that some things in life are just not for us to prove to everyone else. Thank you again for making it possible for me (and hopefully for everyone involved in this) to embark on such an amazing journey.Reply
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Perry says:June 6, 2011 at 5:01 pmIan, On the upper right side of this article at the top of the page is a beige box that deals with Gödel’s theorem via formal syllogism, showing that if the Church-Turing thesis is correct, the universe is incomplete. Invoking circles is not a requirement here. I still stand by my circles though, because Gödel’s theorem specifically refers to that which is “inside” the theory and “outside” the theory. There is an inside and an outside. So whether we use circles or 3 dimensional surfaces or N dimensions or whatever, there is a boundary, and Gödel’s theorem concerns the existence of something beyond it. My “draw a circle” around language is much easier for most people to grasp than Gödel’s abstract language and it’s still accurate. Yes, as you say, the roots of our current mathematical system could be pulled up by some new discovery. Just like in physics. For now, we’re pretty certain that x=x. My motto is: I can’t know everything for certain but I can follow the evidence where it leads. Everybody likes to make up a cave-dweller story out of thin air and say yeah, that’s probably how things went down. But it is still a made up story and it contradicts the stories that have been recorded and preserved. Prior to 1947, the oldest copies of the Old Testament were physically dated 1100AD. Skeptics assumed there’d been all kinds of liberties taken by scribes. Then the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and texts from 100BC turned out to be virtually identical. You can make up cave dweller stories if you want, but ancient people went to utterly extraordinary lengths to make sure you and the rest of their descendants knew that the God of Israel actively intervened – cloud by day, fire by night – and freed them from slavery in Egypt. I have not proven that God exists. What I have done is shown that IF we can trust mathematics as it is currently known, then you have two choices: 1-You can not believe in God, so long as you are willing to admit the universe is therefore irrational. The benefit of that view being that you get something for nothing. 2-You can take the existence of God as axiomatic, which gives you philosophical grounds for postulating a rational, logical, scientific, mathematical universe. You get to decide. Given the above, it shouldn’t be surprising that the modern science we know today was formulated in large part by theologians and that most of the early scientists considered their work to be an act of worship.Reply
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Ian says:June 6, 2011 at 6:33 pmOkay, dude, I’m Jewish and I don’t believe half the stuff that’s written in those documents. The sun standing still so that the Hebrews, with Joshua leading them, could win a battle? You realize what would have to happen for that to work, right? Literally, the earth would have to stop spinning (and then start spinning again the same as it had been), causing continents to loosen from their tectonic foundations, oceans to spill over and cover most of the planet’s land, and a whole lot of other stuff that would stem from the effect of jamming a pole in between the blades of a running industrial fan. I mean, if the universe were logical BECAUSE there is a God whose presence is attested to in those scriptures, then God’s own universe would have just violated its own laws. This stuff isn’t real. Yes, the writings are there and have been properly dated, but there is no proof outside of those documents that God came down and interacted with anyone, let alone held the sun still in the sky. It’s all allegory, meant only to teach us how to live good, virtuous lives, and all the cave scrolls really tell us is that those age-old lessons were just as pertinent then as they are now. Keep in mind that by 100 BCE, the Hebrews had been in Canaan for about a millennium (Solomon is estimated to have reigned around the year 1000 BCE), and so the REAL cool stuff that God supposedly did would still, even then, have been a distant memory. There was no way for them to confirm all the stories that had been passed down by word of mouth. We only hold onto those teachings now because they give our lives some kind of meaning apart from us. An interesting question, JUST a question. I’m not going to insist that the Bible/Torah is a political document, but isn’t it interesting how the soundest argument for its veracity is that God wrote it, and isn’t it even more interesting that the only reason we know God exists is because the Bible says so? It’s like saying, “I’m the best because I said so”. Not to bash my own people now, but isn’t having a strongly admired leader come down from a mountain holding alleged proof of God’s support for them a great way to win a crowd? It’s a really great feeling knowing you’re one of the chosen people…well, until you’re chosen to go to a gas chamber…but I digress. But really, if you’re about to go kick a few dozen tribes and clans out of the land they have inhabited for several generations, aren’t morale and gusto great things to have from everybody? So what if it takes forty years of wandering through a desert? That’s just to weed out the old and sick. We want our people young, fresh, and untainted by the demoralizing shackles of slavery. THAT’S how you take over a small strip of land in the Middle East, not with scud missiles. Now, given what we know about human evolution, plus the shadiness of the authorship of the Torah, the most LOGICAL hypothesis in this situation is that *Man created God*, not the other way around. Man saw things he could not possibly explain given his own knowledge and available resources, and so he theorized the existence of an outside entity. Looking back now, however, knowing what we know, we would laugh at someone who thought the success or failure of his harvest was the work of an opinionated god. The nature of the human mind is to explore the world and discover new things. Obviously, there will be times when we come upon things we don’t understand. Some will see the mechanism sooner than others, but ultimately we will push our way forward in our comprehension of the universe. About this something from nothing idea… I don’t actually agree with the hypothesized singularity-based origin of the universe. It has a distinct aftertaste of Einstein’s prediction of the failure of his theory of general relativity. There is something beyond that, something that Einstein’s equations don’t account for: the quantum world. See, according to classical/relativistic physics, the universe existed far in the past in a state of infinite density and infinitesimal volume. What that produces mathematically is the division of infinity by zero; in a logical universe, that’s not allowed. But what if that volume is not zero but some sphere whose diameter is a multiple of the smallest practically applicable unit of length (the Planck length)? The density and volume still should work out to provide the energy for the expansion of the universe as we have determined it, but even cooler than the elimination of a singularity is this: perhaps the “big bang” was not the beginning at all-perhaps it wasn’t even a bang. Imagine a previous universe collapsing in on itself and immediately re-expanding. Now imagine ours doing the same thing. And finally, imagine all matter and energy doing this forever-one big clump of everything oscillating in and out of stable equilibrium. It’s a crazy idea, granted, but it is logical, and if the universe is a logical place, then we should at least take a minute to consider an alternative to the HUGE white elephant problem that is a singularity at its beginning.Reply
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Perry says:June 7, 2011 at 7:42 amIan, I don’t have the ability to evaluate the Joshua story of the sun standing still. I fully understand that would require a suspension of the laws of physics. Miracles in some sense are understood to transcend normal laws, that’s why they’re called miracles. A violation of the normal pattern. There is nothing theologically inconsistent about God suspending or changing a normal law. Both Old and New Testaments report the resurrection of the dead. That is nothing more or less than a reversal of the laws of entropy. Many modern people scoff at this idea but if you do then I challenge you to study serious modern scholarship of Jesus’ resurrection. Good place to start: http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/what-we-know-about-jesus-and-the-resurrection/ Before you dismiss this, let me remind you that everybody who does not believe in God believes that life itself, the first cells, somehow magically self-assembled, or that through some laws of physics and chemistry that are utterly unknown at this time, spontaneously produced life. That’s belief in miracles, my friend, they just refuse to call it that. It’s a violation of every scientific principle that is actually known. Actually everyone believes in miracles, but only religious people are honest enough to call them that. I am not asking you to believe Torah or Bible merely because it asserts its authority. There are all kinds of external measures you can apply. In fact the fact that you would even say what you said indicates you have never investigated this for yourself. Consider: -If you assume a day is a period of time, and that the story is told as seen from the surface of the earth, Genesis 1 matches modern science *exactly.* No other ancient creation story can even begin to make such a claim. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/genesis1 -The Bible is extremely accurate historically and archaeologically. It’s got a better track record than any other historian or document in history. -Jesus and various aspects of his miraculous work are cited in a dozen extrabiblical sources. Good book: Jesus outside the New Testament by Voorst -The Jews are the ONLY civilization that is intact after 4000 years. Same language, same customs, same holidays, same religion. Every other ancient civilization is G-O-N-E. Ruins. Despite the fact that most of those other civilizations tried to destroy the Jews. Not only that, Jewish people (there’s only 15 million in the whole world) occupy the top 20% of every intellectual profession. Most extreme example of the 80/20 rule in action, ever. Illiteracy rate, nearly zero. In free countries, Jewish poverty rate is nearly zero. Israel has 7 million people yet has more venture capital than all of Europe combined and more companies on the Nasdaq than any other country besides the US. Do you really think this is the result of simply having “made up” a better story than everyone else? C’mon dude, open your eyes and look around. Not to mention the fact that Jesus, the most influential person in all human history, was Jewish. And that Paul, the most influential intellectual in human history, was Jewish. And by the way what’s the 2nd most enduring civilization in history? The Catholic church. Outlasted Rome and the Huns and the Egyptians and everyone else. The only reason it’s possible to stand here and ridicule their history, criticize them for the Galileo stories etc is because they’re still around. The history of both the Jews and the Christians is an open book. You can insult your ancestors if you want but the world has been more blessed by them and their culture than all others – by far. You should also study Biblical prophecy – utterly remarkable stuff. For example Isaiah described the crucifixion of Jesus with remarkable precision, 700 years before it happened. Daniel predicted the rise and fall of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires, in sequence, including remarkable details – in 550 BC. You, a guy who doesn’t believe in miracles, just got done telling me that the universe explodes and then collapses on itself in an endless cycle. Ian, don’t you know about entropy? Don’t you know that IF the universe collapses upon itself all its energy will be spent and it doesn’t have enough to explode again? Entropy alone proves that the universe has finite history, that there’s an elephant in the room. Ian, you have simply traded one set of miracles for another. And the miracles you have chosen to believe in have less to commend them than the ones I believe in. By the way I’ve written a chronicle of my personal investigation of miracles over the last 10 years with extensive documentation – see http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles/ Here’s my challenge to you: If the issue for you is historical, scientific or philosophical credibility, then I encourage you to study these things in depth. Read the very best scholars who disagree with you, understand their data and their arguments and make a fair assessment. If the issue for you is your personal experience, then I ask you to invite God, in whatever form or manner He might choose, to show up in your life and make Himself personally known to you. And I ask Him to do the same.Reply
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Ian says:June 8, 2011 at 7:51 pmI’ve just about had it. I can respect others’ belief in God (or lack thereof), but it seems wrong to me to try to use a mathematical proof to force an admission that God is real. People believe in God because they find that it has some meaning for them in their own lives. People can experience grace, have visions, or go through something/have an attribute that leads to faith in a creator, but they do it without being beaten in debate, and they do it at their own pace. I swear, Perry, if you have converted anyone via this thread, it is a tainted victory for you, and I will take this conviction with me to the grave. Using logic the way you have as a foundation for the exact opposite (assumption of something that cannot be directly observed) is a cheap shot that relies on the iconoclastic doubt typical of a scientifically motivated mind, an underhanded tactic whose sole purpose, it would appear, is to force a victory for the church by adding more saved souls. Please, for the love of all that is sacred, stop doing this. Perry, you are entitled to your beliefs, but when you want to talk about science, leave God at church. The debate you attract with your article and subsequent posts invites discussion that revolves heavily around science and logic. If you want to have a theological seminar, then talk about scripture and ethics and such. Tell us about your interpretation of holy writings without firing up a debate involving empirical research and speculation. I would gladly tune in, but right now I have a hard time tolerating your attempts to make people see things your way in an area where the whole point is that we all see it differently.Reply
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Perry says:June 10, 2011 at 1:02 amMight it really be possible to demonstrate the necessity of God through reason and logic? Some of the greatest philosophers in history have taken this position. So then why should it be so surprising to find out that the prevailing view of the 20th century – which says religion and science must not speak to each other – has turned out to be wrong all along? I understand that these conclusions seem radical and worrisome, to the point where you’re ready to proclaim that you will resist them to your grave. Ian, why approach this with fear? I’m not ramming Judaism or the Catholic Church or any particular institution down your throat. I’m just challenging you: IF in fact reason, logic and mathematics infer the existence of God, then what good could it possibly do for you to run the other way? After all you’re a pretty smart guy. Wouldn’t your absence from that conversation just invite more abuses and prejudices from people with harmful agendas? If the notion that science and religion can’t speak to each other was wrong, then isn’t it just as possible that your conception of God and spirituality could have been be equally flawed? What if God is BETTER than you imagined Him to be? What if a relationship with God can be both meaningful and rooted in fact? Surely at some time in the past you’ve challenged somebody somewhere to show you evidence for God. I’ve shown you an entirely logical argument based on Gödel which nobody’s been able to overturn. Does this really merit such a negative reaction? Do you really mean to tell me, in the name that “all that is sacred” that it’s wrong of me to do this? Who’s more concerned about that which is sacred? You or me? Did you not choose to join this debate? If I think I can present an argument, shouldn’t I try my level best? Are we here to have a meaningful intellectual discussion, or are we just playing patty cake? Are you really serious when you say “Tell us about your interpretation of holy writings without firing up a debate involving empirical research and speculation?” If it doesn’t involve empirical research, then what should it involve? My point is not that we all see it differently. Everyone knows that already. My point is that mathematics and logic distinctly infer an infinite being as the source of the universe. All I’m asking you to do is follow the evidence where it leads.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:June 10, 2011 at 2:34 amIan said :”it seems wrong to me to try to use a mathematical proof to force an admission that God is real.” I agree. If that were Perry’s intent, it would not only be wrong, but futile. I suppose you would equally agree that it is wrong that people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are trying to use “science” to force an admission that God is NOT real. In their case, this is their avowed intention. The nature and implications of religious belief are such that they can not be forced. In an era where science is being used in an unconcealed attempt to rid the planet of religion, Perry’s endeavours are perfectly legitimate. He is generally consistent in his use of the word “infer” rather than proof. (In all the historical sciences, a strong inference is accepted as being on a par with “proof” so there’s no problem there.) In a combat where science, math and logic seem to be the main weapons being deployed, Perry is using those same weapons and saying that they can be used differently, to different ends. Rather than force anyone into belief, he is showing that you can take science, math and logic to point in a different direction than atheism. Paying lip service to “reason” even Dawkins has said that the chances of God existing are “vanishingly small”. He says this as a biologist. Perry is demonstrating that the “vanishingly small” conclusion is not the only one that can be inferred from our knowledge of science, math and logic. Quite the opposite. What a refreshing voice to hear amid the clamour of cries for humanity to be cured of the God delusion and cleansed of religion.Reply
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Ian says:June 10, 2011 at 11:08 amGodel never made any reference to God. The largest assumption that fits with Godel’s theorem is that mathematical and physical systems are logical. Any theory we come up with is only good if the universe makes sense, and that cannot be proven by any theory. We just have to assume that. God has nothing to do with it. Godel does not account for God, he only introduces the necessity of a statement of inherent universal logic for any arithmetic theory to be both consistent and complete. There is a tremendous difference between proving mathematically and logically what we CAN observe and what we CAN’T observe. Touting proof of the existence of an intangible, unknowable God implies the necessity that there is only one right way to see things. This is an acceptable framework for determining HOW things work, as when the rubber meets the road, the world only works in certain ways, but not for WHY things work, which is the domain of religion. The goal of science is to investigate phenomena in the natural world so that we can both understand how they arise and accurately predict when they will next arise. A GUT (Grand Unified Theory) will only explain how things tick, not why. Every religious war and act of persecution in history stemmed from one side’s conviction that the other side’s belief system or some other attribute was fundamentally flawed. The Inquisition and the Holocaust are both instances of authorities using warped scientific deduction to arrive at a conclusion of their particular sides’ undeniable supremacy, giving them the right, indeed the mandate, to purge the world of all others. This has happened in religion, but not in science. Why? Because there’s no way to prove whose religion or God is the right one, let alone that there is a God. However, when one scientist disagrees with the hypothesis of another, they don’t go to war, they put their theories to the test. The one that agrees with observable reality is obviously the right one. Perry, you fail to see that faith is such a deeply personal matter that nobody will ever see it the same way, no matter how desperately you appeal to cognition. That millions can go about their lives, either believing in or denying God, or somewhere in between, and that they still find success in life is a testament to the relative nature of religion’s impact. So, in short, don’t invite atheists to the table when you want to preach abut God. You will only meet with frustration when you realize you can’t possibly change our minds.Reply
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Perry says:June 12, 2011 at 1:47 amThere are many ways to see things; we all know that. But do you agree that in the final analysis there is only one reality? Do you believe philosophy’s law of non-contradiction – that two contradictory things cannot both be true in the same way at the same time? Or do you believe the opposite? If you believe the opposite, you can then embrace the view that the universe is inconsistent. That the cosmos is illogical. In that case the atheist position is safe from attack. Or you can believe that the universe is logical. That it is incomplete, and that it necessarily depends on something outside itself. If the universe is logical, there is an Other. That’s what happens when you apply Gödel’s incompleteness theorem to matter, energy, time and space. But you can’t have it both ways. It’s either inconsistent or it’s incomplete. You’ve hit on a key point: Science cannot tell us why, it can only tell us how. Only religion can tell us why. So if any answer to WHY exists, then religion is valid. How do you know there is no way to prove whose religion or God is the right one? Please come forward with a logical argument. Religious wars have usually been about money, land, sex and power, not religion. Whatever god in question is merely used as a convenient excuse to act out the cravings of natural selection and behave like animals. You might not be aware that theologians approach their questions the same way scientists do. They subject propositions to rigorous analysis and debate. Ever read a theological journal? You can find one at the nearest university library. In fact science came from theology. I’ve written at length about this elsewhere. It seems to me that this discussion is making you uncomfortable so you’re trying to declare it out of bounds. You say I’m trying desperately to appeal to cognition. I’m only using math and logic to tell you what your options are. Seems to me you’re trying desperately to avoid cognition. It’s not my job to change your mind. I am fully aware that some atheists will not be dissuaded by facts or logic. Believe me, I know that quite well. It’s only my job to present evidence and logic that cannot be refuted. You know that I welcome all comers and thus far after 500+ comments in this thread, I have at least done that. If you want to embrace a worldview that violates the laws of entropy every time the universe re-creates itself, if you want to dodge the necessity of a first cause, that’s up to you. Only you get to choose between atheism and rationalism.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:June 10, 2011 at 2:39 pmIan : excuse me for this remark which you might find offensive, but it is not my intention to offend, just to clarify. You say: “That millions can go about their lives, either believing in or denying God, or somewhere in between, and that they still find success in life is a testament to the relative nature of religion’s impact.” That is SO American! Try this : “For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills.” You’ll find it in Psalm 73. That somebody find “success” in life or not has nothing to do with religion; even less than Gödel’s Incompleteness Theory. (I am British. I live in France. And I LOVE the USA!) Oh – and thankfully you are wrong about changing people’s minds. Most people DO change their minds in the light of new information. *rant over* Now, getting back to Gödel…Reply
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Ian says:June 12, 2011 at 4:53 pmWhat this boils down to is faith in the theory. You need a great deal of faith, even in the face of sound logical deduction, to accede to the verity of a statement that you have never seen in action with your own eyes. Take electromagnetism, for instance. It’s so hard to believe at first that things can really exhibit those certain behaviors, but as you play around with it, you get comfortable with the idea. This experiential elimination of doubt can be made accessible to anyone. You seem to be assuming that God works the same way. Here’s the flaw: there is no observable evidence that indicates God’s existence. The inability to disprove that God is real is not evidence that God is real. I want you to provide just one real-world example that proves there IS a God. Faith doesn’t cut it for me. Until we can prove that the whole observable universe sprouted from the will of one entity (who, additionally, is particularly interested in the goings-on of a little blue planet in some corner of the Milky Way galaxy), there is as much legitimacy in your argument as there is in my own earlier challenge to thermodynamics (I never said I was right). We need more than faith in a clever manipulation of logic; we need hard evidence. Let me restate that Godel never mentioned God in his theorem. What he said amounts to this: “There will always be more to learn. Humankind will never quite know all there is to know.” On that note, if we know everything there is to know about the observable universe, plus we know from just by knowing the finite extent of everything that there is an Other (and we achieve a formulaic description of that Other), haven’t we just proven that it doesn’t end with that Other? If we can describe that Other, then there must still be something beyond. This becomes a never-ending God-hunt, even if you are right. Your basic assumption dictates that we will never know everything, so we will never know for sure whether or not there is a God.Reply
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Perry says:June 13, 2011 at 11:50 pmhttp://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles/Reply
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WR Clinton says:July 21, 2011 at 1:18 pmJeez Perry: There is a huge amount I would like to say, but I don’t have time: gotta work. I’ll try to make just two main points. 1. You say: “The incompletness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But it IS proof that in order to construct a rational scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical..it’s necessary.” Godel did not prove the universe is incomplete. He proved our attempts at building rational, mathematical models of the universe are incomplete. Big difference! Further, of necessity must our models must always be incomplete and that is what we are stuck with. You say: “just as you cannot build a coherent system of geometry without Euclids 5 postulates, neither can you build a coherent desctiptionn of the Universe without a First Cause and a Source of order” Well, there are a number of alternate Geometry systems that use other postulates and come up with self-consistent results. In some of these, for example, parallel lines DO meet. Euclidean works for me, but for other purposes, Non-euclidean is chosen. The truth is, we live in a world that is in many ways simply bizarre. In deep space (and every where else) particles appear out of nothing and disappear into nothing. Galaxies behave “as though” there were a much greater concentration of mass in them than we can find. Physicists postulate undetectable “dark matter” but cannot define what that might be. One could with equal right postulate that things are that way because that’s the way God wants it. Belief in “Undetectable Matter” or “Undetectable God” are equally rational–or equally not. The fact that we yearn for certainty, does not oblige the universe to supply it. It’s fine with me for you or anyone else to add order to their experience of life by believing in God or whatever. So long as we don’t use that belief to suppress others. I have my own approach to “belief in God” and it’s different from yours. I don’t argue with your right to your belief. I do argue when you claim Godel supports your conception. Not true. Bill ClintonReply
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Perry says:July 22, 2011 at 7:00 amBill, Yes, the universe is a very strange place. The real question here still remains, is the universe rational or not? However strange it may seem, however complex those laws are, does it obey logical mathematical laws or not? If it does, God necessarily has to exist. As I show in the syllogism in the right column of the above article. I’ve noticed that a lot of people suggest or imply that I’m going to use this sort of logic to suppress others. I’m not doing that. I’m showing you what reason and logic say. Just because someone can prove the cigarettes will kill you doesn’t mean they are going to come and confiscate them from you. Everyone is free to believe what they want, but let no one think that mathematics and science have nothing to say.Reply
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Gerard says:July 21, 2011 at 7:47 amFirst of all, I have to apologise. I haven’t read all the comments above, so it’s possible someone might already have made a similar point. Anyway; my view is that it’s never going to be possible to prove the point you’re trying to make Perry, by dipping into the details. And to that extent, I include Gödel’s work as detail. Part of the philosophical implications of what Gödel found was that humans seem to possess some kind of amazing ability to draw conclusions about what is provable within a formal system – that the formal system cannot prove. However, I don’t get too carried away by the claim. It wouldn’t surprise me if robots are eventually able to outperform humans in all mental tasks, including identifying when a formal system requires another axiom. The robot would still be implementing a formal system of logic, with its own limitations, but it would be far beyond what a mathematician could do. I think, in order to answer your original question, it’s necessary to step back from the detail, and ask questions like: why is there logic? Why is there mathematics? I prefer the question: why is there something rather than nothing? PS I have a maths degree, but I’m not a big believer in the idea that the universe does maths. Just because mathematics can be used to describe how a bicycle stays upright, doesn’t mean it’s the only description, or that mathematics is being used to ride the bike.Reply
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Perry says:July 21, 2011 at 8:42 pmI suggest you read the comments above. I have addressed your objections multiple times.Reply
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Wes says:July 21, 2011 at 9:11 amPerry is doing what humankind has always done – go to the limits of the knowledge of the time, point out the mysteries that we don’t know or can’t yet explain, and then claim that it proves that God exists. We will never be able to explain first cause – why anything exists – so the God people will always bring that up. So why does God exist? Even the God people can’t answer that, factually. And if a God did exist, the chances that it would resemble the mythic bad-tempered old man of the Bible are “vanishingly small.” Give it up, Perry. There will always be stuff we don’t know. You will always put God there, on faith. Quit claiming that your solution is scientific.Reply
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cif says:July 21, 2011 at 9:22 amIt does not say what is life and how it is godlike and who we are – it tells rather the opposite what is not the causing point. At least it is true. Thanks for pushing these points home !Reply
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Richard says:July 21, 2011 at 9:26 am“All closed systems depend on something outside the system.” I don’t think so. Just because there are true statements that can be made about the integers (for example) which can’t be proved using some system – this does not mean that the integers DEPEND on something outside that system.Reply
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Perry says:July 21, 2011 at 8:40 pmRe-read Gödel’s theorem.Reply
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Gerard says:July 22, 2011 at 4:19 amI see what you’re getting at Richard about the justification of using such a heavily loaded word as ‘depend’. And it’s not just an issue limited to discussion of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. It’s a general matter of the quality of the debating and deductive methodology used. It’s also one of many common errors made in debates. Someone may go through a very detailed and convincing outline of an argument, but then in the last line, draw some tangential conclusion that isn’t justified by what went before (but often provides 99% of the weight of the conclusion). Sometimes it’s done inadvertently, other times it happens because the speaker, either consciously or subconsciously, has already decided on the conclusion to be arrived at. But if we’re really really driven by a desire to discover truth, then spotting such issues should be a cause for encouragement. If this were a face-to-face conversation, I could imagine myself saying: let us not overburden the moment with meaning, and let us not overburden the conclusion with unjustified meaning.Reply
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Richard says:July 25, 2011 at 9:46 amThank you Gerard. I do understand Godel’s theorem, Perry. It seems to me that you’ve used the word ‘incomplete’ in two different ways. ‘Incomplete’ in mathematics means there are true statements that are unprovable from the axioms. That is all.Reply
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Mike in Seattle says:July 21, 2011 at 9:54 amEverything every human believes is based on faith. Atheist. Christian. Buddhist. Scientist. Mathematician. Butcher. Baker. Candlestickmaker. Every single one. A bold statement with no exceptions Facts support belief systems, yes. i can drop a rock off the roof and decide that gravity seems like a good theory…good enough that i don’t want to jump off the roof myself and see if i’m the exception. in the end, the question is…which incomplete set of facts and which set of assumptions do you want to bet your life on? Pascal’s wager is not irrational, its the only option. Its good sport to make fun of Christians for not being rational or scientific. (Truth is, many Christians don’t help themselves much here admittedly). Better to simply say, ‘you’re right. I do believe this is an incomplete set of data. And so I made a leap.’ However if you are outside the Christian faith, you are less than honest when you don’t think you are doing the same. Every person who says the “hard facts” don’t support God or the Christian faith are also willfully ignoring a great deal of information. Which they are free to do. They simply have faith in other facts, are willing to make certain assumptions while dismissing others. We all…every one of us…do this. Better to clearly man up, admit it, and then see if our theories of life hold up with the passing of time. The Christian faith is not an airtight proof. Its rational, but not definitively provable. I freely admit this. That said, neither is atheism. Or Hinduism. Or Objectivism. Or anything. I can’t prove for example that when my wife fixes me dinner tonight, that instead of doing it out of love….she’s not secretly fattening me up for slaughter like the witch in Hansel and Gretel. Christianity = incomplete set of facts. Not exhaustively provable. Show me a better explanation for love, meaning in life, good, evil, rationality, man as self conscious creature….and I’m interested. But I’m 52 and have spent most of my life looking…so far, every explanation I hear is less complete, less rational, less personally satisfying. Still looking of course, but as a wise man once said, you can only spend so much time in the hallways of a home, deciding which room to enter. At some point you must choose, since in the rooms is where the fireplaces, the good meals, and long talks into the night with good friends occur. At some point you need to live life, not just “think” about living it. I’d love more certainty…always…but I have enough to place my bets. We’ll all get to see for sure when we face that One Great Certainty and learn first hand if we placed our bet on the right horse or not.Reply
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Steve says:July 21, 2011 at 1:29 pmThe most i am able to contribute to this conversation is an expression of my belief that the wisdom, that is logic, of man is foolishness to God.Reply
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Roger Willcocks says:July 22, 2011 at 6:07 amGodel’s Theorem, as quoted by you above determines nothing about “cause” only about “proof”. The presence, absence or potential for provability has nothing to do with cause or origin. Even the incompleteness test you describe above doesn’t do that, because while the universe may well be incomplete with regards to basic mathematics, the whole that consistutes the universe dwarfs the mathematical aspect of it. The fact you cannot prove that something is complete, does not mean that it is not complete. I’ve seen variants of your reasoning used for the purposes of demonstrating that there is an exremely high likelihood that the universe we live in is a simulation. Following from which, the sysop is God.Reply
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Perry says:July 22, 2011 at 6:52 amRoger, Gödel didn’t not say “cannot be proven consistent and complete.” His theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” If the universe dwarfs mathematics then you’re really saying the universe is somehow “above” reason and logic. Which is to suggest that the universe itself is metaphysical. That would be at least some sort of pantheism or panentheism.Reply
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Roger Willcocks says:July 22, 2011 at 5:21 pmI still say, cannot be proven. Let’s start with “both consistent AND complete” You claim the universe is not complete. So prove that it is consistent. My admittedly limited reading on the nature of hyper dimensions and singularities would indicate to me that we cannot currently prove that the universe is consistent across all conditions, or that it’s condition is even stable. In fact Godel’s Theorem would probably indicate that we will never be able to do so. But really, when you start these discussions, you should probably define the type of God you are talking about. God the prime cause? God the all knowing? God the all powerful? God the all caring? God the flying sphagetti monster? You are taking a word that has a great deal of vaguness about it, and a massive emotional and neurological load, and waving it about as a target. There is no way you are going to do anything but draw fire from multiple directions for it. For the record Atheist I’m more than prepared to admit the possibility of God the prime cause. I’m more than prepared to admit the possibility that at least one entity exists that we would consider to have the power of the prime cause. I’m dubious about the existence of God the all knowing, since information theory dictates that the information density of such an entity would have to exceed that of the universe. I can’t see what God the all caring would get out of it, unless it is an entity that is at some point dependent on our existence. Which would in turn negate the existence of God the all powerful. But I can easily see the potential for the existence of a being we would CONSIDER all powerful.Reply
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Perry says:July 22, 2011 at 6:15 pmRoger, First of all you owe me the courtesy of reading at least a sampling of the above comments because we’ve already discussed this ad infinitum. We cannot prove the universe is consistent. We can only assume that the universe operates according to reason and logic. I can hardly think of a presupposition that atheists are more fond of, than that reason and logic are fundamental to everything. If the universe is consistent – ie logical – then it is incomplete. That’s what Gödel says. If you wish to presume the universe is not logical, be my guest. But given a logical universe, a metaphysical world necessarily exists. Thus materialist philosophy is not compatible with the laws of mathematics. From that point forward, all your questions are theological. Happy to discuss them, but at that point we go beyond mathematics.Reply
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Roger Willcocks says:July 23, 2011 at 4:17 pmHi Perry. I have read the other comments. And I am trying to understand, but I think that you are not answering some key assumptions. 1. What “type” of god are you discussing 2. Why do you think you can assume that the universe is either consistent or complete given that Godel’s Theorem itself implies that neither is likely to be POSITIVELY provable. (They may be negatively provable) 3. Both Godel’s Theorem and the Church-Turing hypothesis “as quoted by you” apply solely to alogrithims. That is to say, they must be computable. So why does that apply to the universe? At the smallest level, the universe is subject to quantum effects that render computation of the behaviour individual items (e.g. electrons and quarks) uncertain. Is this not a form of inconsistency? Around singularities, the physical laws are believed to break down. Would this not also be another form of inconsistency? In these cases, even if Godel’s theorem does apply to the universe, if the universe allows inconsistency, then it can be complete.
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 12:39 pm1. In this article I’m discussing what can be inferred about God mathematically: That God is boundless, immaterial and intentional. Also that, per the origin of life, God has triggered at least one more singularity event beyond the big bang. 2. Gödel says it’s either one or the other. You can choose either. Incomplete gives you a logical universe. 3. We don’t know that the Church-Turing thesis applies to the universe. But modern science effectively does assume this and you can’t practice science without that assumption. If behavior of subatomic particles is unpredictable that doesn’t mean it’s illogical. It just means we haven’t figured out the logic. If a singularity is a boundary between one system and another then it’s not an inconsistency. If the big bang is something that happened for no reason at all, then it is an inconsistency.
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Desi says:July 22, 2011 at 9:02 amThis is what I love about you, Perry.Reply
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George Krahn says:July 23, 2011 at 12:30 pmHi Perry, Great job of making people think! The high number of responses to this post show that this is a subject that people passionately care about, whether they agree or disagree with you. I read quite a few of the comments and appreciated that you were willing to clarify your statements. You also welcomed people to defend their arguments with logic. The huge amount of time that you’ve put into this broad subject shows that you want to help people on another level. Instead of asking the question: “How can I do what I am doing better?”, you pose the bigger question: “Why do we do the things that we do?” I love it! I eagerly await more thought-provoking posts in this spirituality series. Keep ’em coming.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:July 25, 2011 at 10:18 am@ Rick Kettner “However, there is absolutely no reason to consider it above other possibilities.” Did you rather mean to say, “I have not encountered any reason which could be acceptable to me”? I presume you are not making any claims to omniscience here. Unless you truly believe that you are familiar with all the possible “reasons” available for considering “it” above other possibilities. “We simply do not have the evidence to settle on either side of this equation yet. I’ve looked closely at the different possibilities and cannot see how anyone could conclude either way with honest certainty. “ Have you concluded that with honest certainty? Your position is a firm and dogmatic, “I don’t know” or “I can’t know” – is that right? “Pretending to be able to validate such a view is a result of knowingly or unknowingly engaging in confirmation bias through selective inductive reasoning.” Which is precisely what you are doing here. Or as you say, “This statement betrays your overwhelming bias towards one specific option.” Your option being, “ I am in a position to decide whether or not something is knowable.” That is just a biased and dogmatic as, “I believe God exists.” “I grew up religious and have no real issue with religion besides the fact it simply claims to know something it can’t.” I am wondering how you can say that “religion” can know anything at all. People know things, not religions. (Unless English grammar on your side of the pond has different rules.) “I’ve also considered the alternatives and see no reason to assume there is no God.” You’ve considered ALL the alternatives? Well……wow! “Therefore, our only practical move is to further ….” You have decreed that there is only one practical move? Well, considering all your sweeping affirmations, I can understand you having no need for God. You’re already talking as if you were God!Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 25, 2011 at 11:47 am@Richard Morgan “Did you rather mean to say, “I have not encountered any reason which could be acceptable to me”?” You are correct to point out the mistake of me saying “absolutely no reason”. However, you have gone to the other extreme and made the statement subjective. My position is that, at this time, I have not come across any information, argument, or evidence that objectively proves or disproves the existence of a God. “Have you concluded that with honest certainty? Your position is a firm and dogmatic, “I don’t know” or “I can’t know” – is that right?” Incorrect. My position is that I have yet to see an argument that settles the dispute. You might choose to categorize that as “I don’t know” or “we don’t know”, but I hardly see this as a firm dogmatic view. If we don’t have the evidence yet, that doesn’t mean we never will… or that we should jump to conclusions using selective inductive reasoning. It simply means there is more to learn. I’m sorry you’ve decided that it requires a bias to conclude that neither side has objectively proven that there is or is not a God. IF I stated “we will never know”, you would have a case for making such an accusation. In fact, if I said “we will never prove ____” you would have a case. I didn’t say either of those things. Your desire to demonize me for waiting for objective evidence is quite confusing. “You have decreed that there is only one practical move? Well, considering all your sweeping affirmations, I can understand you having no need for God. You’re already talking as if you were God!” You appear to revel in pointing out statements that can be misinterpreted, and then intentionally interpreting them in the worst possible way. I don’t find that to be a productive way to discuss things. Feel free to point out my errors for the sake of clarity, but I would ask that you please refrain from demonizing my views based on assumed interpretations.Reply
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Richard says:July 25, 2011 at 10:35 amYou say that anything which is immaterial must be indivisible. But mathematics is both immaterial and divisible, I think.Reply
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 11:10 amIs there no division between the math that is known today and the math that will be discovered tomorrow?Reply
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Richard says:July 25, 2011 at 11:22 amSo, math is both immaterial and divible – thus contradicting a key part of your argument, it seems. You said that anything that is immaterial must be indivisible.Reply
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 11:26 amI said anything you can’t draw a circle around must be indivisible.Reply
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Richard says:July 25, 2011 at 11:39 amYou can’t draw a circle round math (as it’s immaterial). However it IS divisible, thus contradicting your argument, it seems. Some immaterial things ARE divisible. Also, math is immaterial, but it is not an uncaused cause (because it is not a cause) – which appears to contradict your statement “Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause”.
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 12:02 pmMy “circle” could be a mathematical set. Something with either physical or ideological boundaries. Math is not outside the biggest circle. I’m sorry but your comments make it clear that you have not understood my original statements. I never said that immaterial things are not divisible. Please re-read the article.
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Rick Kettner says:July 25, 2011 at 12:14 pm@Perry – What leads you to conclude there is something outside the circles or that the circles don’t go on to infinity? What leads you to conclude what is outside the circle is a conscious being? Furthermore, how do you even begin to define the characteristics of a being/intelligence/consciousness that somehow doesn’t require a system around it? The big-bang could literally be the equivalent to popcorn popping in a significantly more complex world… especially if all we are relying on is selective inductive reasoning to determine what is going on. Not to take away from the validity of the above questions, but assuming you choose to reconcile such a potential “God” with the theistic view of a loving and personal God that created us in his image, how would such a being not require his own support structure? I can’t help but get the sense you assume the potential existence of an intelligent creator validates the very specific definition of such a being provided in Christianity – one of many possible religions (which also assumes that such a being is accurately described in any human religion). How do you make this connection while also refuting the connections believers of other faiths would make? Why do we assume such a “God” is a personal one or is even capable of forming relationships? Are all of these connections being made based on selective interpretation of texts that are already selectively chosen from one specific religion… all while dismissing texts, information, and insights within your own religion and others? You accept evolution, so does that mean you reject the biblical creation story? Is the story simply allegorical? If so, how do we know the concept of an “afterlife” isn’t allegorical? Obviously the selective interpretation and acceptance of certain verses is not an accurate way to determine if there is a God, what he is like, if there is an afterlife, what it might be like, etc.Reply
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 12:29 pmI promise to give you the responses that your questions deserve some time in the next week or two. Meanwhile the reason I don’t accept circles going to infinity is because that’s infinite regress. Re: some of the other items you mention, most questions are addressed on various articles at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/audio/newevidence.htm and http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/genesis1/
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Richard says:July 25, 2011 at 12:28 pmMath is boundless and immaterial and incomplete and yet you say you can draw a circle round it. Am I correct in thinking that you are saying that?Reply
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Perry says:July 25, 2011 at 2:25 pmMath is incomplete. It is not boundless.Reply
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Richard says:July 26, 2011 at 2:14 amThere is an infinite amount of math – in other words it is boundless.Reply
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DavidH says:July 26, 2011 at 2:37 pmRichard @ You claim: “There is an infinite amount of math – in other words it is boundless.” “Amount of” is just absolutely unassignable to “math”. I hesitate to even guess as to what you might imagine is the wisdom or verity of even using these words together : there + is + an + infinite + amount + of + math. Number of equations known to man? Number of “values” known to man? Number of “unknowns” expressible in math? Technically, math has no volume and no units in and of itself that can be measured unless you want to simply count the words and symbols so far written about math and in math, I suppose. But that takes us farther away form the complete inapplicability of your implausible, if not impossible, statement that the “amount of math” is infinite. What mathematician would ever, to continue past this point, claim that math is “boundless”? The most accurate thing to say, is, as Perry points out: math (The study of the measurement, relationships, and properties of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols) is INCOMPLETE. Boundless means having no limits or boundaries in time or space or extent or magnitude. Math is necessarily constrained from being boundless because, for one reason, it is the construct of a limited mind, our own. When we take imaginary flights, say in metaphysical mathematical thought experiments, we can “pretend” to go to boundless infinity but we have no present empirical proof that we indeed have calculated for boundless infinity. So, in a very real way even our abstractions are hampered by incompleteness in math, the math we think we know and use at present. Here is what Stephen Hawkings had to say when he weighed in on whether he thought there would be an ultimate theory (Explanation) for the Universe and its life. He centered his change of attitude to now doubting that physicists can find an ultimate mathematical unification that explains the creation and all that is init it and he used his own acceptance of Gödel’s theorem to explain- The following are some paragraphs from Stephen Hawkings, Cambridge University, in a Talk Entitled: “Gödel and the End of Physics” I lift paragraphs here and there that stand on their own– In the standard positivist approach to the philosophy of science, physical theories live rent free in a Platonic heaven of ideal mathematical models. That is, a model can be arbitrarily detailed, and can contain an arbitrary amount of information, without affecting the universes they describe. But we are not angels, who view the universe from the outside. Instead, we and our models, are both part of the universe we are describing. Thus a physical theory, is self referencing, like in Gödel’s theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent, or incomplete. The theories we have so far, are ~both inconsistent, and incomplete. Up to now, most people have implicitly assumed that there is an ultimate theory, that we will eventually discover. Indeed, I myself have suggested we might find it quite soon. However, M-theory has made me wonder if this is true. Maybe it is not possible to formulate the theory of the universe in a finite number of statements. This is very reminiscent of Gödel’s theorem. This says that any finite system of axioms, is not sufficient to prove every result in mathematics. Gödel’s theorem is proved using statements that refer to themselves. Such statements can lead to paradoxes. An example is, this statement is false. If the statement is true, it is false. And if the statement is false, it is true. Another example is, the barber of Corfu shaves every man who does not shave himself. Who shaves the barber? If he shaves himself, then he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t, then he does. Gödel went to great lengths to avoid such paradoxes, by carefully distinguishing between mathematics, like 2+2 =4,and meta mathematics, or statements about mathematics, such as mathematics is cool, or mathematics is consistent. that is why his paper is so difficult to read. But the idea is quite simple. First Gödel showed that each mathematical formula, like 2+2=4, can be given a unique number, the Gödel number. The Gödel number of 2+2=4, is *. Second, the meta mathematical statement, the sequence of formulas A, is a proof of the formula B, can be expressed as an arithmetical relation between the Gödel numbers for A- and B. Thus meta mathematics can be mapped into arithmetic, though I’m not sure how you translate the meta mathematical statement, ‘mathematics is cool’. Third and last, consider the self referring Gödel statement, G. This is, the statement G can not be demonstrated from the axioms of mathematics. Suppose that G could be demonstrated. Then the axioms must be inconsistent, because one could both demonstrate G, and show that it can not be demonstrated. On the other hand, if G can’t be demonstrated, then G is true. By the mapping into numbers, it corresponds to a true relation between numbers, but one which can not be deduced from the axioms. Thus mathematics is either inconsistent, or incomplete. The smart money, is on incomplete. Even Stephen Hawkings is in Perry’s corner on this topic.Reply
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Richard says:July 27, 2011 at 2:17 amFor example, there is no bound that can be placed on the number of theorems or the number of proofs or the number of equations.Reply
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DavidH says:July 27, 2011 at 9:09 amRichard, that is quite a theoretical construct but it does not focus on the powers of math to predict or explain, does it? You say, “For example, there is no bound that can be placed on the number of theorems or the number of proofs or the number of equations.” It will first take a human being to construct a theorem or a proof. They do not write themselves. And if you program computers to write theorems and proofs as fast as their little processors can crank them out these computers will have nothing but our own observations according to our understanding fed in to them in the first place. And if you can round up everyone mentally and experientially equipped to also crank out theorems and proofs, you are still bounded by their numbers and the minorities of human population available. So, theoretically, since only humans and computers can do this, there IS a Bound, practically speaking if you follow the logic to its inevitable conclusion. When the last human and computer is counted you have an in-built limit, a boundary. But discovering whether this is or is not a true boundary on the “number of theorems or the number of proofs on the number of equations” such a theoretical inquiry is in a completely different direction than the topics at hand. Even if you could prove that there is NO LIMIT to the Number of Equations or Theorems that could be theoretically generated in (what framework of Time??) this would have nothing to do with proving that ten-gagoogle gillian theorems would ever en-masse close the inherent INCOMPLETENESS of MATH ITSELF.Reply
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Richard says:July 27, 2011 at 10:19 amThere is no limit to the number of equations and theorems. Also there are plenty of math theories which are based on consistent axioms and which do not apply to the real world. In those theories, “true” statements do not apply to the real world. They are “true” because they are valid deductions from the axioms. But they are not true statements about the real world. In those theories there will also be “true” statements which are unprovable. By introducing constructs that are not in the real world, e.g. imaginary numbers, one can describe more of the real world (as well as other possible non-existent worlds). So I think that it is not impossible that there is some mathematics that can describe the whole of our finite universe and much more, although, as all consistent math theories are incomplete, there will be some unprovable statements which are true given the axioms. But maybe those “true” unprovable statements may not apply to the real world, but only to the “much more” in the previous sentence.Reply
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Roger Willcocks says:July 27, 2011 at 3:33 am@DavidH “Even Stephen Hawkings is in Perry’s corner on this topic” Except according to you, he’s not: “The theories we have so far, are ~both inconsistent, and incomplete.” Where as Perry is saying: consistent, therefore incomplete. If incomplete, there must be more outside the universe. The more must be God.Reply
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DavidH says:July 27, 2011 at 8:54 amRoger Wilcocks, Pick up your books and come sit up front where we can keep an eye on you to make sure you’re actually paying attention. Stephen Hawkings took paragraphs to present and develop his thought. The payoff, the ultimate truth of what he professed was contained a few more paragraphs below, which I included. But, in keeping with standard development of ideas in books or lectures he warmed to his topic by presenting some things that seem to be self-evident in the theoretical quests of science, physics, mathematics. He first stated what things presently looked like — “Thus a physical theory, is self referencing, like in Gödel’s theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent, or incomplete. The theories (my note: of what created the universe) we have so far, are ~both inconsistent, and incomplete.” Roger, this is self evident to anyone in his field of math. Hawkings was referring to the CONFUSION reigning in math and science, the many conjectures, the widely ranging opinions about how this whole shebang got started. And THIS is TRUE, and Perry will wholeheartedly agree because he has been talking about the logical implications of Gödel’s theorem, a DIFFERENT issue, Roger. And then Stephen Hawkings continued his train of thought completely wrapped around one thing that “made logical sense” in the midst of everyone’s confusion and expectations regarding the expected revelations to come from theorists. Hawkings focused on Gödel’s theorem of incompleteness and resolved his own intuitions this way, in the popular vernacular: “Thus mathematics is either inconsistent, or incomplete. The smart money, is on incomplete.” Roger, this is an “either or” conjecture from Hawkings. Hawkings, while confessing he is not omniscient, is siding on, betting his expertise to accept ONE condition, NOT BOTH — Mathematics is incomplete. That is what Hawkings has decided until he is convinced otherwise. Or maybe you interpret English in a completely different fashion?Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 27, 2011 at 9:19 am“Roger Wilcocks, Pick up your books and come sit up front where we can keep an eye on you to make sure you’re actually paying attention.” This intentionally personal bashing should not be a part of such an important debate. You may not agree with someone, their logic, or their conclusion… but that is no excuse to make this personal or to attack their intellect. I regret falling into this trap a little in my replies to you, and I want to apologize for that. I think its obvious everyone here is seeing further understanding, so we should acknowledge our shared interested an make progress in productive debates.Reply
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DavidH says:July 27, 2011 at 11:08 amDear Perry, Roger, Rick, etc, You are correct, Perry, when you quote Paul, who also said in his first letter to the Corinthian believers — “For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate’. So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish.” I know you have wrapped up a large part of your life in debating with the debaters, Perry. But the debate is foreordained by God Himself not to convince or to prove ultimately. If this were so, Perry, you would have enjoyed the fruits of it bountifully by now. But the debate, for all the words of opinion and counter opinion expended here is evidently for little or naught. I understand that you welcome the debate and you are apparently resigned to the immutable reality that you are not processing atheists to believers here. Not if what I have read in your forums over the past five or six years is an accurate accounting. Atheists and agnostics and believers are born and bred and thrive on debate. No subject besides politics attracts such diversity of opinion. And we believers earnestly love to argue that we are not insane and actually carry a few logical thoughts in our heads. Hence the debate. But I as a believer come to the table not merely curious or objectively neutral. Believing in God is in itself no big deal. Not a bit. Many “believe” in God and it does not make a whit of difference in their lives. Your own years in this arena have shown you, Perry, that the fruit of this debate, the ultimate harvest after the seeds have been sown and planted is vanity for the debaters. If you want a similarly fervent debate start it on SIN. Is it a wonky concept of some deluded Jehovah believers or is it truly a characteristic that operates in this world? Is it a false man-contrived concept or the most important necessity to examine in ourselves? Why does the Bible hinge its central message on such a simple concept called “sin”? The entire history of the Bible since God first declared, let’s get this party rolling, has been following how sin entered a pristine world and chronicling what God and we are going to do about it. Sin? Delusion or reality?Reply
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Perry says:July 27, 2011 at 5:07 pmI understand that for a person to know God requires God to reach out and touch that person. Like you having that experience of JOY that you described. You can’t give that to Rick (so far as I know), God has to. I also understand that seldom is the person I’m debating with won over. They are predisposed to not like anything I say. But I also understand from my own experience, and my brother’s experience, that facts, information and arguments do make a lot of difference. Why? Because I was almost convinced myself. Had someone proven that random mutations really do produce new biological features (they don’t), things might have gone much differently. I also know that most of the results I get aren’t from the person I’m debating with, it’s the curious onlookers. I know that from the emails I get from people who’ve spent hours on my site investigating. Furthermore there’s a long string of people who have come here, engaged with me, and backed themselves into a corner. They didn’t want to believe and nothing I say can MAKE them believe. But you can be certain that their inability to find any counterargument gives them pause. You need to be careful not to discount philosophy, facts and debate entirely based on a small passage of Paul. Yes, I do understand what he is saying. Still, Paul loved to debate and argue and you see him doing it many places. Heck, Romans itself is one big grand case of theological reasoning. As is Galatians. I don’t know how anyone could read Proverbs or Hebrews (or even read Jesus arguing with the religious leaders) and conclude that facts and information and logic are irrelevant to Christianity. It’s no accident that modern science was born and flourished in Christian culture, that the scientific method originally came from theologians, even after science was stillborn everywhere else. Why? Because the Judeo-Christian worldview asserts that God made a world that operates according to fixed, discoverable laws. No other culture had a theology and a philosophy to support a naturalistic understanding of science. You put me down for debating, yet you debate people yourself – right here on this page. Not only that, you debate me about the usefulness of debating. If this is really so useless, why are you even here? One last thought, from Acts 6: 8 Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed amazing miracles and signs among the people. 9 But one day some men from the Synagogue of Freed Slaves, as it was called, started to debate with him. They were Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and the province of Asia. 10 None of them could stand against the wisdom and the Spirit with which Stephen spoke. 11 So they persuaded some men to lie about Stephen, saying, “We heard him blaspheme Moses, and even God.” 12 This roused the people, the elders, and the teachers of religious law. So they arrested Stephen and brought him before the high council.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 27, 2011 at 6:03 pmDavidH: “Sin? Delusion or reality?” Sin is a natural result of choice, and is initiated by irrational decision making. We all make choices based on what we think is best for ourselves and those we love. Some of these decisions are irrational (theft, murder, greed, seeking power, etc.) because they do not ultimately achieve the true result intended (personal happiness for ourselves and those around us). In the moment, people may *think* their actions will lead to positive results for them, but obviously the outcomes aren’t what they anticipated. It’s short sighted irrational whims that guide such decisions and ultimately create “sinful” results. Most theists blame the failed outcomes on “sin” due to further irrational thinking – instead of fully understanding the root of the problem. I’ve never heard of a decision where the ultimate catalyst, however irrational, wasn’t based on expectation of personal gain. Even an act out of “spite” is an attempt to make the world a better place in some twisted way… much like a small claims court trial is an indirect effort for social justice (even with the knowledge that a financial judgement won’t make up for the specific situation). It’s a way to warn others that similar behaviour won’t be tolerated – mixed with a little irrationality based on “end justifies the means”. Perry: “They are predisposed to not like anything I say.” While I recognize we all have some level of bias due to our past experiences, I generally disagree with the underlying message here – as I think that bias can be reduced to the point where it is a non-issue. I’ve been back and fourth on this debate in the past, and honestly feel as though I do not prefer one outcome over the other. In the end, I sincerely think the most important aspect of life is to be 100% open and honest with ourselves and others as we seek understanding. If there is a God, or more specifically a “personal God”, I have no doubt that he will recognize my honest intentions. People like DavidH may choose to proclaim that I am “lost”, but it doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m quite certain any God worth worshipping would expect me to use the logic and reason that, if he exists and created this world, he has provided me with.Reply
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Perry says:July 27, 2011 at 6:33 pmHey Rick, I’m not saying YOU are predisposed to not like anything I say. Actually you’re much more neutral than a lot of people who come along. I was especially thinking of the people at Infidels when I wrote this. I most certainly agree with your last statement.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 27, 2011 at 9:41 pm@Perry – Thanks for the clarification. I enjoy our debates and look forward to your replies on the CF website. I think it’s fair to say my replies there are sometimes, I’m sorry to say, a little aggressive. My apologies as I do respect your opinions and enjoy the back and fourth.Reply
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Perry says:July 28, 2011 at 9:53 amNo worries. If we didn’t get a little heated up sometimes this wouldn’t be any fun, would it?Reply
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Richard says:July 28, 2011 at 2:23 am“Gödel proved that there are ALWAYS more things that are true than you can prove.” Yes. Given a set of axioms, there are true statements you can make within the theory that cannot be proved from the axioms. For example, given a minimal set of axioms describing the integers, then there are true statements about the integers that cannot be proved from the axioms. The set of axioms is said to be “incomplete”. This does not prove that the integers themselves are incomplete. You can still “draw a circle” round them. It also does not prove that there are any “things” other than integers. Applying this to the universe – there would be statements about the universe that you cannot prove from a given set of axioms. The set of axioms is said to be “incomplete”. This does not prove that the universe itself is incomplete. You can still “draw a circle” round it. This argument also does NOT show that there are any “things” other than things in the universe.Reply
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Perry says:July 28, 2011 at 9:55 amSee the syllogism at the upper right hand side of this article.Reply
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Richard says:July 28, 2011 at 10:31 amI’ve seen it. You appear to be using the word ‘incomplete’ in two different way. Yes, the universe is incomplete in the sense that the are true statements about the universe that you cannot prove from a given set of axioms. No, the universe is not uncomplete in the sense of there being things outside the universe.Reply
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Perry says:July 28, 2011 at 10:47 amThe universe is incomplete in the sense that the are true statements about the universe that cannot be proven in the universe. They can only be verified by going outside the universe. Therefore there is something outside of the universe. Or else the universe is illogical. You get to choose.Reply
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Richard says:July 28, 2011 at 11:07 amThe universe is incomplete in the sense that there are true statements about the universe that cannot be proven from a given set of axioms. That does not mean that the universe is illogical. By the way, do you consider mathematics to be inside the universe or outside it?Reply
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Perry says:July 28, 2011 at 12:53 pmIt means the universe is illogical only if there is nothing outside the universe. Your second question is excellent. Answer: I consider mathematics to be independent of the universe. Mathematics would be true even if the universe didn’t exist. Thus mathematics is not physical, it is metaphysical. 2+2=4 is true both physically and conceptually. Mathematics also stems from a finite set of axioms thus it is also finite.Reply
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Richard says:July 28, 2011 at 1:18 pmThe universe is incomplete in the sense that there are true statements about the universe that cannot be proven from a given set of axioms. That does not mean that the universe is illogical. If there is nothing outside the universe – that doesn’t mean the universe is illogical either. I agree that mathematics would be true if the universe didn’t exist. Mathematics is immaterial and infinite – there is an infinite number of mathematical statements that result from a finite set of axioms. For that matter there is an infinite number of different sets of axioms. Likewise there is no limit on the number of possible computer programs.Reply
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Perry says:July 28, 2011 at 2:33 pmYes, there is an infinite number of possible statements. But there is not an infinite number of actual statements. Nor is there an infinite number of axioms, so far as we can tell. Any way you slice it, Mathematical systems, if true, are incomplete. They rely on something on the outside.Reply
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Richard says:July 29, 2011 at 2:17 amNow you’ve lost me. Given that mathematics exists even if the universe didn’t exist, then all of mathematics exists – all the infinite number of statements and axioms. How could you say that just a finite part of mathematics exists? Again, “incomplete” when refering to mathematical systems merely says that there are some statements which are true but unprovable. That does not mean that they rely on something “on the outside”. Mathematical statements are not “inside” the universe in any case. They are all on the outside.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 9:54 amWhat you’re describing as infinite isn’t really infinite. It is very, very, very large. Remember, if it omits or excludes anything, it’s not infinite. Remember what Gödel is saying about mathematics in the first place – that all mathematical systems are incomplete. There is a boundary between what is provable and what is not. That which is not provable is ostensibly an example of the finitude of what is probable.
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DavidH says:July 29, 2011 at 4:45 amIt seems logically inescapable to conclude that every conjecture regarding the origin of the universe must tread through the realm of metaphysics at the very onset. I will use Wikipedia to define metaphysics. Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms: 1. “What is there?” 2. “What is it … like?” No matter where we start, no matter what theory, no matter what we philosophically imagine or believe is true, talking about the universe takes us to some notion of a beginning. In all discussions regarding what process is responsible for the universe we instinctively quest to know what happened “in the beginning”. And what “made” it happen or did it “just” happen? We all– believer in a “God cause”, or atheist or agnostic–have to come to the same place in this discussion. Like it or not, we all have to stare across the campfire at each other “in the beginning”. Right now most scientists seem to be fairly agreed that what is here now started at some infinitesimally small point. Already, of course, this is spooky supernatural stuff. And I say “supernatural” to acknowledge that at this point of origin the laws of “nature” did not exist. So, technically, any thing that happened from that point was by all definitions superseding nature. Baffling to all of us– atheist, agnostic, Biblical believer– is to behold nothingness for all intents and purposes. A speck tinier than a grain of sand but filled with so much potential energy that when it exploded it created a universe, running on energy that seems inexhaustible even to this day. But does this not by all we know describe a state of overwhelming compression? What FORCE contained this speck of power? How could it build to a point of explosion without a FORCE first containing it? But scientifically it is required that not only did some Force contain the nascent Universe-to-be but further, this Force COMPRESSED the universe before Gravitation could have existed. What scientists routinely believe is a proposition so outrageously beyond present theories to explain that it has to count as a religion in and of itself. After all, if you cannot PROVE, simply offer “logical” theories, then you are a “believer” in every sense of the term until you can conclusively prove all of the mechanisms that would account for the Big Bang. What scientists have at the moment is a theory only because they have to accept what seems most “logical”. Yet in this theory no one has a hope right now of explaining how the elements of an entire universe were packed into this tiny spot in “nothing”. And scientifically, mathematically, the odds are seriously stacked against a universe that just mysteriously sorted this all out with no more intent or decision making power than a rock. We are deluged with such evidence of delicately balanced powers, forces, particles, waves that richly combined simultaneously to create a universe with all necessary properties coalescing almost immediately. Yet believers in a God cause, scientists who do not believe in a God cause, atheists who are quite curious, we all must return over and over to ask at the point of creation why were such forces and compressed supermass ALREADY in EXISTENCE? And if you want to completely avoid the question WHY, you cannot avoid the question HOW? How can Force and Mass exist outside of the universe? People question that there can be something outside of the universe. Yet scientists seem to mostly agree that the universe is here one way or the other because forces,any influence that causes a free body to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape, preceded the universe or it could not be here. It then seems logical that this powerful force is co-existing with the universe. That it never lost its property to contain the universe before a Big Bang or after. In fact, is this Force still absolutely necessary for the sustainment of the Universe even at this scale of expansion? Is there, in fact, a protective “membrane” around the universe that is still in force just as it was when the universe was a proto-seed? This Force self-evidently did not NEED the universe to exist for itself. Scientifically, the universe needed the existence of this Force before it was “born”. The Force had to be in place holding the seed of the universe under unbelievable compression. Some believers in God might say that the Force itself decided just when the Universe was “ripe” and allowed it to erupt into life as a conscious decision. We can all agree that whatever started this wild ride we have been having together it is an awesome contemplation of spooky mind concepts to wrap our imaginations around what the Big Bang requires. And take any other theory and we wind up with the same ultimate question, at some point forces that pre-existed determined what would happen next. Do we contain in ourselves a question that was also pre-ordained to come into being just as inevitably as gravity and light and weak attraction popped into existence? Is this question an implant from the other side of the “boundary”. Do our questions — who are we?, where are we?, why are we? — exist by necessity? Have we been TOLD by this Force, that was evidently existing before our concepts of time, to ask just these questions? We call it “human nature”. Maybe this presumption sells ourselves short.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 29, 2011 at 11:18 am“No matter where we start, no matter what theory, no matter what we philosophically imagine or believe is true, talking about the universe takes us to some notion of a beginning.” I find this to be a false assumption. It may be difficult for us to fathom something existing forever, but it’s no more difficult than accepting that *something* can come from absolutely *nothing*. In fact, many peoples notion of a “God” is that he existed forever… and that is not compatible with a true “beginning” at all. We simply don’t have the information to conclude either way. If we think God existed forever, then we have no reason to conclude the laws governing our universe couldn’t have existed forever. If we believe in a true “beginning” than there is no reason to conclude God had to evolve first in order to then create much simpler beings… we should at least consider the possibility that we evolved directly. “What scientists routinely believe is a proposition so outrageously beyond present theories to explain that it has to count as a religion in and of itself. After all, if you cannot PROVE, simply offer “logical” theories, then you are a “believer” in every sense of the term until you can conclusively prove all of the mechanisms that would account for the Big Bang.” This brings up a very important question: What would it look like if we could have proof of our origins, where we came from, and how we got here? What results is a recognition that we need to enhance our understanding before we can reach the stage of proof, evidence, and certainty. Science may not have all the answers yet, admittedly, but the scientific method is a systematic approach attempting to find and present those answers in a logical framework. Simply asserting that everything requires “belief” or “faith” ignores the many tangible advancements we have made (medical, technological, etc.) and in many ways attempts to destroy the concept of “knowable knowledge”. Unfortunately many scientists, and many theists as well, overstate their position and create the illusion that have more answers than can really be confirmed – especially in areas as complex as origins of the universe. We as human beings are not perfect, and it is wrong for us to overstate conclusions. However, I find significantly more value in the scientific method, because it addresses the question I posed above… it is a model for which we gain practical understanding. Everyday the human race is making tangible technological and medical advancements due to that structure of understanding… and in deeper more complex topics, we are still trying to make connections although with less reliable information at this point. It’s a move in the right direction – rather than simply asserting we can’t know and never will be able to know, we move forward thinking we can know and we will know – we just need to gather more information, consider new possibilities, find further evidence, and enhance understanding. “People question that there can be something outside of the universe. Yet scientists seem to mostly agree that the universe is here one way or the other because forces,any influence that causes a free body to undergo a change in speed, a change in direction, or a change in shape, preceded the universe or it could not be here.” As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the universe could literally be the equivalent to a flower seed blooming in some far more complicated universe. It could be as simple as a bubble flowing down some massive cosmic stream. Obviously these comparisons are hugely limited by my human experience/perspective/creativity, but the point is… we really don’t understand anything about the many possibilities of what lies beyond our universe. My understanding of the “big bang theory” is that its NOT considered the “beginning” of everything at all. It’s considered the origin of the known universe, because scientifically that is really all we can work with at this point. Is it extremely frustrating that we can’t theorize much beyond the start of our universe (without turning to pure speculation)? Yes, of course – but there is no reason to pretend such speculation, outside of science, is any more valid or likely to result in tangible progress of understanding. It all amounts to guesswork – most of which is typically based on a massive assumption that our universe is one-of-a-kind and/or makes up everything that exists. Go back far enough in history and we used to think that of our continent, then planet, then solar system, then galaxy… oh, but now we are certain our universe is one-of-a-kind :). There are some weak theories (read: speculation) attempting to explain things outside of our universe, but admittedly we are limited by science and it’s built-in prudence. Some seem to think the universe might be a repeating cycle where black holes eventually pull everything in, merge, and then hit a critical mass that explodes back out in to a universe (something resembling the big bang). Others propose a multi-verse concept. All wonderful ideas, but they really don’t lead anywhere tangible yet. It’s like trying to complete a sudoku puzzle… you need to lay the groundwork before you can start to fill in some of the more complex answers. All ideas should be considered, but only those backed by evidence, observation, and supporting facts should be considered as progress (while remaining, like advanced sudoku answers, open to adjustment when new information becomes available). Theological arguments, while they attempt to bypass the prudent limitations of science, are no more actionable. They are merely ideas – most often limited by human understanding, creativity, and experience. Trying to prove such ideas, through selective inductive reasoning, doesn’t seem productive to me. If it results in the seeking of additional knowledge and understanding, than that is a different story. However, I don’t think it should ever be claimed as “proven” when based on such a flawed inference. Such assertions limit further progress by pretending to have answers we don’t actually have. I agree with the underlying theme of your statement: “We can all agree that whatever started this wild ride we have been having together it is an awesome contemplation of spooky mind concepts”. This is why I enjoy these discussions, want to peruse further learning, and hope that human knowledge and understanding continues to advance. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we certainly have the ability to seek further understandingReply
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Perry says:July 29, 2011 at 12:39 pmRick, If you walk into a room and find a burning candle, you know it was lit a finite time ago. Entropy alone is proof that there had to be a beginning – because the universe is not frozen and dead. The only way you can escape an infinite regression – which philosophers universally reject – is that some transcendent source is inevitable. If you disagree, then make a counter-argument. Your statements here of “but we just don’t know” contradict known scientific facts, like entropy and cause and effect. Your characterization of God needing to evolve first assumes that God has to have a beginning. You are rejecting this as illogical, yet insisting that the universe itself didn’t have to have a beginning. You can’t have it both ways. Every single thing we know about the universe is that it has a beginning. And everything we know about logic says there has to be something preceding it that did not have a beginning. That something would necessarily be a very different kind of thing than the universe. I’m saying God doesn’t have to have a beginning but the universe does. I know you want to tell me I can’t have it both ways. The empirical evidence says the universe has a beginning and both logic and theology say that God is Wholly Other and doesn’t have a beginning. The transcendent argument for the existence of God is logical and is also supported by inference. The counter argument has no evidence support it. Therefore your accusation that we are making unwarranted inferences is not correct. You are right, any speculation about what is outside the universe is outside of science. We have to rely on philosophy and logic. Which is the whole point of this blog entry about Gödel in the first place. At some point in order to posit a logical universe you have to invoke something transcendent which is not a system of component parts. The value of theology at the very minimum is that it offers grounds for positing testable theories. The idea that the universe is logical and rational and obeys laws came from theologians. Science itself originally came from theology. It’s no accident that the majority of the early scientists in Europe were deeply religious. (It’s not like everyone in Europe was deeply religious.) Your “we don’t know” theme sure doesn’t sound like most atheists I’ve met. Based on everything you have said so far, I would put you firmly in the agnostic camp.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 29, 2011 at 3:04 pm“If you walk into a room and find a burning candle, you know it was lit a finite time ago. Entropy alone is proof that there had to be a beginning – because the universe is not frozen and dead.” Yes, but all entropy indicates is that the universe as we know it has a beginning. It may be a repeating cycle or perhaps an offshoot of a significantly more complex process outside of our universe. I’m not suggesting we can be certain about either idea, only that there are numerous possibilities that we simply do not have the knowledge or evidence to rule out. Attempting to apply this “burning candle” logic outside of our universe is inductive reasoning at best and, while it is certainly possible, doesn’t eliminate many alternatives that may not be affected by entropy. “Your characterization of God needing to evolve first assumes that God has to have a beginning. You are rejecting this as illogical, yet insisting that the universe itself didn’t have to have a beginning. You can’t have it both ways.” If you read the context of my statement, I’m not attempting to have it both ways. I’m merely suggesting that either argument (everything has a beginning or something existed forever) can lead to a non-God conclusion as easily, if not more easily, than a God-required conclusion. I’m letting you pick the argument and then pointing out that God is not required either way. You seem to reject my argument based on an assumption that the universe is everything that exists and thus that entropy affects everything that exists (of which your concept of “God” is outside). I find this assumption to be baseless. As soon as we admit the possibility that something (in your case “God”) existing outside of our finite universe – we unlock numerous alternatives that, like God, may not be affected by the entropy of our universe. “I’m saying God doesn’t have to have a beginning but the universe does. I know you want to tell me I can’t have it both ways. The empirical evidence says the universe has a beginning and both logic and theology say that God is Wholly Other and doesn’t have a beginning. The transcendent argument for the existence of God is logical and is also supported by inference. The counter argument has no evidence support it. Therefore your accusation that we are making unwarranted inferences is not correct.” I’m fairly certain that I understand your argument clearly. It just doesn’t seem reasonable to conclude that of the practically limitless options that could have initiated the existence of our finite universe – you choose to pick one single possible inference… and not only consider it is “viable” but assert that it is proven. I can’t even begin to imagine how you close the gap of alternative possibilities so easily… other than a very strong sense of confirmation bias and a need to solve the question regardless of a lack of observable evidence or contradictory inferences that are possible. I’ve already suggested a very clear alternative based on your same inductive reasoning, and even pointed out how self-sustaining codes pre-date any objectively verified forms of consciousness (waiting for your reply on the CF website). This is just one of seemingly limitless possibilities… many of which, I can only imagine, are outside of the scope of what we can even dream up at this point. Make no mistake, I agree its a viable option to consider the existence of God, but there is just no reason why a truly objective mind would conclude something so specific with any honest sense of certainty. The possibilities are far too endless to be so selective. “You are right, any speculation about what is outside the universe is outside of science. We have to rely on philosophy and logic.” I fundamentally disagree with the underlying message. We’ve discussed this before, and I never really got a reply as to how you continue with this logic. If science is being held back – it is due to its prudence, a lack of observable evidence, etc. It’s not that science will never have answers, its that the high standards in science don’t allow us to speculate so wildly. What exactly allows for theology to somehow skip these steps and still reach any meaningful conclusions? The very reason science doesn’t try to answer such questions with certainty is not because of an arbitrary limitation on science, but because we simply realize such wild speculation is just that… speculation. Asserting that theology “offers grounds for positing testable theories” doesn’t differentiate it from anything else. Theists do not have a monopoly on selective inductive reasoning, taking things on gut-instinct and faith, or making random speculations about our existence. Anybody can do this… it’s just that the scientific community, for the sake of making tangible progress – has a higher standard by which they accept things as true advancements in understanding. Skipping these standards isn’t a “benefit” of theism – its a flaw that allows for self-serving conclusion that have no objective verification (again, something we are all capable of doing, but that we ought to avoid asserting as being “proven”). “Your “we don’t know” theme sure doesn’t sound like most atheists I’ve met. Based on everything you have said so far, I would put you firmly in the agnostic camp.” For me personally, there are two distinctly different components of being an atheist. In my experience, it is a blending of these two ideas that creates a basic misconception of what exactly it is to be “atheist” – what our stance is on various topics, etc. On one hand, when it comes to understanding our origins – we are simply waiting on objective evidence before making a final decision. There may or may not be other life forms out there (including one complex enough to have contributed to our existence), but we have no reason to accept or reject such speculation at this point. In a sense, we are simply waiting for evidence and see no value in jumping to one conclusion over the other. On the other hand, when it comes to theism, religion, and concepts like heaven and hell.. I am significantly more definitive (a-theist = non-theist). I see absolutely no reason to conclude that bronze age mythology, mysticism, or random beliefs have any supernatural origin. Furthermore, I have no objective reason to conclude any God has interacted with us in a meaningful or “personal” way. Human ideas like heaven and hell are not only extremely unlikely to be true, but seem to also be quite destructive in the effect they have on people. As an atheist, I see a distinct difference between concepts like “blind faith” and “faith based on observation”. In that sense, I see faith and reason being on opposite ends of a spectrum… with religious faith being presented as an alternative to reason for many theists. Blind faith alone has no practical value… as soon as it has any basis in objective reality, then it is no longer “blind faith”. It begins an important transition into “faith based on observation” that is rooted in logic and reason. So long as such faith is fuel for further understanding, it is a good thing. As soon as “faith” itself becomes an answer – it is purely destructive. When these two ideas (uncertainty of origins and relatively high certainty of non-theism) are blended… you get a common theists view of Atheism. That the high level of certainty we have about theism being false somehow carries over in forming certainty that no God-like being could exist. I can’t speak for all atheists, but that is absolutely not my position. I see this as two distinctly different issues. One pertaining to the possibility of an intelligent designer and the other is theistic beliefs, definitions, and interactions regarding such a being. When it comes to the second point, I find “theism” to be a very powerful delusion that erodes critical thinking, reason, logic and objectivity.Reply
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Perry says:July 29, 2011 at 3:51 pmRick, I am making a very specific hypothesis. I am showing that my hypothesis and definitions logically fit the requirements. I am prepared to defend my specific thesis in much more detail (with respect to science, objective morality, history and other criteria) as we go forward. The specificity of my claims makes me an easy target for criticism. Nonetheless, as you have indicated, yes, God as I have defined Him does fit the bill. You speak loosely of “limitless possibilities.” What possibilities? You haven’t made any particular assertions yet. I am asking you to be specific. Entropy rules out a repeating cycle unless you can refer to some sort of “entropy reset button.” I am unaware of any such thing. Are you? Can you show any inferential support for any other particular idea that you are advocating? If inductive reasoning is sufficient for the scientific method it’s good enough for this. Do you have something better than inductive reasoning for any alternative theory? I challenge you to pick an alternative theory, any alternative, and advocate it.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:July 29, 2011 at 4:57 pm“I am making a very specific hypothesis. I am showing that my hypothesis and definitions logically fit the requirements. I am prepared to defend my specific thesis in much more detail (with respect to science, objective morality, history and other criteria) as we go forward. The specificity of my claims makes me an easy target for criticism. Nonetheless, as you have indicated, yes, God as I have defined Him does fit the bill.” It fits the bill of simply being one of many possible inferences, but is a far stretch from being “proven”. I don’t want to get repetitive, but we seem to be debating the same points over and over again. You assert your inference meets some set of requirements, and I point out that this doesn’t make something “proven”. You admit this is an “inference” as opposed to “proof”, but continue to state publicly that you have “proof” of God. To be honest, I’m getting a little frustrated by the never-ending semantics debate between you stating “proof” with a later admission of “inference” hiding in the fine-print (in pages of pages of comments that were only posted in response to people challenging your claims of “proof” in the first place). This is my greatest issue within our debate… you claim “proof” while knowing your conclusion is an “inference” at best. I enjoy the discussion, but find the semantic-based assertion of “proof” to be intellectually dishonest. “Entropy rules out a repeating cycle unless you can refer to some sort of “entropy reset button.” I am unaware of any such thing. Are you?” I could just as easily say “Entropy rules out the possibility of an intelligent designer unless you can refer to some sort of “external designer not affected by entropy”. Can you?” See how easy it is to make assertions when you get to choose exactly how your solution works and have no need to back it up with observable facts? Why is an “entropy reset button” any more unlikely than an “all-powerful God that created us in his image, wants a personal relationship with us, and isn’t affected by entropy”. Either could be possible, either has unexplainable origins, either sits outside the affects of entropy… unfortunately theism didn’t raise everyone to pray to the great “entropy reset button” in the sky :). “You speak loosely of “limitless possibilities.” What possibilities? You haven’t made any particular assertions yet. I am asking you to be specific.” The point I made above shows just how simple one of these possibilities can be created virtually out of thin air. When we make use of mystical logic and side-step the scientific method, observable evidence, or objective facts (which I would never advocate)… we can reach all sorts of wild conclusions that are somewhat self-confirming, but still fundamentally broken. As soon as we determine there is something outside the finite universe that doesn’t play by the same rules… the possibilities are truly endless. Science readily admits the big bang isn’t necessarily the “beginning” of everything – it’s merely a theory for the beginning of our finite universe. “I challenge you to pick an alternative theory, any alternative, and advocate it.” I will restate my previous example (from the CF website) for the purpose of serving up an alternative. Furthermore, I will back it up with your same style of selective inductive reasoning for the purpose of debate. However, I will not “advocate” it as I find such selective reasoning to be a flawed method to reach a definitive conclusion. I do NOT know where life originated or claim to have such answers… this is simply a theory designed to demonstrate how easy it is to come up with alternative inferences if one is so inclined… *Our specific universe was created by laws of physics that are different to those affecting our finite universe. These laws govern the creation of matter as well as self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes that drive evolution to varying degrees throughout this universe. These laws have no beginning, didn’t evolve, and have no intentional goals beyond simply creating matter and starting these codes. These laws do not exist in “time” and, depending on your counter argument, can be re-defined to side-step any flaws you choose to point out in them. Fortunately, I don’t have an entirely separate theistic definition of this theory that I need to selectively reconcile with this argument… like the laws wanting a personal relationship with me, that I was created in the image of these laws, or that these laws want to send me to hell to punish me for not having faith in some selective inductive inference regarding the un-proven existence of such laws… :). Every objectively verified form of intelligence requires these self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes (DNA)… and therefore, through inductive reasoning, we should conclude that such codes pre-date all intelligent life. By your argument, we have never observed intelligence create self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes. This would suggest that, while we may think intelligence and self-improving codes may hold somewhat of a “chicken and egg” relationship… the codes necessarily came first due to inductive reasoning (what we have objectively observed).*Reply
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Perry says:July 29, 2011 at 5:50 pmDictionary definition of Proof: a. The validation of a proposition by application of specified rules, as of induction or deduction, to assumptions, axioms, and sequentially derived conclusions. b. A statement or argument used in such a validation. I have been emphatically clear that when I say “If you can read this I can prove God exists” I have proven design only to the extent that science can prove anything: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. Thank you for offering a specific hypothesis. Please enunciate the nature of said physical laws. What are these laws? Specifically, what kind of laws create codes? Even codes all by themselves don’t create new codes. When have you ever seen a brand new code created from scratch, apart from a conscious being? How does inductive reasoning allow you conclude that such codes pre-date all intelligent life? *When have you ever seen a code created from scratch without an intentional goal existing first? This raises a vital question about codes: Which came first, the video camera; or the TV; or the code they use to communicate?
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Rick Kettner says:July 29, 2011 at 8:08 pmIt appears you have stopped attempting to address the flaws I’ve point out in your argument (both here and on the other website). I’ll take one more go at pointing out your slight-of-hand use of the word “codes”… please address these points directly to further the conversation. I’ll be more than happy to address your questions about my fake-hypothesis assuming you can provide answers to these substantial flaws: — “1. The pattern in DNA is a code.” Clarification: The pattern in DNA is a self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving code. “2. All codes we know the origin of are designed.” Correction: We have absolutely no idea where self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes come from. “3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not.” Correction: We have absolutely no way to infer that such codes are designed as we have never observed, participated in the creation of, or even verified the “beginning” of such codes. Addition… 4. We observe that all self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes pre-date all objectively verified forms of intelligent life. Therefore, by the power of inductive reasoning, we have 100% inference that intelligence requires such codes and 0% inference that it does not. — The fundamental trick that made your argument appear to work is the blending of two different definitions of the word “codes”. You have strongly argued that we, the highest form of objectively verified intelligence, have never and will never create self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes. Therefore your inference is fundamentally broken. Not only does your argument use selective inductive reasoning, but your argument turns out to be rooted in a play-on-words. For the sake of intellectual honestly, I would like to clarify that I don’t necessarily accept such limitations on the human mind. I think the day may come when we will create self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes. If and when that day comes, your interference may regain its legs as being a selective inductive inference, but until then the entire argument is fundamentally broken… and the exact opposite inference remains stronger than ever. Ironically, you now have a “theists riddle” to solve… “provide an empirical example of self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes being created by an intelligent being”.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 10:09 am“Information, transcription, translation, code, redundancy, synonymous, messenger, editing, and proofreading are all appropriate terms in biology. They take their meaning from information theory (Shannon, 1948) and are not synonyms, metaphors, or analogies.” (Hubert P. Yockey, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life, Cambridge University Press, 2005) The codes in biology are exactly the same as codes in computers. This is no trick. There is no sleight of hand here, Rick. All codes map symbol to referent in a Claude Shannon encoder / message / decoder arrangement. Including DNA transcription and translation. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/dna-atheists/dna-code/ The only difference is that the system DNA is part of is so vastly superior to human technology, it’s staggering. -Simple codes infer a simple designer. -Sophisticated codes infer a sophisticated designer. -Fabulous, wonderful codes infer a fabulous, wonderful designer. They do not infer anything else. I am personally doubtful that humans can create something as amazing as a cell from scratch. However, I admit I could be wrong. You take the position that it is possible. To the degree that you challenge me for doubting humans ability to expand our intelligence and capability to create life, you reinforce the inference to a Designer who is smarter than we are.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 10:22 amYou said: I could just as easily say “Entropy rules out the possibility of an intelligent designer unless you can refer to some sort of “external designer not affected by entropy”. Can you?” I have no choice but to posit one. It’s the only way you avoid infinite regress. If you have an alternative, offer it. *Our specific universe was created by laws of physics that are different to those affecting our finite universe. These laws govern the creation of matter as well as self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes that drive evolution to varying degrees throughout this universe. These laws have no beginning, didn’t evolve, and have no intentional goals beyond simply creating matter and starting these codes. These laws do not exist in “time” and, depending on your counter argument, can be re-defined to side-step any flaws you choose to point out in them. Then please articulate these laws of physics and explain how they exist apart from time and space. Every objectively verified form of intelligence requires these self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes (DNA)… and therefore, through inductive reasoning, we should conclude that such codes pre-date all intelligent life. Explain how this works. By your argument, we have never observed intelligence create self-replicating, self-sustaining, and self-improving codes. True. We have only observed intelligence create much more limited codes. Which infers that the intelligence that created life is greater than us. This would suggest that, while we may think intelligence and self-improving codes may hold somewhat of a “chicken and egg” relationship… the codes necessarily came first due to inductive reasoning (what we have objectively observed).* Explain where these codes came from.
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 11:25 amI cannot reply to the original thread in-line… there are no “reply” links there… “The only difference is that the system DNA is part of is so vastly superior to human technology, it’s staggering.” This is the whole point. You seem to have no problem dismissing the “staggering” difference between codes and self-replicating, self-generating, and self-improving codes. Your argument that “simple codes infer a simple designer” and thus “sophisticated codes infer a sophisticated designer” takes inductive reasoning to a whole new level. I’m sure there is a technical term for this kind of multiplied extrapolation, but regardless… it makes for an overwhelmingly flawed argument. You can’t have it both ways… saying that the different is so staggering that you doubt humans will ever be able to create such codes, but yet that human intelligence infers a more advanced intelligence could create such codes. This is a blatant contradiction no matter how you try to dodge around it, and while I’m beginning to doubt I will convince you of this… it’s quite clear your argument here is fundamentally broken. At this point I see little reason in continuing to debate this specific point. For me, it isn’t about convincing you of my perspective, but rather about fleshing out all possibilities. This possibility has clearly ended in a flawed argument – whither I can convince you of that or not. “To the degree that you challenge me for doubting humans ability to expand our intelligence and capability to create life, you reinforce the inference to a Designer who is smarter than we are.” My subjective speculation is not evidence for your cause. Until we observe human intelligence actually creating such codes – your argument is entirely flawed. If and when we do observe such codes being created – your inference will still only be based on selective inductive reasoning.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 12:59 pmHuman intelligence creates codes. No codes have ever been observed being created apart from conscious choice. Codes existed before humans. Therefore an intelligence capable of making choices existed prior to humans. You are welcome to offer an alternative explanation.
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 11:47 am“Then please articulate these laws of physics and explain how they exist apart from time and space.” I might as well ask you to please articulate God and explain how he exists apart from time and space – beyond merely asserting that he does. Your vague definition seems directly applicable to any other concept of what might be outside time and space. You just happened to arbitrarily choose the chicken over the egg. “Explain how this works.” I did explain how it works. Similar to your assertion that codes require intelligence… all objectively verified forms of intelligence require structural codes. Back to the chicken and egg idea… as soon as you explain to me how an intelligent creator exists without the need for codes – I’ll explain how the codes exist without the need for an intelligent creator. You define your creator as not needing codes, and I define my codes as not needing a creator. Through inductive reasoning… both appear to rely on each other, so we’re not getting anywhere. “Explain where these codes came from.” Please explain where God came from… your answer should carry over nicely. Surely you recognize the fact that all of the questions you are bringing up can and should be applied to your own inference. Why do you choose to ask them to me, but find no problem ignoring their implications to your own inference? This is the problem with confirmation bias and an overwhelming acceptance of pre-existing beliefs. You do a wonderful job of pointing out potential flaws in my argument, but fail to apply the same logic to your own inference. Remove confirmation bias, and there would be no need for me to point out flaws in your argument – as you seem to readily point them out when facing an alternative inference.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:20 pmRick, I have posited a boundless, indivisible, conscious intelligent designer outside of space and time. I have shown this is entirely logical and consistent with all known facts. I have shown that the closest thing in the human realm to DNA is TCP/IP and human language. You have acknowledged that DNA is actually much more sophisticated than either of those things. I assert that this level of sophistication raises the bar for a designer. All of this points to the solution that I have presented. I have readily acknowledged that the only direct evidence we have for the creation of codes is humans. That’s the closest we can come. When it comes to DNA the only inference we have is fact that you and many others point out, that we would have to be much smarter than we are right now to make a code that good. If you do not feel that is adequate inference then there is nothing I will say which will convince you. The only response I can make is that thus far you have presented no particular alternative theory that you seem willing to defend. You have asked some questions that I have not gotten to but I will get to them. I have asked you a series of questions that you have not answered. For example: Which came first, the video camera; or the TV; or the code they use to communicate?
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 1:17 pmStill can’t reply in-line properly. I honestly can’t do this all day… got lots of work to do. I’ll take one more round at these questions because honestly – I really don’t want to leave you with the impression that there are no answers to your questions. That said, unless I read something new in your replies – this is probably it for now :). No hard feelings… enjoyed the debate. “You are welcome to offer an alternative explanation.” Codes are the foundation for human intelligence. No intelligence has ever been observed without being supported by a structure of codes. Codes existed before humans. Therefore codes existed prior to intelligence. — Any flaw you’ve ever pointed out in this kind of reasoning can and should be applied to your own reasoning.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:25 pmAll codes in biology are paired with intelligence. This is because all cells are intelligent, according to the following definition: 4. knowledge of an event, circumstance, etc., received or imparted; news; information. 5. the gathering or distribution of information, especially secret information. Therefore codes have never been known to exist prior to intelligence. This is the flaw in your argument that codes came first. There is no chicken and egg problem; All known scientific observation – from computer science and linguistics – is that codes come second.
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Perry says:August 10, 2011 at 11:11 pma) Information theory infers DNA is designed by a conscious being. b) Information is immaterial. Therefore the original source of information is also immaterial. c) Basic philosophical principles exclude infinite regress. d) Gödel’s incompleteness theorem infers the source of everything is boundless and indivisible. e) The Big Bang was necessarily caused by something outside of space and time. f) Entropy eliminates possibility of an eternal universe. My description of God as immaterial, boundless, conscious being existing independently of space and time has come from a process of elimination, because we can consider the alternatives as follows: A) If you say DNA wasn’t designed, you violate communication theory. B) If you say the source of information is material, you must prove that matter create codes. C) If you invoke infinite regress you reject philosophy. D) If you demand deductive proof and reject inference, you reject the scientific method, which is inductive; and you reject Godel, who proved some statements must be taken as axiomatic. E) If we insist that God would have to be confined to space and time, we make God smaller than the universe. (And we ignore everyday experience, which is that a design is always lesser than the person who designed it.) F) If you insist on an eternal universe you violate entropy. If you demand that whatever caused the universe be nearly identical to things you are already familiar with (i.e. “the only designers we know of are human, therefore to speak of any other kind of designer is nonsensical”), you reduce the origin of the universe to the poverty of your own imagination. Everything I have stated above is not deductively proven but it is reliably inferred. If inference is a valid form of reasoning, then we have a catalog of good reasons to believe in God and no reason to not believe in God. If inference is not a valid form of reasoning, then science is invalid. “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” -St. Paul Rick, you had said I made selective, unwarranted inferences. If you would offer any alternative theories, I would certainly be willing to consider them.
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Igor says:August 3, 2011 at 11:33 am@Rick Kettner I absolutely agree with your point of view about pretty much everything that you said. Mostly with the fairness part. The thing that mistifies me most is that many people hate being in the gray area – the not being able to know if something is true or false area. I don’t see anything wrong with not knowing answers to critical philosophical questions. Another thing that I struggle with to understand are opinions like that of mr. David H. It seems like many theists believe that scietists choose not to investigate into the questions of afterlife for some reasons other than there is little progress to be made there. If there were progress to be made there are outstanding technologies to help with the process but there just isn’t any at this point. On the other hand, I’ve been helping my friend with a scientific article about paying for parking by cell phone. In just two years it became very popular and will soon probably become a standard in bigger towns in Croatia. My point is when observable and solvable issues arise science deals with it swiftly. When the questions presented are beyond the grasp of our current point of technological development I see nothing wrong with admitting ignorance.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 10:33 amEntropy rules out any possibility of an infinite repeating cycle. If there are alternatives not affected by entropy, explain how these can be defended as scientific. You are right, the high standards of science do not allow us to speculate widely. They do not even allow us to escape entropy. But logically the universe has to come from something that transcends entropy in order to avoid infinite regress. Which only shows you what any philosopher already knows, which is that philosophy and logic raise questions that science cannot by definition answer. Thus science is subservient to philosophy. At some point science hits a dead end and any thinking person has no choice but to step outside of science. This is the most fundamental problem of scientific materialism. “There may or may not be other life forms out there (including one complex enough to have contributed to our existence), but we have no reason to accept or reject such speculation at this point. In a sense, we are simply waiting for evidence and see no value in jumping to one conclusion over the other.” You are not an atheist, Rick. You’re an agnostic. I agree, blind faith is of no practical value. We must exercise faith the exact same way mathematicians do. Faith is the application of unprovable axioms to see if they work. We look for inference that those axioms are correct. I posit that something intelligent designed DNA and when I find something that appears to have no function, I have faith that a function will be found. Atheists label it Junk DNA and 30 years later we find out they were circumventing the scientific method and overlooking major discoveries with their arrogant anti-scientific assertions. No creationist or ID person would ever posit a theory of “Junk DNA.” In the case of Junk DNA, it is clear that “atheism” is a very powerful delusion that erodes critical thinking, reason, logic and objectivity. Which ostensibly short circuits scientific research.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 12:00 pmI’ve addressed most of these points in my last post regarding codes/creator and the whole chicken/egg issue there. Lets maintain that discussion there. “You are not an atheist, Rick. You’re an agnostic.” I’ve previously explained how this statement is based on a common misconception of what it is to be an “atheist”. Atheists don’t “believe” there is no God. Atheist = non-theist. There are two separate issues here… one is the existence or non-existence of a God or creator (in which Atheists are waiting for conclusive evidence either way) and the other is the acceptance or rejection of theistic/mystic beliefs (in which Atheists find absolutely no reason to accept such unsupported claims). Theists like to paint this as a dogmatic view, but it isn’t. Being non-theist is simply not blindly accepting theistic belief systems. We are completely open to new evidence, but based on modern understanding, reason, critical thinking, and logic – see no reason to accept theistic beliefs. I dislike the word “Agnostic”, because it gives the impression that atheist and theist are both systems based on dogmatic beliefs. As pointed out above, this is not true. Atheist is the middle position of seeking information, evidence, and objective facts. If there are people that “believe 100% that there is absolutely no chance of a God”… they would be the opposite extreme to theism. Theists try to paint atheists in this light to give the impression that atheism requires faith, but this is inaccurate propaganda.
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:08 pmSome atheists do believe there is no God. If you think otherwise, you haven’t met many atheists. Atheists are dogmatic. They’re zealots. I know, I’ve been debating them online for 7 years. And they all have faith in a long list of unprovable things. Like Dawkins when he said, “Life was a happy chemical accident.” Ever read Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens or Daniel Dennett?
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 1:29 pm“Some atheists do believe there is no God. If you think otherwise, you haven’t met many atheists.” I think you mean “some people do believe there is no God”. Subjectively defining them as “atheists” doesn’t change the word. Atheist = non-theist… there is no atheist bible or atheist set of beliefs. “Like Dawkins when he said, “Life was a happy chemical accident.” Ever read Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens or Daniel Dennett?” Just because someone defines themselves as “atheist” doesn’t mean ever word out of their mouth is to be considered part of the definition of “atheism”. Are you suggesting everything a theist has ever said is part of theistic belief? Wouldn’t that make these debates interesting :).
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 10:42 amGod did not “exist forever.” God is outside of space and time. The concepts of beginning and end do not apply to God. All systems of knowledge rest on unprovable axioms. Everything that you call knowledge is still subject to questions of epistemology – ‘how do you know what you think you know?’ You are consistently criticizing my position yet persistently resist offering any specific theory of you own. The only thing you’ve offered is vague, fuzzy speculation. Yes, when you attempt to offer anything concrete I will cross examine you. Stop being so shy and let’s get going with that. The Big Bang is the beginning of matter, energy, space and time. Since science operates only within matter, energy, space and time, whatever is outside the universe is also outside of science. Welcome to Metaphysics, Rick. Theological arguments are axioms. They produce theories that you can test, criticize and evaluate. I’ve made my arguments and you have not demonstrated them to be false or inconsistent with anything we know.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 12:13 pm“You are consistently criticizing my position yet persistently resist offering any specific theory of you own. The only thing you’ve offered is vague, fuzzy speculation.” I am sorry that you don’t recognize the similar vague fuzzy speculation within your own inference. I do not claim to have answers that are vastly different to your own inductive reasoning. My point is only to show how your logic absolutely requires selective reasoning and confirmation bias to reject obvious alternatives. “Theological arguments are axioms. They produce theories that you can test, criticize and evaluate. I’ve made my arguments and you have not demonstrated them to be false or inconsistent with anything we know.” I have consistently demonstrated them to be flawed and contradictory to similar inductive arguments. At this point it is abundantly clear that you aren’t willing to ask yourself the same questions you are willing to offer against contradictory theories. If you did – there would be no need to ask me to repeatedly point them out. The whole codes/creator and creator/codes argument makes this abundantly clear. Any holes you point out in the “codes first” example carries over directly to challenge your own theory. That you choose not to acknowledge this makes the debate quite frustrating.Reply
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Richard says:July 29, 2011 at 11:11 am“Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being” Unfortunately for me perhaps, I don’t understand this. All the conscious beings I know are caused and divisible. I literally cannot comprehend the idea of an uncaused, immaterial, indivisible conscious being. I can break that down: I cannot comprehend the idea of any of – an uncaused conscious being – an immaterial conscious being – an indivisible conscious being particularly remembering that this being is said to have designed the universe – a task which one might thing would require the designer to have more complexity than that which is designed.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 9:56 amYou don’t have to understand this. I don’t comprehend an uncaused being. I’m not sure anyone ever said you could – welcome to theology, which thinks bigger thoughts than any other discipline. But I can define it. All I’m asking you to do is apply the logic and definitions. The logic requires this. We’ve talked about the complexity of the designer ad infinitum here.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 10:58 amWell, if these ideas are incomprehensible then there is no basis for discussion.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:06 pmIn theology we make a distinction between the language we use to refer to something and the thing itself. NLP does the same thing. My idea of God is not God. God is larger than me, larger than my ideas. But that doesn’t mean some ideas about God aren’t more accurate than others. The ancient Jews would not pronounce the name YHWH because it was too holy. But they considered discussion about God to be the highest form of thinking. Considering the Jewish race is the most successful and enduring civilization in history, I think there is merit to their philosophy.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:36 pmAs I say, if these ideas are incomprehensible then there is no basis for discussion.
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 11:30 am“You don’t have to understand this. I don’t comprehend an uncaused being. I’m not sure anyone ever said you could – welcome to theology, which thinks bigger thoughts than any other discipline.” @Perry – Welcome to theology, where we are free to speculate because we are not held back by prudence, observation, or objective evidence. If we can think it – it’s possible… so long as it lines up with pre-existing theological beliefs :). Why do you think theology has an exclusive right to speculation? Why is this an advantage over science which bases it’s arguments on observation, objective evidence, and prudence? Why does your selective inductive reasoning revolve entirely around confirming theological beliefs when it could just as easily be used to support contradicting inferences?Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:02 pmTheology has the same right to speculate as anyone else does. You can speculate too, and I invite you to. As soon as you do, you step into the realm of metaphysics. Which means you have no grounds to criticize theology for being metaphysical. Everything we are attempting to discuss takes us outside of science. As Gödel’s incompleteness theorem leads us to expect.Reply
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Rick Kettner says:August 9, 2011 at 1:23 pm“Theology has the same right to speculate as anyone else does. You can speculate too, and I invite you to.” Inviting me to speculate with equal bias doesn’t validate your position in any way. “As soon as you do, you step into the realm of metaphysics. Which means you have no grounds to criticize theology for being metaphysical.” I can certainly choose not to step into a real of such arbitrary speculation and selective reasoning. Furthermore, if I do… and am willing to be critical of my own ideas, I can certainly be critical of others. IF I was stating my perspective was “proven” – you might have a case to assert my position as being contradictory.Reply
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David H says:July 30, 2011 at 2:41 pmAs a believer in the Judeo-Christian God I believe that He has promised “To reveal all things:” And that He will one day actually sweep away time itself and even the law of entropy. I believe that He has said that there will be no moon, no stars to give light because God himself will provide all energy, all light, and the body of a person will be internally fueled, never needing to eat to provide motive energy. Very intriguing is the concept of our time and the arrow of time being completely removed from our lives. That God has essentially said that He will remove some of the principles that we rely on in our present science. Entropy? Done away with forever. That we will move into his realm, or more accurately, that he will move us to where He is and has always been, and that the laws of our reality will be REWRITTEN as He recreates this universe and we get a massive UPGRADE to God Class living. Now this all sounds like so much pie-in-the-sky religiosity with no scientific grounds to stand on. And, that is partly what I am saying that I believe. That some very significant natural rules will change in the universe. That what we have always known to be “reality” will be lived under some very different rules. Time will not be a concept. Completely done away with and replaced with an Eternal NOW. We will finally know what it is is to truly LIVE IN THE MOMENT. Yet, I think it is a fascinating concept that deserves scientific conjecture. Why not consider a universe literally reconstructed with different rules and principles? Why not, as a scientist go with that idea and treat it as matter of serious inquiry? INQUIRE into such theories. I believe that there is a logic to not leaving out any possibilities especially when these ideas have been communicated for thousands of years and actually drove the explosion of science and medicine in the Western world? A steady state existence where entropy has been left behind, having fulfilled its universal purpose — to create dissolution and change until it has achieved its mission in this present universe. This would be a scientific inquiry that sets up hypothetical models and runs the numbers, so to speak. This is done with every other theory or conjecture. What is a serious ARGUMENT or OBJECTION that this is not as worthy a line of scientific inquiry as any of the other myriad investigations of physicists and scientific philosophers?Reply
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Rick Kettner says:August 2, 2011 at 9:46 am“Why not, as a scientist go with that idea and treat it as matter of serious inquiry? INQUIRE into such theories. I believe that there is a logic to not leaving out any possibilities especially when these ideas have been communicated for thousands of years and actually drove the explosion of science and medicine in the Western world?” If you have a legitimate way by which to scientifically “inquire” about such possibilities, nobody is holding you back. The problem is, beyond selective inductive reasoning, there is very little progress to be made. We can certainly wonder about alternative possibilities… but simply “wondering” about something isn’t “science”. It is just random speculation… because we cannot observe, prove, or make any significant progress with such ideas. Science isn’t the big anti-theism conspiracy some theists like to believe. If you have a legitimate way to inquire about these ideas – go for it. This seems to be what Perry is trying to do, although I have pointed out significant flaws in his logic (my last post has yet to be approved or responded to). “Now this all sounds like so much pie-in-the-sky religiosity with no scientific grounds to stand on. And, that is partly what I am saying that I believe. That some very significant natural rules will change in the universe.” You are certainly welcome to believe whatever you want. That said, I don’t understand how or why religious people feel “I believe” is still a legitimate form of justification (even just as personal justification). You seem to openly admit such beliefs are a substitute for facts or evidence, but never explain why “belief” should hold any weight personally or publicly. These subjective concepts are not sufficient to back extraordinary claims, and lend no credibility to the statements they support. At the end of the day, beyond the possibility that you were raised in a specific religion or were converted at some point… WHY do you “believe”? “What is a serious ARGUMENT or OBJECTION that this is not as worthy a line of scientific inquiry as any of the other myriad investigations of physicists and scientific philosophers?” I don’t see anything specifically wrong with the idea – so long as you find legitimate ways of scientifically inquiring into such ideas. In Perry’s case, he believes he has a sound scientific argument for the existence of God. Again, my last reply addresses this argument directly… but he is certainly open to seeking solutions for the flaws I’ve pointed out.Reply
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Richard says:August 2, 2011 at 9:13 amI was hoping that my previous 2 comments would appear on the site.Reply
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Perry says:August 2, 2011 at 1:29 pmThey will, they deserve more attention than I can give them this week. Same w/ Rick.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:August 2, 2011 at 12:47 pm@ David H. I have stopped posting on account of you. You say everything that I would want to say, and you do it better than I could have done. Could we exchange e-mails? [email protected]Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 10:49 am“What you’re describing as infinite isn’t really infinite. It is very, very, very large. Remember, if it omits or excludes anything, it’s not infinite.” That is not the case. Even just looking at the integers, there are an infinite number of them – otherwise you could tell me what the largest integer is. There is not a finite number of integers. There is an infinite number of them.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:03 pmAn infinite number of integers – which in proper mathematical lingo is “limit as N goes to infinity” is not infinity itself. There is still a boundary between all those integers and real numbers.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:23 pmThere is not a finite number of integers. If there is a finite number of integers, please tell me how many integers there are.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 11:04 am“-Simple codes infer a simple designer. -Complex codes infer a complex designer.” Is God complex or simple?Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:07 pmAs soon as I wrote that I changed the word “complex” to sophisticated. Because in the context of this conversation, God IS simple. God is also infinite and infinitely capable thus sophisticated. But God is nevertheless boundless and indivisible.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:21 pmPiling contradiction upon contradiction. So now we have complex codes and a simple designer. I can’t make any sense of what you are saying at all.Reply
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Perry says:August 9, 2011 at 1:28 pmWhy do complex codes contradict a simple designer? Especially when you know that very complex proofs and deductions are made from simple theorems?Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:35 pmSomething that is indivisible is modelled in mathematics by a point. A point can’t do much.
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:49 pmAll the persons I know are divisible and not immaterial. All the designers I now are divisible and not immaterial. I don’t know what an “indivisible immaterial person” could possibly mean. It seems like a contradiction to me. I don’t know what an “indivisible immaterial designer” could possibly mean either. It too seems like a contradiction to me.Reply
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Richard says:August 9, 2011 at 1:30 pm“I have posited a boundless, indivisible, conscious intelligent designer outside of space and time”. Unfortunately for me this is contradictory and therefore illogical. For example, intelligence requires a brain. All designers I know are not immaterial. Etc.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:August 9, 2011 at 3:27 pm@ Rick Kettner : You said, as if you were delivering the coup de grâce, “Any flaw you’ve ever pointed out in this kind of reasoning can and should be applied to your own reasoning.&##8221; You were referring to this “alternative explanation” of yours : “Codes are the foundation for human intelligence. No intelligence has ever been observed without being supported by a structure of codes. Codes existed before humans. Therefore codes existed prior to intelligence.” There are no flaws in the reasoning there, because it is not “reasoning”. Calling that reasoning is so dishonest it should be called politics! You started off by referring to “human intelligence”, then for some reason you dropped the “human”. This means you are no longer talking about the same thing. However, something quite interesting happens if we correct your wording to make it clear that we are talking about human intelligence at each stage. “Codes are the foundation for human intelligence. No HUMAN intelligence has ever been observed without being supported by a structure of codes. Codes existed before humans. Therefore codes existed prior to HUMAN intelligence.” Sounds good to me. The alphabet existed prior to the poem; counterpoint and harmony existed prior to the B minor Mass; Divine Intelligence existed prior to humans, and thus prior to human intelligence. That Divine Intelligence created codes in creating DNA – life – the birds and the bees and you and me – all that sounds fine to me. @ all those who resort to the silliness of asking for “scientific” description of God (“What caused God? You can’t answer that one, can you?” snigger, snigger), can I remind you of an axiom that is so fundamental, I shouldn’t even be having to remind you here – “The creator is greater than the creature / creation.” Whatever we can describe or explain with our “human” intelligence can NOT be God. Even ignorant, Bronze-age goat-herders understood that. In attempting to describe God, the best I could come up with would be a SuperRichard; And not even I would give up my Sunday mornings for a Richard Morgan 3.0. That we are allowed minute glimpses of the nature of God, glimpses that can be squeezed into the conceptual capacities of human intelligence, is a wonderful fact : we call it “revelation”. That even tinier clues – fingerprints / signatures can be detected in nature / God’s creation, is frankly enthralling, riveting, mind-boggling…. whatever. It should at least be eye-opening and humbling. But so many seem to wilfully keep their eyes shut tight, then say, “You’re not showing me anything, because I can’t see anything.” To those of them who post here I say, “Thank you very much for your cleverly-presented descriptions of the insides of your eye-lids.” Could I just reiterate what Perry has said a million times? Yes, we can join hands with generations of scientists who made progress by accepting the principle – “Every time we have encountered X, we have found Y as the explanation. It is reasonable to infer that for this new case of X, then Y is is not very far away.” Unless you want to say that the DNA code is a special case, which requires special pleading. Nah, you wouldn’t do that, would you? I mean, you’re always calling our team out for doing that. Aren’t you?Reply
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Richard says:August 11, 2011 at 3:26 am“If you demand that whatever caused the universe be nearly identical to things you are already familiar with (i.e. “the only designers we know of are human, therefore to speak of any other kind of designer is nonsensical”), you reduce the origin of the universe to the poverty of your own imagination.” I never demanded that whatever caused the universe be nearly identical to things I am already familiar with. I merely demand that words like “designer” are not used in an apparently meaningless way. An immaterial, indivisible designer is incomprehensible to me. In E you say that a design is always lesser than the person who designed it whereas previously you said that God was simpler than the universe. I believe that you are using all the following words in a non-standard way, or in different ways in different parts of your proposition: cause, designer, person, infinity, indivisible, simple, incomplete. For me, this invalidates your argument. So, as to some of the other points in that post, I believe a, c, d, e, f, A, C, D and F to be incorrect.Reply
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Perry says:August 11, 2011 at 8:53 amOn what grounds do you say an infinite God is lesser than His finite creation? Please explain how I have abused the terms cause, designer, person, infinity, indivisible, simple, incomplete. If you cannot comprehend the theistic conception of God, then use the definitions and logic and accept the conclusions as axiomatic.Reply
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Richard says:August 11, 2011 at 9:32 amOn what grounds do you say an infinite God is simpler than His creation? I can’t accept the logic because it relies on using various terms in different ways in different places. For example: infinite. You say that the set of all integers is a finite set, whereas Gödel’s theorem relies on it being an infinite set. Indivisible: Please explain how a person can be indivisible and immaterial. Designer: Please explain how a designer can be indivisible and immaterial.Reply
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Perry says:August 11, 2011 at 10:38 amWhen did I say the set of all integers is a finite set? I’ll bet money you’ve read a fiction book which contained a spirit being and you had no problem following the plot. Am I really to take you seriously when you say you cannot conceive of this, or are you refusing to accept an idea that every single human being is familiar with. My children – and most children – have no problem conceiving of an immaterial person. If you cannot conceive of this, I cannot help you. Let me remind you that there are many things in mathematics and physics that we cannot “conceive of” (whatever that means), yet they are still taken to be true. Jesus did say, “Unless you become like this little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The indivisible, immaterial designer is given as axiomatic – this is the end of the inferential chain. I cannot explain this to you, as though this could be deduced from something even more primary. Rather, I have demonstrated that this is the only possibility.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:August 11, 2011 at 10:44 am@ (the other) Richard : I can not believe that you are implying that “simpler” is synonymous with “lesser”! Perhaps you might like to re-word this sentence : “In E you say that a design is always lesser than the person who designed it whereas previously you said that God was simpler than the universe.” Old Welsh proverb : “Sometimes less is more.”Reply
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Richard says:August 11, 2011 at 11:41 amI said that mathematics is infinite. You said “What you’re describing as infinite isn’t really infinite. It is very, very, very large. Remember, if it omits or excludes anything, it’s not infinite.” Clearly the set of all integers “omits something” Nevertheless it is an infinite set. I am sorry that you doubt my seriousness. I note that you failed to address my requests for explanations. If you are taking the existence of an indivisible, immaterial designer to be an axiom, then there is nothing more to be said (other than “indivisible” and “designer” seem to be contradictory). This is faith rather than reason. I do not agree that you have demonstrated that “an indivisible, immaterial designer is the only possibility”.Reply
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Perry says:August 11, 2011 at 2:45 pmThe set of all integers is infinitely large. But is it boundless? No. If you lined them up East to West, they would occupy no space going north to south. The universe and all the propositions of mathematics rely on something that is boundless in all respects. The set of all integers is boundless in only one respect. The set of all integers excludes real numbers – and most other mathematical concepts.Reply
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Richard says:August 12, 2011 at 2:28 amQuite clearly there is more in mathematics than the integers. For example, the real numbers. But at last we can agree that the set of integers is infinitely large, and therefore so is mathematics. The next question is: does the universe contain the set of integers? @Richard Morgan: I am trying to find out what Perry means by God being simple and indivisible. But he’s not responding. You have to agree that human designers are not usually characterised as simple or indivisible. So it is perfectly reasonable for me to probe this. Beoming like children: when this quote is look at in context, it can be seen that it is about becoming humble, not about children’s beliefs. After all, many children believe in Santa Claus. Ghosts: Yes I can follow the plot. These fictional ghosts are material, divisible and finite. They are material because they react with stuff in the world and so science can measure those interactions. Even the ghosts you can see but not touch (like holograms) are open to science: the light coming from them can be analysed. However, this does not in any way help me to understand the concept of an immaterial, indivisible designer.Reply
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Perry says:August 12, 2011 at 5:26 pmRichard, Are ghosts divisible? Are people? Can you saw a person in half and have two people? No, the universe does not contain the set of all integers. The set of all integers is not boundless – there are many things it does not contain. Therefore it is contingent on something else that is axiomatic. I think this discussion is coming down to the fact that something can be infinite and still be bounded in some respect. There’s a difference between infinity and boundlessness.Reply
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Richard says:August 13, 2011 at 5:36 amIf the universe does not contain the set of all integers then Godel’s theorem does not apply to it. Mathematics as a whole is unbounded. Any material object with extension in space can be divided. Dictionary definition of divide: Separate or be separated into parts. People have parts. You can divide someone’s head from their body with an axe. Mathematics – which is immaterial, infinite and unbounded – can also be divided. It is true that mathematics is built on unproveable axioms. (These axioms are part of mathematics). It is also true that (in mathematics) truth outruns provability. However, the true-but-unproveable statements are still mathematical statements.
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Perry says:August 13, 2011 at 6:30 amYou’ll need to explain your first sentence. Mathematics is incomplete. If something does not contain everything – if there is anything which it does not contain – it is not boundless. This is not to be confused with infinity, which in the case of integers only applies in a very narrow context. “Boundless” is vastly larger than any specific mathematical instance of infinity. Boundless encompasses ALL.
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Richard says:August 13, 2011 at 7:37 am“You’ll need to explain your first sentence. Mathematics is incomplete.” Godel’s theorem applies only to systems which contain the integers, and the universe (you say) does not contain the integers. Therefore Godel’s theorem does not apply to the universe. Mathematics is incomplete ONLY in the sense that mathematical theories contain mathematical statements which are true but unprovable from the axioms.
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Perry says:August 13, 2011 at 12:25 pmIntegers come into consideration when we measure the universe. Read what I said about the church turing thesis. The universe when subjected to measurement performs computation. If computation is incomplete so is the universe.
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Richard says:August 13, 2011 at 1:30 pmThe Church Turing thesis applies to systems that contain the integers. The universe does not contain the integers, you say. Therefore the Church Turing thesis does not apply to the universe. Also you have again incorrectly applied the word “incomplete”. But we do know that the universe is incomplete in another sense: for exanple, mathematics is not in it. Also: God is Truth, God is complete, therefore Truth is complete. Since every true statement can be represented as a mathematical statement, and Truth is complete, then mathematics is complete (in that sense), as well as being infinite and boundless.
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Perry says:August 19, 2011 at 5:52 pmThe universe does not contain mathematics per se. It operates according to mathematical rules. Definition of Church-Turing Thesis: Every effectively calculable function is a computable function. Integers are peripheral to this definition. I suggest you go back and read Gödel’s original theorem, he clearly shows that mathematics is incomplete. If you have used my statements to conclude that mathematics is complete then you have misunderstood me.
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Richard says:August 20, 2011 at 3:36 amI do understand Godel’s theorem, but it seems you don’t. The theorem says that in every mathematical theory that contains the integers there are true statements that are not provable from the axioms. That is all. Therefore the set of AXIOMS is said to be incomplete. But you go on to use “complete” in a completely different way. Godel’s theorem is not contradicted by the following: God is Truth, God is complete, therefore Truth is complete. Since every true statement can be represented as a mathematical statement, and Truth is complete, then mathematics is complete (in that sense), as well as being infinite and boundless. Church-Turing Thesis: Every effectively calculable function is a computable function. According to the Church-Turing thesis, computable functions are exactly the functions that can be calculated using a mechanical calculation device given unlimited amounts of time and storage space. No such devices can exist in a finite universe. Also the definitions used in the thesis – of Turing machine, effectively calculable function and computable function all rely totally and fundamentally on the integers.Reply
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Perry says:September 10, 2011 at 4:19 amYou are trying to tell me that the universe is complete and consistent. If you are saying that, then you don’t understand Gödel because Gödel said a system is either one or the other. Your statement “Since every true statement can be represented as a mathematical statement, and Truth is complete, then mathematics is complete (in that sense), as well as being infinite and boundless” is an explicit contradiction of Gödel. The universe relies on axioms which cannot be proven within the universe. They have to be assumed.
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Richard says:September 11, 2011 at 5:37 amYou only think it contradicts Gödel because you don’t understand the usage of the word “complete” in Gödel’s theorem. “Since every true statement can be represented as a mathematical statement, and Truth is complete, then mathematics is complete (in THAT sense), as well as being infinite and boundless” – is a true statement. In any event, my other arguments show that your whole thesis is false.
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Perry says:September 12, 2011 at 10:42 pmIf truth includes a correct mathematical statement referring to the universe, and if that statement is not the universe itself, then the truth is not complete because it refers to something outside of itself.
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Richard says:September 13, 2011 at 2:27 amPerry says “If truth includes a correct mathematical statement referring to the universe, and if that statement is not the universe itself, then the truth is not complete because it refers to something outside of itself.” Strictly speaking, mathematical statements do not “refer” to anything outside the mathematical system. However, if mathematics is not the whole of reality, it is true that mathematics is not complete in THAT sense. Of course, I didn’t claim that mathematics is complete in THAT sense. However, your argument also shows that God is not complete – if you believe the universe is outside of God, which you must do, as you say that God is wholly immaterial. That definition of God appears to be too small, as God + universe is greater than God.
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Perry says:October 8, 2011 at 9:29 pmI did not say that the universe is outside of God. “in him we live, and move, and have our being” . God + anything is not greater than God. Crude analogy: Let’s say we take the sequence of numbers 01234567890123456789012345678901234567890 1234567890123456789012345678901234567890123456789….. and we say “select every ninth digit and string them together” then you get 09876543… The second set has come from the first set and it’s a new pattern. But it doesn’t subtract anything from the original pattern.
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Richard says:October 9, 2011 at 6:33 amPerry: “I did not say that the universe is outside of God”. In that case, God is not wholly immaterial.
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Perry says:October 12, 2011 at 6:59 amThere is the incarnation.
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Richard says:October 12, 2011 at 9:09 amPerry: “There is the incarnation.” Therefore God is not wholly immaterial.
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Perry says:October 12, 2011 at 9:14 amCorrect. “And the WORD became flesh and dwelt among us.”
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Richard says:October 12, 2011 at 9:38 amPerry said : Correct. If, as you say, the universe is not outside God, then the universe is part of God.
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Perry says:October 12, 2011 at 10:20 amThat’s not what I said. Something in the universe became God. I didn’t say the whole universe is part of God.
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Richard Morgan says:August 12, 2011 at 7:30 pm@ Richard : You said : “You have to agree that human designers are not usually characterised as simple or indivisible.” Perry is not claiming that God is a human designer. This sounds like you are still looking for a God who is a Super(hu)man. Therefore it is not “perfectly reasonable” for you to “probe this”. By divisible, I suppose that you mean “is composed of parts”? I wonder if you can you run with this: Christians regularly make the claim “God is love.” I believe love is indivisible. I believe love is simple. Saying that God designed the universe or DNA does not mean that calling God a “Designer” has exhaustively described His nature. No more than describing you as a software engineer completely defines you. I understand that defining God as “love” creates problems for you, because love engages the heart, and most of the folks here are averse to inviting the heart to the party, as if it would be betraying the head. Excluding the heart is like rowing a boat with one oar (paddle). It’s great for going round in circles, but you don’t actually get anywhere. As we have noticed. There are some things that need to be understood by the head AND the heart, otherwise they are not truly understood at all. All of Perry’s endeavours (and mine) are designed , ultimately, to enable you to open your mind to the possibility of the existence of God. That same God that we describe as “Love”. Not as a Superman. Love IS simple. Love IS indivisible. God is love. Perry’s right.Reply
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Richard says:August 13, 2011 at 7:47 am@ Richard : Oh dear. In fact I believe that the statement “God IS love” is correct. And the statement “God IS a designer” is incomprehensible. God is indeed not a Superman.Reply
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DavidH says:August 13, 2011 at 10:45 amLet’s go settle just one thing before we go on with our “discussion” — just what IS a “cloud”? Pack a picnic lunch and let’s take the bikes on a day where lots of those critters seem to be floating overhead. Find a nice hill, a beautiful landscape, lay out the blanket, grab a chilled something for our thirst, lean back and let us finally reason together and AGREE on ONE DEFINITION for “clouds”. That way, every time you and I talk about clouds from now on until the cows come home, we will know precisely what we are talking about and not have to repeat the definition and meaning of clouds. Just achieve that and we can move on to, oh, such stuff as dreams are made of. So, friend, discussion buddy, let’s take a look up there… There, right there, see where my finger is pointing? THAT IS A CLOUD. What? Oh, that fluffy white mass that looks like a snow man. See the rounded shapes stacked on each other like the legs, trunk and head? Yep, you got it. Okay, so do you agree with me that we are both looking at a cloud? Good. So, let’s agree that from now on we know what we both mean when we say “cloud”. Ahhh, you point out that we should write it down to record what we mean. Great idea. We will have a written reference to read and refer to. Our personal dictionary for “cloud”. So, you ask, does it have to look like a “snowman”? Seeing as how our snowman is now looking more like a gorilla you ask a relevant question. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem here. This discussion is fruitless. If it is meant to simply be a bantering barbershop customers’ back-and-forth of “that’s not what I mean” followed by “that’s not what I mean, either” then you have achieved this goal brilliantly, if tediously. This is a game of badminton where the shuttlecock is smacked furiously only to travel a a paltry few yards to be smacked in return. Only in this discussion points count for nothing. The last tools to PROVE the “possibility of God” are “discussions” and “forums”. The very, very, very lowest investigative tools on the totem pole of rationality and reason and logic are “open to discussion, let’s all share” talkarounds. That is because, Perry, as you obviously know, science and logic and metaphysical conjecturing in the context of a “discussion” is blatantly similar to defining a “cloud”. We may see white streaks in the atmosphere but we are going to immediately have a debate as to whether they are truly “clouds” every single time. Where does that thin streak end, where does it begin, does it have enough mass or “cloudiness” to be labelled “cloud”? Yet, we all know there are clouds. Maybe not in your sky at the moment, but we have all seen them. However, in a “discussion” like this you will have the perpetual dissenters who enjoy taking EVERY single word and phrase and “definition” and naysaying it because, here is the crucial point, because words allow us to say and unsay everything. Give me an apple. And in a “discussion”, since we are imagining the apple in the first place, it is patently, demonstrably easy to say, as if making a deeply profound point, ahh, but you “say” you have an “apple”, but how do WE KNOW? We cannot see and independently verify this apple you present for us to dissect in a “discussion” online. This is because science is science in practice mostly. To talk “of” science is not science, so we can not apply “scientific reasoning” to any conjecture in a “discussion” conducted by remote keyboards. Math, whatever it may be, is too deep, too profound, for most of us to be able to make a point, prove a point, argue a point, negate a point because we do not, for the most part, understand the very language of math. If I present a Sanskrit syllogism that excellently makes a philosophical point, unless you intimately understand Sanskrit I have made no point at all to you. And if you do understand Sanskrit you then have all the freedom in the world to say, nope, don’t agree, and I object to your definition of megha – cloud. God gave his own rules for finding Him. He is not interested in proving Himself to you if you are not interested in accepting who you will find. If you WANT to find God then He will not hide. He has already revealed Himself over and over and over, millions of times. But you cannot come through philosophy, through math, through theorems. You will not find God here. No matter how many times the POSSIBILITY is discussed and wrangled over. Perry, as you well know, this forum is one of the LAST places that someone will FIND God. A charitable nice expression of “openness” to “discussing the possibility” is not ever, ever the same thing as wanting to know, truly know God. You have to lay down your arguments to the contrary because your arguments will be crushed to powder when you find God. Your intellect will be reformed and improved upon tremendously but first you have to be willing to sacrifice what you think you know, your “opinions” about anything and everything. If I am looking for gold in a Brazilian mine I have to put away my flippers, wet suit, depth finder, mask, air tank, and BOAT to find gold in the jungle. These tools work perfectly fine for finding other things– but not for this particular expedition. The tools DISCUSSED in this forum are words that loosely, all too loosely REPRESENT tools of science, math, philosophy, astrophysical theorems, etc, etc, but they themselves are useless to find the “possibility of God”. This is why a discussion goes nowhere even though valid points are made. A theoretical discussion in this forum is not even conducted on the same level of reason and logic. We go wildly up and down the staircase of logic from post to reply to post to reply. This is Plato’s allegory at work right here–the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. In this thread of discussion we are debating not reality, but a shadow of it. And there is no way to break out the cave in this discussion. If you want honestly and truly know about the “possibility of God” you cannot just stick your toes timidly in the water, ready to pull away if God stirs the water. You have to jump in but it calls for a personal willingness to accept what you find. And this PARTICULAR WAY TO KNOW GOD once and for all, to settle the question for yourself, is simply not up for a debate no matter how many objections you make to the contrary. There IS a way to know if there is a living being outside the boundary, on the other side of infinity.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:August 13, 2011 at 2:58 pmBless you, David H. – you can be so right, yet so wrong sometimes. Your error can be called “not seeing the wood for the forest”, or “failing to distinguish the relative merits of the container and the contents.” Sometimes the container alone (the fact of there being a discussion) is what really matters, what really makes a difference and can be a catalyst with astonishing effects. If I accompany you to a mountain-top to observe and discuss the identifying characteristics of clouds, we may just end up with a mountain-top “debate” or a “forum” of two. But what we will remember ten years later is not any revelation about the nature of clouds, but the communion of two people exchanging…something. God, the Bible and human beings are all about relationships, not theorems or proofs. See, even Richard II and I have ended up agreeing that ” the statement “God IS love” is correct. And the statement “God IS a designer” is incomprehensible. God is indeed not a Superman. ” And as a fully paid-up, card-carrying human being, I sense that for both of us there is a very special value in that coming together. Neither of us winning or losing points, just two people finding themselves together on some common ground. I don’t think anybody ever comes to a forum believing that he/she is going to convince other folks to change their minds. Forums thrive, and always will thrive because ordinary human beings want to be in communion with others, almost regardless of the subject matter of the discussion. If an atheist debates a theist, they are both talking about God, aren’t they. I sense that it must be more “pleasing” to God to be talked about than ignored. Maybe some future dictionary of antonyms will suggest this : “indifference – antonym : internet forum.” Come, David H, let us have a good cappuccino together on the sunny square in the centre of Toulouse. In the shade of the plane trees, we will discuss the problems posed by the “no true Scots-cloud” fallacy. And our being together as two individuals will create a special third entity – a friendship, or may just a moment of communion. Unknowingly we will be following in the steps of Christ, who broke the good/bad strangle-hold on the human condition by inviting us to a third place : Himself. I love the trinity of these discussions – The Ayes, the Nays and the Forum itself.Reply
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DavidH says:August 14, 2011 at 6:07 amRichard Morgan, thank you for your kind invitation to Toulouse. I live in Vienna and have been to Toulouse, so I can well imagine the scenario. And now, friend, let me address my errors, as you see them: My Richard Morgan Error No. 1: “Your error can be called “not seeing the wood for the forest”, or “failing to distinguish the relative merits of the container and the contents.” Sometimes the container alone (the fact of there being a discussion) is what really matters, what really makes a difference and can be a catalyst with astonishing effects.” My reply: My viewpoint is this–to enter into this discussion in the first place, is choosing to fall down the rabbit hole. Unlike Alice I know my way back through the mirror quite well. Where I have been in my own supernatural, whether you will or you will not, spiritual experiences, is outside of the container and its contents. The “astonishing effects” you allude to I have already experienced. Quite astonishing. I mean QUITE Astonishing. ASTONISHING in all CAPS. Do not misunderstand, I do most certainly understand the concept here. Let’s debate and debate. Let’s all keep an “open mind”. The important thing is to COMMUNICATE and ruminate and cogitate to our heart’s content. Wheeee, isn’t this Fun?! Yet… Entering into this discussion forum, for me, is like walking into a room where everyone is huddled around a package of brownie mix. Incredulous expressions on everyone’s faces because the brownie mix cover shows a plate full of juicy, moist brownie squares oozing delectableness. The claim printed on the box “In just half an hour you can make the World’s best Dessert–super chocolate-fudge brownies, perfect every time!” You are so close, but so determinedly far… The brownies will never be made. First, everyone in the discussion group will rage heatedly over whether the claim on the box is true. Picking apart “perfect”, picking apart “every time”, picking apart “in just half an hour”, picking apart “the World’s best dessert”, picking apart “super”, picking apart “chocolate-fudge”, etc. etc. Another group will break off into a side discussion as to whether this photo is digitally enhanced. I will stick in my two cents to this hypothetical scene: “I have actually MADE these brownies, not once, but many times. I can’t always make them look as attractive as the picture and I can’t vouch as to whether they are “the World’s best”, but they are delicious–if you love chocolate.” In this discussion forum everyone contends over the powder inside the box with very passionate or dispassionate “arguments”– but there will never be brownies without opening the box, removing the powder, and performing the extra steps to actually verify that what we have in the box has the potential to be moist, rich, chocolatey brownies. There is your “container”, there is your “contents”. In my life I want the brownies, hot, luscious, satisfying. Not the dry box. What you are saying, Richard, is that you are quite happy to discuss the container and the contents. You just don’t want to go quite so far as to actually move beyond the discussion and simply make the brownies and eat them. My Richard Morgan Error No. 2 ?”If I accompany you to a mountain-top to observe and discuss the identifying characteristics of clouds, we may just end up with a mountain-top “debate” or a “forum” of two. But what we will remember ten years later is not any revelation about the nature of clouds, but the communion of two people exchanging…something.?God, the Bible and human beings are all about relationships, not theorems or proofs.” My reply: I appreciate the sentiment, Richard. You seem to be a great guy and a good friend to all who enjoy your company. Friends can be more important than family and are a great, great love and comfort. The communion you speak of is rich. As it was intended. I believe, by the maker of such possibilities. I contend that “communion” is exactly what you, as a human being, are supposed to be having with God. Not to exclude friendships, but to ENRICH friendships. If you can go beyond contending over the container and the contents and just BAKE the BROWNIES according to the INSTRUCTIONS on the side of the box, then, whether you can believe it or not at the moment, God will come out of the oven, every time. Perfect. No matter how sloppily you may have followed the instructions. INTENT IS EVERYTHING in this case. You will have communion not just with me, but with the MAN. Literally. Then you will have so much more strength, wisdom, LOVE, and nurture to give freely to friends. Once that communion is established the very last thing you need to ask God about is whether Gödel’s Theorem proves that he exists. He may chuckle and simply say, “Gödel exists because of me.”Reply
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James Clark says:August 18, 2011 at 6:27 pmI like your inductive reasoning… •In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial. •The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time •All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. •Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being. Let’s change one true statement with another and see if the conclusion still holds true. •In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial. •The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time •All codes we know the origin of are designed by human beings. •Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a human being. I guess it must be true then that humans created the genetic code? Either that or your arguement is logically flawed.Reply
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Perry says:August 19, 2011 at 9:41 amIf you insist that the only form of intelligence that can possibly exist is human beings, then this would be true. On what basis do you make this assumption?Reply
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DavidH says:August 20, 2011 at 5:05 amJames Clark, Your substitution of “human being” for “conscious beings” falls completely apart in your summation: “•All codes we know the origin of are designed by human beings.?•Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a human being. I guess it must be true then that humans created the genetic code? Either that or your arguement is logically flawed.” Since you insist that logic be used here to point out what is “logically flawed”, let’s use logic. “All codes we know the origin of…” Languages, words, writing, computer programs, math, geometry… Got it. All made by humans, or at least claimed openly to be of human origin. This is like saying “All blue jeans manufactured in Chicago”. We know and logically claim and have the evidence to state “All blue jeans manufactured in Chicago”. “All blue jeans manufactured in Chicago have a label saying ‘Made proudly in Chicago’. Okay. Let’s say that is true. NO argument. True, logical, proven in this hypothetical example. now back to “All blue jeans we know the origin of …” “All blue jeans we know the origin of are made in Chicago”. No, not quite so fast, there is a leap, an illogical leap there. Okay, you say you can clean that up ….. “All blue jeans we know the origin of are made by … hmm, Chicagoans? human beings? Blue jeans made in Indianapolis? What shall you say then? Richard, “all codes we know the origin of” is vastly different from “all code is”. Vastly, hugely different. No matter how you try to force it in your example, it all hangs on the fact that we do NOT know the origin of the DNA code. The origin of what you agree is code cannot be confined, in fact, is immediately excluded as soon as you insist on premising your argument by “All code we know the origin of”. DNA code gets excluded automatically by your term “code that we know the origin of” because we do NOT know the origin of that code to begin with and to end with. DNA cannot belong, it is already outside your “logic” unless you claim we DO KNOW the origin right this moment without a doubt. Here is where we stand: All codes that we know the origin of are designed by human beings. Human beings, as they are presently created, cannot exist without DNA, which is a highly complex coded structure composed of organic living matter. DNA code existed before human beings, as they are presently created. Human beings could not have had any part in designing their own code. DNA code could not have been created by human beings. Human beings have yet to scientifically explain the origin of DNA code.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:August 19, 2011 at 10:05 amJames Clark : Perry’s syllogism has been accused of committing the Black Swan fallacy. Could be true, couldn’t it? So, what should we do with the atheist’s rebuttal, when he says, ” All codes that we know the origin of were created by a conscious mind, but DNA is a special case, because we don’t know its origin.” Yeah, I know, special pleading makes us all a bit jittery, so let’s remain realistic. Can YOU prove that it wasn’t created by a conscious mind? Can we prove that it WAS created by a conscious mind? James, can you set up an investigatory protocol that would enable either side either to prove its assertion, or, in the absence of probative evidence, make a compelling case? The kind of stuff that wouldn’t look ridiculous in a court of Law? I’m not asking you to do any proving at this point, I just want you to determine what method you would use. And how it would convince a judge to at least give it a fair hearing? One condition – no philosophy, OK? Then somebody on this side of the debate (maybe me) will apply your criteria and methodology and run with it as far as we can. Deal?Reply
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Richard says:August 19, 2011 at 11:00 amYou might as well say (by “induction”) – All conscious beings that we know of have brains. Therefore whatever designed the genetic code has a brain. In any event, the original argument is a “God of the gaps” argument. What if a physical process that creates codes is discovered? Science keeps on filling those gaps. With respect to the genetic code being symbolic and immaterial – such immaterial things cannot have any effect in the universe unless they are instantiated in matter. With respect to God being A being, the great Christian philosophers, from Aquinas (and before) to Tillich say rather that God is being itself. Aquinas, 3 times in ST I Q4 A2: God is being itself, of itself subsistent. God is subsisting being itself God exists not in any single mode, but embraces all being within Himself, absolutely, without limitation, uniformly. He is very being to subsisting things. On the topic of Turing machines, a Turing machine has an infinite memory capacity (Turing 1936) – and so there are no Turing machines in a finite universe.Reply
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Perry says:August 19, 2011 at 11:31 amYes, it is a god of the gaps argument. In the history of science, the gaps have never been closed. They’ve only moved backwards in time. And grown bigger. For example the origin of life question has never been more daunting than it is in 2011. (Remember when people thought cells were just blobs of protoplasm? Now we know they’re supercomputers more complex than New York City.) This time next year the mystery will be even greater, because we will know more. If we discover a physical process that creates codes, ie a new law of physics (option #4 in the DNA syllogism) then our understanding of the universe will make a fundamental change and quantum leap. The universe itself will now be more wondrous than it was before. The gap will move backward and it will become larger than it was before. I agree with your Aquinas quote. God IS being. I will reply to your earlier posts (not yet approved) soon. The universe is a Turing machine with finite memory capacity.Reply
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Richard says:August 20, 2011 at 10:24 am“The universe is a Turing machine with finite memory capacity”. The universe may be such a machine (vast numbers of things are). But a Turing machine is useless unless it is running some computer program. Are you really saying that the universe is running a computer program? This would be a very exotic theory indeed, although others have proposed it. Can you show me the program? Are you saying that human beings are actually only computer program objects?Reply
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Perry says:September 10, 2011 at 4:16 amI am not saying the universe is ontologically a Turing machine. I am saying that it performs computation because the interactions between particles are logical. I do not believe human beings are computer program objects because we have free will. We are selves. Self transcends physical laws because of the ability to act volitionally.Reply
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Richard says:September 11, 2011 at 5:29 amI can’t derive any meaning from your first paragraph.
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Perry says:October 8, 2011 at 9:31 pmIn other words the universe is not a machine that processes a piece of tape. But it performs computation in the same manner that the church-turing thesis demands.
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Richard says:October 9, 2011 at 6:36 amPerry: “In other words the universe is not a machine that processes a piece of tape. But it performs computation in the same manner that the church-turing thesis demands.” I don’t think so. Please show me the program it is running. A Turing machine is useless unless it is running some computer program. Are you really saying that the universe is running a computer program? This would be a very exotic theory indeed, although others have proposed it. Can you show me the program? Are you saying that human beings are actually only computer program objects?Reply
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Perry says:October 12, 2011 at 7:03 amThe church-turing thesis says: “everything computable is computable by a Turing machine.” The Turing machine is just a concept that describes computability by logical processes. The idea of the universe running a tape is completely beside the point. My original statement above is: Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. (In other words, children can do math by counting their fingers, water flowing into a bucket does integration, and physical systems always give the right answer.) Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete. The “program” that it is running is the laws of physics. Human beings are not only computer program objects because we have free will. That means that our ability to choose is above mere physical laws or deterministic physical processes.
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Richard says:October 12, 2011 at 9:03 amPerry said “The church-turing thesis says: “everything computable is computable by a Turing machine.” The Turing machine is just a concept…” This is all incorrect. – The laws of physics are not a program. – I never mentioned “tape” – The universe is not a Turing machine running a program which comprises the laws of physics – The universe cannot contain the integers, as the universe is finite. This by itself invalidates your whole argument.
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Richard says:August 19, 2011 at 11:59 amI don’t really understand what you say about moving gaps. You agree that God IS being itself. And yet you also say that God is A being. Aquinas is very much into the immanence (omnipresence) of God, as well as God’s transcendence. You say God is boundless and boundless encompasses ALL. But you also say (I think) that God is entirely immaterial. The universe is material and so not within God. Therefore God is not ALL. Contradiction. The Godel and Church-Turing stuff does not apply to “a Turing machine with a finite capacity”, but only to a Turing machine proper. But in any event, we know the universe is incomplete, because the whole of mathematics and logic is outside it.Reply
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Perry says:August 19, 2011 at 6:02 pmLong ago some people thought the thunderstorm came from God. Turns out thunderstorms come from the outworking of ‘simple’ physics and chaos theory. But physics isn’t necessarily all that simple and chaos itself is so fine-grained, you can’t predict the weather more than a week in advance, even with precise measurements and supercomputers. Butterfly effect. Nobody knows why the laws of physics are what they are, why they’re not different. And it turns out they have to be fine tuned to 100 decimal places or life could not exist; if the big bang wasn’t tuned to 100 decimal places stars wouldn’t have even formed. Did the gap get smaller, or bigger? How could anyone legitimately say that science got rid of a gap? All it did was give us more explanatory power, more ability to predict, and present us with even more daunting questions. Have you ever noticed that every answer science produces brings up 3 more questions? God is boundless. God is unrestricted. God is not physical but in Christian theology God can be physical – the incarnation. God becomes man. Or as Paul said in Acts 17:27: God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ In trigonometry, a conclusion that you can come to based on the axiom is not the axiom. But the conclusion is derived from the axiom. So you can say that the conclusion is contained in the axiom. The question you ask is a lot like the conundrum in mathematics – “the set of all sets that do not contain themselves” ie Russell’s paradox. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_set_of_all_sets_that_do_not_contain_themselvesReply
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Richard says:August 20, 2011 at 3:08 am“God is not physical but God can be physical” is a contradiction. As the universe is finite, the description of how it works is finite. As science provides more scientific explanations, so the amount left unexplained necessarily gets smaller. Therefore the knowledge “gap” is necessarily decreasing. Newton (who believed in God) could have said that the heavenly bodies were miraculously moved by God. But he didn’t. Equally we could say that the genetic code was miraculously created by God. It would be very disappointing if scientists started taking that view. It is fundamentally anti-science. It is not I who has stated anything related to Russell’s paradox. Perhaps you have though. Paradoxical statements are necessarily not true, as they are meaningless.Reply
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Perry says:September 10, 2011 at 4:09 amWhy is it a contradiction to say that God can do something at some point in time that He is not doing at another time? Newton wondered how the planets could stay in place. Now we wonder how matter and energy space and time could come into existence all at once and expand at a precise rate that had to be fine tuned to 120 decimal places just for stars to form. And you say the knowledge gap is necessarily decreasing? From a human point of view what we know we don’t know grows exponentially.Reply
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Richard says:September 13, 2011 at 2:47 amActs 17:28 does not refer to the incarnation, but rather makes a general statement: “26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” ‘In him we live, and move, and have our being’ applies universally, at all times, to all people.Reply
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Perry says:October 8, 2011 at 9:25 pmRichard, And to that I would add, this statement “in him we live, and move, and have our being” explains how the space that we occupy does not exclude God, yet we are not the same as God.Reply
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Richard says:October 9, 2011 at 6:25 amYes. We are certainly not the same as God. Interestingly, Orthodox belief majors on the remarkable doctrine of theosis (deification, divinization), which is also not seen as heretical by Catholicism nor by most Protestant sects.
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Richard Morgan says:August 19, 2011 at 12:24 pmI would like to beg to differ slightly with Perry here. (That makes a nice change, doesn’t it?) Perry said : “Yes, it is a god of the gaps argument.” I would prefer, “It is a God-of-the-gaps inference to the best explanation. Today.” However, I am uneasy with “a Turing machine has an infinite memory capacity.” This is likely an example of anthropomorphism. Sounds exactly like my ex-wife. And I will finish with a swift, drive-past, swipe-card rebuttal of “You might as well say (by “induction”) – All conscious beings that we know of have brains. Therefore whatever designed the genetic code has a brain.” Not so, my dear Richard. We are allowed to posit the axiom “The Creator is greater than the creation. The designer greater than the design.” Using the terms “intelligence” or “consciousness” does not commit this error. Your induction is pointing in the wrong direction.Reply
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Igor says:August 20, 2011 at 11:26 amAs I see it the first two commandments directly speek against bowing before ideals created by our own hands/minds. If the creator, if there is one, is boundless and imaterial, a sophisticated something beyond our comprehension how can our atempts at understanding it, and atributing it properties be anything more than ideals?Reply
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steven says:August 24, 2011 at 3:05 amconsider this statement to make it more simple we have a universe to look at that is either infinite or not infinite 1.if infinite we have an infinite number of infinite things and cannot exclude god as everything must happen 2.if not infinite then has boundaries which can only be placed there by god or maths(quantum maths in the 10th dimension) therefore god is mathReply
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Richard says:September 11, 2011 at 5:25 am“God is not physical but God can be physical” is a contradiction. As the universe is finite, the description of how it works is finite. As science provides more scientific explanations, so the amount left unexplained necessarily gets smaller. Therefore the knowledge “gap” is necessarily decreasing.Reply
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Joe Mobley says:September 18, 2011 at 11:57 am“The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” Although I may not share your enthusiasm regarding this statement, let’s run with it a second. Let’s have a look at what is NOT being said but IS being implied. …belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary… Therefore there is a God. So the bible has to be true. Therefore Jesus is Lord. Yahdah, Yahday, etc. Ah… bull-fritters! Because, somewhere else in the world, a very bright man who was raised as a Muslim comes to the same conclusion. …belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary… Therefore there is a God. So the Koran has to be true. Therefore Mohammad is the true prophet. Praise be to Allah. And somewhere else in the world… ad-nauseam. Is there a God? Possibly. Did he come from the sons of Abraham? Doubtful. Joe MobleyReply
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Perry says:September 19, 2011 at 8:58 amJoe, God exists, therefore the Koran is true doesn’t necessarily follow. One would have to connect a lot more dots than that, to come to that conclusion. Gödel won’t get you to Christianity or Islam. It’ll only get you to monotheism. But it does get you that far, and shows atheism to be irrational. Joe, God loves you intensely. I don’t know that from logic, I know it from personal experience. I invite yourself to open your heart to having such an experience, because after that you will KNOW. PerryReply
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Richard says:October 12, 2011 at 11:14 amPerry: That’s not what I said. Something in the universe became God. I didn’t say the whole universe is part of God. You said previously “I not say that the universe was outside of God.” Either the universe is outside of God or inside of God. Which is it? If any part of the universe is outside of God then God + Universe is greater than God.Reply
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Perry says:October 12, 2011 at 12:05 pmIsn’t it interesting that in Christianity this isn’t a simple yes/no answer. The universe is not God. The universe is contingent on God. Before God created it, it didn’t exist. Then God entered the universe. Colossians 1:16-17: “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He himself existed before anything else did, and he holds all things together.” God is not the universe, but at the same time the universe cannot exist or hold together apart from God. It is not conceivable for God to be completely uninvolved. So the statement “If any part of the universe is outside of God then God + Universe is greater than God” doesn’t apply. The universe is incomplete. God is not.Reply
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Eddie Nuno says:November 26, 2011 at 5:38 amThough I suspected there to be many flaws in this proof, let me just start with one facet of your argument: ” (1)In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial. (2)The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time (3)All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. (C)Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.” -Perry Marshall Let’s focus on premise three: “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.”-Perry Marshall. Citation not needed of course, because as any master debater, you included this link: which links to yet another one of your arguments, an extremely similar one. Though of course you linked to this argument because within it you attempt to prove the above third premise. Your argument is as follows: “We can explore five possible conclusions: 1) Humans designed DNA 2) Aliens designed DNA 3) DNA occurred randomly and spontaneously 4) There must be some undiscovered law of physics that creates information 5) DNA was Designed by a Superintelligence, i.e. God. (1) requires time travel or infinite generations of humans. (2) could well be true but only pushes the question back in time. (3) may be a remote possibility, but it’s not a scientific explanation in that it doesn’t refer to a systematic, repeatable process. It’s nothing more than an appeal to luck . (4) could be true but no one can form a testable hypothesis until someone observes a naturally occurring code. So the only systematic explanation that remains is (5) a theological one.” -You again. Again, let’s focus on your analysis of possibilities of three and four: “…(3) may be a remote possibility, but it’s not a scientific explanation in that it doesn’t refer to a systematic, repeatable process. It’s nothing more than an appeal to luck. (4) could be true but no one can form a testable hypothesis until someone observes a naturally occurring code.” -Marshall, Perry These analyses, my dear friend, are argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacies (i.e. the fallacy that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false simply because it has not been proved true.) Though these are persuasive to the inexperienced reader, it is easy to to see that the conclusion that all codes come from conscious beings is invalid, and though this argument appears to be logically valid, validity and truth are not synonymous, and your logically valid argument stands on invalid premises. It only works if you accept the premises you’ve proposed.Reply
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Perry says:November 27, 2011 at 2:36 pmShow me a code that’s not designed.Reply
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Eddie Nuno says:November 27, 2011 at 4:44 pmThree things: 1)Can you give me a single example of a code that wasn’t designed by a human being? Follow your logic through to it’s conclusion. I feel like I have to caution you against “begging the question” or reasoning in a circle. It’s fallacious and invalid. lrn 2 logic. 2)You just shifted the burden of proof. That’s a argumentative fallacy–a type of argumentum ad ignorantium, to be exact. Your logic seems to be inherently fallacious, albeit persuasive. It’s tantamount to someone saying: “I have a pink unicorn in my back yard.” Well, prove it. “Well, you can’t prove that I don’t.” I can’t prove these claims positive anymore than you can prove them negative. Your argument employs the syllogism from an invalid claim, therefor it is invalid, which is not to say your conclusion is right or wrong, just logically fallacious, that’s all. 3) You contradict “DNA was designed by a conscious being” logic within your proof. Doesn’t DNA require an outside observer? Who was outside the circle of DNA? Man. We called it a code. We do not have the letters “ACGT” floating around in the nuclei of our cells. Any high school biology student will tell you so. We have DNA, and it was DNA before we observed it and it was not a code until we called it one. We call DNA a “code” because DNA is an appropriate parallel to what man calls a “code.” Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom create water. H20. It’s a code! All water must be created by conscious beings! Chemical reactions never happen autonomously in nature! Again, I feel like you’re going to reason circularly in your response. Don’t. It’s logically fallacious and if you want to be taken seriously, you need to avoid these doing it. We’re arguing your conclusion, which is that a conscious creator created the universe. Don’t use your conclusion as one of your assumptions.Reply
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Perry says:November 28, 2011 at 6:17 pmDNA was a code before we ever called it one, before anyone recognized it as such. Why? Because the four nucleotides have a symbolic relationship with the amino acids they produce. GGG codes for Glycine, but GGG is not Glycine. The fact that we showed up 3 billion years later and were intelligent enough to recognize it as a code (and award two men a Nobel prize for doing so); the fact that digital systems that very smart people invented in the 20th century turned out to be isomorphic with DNA, only confirms the fact. Was H20 not chemistry until humans figured out the periodic table? Did hydrogen only exist after we gave it a name? Consider what you’re attempting to say here! Note what I said: The starting point of my argument is the fact that we do not know the origin of DNA 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. Please show me any place where I have inserted an a priori conclusion of design. H20 is not a code because it contains no encoder or decoder. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/faq for clarification. From your comments it is clear do not understand Shannon’s model or exactly why Watson and Crick are some of the most celebrated scientists of the 20th century. Please apprise yourself of these facts and definitions before attempting to argue this further. I didn’t shift the burden of proof. Everyone knows that communication systems don’t just happen by accident. The idea that life happened as a natural process of physics and chemistry is a hypothesis that has never been scientifically proven or demonstrated in any way, shape or form. All codes we know the origin of are designed. The burden of proof has been on the naturalist all along to demonstrate that machinery so fantastic did not have to be designed. Show me a code that’s not designed.Reply
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Richard says:November 28, 2011 at 2:20 am“Show me a code that’s not designed.” DNA.Reply
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Perry says:November 28, 2011 at 6:04 pmAnd you know this… how?Reply
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Richard says:November 30, 2011 at 2:55 amWell, we can wait and see how the scientific approach will discover more about the origins of DNA. Your anti-science view that DNA was magicked into existence is a possibility, but the magical view has always been proved wrong in the past, e.g. that the earth was magicked into existence or that human beings derived from Adam and Eve who were magicked into existence, etc. Fortunately the proponents of magic have been unable to snuff out scientific progress so far, although they tried hard by persecuting the likes of Galileo, etc, etc. and continue relentlessly today.
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Perry says:November 30, 2011 at 8:24 pmRichard, If you think my view is anti-science then name one non-scientific fact that I have presented in favor of my argument. The anti science people are the ones who deny that it’s a code; who deny that codes are always, to our knowledge, designed; those who advocate Junk DNA; those who make it sound as though an answer is just behind the next corner. All codes we know the origin of are designed. That is a fact. Inference to anything BUT design is anti-science. It may be entirely possible that there is a natural explanation for the origin of DNA and the genetic code, but it will require the universe to have properties that are more wonderful and amazing than any we know now. Which will then only further provoke the question “And where did the universe come from and why is it so exquisitely orderly?” David H’s reply to Richard Morgan in this thread is excellent, by the way. Bravo, David H. At some point, all world views invoke magic. ALL of them. I just happen to be willing to admit it.
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Richard Morgan says:November 27, 2011 at 5:27 pmThere is one point that has been hinted at by others, but never fully developed. It concerns Perry’s third premise : “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” To illustrate my point, and in order to see to what extent the qualification “we know the origin of” is valid and useful, let us replace “code” with something else and see how far we can run with it. To do so, I will fall back on our old pal William Paley. “All watches we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” Interestingly, that would only be true for someone who knew what a watch was, and who understood the nature of its purpose. To a primitive tribesman who had never seen anything that was designed to measure the passing of time, finding a watch on a beach would not indicate the existence of any intelligent being who would have created it. He could have taken it for a very rare precious stone, and worn it around his neck as a decoration. Today, almost everybody would recognise it as a human artefact, and would be entitled to presume that it had been designed and made by a conscious being. This allows us to extend the premise thus: “All the objects which we recognise as watches AND which we know the origins of are designed by conscious beings.” Let’s take this addition back to Perry’s premise: “All the phenomena that we can recognise as codes according to the criteria which define man-made codes and which we know the origins of are designed by conscious (man-like?) beings.” This introduces a new and vital proviso : our ability to recognise something as a code. Obviously it must be intelligible to the human mind in order for this identification and recognition to take place. One could surmise the possibility of other forms of communication which do not involve codes, and which our brain/mind could NEVER identify or recognise. So now we are back to the old problem of the limitations of the human brain processing data received through only five senses. As I have said elsewhere, if ever I got “beamed up”to a planet where everybody had TEN senses, I would only ever be able to have half as much fun as them Communication would be extremely difficult because I would only possess half of their terms of reference. Let’s give that pesky premise its final facelift: “All the phenomena that we can pick up with our five senses, and which can be processed by our brain, and which our brain matches with information identifying it as a code (it precisely resembles man-made codes) and which we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” But even with that, in order for the comparison to work, we would have to be able to identify the encoder and the decoder, then determine the contents of the information being communicated and the reason it is being communicated. Why? Because we can do this with “all the codes we know the origin of”. So we would need to be able to do that with DNA before the syllogism works. Using the reasoning, “It’s yellow, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck and avoids oranges” could perhaps lead us to use the inference to the best explanation and say it’s very probably a duck. It would take rather more verification for us to scientifically identify it as a duck. The four bits of information certainly point us in the direction of “duck” but they are insufficient as proof. Similarly, pointing out that DNA behaves in a way that corresponds exactly (or almost) with the Shannon criteria for communication is inadequate for claiming it as “proof” that DNA is a code in precisely the same way that the English language is, or uses, a code. We lack some vital bits of information: i) the identity of the inventor of the code; ii) the identity of the encoder and iii) his motivation/purpose in emitting a message. Any suggestions…without invoking God?Reply
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Davd H says:November 29, 2011 at 6:11 amHello Richard, I will do a little cut-and-paste quoting from your last forum offering: ‘To do so, I will fall back on our old pal William Paley.?“All watches we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.”’ We seem to be hung up on the overly qualified modifying clause, “we know the origin of”. A watch, whether we know the ORIGIN of it or NOT, demonstrates by its very crafted existence and PURPOSE, which is to mark the passage of time, a DESIGN. Agnostics and atheists intentionally overlook, as they must, that everything we see, including ourselves and our world, and our universe, is ALREADY Designed. This world we speculate about has its design built in from the start, just staring us nakedly in the face. That is a point that theists feel or insist is already self-evident before going into hocus-pocus land for other explanations. Returning to the watch, you do primitive tribesmen everywhere a great injustice, Richard, to automatically surmise that they, would, of course, fail to recognize a watch as a Design. You premise your allegory on the complete incomprehension of a “primitive” to recognize that this watch was most assuredly NOT a natural object such as a precious stone! But, let’s give you the credit for simply “making a point”. So, let’s say to extend your allegory further, which seems to depend upon, for your purposes, the NON recognition of this watch — make the discoverer a rather dullwitted beach crab who scuttles away with the watch in its claws. But, fascinatingly enough, whether the watch is “recognized” as Designed or as a Natural object , NEVER EVER CHANGES ITS CREATION FACTS. Does it? No conjecture about “recognition” even for the sake of a specious argument can ever change the essential truth: the Watch was CREATED not inanimately formed. A million forum posts in denial cannot alter the Facts. The intent is irrevocably demonstrated and embedded in its physical structure. If a tribal council, afraid that this watch indicates that some superior intelligence lies just over the waves and will show up one day soon, proclaims in their secret cabal that the Truth about this Watch must be hidden and lied about for fear of causing panic in the village, it DOES NOT CHANGE THE WATCH’S ORIGIN IN THE LEAST. No amount of preaching against or arguing against the obvious design (conscious intent or plan to create an object for a purpose or utility that could only be useful to the mind containing that consciousness) changes how the watch came to be. Looking for other explanations will never ever ever in billions and billions of years change the facts of the watch’s design and construction, let alone, how it arrived on this beach. It is brainwashing against even accepting a superior consciousness that drives people to flee the OBVIOUS origin of DNA and RNA. It should be the most astounding revelation of all history that math and science have PROVEN that we are programmed by a super intelligence, irrefutably. It is only rebellious theorists who run from the light to darkness to fiddle with Dark Matter and Dark Energy and multiple realities as some sort of scientific refuge from the truth. Richard, you say: “One could surmise the possibility of other forms of communication which do not involve codes, and which our brain/mind could NEVER identify or recognise.” Oh, could we now? The definition of CODE, just in case you seem to have forgotten, will always apply to “communication”, “other forms” or not. Communication, which you necessarily must draw into the fray, is an intent, a transmission of consciousness to another consciousness. Wikipedia helps out: “Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender’s intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space. Communication requires that the communicating parties share an area of communicative commonality. The communication process is complete once the receiver has understood the message of the sender. Essential to all of this is a “code” of some sort where the mechanism of “decoding” is perfectly synchronized with the Coder. And entities, corporal or etherial, can not be “entities” without Structure. ” Richard, finally, you close with this declaration of need — what, according to your analysis, we have to know first, before we can finally assign DNA to a conclusive origin : You declare, Richard — “We lack some vital bits of information: ?i) the identity of the inventor of the code; ?ii) the identity of the encoder and? iii) his motivation/purpose in emitting a message.” The other day I went into a bookstore and came across books written in Sanskrit. These books contained lines such as this: ‘??????? ????’ Satyameva Jayate Although I did not know that in English we might translate that as “Truth alone triumphs” I could be confident that although I did not the know the author, I did not know who invented the code I was seeing, I did not know who had typeset these pages, I had no idea about the motivation/purpose of any of these people, I knew most assuredly, undeniably, not open to scientific debate, that it was a MESSAGE. I.E., from an Intelligence To an Intelligence. Yet, I could not read it. I did NOT know the identity of the author or before that the identity of the inventor of the code. I did NOT know the identity of the encoder. I did not know the motivation or purpose in emitting this message. I could not pronounce it or decode it. I could not completely receive the code as it was intended, to be read and understood. But my pitiful incomprehension will never ever negate or erase or eliminate the life and intent of the writer or their purpose in writing it. It did not negate the obvious existence of an Author with thoughts and purpose and a plan to communicate and create this book and its pages and its words and intent to teach and inspire or to simply record thoughts of intelligent consciousness. That message was sent quite a while ago. It will await the day that I learn Sanskrit to fully unlock all the meaning. But, the meaning is pure, intact, stored, recorded, waiting for me to discover its fullness. I do not believe DNA to be a “message” from God to us. It is a means to an end. To get the job done. But, “job” it is. It has a purpose. To replicate extremely complicated forms of life. If there was not a Bible. If we had never ever heard of “God” or “Jesus Christ”. If there had never been a belief system called Christianity. If all over the world not one single culture ever looked to the “spirit world” or created legends over evening fires of Great Spirits in the Sky. If to this day there did not exist a single cathedral or temple or mosque. If “religion” in any conception had never existed. If we had a “clean slate” to write on when it came to scientific discoveries, no readily made “anthropomorphic” framework in which to couch spooky suppositions for why we are here. It would be a world that, of course, necessarily had constructed and understood the necessity and intention of code for language communication and manufacturing and storage and retrieval of vital information. Each nucleus in the cell of a human or other mammal contains some 6 billion base pairs of DNA which, if stretched out, would form a very thin thread about 6 ft (2 m) long. This DNA has to be packaged into the chromosome within a nucleus that is much smaller than a printed dot. In that hypothetical “non religious” world the discovery of DNA and its immensely complex, astronomically unlikely chain of “letters” written into a 6 foot strand of chained molecules that directed the assembly of a human being or an elephant or a fish, would have rocked the scientific world. A discussion of DNA–the HOW and WHERE and WHO and even WHY would have consumed scientific forums without prejudice. They would have reached some inescapable conclusions based purely on likelihood and mathematical probablities. They would have accepted as “scientific” what such a discovery unmistakably portended. Then, and only then would these scientists have turned their eyes towards the heavens, perhaps fearfully, or in hopeful wonder, and speculated as to Who was watching and for what purpose.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:November 29, 2011 at 4:47 pmDavid H, Thank you for taking the time to write all that. I’m not quite sure what you are arguing with me about. What is your point? I was not questioning the origins of the Universe and all things therein. I was simply doubting the usefulness and validity of the syllogism. I am a Christian. Several times a week at Mass I recite , “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. Et seq. In a gentler way I was echoing Eddie Nuno’s concerns about the use of logic. Is all.Reply
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Davd H says:November 30, 2011 at 3:07 amRichard Morgan, “Any suggestions…without invoking God?” Ahhhhhh….. gotcha. Yes, then, you are mostly correct. However, I think you are being overly constrictive with this conjecture : “Similarly, pointing out that DNA behaves in a way that corresponds exactly (or almost) with the Shannon criteria for communication is inadequate for claiming it as “proof” that DNA is a code in precisely the same way that the English language is, or uses, a code. We lack some vital bits of information: i) the identity of the inventor of the code; ii) the identity of the encoder and iii) his motivation/purpose in emitting a message.” “in precisely the same way that the English language is, or uses, a code” is an almost farcical underestimation of the complexity of the DNA structure. The superior intelligence is revealed in the monstrously complex precision and efficiency of DNA far more than the intelligence revealed in the English language, even though both obviously reveal an intelligent origin. All of our own examples of coding, even the code running through my MacPro to access the internet and interface with yourself, are pitifully simple and “childlike” compared to the code already sitting in place inside my DNA. It is like a child first playing with paints at the age of four splattering watercolors onto paper and holding it up proudly to say, “LOOK, what I made, Mommy!” We are so proud of ourselves in 2011 and have the arrogance to look around and declare that we have reached such a level of scientific sophistication that we can conclusively maintain that the conception of a super creator is itself child’s tales. Even as a Christian apologist, Richard, I think you do the full significance of DNA’s structure and operation dreadfully short service. The sequencing of genomes is only further exposing the unfathomable GENIUS of DNA and RNA. Sequencing is only opening up more and more mysteries beyond belief. Beyond belief. But, as you say, Richard, to paraphrase — God, superior outside intelligence, not “nature” or “forces”, has to be necessarily invoked to discuss this at all.Reply
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Richard says:December 1, 2011 at 2:46 am“God, superior outside intelligence…” You’ve got into a loop here. Intelligence, as we know it, requires a brain, and that is built via DNA. God is not some sort of superman. Or else you are using the word “intelligence” to mean something very different from its usual meaning.Reply
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Perry says:December 1, 2011 at 3:51 amRichard, My brother Bryan asked me a great question once, he said, “Perry, what do you expect scientists to do? Do you expect them to throw up their hands and say “God did it” or do you want them to do the jobs they’re paid to do?” I would like to submit to you that one need not abdicate science in order to acknowledge the evidence for that which is transcendent. Rather I believe that the transcendent is the very thing that gives us philosophical grounds for methodological naturalism in the first place. This entire article and thread about Godel is about precisely that. That the universe, if it is logical, cannot explain itself. Science cannot explain itself, mathematics cannot explain itself and the laws of physics cannot account for themselves. Remember what the question is here. The question can be phrased in any and all of the following ways: Does science give us a reason to believe God exists? Can the universe explain itself or does it require a transcendent cause? Was Paley right with his watch argument or was Hume right in his later argument for natural causes of everything? Is there design in biology, or only the appearance of design via natural selection? Those are the questions. I must be blunt: I am not caught in a loop. You are. This is because you are denying, before we even start, that evidence for the supernatural is possible. This leads you to deriving your premise from our conclusion, when you say that there cannot be a designer because the only designers we know of are humans. We all already knew that before this discussion began. That’s implicit in the setup of the whole conversation. But the question is, does science give us inference to any other kind of external Designer? The fact that DNA is a code makes the answer to that question a clear and unambiguous yes. Once you allow for science to INFER (not deduce) things larger than itself, you’re out of the loop. You can then accept what Godel was already telling you all along, which is that the universe requires an immaterial boundless cause. The existence of codes proves that this cause is also conscious and capable of language and making decisions. Richard raised the question of how valid my conclusion of design, from the syllogism, is. It’s exactly as valid as the isomorphism between Shannon’s system and the operation of the genome. The intricacy and elegance of the genetic language, which is found in the layers far above the simple ACGT/amino acid code, is further proof that we are dealing with a Designer and not merely a designer. Random processes have never been observed create such fabulous languages such as we see in DNA. I am completely in favor of finding a naturalistic explanation for DNA. Perhaps someone will do so. If they do they will probably solve the artificial intelligence problem at the same time. But right now the naked truth is that there is not a single origin of life theory that properly qualifies as science. Richard, in Romans 1 Paul said this: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” This is a statement you can take to the bank. The fact that the universe is finely tuned and the product of deliberate design can be directly inferred by EVERYTHING we know about computer science and information theory. There is no ambiguity about this. The only way to deny this is to preclude the possibility before the conversation even starts. This is the default atheist position, but it is demonstrably illogical. You and I have every logical and rational reason to believe in God – because of the order of the universe. And if someone discovers a natural process that creates codes, then they will have discovered even more order in the universe than before. And St. Paul’s words will still stand true.Reply
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Richard says:December 1, 2011 at 4:22 am“does science give us inference to any other kind of external Designer” I’ve no idea what you mean by some “other kind of external designer”.Reply
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Richard Morgan says:December 1, 2011 at 9:38 amPerry said : “Richard raised the question of how valid my conclusion of design, from the syllogism, is.” Wrong. As I have said to David H twice, I was simply doubting the usefulness and validity of the syllogism itself. A syllogism is an exercise in Logic and in order to be valid, it has to respect certain rules. Your first premise talks about a code. However your second premise talks about a code that we know the origin of. The logic breaks down at that point. The premises no longer have a common term. This means that no conclusion can be drawn. Let’s look at a syllogism from Logic 101. Major premise: All men are mortal. Minor premise: All Greeks are men. Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal. If we change it to include the error you make, we get: Major premise: All men are mortal. Minor premise: All Greeks are men that I know. Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal. To make your syllogism work (as an EXERCISE in Logic) you would have to do something with the qualifier you have added to the term “code”. That leaves us with the choice between: P1 : DNA is a code we know the origin of; P2 : All codes that we know the origin of are designed by a conscious mind. C : DNA is designed by a conscious mind. OR P1 : DNA is a code; P2 : All codes are designed by a conscious mind. C : DNA is designed by a conscious mind. When I was a student, I had a friend who was very successful with women, even though he received a fair share of slaps. His attitude was based on a false syllogism, something like this; P1 : Céline is a woman; P2 : All the women I know want to sleep with me; C : Therefore Céline wants to sleep with me. Of course, I agree that we can infer that it is highly probable that DNA was designed, since all the codes we know the origin of are designed. The point I am making is that it is not a syllogism which gets us there. By changing one of the terms, the major and minor premises are not referring to the same subject. This means that no logical conclusion can be drawn. Just as a point of interest, we fall into the same fallacy if we use the same term twice, but change the meaning of that term. P1 : All reds are commie b*st*rds; P2 : All tomatoes are red; C : All tomatoes are commie b*st*rds. I believe, with an intensity that makes me treat my belief as a certainty, that God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. , that. But it wasn’t human Logic that got me there. P1 ; Gods loves all his creatures; P2 I am one of His creatures; C ; There fore, God loves me?
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Perry says:December 1, 2011 at 10:04 amMajor premise: All men are mortal. Minor premise: All Greeks are men that I know. Conclusion: All Greeks are mortal. That’s not the actual logic of immortality. The actual logic is: All men that I know the fate of are mortal. Everyone named John is a man. Therefore everyone named John is mortal. This syllogism, and mine, are equally reliable. Both are inductive. Neither can absolutely prove mortality. It is possible for there to be an exception. Christianity claims very emphatically that there are exceptions to mortality, as you know. The reason that you can say “I agree that we can infer that it is highly probable that DNA was designed, since all the codes we know the origin of are designed.” is because even though it is not an absolute proof, it’s a probability: Millions of codes we do know the origin of vs. one code we don’t. We cannot draw an logical deductive conclusion but we most certainly can draw a logical inference.
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Richard Morgan says:December 1, 2011 at 1:08 amDavid H: Thank you for finally reading the last line of my comment. You say, “I think you do the full significance of DNA’s structure and operation dreadfully short service.” I had previously said :”I was simply doubting the usefulness and validity of the syllogism.” If I dared to discuss “the full significance of DNA’s structure and operation ” I would probably do far worse than “dreadfully short service”. I can’t even begin to understand the “FULL significance” of DNA. I was simply doubting the usefulness and validity of the syllogism. (Also I think it would be a sad day for Christian apologetics if ever I claimed to be a Christian apologist!)Reply
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Richard says:December 1, 2011 at 2:35 am“All codes we know the origin of are designed. That is a fact.” We don’t know the origin of DNA. Therefore we cannot deduce that it is designed. All designers we know of are material, have brains and are complex. God has none of those properties, so God is not a designer in the same sense as the designers we know of. It is not helpful to be like Humpty Dumpty when using words like ‘designer': “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”Reply
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jithendra says:December 1, 2011 at 3:40 amI am extremely thankful to you (Mr. Perry) because you gave me new insights into life. But while I was going through the article, I see many similarities to what Buddhism says (I am a Hindu by birth though). I think you must have read his works on “Duality”. I feel may be Einstein is right “If there is any religion which would meet the demands of science, it has to be Buddhism”. I don’t belong to or believe in a religion though I am a believer of God.Reply
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Richard says:December 1, 2011 at 11:24 am“The reason that you can say “I agree that we can infer that it is highly probable that DNA was designed, since all the codes we know the origin of are designed.” is because even though it is not an absolute proof, it’s a probability: Millions of codes we do know the origin of vs. one code we don’t. We cannot draw an logical deductive conclusion but we most certainly can draw a logical inference.” Of course this is entirely wrong. You might as well say that all the billions of animals we know were born on earth, therefore we can draw a logical inference that there are no animals on other planets. A probability of billions vs. zero. DNA in fact differs in all sorts of respects from codes written by humans or machines, and therefore it would not be in the least surprising if it had a different origin. In fact we know it has a different origin. Of all the codes that we know of, it is unique in not being designed by a human being or a machine made by a human. Other than the codes in people’s brains of course. Actually different animals have different codes in their DNA and so in fact there are billions of different DNA programs.Reply
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Richard says:December 2, 2011 at 11:20 amIntelligent Design belittles God I don’t know whether I can put a URL in this box, so I’ve put it in the box above. PS, I am not a Roman CatholicReply
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Perry says:December 2, 2011 at 7:56 pmI am entirely in favor of a theory of evolution. What I am not in favor of is the anti-scientific proposition that it is random and accidental.Reply
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Richard says:December 3, 2011 at 4:01 amI see that the URL I supplied has been omitted. The theory of evolution does not contain the proposition that it is entirely random and accidental. It describes a natural selection process which is neither random nor accidental in the main.Reply
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Perry says:December 3, 2011 at 6:40 pmYour link works for me, I hope there’s not a technical glitch. The mutations aren’t accidental either, they’re algorithmic. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/new-theory-of-evolution/Reply
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Richard says:December 4, 2011 at 6:02 amOh I see, the link is from all occurrences of my name. I really just wanted it to be a link within the text of that one post. Anyway, the idea that many mutations are not accidental makes sense to me. Whereas the idea that a wholly immaterial entity can be a programmer makes no sense to me.
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Richard Morgan says:December 3, 2011 at 6:56 pmRichard : in the standard theories of evolution, without mutations, there would be nothing for natural selection to work on. These mutations are claimed to be random. So all the rest could not happen if the ‘random’ events did not occur. No scientific theory can be based on randomness which, like “God-did-it” is a strict synonym for, “I don’t know.” It is worse than saying E=M(tralala)^2Reply
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Blaine the bassist says:February 10, 2012 at 4:05 amThe writer seems biased towards a belief in god in these writings and I feel it’s a little off putting. He is correct that assuming something that hasn’t been proven is a breach of logic but the same hypocrisy he almost repeats towards the end of his writings. He seems to want to say that a belief in god is rational when it isn’t. To assume that there must be a creator when a creator isn’t necessary is just banking on the fact that science isn’t complete. I mean, if you found a tree would you assume that someone built it or that it grew? Of course you’d assume it grew because we see little trees that are growing. Well we can see galaxies being born right now. Do we see a massive man with building them? No. This is why there are very few atheists out there who claim to be Gnostic Atheists aka positive there is no god. The evidentialist atheists claim that on a scale of 1-10, they’re around a 7 or 8 and therefore there is probably no god. What I always say is that if I ever saw definitive evidence of god, I would believe. Until then, I’m claiming the most rational conclusion: there is probably no god.Reply
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Perry says:February 10, 2012 at 8:50 amYessir, I am banking on the fact that science isn’t complete. Gödel proved that it’s impossible for it to be complete.Reply
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Richard says:February 10, 2012 at 8:57 amNo, he didn’t.Reply
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David H says:February 10, 2012 at 9:21 amBlaine, it’s amazing to me that you actually think you have made an “argument” against the existence of God based on your own “experiences” created from your own senses. To quote you : “Well we can see galaxies being born right now. Do we see a massive man with building them? No.” The truth is, Blaine, right now as you read this and as I type this response, there is a vast world of images and sounds and words passing completely through my body. There are incredible symphonies and funky blues tunes and old time rock and roll tunes, songs, sounds passing completely through my tympanum, completely invading my ears and yet I cannot hear a single note and have no idea that my ears are being flooded with millions of sounds that I cannot hear. There are millions of pages of books complete with illustrations and colors and type fonts and words of every language under the sun passing through my eyes, literally PASSING THROUGH MY EYES, and I can NOT see a single word or color, not even the tiniest pixel or bit of all this miraculous transmission occupying the same space I am sitting in, the same space you sit in. There are millions of simultaneous conversations passing through my ears but my ears hear nothing but silence in this room. Nothing but the clicks of my keyboard. This is indisputably happening “they” say, but I am deaf to it. Millions of movies of moments in past times, in sound and images, flow about me but I only hear my fingers on the keyboard. I only see the monitor screen in front of me. My urban space is permeated by thousands and thousands of electromagnetic transmissions of movies via wi-fi and telecommunications radio frequencies, cellphone conversations, television and radio broadcasts, wireless internet streams, of microwave frequencies. But, I can tell you unequivocally, I hear nothing, I see nothing, I perceive nothing like this at all. My experiences, my senses, tell me UNDOUBTEDLY, without reservation (because if I can not trust my own senses, then what CAN I trust?) that these “claims” that I can view a movie, an entire MOVIE with a title and music and loud thunderous sound effects in surround sound and beautiful actresses and dramatic actors running down the streets of New York City in the rain simply by sitting in this very same room …. well, get REAL, this is absolute NONSENSE! Who are you imbeciles who claim to see and hear and EXPERIENCE such things any time you want!? Now, let me get back to my stargazing. Oh, look, a galaxy, a “young” galaxy. Nope, by the same reasoning I proudly and confidently proclaim there is NO GOD up there, either. You and me, Blaine, WE know better, don’t we?Reply
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Richard says:February 10, 2012 at 10:46 amI suspect that you DO in fact have some evidence of “thousands and thousands of electromagnetic transmissions of movies via wi-fi and telecommunications radio frequencies, cellphone conversations, television and radio broadcasts, wireless internet streams, of microwave frequencies”, otherwise why do you talk about them?Reply
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David H says:February 11, 2012 at 7:21 amWell, Richard, I would say the the whole point of my reply to Blaine is summed up in my opening sentence. “Blaine, it’s amazing to me that you actually think you have made an “argument” against the existence of God based on your own “experiences” created from your own senses.” And you, Richard, missed the comparison? Really? It, obviously, had nothing to do with whether I have or do not have “proof” of these transmissions. They are obviously proven and a common place fact-of-life in this era. It had to do with INVISIBILITY to our 5 senses. We have thousands of examples to show how unreliable our senses truly are when it comes to exposing every day reality. So you can not SCIENTIFICALLY argue against the possibility of God merely based on not having seen God at work or maybe dozing off in a celestial hammock. Or are you experiencing life differently, Richard?Reply
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Richard says:February 11, 2012 at 9:37 amElectromagnetic transmissions relate to a scientific theory supported by evidence. Contrast this with statements about God.
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Richard Morgan says:February 10, 2012 at 10:07 amBlaine : You say : “Well we can see galaxies being born right now.” Strictly speaking, this is not true. If we can witness the birth of a galaxy that is only 1,000 light-years distant fro; the earth, it is NOT happening “now” but one thousand years ago. (Sorry, but I tend to insist on correct language.) “Do we see a massive man with building them? No.” Who on earth has ever claimed that a “massive man” built galaxies? This is just another very silly straw man argument : paint God as a “massive man”, look into the cosmos for a “massive man”, can’t see any “massive men”, therefore – no God. Good grief…… One of the wonders of science and our knowledge is its incompleteness. That means that anything remains possible, including stark contradictions and invalidations of ALL that we now call “facts”.Reply
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Richard says:February 10, 2012 at 10:24 amAh, the massive man is a straw man! Perhaps as seen in the 1973 film ‘The Wicker Man’?Reply
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David H says:February 12, 2012 at 2:53 amRichard, you are farther and farther off track. INVISIBILITY, Richard. How many times must I proclaim this? Blaine’s statement was that God is not SEEN and there is no VISIBLE God working in a new galaxy’s formation. Why do people have to go to such excruciating lengths to break things down into such simple verbal components for you? As JESUS said, you strain out a gnat from the water you drink but swallow a camel. The mathematical evidence and algorithmic evidence for a vastly superior intelligence at the core of all life and creation far far exceeds what is normally posited to create a theory that is ACCEPTED as a scientific “fact”. Einstein’s “theories” had to await decades for some aspects to be “proven”. Nevertheless, scientists raced out to create a nuclear bomb by FAITH. At the time there was still debate over whether Einstein had overstated some of his conclusions. But two nations poured huge amounts of money into seeing if Einstein’s math could translate into an explosive fission reaction. Einstein’s math, however, gave no instructions on HOW to release the energy. The equations that calculate the series of events that would have to occur for us to be here chatting in this forum eons later are in a “scientifc” sense, irrefutable. Simply as math without philosophical attachments. The reason, Richard, that you feel free to refute the evidences for God’s existence is because you don’t understand them. The astounding and awesome depth of them. The reason people stay non-believers, even highly trained scientists, is because they let their prejudices negate what the science and the math have ALREADY demonstrated. And this is why you will year after year strain at your gnats in this forum and swallow the camel that there is NO PROOF of God. The shadow and the light that looms over you is God and his intentions, which shape everything you live and breathe. Not too long ago God was ON THE SCENE talking openly, doing things in a big literal demonstration of his power. But, he has chosen to hide himself away for a season, to let his words and the people who truly believe his words and act on his words be His witness. And for now, Richard, it gives you great freedom to spend literally years in this forum circling like a buzzing fly inside a fruit jar, banging endlessly against the glass until life fades away. Must be frustrating.Reply
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Richard says:February 13, 2012 at 11:22 amFrustrating for you maybe. But I rather dislike being preached at – and you make a lot of assertions without backing them up in any way. So there is nothing for me to respond to.Reply
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Davd H says:February 13, 2012 at 2:09 pmGood. No response is appropriate.Reply
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Richard says:February 14, 2012 at 3:19 amDavid, I will perhaps be forgiven for pointing out that when Jesus said “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” he was specifically addressing the remark to religious teachers such as your good self.Reply
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Davd H says:February 15, 2012 at 4:24 amGödel’s Theorem Will End In The Future! Richard said: “David, I will perhaps be forgiven for pointing out that when Jesus said “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” he was specifically addressing the remark to religious teachers such as your good self.” Hello Richard. You are certainly forgiven. Thank you for bringing up more discussion on that point. When you dip into the scriptures a bit further you will discover that Jesus was not speaking to me or “religious teachers” like me. I believe in Jesus Christ. I accept his teachings completely. Jesus’s verbal zinger was addressed to “religious teachers” who quite obviously did not believe his teachings. They were the sects who had become bound up in their own writings filled with niggling fine points and man-made interpretations and even “new commandments”. Jesus was constantly in a philosophical battle with these various sects that had subverted and distorted the purity and intent of the original commandments and the scriptural “examples” of David in Psalms, as one of many other examples of God’s continual revelation of his nature and what man’s should be towards God. Jesus made it clear over and over that “religion” as he found it practiced in the region of his ministry was profoundly perverse and off-the-track. I am also convinced that “religion” is still completely off-track. And has been way, way off the mark for several thousand years. Even our “religions” that claim some affiliation with Christ, however tightly or loosely their bonds may seem to be, are sadly, tragically missing the boat. It is the very act of trying to place a man-made structure around the Gospel, the Good News, that ultimately will always, always destroy the intent and power of that Good News. And this happens, unfortunately, in the “best” of churches as diligently as they try and pray to be “in the will of God”. This is not to condemn all churches, but to simply say we must be alert and cognizant of how our own resolutions to stay “together” in a church structure at a physical address by our flawed humanness begin to introduce error and mistakes despite our most fervent intentions otherwise. Jesus was a revolutionary and a radical in the sense that He flatly rejected ALL FORMS OF RELIGION that he found operating in Galilee. He, in fact, ridiculed these “religious” leaders and “religious” teachers to their faces when he said “You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!” This was a smack in the face to their supposed authority to represent what we may collectively today call “Judaism”. Jesus was a Jew speaking to Jews and Jewish High Authorities about the existing Jewish Religious structure and synagogues he found in operation during his time on Earth. And his rebuke still holds true and relevant and applicable to “Christianity” today. True Christianity, by the was, is inextricably and irrevocably bound up and descended from Judaism. As such a True Believer in Jesus Christ is spiritually a Jew and a brother and sister to Jews. Even if Jews today may not understand that and even despite an early so-called “Christian” movement to reject that truth. There were always some true believers in Christ throughout history who never ever denied their spiritual Jewish family roots. Simply put, a Christian in every sense of that term can not be an Anti-Semite. This is a complete contradiction. And, pro-actively, a Christian must be an ally of his fellow Jews even if they are not believers in Christ. To accept Jesus Christ is to accept, indeed, gratefull y welcome and rejoice that our spiritual blessings forever and ever come through a Jewish tree and that we with all our spiritual guarantees are always indebted to the fact that Jesus came first as a Jew offering salvation to the Jews even though it was always His intention to freely offer salvation to the whole world. So, with that spirit in us, a Christian can not join in with anti-semitic, anti-Jewish feelings or statements or actions. They should not even exist in our hearts or we have, in truth, not accepted the full spirit of Christ. Jewish leaders felt that Jesus’ teachings were sinful because he disregarded traditional Jewish religious laws. Jesus scared them because he seemed to be gaining popularity as he declared that He himself superseded existing and firmly established “religious beliefs”. It was to these Rabbis of various competing sects, the Pharisees, the Saducees, the Zealots, and even Jesus’s own Essenes sect, that he directly spoke when he stated: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me,” All of this hoohah would not have meant too much — many crazy things can be claimed by any schizophrenic or deranged person, as we well know — but Jesus deliberately cemented his authority to make these claims by almost daily miracles for three-and-a-half years straight. It was the weight of his miracles, defying “science”, walking on water, speaking to storms and calming the seas and the winds and the sky instantaneously, telling dead bodies to live and breathe again, multiplying loaves of bread and fishes by factors of 100 or more, healing blindness, healing deafness that convinced people that Jesus must have more true authority than the High Priests and Rabbis. Jesus put an exclamation point on that Authority and claim to literally be God as much as the Father God Himself, by rising from his own grave after he was convincingly dead, and walking about appearing to large groups of people over a period of 40 days. Then he in plain sight left the earth before a crowd and without any effort overcame gravity to rise straight up and disappear into another realm. This is quite a bit of “religion” for this forum but it is very relevant to your insistence, Richard, that Jesus surely was addressing people like me. As long as I believe Jesus is the final authority on what is true and not even the prevailing “religious leaders” of this day, then the Good News is for me and those who also accept and welcome Jesus over Religion, is that I am, for all my faults and stupidities and ignorance, Eternal. And that my life is guaranteed Forever when “science” comes to an end. Even Gödel’s theorem will come to a conclusion, according to what Jesus plainly states. Even the present laws of thermodynamics will be changed and done away with. That is amazing! And, finally, Richard, Religion itself will pass away forever. Good Riddance.Reply
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Richard says:February 28, 2012 at 11:03 amAs a matter of fact, according to Matt 23, Jesus did not object to what the religious leaders said (“you must be careful to do everything they tell you”). His objection what that they did not practice what they preached (“do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach”). It is not enough for a person just to claim that they believe everything Jesus said (“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven”). What is important is to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Gal 5:14 and 7 other places).Reply
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Davd H says:February 29, 2012 at 3:08 amHi Richard, It is exactly true that Jesus was objecting to and scorning the Pharisees and the scribes openly for preaching one thing and yet doing completely the opposite of their own priestly admonitions to the temple worshippers. At that time all Jewish worship centered around the temple, what Jesus called Moses’ seat. Jesus himself revered the practices of worship in the Temple which is why he was so incensed when he “cleaned up” the Temple from all of the merchants who had set up shop inside the temple and profaned the holiness of the Temple. That is some of the background when Jesus spoke to the multitudes and said: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them.” Because of the scribes’ and Pharisee’s Position, solely and only because of their Position, Jesus said “therefore”. His message was: Because they hold this position “in the chair of Moses” that is why I do not tell you to oppose them and rebel against the sacraments as practiced in the Temple. But, it is obviously not so that the ONLY objection Jesus had was that the Jewish religious leaders did not practice what they preached. Far from it, far far from it. He made it too clear too many places in the scriptures to contend otherwise. Their biggest failure according to Jesus was that they professed to be scholars, to know God and His Will, to worship and serve the God of Abraham and Moses, and yet, they opposed the Son of God who was foretold in the very scriptures they professed their expertise. He scorned them that they did not believe his testimony and that they condemned his works of good as evil. And Jesus scorned them that they REFUSED to believe that the scriptures of his coming had been fulfilled in front of their own eyes. But, here is a critical point, Jesus repeatedly said that the FIRST sign of a believer was that he or she professed with the mouth. The beginning of faith is to profess with the mouth what you believe. Yes, Jesus acknowledged that not all who have said “Lord, Lord..” will be saved. But he made it clear that they are a sub-set, a portion of all who have said “Lord, Lord” . The ones who Jesus will acknowledge and welcome are those who meant it, after saying it, with all their hearts. That is why Jesus said that the gate is narrow. Not everyone will pass through that gate who thought they were going to. But, at least Jesus gave us fair warning to stay vigilant and “in the faith”. When you say, Richard, that what is “important” is to “Love your neighbor as yourself” you seem to endorse a popular “Christian” theology that leaves what that means up to the individual and that “as long as you are a good person” you are a Christian and a believer. Jesus said that the RESULT of accepting him as Lord would be that your heart would be transformed, your very inward nature would be changed, sometimes immediately, sometimes over the course of time, but it would be changed so that the laws of God would be “written on your heart”. With that spiritual transformation it is not a chore or a duty to “Love your neighbor” as it was before the change. To Love your neighbor is a reminder to believers, not another way for non-believers to profess that they are “just as good” as Christians. The sad truth is that they are exactly correct. Too many “Christians” are going through the motions because they are not actually believers.Reply
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Richard says:March 3, 2012 at 10:49 amYou have it exactly back to front. Everyone who is following the commandment to love their neighbour as themselves is a believer and therefore a Christian whether they acknowledge it or not. Perhaps I can state this more formalistically. We agree that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord, ” will enter the kingdom of heaven. But what about the converse? Can anyone who does not say “Lord, Lord” enter? Clearly mutes and those who have never heard of Jesus cannot say “Lord, Lord, ” – but they are thereby not to be consigned to hell. One counterexample is enough. It is entirely back to front to say that to love your neighbor is a merely a reminder to believers. You could say that it is a test of whether you are a believer. “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven …”. Jesus said to the religious leaders: “You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
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David H says:March 4, 2012 at 11:18 amHello Richard, thanks for your reply. You stated: “You have it exactly back to front. Everyone who is following the commandment to love their neighbour as themselves is a believer and therefore a Christian whether they acknowledge it or not.” Richard, this is exactly the “Christian myth” I am referring to. Jesus did not spend 3 and a half years asserting his Godhead, His Divinity, His Authority over Hell, Death, and the Grave itself simply to say at the end, “Oh, in case, you want to follow me, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Oh, well, gee, Lord, why do you have to Die then? What is the point of this “sacrifice”? Isn’t that kind of overdoing it if all we have to do is to “Love my neighbor as myself” and I do whatever I think you mean by that? Do you need to die on the cross and then raise from the dead just to deliver a homily: “Love your neighbor as yourself”? Couldn’t any human religious guy come up with that one? As so many people do, Richard, you have used a scripture as an Hors d’oeuvre So many people treat the Bible as a smorgasbord. Pick up a little salad here, a little olive oil and lemon there …. don’t like tuna grilled, so I think I’ll have the roast beef. Let’s look at what Jesus actually said: And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (NAS, Mark 12:28-31) A Christian’s relationship with our fellow men, women and children is inseparable from our relationship with God. Love of God and love of our neighbors are two aspects of the same calling. But which did Jesus proclaim was FOREMOST? With “all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” !!! WOW! Jesus said in no uncertain terms, you cannot SKIP one commandment, the FOREMOST commandment, and claim your “dessert”, “You shall love love your neighbor as yourself” Jesus said they are inseparable. Does this sound like God is going to pat you on the head as long as you proclaim to “Love your neighbor as yourself”? Either you are able to say with a full heart and complete utter sincerity that you have committed all that you have to follow his first commandment or you can skip thinking God honors your intention to “Love one another.” “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (NIV, John 13:34-35) Jesus said that this LOVE ONE ANOTHER admonition was a discipleship issue. That being a Christian meant first that you fulfilled what it means to be called a “disciple” of Jesus — refer to Commandment One. Discipleship STARTS up with the Foremost Commandment. Loving your neighbor is bound up and inseparable with ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ Do you honestly think that you could enter into a relationship with a woman, stand on the altar of marriage, and when asked “Richard, do you take Cynthia for your lawful wedded wife, to live in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love, honour, comfort, and cherish her from this day forward, forsaking all others, keeping only unto her for as long as you both shall live? And you answer, “Uh, you know, Reverend, I will have to get back to you on that … someday. In the meantime I just want to assure everyone here that I love them very much and love them as much as myself. Cynthia, darling, I hope you can accept that as all the assurances you really need that I am sincere when I say that I am your Husband.”
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Meteor says:February 12, 2012 at 11:46 pmIf Godel is right, then it is impossible to prove, because as stated, we can only work in from outer circles. As the outermost axioms are, by definition, not proven, we can accept that the inner ones cannot be irrefutably true. Q.E.D. Godel seems correct, but it cannot be known.Reply
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Perry says:February 13, 2012 at 10:12 amGödel proved his theorem was correct.Reply
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Richard says:February 13, 2012 at 12:04 pmYes, but his axioms cannot be proved to be correct – which I think Meteor was getting at.Reply
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Mike says:February 23, 2012 at 1:14 amWhat about the spiritual? what about demonic manifestation? what about the power in the word “Jesus Christ” and its effect when is mention? what about spiritual gift? Cuz all of this shit is happening outside while you “scientist” try to explain existence locked up in a lab. Here is a personal experience, i was at a church youth group, during worship the pastor asked if anyone wanted the “Gift of Tongues”, i thought- sure.. what is there to lose, should be interesting. i was the only one to raise my hand, they prayed for me, when the leader said as final words “i now impart you the gift of tongues” as soon as the last letter ended out of his mouth, my tongue felt like is swelled up the size of a lemon, i couldn’t speak fluently English but i was too overwhelmed by everything and everyone to speak the gibberish that felt was all i could say. the feeling in my mouth lasted a little more than 20 mins. That for me was a clear and overwhelming objective evidence by personal experience. My question is; How do you explain that?? and where does it fit in a “scientific reasoning” towards objective evidence of the spiritual existence ? What if the spiritual is more real than what we perceive as an absolute and only reality, “planet earth and everything else.. Existence is a result of cause and effect. tracing all existence back as the effect, inevitably leads to Divine creation as the cause. period.Reply
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Perry says:February 23, 2012 at 7:41 amAny skeptic can come up with some “just-so” explanation for what you experienced. But that person was not there, they did not experience it, and they cannot defend their explanation with any substantive facts. I’ve had many experiences somewhat like this myself, and eventually you come to realize that something much greater than you is at work. I’m in your corner on this one.Reply
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Richard says:March 8, 2012 at 7:26 amThe problem with experiences such as these is that believers in all religions have such experiences – including devil worshippers. Therefore one cannot legitimately conclude that these experiences prove that the religion you believe in is correct.Reply
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David H says:March 9, 2012 at 9:48 amNO, NO, Richard. You are so obviously out of your depth on this subject. NO OTHER RELIGION, not ONE, NOT ONE, has “these” experiences. This is one of those myths that gets perpetuated and restated so glibly, that “all religions” have basically similar experiences and therefore…therefore..ergo… ONLY Christianity, distinguished from all other “religions”, and I mean, Richard, in no uncertain terms, ONLY THE BELIEVERS IN JESUS CHRIST who have made a conscious decision to turn from unbelief or skepticism, which is the same thing, get these kind of experiences. Especially, Richard, come on fellow, the Scriptures are a special case where it is ROUTINELY, so routinely a distinctly CHRISTIAN experience reported over and over and over almost ad infinitum — in case you are not aware of the literature and the testimonies — that the Scriptures were “illuminated” and “opened up” to constant revelations and awesomely soul-rocking mind and heart expansion simply from READING plain Words. This is so distinctly a Christian-only phenomenon. Devil worshippers never receive this. You may Google to your heart’s content and search every library and for any one “testimony” of a “devil” or Satan worshipper who claims anything remotely as revelatory in reading whatever Satan worshippers claim is “scripture” you will find, on the other hand, endless testimonies in print, in biographies, in online testimonies, in television stories of something far far more numerous and widespread in the “Christian” or “born again” realm. Some distinctly different and powerful is going on and has been going on in the relatively small community of “believers”… and I do not mean church goers or denominational members. I mean in the individual testimonies of people who experienced something dramatic and powerfully transformational in their lives that is labelled “Being Saved” or “Accepting Christ as Lord” or just “Accepting Christ”. Read some of the testimonies of former Muslims who were transformed in their faith to belief in a God, Jehovah, not Allah, that they formerly repudiated. You will find their stories often, so often, bear similar characteristics. My experiences are “classical Christian” motifs, if you will. But I wanted God up close and real, not motifs. And I got much more than I bargained for or imagined ahead of time. I was “Surprised by Joy”.Reply
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Richard says:March 9, 2012 at 11:25 amYou miss the point I was making. The experience reported was that of a swollen tongue, and that is hardly Christian-specific. Please read what was said. Nevertheless, it is true that people report experiences that relate to their religion. Believers in Krishna have visions of Krishna, Roman Catholics see the virgin Mary, etc. Bible literalists will tell of experiences related to Bible literalism. And so on. Quite clearly these experiences do not prove that these religions are true. I am pleased to hear that you were surprised by joy. But I have to say that it isn’t joy that is coming across in your posts.
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David H says:March 5, 2012 at 2:54 amMike, I know exactly what you are talking about. In this world there are people who have been trained as astronauts. They “routinely” sit on top of huge rockets and are shoved into Earth orbit. They see the world from hundreds of miles above us. These astronauts see the stars with no atmosphere to block the view. They gaze into Eternity and routinely take pictures of it. These astronauts watch the Earth pass through an entire day, what would take us dawn to dusk to experience, and they see it over and over, hour after hour, encompassing the whole earth in just one of their own “days”. Just a routine day in space for astronauts. To say that they know more than us about “God’s eye view” is not just conjecture to be debated or pooh poohed with logic and rationale in a forum. An astronaut does not have to think themselves better or superior to one of us to simply state “There are some things I know and that I have seen that you cannot possibly imagine.” So it is with being on the other side of the Gate, the one Jesus offered, the Door into Eternal life. Since choosing to accept that invitation and making sure that God and Jesus knew that I was SERIOUS, incredible things came back from a Godly realm to let me know that I had made the right decision. Miracles happened that cannot be explained simply because you have not had them happen to you. I became an “Astronaut”, if you will, experiencing just a little peek beyond the veil where the Spirit of God lives and breathes, and that breath was breathed into me. Simply by choosing to believe, asking for forgiveness for not believing and not acting before, for not accepting what was freely offered by my own Creator. On the day I made that decision, a simple prayer that finally acknowledged that I was and did know that I was a “Sinner”. Not an easy thing to say when I considered myself a believer already. And I asked for God in the name of Jesus to Forgive me for everything. Please. Then I, with complete depth of desire, said that I wanted Jesus Christ to BE the LORD of my life and to come into my heart and to save me as He promised. The words were being given to me by a man I had never met. I had to humble myself before him and several other people joining in. So, while I was being “led” in the very prayer I was making, the words were being put into my ears and mouth, the intention as I myself said them, repeated them was totally original and sincere within me. When the prayer was done I looked around and everyone was inspecting me closely to see if there was any “change”. None that I could tell. I thanked them sincerely, a bit embarrassed for not being able to give them a Dove from Heaven alighting on my shoulder. I felt slightly “relieved” to get out of there and get on about the day, and I had friends who had been patiently waiting in a car for me out in the parking lot. Everything about me seemed to be the same despite my earnest but slightly bashful prayer. I had pride and I had humbled myself in a way that I had sworn an hour earlier I would not do. Okay, so that “vow” had not worked out. I was ambushed by God, apparently. It was a beautiful Spring day. Sun shining. Birds twittering. About half way across the parking lot SUDDENLY … totally by surprise, I began to feel as if I was being lifted off the ground. My feet began to leave the concrete as if I was ascending. I assume I was still on the ground but it felt as if gravity itself was being suspended by at least 50%. I was feeling lighter and lighter physically. As I floated towards the car I looked up and at that moment it was like a tinted window had suddenly been peeled of its plastic tinting. I saw a corner of my vision on my left side brighten and the effect swept across the sky in front of me, as if a gauzy tinted veil were being pulled back and removed from everything I saw. Immediately the leaves of the trees were GREENER than I had ever thought possible. The sky was BLUER than I had ever remembered seeing. In a split second I had my first revelation — a communication from God in the classic sense of old — I was conscious, supremely conscious that the world up until then, my entire life, had been a series of jigsaw puzzle pieces jumbled in a pile, and NOW “someone” had put them all together for me. The puzzle of my whole life had been instantaneously SOLVED and I had nothing to do with it. It had been done FOR me. But this “instant knowledge” confirmed itself somehow. I knew it was not just my random thought. I KNEW. I climbed into the car where people looked at me anxiously. “So, David, what happened?” Before I could think of how to describe things or make up a “nothing, really” response, I heard the words blurted from my mouth, “I think I have been Saved.” Then I knew that was PRECISELY what had happened to me. The next miracle many of you will greet with especial skepticism: As soon as I was dropped off at home I was itching to get my hands on a Bible I had been given years before. I found it quickly, flipped it open, skipped around and flipped open to John. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. My heart began to race: something was making those words mean more than I had ever imagined or known. As soon as I began to read of Jesus picking his disciples I was suddenly THERE. As if I had transcended time and space. I was in His presence, behind Jesus, walking down a dusty road. There were stones and dust as our sandals slapped against the ground. I felt as if I was inside a movie, a 3D movie. I saw everything CLEARLY, in DETAIL. I could see the grains of dust in the footprints of Jesus as He walked in front of me. My heart was pounding. Nothing even remotely like this had ever happened. Miracles and revelations did not happen to ME. I was in Galilee on some day in history during the time of Jesus and I was walking with him, behind him, Him leading the way, me following. So many more experiences I could share. But, this is why disputations over Gödel and number sets mean nothing, absolutely nothing important to me. I have been beyond and I know. Mike’s experience I have had as well.Reply
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Richard says:March 5, 2012 at 8:45 amDavid H, I have to say that I thought your reply to me was remarkably cynical. What does it mean, to love God? “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” – 1 John 5:3. And we know what his commandments are – to love God and to love your neighbour. A virtuous circle here.Reply
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David H says:March 8, 2012 at 8:06 pmRichard, I have read everything you have written for the last couple of years in this forum. Nothing you have said in all that time, truthfully, would ever get me closer to what I consider are answers to the most important questions. Is there a God? Yes, as I explain many many times, there IS and you can KNOW. Your answers to me never give me the feeling that I am talking to a fellow believer. You never settle down to testifying that you are a believer and that the question is settled once and for all with you. Not at all. When a believer writes, Richard, you profess not to understand. And, yes, I am quite willing to accept that you do not understand. But, the scriptures also predict that you will not understand. Words don’t work because there is a deeper meaning and a deeper dimension to these words that you look up in the Bible. I have been telling you that there is a Spirit in those words that is ready to reveal itself and the meaning of those words in a way that is deeply STIRRING and breath-taking. It is a POSSESSION, a spiritual flooding of the person, even your person, that literally, not metaphorically, but really, truly comes INSIDE YOU once you accept that Jesus Christ asks for your heartfelt commitment since He has already made His own to you. If you don’t feel the deep impact of the scriptures you quote then you have another journey to take. The “virtuous circle” you speak of is not a virtuous circle at all. If you say that what I write is “cynical” then you have firmly stated your case for not “understanding”. No, Richard, I am sure by your own repeated testimonies in this forum that you just don’t “get” it. You are the naysayer, naysayer, naysayer on so many topics. But naysaying ultimately leads you farther and farther away from the truth. “Loving God” is not a bumper sticker phrase or a piece of literary fluff. It is the very STUFF of lIFE. It is the Door into Eternity starting NOW and extending beyond Gödel’s theorem and beyond all talk of whether we are “coded by God”, or not. Of course we carry the mind and conscious intention of God in our genes! It cannot be otherwise. Impossible to be otherwise. So, Richard, go back and take the Foremost commandment that Jesus gave. Quote it in its entirety as I did and then you break it down for me. You TELL ME, “Mr. Cynic”, what this means to YOU.Reply
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Richard says:March 9, 2012 at 8:13 amYou pooh-poohed the second of the two commandments in your previous reply, and I found that to be breathtakingly shocking. You say “Jesus Christ asks for your heartfelt commitment”, but you don’t say what the commitment is to. May I suggest that it is a commitment to follow his teachings? And as you appear to reject out of hand what John 5:3 says the love of God is, perhaps you would like to say what you think it is.Reply
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David H says:March 9, 2012 at 6:22 pmNo, Richard, you are absolutely wrong. If there is any pooh poohing it just may be you. What I am using feeble words to convey is that you cling to the one commandment that you think you are fulfilling, I guess that is what you are saying. You love your neighbor as yourself. This is HUGE and Supremely wonderful. And this is the commandment that most people point to as “proof” that they are “just as good as a Christian” or the reason that they think God is going to honor “where they are at”. What I am in all seriousness trying to point out is that the same people who make your claim do NOT jump on the First Commandment with the same security and it is a rare person who embraces the First Commandment. The Foremost commandment, the one that PRECEDES. Do you not see that the Second Commandment is the Second Commandment because it is our response toward our fellow man as God makes sure we know. But, Richard, the First, the Foremost commandment you still evade. I ask you to talk to me about the First Commandment and you can not. You evade the invitation as I suspected you would. THIS is what sets you apart from a believer. A Believer would embrace the First Commandment with joy. You have once again deflected the issue of what does that First and Foremost Commandment. Every single word and every single line. It seems to gall you to talk about this. In other words, Mr. Naysayer, you are not comfortable with this subject. The only response you seem to be able to make is to dodge behind smoke and mirrors. This is a serious subject, Richard. That is why I do not express Joy to you. You think “joy” is silly and unscientific and not proper stuff for philosophic discussion. And what I am trying to tell you, Richard, is that it is NOT ME that has the burden of proof. It is you, personally, that bear the full responsibility for what you choose to believe. I can lead the Richard to water but Richard says “No way I am going to drink from the stream. It’s probably polluted or is not as quenching as you claim.” Now, will you bravely face my question again, Richard? Please — Tell me why the First Commandment Jesus gave was SO “EXCESSIVE”. And tell me why, for what reason He said it was Foremost. That it had to go with the second commandment, but preceding His second commandment, and that one without the other was hypocrisy?Reply
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Richard says:March 10, 2012 at 8:46 amDavid, Just more aggression, unjustified accusations, evasions, condemnations and judgementalism from you then. I never said I was “fulfilling” the second commandment. I never said that joy was “silly”. It does not “gall” me to discuss the first commandment. On the contrary, I have already discussed it, but you chose to ignore what I said. Let me repeat what I said: What does it mean, to love God? “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” – 1 John 5:3. And we know what his commandments are – to love God and to love your neighbour. You evaded the question as to what does it mean to love God. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deut 6:5-9 (NIV) You said that a Believer would embrace this with joy.
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David H says:March 10, 2012 at 7:01 pmRichard, you preface so many of your replies with accusations ascribing certain things against me. You obviously find things I say rankling to you. I understand your emotions. I challenge you and you seem to resent that deeply. I don’t let a facile answer go unchallenged, Richard. What I am repeatedly pointing out is that everyone, including, you, Richard, everyone professes to know just what “love your neighbor as yourself” means and claims to live that themselves. The meaning of that has been “commercialized” in the sense that it has been cheapened by a million “interpretations”. That is why I don’t jump to applaud you and bestow honors and praise when Richard claims to fulfill that commandment. I do not question you to degrade you, Richard. Rather, it is my wish that everyone receives an upgrade. And that requires telling the Truth in this conversation at the risk of offence.Reply
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Richard says:March 11, 2012 at 4:36 amIt is perfectly reasonable for me to object to your many false accusations. I already told you I never claimed to “fulfill” the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself. Stop repeating false statements. If anyone else is reading this thread they can draw their own conclusions about who is telling the Truth. And yet again you avoid responding to my question.
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David H says:March 11, 2012 at 3:02 amRichard, WOW! MADE ME SMILE and just about dance! “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.” Deut 6:5-9 (NIV) What KILLER SCRIPTURES! “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Thank you! I keep reading them and they are rich. Talk about “all in”! You ROCK, Richard. WAYY to GO!Reply
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Richard says:March 12, 2012 at 3:56 amDavid H, That’s good! You didn’t mention “Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” but let’s let that pass. Let’s now “talk about them” as commanded. Let’s start with the first commandment. What does it mean to love God? Is the following correct or not? “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” – 1 John 5:3.Reply
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David H says:March 12, 2012 at 5:23 amRichard said to me: “You say “Jesus Christ asks for your heartfelt commitment”, but you don’t say what the commitment is to. May I suggest that it is a commitment to follow his teachings? And as you appear to reject out of hand what John 5:3 says the love of God is, perhaps you would like to say what you think it is.” Richard, as I have said in this forum, even directly to you, Jesus said “You must be born again.” A man or woman doesn’t have a commitment to make or break or just leave alone unless they make THAT decision. And that decision IS a Commitment. Committing your hopes, your fears, your heart, your soul, into the care of Jesus Christ. Not Jesus Christ the “moral teacher”, not Jesus Christ the “good man”, not Jesus Christ the “spiritual teacher” but far and above all of those labels, Jesus Christ as Lord. As Lord over all and everything in your life. If you have made this commitment you have been slow to talk about it Richard. I make assumptions, yes, I judge that you have not made that particularly earthshaking decision. Every grain of pettiness in your replies indicates that you resent being told this by someone who says, yes, as a matter of fact, this is what I have done in my life and I am now a believer. It does, believe it or not, no good whatsoever to omit one commandment and give lip-service to another one. I do not say I am special, I do not say that I am superior, I only say in a straightforward fashion, Richard, that all things flow out of that one commitment to God first. it is not enough, Richard, to cling to what we claim we do for mankind and ignore what we have not done for God face-to-face. This is precisely where many will come, Richard, crying Lord, Lord, have we not done this and that in your name? This is a situation where the Lord will not be fooled by half-measures. This is why He will say to some, too many, “I never knew you.” How could He say that? He knows of all of us. There is not one of us sinners that He does not know by name. So how can the Lord claim in Truth that He NEVER …. get that? That he NEVER knew us. Then what does “KNEW” mean? What in the world is Jesus Christ claiming here? It does not make sense. The ones protesting are SO SURE that the Lord KNOWS them. Absolutely POSITIVE that Jesus KNOWS them. But Jesus claims he NEVER knew them! EVER! What is this contradiction? How can it be explained? Why is the Lord being so “picky” and “contrary”? Jesus does not force himself upon us. That is why we have to GO to Him. We have to make an EFFORT to know Him. He says he knocks. Every time I post in this forum it is, in a sense, the Lord knocking for you, Richard. Instead of reviling the messenger with insults, go and inquire of Jesus Himself, as Perry has posted. Ask God Himself to come help you understand why I am not making sense to you. Read my account of what happened to me in church that one Sunday. Of what I said. Simple stuff. But with profound consequences. I was shaken to the core as I admitted that I was, yes, a Sinner. In the old-fashioned Gospel sense of SINNER. I have sinned against God minute by minute thoughout my life even though I was nominally a believer, nominally a Christian, by association, by baptism, by Catechism, by singing hymns in pews, even in putting on a choir robe and singing in front of an entire congregation Sunday after Sunday. But only on THAT Sunday did I do something far beyond all of that useless tradition. I spoke to God. Straight on to God. I first had to say I knew my place. I first had to admit that He had done something wonderful for me long ago. He had made an eternal sacrifice that I might KNOW HIM and have Eternal Life with Jesus, with God the Father. It is an extremely emotional revelation to oneself to say, Yes, Lord, I know that I am a Sinner. I have sinned against you all my life. I have listened to your words and yet ignored your words in the deepest part of my heart and soul. But now I want to change all of that, Lord, if you will allow me. Please, Father, in the name of Jesus, forgive me of my sins, all of my sins, all of my ignorances, all of my transgressions against you and my fellow man. Wash away my sins, Lord, by your precious blood shed so long ago. Make me white as Snow, Justify me as if I have never sinned, Lord. Come into my heart, Lord Jesus, and save my soul. With all my heart I ask you to be my Lord. Amen. Only then, only then, Richard, did the Lord look at the love I felt and expressed for my neighbors and see that in that I was loving Him and Honoring Him. Out of my faith in HIM, not my faith in me or my fellow man. And the amazing thing is that I became so filled with a gut-wrenching, heart filling love for other people beyond any measure that I had thought possible before. It was like being drunk on universal love for all He created. I love airports because of the swirl of humanity. All our different looks and dresses and tongues. It is amazingly fulfilling just to pass through an airport terminal and absorb the emotions, tensions, hopes, dreams, of every person passing. At times I will see a plane 36,000 feet above my head and spontaneously pray, Oh, Lord, allow them to go safely to their destination. Bless everyone on board to fulfill their hopes and dreams. Keep them, Oh Lord, keep them to the end, safely to their trip’s end. It is is not the time now, nor will it ever be the time, to say what I do in my daily life that shows my love for my neighbor and for those less lovable. For Jesus had no love for “showmanship” in life or worship. Verily, he said, they have their reward, those who point to themselves. So I can tell you, Richard, that there is a huge dimension that came into my life and my heart when I said, Lord, Lord, forgive me. Save me, Lord. Raise me up and transform my heart. Make me a new man in You.Reply
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Richard says:March 12, 2012 at 9:23 amDavid H, Thank you for your reply on ‘commitment’. I thought from your previous post that perhaps you were going to desist from making disparaging remarks. But no, you say “Every grain of pettiness in your replies …”. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” – 1 John 5:3.Reply
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David H says:March 12, 2012 at 1:16 pmRichard, you are ever true to form. Straining at the gnat and professing offense. But, yes, there is a repetition of pettiness in your communications. I am not blind. Do you not see? Is not this your intent? There is the outline of a prayer there, Richard. Those words are not just my words to fill up white space. You wanted to know what “commitment” means. That is the commitment. You are heartily encouraged to try this for yourself. It works even better when it comes out of your mouth rather than mine. Blessings to you, Richard.Reply
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Richard says:March 13, 2012 at 3:26 amDavid H, More disparaging remarks from you then. You said you were “filled with a gut-wrenching, heart filling love for other people beyond any measure”. Do you not think that there may be just the tiniest disconnect between what you claim and how you act, at least as evidenced by some of your remarks in your posts? You indicated previously that doing good does not count as goodness unless it is done by people who believe what you claim to believe. I think you stand in great danger here. The danger is that of speaking against Goodness – in other words speaking against God.Reply
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David H says:March 13, 2012 at 8:11 pmRichard, No, I don’t think there is any disconnect in my posts. I believe I make my connection quite clear. One obligation I have as a believer is to tell the Truth. You repeatedly vilify me for telling the truth. And you are evidently offended if I say something that more accurately refines the idea of “Goodness”. There seems to be the “Goodness” that you, Richard, profess, to uphold, and what Jesus Himself says. I really seem to get your goat when I try to point you to the Source of Goodness. That is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And it is for this that you sputter and fume. You will never find the Truth making repeatedly snide remarks to me, Richard. I have done what is simply my Duty, my Obligation, my Responsibility to you as a Child of God. I am saying directly, to you, Richard, my taking the time to respond to you IS an act of love. Telling you the Truth will, usually, offend, because you have come to a point where you so evidently resist anything that might implicate your own postures and utterances as falling short of what God has requested from you. I, too, fall short, but I fall short from the position of a believer who reads, prays, and studies the Word of God. And it would be a huge disservice to you, Richard, to placate you with popular platitudes.Reply
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Richard says:March 14, 2012 at 6:01 amReaders can decide for themselves where most of the vilification is coming from. Your statement that the only source of Goodness is “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” is 100% flat out wrong. The source of Goodness is God. We are told that Abraham was righteous, and one thing we can be sure of is that he did not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction?” – James 2:25 It is simply not the case that the only good acts are those done by “believers”. To say that would be saying that good is bad, and that would be speaking against Goodness – in other words, speaking against God. The story of the good Samaritan is a perfect example of how “non-believers” can do good. Do you call the good things Gandhi did bad? If a fireman saved your loved one from a burning building you’d consider it a good act. But what if you learned that fireman was an atheist? All of a sudden he didn’t do good by God, huh? Good acts done by “unbelievers” are not sins. “If humanity lacked all goodness, the human race could not survive. Drivers would disobey every traffic signal, all police would become utterly corrupt, every pedestrian would be robbed, every house plundered. Murder, rape, and other cruel acts would reign. No driver would nod to let a man cross the street, except to run him down. The poor and disabled would face extinction. Just laws would not exist. All parents would abandon their children to the streets.”Reply
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David H says:March 14, 2012 at 1:15 pmRichard, when are you going to understand that GOODNESS is not necessarily GODLINESS, The scriptures declare that OUR “Goodness” is as filthy rags. Pretty harsh. But, in the eyes of God, that is the case. We judge our “goodness” by ourselves and come out looking pretty darned good. God looks at what we celebrate, and obviously, you, Richard, celebrate, and pronounces it NOT GOOD ENOUGH. That is what I have been saying. NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN UNLESS WE ARE BORN AGAIN. The message of Jesus is that we, by ourselves, on our own, NEVER EVER are “Good” according to the even more demanding standards of God. So ineptly does our own “goodness” fall short that God had to send a PERFECT example of “Goodness” and righteousness by the name of Jesus Christ. You, Richard, make the classic mistake of calculating your own goodness and the “goodness” of people according to human, carnal standards. God has always said He wants even more than that. But we can never live up to that standard of perfection. This is what is so marvelous about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. His perfection becomes our own perfection, if you will, if we acknowledge that we need HIS Goodness to cover our feeble attempts at goodness in our own faulty human frame. Abraham was righteous because he looked AHEAD to the coming of the Lord. He was already well acquainted with the Spirit of God before Jesus came. Abraham trusted that God would send a Savior. Rahab and the Good Samaritan are examples of how God is not looking at our “goody two shoes” examples of Goodness. He sees the very intent. Your fireman as an atheist example is so far off the mark because I am not talking about the World’s Goodness. I am talking about how God needs more than Goodness. We cannot be saved by our own Goodness no matter how hard we try. That is why Jesus is so necessary, so crucial to our salvation. The scriptures declare that while we have the capacity to do Good, and be Good, as far as God is concerned, it will never measure up to his own standards. We are always destined to fail in the “Goodness ” department. Hence, the wonderful way out of this eternal dilemma is provided in Jesus Christ.
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Richard says:March 15, 2012 at 4:02 amDavid H, That was a better post – no gratuitous insults this time! [There is no reply button against your most recent reply to me, but that is what I am trying to reply to] The following statement is incorrect: “You, Richard, make the classic mistake of calculating your own goodness and the “goodness” of people according to human, carnal standards.” There is only one standard of Goodness. And so I calculate against that, and find that I am a very long way away from being perfectly good. It is true that no-one can be perfectly good – not me, and not you. You say that the Christ’s “perfection becomes our own perfection”. That is quite clearly not the case right now. We are not perfect – we err – you sometimes err. I think you said that you had in the past repented of sins. But then we would also need to repent of sins committed after some previous repentance. You say “we need HIS Goodness to cover our feeble attempts at goodness”. I think that terminology is a unfortunate – we cannot use his goodness to cover up the sinning that we continue to do. On the detailed points – I don’t think there’s any evidence that Abraham “trusted that God would send a Savior”. I don’t agree with your remark about the fireman. Clearly the fireman did some good as measured by the one standard of Goodness. As did Gandhi. Your remark about “goody two shoes” is, I think, unfortunate. You say “God needs more than Goodness”, and again, that is not really the right way to put things. It is precisely goodness that is asked for. You say “We cannot be saved by our own Goodness” and that brings us back to the topic of salvation and what it means – which will mostly have to wait until the next exchange of views. But I will repeat that Abraham, Rahab and the Good Samaritan were (it is assumed) “saved”, but that salvation was not because they had a belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection – as they did not even know about it.
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David H says:March 13, 2012 at 1:41 amPerry, I am in Puerto Galera, Mindoro, Philippines. I “tune in” to what you are up to via a sloggy internet connection. In a few days I will be back in Vienna, Austria. I have been working in internet design and website issues since 1996. I would be happy to help you update the forums format you are using so that it loads faster and allows a full reply to exactly the user or topic without compressing the responses into narrower and narrower columns. Perhaps a multi-tabbed format instead of the “endless load” that makes this forum rather, well, clumsy as it gets longer and longer. I think your responders and readers would appreciate an “upgrade” here. I would be happy to listen to what you want to do and to suggest some options that will use the best forum formats that have come on the scene since you first started these forums. I am particularly experienced with WordPress. Blessings, David HunterReply
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Perry says:March 13, 2012 at 6:48 amI will pass this along to my webmaster. Thanks!Reply
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Jim Priebe says:March 18, 2012 at 10:43 amThanks (again) for your writing Perry, I found this one interesting. I’ve never been able to see an implication of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and you’ve sure hit on a doozer. In his book “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking outlines a kind of self-contained universe theory. Of course, one is left wondering where the pre-existing “laws” come from (such as the law of gravity) that make a self-contained universe possible (if one hasn’t read the book this may not make sense, but I’m not qualified to summarize the book). But I’m wondering if, logically, by assuming certain laws simply exist, Hawking’s hypothesis is consistent with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem? Raymond Smullyan wrote some fun puzzle books. One is Forever Undecided, subtitled “a puzzle guide to Gödel”. If there is room for fun in anyone’s life, track down this out-of-print book. On another note, Gödel also proved that, in any universe described by the theory of relativity, time can’t exist. Einstein was not able to refute the proof, and apparently reluctantly “endorsed” it.Reply
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Perry says:March 19, 2012 at 3:09 pmHawking is apparently assuming that laws can exist without any other explanation or source. But what Gödel is staying is that you have to acknowledge some external axiom those laws rest on, which you do not prove. A “self contained universe” that relies on over-arching laws is not really self contained. Actually the philosophers have had a field day with Hawking’s logical fallacies. Not familiar with the last part about time. Interesting.Reply
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BeatleEDs says:March 25, 2012 at 11:03 pmIs this topic current? Or is this march of some other year.Reply
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Perry says:March 26, 2012 at 12:11 amIt’s currentReply
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myke steffens says:April 8, 2012 at 1:13 amSo when did “what came first the egg or the chicken?” become math? There is no theorem here… Simply a human being stuck within his own conscious un able to think correctly so he turned math into his outlet for higher power. “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.” I’m glad people have to put life into math terms for people to understand. This is garbage, this theorem doesn’t even make sense, or at least the article doesn’t .Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 27, 2012 at 1:02 pmHere’s the biggest flaw in your argument: Even if I concede everything in this article and thereby accept that an intelligent designer does exist, there is no way to deduce anything about the personality of this designer merely from the fact that she/he/it exists. The God that you claim must necessarily exist could be omnibenevolent or a jackass and you couldn’t prove it one way or another.Reply
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Perry says:April 27, 2012 at 1:23 pmWhat I’ve outlined here gets you at least to Deism – in fact it puts the existence of some kind of metaphysical creator on very sound footing. That’s progress. It’s not something to be resented, but celebrated. If this bothers you, then I ask you to look inside and ask why. Why the bitterness? Why use words like Jackass? You have to walk before you can crawl. I got you past square one. If we’re going to be intellectually honest, we have to acknowledge the existence of God. That is a great starting point. If square one is “God exists” then square two is “Theology is in fact an important and necessary subject.” Now you can begin to investigate the truth claims of religions and theologians seriously. And at that point you’re not starting with blind faith but solid inference and logic. My email series at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com and http://www.coffeehousetheology.com address these questions, I encourage you to subscribe and give these ideas consideration.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 27, 2012 at 2:07 pmDon’t patronize me by trying to psychoanalyze me. All that crawl before you walk nonsense is unnecessary. I use words like “jackass” because God could in fact be a jackass. This is an indisputable fact: If a being is sufficiently powerful to warrant the designation God, then there is no way to glean any information about her/his/its personality merely from the fact that it exists. However, you could glean some information about his/her/its personality from how the universe is set up (and here I’m specifically referring to the problem of evil). You would think that if a being was sufficiently powerful to create everything in existence it could do so without, for example, mass extinction events. Or without having tens of thousands of people die every year from natural disasters. Or without placing the planet next to a sun that will go supernova and destroy it in a couple billion years. Or make it so that some children weren’t born WITHOUT a brain. And so on. You’ve engaged in quite a bit of semantic trickery. Your “argument” (which is filled with so many logical fallacies you couldn’t publish it in any respected mathematical, scientific, or philosophical academic journal), insofar as I’m willing to take it at face value, gets you to God, but it is in no way an argument for anything like the Christian God you believe in, and in fact the universe is evidence to the contrary.Reply
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Perry says:April 27, 2012 at 2:24 pmCS Lewis in is book Mere Christianity said “Someone”, while obviously a great artist (as the universe is a very beautiful place) is also “quite merciless and no friend of man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place).”Reply
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Perry says:April 27, 2012 at 10:14 pmOr to put it a different way: He captured and collected things And he put them in a shed He raised a proper family So he could tie them to a bed The creator had a mastertape But he left it in a cab I stared into the void tonight The best dream I ever had He worked himself into the ground And drove a spike into his head A voice said Are you happy now ?? Your sordid home is running red? Pills and chloroform All the pages torn -Porcupine TreeReply
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Al-Zamar says:April 28, 2012 at 3:22 amListen, you can quote C. S. Lewis, you can even quote all the poetry in existence, but the fact of the matter is this: you’re playing a very dubious semantic game. You know it and I know it, which is precisely why you have not responded with any rational objection to my argument. I can concede everything you’ve written here and it would not get you to a Christian God. I’m not saying you can’t believe in a Christian God, but I am saying that when you write something that you claim to be rational, you should not engage in intellectual dishonestly. If you believe in God fine, but just know that nothing you’ve written here proves that a Christian God exists. And in fact, what we can observe about the nature of the world is evidence to the contrary. Every intelligent design argument I’ve ever come across makes this same mistake: they get to the end of their proof in an intelligent designer and then think that they’ve de facto proven the existence of a CHRISTIAN God.
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Perry says:April 28, 2012 at 9:20 amGo back and read my first reply to you.
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Al-Zamar says:April 28, 2012 at 9:51 amEither you’re being intellectually dishonest or you’re confused about my argument. My point is, and has always been this: theology is practically useless because even if I concede that an intelligent designer exists there is no rational way to get from that intelligent designer to a Christian God. Here’s what I wrote in my first post, “Even if I concede everything in this article and thereby accept that an intelligent designer does exist, there is no way to deduce anything about the personality of this designer merely from the fact that she/he/it exists. The God that you claim must necessarily exist could be omnibenevolent or a jackass and you couldn’t prove it one way or another.” So it seems like you’re the one who should go back and read people’s replies, not me. There is simply no rational reason why the intelligent designer must be either omnibenevolent and/or perfectly moral. (And this a problem that occurs before we can even approach the problem of evil. For example, can you give a rational argument for how [and why] an intelligent designer powerful enough to create a universe would allow for anencephaly?) Moreover, interestingly enough, as a Christian you can’t even believe the argument that you’ve laid out here for intelligent design because there is nothing in your argument that precludes the possibility that there could be more than one intelligent designer.Reply
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Perry says:April 28, 2012 at 10:22 amShow me where in this article or thread I have asserted that this proves the Christian God.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 28, 2012 at 10:33 amHere’s one example I found in about ten minutes: “God is Love. Love is indivisible. This is why God is indivisible, because God is love. Self, expression of self, and self-understanding in a context of perfect love know no division. Jesus said, ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me.'” This was written by you on August 11th at 2:47 pm. This is why I say you are being intellectually dishonest. You frequently use “God” as a fill in for “intelligent designer,” and whenever you invoke God you are specifically invoking the Christian God. Here you are quoting Jesus Christ but you would have me believe that the argument that you’ve laid out attempting to prove that there is an intelligent designer is not the Christian God?Reply
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Perry says:April 28, 2012 at 10:37 amAgain, where did I say this proves the Christian God. In these statements, and others like them (ie Aquinas’ Via Negativa) did I not show that Christian theology matches my definitions and also addresses the questions that naturally follow? Al-Zamar, this is not the same as saying I proved the Christian God.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 28, 2012 at 10:55 amAnd here’s a rather curious quote from May 11th at 2:44 pm, “That which is outside of space and time is infinite. And indivisible. I believe that everything I stated in my article is entirely logical, and that which logic tells us has to be outside the universe bears a striking resemblance to God.” In what ways does the intelligent designer that you’ve argued for bear a “striking resemblance to God”? As far as I can tell it bears no significantly relevant resemblance to God whatsoever. You can’t show (or offer any rational arguments) that this intelligent designer is omnipotent (although he/she/it may be incredibly powerful), omniscient (you can’t even show that this intelligent desinger ever INTENDED for their to be homo sapiens, what with the mass extinction events, snowball earth, etc.), omnibenevolent (precisely why was 1/3 of Europe wiped out by the bubonic plauge?) or perfectly moral (problem of evil anyone?). The only thing this article/thread can prove (if it can prove anything at all) is that an intelligent designer created the universe not less than 13.7 billion years ago. (As an aside you would think that an “intelligent” designer could create a universe that didn’t take 9.14 billion years to produce the planet Earth, and then an additional several hundred million years to create prokaryotic cells. I mean this guy/girl/thing is pretty powerful right? Why couldn’t he be more snappy with it?)Reply
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Perry says:April 28, 2012 at 12:17 pmI’ve argued for an infinite, conscious, immaterial, indivisible creator who exists outside of space and time, who must be taken as an axiom in order to posit a rational universe that obeys the laws of logic. If you don’t think that resembles a monotheistic definition of God, then you haven’t studied monotheism. All your other questions are theological questions. They are issues of intent and moral judgment, not scientific or mathematical facts. You are now on square two. If you are willing to acknowledge that, we can go ahead and discuss your questions. If you’re still on square one, then we’ll need to deal with that first.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 29, 2012 at 2:31 amEither you’re being intellectually dishonest or you’re being purposefully obtuse. I have already conceded your argument, i.e. that an intelligent designer exists (but nothing more than this) but not because I believe that what you have written here is true; my concession is merely conditional. First, you implicitly claim that there are three steps: the first is the proof of the existence of an intelligent designer, the second is to make an argument that this intelligent designer “bears a striking resemblance to God” and the third step is theology. The problem, however, is that you can not get from step one to step two. I have continually made an argument which you have never raised any rational objections to, which is this: It is an indisputable fact that IF you have proven the existence of an intelligent designer you can glean nothing from her/his/its personality merely from the fact that it exists because there is no logically necessary relationship between existence and personality. There are significant implications for this thread, but among them is this: if my argument is true, namely, that there is no logically necessary relationship between the existence of an intelligent designer and her/his/its personality, then you can make NO arguments about theology or the theological entity known as God because theology requires that there be a logically necessary relationship between the existence of God and his/her/its personality. The proof of the existence of an intelligent designer and theology are mutually exclusive. You have engaged in a logical fallacy known as selective attention. Here is what you wrote, “I’ve argued for an infinite, conscious, immaterial, indivisible creator who exists outside of space and time, who must be taken as an axiom in order to posit a rational universe that obeys the laws of logic. If you don’t think that resembles a monotheistic definition of God, then you haven’t studied monotheism.” But the problem with your argument that an intelligent designer bears a striking resemblance to God is that you focus only on those attritubes of the theological entity known as God that confirms your beliefs while disregarding all others. Perhaps this is a failure of knowledge on my part, but as far as I know the overwhelming majority of theologians who argue that God is conscious and personally knowable, also argue that God is perfectly moral. (I am not talking about the capacity to be perfectly moral, I mean that God is in fact perfectly moral.) If God was in fact conscious and personally knowable, but not perfectly moral then the Bible could not be considered authoratative and all of Christian eschatology would be called into question. Similarly, this is also true for other attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence, but this is especially true for omnibenevolence. Thus, monotheistic theology requires that if God is conscious and personally knowable, then there must be a logically necessary relationship between her/his/its existence and her/his/its personality. This is NOT true for an intelligent designer. Additionally, you assert this, “All your other questions are theological questions. They are issues of intent and moral judgment, not scientific or mathematical facts. You are now on square two.” Again, you claim that the first square is proof of the existence of an intelligent designer and all other questions are theological and must come later. But I deny this. You’re simply confused about what kind of questioning falls within the domain of theology and what kind of questioning does not. To question the intent and moral judgment of an intelligent designer is NOT a theological question because an intelligent designer is not necessarily God; and, as I have stated before, there is no way to prove that an intelligent designer is, in fact, God. (It is here that I must acknowledge a potential weakness in my argument which is this: my argument is entirely predicated on a conception of God within a monotheistic or polytheistic or other religion tied to a particular conception of eschatology. [I’m not sure if there is a religion with a conception of a conscious knowable God but no conception of eschatology]) In other words, an intelligent designer is not necessarily a religious or theological entity; if this were true then it would be impossible for an atheist to entertain the possibility that an intelligent designer even exists. Moreover, even if there is no necessary relationship between existence and personality, you can still glean something about the personality of an intelligent designer. Here is what I previously wrote, “[Y]ou could glean some information about [an intelligent designer’s] personality from how the universe is set up.” It seems to me that it is reasonable to infer that an intelligent designer who created the universe and allowed for the creation of DNA that could produce certain genetic mutations that result in fetal deformations like anencephaly is either morally indifferent or evil. It seems rather obvious that an intelligent designer powerful enough to create the entire universe would find it a trivial matter to design self-correcting DNA. Finally, and this is an argument which I alluded to in my previous post, this “mathematical” or “logical” proof for the existence of an intelligent designer in no way precludes the possibility that there could be more than one intelligent designer. There is no reason, for example, why there could not be 10, 100, or 1,000 intelligent designers. This proof that you have offered can NOT serve as the foundation for a belief in a Christian God precisely because it leaves polytheism as an open possibility. What follows is this: you have NO rational basis for a belief in a Christian God if this “mathematical” or “logical” proof is the only argument you can proffer for the existence of an intelligent designer. It seems to me that at the very least you ought to remain agnostic about the existence of a Christian God.Reply
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Perry says:April 29, 2012 at 4:15 pmThat which is outside of the largest circle you can draw is indivisible, therefore there are not multiple designers. You can posit other designers who are created beings if you wish, but that doesn’t change the logical necessity of only one original designer. Gödel’s incompleteness theorem thus disproves polytheism. In other words there is no distinction between your step one and step two. They are one and the same. I do not know of a way to determine the personality of God from mathematical axioms as I have done here, nor have I claimed to be able to. As I said yesterday, this gets you to square one, the existence of God. But if you claim any right to ask the questions you have asked about the character of God, then it is you who have brought theology into the discussion. I don’t see how anyone could possibly avoid these questions. You have made all kinds of theological assertions right here. You said: “You could glean some information about [an intelligent designer’s] personality from how the universe is set up.” I agree. That is called natural theology. Welcome to the world of theology. Now that you have placed all kinds of theological questions on the table, we can begin to sort them out.Reply
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Jim says:April 29, 2012 at 4:53 pmYour argument is difficult to understand because you don’t seem to understand the meaning of the terms “eschatology”, “mutually exclusive”, or even “theology”. In order to be convincing, your last paragraph needs to show your logic and how you arrive at your conclusion instead of simply stating them (your conclusions).Reply
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Richard says:April 28, 2012 at 12:34 pm“That which is outside of space and time is infinite. And indivisible. I believe that everything I stated in my article is entirely logical, and that which logic tells us has to be outside the universe bears a striking resemblance to God.” Interestingly mathematics is outside of space and time. A counterexample to the above paragraph?Reply
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Perry says:April 28, 2012 at 11:25 pmI didn’t say everything that is outside of space and time is infinite. I said the thing that is outside the biggest circle you can draw is infinite.Reply
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Richard says:April 29, 2012 at 2:26 amOh yes you did. You said it on May 11 [of some year] at 2:44 to Greg: You said: “That which is outside of space and time is infinite. And indivisible. I believe that everything I stated in my article is entirely logical, and that which logic tells us has to be outside the universe bears a striking resemblance to God.”Reply
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Perry says:April 29, 2012 at 2:28 amAnd I also said you could draw a circle around mathematics. This statement is not about mathematics, it’s about the original axiom necessary to make it all logical.
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Richard says:April 29, 2012 at 4:29 amLet’s just check two of your statement: “That which is outside of space and time is infinite” “I didn’t say everything that is outside of space and time is infinite.” I rest my case.
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Perry says:April 29, 2012 at 4:01 pmYou are quotemining one statement and taking it out of context. Richard, this is not what I meant. You can plainly verify my intent by all my discussion in this very long thread about the immaterial nature of mathematics and information. Only that which is outside the largest circle is infinite.
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Richard says:April 30, 2012 at 2:18 am“Only that which is outside the largest circle is infinite.” Mathematics is infinite. Even the number of integers is infinite. As to whether I’ve taken your contradictory statements out of context – readers can draw their own conclusions.
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Jim says:April 28, 2012 at 11:45 amAfter reading Perry’s proof I too was left wondering what that actually showed about the nature of God. Perry has now clarified his intention that it was only to prove that God exists. (Of course I had the same problem with Descartes’ proof and others.) I’m left wondering about the anger being directed to Perry about that. What I see Perry trying to do is set us on a journey to know “God”, and in this proof he is not making any claims about the nature of that God. If one’s sticking point is “there is no proof that God exists” I guess Perry is saying – look, you can easily get past that. If your sticking point is “God can’t exist because of the evil in the world” or “God can’t exist because of this horrid suffering my child has experienced” I don’t think rational argument is going get you anywhere. It certainly won’t give you any comfort, especially if you tend to be more emotive than rational (like myself). But you can still embark on a spiritual journey to find and trust this God. And I think that is what Perry is working towards, and I think it is a good thing, and I think Perry is being open about this.Reply
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Ben says:April 30, 2012 at 1:40 amYou have a real problem with your argument insofar as Godel’s Theorems have NOTHING to do with the real world. They are nothing more than a significant observation based on the Liar’s Paradox. The first theorem, if you bother to actually study it or, you know, read Godel’s work, states that “This statement has no proof” can be expressed in any MATHEMATICAL THEORY that is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic (e.g. Peano Arithmetic et cetera). The second theorem (the one that’s causing all the hubbub), follows directly from the first. As described above, Godel expressed the statement “this statement has no proof” and showed that, if the theory is consistent, this is a true statement (over N) that has no proof. Informally, because the proof that this is a true statement can be obtained within any rich enough theory, such as Peano arithmetic (PA) or ZFC, if the consistency of the theory itself can also be proved within the theory, then the statement can be proved within the theory, which is a contradiction. Hence, if the theory is rich enough, the consistency of the theory cannot be proved within the theory. Thus the second incompleteness theorem follows directly from Godel’s original proof for the first incompleteness theorem. Essentially your problem lies in the fact that Godel (along with Escher, Bach, Turing et al) was trying to reduce ALL math to an axiomatic system (meaning any mathematical statement is directly provable in a mechanical fashion). His work was about mathematical theories and specifically refers to mathematical theories when he makes his argument. The universe is not a mathematical theory. And that is not dismissing logic or science. It is not. We didn’t INVENT the universe as an explanation. We did not hypothesize the universe. And further, while elementary arithmetic can be expressed IN TERMS of the universe, the universe itself does not express it. Nowhere does the universe make any axiomatic arithmetical statement. The fact that things fall do not EXPRESS gravity. It can be EXPLAINED by gravity and then computed, but the universe does not express gravity axiomatically when things fall. The fact that one apple plus one apple equals two apples does not express arithmetic. That is the observer (me, you) expressing arithmetic by using apples as an example. Godel is talking about the trouble in creating an overall axiomatic theory of math wherein everything is true/false. The fact that he proved that could not be done in some respects shocked the world. It’s been argued for years, and people are still excited about it. But the fact that he showed there will most likely never be a grand unified theory of axiomatic mathematics does not get you anywhere near a logical expression of something infinite and indivisible. I’m sorry, because I would really like there to be a simple proof. But this is not it. In this instance, you are simply incorrect, and further, you are applying an altered, misunderstood version of the SECOND of two coupled theorems to something they do not address. And they do NOT address the real world, before you come back with “Math describes the universe.” Godel’s theorems are about “IDEAL MATHEMATICAL THEORIES” which have no direct counterpart in reality. They are conceptual. QEDReply
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Perry says:April 30, 2012 at 8:17 amGödel’s theorems have precisely as much to do with the real world as mathematics itself does. What does mathematics have to do with the real world? It describes its behavior (if and only if the real world is logical). The universe either conforms to mathematical principles or it doesn’t. If the universe obeys mathematical laws then it expresses them. If it does not express mathematical laws then that is because it does not obey them. If you want to say that the universe does not express mathematical laws, and just does whatever it feels like doing and doesn’t follow any rules… take that position and throw all of science and rationality in the dumpster. Your statement about apples and observers is a solipsism. Again, if ideal mathematical theories have no direct counterpart in reality, then we are living in a solipsistic, non-scientific, illogical world.Reply
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Richard says:April 30, 2012 at 8:27 am“What does mathematics have to do with the real world? It describes its behavior (if and only if the real world is logical).” Absolutely wrong. There are plenty of mathematical theories in existence that do not describe or apply to the real world at all. Only a very few mathematical theories describe the behaviour of the real world. And, if the real world in finite, as you claim, then Godel’s theorem does not apply to it.Reply
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Perry says:April 30, 2012 at 8:58 amYou do not know how much of mathematics has purely theoretical application, and how much has practical application yet undiscovered. For a long time people thought imaginary numbers were just a theoretical construct. Turns out they’re absolutely essential to certain kinds of differential equations for very practical problems. Imaginary numbers represent stored energy in analog filter design, for example. Gödel’s theorem applies to all logical statements, so it applies to any mathematics that is used in science.Reply
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Richard says:April 30, 2012 at 9:46 amYour statement “What does mathematics have to do with the real world? It describes its behavior (if and only if the real world is logical)” is incorrect. Most mathematical theories (for example a theory of infinite dimensional spaces) are unlikely to apply to the real world.
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Perry says:May 1, 2012 at 7:02 amYou are misquoting me, Richard. I refer you to my most recent comment to you.
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Ben says:April 30, 2012 at 9:57 amGodel’s theorem does NOT apply to all logical statements. It applies ONLY to recursively enumerable mathematical theories. There are plenty of logical statements, and, in fact whole theories that Godel’s theorem does not apply to: 1. Euclidean Geometry 2. Real Closed Fields Also, “The universe is not a mathematical theory. And that is not dismissing logic or science. It is not. We didn’t INVENT the universe as an explanation. We did not hypothesize the universe. And further, while elementary arithmetic can be expressed IN TERMS of the universe, the universe itself does not express it. Nowhere does the universe make any axiomatic arithmetical statement. The fact that things fall do not EXPRESS gravity. It can be EXPLAINED by gravity and then computed, but the universe does not express gravity axiomatically when things fall. The fact that one apple plus one apple equals two apples does not express arithmetic. That is the observer (me, you) expressing arithmetic by using apples as an example.” The fact that you dismiss this doesn’t make it not true. The universe is NOT a mathematical theory and that doesn’t mean that math does not relate to the universe.
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Perry says:May 1, 2012 at 7:02 amBen, First of all let me RETRACT my previous statement statement: “Godel’s theorem applies to all logical systems.” You are correct, it does not apply to all logical systems. It only applies to an “effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic.” A physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. This includes calculators and computers and other physical systems, which is the point of the Church-Turing thesis. From Wikipedia: In computability theory, the Church–Turing thesis is a combined hypothesis (“thesis”) about the nature of functions whose values are effectively calculable; or, in more modern terms, functions whose values are algorithmically computable. In simple terms, the Church–Turing thesis states that “everything algorithmically computable is computable by a Turing machine.” Syllogism: 1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system 3. Therefore the universe is incomplete
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Richard says:May 1, 2012 at 7:18 amPerry say “You are misquoting me, Richard. I refer you to my most recent comment to you” Astounding! I exactly quoted what you said on Apr 30 8:17.
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Perry says:April 30, 2012 at 9:12 amAs for your assertion that Gödel’s theorems only apply to Turing machines with infinite tape, I refer you to the history of Turing’s halting problem and its many applications to the real world. No computer is infinite and that’s hardly a problem. Whether the tape is infinite or not is largely irrelevant to the halting problem, and every practical computer scientist understands its import.Reply
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Richard says:April 30, 2012 at 9:55 amYou say “the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic”. If it’s finite then it isn’t capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. For example, it cannot add up two very large numbers if the result cannot fit into the largest “tape” that the universe can hold. Therefore Gödel’s theorem does not apply to the universe, except to say that there are some algorithms that could not be computed by the universe even if it was infinite. I wonder if you think that God can compute all algorithms.
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Perry says:May 1, 2012 at 7:03 amIn other words you are saying “You can’t do any math with an abacus because you can’t do all math with an abacus.”
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Richard says:May 1, 2012 at 7:20 am“In other words you are saying “You can’t do any math with an abacus because you can’t do all math with an abacus.” I didn’t say that. Please try to read what I said.
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Ben says:April 30, 2012 at 1:49 amAlso, check this out: http://simplycharly.com/godel/james_meyer_godel_interview.html He’s getting pretty famous for pointing out a flaw in the theorem you like to use, so it may behoove you to keep track. He’s not the only one, by the way. Many people have dismissed Godel from the beginning as reductio ad absurdum, or a reduction to the point of absurdity. But I’m sure you knew about the big story about how there was a logical flaw in the theorem.Reply
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Perry says:April 30, 2012 at 8:07 amMr. Meyer came here a couple of years ago and made a statement. You can see it, and my replies: http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-17338Reply
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Al-Zamar says:April 30, 2012 at 11:18 pmThis is my final post here. There are either 3 possibilities: 1) you don’t understand Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems (there are actually two); 2) you understand Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems but you’re simply lying about what his arguments are; or 3) you’ve never actually read Godel. And quite frankly I don’t know which one it is; I suspect that you are an honorable and truthful person but you’re simply being obstinate. I had a suspicion that you were engaging in an egregious misapplication of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, but mathematics and logic is not my area of study so I couldn’t prove it. But I happen to be a student at Rutgers University, and our philosophy department is consistently ranked either #1 or 2# in the English speaking world, and I figured I could probably find someone who understands this. So I reached out to Barry Loewer, who is a philosopher of science (his specialty is the philosophy of physics, especially cosmology) and a philosopher of logic. He didn’t go into much detail because this is rather complicated, but this is what Professor Loewer wrote: “Godel’s theorem says that it is not possible for there to be a complete axiomatization of any mathematical theory [that] contains arithmetic (general truths about numbers like for any numbers x, y x+y = y+x). There will always be some truths of arithmetic that can’t be proved from a sound axiomatization. It has nothing to do with God. There are some serious thinkers who have claimed that it can be used as part of and (sic) argument to show that our thought processes cannot be modeled by computation. These arguments are not good either.” In other words, not only does Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem not apply to rocks or the universe, as you erroneously implied in your post @November 14th, 5:01 pm, but it doesn’t even apply to “everything that reason and logic apply to” as you have erroneous claimed several times (see, for example, your post @January 28th 9:22 am). Neither does it apply to “all systems, statements, objects and propositions” as you claimed @December 30th, 10:36 am”. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems only apply to formal mathematical language that includes sentences about numbers. Thus, any graduate school student studying logic will tell you that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems do not apply to, for example, first-order predicate logic. And any theoretical physicist will tell you that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem can’t possibly apply to “the universe”. While it is true that one can use mathematics to DESCRIBE the nature of the universe, and Godel’s Theorems certainly apply to mathematics, it is in no way true that Godel’s Theorems can be applied to the universe itself. It’s really quite simple: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems ONLY apply to a system of axiomatic presuppositions that serve as the precondition for any sufficiently complex system of formal logic that makes statements about the nature of the arithmetical relationship between natural numbers. The physical universe is not such a system, therefore Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems do not apply TO THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. Again, such systems can be used TO DESCRIBE the the universe, but they DO NOT APPLY TO THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. Other people here have pointed this out to you, and yet you remain obstinate in your belief that you understand Godel. In my endeavor to understand Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems and your misapplication of it, I also contacted Mark Chu-Carrol, someone with a Ph.D. in computer science. Here is what he writes on his blog about what you’ve written here (you can find his refutation of your reasoning here: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/05/the_danger_when_you_dont_know.php): “The problem with all of the statements above is (apart from his confusion about axioms) the fact that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is a statement about formal logical systems, and statements within those systems. Incompleteness doesn’t talk about religion, faith, god, circles, or open or closed systems. It talks about formal logical inference systems.” So, as you can see, I have contacted two people Mark Chu-Carrol and Barry Loewer, Mark has a Ph.D. in computer science and Barry is a Rutgers University professor whose specialty is the philosophy of science and the philosophy of logic. If you really feel strongly about your position, you can contact other mathematicians and logicians, but they will tell you the same thing. Goodbye.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 1, 2012 at 5:27 amAlthough I stated in my previous post that I would not be posting again, I find it absolutely necessary to post this final addendum so that any person reading the previous post will appreciate the full context of what I have written. This context is important because it involves the fact that Godel actually has a COMPLETENESS THEOREM as well. Yes, you read that right, Godel has a Completeness Theorem as well. (Perry Marshall has made such a big deal about Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem that I find it shocking that no one has mentioned this before.) So, this final addendum that will undoubtedly crush any rebuttal that Perry Marshall can make. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem ONLY applies to sufficiently complex logical systems that make mathematical statements about the arithmetical relationship between natural numbers. However, there are some logical systems of first-order predicate logic that make no such mathematical statements, therefore, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem does not apply to them. And it is these logical systems, i.e. the logical systems that do NOT make such mathematical statements about the arithemetical relationship between natural numbers, to which Godel’s Completeness Theorem applies. Hence Perry Marshall’s claim that “Gödel’s theorem applies to all systems, statements, objects and propositions” is unequivocally NOT TRUE. I direct you to this website: http://lesswrong.com/lw/93q/completeness_incompleteness_and_what_it_all_means/. Anyone who is interested should read everything up to and including the section on Godel’s Completeness Theorem. Of crucial importance is the first paragraph under the heading Godel’s incompleteness theorem, “Gödel’s (first) incompleteness theorem, is a theorem about an arithmetic but also (implicitly) about a model. THE IMPLICIT MODEL IS THE NATURAL NUMBERS: ANY ARITHMETIC THAT CAN MODEL THEM SUFFERS FROM THE INCOMPLETENESS THEOREM.” (capitalization used for emphasis.) Also of crucial importance is the second and third sentence under the heading Godel’s completeness theorem, “Unlike the previous theorem, this is a statement about about the axiomatic system and all of its models. It simply says that if a sentence is valid (true in every model) FOR A FIRST ORDER THEORY, then it can be PROVED FROM THE AXIOMS.” (capitilization used for emphasis.) In other words, when dealing with some first order systems of logic there are sentences that are valid, i.e. sentences that can be “proved from the axioms,” meaning that these first order systems do not suffer from incompleteness. I have also continued my correspondence with Professor Barry Loewer, and he wrote this, “Like I said the theorem is a conditional “IF S IS A SYSTEM THAT CAN REPRESENT ARITHMETIC THEN……….” “represents arithmetic” is a bit technical but basically it means that you can prove in the system everything you know about natural numbers…. e.g. 7+5=12…. for every pair of numbers there is a unique sum of those numbers, and soon. Propositional logic is much too week (sic) to represent arithmetic….. first order logic with certain axioms can represent arithmaitc and the theorem “applies”. Modal logic contains first order logic so if it contains the axioms too the theorem applies….” (capitalization used for emphasis) This is absolute proof that Perry Marshall is misapplying Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. The application of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is predicated on a conditional: If a logical system can be used to model arithemetic, then it will suffer from incompleteness. However, as Professor Loewer points out, “Propositional logic is much too week (sic) to represent arithmetic….. first order logic with certain axioms can represent arithmaitc and the theorem “applies”.” In other words, logical systems that do not contain arithmetic do not suffer from incompleteness and Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem does not apply. Professor Loewer then went on to write this, “Godel’s theorem is about formal systems… that is something very specific…. it is not about objects…e.g. my computer, my son’s soccer ball.,… that would make no sense…. I don’t know what Perry Marshall is doing… the idea that you can prove the existence of God…or anything that can do anything from the assumptions needed to get Godel’s theorem is wrong headed and likely he is very confused.” This is only further proof that you can NOT apply Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to the UNIVERSE ITSELF. It does NOT apply to circles, bicycles, rocks, the universe, or any real, physical object. So practically everything that Perry Marshall has written in the above article is NOT true and is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of Godel. Again, Perry Marshall’s claim that, “Gödel’s theorem applies to all systems, statements, objects and propositions” is unequivocally NOT TRUE. Now, I would advise anybody reading this NOT to take my word for it. If you are willing to spend a couple of days doing some intense reading, and you are reading with the guidance of a mathematician or logician (not some amateur hack but someone formally trained in the relevant material) you will see that Mark Chu-Carroll and Professor Barry Loewer are right and that everything I’ve written here is absolutely right. Therefore, I challenge Perry Marshall to find any mathematician or logician with at least an M.A. in either mathematics, logic, or the philosophy of logic who will contravene anything I’ve written here. So, once and for all, and for the final time, you cannot use Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to prove the existence of God. Goodbye.Reply
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Perry says:May 1, 2012 at 6:56 amAl Zamar, I don’t have time to respond to everything here today, may take me a week or two. For the time being, I quote a comment from the ScienceBlogs thread http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/05/the_danger_when_you_dont_know.php#comment-2533327 A sadly misguided blog, Mark. You’ve been visiting too many crank sites: you are starting to write like them. It seems to me that there are two ways one can read another person’s opinions. You can read sympathetically and try to understand the point he/she is making. Or you can read antagonistically and willfully misinterpret whenever possible in order to attack it. In the second case, your attacks do not disprove the other person’s ideas, they only disprove your own misunderstandings. Here you seem to be insisting that all Mr Cosmicfingerprints’ statements are prefixed with “Gödel’s incompleteness theorem proves that …”. It is easy to demolish such a misinterpretation, but pointless, because that is not what he is arguing. As I understand Mr Cosmicfingerprints, he is reasoning informally by analogy. He is putting forward a list of ideas related to or implied, in some way, by Gödel’s theorem. (Hofstader did the same thing all thru “G.E.B.” after all.) Given that he is in no way attempting formal mathematics, his proposals seem generally reasonable. Much of what he says seems right to me, tho he does go off the rails at the end. There are many profound implications of Gödel’s theorems, not all of them strictly mathematical. His theorems came at a time when people believed that mathematics could deliver absolute truth and that everything true was provable. He demolished that certainty. You could say that his work was about the limits of knowledge; or that mathematics is creative, not purely deductive; or that rationality can “see truths” which cannot be proved by logic. Of course, none of those meta-statements or non-mathematical opinions can be proved by maths. (Gosh! Is anyone surprised?) It does not mean that they are pointless, or wrong. Now, if you had sympathetically followed Mr Cosmicfingerprints’ argument and shown where his conclusions were actually wrong, then there might have been some purpose to your blog. Instead, you gave a long list of your obviously-wrong misinterpretations and said that he (not you and your misinterpretations) was wrong. To my mind, what you have done does not teach good mathematics, nor correct thinking. What this teaches is how to nit-pick like a crank. An example : ‘Those are just about the worst definitions of “inductive” and “deductive” that I’ve seen.’ I disagree with you. I think those are jolly good ways of describing (not defining) deduction and induction in simple, everyday language. His deduction example is spot on. As for induction, I do not immediately see how to do better. If you start getting into “case(n) implies case(n+1) and case(0) is true”, then there are all sorts of complexities like doing odds and evens separately, going backwards case(n-1), whatever. Missed opportunity – you could have used this blog to say something interesting about mathematical induction. Overall, you are both wrong. If forced to choose, I would say that Mr Cosmicfingerprints is less wrong than you are. ~~~ Again I will respond more fully in the next couple of weeks.Reply
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Perry says:May 1, 2012 at 10:58 pmAl-Zamar, First you are correct that Gödel’s theorem does not apply to all logical statements. It only applies to effectively generated theories capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. That said, all physical systems subjected to measurement express elementary arithmetic as I shall explain. I initially thought it was going to take a long time to respond to this but such is not the case. All the comments by professor Loewer are merely statements of his own opinion. There is nothing rigorous anywhere in his refutation of my statements, and possession of an advanced degree or a teaching post at a respected university is no substitute for rigorous argument. Gödel’s theorem applies to any effectively generated theory. “Effectively generated” means “reducible to discrete steps that give consistent answers” – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectively_calculable Is “theory” confined to pure math in our heads? No it is not. Where do theories come from? Our minds. Can you do math with anything else besides a mind? Yes, of course you can. You can use computers too. (And pencils and pieces of paper.) This is an essential point of the Church-Turing thesis. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as an instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing complete or computationally universal if and only if it can be used to simulate any single-taped Turing machine and thus in principle any computer. A classic example is the lambda calculus. The concept is named after Alan Turing. In colloquial usage, the terms “Turing complete” or “Turing equivalent” are used to mean that any real-world general-purpose computer or computer language can approximately simulate any other real-world general-purpose computer or computer language, within the bounds of finite memory – they are linear bounded automaton complete. A universal computer is defined as a device with a Turing complete instruction set, infinite memory, and an infinite lifespan; all general purpose programming languages and modern machine instruction sets are Turing complete, apart from having finite memory. All known laws of physics have consequences which are computable by a series of approximations on a digital computer. A hypothesis called digital physics states that this is no accident, that it is because the universe itself is computable on a universal Turing machine. This would imply that no computer more powerful than a universal Turing machine can be built physically (see Church–Turing thesis#Philosophical implications). ~~~ Look up “Theory of Everything” in Wikipedia and you’ll see that physicists of no less stature than Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson believe as I do that Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has direct application to the universe and our models of it. For those who disagree, the only way to disagree is to say that the universe is not mathematical. This has depressing implications for science if it is true. As for Mark Chu-Carrol, he apparently doesn’t even know a good example of inductive or deductive reasoning when he sees it; you can find mine in all kinds of philosophy books (“1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal”). Given that, I’m not sure why we should trust anything else he says here; deduction is rather elementary definition in philosophy, is it not? His review is full of misrepresentations of me and Godel. For example: “Does Gödel really say that you can’t describe the physics of reality mathematically? No.” I didn’t say that and neither did Godel. My point was the exact opposite: that you CAN describe the physics of reality mathematically, and that if you can, the universe is necessarily incomplete just like the mathematics that describes it.’ Or how about this statement in his blog: “How can you possibly get from Gödel’s theorem to a statement that the universe can’t be infinite?” I didn’t say Gödel ever said this. I said that according to everything we actually know in science, the universe occupies finite mass, energy, space and time. He doesn’t even know what I’m saying! Did he bother to read this, or did he just skim it lightly and dash off to write his screed? It’s hard to take a man seriously when he makes such fundamental, egregious misinterpretations. What’s going on, did I push his anger buttons? (I’ve noticed a lot of people lose their ability to spell when debates about the existence of God make them upset.) In any case, your assertions that others have absolutely proven me wrong are a little overstated. Both Mr. Chu-Carrol and Mr. Loewer are more than welcome to come and dialogue with me. Remind them to do their homework before they come. I’ve done mine.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 2, 2012 at 2:03 amYou’re wrong, you know it and I know it. You keep trying to slip in your false assertions in the midst of red herrings. I care about one claim, which is this: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem DOES NOT APPLY TO THE UNIVERSE, ONLY TO THE FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEMS USED TO DESCRIBE THE UNIVERSE. This is indisputable. This is what you wrote: “you CAN describe the physics of reality mathematically, and that if you can, the universe is necessarily incomplete just like the mathematics that describes it.’” This is absolutely wrong. There is a difference between the universe and the mathematics used to describe the universe. 1) Physics is a mathematical DESCRIPTION of the universe; physics is not the universe and vice versa. 2)It is not true “that if you can, the universe is necessarily incomplete just like the mathematics describes it.” Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems ONLY apply to formal logical systems, which means that the mathematics used to describe the universe, i.e. physics, will be incomplete, NOT THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. Incompleteness is not something that an object can possess: rocks, trees, bicycles, the universe, none of these things can be incomplete; ONLY FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEMS CAN BE INCOMPLETE. You told me to go to “The Theory of Everything” on wikipedia so I did, and this is what Freeman Dyson is quoted as saying, “Gödel’s theorem implies that pure mathematics is inexhaustible. No matter how many problems we solve, there will always be other problems that cannot be solved within the existing rules. […] Because of Gödel’s theorem, physics is inexhaustible too. THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE A FINITE SET OF RULES, AND INCLUDE THE RULES FOR DOING MATHEMATICS, SO THAT GODEL’S THEOREM APPLIES TO THEM.” The phrase “applies to them” means applies to physics and mathematics NOT THE UNIVERSE. You’re now referring to material that directly contradicts you Perry. Everybody here can see it, and the longer you drag this out the worse you’ll look. The universe is not, can not, and never will be incomplete according to Godel’s Theorems, because Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem ONLY APPLIES TO FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEMS, NOT THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. It seems that this is clear to everybody except you, Perry. You will not find 1 mathematician, physicist, or logician who will agree with you. Find 1 quote, just 1 quote, from any physicist, mathematician, or logician with an M.A. in their respective fields who claims that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem can apply to objects. P.S. You won’t find a single one.Reply
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 6:19 amAl-Zamar: The crux of your assertion is this: “Incompleteness is not something that an object can possess.” From Wikipedia’s entry on Alan Turing: In his momentous paper “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” Turing reformulated Kurt Gödel’s 1931 results on the limits of proof and computation, replacing Gödel’s universal arithmetic-based formal language with what became known as Turing machines, formal and simple hypothetical devices. He proved that some such machine would be capable of performing any conceivable mathematical computation if it were representable as an algorithm. He went on to prove that there was no solution to the Entscheidungsproblem by first showing that the halting problem for Turing machines is undecidable: in general, it is not possible to decide algorithmically, whether a given Turing machine will ever halt. ~ In other words, objects perform operations whose prior behavior cannot be predicted by an algorithm. David Hilbert desired to find an all-encompassing, self-validating theory of mathematics. Gödel proved it was impossible in theoretical mathematics. Turing proved it was impossible computationally. That is incompleteness. ~ From WIki’s entry on Halting Problem: “In his original proof Turing formalized the concept of algorithm by introducing Turing machines. However, the result is in no way specific to them; it applies equally to any other model of computation that is equivalent in its computational power to Turing machines, such as Markov algorithms, Lambda calculus, Post systems, register machines, or tag systems.” “The concepts raised by Gödel’s incompleteness theorems are very similar to those raised by the halting problem, and the proofs are quite similar. In fact, a weaker form of the First Incompleteness Theorem is an easy consequence of the undecidability of the halting problem.” ~ The Church-Turing thesis establishes the equivalence between computational objects and purely mathematical concepts. Therefore incompleteness applies to physical objects.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 2, 2012 at 2:15 amSo, here’s a simple summary of the dispute. Perry Marshall’s argument: Physics and mathematics can be used to describe the universe. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem says that physics and mathematics are necessarily incomplete. Therefore, the universe is incomplete. Quote from Perry Marshall: “My point was the exact opposite: that you CAN describe the physics of reality mathematically, and that if you can, the universe is necessarily incomplete just like the mathematics that describes it.” My argument: Physics and mathematics can be used to describe the universe. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem says that physics and mathematics are necessarily incomplete. Since Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem ONLY applies to formal logical systems, physics and mathematics are incomplete, but the universe is not.Reply
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 6:22 amI insist that your rejection of incompleteness vis a vis the universe is a red herring. Here’s why. We can posit an electrical filter (LC circuit), mechanical filter (Mass/Spring) and acoustical filter (helmholtz resonator) and the three are isomorphic. All three oscillate. Each is described by an identical differential equation. The math equation itself is isomorphic to the three systems. The mathematical system, the idealized electrical system, the mechanical system and acoustical system are all conceptually identical. To solve the equation we can use any number of mathematical devices and there are many choices. We have integration, laplace transforms, numerical methods – and they will ALL accurately predict the behavior of the system. They all give us the same answer. We have all kinds of mathematical operations that apply to nontrivial arithmetical theories: differentiation, integration, algebra, matrix theory, differential equations, set theory, and ALL of them apply to physical objects. Mathematical theories are used to understand the universe and theories about the universe are used to understand math. Knowledge travels in both directions. Therefore I don’t see how anyone can reasonably say, “But wait a minute, Gödel’s theorem is an exception. Sure, all that other stuff applies to the universe, but Gödel doesn’t.” That makes no sense. I can only suspect that the reason you insist on this exception is that it contradicts your religious views. I cannot mathematically PROVE that Gödel applies to the universe. But I do have 100% inference, based on all the other properties of mathematics that do apply to the universe. (This is the same reasoning that gives us the Church-Turing thesis.) Thus I have the full authority of science in postulating that the universe is incomplete. Because science assumes that the universe is logical and mathematical. The laws of physics are algorithmic. Are you unconditionally committed to the atheist worldview or are you willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads?Reply
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Richard says:May 2, 2012 at 7:32 amLet’s take Perry’s original argument, and I will comment on it with lines beginning with 2 dashes: Now please consider what happens when we draw the biggest circle possibly can – around the whole universe. (If there are multiple universes, we’re drawing a circle around all of them too) — Perry later admitted that mathematics was outside the universe but that he wanted to draw a circle round mathematics too There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove — There are infinitely many statements which are true but which we cannot prove. The universe as we know it is finite – finite matter, finite energy, finite space and 13.7 billion years time — However, mathematics is infinite, but inside the circle The universe is mathematical. Any physical system subjected to measurement performs arithmetic. (You don’t need to know math to do addition – you can use an abacus instead and it will give you the right answer every time.) — No, an abacus will not give the right answer if the answer is so big that it can’t be fitted into the universe. The universe (all matter, energy, space and time) cannot explain itself — Within the circle including logic and mathematics we provide explanations all the time Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it. — On the contrary, mathematics is boundless, but you say it’s inside the circle. Contradiction.Reply
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 8:53 amThe set of all integers is infinite. The set of all real numbers is infinite, and larger than the set of integers. Richard, I have a question for you: If the set of integers is “boundless” then how does it not also include all real numbers? And if the set of real numbers is “boundless” then how does it not also include all imaginary numbers?Reply
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Richard says:May 2, 2012 at 9:50 am“Boundless”. That’s a good question. Saying that the set of integers is boundless is the same as saying that it is an infinite set – and that if you claim to give me the greatest integer I can always give you a greater one. Certainly there is no limit to the number of integers. For that matter there is no limit to the number of even integers. Cantor proved that there is an infinity of infinities (See Georg Cantor in Wikipedia) and his theory is now accepted by all mathematicians. Also, imagine two parallel lines of infinite length. They both have infinite length, and are therefore both boundless. If you try to imagine the class of all mathematical “objects” there is a far greater infinity of those! For example, there are theories of infinite-dimensional spaces – and you can have infinite numbers of such spaces! Mathematics is overwhelmingly boundless! As well as being immaterial. You cannot draw a circle around mathematics.
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 10:25 amRichard, If I take an infinite line and look at it from one end, all I see is a dot. You can certainly draw a circle around a dot. It’s boundless in only one dimension. I am talking about something that is necessarily boundless in ALL dimensions. Boundless every possible way. Mathematics has infinite dimensions and infinite possibilities but every mathematician also knows that some infinities are greater than others. The set of all integers is a bigger infinity than the set of even integers. I am talking about the greatest possible of all infinities, something that is not bound in any way shape or form. That is a very different animal from mathematics or physics or the universe. For the universe and mathematics to be rational, such a thing has to exist.
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Richard says:May 2, 2012 at 10:38 am“The set of all integers is a bigger infinity than the set of even integers”. As a matter of fact, every mathematician knows that Cantor proved that the set of all integers is the SAME infinity as the set of even integers, whereas the set of real numbers is a bigger infinity. “I am talking about the greatest possible of all infinities, something that is not bound in any way shape or form. That is a very different animal from mathematics or physics or the universe. For the universe and mathematics to be rational, such a thing has to exist.” There is not a greatest infinity – infinities go on for ever, as Cantor proved. A greatest infinity therefore does not exist.
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 10:57 amGod is not a strict mathematical infinity. Remember how emphatic I have been that, logically, whatever is outside the largest circle cannot be divided into component parts. God is not a system. God is a boundless immaterial being. Either that, or the universe is irrational.
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Richard says:May 2, 2012 at 11:14 amThe God you describe is by definition irrational. Otherwise there would be a mathematical description of God. Godel proved exactly the opposite of what you claim. He proved that there are always things that can’t be proved. It’s no good saying “aha, God”. It remains the case that there are always things that can’t be proved. The universe is not irrational if it is finite. It doesn’t contain the integers and so it can be completely described by something outside itself, viz. some mathematics.
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Perry says:May 2, 2012 at 3:43 pmRichard, I have not proven God; I have merely given you three options to choose from: 1) The universe is irrational and thus requires no outside explanation and no God. 2) The universe is rational and thus requires an outside explanation ie God 3) The universe is the result of an infinite series of axioms or past events (infinite regress) If God is just more math, then all you’ve done is multiplied axioms. It’s a form of infinite regress. Your demand that God be mathematical keeps you from reaching a conclusion. (Furthermore, no theologian I know would agree that God is simply “mathematical.”) Please explain exactly why an infinite, indivisible, immaterial conscious being is “By definition” rational. Please articulate your assumptions and your logic, step by step.
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Richard says:May 3, 2012 at 2:11 amGodel proved that there are some truths that are unprovable. It is logically impossible to prove all truths. Introducing God makes no difference. God cannot do what is logically impossible. With God in the picture there are still truths which are unprovable.
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Perry says:May 3, 2012 at 8:14 amCorrection: If all truths go back to God as an axiom, then that means that with God in the picture there are truths which only God can prove.
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Richard says:May 3, 2012 at 8:25 am“If all truths go back to God as an axiom, then that means that with God in the picture there are truths which only God can prove.” There may be truths which only God can prove. However: Godel proved that there are always some truths that are unprovable. It is logically impossible to prove all truths. Introducing God does not invalidate Gödel’s proof. God cannot do what is logically impossible. With God in the picture there are STILL truths which are unprovable EVEN BY GOD.
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Perry says:May 3, 2012 at 8:34 amThis is not true. Why? Because God is not a system of component parts. God can prove anything and everything because God is indivisible. In other words the only way that everything can be true FOR A REASON (even if known only by God) is if God exists. If God does not exist then things happen for no reason at all.
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Perry says:May 3, 2012 at 8:38 amLet me clarify why God has to not be a system. Gödel said: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.” “Effectively generated theory” means procedure involving discrete steps that provide definite answers at each step. Whatever is outside the largest circle therefore has to not involve discrete steps, ie not be divisible. If God is defined as boundless and not a system of component parts then you have a means of having a logical universe in which everything happens for a reason – without violating Gödel’s theorem.
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Richard says:May 3, 2012 at 8:48 amIf you want to believe that God can do logically impossible things then that’s up to you.
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Perry says:May 3, 2012 at 11:42 amSystems of mathematics are unprovable from within the systems. Please prove in step by step detail why is it impossible for God, who is outside systems of mathematics, to prove them.
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Richard says:May 3, 2012 at 12:16 pmFor the same reason as I can’t prove them. I am also outside the systems of mathematics for which I am providing proofs. Godel said it was logically impossible and God cannot do logically impossible things. It is a matter of FACT that there are some truths that are unprovable and so it is IMPOSSIBLE for God to provide a proof of something unprovable. It is impossible for God to do something impossible. God has the whole of mathematics at his disposal. But the larger the mathematical system, the more truths there are that cannot be proved. God could not write down on tablets of stone a proof that violates what Gödel proved. And any proof must be capable of being written down, otherwise it is not a proof. You would be better off arguing that God KNOWS all truths. Indeed normally theologians say that God does know all truths. But they also normally say that it is impossible for God to do something impossible.
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Perry says:May 3, 2012 at 6:01 pmBut Richard, it’s only impossible to prove certain things within the system. On the other hand it is possible to prove an undecidable proposition – as long as you’re outside the system.
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Richard says:May 4, 2012 at 2:04 amNo, all proofs are with respect to some mathematical system. It is true that there can be an undecidable proposition with respect to some set of axioms, and then you can add in more axioms to make some bigger system so that with respect to the new system the proposition becomes provable. But by adding axioms you have just added a host MORE undecidable propositions. Godel says that however many axioms you add there are always undecidable propositions, in any system that contains the integers. So however many axioms you or I or God adds, however big the system, there are always undecidable propositions. That is why it is said that “truth is greater than provability”. For that matter, all these additional axioms are themselves never provable – they are axioms. Whichever way you look at it, there are always unprovable propositions.
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Perry says:May 4, 2012 at 8:02 amSee http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/comment-page-6/#comment-52979
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Al-Zamar says:May 4, 2012 at 3:19 amI now fully understand your argument, which is this: 1. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to formal logical systems that can model arithmetic 2. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem implies such formal logical systems suffer from incompleteness. 3. Incompleteness means that there must be something outside of these formal logical systems that makes them explainable. 4. A Turing machine is such a formal logical system to which Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies. 5. The universe is a Turing machine (or its equivalent). 6. Therefore, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to the universe. 7. Since formal logical systems that can model arithmetic require something outside of them that makes them explainable, the same is true of the universe. 8. That which makes the universe explainable must be God. 9. Therefore, God must exist. If this is your argument Perry, then you have not proven the existence of God. In the first place your argument is predicated on proving that the universe is a formal logical system that can model arithmetic, i.e. a Turing machine, but it is impossible for you to do this here; and it would be futile for you to argue further. It always surprises me that you continue to use evidence or cite material that you either do not fully understand or that you have not thoroughly read yourself. In the Wikipedia article entry for the Church-Turing thesis there is a sub-heading entitled Philosophical Implications. While the first IMPLICATION is that the universe is a Turing machine or its equivalent, here is the second of those implications: “The universe is not equivalent to a Turing machine (i.e., the laws of physics are not Turing-computable), but incomputable physical events are not “harnessable” for the construction of a hypercomputer. For example, a universe in which physics involves real numbers, as opposed to computable reals, might fall into this category.” What becomes immediately clear is that the Church-Turing thesis has been interpreted differently by different people, which is what accounts for the various contradictory implications being drawn from it. I consistently find it absolutely astonishing that someone who claims to know this material persistently demonstrates how badly you understand it by referring to or quoting something that refutes your own points. The Church-Turing thesis (which is a hypothesis) may be true, but the implications being drawn from it, that the universe is or is not a Turing machine, have not. In fact, there is an entire branch of physics known as digital physics (see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_physics) dedicated to the hypothesis that the universe is a Turing machine, and yet you never mention it once. (I can only assume that you don’t know what digital physics is.) However, for every digital physicist there is another physicist, a string theorist perhaps or a physicist of quantum mechanics who disagrees with them. In fact, the aforementioned article on digital physics actually lays out the position of the digital physicists, goes over the criticism of digital physics, and gives the counter-arguments of the digital physicists; but surely this Wikipedia entry has not exhausted the debate. Therefore, the notion that you could have proven something, i.e. that the universe is a Turing machine, that physicists see as a major source of debate strikes me as incredibly arrogant and misinformed. The questions that you have raised in this article are extremely complex and complicated and you have oversimplified them to the point of irrationality. I could stop right now because as long as you can’t prove that the universe is, in fact, a Turing machine (or its equivalent) your argument is, at best, valid but not sound. (For the difference between validity and soundness see Wikipedia.) However, there is something else more troubling about your argument that has been nagging me ever since I first read your article, and this is point #3 above in my summary of your argument. Does Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem really say that there MUST be something outside of a formal logical system that makes them “explainable”? I am almost certain that it does not. In your article you write this, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says: ‘Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.'” Except, Gödel never wrote this, and all attempts to find it have sent me back to this article. Therefore, I challenge you to produce a citation for this quote FROM GODEL or FROM A RESPECTED ACADEMICIAN or FROM SOMEONE WHO POSSESSES AN M.A. IN EITHER MATHEMATICS, LOGIC, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC. Anyone can claim that Gödel said anything; therefore, what I am looking for is an academic citation. My suspicion is that you (wrongly) rephrased Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and then placed your rephrasing of it in quotes or someone else rephrased Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and you placed that rephrasing in quotes. In a paper entitled, “What Gödel’s Incompleteness Result Does and Does Not Show” written by distinguished Professor of the Philosophy of Logic, Haim Gaifman, which you can find here: http://www.columbia.edu/~hg17/godel-incomp4.pdf, he writes (it behooves you to read this ENTIRE paper and this ENTIRE passage in particular): “Any deductive system, T, that formalizes mathematical reasoning must leave something outside: Its own consistency, expressed as Con(T), cannot be derived in it. As we remarked above, in principle, a computer that proves theorems generates proofs in some formal system….If the computer can “know” only what it can prove, then it cannot know that it is consistent (i.e., never produces a contradiction), something that we qua mathematicians seem to know. We may know it, for example, on the basis of a soundness argument, by appealing to the concept of truth: ALL THE AXIOMS OF T ARE TRUE, IN THE INTENDED INTERPRETATION OF THE LANGUAGE IN QUESTION, AND ALL THE INFERENCE RULES PRESERVE TRUTH; THEREFORE WHATEVER WE PROVE FROM THE AXIOMS BY APPLYING INFERENCE RULES, MUST BE TRUE, A FORTIORI, NON-CONTRADICTORY. There is now a philosophical temptation to argue that our access to the concept of truth gives us an edge over any computer. The thought appears attractive, given the traditional distinction between syntax and semantics and the view that sees the computer as carrying out mere syntactic manipulations. But this line fails. In the same sense that computers can prove, they can handle semantic notions. The argument from soundness can be formalized in a richer system, in which we can define a truth predicate for the language of T; the clauses of the truth definition are deducible as theorems in the second system, and so is the general statement that every sentence provable in T is true, hence noncontradictory. A computer that proves theorems in the richer system “knows” that T is consistent. The appeal to the truth concept is therefore misplaced. Still, the argument seems to carry through. As a rule, mathematicians take the consistency of the framework within which they work for granted. (This is different from physics where faute de mieux contradictions are tolerated as temporary anomalies, to be resolved later.) If T is obtained by formalizing a framework of mathematical reasoning, those who accept the framework accept, at least implicitly, that T is consistent, i.e., they accept Con(T). THIS ACCEPTANCE IS NOT MERELY SOME STATE ASCRIBED TO THE MATHEMATICIAN FOR PHILOSOPHICAL CONVENICE. Had it been so, one might have stipulated “by definition” that the theorem-prover that works in T “knows” that T is consistent. In principle, it can be manifested by using Con(T) in mathematical practice; a mathematician will reject as false any hypothesis he is trying to establish, if he finds that the hypothesis implies the inconsistency of the system within which he is working. Which is what a theorem-prover is incapable of. Observe, moreover, that the mathematician’s ability derives from a certain capacity for self reflection. REFLECTING ON ONE’S MATHEMATICAL REASONING AND REALIZING THAT IT CAN BE FORMALIZED AS T, ONE TAKES CON(T) AS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE LEGITIMATELY USED IN MATHEMATICAL REASONING. We CAN [not that we must] extend T by adding Con(T) as an additional axiom. But then the consistency of that system is beyond its reach, and so on. We thus have a systematic way of extending any acceptable formal system to a stronger acceptable system.” (Capitalization used for emphasis.) In other words, mathematicians can legitimately use Con(T), where T is some formal logical system and Con is the consistency of that system, BY INFERING IT VIA MATHEMATICAL REASONING, BUT WE CAN NOT PROVE IT. Now, as Gaifman has pointed out, “We can extend T by adding Con(T) as an additional axiom. But then the consistency of that system is beyond its reach, and so on. We thus have a systematic way of extending any acceptable formal system to a stronger acceptable system,” BUT IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE CONSISTENCY OF T IS PREDICATED ON SUCH AN EXTENSION AND IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE MUST DO SO TO ESTABLISH THE CONSISTENCY OF T. Consequently, this does NOT mean that a formal logical system “cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle” AND IT CERTAINLY DOES NOT MEAN THAT GOD IS LOGICALLY NECESSARY TO ESTABLISH THE CONSISTENCY OF ANY FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEM, EVEN IF THAT FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEM IS THE UNIVERSE. You are simply wrong Perry Marshall. To say the least, this is a serious blow to your position. Gaifman goes on to say this: “The discussion above brings to the fore the role of mathematical self-reflection: A mathematician realizes by self-reflecting on his own reasoning that his inferences can be formalized by such and such deductive system. From which the mathematician can go on to infer that the system in question is consistent. The self-reflection is therefore itself part of mathematical reasoning. Gödel’s result shows however that self-reflection cannot encompass the whole of our reasoning; namely, it cannot comprehend itself within its horizon. There is, indeed, prima facie plausibility to the general claim that we can only reflect on part of our rational apparatus; for the very act of self-reflection remains outside the picture it reveals. Gödel’s result lends mathematical grounds to this intuitive plausibility.” This means that if we have a formal logical system, and we know the axioms to be true, then following the rules of inference we will know that the formal logical system will preserve truth, although there will be some statements produced by the formal logical system which we cannot prove to be true. And through mathematical reasoning we can infer, but never know, that the formal logical system is consistent. THIS IN NO WAY IMPLIES THAT A FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEM IS ONLY EXPLAINABLE BY REFERENCE TO SOMETHING OUTSIDE OF IT. Properly speaking, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies to formal logical systems that can model arithmetic in two VERY TECHNICAL AND SPECIFIC ways: 1) the theorem says that SOME mathematical statements produced by a formal logical system that can model arithmetic ARE true, but not provable within the system; 2) the theorem says that you can NOT prove the truth AND consistency of any formal logical system that can model arithmetic. In other words, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not only to certain formal logical systems in general, but to the mathematical statements produced within those formal logical systems, specifically. It does not say that a formal logical system that can model arithmetic must look outside itself for its own explainability. So, to briefly summarize: Premise #5, in the aforementioned summary of your argument, is not provable by you; and premises #3 and #7 are simply not true; therefore, your conclusion, i.e., that God must exist is not true either.Reply
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Perry says:May 4, 2012 at 8:01 amAl-Zamar, Yes, I am familiar with Digital Physics. However I saw no point in introducing yet another term to the discussion. I’m well aware that some disagree with the premise of digital physics. Usually the arguments against it are along the lines of “certain spurious events happen in quantum mechanics that are not mathematically describable” or something like that. If you reject the notion that the universe is Turing equivalent, you have a major problem, which is: It undercuts the entire premise of physics and the scientific enterprise. What is physics itself if it is not a mathematical model of the universe? If you read the threads of discussion here, I am only saying something I’ve already said 100 times: You cannot prove that the universe is logical and mathematical. But if you assume that it’s not, then science itself becomes irrational. If you disagree, then explain how you can build any rational theory of physics without math. Now there is one issue which I’m surprised does not come up more than it does, and it’s this: If FREE WILL exists – if humans or even animals have what philosophers understand to be meant by free choice, then humans and animals are by definition not strictly mathematical. I am a dualist, which means I understand mind and body to not be the same thing. I believe that humans do have free will. I also have written at length about the fact that no code (ie ASCII or DNA) can be derived from the laws of physics, because the symbol assignments in codes are freely chosen. In my view consciousness and the laws of physics operate on two different planes, and interact within living beings. And that consciousness by definition is not algorithmic. I believe what Gödel believed, that humans are NOT Turing machines. Turing believed that humans are Turing machines and that’s an interesting story that we don’t have time for here. That said I think we could confine this discussion to non living things, i.e. basic physics and set aside questions of consciousness (which physics has no idea how to model now anyway) and we will still be just fine. Because I’m still operating within the paradigm of reductionism, which is the prevailing view in science. The foundations of modern physics fall apart if we do not assume that the universe is Turing equivalent. Even though physicists 200 years ago had never heard of Turing machines, they always assumed the universe was computable. If you reject proposition #5 then you have to change the very definition and aims of science. The Church-Turing thesis is much more central to the foundations of modern science than most people realize. Now to your second point. You say that the following is not necessarily true: “3. Incompleteness means that there must be something outside of these formal logical systems that makes them explainable.” You go on to say, “And through mathematical reasoning we can infer, but never know, that the formal logical system is consistent.” So let’s go with the opposite of 3 and your above sentence, and let’s make a corresponding statement: “Nothing outside of these formal logical systems makes them explainable.” What that means is that we can infer but never know that a formal logical system is consistent. We also know that if you extend the system with deeper axioms, you CAN prove that the formal logical system is consistent. You just don’t know that your new, larger system is consistent. So when you get to the end of your logical progression, eventually something ends up being true for no reason at all. “Reason” hits a brick wall. It is there just because. It is true just because. There is no other reason or explanation. “Just because” is not reason and logic. It’s assumptions hanging in mid-air. What is reason and logic if not arguing that things happen for a reason? How can reason and logic be a set of assumptions that hang in mid-air? How can any philosopher or mathematician simply accept an axiom at face value and not at least attempt to extend his proofs deeper? Isn’t it his job to assume things are true for a reason? If you reject my conclusions, which you are free to do, you have to redefine not only science, but reason and logic. So is there any benefit to assuming God exists, to positing God as the unprovable but necessary axiom of science, reason and logic? I say there is. You have one axiom on which all else rests. You assume that everything does happen for a reason. You assume that even if we cannot prove the consistency of the universe from within the universe, that an ultimate proof of consistency from the outside does exist somewhere. You don’t have to redefine science and you don’t have to redefine reason and logic. Furthermore the theistic view has plenty of room for consciousness and free will and “more things on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Finally I would like to point out that the theistic worldview gave birth to modern science. It’s no secret that the majority of the early great scientists were deeply religious and saw their work as an act of worship. Wisdom of Solomon 11:21, which was written at least 2,500 years ago, says, “Thou hast ordered all things in weight and number and measure.”Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 4, 2012 at 10:55 amPerry, sometimes I wonder if you even read what I write or if you read it but not carefully enough. This is what you write, “We also know that if you extend the system with deeper axioms, you CAN prove that the formal logical system is consistent. You just don’t know that your new, larger system is consistent. So when you get to the end of your logical progression, eventually something ends up being true for no reason at all. “Reason” hits a brick wall. It is there just because. It is true just because. There is no other reason or explanation.” First, Gaifman makes an even stronger argument than this, he says, “We CAN extend T by adding Con(T) as an additional axiom. But then the consistency of that system is beyond its reach, and so on. We thus have a systematic way of extending any acceptable formal system to a stronger acceptable system.” But does this mean that we just assume the consistency of that system? Absolutely not. Gaifman then goes on to say this, “If T is obtained by formalizing a framework of mathematical reasoning, those who accept the framework accept, at least implicitly, that T is consistent, i.e., they accept Con(T). THIS ACCEPTANCE IS NOT MERELY SOME STATE ASCRIBED TO THE MATHEMATICIAN FOR PHILOSOPHICAL CONVENICE.” Now Gaifman tells us that even if we can’t prove Con(T) the fact that we accept Con(T) is not predicated on mere assumption. Gaifman then goes on to explain precisely why it is that the mathematician’s acceptance of Con(T) is not just a mere assumption. He writes this, “Any deductive system, T, that formalizes mathematical reasoning must leave something outside: Its own consistency, expressed as Con(T), cannot be derived in it. As we remarked above, in principle, a computer that proves theorems generates proofs in some formal system….If the computer can “know” only what it can prove, then it cannot know that it is consistent (i.e., never produces a contradiction), something that we qua mathematicians seem to know. We may know it, for example, on the basis of a soundness argument, by appealing to the concept of truth: ALL THE AXIOMS OF T ARE TRUE, IN THE INTENDED INTERPRETATION OF THE LANGUAGE IN QUESTION, AND ALL THE INFERENCE RULES PRESERVE TRUTH; THEREFORE WHATEVER WE PROVE FROM THE AXIOMS BY APPLYING INFERENCE RULES, MUST BE TRUE, A FORTIORI, NON-CONTRADICTORY.” This means that we can know but never prove Con(T) via an appeal to soundness. The argument goes like this: 1) we know the axioms are true; 2) as long as we follow the rules of inference precisely, we also know that the formal logical system within which we work will preserve truth; 3) thus we know “a fortiori” that the system is “non-contradictory,” i.e. that the formal logical system is consistent; 4) Thus we know via mathematical reasoning that the system preserves truth and will do so in a non-contradictory way, i.e. be consistent, as long as the axioms are true and we continue to apply the rules of inference precisely. Gaifman then says this, “[A] mathematician will reject as false any hypothesis he is trying to establish, if he finds that the hypothesis implies the inconsistency of the system within which he is working. Which is what a theorem-prover is incapable of. Observe, moreover, that the mathematician’s ability derives from a certain capacity for self reflection. REFLECTING ON ONE’S MATHEMATICAL REASONING AND REALIZING THAT IT CAN BE FORMALIZED AS T, ONE TAKES CON(T) AS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE LEGITIMATELY USED IN MATHEMATICAL REASONING.” This means that by engaging in a specific systematic practice of precisely applying the rules of inference to T, and using mathematical reasoning to self-reflect, one can in fact legitimately use Con(T) without having to merely assume it. Finally Gaifman writes this in one of the concluding paragraphs of the paper, “The discussion above brings to the fore the role of mathematical self-reflection: A mathematician realizes by self-reflecting on his own reasoning that his inferences can be formalized by such and such deductive system. From which the mathematician can go on to infer that the system in question is consistent. The self-reflection is therefore itself part of mathematical reasoning.” What Gaifman is saying, but what you seem to not understand is that the truth of T implies Con(T), and this is true even when we know T is true but cannot prove it. Why? Because if we know that the axioms are true, and we apply the rules of inference precisely, then whatever we prove within the logical system will be true a fortiori, and they will be non-contradictory i.e. the logical system will be consistent. Now we cannot prove Con(T) but since we know T preserves truth, and the truth of T must be non-contradictory, then we can infer Con(T) via mathematical reasoning. I suspect that you did not so I will so it again, it behooves you to read Haim Gaifman’s article Perry. A huge chunk of that article is dedicated to explaining why it is that the mathematician is entitled to use Con(T), and why his use of Con(T) is not predicated on mere assumption.
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Perry says:May 5, 2012 at 10:48 amYou said: “then following the rules of inference we will know that the formal logical system will preserve truth, although there will be some statements produced by the formal logical system which we cannot prove to be true.” “Gaifman tells us that even if we can’t prove Con(T) the fact that we accept Con(T) is not predicated on mere assumption.” “This means that we can know but never prove Con(T) via an appeal to soundness.” Al-Zamar, in mathematics you are either proving or assuming. It is either one or the other, there is no middle ground. You might assume by inferring, and inference is often very reliable (it’s reliable enough to give us the Church-Turing hypothesis for example), but inference is not the same as proof. Look up the definitions for yourself. If you have not proven something, then you do not know it. You said: REFLECTING ON ONE’S MATHEMATICAL REASONING AND REALIZING THAT IT CAN BE FORMALIZED AS T, ONE TAKES CON(T) AS SOMETHING THAT CAN BE LEGITIMATELY USED IN MATHEMATICAL REASONING.” Yes, as long as you acknowledge that everything you assume to be true could be disproven tomorrow by a different or larger system. Gaifman reinforces this when he says, “A mathematician realizes by self-reflecting on his own reasoning that his inferences can be formalized by such and such deductive system. From which the mathematician can go on to infer that the system in question is consistent.” You said: “What Gaifman is saying, but what you seem to not understand is that the truth of T implies Con(T), and this is true even when we know T is true but cannot prove it.” You contradict yourself with your own words. If the truth of T implies Con(T), that’s just circular reasoning. If a skeptic is a person who believes no truth until it is absolutely proven, then that skeptic cannot believe anything in mathematics at all, because no mathematical system is provable. Therefore the only imaginable universe in which a skeptic’s doubt could be satisfied is a universe that includes a God who is capable of proving everything.
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Al-Zamar says:May 4, 2012 at 12:07 pmI didn’t write this in my last post, but this statement, “Nothing outside of these formal logical systems makes them explainable,” indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of Godel. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems is about the relationship between truth, provability, and consistency with respect to formal logical systems that model arithmetic. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH EXPLAINABILITY. Properly speaking, formal logical systems are not “explainable”; they can either be true or not true, provable or not provable, consistent or not consistent. This is why I asked you to produce a citation from Godel about this statement from your article, “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem says: ‘Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove.'” This statement is what really puts the nail in the coffin of your argument. Again, I don’t know where you quoted this from, but it is in no way a proper re-phrasing of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems.
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Perry says:May 5, 2012 at 10:53 amAllow me to use Gaifman’s words to define what I mean by the word “explain”: “Now in order to believe the consistency of some program on mathematical grounds, we have to understand how the program works, just as we understand that a certain algorithm performs addition.” Explain = cause to understand, which is prove. (Not infer.)
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Richard says:May 4, 2012 at 9:00 amAs you haven’t made any argument against my statement that there are always unprovable propositions, I assume you now accept it.Reply
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Perry says:May 4, 2012 at 10:19 amNo, please re-read that comment linkReply
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Richard says:May 4, 2012 at 10:44 amI have re-read it. I don’t find anything there that attempts to respond to the points I made.
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Perry says:May 5, 2012 at 11:11 amRichard, Let’s say we have 100,000 unprovable statements. Let’s acknowledge that within available systems of logic, we simply cannot prove them. Objectively speaking: Are they all untrue? Are some of them true? Are they all true?
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Richard says:May 6, 2012 at 3:34 amAs given a set of axioms (for a theory which contains the integers) there are true propositions which can be constructed from those axioms which are not provable from the axioms – then some of those statements may be true. But by introducing more axioms you can prove them to be true. So you CAN prove them “within available systems of logic”. (So I do not accept your premise). But then you’ve introduced more unprovable statements by introducing additional axioms. Truth always outruns provability.
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Perry says:May 11, 2012 at 6:44 amPer my conversation with Al-Zamar, what you presume to be true can never ultimately proven to be true if God does not exist. You either have an infinite regress, or truths hanging in mid air and axioms being true for no reason at all, or there is just one unprovable axiom.
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Richard says:May 11, 2012 at 7:39 amRe Perry’s “Per my conversation …” False. Firstly there are always unprovable truths. Secondly with God as an axiom you still need just as many additional axioms and unprovable statements. For example – that God behaves logically, that God can prove unprovable things, that God is both wholly immaterial and a designer, that God is an immaterial uncaused cause, that God is simple, that God is boundless, and on and on. Thirdly, you introduce difficulties that didn’t exist before, for example why God should go in for tsunamis, parasites, etc., …
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Perry says:May 12, 2012 at 1:11 pmTruths are only unprovable within a system. If you posit some arbitrary number of truths that can never be absolutely proven then you have an irrational definition of truth. Which is to say without God, nothing you assert to be true can ever be absolutely known to be true by anyone under any circumstances. Which means truth itself is irrational. If God is the source of everything then God by definition can prove everything. If all material things are inside the circle then whatever is outside the circle is immaterial. If God is outside the largest circle you can draw then God by definition is boundless. As I said to Al-Zamar, once you’re past step 1 (the existence of God) then we can proceed to step 2 (theological propositions regarding the character of God and questions of theodicy).
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Richard says:May 13, 2012 at 2:54 amPerry says “God by definition can prove everything”. Godel’s theorem is provably true and God cannot make it false. God cannot go against truth. God cannot provide a proof which disproves Godel’s proof. You have made your choice – it is a choice for irrationality and against Truth.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 5:54 pmGod is not an effectively generated theory, i.e. a series of discrete steps and calculations. God is indivisible and one. That is why God can transcend Gödel’s theorem without violating it.
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Richard says:May 16, 2012 at 3:00 am“God can transcend Gödel’s theorem without violating it.” I have no idea what this means. The fact is that Gödel’s theorem is provably true and God cannot make it false. God cannot go against truth. God cannot provide a proof which disproves Godel’s proof.
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Al-Zamar says:May 4, 2012 at 3:49 amOne final addendum. First, Perry you should not misconstrue my position as a defense of the non-existence of God. I do not know if God exists or not; and I’m certain that no one has ever either proven the existence of God or disproven the existence of God; but I am completely committed to the possibility of the existence of a deity. However, I do believe that if there is an entity sufficiently powerful enough to warrant the designation of “deity,” then he/she/it probably will not be anything like the Christian God of the Bible. Second, like I stated previously, I believe that you are a truthful and honorable person (I do think you can be condescending and abrasive but the same applies to me as well so no hard feelings) at least such is my judgment based on my interactions with you here. However, your methods of engaging in intellectual inquiry are troubling. Here at this blog, for years you have repeated statements which when put to the test turn out not be true, all the while giving the impression that you understand and have studied the relevant material. You erroneously believed, for example, that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems applied to everything, i.e. all logical systems, all statements, all propositions, all objects, in every field, etc. But it only took one read through the Wikipedia article on Logic, and a quick e-mail correspondence with a professor to find out that this was in fact not true. In fact, here is a quote from the Logic article from Wikipedia, found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic#Consistency.2C_validity.2C_soundness.2C_and_completeness, “Some logical systems do not have all four properties. As an example, Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems show that sufficiently complex formal systems of arithmetic cannot be consistent and complete; however, first-order predicate logics not extended by specific axioms to be arithmetic formal systems with equality can be complete and consistent.” (It also seems as if you didn’t know that Gödel had a Completeness Theorem or that digital physics is a field built on the hypothesis that the universe is a Turing machine.) In retrospect, this means that something which you had believed for years was shown to be erroneous by me, a person who had never even heard of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems before I first posted here about a week ago. All I’ve had at my disposal was my own intelligence, doing intensive reading of various articles over the internet, and some guidance by a Professor. Now, I’m not saying that you are not intelligent or well read, but what I am saying is that you seem to be very obstinate and comfortable with your own ignorance. You claimed that Professor Barry Loewer’s arguments were not “rigorous” and yet when it came down to it he was right and you were wrong. This does not mean that professors or people who have M.A.’s and Ph.D.’s are always right, but it does suggest that we should have a healthy respect for the fact that they have intensively studied their specific area of research and inquiry. In the future I think you would do well to either consult mathematicians, logicians or philosophers of logic, or re-dedicate yourself to intensively studying logic, but Gödel specifically, and digital physics generally.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 5, 2012 at 2:15 pmPerry, you’ve certainly thrown me for a loop; I concede everything in your last two posts. But what follows? Does it follow that there is a “benefit to assuming God exists, to positing God as the unprovable but necessary axiom of science, reason and logic?” No, this does not follow at all. I think that there is one flaw in making God reducible to an axiomatic presupposition of science, reason, and logic, which is this: I don’t have to believe in God to believe that the universe is logical and consistent. I can merely posit it as an axiom of science, which is what scientists do all the time anyway. I think you have engaged in a logical fallacy known as the false dilemma. You have frequently said that our only options are these: 1) the universe is not logical; 2) the universe is not consistent; or 3) God exists. But this is not true, and there’s no reason why it should be. If, according to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, an axiom of a formal logical system that models arithmetic is an unprovable presupposition of that formal logical system, then I can just make it axiomatic that the system is logical and consistent. And I don’t have to believe in the existence of God to do it. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems do not say that our choice is between illogic or inconsistency, in fact, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems fully leave open the possibility that formal logical systems which can model arithmetic are logical and consistent, the Theorems merely say that we can NOT prove this to be the case. I can’t prove it but so what? I just take the logicality and consistency of the universe as an axiom and move on.Reply
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Perry says:May 7, 2012 at 10:19 pmAl-Zamar, You said: “You have frequently said that our only options are these: 1) the universe is not logical; 2) the universe is not consistent; or 3) God exists.” This is not what I said. I said, You have three choices: 1) The universe is not logical 2) you have infinite regress or 3) God exists. Is this a false dilemma? Let’s return to the original wording of the theorem: Gödel says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete.In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” You’re trying to say that a complete system can also be consistent. Gödel’s statement means that if a system is complete, it is inconsistent, and if it is consistent, it’s incomplete. If the universe is logical for no reason it all – if its axioms all hang in mid-air and must be taken as given with no further possible proof, then it’s illogical, because a logical universe would always be logical for a reason.Reply
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Richard says:May 8, 2012 at 2:51 amYou switch from talking about consistency and completeness to talking about “logical”. Any theory that is consistent is logical. And that is the end of it. If a consistent theory contains the integers then it is incomplete (in the sense that there are some true statements that are unprovable from the axioms). And that is the end of that. No need to hypothesize God. I see my previous post has not been published.Reply
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Richard says:May 13, 2012 at 5:14 amCircles: You can’t even draw a circle round a mathematical plane, let alone mathematical 3D space. Step 1, step 2: you can’t get past step 1 without having some definition of what you mean by God. I am objecting to your definition of God. In fact your definition does not seem to correspond to the orthodox Christian view of God: You say God is wholly transcendent, whereas orthodoxy says God is also omnipresent. You say God can do impossible things, whereas orthodoxy says God cannot do impossible things. You say God is simple, whereas orthodoxy says God is a Trinity. You say God is unchangeable whereas orthodoxy talks of the suffering of God. You say God is wholly immaterial, whereas orthodoxy says God appeared on earth. You say God is provability, whereas orthodoxy says God is Truth. You say God is a person, whereas orthodoxy says that God is not a person.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 5:58 pmA mathematical plane is not boundless in every possible way. We discussed this issue several times before. God is transcendent and omnipresent. There is nothing that it outside the purview of God. I never said God could do impossible things. God is simple. The Trinity is simple. It is a community bound by indivisible love. God’s action in the affairs of man does not change His character in the slightest. There is nothing in science or mathematics that precludes God from occupying a material body. Truth with a capital T is the only source of ultimate provability. God is a person. That does not mean God has to be a man.
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Richard says:May 16, 2012 at 2:57 am“A mathematical plane is not boundless in every possible way.” Nevertheless you cannot draw a circle round it. Perhaps you now concede that we should ignore your talk about circles. But you keep repeating it. “God is transcendent and omnipresent. There is nothing that it outside the purview of God.” Purview? Omnipresence means much more than just purview. “I never said God could do impossible things.” You said that God could prove the unprovable. This is impossible. “The Trinity is simple. It is a community”. Contradiction. “God’s action in the affairs of man does not change His character in the slightest.” I never said that God’s character changes. “There is nothing in science or mathematics that precludes God from occupying a material body.” Occupying? – please explain. “God is a person.” God is not a person.
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:46 pmI have explained my use of the word circle as something with a surface and outer boundary numerous times. If you will not pay attention to how I define it then I am not obligated to continue to repeat myself. “Occupying a material body” – I quote John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. God is not a human, but became human.
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:30 amAttempting to reply to Perry’s post which begins “I have explained my use of the word circle”. Again, no reply button available. You say your so-called circle is actually a surface. However, whatever surface you draw I can draw a bigger one. And whatever surface you draw there is always some mathematics outside it. Therefore your “circles” argument fails. “God is not a human, but became human” – contradiction.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 10:21 amEvery mathematical construct has limitations.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 12:24 pmNo reply button available. Perry says: Every mathematical construct has limitations. Indeed. However, your “circles” argument fails. Because there is no “biggest circle” and your argument relies on there being one.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 1:15 pmIf there is a theory with limitations, there is an inside (“within the theory”) and an outside (“outside the theory”). If there is an outside, it relies on something on the outside, or else it is inconsistent. “CircleR#8221; is a convenient way to refer to the boundaries of the theory. See Gödel’s original statement.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 1:58 pmPerry said “If there is a theory with limitations” etc. I’m not going round this again. I have already shown that your argument is incorrect.
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Al-Zamar says:May 5, 2012 at 2:24 pmTo summarize my previous post, it seems to me that if Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems are right, then our only two choices are either: 1) Make God the unprovable but necessary axiom of the universe, science, and reason or 2) Make the logic and consistency of the universe, science, and reason an axiom. So, it seems to me Perry that not only have you not proven the God exists, but you’ve proven that God is not necessary to safeguard the logic and consistency of the universe, science or reason.Reply
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Mordecai says:May 6, 2012 at 12:19 amIt’s fairly astonishing how closed-minded and ignorant Perry can be after being proven wrong by so many people.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 8, 2012 at 2:10 pmHere is what you wrote: “You’re trying to say that a complete system can also be consistent. Gödel’s statement means that if a system is complete, it is inconsistent, and if it is consistent, it’s incomplete.” You’re confused about what I’m arguing. Yes, Godel says that a system can not be both COMPLETE AND CONSISTENT. He does NOT say that a system cannot be both logical and consistent. Incompleteness means that the logicality of a system is not provable, it does not mean that the system is not logical. The Theorem says, “In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, THERE IS AN ARITHMETICAL STATEMENT THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT PROVABLE IN THEORY.” This means that if the statements produced by the system are true then the system is logical, but it lacks completeness because we can’t prove them to be true. You’ve confused logicality and completeness. The implication of this is that if a system is logical, then it is necessarily consistent. If there is a system in which all the conclusions can be deduced from the premises, even if we can’t prove this, i.e. the system lacks completeness, then that system is, like Haim Gaifman wrote, “a fortiori non-contradictory.” In other words, that system would be both logical and consistent. Moreover, God won’t help you get rid of the infinite regress. To do so would simply reduce your argument to a tautological God of the gaps argument. I suppose you could just define God as the proof of everything (or define God as possessing the proof of all logical systems), but doing so is not a very convincing argument for the existence of God; the tautology simply allows you to define God as whatever is necessary to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. In this case, God would have the power to prove the logicality and consistency of all formal logical systems that can model arithmetic. However, as Richard has already pointed out, God himself can’t either possess or know such an all encompassing proof. Only logical systems can prove something, and, since according to your argument God can’t be a logical system and all logical systems that model arithmetic suffer from Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems, God can’t help you. The ONLY way to get out of this argument is to claim that God possesses a way of proving something that is not predicated on a formal logical system and, therefore, evades Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. But then again, this would just prove my point about God being tautological. I honestly don’t see how the discussion can proceed after this. Like I said before, our only recourse seems to be to just take the logicality and consistency of the universe as an unprovable axiom.Reply
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Perry says:May 9, 2012 at 8:34 pmAl-Zamar, If you say a statement is true but cannot prove it, then you are making your statement based on faith. Call it “a fortiori non-contradictory” or any other thing you want, but it’s faith. If God does not exist then Gödel’s theorem proves that any time you use the word “truth” you are making a questionable statement that can never be known to be certain – because the axioms on which it rests are ultimately not certain. On the other hand if you posit the existence of God then absolute truths can exist, even if they are not provable within our universe. You get to decide which point of view you want to embrace. Not so fast on your god-of-gaps assertions. Whenever someone brings up ‘god of gaps’ they’re referring to the ability of science, math, reason logic etc to explain things. If you reject the existence of God then per Gödel then you necessarily accept that some of the gaps can’t and will never be filled. Don’t preach to me about gaps; go back and read Gödel. Science and logic alone will never fill all of them, ever, because science and logic cannot even prove themselves. The second problem with your statement is, I am not even making a god of gaps argument in the first place. I am positing God as an ultimate explanation, as a first, uncaused cause. First cause is not a gap. If you believe in cause and effect and if you don’t believe in infinite regress, an uncaused cause absolutely necessary. A required axiom. If you want to say that God, who is not a mathematical system, who is the First Cause of all things, the ground of all reason, boundless and outside of space and time, the one axiom on which all other truths rest — if you want to say that God cannot prove the truths in His own universe, then you need to explain exactly why. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. Question: Why do you get to posit an apparently endless number of a fortiori assumptions and I don’t even get one? You’re telling me that MY worldview is contradictory? And if my worldview requires one axiom and yours requires so many you can’t count them, whose worldview is more compatible with Occam’s razor? To rephrase your own statement: Yes, God does possess a way of proving something that is not predicated on a formal logical system. God is the source of all reason and logic, cause and effect. God Himself is not a system and not contingent on any other thing. God is not tautological, because a tautology always requires two system elements, each which refers to the other. God is one, indivisible and causeless. God IS.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 10, 2012 at 4:33 amI’m sorry Perry, but your argument is spiraling into incoherence. This is what you write, “If you say a statement is true but cannot prove it, then you are making your statement based on faith. Call it “a fortiori non-contradictory” or any other thing you want, but it’s faith. If God does not exist then Gödel’s theorem proves that any time you use the word “truth” you are making a questionable statement that can never be known to be certain – because the axioms on which it rests are ultimately not certain.” But this is absolutely not true, and I’m not sure if there’s anyone who would agree with you. The preconditions for truth and the preconditions for provability are not the same. (Richard has already tried to show you the distinction and yet to insist on collapsing them.) Take quantum mechanics, for example. Here we have a falsifiable, empirically verifiable theory that makes incredibly precise predictions about the nature and behavior of atomic and subatomic particles. Who would claim that this theory is not true? Now, you may claim that according to Gödel the theory is not provable in a mathematical sense but this does not derogate from the truth-value of quantum mechanics. No matter how badly you want to continually re-instate the fallacy of the false dilemma, Perry, it will remain a fallacy. The choice is not between logic and assumption (or faith, as you put it). Then you go on to write this, “Not so fast on your god-of-gaps assertions. Whenever someone brings up ‘god of gaps’ they’re referring to the ability of science, math, reason logic etc to explain things. If you reject the existence of God then per Gödel then you necessarily accept that some of the gaps can’t and will never be filled. Don’t preach to me about gaps; go back and read Gödel. Science and logic alone will never fill all of them, ever, because science and logic cannot even prove themselves.” First, let’s forget the irony of you telling me to read Gödel; after all, I was the one who pointed out your outlandish nonsense about Gödel applying to all propositions, statements, and objects. You didn’t even know that Gödel had a Completeness Theorem. Second, I don’t care how other people use the “god of the gaps” argument; this is how I’m using it. And as far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter if the gaps in human knowledge are temporary or permanent, if you try to fill in those gaps with God, then it is de facto a “god of the gaps” argument. This is precisely what you’re doing here. Then you go on to write this, “God is not tautological, because a tautology always requires two system elements, each which refers to the other. God is one, indivisible and causeless. God IS.” Here’s the definition of a tautology, Perry, “A rhetorical tautology can also be defined as a series of statements that form an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed . . . Consequently, the statement conveys no useful information regardless of its length or complexity making it unfalsifiable. IT IS A WAY OF FORMULATING A DESCRIPTION SUCH THAT IT MASQUERADES AS AN EXPLANATION WHEN THE REAL REASON FOR THE PHENOMENA CANNOT BE INDEPENDENTLY DERIVED.” Honestly, Perry, I fail to grasp how your use of God is not tautological. You have invoked God in this thread innumerable times, attributing properties to him/her/it and then subsequently claiming that he/she/it possesses these properties BECAUSE he/she/it is God. That’s not an explanation or justification Perry, it is a tautology. Here is an example of your use of tautology, “To rephrase your own statement: Yes, God does possess a way of proving something that is not predicated on a formal logical system. God is the source of all reason and logic, cause and effect. God Himself is not a system and not contingent on any other thing.” Are you serious? ALL PROOFS REQUIRE A FORMAL LOGICAL SYSTEM. You need premises, you need deduction, you need conclusions. Without those things you don’t have a method of proof, hence you can’t produce a proof. And precisely why is it or how is it that God possesses the ability to prove things without relying on a formal logical system? And, more importantly, how do you KNOW he possesses this power? You can NOT claim that God possesses the power necessary to ensure that he exists for the purpose of being an axiom of the universe. Can you honestly not see how this argument is tautological? And then to go on and claim that God is the source of all reason and logic? I don’t know a theologian alive who would argue this, Perry. God is LIMITED by logic; he/she/it can NOT be the source of it. I don’t care how hard God tries, he/she/it can NOT make 2+2=5. He/she/it can try really, really hard but will NOT be able to do it. 2+2=4 is a mathematical truth; it is true in ALL possible places and at ALL possible times. Question: Can God make a rock so big that he/she/it can’t lift it? Then you go on to write this, “Question: Why do you get to posit an apparently endless number of a fortiori assumptions and I don’t even get one?” What I wrote was not an assumption it is true. If a system is logical, then it is necessarily consistent. There’s no way to get around this, Perry. A logical system can’t fail to be consistent. Are you now arguing that it’s possible to have a formal logical system in which all the conclusions can be derived from the premises via deduction, but the system can be inconsistent? Then you go on to ask this question, “And if my worldview requires one axiom and yours requires so many you can’t count them, whose worldview is more compatible with Occam’s razor?” Perry, why do you continue to use theories that you clearly do not understand? Occam’s razor refers to theories that are FALSIFIABLE, FALSIFIABLE, FALSIFIABLE! God is, by definition, UNFALSIFIABLE. Therefore, Occam’s razor does not apply. Now let’s deal with your argument about infinite regress. This is what you write, “If you believe in cause and effect and if you don’t believe in infinite regress, an uncaused cause absolutely necessary. A required axiom.” But Perry, you’re simply confused about how Gödel applies here, and I can understand why you would be. Gödel is about an infinite regress with respect to PROVABILITY, NOT LOGICALITY. Gödel is about the limits of PROVABILITY, NOT LOGICALITY. Just because all formal logical systems that can model arithmetic are necessarily incomplete, that does NOT mean that they are not logical. It is entirely possible for them to be logical according to Gödel; the only thing that they can’t be according to Gödel is complete, i.e. provable, and consistent. This means that it is possible for the universe to be logical according to Gödel. Now, if you want you can insert God as the proof of the universe, but the non-existence of God will do nothing to derogate from the logicality of the universe, if the universe is, in fact, logical. All we have to do is make the logicality of the universe axiomatic and we don’t need God. Of course we can’t prove that the universe is logical, but who cares? Either the universe is illogical, in which case God won’t help you, or the universe is logical and the non-existence of God can NOT derogate from its logicality. Whether or not we can prove the logicality of the universe is irrelevant to whether or not the universe IS, IN FACT, LOGICAL.Reply
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Perry says:May 10, 2012 at 6:51 amAl-Zamar, You showed your hand when you said this: “All we have to do is make the logicality of the universe axiomatic and we don’t need God. Of course we can’t prove that the universe is logical, but who cares?” WHO CARES? You’re really asking this? Ah, the nihilism of atheism. You can’t get away from it. Who cares? Anyone who cares about reason and logic. Anyone who actually wants to think rationally. I care about this a lot. I wish you did. Actually I think you do, or you wouldn’t still be here. If you can’t prove something, you don’t know it’s true. It’s that simple. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You can’t prove quantum mechanics, you can’t prove gravity, you can’t prove the sun is going to come up tomorrow morning. All you can do is INFER that things in science are true. We assume the laws of physics are everywhere the same in the universe; you cannot prove that. Within the atheist worldview, NOTHING can ever be known to be certainly true. The best you can do is have a large number of unproven axioms on which all your logic hinges. In positing God I am not guaranteeing the truth of any particular proposition. I am saying that if you are willing to make one assumption, on faith, you then have grounds for the existence of absolute truths, and ground for believing that it’s possible to use logical systems to deductively prove many axioms from the existence of the first axiom. (This brings up another way in which you need to hear what I am saying, because if the first axiom is known to be true then the axioms which follow can then be proven. Yes, all proofs need a formal logical system. The formal logical system simply needs the starting axiom and deductive proofs can follow.) It is not entirely correct to say God is limited by logic. I understand your motive in saying that, and I agree with your sentiment (because I do not believe that God is ever illogical) but remember that logic always exists within systems and there are different systems of logic and none of them can prove themselves. God is outside the largest circle. When you say that God is limited by logic, but then admit elsewhere that none of your logic is ever provable, then you really don’t know what it is that you are saying God is limited by. You can’t even prove the consistency of the logic you think God needs to obey; you take that on faith. Since logic is not provable and requires faith, and since deductively provable logic is only possible if God exists, then it takes faith in fewer things to believe in a logical world with God than in a logical world without God. Logic depends on God. God doesn’t depend on logic. Provability vs. Logicality: If you can’t prove it’s logical, you don’t know it’s logical. You may not care that within the atheist worldview, nothing can ever be known to be true. But I think you as a human being, made in the image of God, deserve a better worldview than that. I think you should care. P.S.: You have faith in a million things that are falsifiable. I have faith in one thing that you confess is not falsifiable. I think I am making quite a reasonable wager.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 10, 2012 at 11:26 amAlright now this is just getting ridiculous. Here is a quote taken directly from the article you wrote above, “You can draw a circle around all of the concepts in your high school geometry book. But they’re all built on Euclid’s 5 postulates which are clearly true but cannot be proven.” Now explain to me why you get to say that “Euclid’s 5 postulates […] are clearly true,” but I don’t get to say that quantum mechanics is true? Or that 2+2=4? Again Perry, your argument is completely tautological. You can’t define God as possessing the powers necessary to make him an axiom of the universe in order to prove he exists. Then when I ask you how you know he possesses these powers, you refuse to answer my question and then reassert your original definition of God. Let me guess, God has these powers because God by definition has these powers? Completely tautological and becoming circular very fast.
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Perry says:May 11, 2012 at 6:41 amAl-Zamar, I believe Euclid’s 5 postulates are true. But nobody can prove them to be true. Any one of them could be proven wrong tomorrow. If you don’t believe me, walk over to the math department and ask a mathematician. Science and math are nothing if not full of surprises. You say: “You can’t define God as possessing the powers necessary to make him an axiom of the universe in order to prove he exists.” Never did I claim to be able to prove God exists. What I claimed is that if mathematics and the universe are logical, and if the axioms on which mathematics hinge are also true for a reason (instead of being true for no reason at all) then it is necessary to posit the existence of God. The reasoning that leads me to this is the same kind of inferential thinking that leads to Euclid’s 5 postulates. We can imagine all kinds of starting points for our logic and an infinite boundless conscious entity is the only starting point that would enable everything that follows to make sense. You can choose to have faith that a very large number of axioms and unprovable statements are true for no reason at all. I choose to have faith that all are true because of one axiom and unprovable statement. This, by the way, is why we have science in the first place. Science came from theologians. Is it merely an accident that almost all the great early scientists were deeply religious? The scientific view and the assumption that the universe was logical naturally followed from the premises of monotheism. It was then verified by experiment. The history of science supports the power of this theistic view.
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Larsen says:May 8, 2012 at 11:41 pm“Science” claims that this universe, or any others, does not have very specific and all-encompassing laws that every aspect of matter, space, and energy has to follow, that the universe all spontaneous and that some by-laws (such as gravity and magnetism) have formulated on their own. Well then this proves sequential reasoning incorrect (A=B and B=C so that means that A=C), and no theorms or theories, for that matter, let alone the origins of our universe, can hold any validity. If, however, this universe did have very specific and all-encompassing laws that every aspect of matter, space, and energy is required to follow, then someone or something must have created them. Nothing can create itself out of nothing, and there is no mutation explanation that could possibly explain every aspect of this universe being so willing to cooperate in these very specific laws of “nature.” (Newtons laws 0-2, DeBroguile’s law….) So in order for science to have any validity whatsoever, because it is all based upon observation and all observations must be made in a constant universe, then the existence of a force or being outside of this universe is necessary.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 11, 2012 at 8:15 amFirst, just because something CAN be disproven does not at all imply that it WILL be disproven. If you honestly believe that there is even the slightest possibility that it will be mathematically disproven that 2+2=4 or that two parallel lines will never intersect, then I can only surmise that you cling to this belief because you understand that by conceding you will have to acknowledge the distinction between truth, provability, and logic; which will mean that a serious blow will have been dealt to your position. However, if you want to believe this, then this is your intellectual failing not mine. I have been making a very simple argument for the last several posts now, and you refuse to respond to it in any other way besides reasserting your original position. On one hand, you tacitly concede my argument (for example, that you have confused incompleteness and logicality) but you obstinately refuse to accept the inevitable conclusions. My argument is this: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems are about an infinite regress ONLY with respect to provability and consistency, NOT logicality. According to Godel it is entirely possible for a formal logical system that models arithmetic to be incomplete but consistent and logical; which is why the theory says, “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that PROVES CERTAIN BASIC ARITHMETIC TRUTHS, THERE IS AN ARITHMETICAL STATEMENT THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT PROVABLE IN THE THEORY.” Do you understand what this means Perry? It means that even the theory you hold so dearly implicitly recognizes a distinction between truth, logicality and provability. Let me quote it again, “THERE IS AN ARITHMETIC STATEMENT THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT PROVABLE IN THE THEORY.” You keep trying to collapse truth, provability, and logicality because then you can make the infinite regress of Godel apply to all 3, thereby allowing you to claim that “things will be true for no reason.” But our inability to prove the logicality (i.e., a system’s completeness) or consistency of a system has no bearing on whether or not the system is ACTUALLY LOGICAL. This means that the logicality of a formal logical system is not in any way predicated on either the provability of its logicality or the provability of its consistency. It is entirely possible for a system to be logical, but for us not to be able to prove its logicality or consistency. Godel does NOT say that it is impossible for a system to account for its own logicality, as you insist on erroneously claiming. Godel merely says that it is impossible for us to PROVE its logicality. Hypothetically speaking, it is entirely possible that the universe is a system that is incomplete but logical and consistent in a way that can account for its own logicality because its axioms are true. If this is true, then the non-existence of God CAN NOT DEROGATE FROM THE UNIVERSES’S LOGICALITY. The logicality of the universe would just be a fact, and it would remain a fact irrespective of whether or not God exists. Again, and for the final time, if the universe is illogical God cannot help you; if the universe is logical, then the non-existence of God CANNOT derogate from its logicality.Reply
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Perry says:May 12, 2012 at 11:56 amI don’t doubt that 2+2=4. But let’s take one of Euclid’s other 5 postulates: “A line can be extended infinitely in both directions.” That sounds entirely reasonable, but it’s not possible to do this in our universe, because space itself does not extend infinitely in both directions. So even the most basic mathematical assertions are not provable and a true empiricist would have to reject this postulate. Even mathematics itself is metaphysical. Your argument says: “My argument is this: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems are about an infinite regress ONLY with respect to provability and consistency, NOT logicality.” Al-Zamar, logicality IS consistency. I suggest you stop accusing me of not listening until you yourself can start listening to what I say and make sure you understand the definition of the terms before you post. Then you say: “This means that the logicality of a formal logical system is not in any way predicated on either the provability of its logicality or the provability of its consistency.” I do fully understand that there are statements that are true, that are not provable. But given that, you still don’t know which ones you believe are true actually are true, and which ones you believe are true are actually false. You don’t know until you prove it. Until you have proven it, you are taking their truth on faith. Then you say: “Hypothetically speaking, it is entirely possible that the universe is a system that is incomplete but logical and consistent in a way that can account for its own logicality because its axioms are true.” That is circular logic. If it is consistent, Gödel says its axioms lie outside of it and therefore can only be proven true from outside the system. So the only scenario in which any system can absolutely be known to be consistent is if God exists.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 11, 2012 at 8:33 amOne final addendum Perry, in case you don’t understand what this means for your argument: what I have written in my prior post makes your argument moot. If the logicality of a system is not predicated on its provability, then even if I concede that God can stop the infinite regress with respect to provability by using some method that does not require a formal logical system it would be irrelevant. This means that everything you’ve written in your article is irrelevant Perry.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 12, 2012 at 1:20 pmMost of your arguments don’t make sense. I won’t even address them because you’ll just use them to sidetrack the discussion. Here is the heart of the matter. All your arguments are moot Perry. This is an indisputable fact: the logicality of a system is not predicated on what you can prove about it. It is entirely possible (in fact, according to Godel it will happen every time for systems that can model arithmetic!) for a system to be logical but for us not to be able to prove its logicality. If, as you suggest, the universe is a formal logical system it is either logical or it’s not. Therefore, anything you continue to write about provability with respect to consistency or logicality is irrelevant. So, it doesn’t matter if God can prove anything. There are only two options: either the universe is not logical, in which case God cannot help you; or the universe is logical and the non-existence of God cannot derogate from its logicality. The logicality of the universe does not depend on the existence of God, unless you define God as the source of all logic. But I’ve already pointed out that God is limited by logic, not the source of it. (I’m not sure there’s a theologian alive who would agree with you Perry; in any event you can’t prove this. Perry do you honestly believe that God can make 2+2=5? He/she/it can’t do it.) If the universe is logical, and we take its logicality as axiomatic, then we can do science because science is falsifiable. Falsifiability, i.e. empirical verifiability, provides truth.Reply
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Perry says:May 12, 2012 at 10:35 pm“the logicality of a system is not predicated on what you can prove about it.” Al-Zamar, you’ve made your choice. Believe whatever you want to believe.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 14, 2012 at 8:09 amPerry, this is a true statement: The logicality of a system is not predicated on whether or not you can prove it to be logical. In fact, the ironic thing about this situation is that the theorem you use–Godel–actually backs my argument. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems do NOT say that formal logical systems that model arithmetic either are not or cannot be logical; Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems ONLY say that such formal logical systems cannot be both complete and consistent. In other words, Godel says that a formal logical system that models arithmetic will produce some mathematical statements that are true but not provable within that system. However, the fact that these mathematical statements cannot be proven does not derogate from the logicality of the system, because Godel has already stipulated that the statements WILL BE TRUE. However, this does mean that what we can logically prove about a system is limited–but that’s all it means. It simply can’t be any clearer than this that logicality is not contingent on provability. (And this is precisely why the problem of infinite regress ONLY applies to provability and not logicality.) This means that what God can prove about the universe is completely irrelevant to the logicality of the universe. From a metaphysical standpoint, the universe is either logical or it’s not logical, and if it is logical, the non-existence of God cannot derogate from its logicality. The end result is this: the universe can be logical without God. Thus, once I grant that the universe is a Turing machine or its equivalent, and once I clear up the distinction between provability and logicality using Godel, your argument is reduced to a very typical cosmological argument. I can understand why you refuse to concede this argument Perry, after all you’ve spent many years erroneously believing what you’d written in the article above, but I think you should really reconsider. As it stands now, if you continue to remain obstinate it will only make you look worse.Reply
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Perry says:May 14, 2012 at 9:03 amIn mathematics, if a statement is true but you can’t prove it’s true, how do you know it’s true? In answering that question, please define your use of the word “know”.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 14, 2012 at 3:01 pm“In mathematics, if a statement is true but you can’t prove it’s true, how do you know it’s true?” This question is proof that you don’t understand Godel. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem ONLY applies to systems that are logical, Perry; the Theorem CANNOT apply to a system if the system is illogical. (It wouldn’t even make sense if you tried to apply Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to an illogical system. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem was designed to show that all logical systems that model arithmetic are fundamentally unprovable, so why would Godel even bother with illogical systems?) Hence, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem grants the logicality of the system to which it applies. What you have done is mistaken incompleteness for illogicality, and you have confused yourself as a result. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem does NOT say that a formal logical system is incomplete, i.e. unprovable, and therefore illogical; the Theorem only says that formal logical systems that model arithmetic are incomplete. If Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem did not grant the logicality of the systems to which it applied, then the idea that a formal logical system could produce true mathematical statements that are not provable would be entirely incomprehensible. Thus, the system will produce true mathematical statements because Godel is already granting the logicality of the system. In other words, if the axioms are true (which Godel is granting), then as long as you use the rules of inference correctly the system will always produce truth. In fact, the system can’t fail to produce truth. What Godel says is that some of the truths you can produce via a logical system, if that system can model arithmetic, will be unprovable within that system. The consequence is this: Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems make a VERY clear distinction between truth, incompleteness (provability) and logicality. By confusing incompleteness with illogicality, Perry, you have tried to make the infinite regress implied by Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem apply to provability as well as logicality. But this is a FATAL error. What you can prove about a system has no bearing on whether or not that system is ACTUALLY logical. This was Godel’s whole point: that a system can be logical but you won’t be able to prove it; hence an absolute foundation for mathematics could never be achieved. If it is true that provability is related to, but DOES NOT DETERMINE logicality, then it must also be true that, irrespective of what God can prove, his non-existence CANNOT DEROGATE FROM THE LOGICALITY OF THE UNIVERSE, IF THE UNIVERSE IS LOGICAL. My whole argument is premised on this thought experiment: Let’s assume that you are right, Perry. Let’s assume that the universe is a Turing machine or its equivalent. Let’s assume that the universe is ACTUALLY logical. Now let’s ask this question: Does it follow that the universe will become illogical if we can’t prove its logicality? As long as you understand that logicality is not contingent upon provability the answer will, unequivocally, be no. The only way the answer can be yes is if you make God the source of all reason and logic but as I, as well as Richard, have pointed out, God is limited by logic not the source of it so this can’t be true.Reply
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Perry says:May 14, 2012 at 4:28 pmAl-Zamar, I repeat my question: In mathematics, if a statement is true but you can’t prove it’s true, how do you know it’s true?Reply
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Richard says:May 15, 2012 at 2:34 amI will submit a comment, although my previous two comments have not yet been placed on the site. “In mathematics, if a statement is true but you can’t prove it’s true, how do you know it’s true?” Godel actually provides one statement which is true but unprovable. It is the mathematical equivalent of a statement which asserts its own unprovability. Godel says: “From the remark that [the unprovable statement] asserts its own unprovability, it follows at once that [the unprovable statement] is correct, since [the unprovable statement] is certainly unprovable”. For each consistent formal theory T having the required small amount of number theory, the corresponding Gödel sentence G asserts: “G cannot be proved within the theory T”. This interpretation of G leads to the following informal analysis. If G were provable under the axioms and rules of inference of T, then T would have a theorem, G, which effectively contradicts itself, and thus the theory T would be inconsistent. This means that if the theory T is consistent then G cannot be proved within it, and so the theory T is incomplete. Moreover, the claim G makes about its own unprovability is correct. In this sense G is not only unprovable but true, and provability-within-the-theory-T is not the same as truth. This informal analysis can be formalized to make a rigorous proof of the incompleteness theorem, as described in Wikipedia. However, the real problem is that Perry seems to believe that God could provide a proof that contradicts Godel’s proof! But that would make Perry’s whole thesis incoherent.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 5:59 pmGod can provide a proof of anything if God is the original axiom from which all other logic flows — if God is not a system of divisible enumerable parts.Reply
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Richard says:May 16, 2012 at 2:40 am“God can provide a proof of anything…” So, you are now saying that Godel’s theorem is false. You have chosen illogicality.
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:41 pmGod can provide a proof of anything because God is not an “effectively generated theory”; God is not a system. Therefore God can be both consistent and complete and not violate Gödel’s theorem because God is indivisible.
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:24 amAttempting to reply to: God can provide a proof of anything because God is not an “effectively generated theory”; God is not a system. Therefore God can be both consistent and complete and not violate Gödel’s theorem because God is indivisible. Again, no Reply button. God cannot provide a proof of the unprovable. God absolutely cannot write down a proof which disproves Godel’s proof. To say otherwise is to embrace illogicality.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 10:16 amGod is not an effectively generated theory or system so Gödel’s theorem does not prevent God from proving that which originates from Him.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 11:46 amNo reply button available. Perry said: God is not an effectively generated theory or system so Gödel’s theorem does not prevent God from proving that which originates from Him. I’m not an effectively generated theory or system either, but that is irrelevant. A formal theory is said to be effectively generated if its set of axioms is a recursively enumerable set. In other words “effectively generated” applies to the theory, not to the person doing the proving. God cannot write down a proof that disproves Godel’s proof – unless you are voting for illogicality.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 1:19 pmIf God is boundless and indivisible and is the starting axiom of a mathematical theory – the thing from which everything can be deduced, then if God can be proven to exist, also by definition proves everything that follows. God can prove Himself. Therefore, God can prove everything.
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 5:04 amPerry, your question is valid but absolutely irrelevant within the context of this discussion. I have already explained that knowing whether or not a system is logical is immaterial to whether or not that system is ACTUALLY logical. The irony is this: it is absolutely clear from Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems that Godel believes a mathematical statement can be true but logically unprovable, therefore, if you reject the idea that a mathematical statement can be true but logically unprovable, then you must also reject Godel. And if you reject Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, then your argument completely falls apart. (And since Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems have not been disproven, it’s safe to assume that other mathematicians and logicians agree that it’s possible for a mathematical statement to be true but logically unprovable.) On another note, if you really want to answer this question: “In mathematics, if a statement is true but you can’t prove it’s true, how do you know it’s true,” then ask a mathematician or a logician, Perry. Don’t ask some random guy on the internet. Or better yet, read Godel. I will say this though, the reason why you insist on asking me rather than reading a book on mathematics or logic, or asking a mathematician or logician, is because you’re interested in being right, you’re not interested in challenging your own assumptions and beliefs by rigorously studying the material that you have been erroneously using to browbeat other people into submission.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 6:20 amYou said, “if you reject the idea that a mathematical statement can be true but logically unprovable, then you must also reject Godel.” My question is thoroughly relevant to this discussion. I fully accept Godel. And you still do not understand my position. I repeat: How do you know a statement is true if you cannot prove it? And precisely what does the word “true” mean if you can’t prove a single axiom your entire mathematical system rests on?Reply
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Richard says:May 15, 2012 at 6:25 amYou did not publish my response to this.
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 6:41 amYour posts are thoughtful and require a thoughtful response in return. Have I ever not posted your replies? Please be patient.
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Richard says:May 15, 2012 at 7:30 amI apologise for my impatience! Let me add to my previous reply. Godel’s proof that there are true but unprovable statements rests only on the axioms for the integers and on logic. We can either believe in the integers or not – but introducing God into the equation does not make any difference, as we do not know whether God believes in the integers or not. It is perhaps remarkable that if the integers exist then a statement can be true but unprovable. Godel’s statement G: “G is unprovable” is either true or false. But if it is false then G is not unprovable, i.e. “G is provable”. So if it’s false then it’s true (contradiction) therefore it is true. The result is quite astounding! Merely by a bit of mathematics and logic we discover that there are true but unprovable propositions.
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 6:01 pmIf God is the source of all logic, then the integers come from God and God would certainly believe in integers. What kind of God would not believe in integers? An inconsistent God, I would think.
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Richard says:May 16, 2012 at 2:31 am“If God is the source of all logic, then the integers come from God and God would certainly believe in integers. What kind of God would not believe in integers? An inconsistent God, I would think.” A lot of confusion in those statements. Just because you have a system of logic does not mean that you have the integers. The integers have their own axioms. God will only believe in the integers if the theory of integers is consistent. You can’t just declare that God believes in the integers.
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:40 pm1. Integers exist. 2. If all things from God, integers come from God. 3. Therefore God believes in the integers.
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:18 amAttempting to reply to Parry’s statement: 1. Integers exist. 2. If all things from God, integers come from God. 3. Therefore God believes in the integers. As usual, there is no Reply button. Reply: the integers exist within the mathematical theory of the integers. However, Perry says that the universe is finite. Therefore, according to Perry the integers do not exist in the universe. Therefore, the theory of integers is not “true” if by “true” we mean existing in the universe. There are infinite numbers of mathematical theories and only a vanishingly small number of them apply to the universe in any way.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 10:14 amIf I had a nickel for every time you misquote me. Every time I have said the universe is finite I have been referred to the size, mass and energy of the physical universe.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 11:37 amPerry says “If I had a nickel for every time you misquote me.” I have not misquoted you. A mathematical statement may be true given a set of axioms. But those axioms may not apply to the physical universe. According to you, the physical universe is finite, therefore the theory of the integers does not apply to it.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 1:35 pmNo reply button available. Perry says “If God is boundless and indivisible and is the starting axiom of a mathematical theory – the thing from which everything can be deduced, then if God can be proven to exist, also by definition proves everything that follows. God can prove Himself. Therefore, God can prove everything.” Simply incorrect and illogical throughout. And ungrammatical. God cannot write down a proof that disproves Godel’s proof. Otherwise you are voting for illogicality.Reply
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Perry says:June 8, 2012 at 8:33 amIf you know the axiom is true – if it can absolutely be proven to be true, then everything that deductively follows from it (which was already true because you could write a proof based on the axioms) is now absolutely proven true too. Such is the case if God is the original axiom of all things. Then all things could deductively be proven to be true — without violating Gödel’s theorem, because God is not a system. I have not proven God exits. But what we can say is that no other view allows for a rational universe. If God does not exist then a system of axioms exists for no reason at all, hanging in mid-air and is thus inconsistent. Or else we have an infinite regress which you are, not surprisingly, unwilling to defend. (In all my years of debate only one other person was willing to try and he failed. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/design-evil-suffering/comment-page-1/#comment-3810, conversation both above and below.)Reply
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Richard says:June 8, 2012 at 9:28 amI do indeed defend what you choose to call an infinite regress. You say “if God is the original axiom of all things. Then all things could deductively be proven to be true”. This is obviously false – “all things” cannot be proven to be true from the axiom that God exists. There is an infinite number of systems of axioms and almost all of them do not apply to the universe. I really don’t understand at all what you are trying to say. By the way, I have never claimed that God does not exist. All I have ever claimed is that nearly all your arguments are incorrect and that your view of God is heterodox. Many people are coming to this site and they don’t agree with your arguments and they leave. Very unfortunately this may lead them to conclude that all religion is as nonsensical as they believe your arguments to be.
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Perry says:June 9, 2012 at 8:53 amAgain, you misquote me. You quote me as saying “all things” can be proven to be true from the axiom that God exists. I did not say that. I said that if God, boundless and indivisible is the source of all things; and if all things logically flow from a single axiom (which they must if the universe is logical)… then it would be theoretically possible to prove everything – if you knew everything that God knows. And you could do so without violating Gödel because incompleteness does not apply to something that is boundless and indivisible.
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Richard says:June 9, 2012 at 9:52 amPerry says “I said that if God, boundless and indivisible is the source of all things; and if all things logically flow from a single axiom (which they must if the universe is logical)… then it would be theoretically possible to prove everything – if you knew everything that God knows. And you could do so without violating Gödel because incompleteness does not apply to something that is boundless and indivisible.” All things cannot possibly flow from a single axiom. This makes no sense. And again you say that God can provide a proof of everything. This contradicts Godel.
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Perry says:June 11, 2012 at 3:35 amIf all things cannot possibly flow from a single axiom, then all things flow from multiple axioms, in which case the multiple axioms form a system which does not rely on something outside of themselves, which means all things are inconsistent. You can have that choice if you want it: You are free to believe the universe is irrational.
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Richard says:June 11, 2012 at 4:12 amPerry says “If all things cannot possibly flow” etc. Incorrect. It is not inconsistent in the mathematical sense. Also “things” do not “flow” from axioms. So to me what you are saying here doesn’t make any sense. You are the one who believes the universe is irrational – because you say that God can provide a proof of everything, thereby contradicting Godel’s proof. I, on the other hand, believe in rationality and so I reject your irrational claims.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:11 pmConclusions are logically deduced from axioms. In all mathematics it’s no different than in high school geometry. In the comment you are replying to, I said that if you absolutely know the axiom is true, you absolutely know that everything that logically follows from the axiom is also true. If God can tell you that your axioms are true, then you can know everything in your logical system is true. And if God is not a system then God can prove the truth of anything that is true without violating Godel.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:20 pmPerry said “If God is not a system then God can prove the truth of anything that is true without violating Godel.” Incorrect. God cannot provide a proof of anything that is true, as that proof would violate Godel.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:29 pmSyllogism: 1) Gödel says that Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. 2) God is not an effectively generated theory. 3) Therefore God is not limited by Godel.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:42 pmPerry said “God is not limited by Godel”. God cannot do anything illogical. In particular, God cannot provide a proof that contradicts Godel’s proof. If such an alleged proof was provided, mathematicians would look at it and point out where it was wrong. It would have to be wrong as it would contradict Godel’s proof.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:45 pmGod is not an effectively generated theory. This does not mean God contradicts Godel. It means that God is excluded from Gödel. Therefore the limitation of being either consistent or complete does not apply to God.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:54 pmPerry said “God is not an effectively generated theory. This does not mean God contradicts Godel. It means that God is excluded from Gödel. Therefore the limitation of being either consistent or complete does not apply to God.” The words “consistent” and “complete” apply to theories and God is not a theory. God cannot do anything illogical. In particular, God cannot provide a proof that contradicts Godel’s proof. If such an alleged proof was provided, mathematicians would look at it and point out where it was wrong. It would have to be wrong as it would contradict Godel’s proof.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:May 14, 2012 at 9:05 pmIn The Beginning from The Keys of Jeshua By Glenda Green “In the beginning there was Love, and Love existed in alternating rhythms of release and self knowing. In knowing Itself, Love created a viewpoint, and from that viewpoint It created points to view. These points were all good and existed only because Love said that it was so. In the relationship between Love, It’s viewpoint, and Its points to view, there came to be space and unity. Love knew this as Spirit. In that same relationship, there also came to be rhythm, energy, and differences of potential. Love knew this as Life. All of this existed only because intention and thought propelled Love into the prospect of ‘having an experience’. Initially, every potential, thought, and action occurred in perfect synchronicity; therefore its reality existed at the speed of light. As Love desired to have an experience, a new pattern of relationship was necessary; one that included points of random change and finite passages of what is now called ‘time’. To accomplish this, Love entered a dialogue with Spirit, and so life acquired a new tendency toward novel response. After all, what is a dialogue if the response is predetermined? Through this dialogue, the foundation was created for free will and choice. Thus, for the first time it was necessary for Love to ‘mark the spots’ where life and spirit had emerged into manifestation. Wherever change occurred in a field of equilibrium there would be mass. Love was adamant about this! Nothing must ever be lost from spirit, regardless of the changes, distresses, or configurations that may unfold in the course of existence. Consequently, you may call this presence ‘adamantine’. Only a whisper, a trace, at first, and yet it was the first manifestation of substance, and the beginning of the universe as you know it. From this, all matter was created. But to understand this, you must respect the essence of Spirit, the Love from which it sprang, and the river of life in which it flows.”Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 6:43 am“I repeat: How do you know a statement is true if you cannot prove it?” I repeat: This question is irrelevant. You can continue to assert that it is, but that won’t change the fact that it is irrelevant. If, however, you think it is relevant, then explain why it is.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 7:07 amYou claimed to know statements are true. I asked you to explain how you know. You said how you know these things is irrelevant…. Then you insist that I explain why I even need to know. Really? Have you ever studied math? If the question is irrelevant, why have mathematical proofs at all? Why not make up anything you want to believe?Reply
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Richard says:May 15, 2012 at 7:36 amI know the sun is shining here, but I may not be able to provide a mathematical proof of it. Nevertheless I know it.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 6:02 pmI know that every effect has a cause and that unless there is infinite regress, an uncaused cause is necessary. I cannot provide a mathematical proof of it but I can infer it from all experience. If the universe is logical, that inference is correct.Reply
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Richard says:May 20, 2012 at 9:05 amThe proposition: every cause is caused by a prior cause, therefore there is an cause which is not caused by a prior cause – is a contradiction, and therefore illogical. I don’t have any problem with the concept of a universe which has existed forever and which will exists forever. Nor with in infinite number of universes in the multiverse, nor with an infinite number of universes in the cosmic landscape. There is nothing inherently contradictory about an infinite regress. Nobody has shown that, if an infinite heirarchy of causes occurred, then both A and not-A would be true. Nobody has demonstrated that, with an infinite regress, some basic piece of knowledge about the world would be contradicted.
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:48 pmMy problem with infinite regress of the universe is entropy. If you walk into a room and see that a candle is burning, when are you ever justified in assuming it’s been burning forever?
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:33 amAttempting to reply to “My problem with infinite regress of the universe is entropy.” There is no reply button. Yes. However, there are some “big bounce” theories which have entropy decreasing before the “bounce”.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 10:20 amPlease show me, in detail, how you reverse the law of entropy without violating known laws.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 12:19 pmNo reply button available. Perry says: Please show me, in detail, how you reverse the law of entropy without violating known laws. Neil Turok and Paul Steinhardt have a theory which they say addresses this issue. Also Roger Penrose.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 1:11 pmI don’t buy it. Explain how this works. Where’s the empirical proof? How do you put this to use?
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 1:28 pmPerry says: I don’t buy it. Explain how this works. Where’s the empirical proof? How do you put this to use? You sound anxious. I suggest you read the original papers.
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 1:44 pmI’ve been down this rabbit trail before, and such theories always invoke some outlandish assumption. In this case, it’s that candles aren’t free but entire universes are. Really? If you actually believe this, then come forward with a clear explanation. If you want to posit an infinite regress, a vague reference to some work by some guys who wrote some papers won’t do.
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 9:43 amThis is what you wrote, “You claimed to know statements are true. I asked you to explain how you know. You said how you know these things is irrelevant.” Even if I did say this, which I didn’t, so what? For the sake of argument, let’s assume I did say this. Would this somehow help your position? If it does, please explain how it helps you. I contend that it would not. Let’s do this thought experiment. Let’s assume that humans know nothing. Let’s assume that humans can’t prove anything. Would it follow from this that 2+2 does not equal 4? Would the human incapacity with respect to knowledge and logical proof somehow derogate from the fact that 2+2=4? This is a metaphysical truth Perry: it was always true, it is true now, and it will always be true. And our inability to know or prove that 2+2=4 would not alter the truth status of 2+2=4. 2+2=4 is a truth that is NOT human-dependent. Likewise, IF the universe is logical, whether or not we can prove it or know it IS IRRELEVANT TO THE LOGICALITY OF THE UNIVERSE. Hence, it doesn’t matter what God can prove. Even if God can prove the logicality of the universe it would not follow that the logicality of the universe is contingent upon the existence of God. If the universe is actually logical, then the non-existence of God cannot derogate from its logicality. Perry, you can continue to nitpick at these arguments about knowledge and provability, but doing so will not help your position. It would seem that you cannot see the forest for the trees.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 11:48 amI agree that 2+2=4. We both also agree the universe is logical. I’m glad to see we also agree there are metaphysical truths. My question for you is, when you get beyond kindergarten simple things like 2+2=4, how do you know they’re true if you can’t prove them? If, as you say, you can’t prove it or even know it, why would it “not matter” or be “irrelevant”? Do you consider yourself an intellectual?Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 12:30 pmYou wrote this: “If, as you say, you can’t prove it or even know it, why would it “not matter” or be “irrelevant”?” For the last time, it’s irrelevant because asking this question cannot help you prove that God is a necessary axiom of a logical universe. Your question is a valid epistemological question, but with respect to you being able to use the fact that humans can’t know or prove certain things in order to argue that God is a necessary axiom of a logical universe, it is absolutely irrelevant. Your question isn’t irrelevant per se, it’s just irrelevant in this context, which is what I have been saying all along. I’ve been making the same argument for several posts, which is this: The non-existence of God cannot derogate from the logicality of the universe. It doesn’t matter if humans don’t know anything or can’t prove anything or if God can know everything or prove everything because the logicality of the universe is not predicated on knowability or provability. Again, you’ve mistaken completeness and logicality, which leads you to the erroneous belief that an infinite regress in either knowability or provability necessarily means an infinite regress in truth and logicality. Perry, this is what happens when you take a theorem that you don’t understand, make erroneous assumptions about what that theorem says and how it applies, and then refuse to admit you were wrong in doing so. Your inability to understand is frustrating you, but if you go back and read Godel, not just skim it or halfway read it, your frustration will be alleviated. Once you do this, you’ll be ready to concede that your argument is wrong.
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 1:22 pmYou still didn’t answer my question. Kindly stop making accusations and answer the question.
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 1:54 pmPerry says: “I’ve been down this rabbit trail … ” etc. I’ve no intention of explaining scientific theories here. These guys are well-respected and the scientific papers are available. Fortunately, orthodox Christianity would not be falsified if the theories of these scientists happened to be correct.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 12:34 pmWhen Richard pointed out that you hadn’t posted his response, you wrote this, “Your posts are thoughtful and require a thoughtful response in return. Have I ever not posted your replies? Please be patient.” Am I right in interpreting this to mean that you either don’t or won’t publish a person’s post until you have responded to it?Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 1:33 pmThis was your question: “If, as you say, you can’t prove it or even know it, why would it “not matter” or be “irrelevant”?” This was my reply: “For the last time, it’s irrelevant because asking this question cannot help you prove that God is a necessary axiom of a logical universe. Your question is a valid epistemological question, but with respect to you being able to use the fact that humans can’t know or prove certain things in order to argue that God is a necessary axiom of a logical universe, it is absolutely irrelevant. Your question isn’t irrelevant per se, it’s just irrelevant in this context, which is what I have been saying all along.” I’ve explained to you why your question is irrelevant. What more do you want from me? You just keep asking the same question, and no matter how many times I give you an answer, you keep asking it.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 1:46 pmI ask you how it is you know something is true when you can’t prove it’s true. You retort by dodging my question and claiming it’s irrelevant. It’s a valid epistemological question. I’m not interested in your personal presumptions, accusations and judgments about the context. I want to know how you determine what’s true. Answer the question.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 1:54 pmI don’t know. What follows?Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 2:56 pmIf there is nothing outside the circle, what follows is that everything that is true is true for no particular reason at all. It means that truths are only true within the context of a limited system that can never, not even in principle, ultimately be proven. It suggests that all truths are relative. On the other hand if there is something outside the circle, that is the only way it is possible for a truth to really be an absolute truth and not just a relative truth. It means that everything that is true, is true for a logical reason and grounded in a larger reality. It means that the inferences we make do have a decent chance of being correct. It means that even though all human knowledge is provisional, the word “true” has real objective meaning — ‘the truth is out there.’ It means that a vantage point exists outside of the universe, from which everything in the world could actually make sense.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 3:44 pmDo you consider yourself an intellectual, Perry? Because all you’re doing is dodging and obfuscating. I spent several posts explaining to you why what you’ve written in your last post is not true, and instead of responding to those arguments you just reassert your original position. It’s clear to me that you won’t respond in any other way because you know that you can’t get around the argument. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem does not say that a system cannot be logical, only that it cannot be proven to be logical. That’s a very important distinction that you simply refuse to acknowledge. Infinite regress does not apply to either truth or logicality Perry; infinite regress applies to knowability and provability. What you’re arguing is tantamount to saying that something can’t be true or a system can’t be logical if we can’t prove it to be true or logical. It’s like arguing that the 2+2 did not equal 4 before we proved it. It’s utterly absurd. If something is true, then it’s true; if something is logical, then it’s logical. It doesn’t matter if we can’t prove it or know it. IF the universe is logical, our inability to prove its logicality can’t possibly derogate from its logicality; hence, whether or not God can prove everything is irrelevant. Godel says that there are some mathematical statements that are true but unprovable. Then you say that if something is unprovable then it can’t be true. And yet you still maintain that you accept Godel? How can this be, when the premise of your argument is that unprovability results in an irrational and illogical universe? You can’t accept the parts of Godel that support your argument, then reject the parts of Godel that contravene your argument, all while maintaining that you do in fact accept Godel. Like I said before, you’re spiraling into incoherence.Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 5:51 pmPlease explain precisely what you mean when you say “Infinite regress does not apply to either truth or logicality.” Please use examples. Gödel’s theorem says that if a system is logical, then it is incomplete. If it is incomplete, then it relies on a set of axioms which the system cannot prove. Now we have to consider those axioms. This is very important and I believe this is where our disagreement lies. If all of mathematics traces back to those axioms — which themselves are according to you, complete (require nothing else in turn on the outside), then having eliminated infinite regress, THAT system of axioms is necessarily inconsistent. Within such a view, nothing could ever be proven to be true or logical, not even in theory. Why? because no axiom we base that system on can be logical because we would be positing a complete universe. Godel says: if it’s complete, it’s inconsistent. You said, “When something is true, it’s true.” It’s true according to who? In what system? In what frame of reference? You’re referring to an ultimate truth, but in a complete system, truths can only be relative and will ultimately contradict.Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 16, 2012 at 1:07 amOne question: What does incompleteness mean?
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:38 pmIt means that no system can prove its own axioms. It also means something much more subtle: If your worldview invokes multiple axioms, those axioms themselves constitute a system, and for that system to be logical, it must further rely on still another an external axiom. Because it too is incomplete. If you say your axioms can be true “just because” and for no deeper reason, then your universe is inconsistent.
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Richard says:May 16, 2012 at 3:13 amSo many things wrong with this argument! However, we don’t need Gödel’s theorem to tell us that a theory can’t prove its own axioms! No theories can prove their own axioms – that’s why they are called axioms. Gödel’s theorem tells us that there are some OTHER statements that are true but unprovable from the axioms.
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:50 amAttempting to reply to post “It means that no system can prove its own axioms.” – but no reply button available. You can add as many axioms as you like – and then you will have more unprovable axioms. You can’t get away from that. However your statement that the system must be mathematically inconsistent is false.
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Edward Cannell says:May 15, 2012 at 2:00 pmI submitted that piece above “In the Beginnig” because it speaks to all of the issues being discussed in this blog. It tells you that Love is outside the circle. It tells you about the causeless cause. It tells you that we are created in the image of Love. And it tells you that we exist only because Love says that this is so. All of the various arguments found in this blog validates the recognition that one belief is as good as another. Just as Love created a point of view, so do each and every one of us. The beliefs we choose are just an exercise in creating our own reality (viewpoint & points to view). What I do find interesting about the various beliefs found within this blog is how they vary in terms of value and/or limitations. Given that we could believe anything we wanted to believe, crazy or not, I am amused at how people do argue for their limitations. If there is a multi-universe I think it stems from the myriad beliefs emerging from 7 billion people, and counting. But we should be having a bit of fun with this, so I leave you with a comment I heard from a little old lady in reference to someone she disagreed with… “He is entitled to his ridiculous opinion.”Reply
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Al-Zamar says:May 15, 2012 at 3:50 pmAnd what makes your argument even more incomprehensible is the fact that Godel doesn’t apply to all logical systems. Does this mean that God is a necessary logical axiom for the parts of the universe where Godel applies, but not for other branches of logic, e.g. propositional logic?Reply
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Perry says:May 15, 2012 at 6:03 pmI’m not sufficiently familiar with the formalities of propositional logic to comment.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:May 21, 2012 at 1:14 pmPeople are invested in their beliefs and that investment has far more to do with an investment of emotion than it does with an investment in logic. We should all be aware of the heavier emotional investment in our beliefs, but apparently not. This is because we are convinced that the human mind is a rational and logical mind. But this is just not true. From the time of Plato western philosophy has believed that the human brain provided us with a logical mind, but it doesn’t. This false belief in human logic was forgivable because the brain was like a black box. We could only assume some truths without really seeing exactly where the action was inside the skull bone. Modern neuroscience now has tools like EEG and MIR scans to see the brain activity and the evidence is not at all supportive of the philosophical suppositions over the last 2500 years. The human mind is not logical in how it functions. It was always thought that the logical aspect of the human mind was dominant and that it was precisely because we have this logical component that this is what makes us different from other animals. This belief, too, is not accurate. It is only because we have logical, emotional and instinctive brains integrated as one that we differ from other animals. Our logical capabilities are not ever used in isolation from the other two aspects of mental activity. If people making comments on this blog were honest they would not argue the logic but simply say “I do not believe in God and so no amount of logic will convince me that God is necessary!” If you have an emotional investment that rejects God then why do you need anything more? Who are you trying to convince? What’s wrong with not liking God? With the amount of anger and hostility toward religious and spiritual beliefs it almost seems as though you believe in God with great resentment. I do not need a logical reason to believe in God because I have my experience that trumps any logical explanations. And it appears that many of those posting comments in this blog have their emotional beliefs that trump logic – so that makes us even-steven. But what I don’t agree with is the anger in the arguments. To read more about the human mind I recommend a book by Jonah Lehrer call “How We Decide.” http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books/how-we-decide/Reply
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Perry says:May 22, 2012 at 7:27 amEd, It’s a very busy week and some of the comments in the queue will have to wait. Will get to them soon. I too have had undeniable divine experiences but I also believe that one can also make a case that a rational universe requires God. Those who disagree with me are generally extremely angry and offended at my assertions. There’s a lot of emotion behind this, as you say.Reply
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Richard says:May 22, 2012 at 8:00 amLots of people have had “undeniable divine experiences” but unfortunately different people associate their experiences to fundamentally conflicting conceptions of God. One can conclude from this that such an experience does not prove that a person’s conception of God is correct. Buddhists have undeniable experiences which demonstrate undeniably to them that there is no omnipotent creator deity or prime mover.Reply
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Perry says:May 28, 2012 at 4:49 pmWhat divine experiences show us is that 1) the metaphysical world is real, and 2) it is a world in conflict.Reply
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Richard says:May 29, 2012 at 2:44 amPerry says “What divine experiences show us is that 1) the metaphysical world is real, and 2) it is a world in conflict.” These experiences are happening in someone’s brain and are therefore real brain processes. But whether they correspond to something outside the brain is another matter entirely. And, as some people have divine experiences that directly contradict other people’s divine experiences then clearly having such an experience cannot possibly prove that what has been revealed is true. Indeed many people have gone in for unspeakably wicked acts as a direct result of what was “revealed” to them.
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Edward Cannell says:May 22, 2012 at 12:41 pmPerry, I understand your love for logic and I enjoy reading your approach to understanding the universe created by a loving intelligence that is orders of magnitude more loving and intelligent that ourselves. (Is there a logic for love? I would imagine so. Just a thought.) And my previous post was not to deny that logic is a wonderful advantage because is does add a third perspective for the mind to make use of. And because I couldn’t write this without a logical component or, for that matter, an emotional component for my mind to work with. But, to debate your logic by comparing a fishbowl to the universe is not logical, it is disruptive science fiction fantasy. How dishonest is that? Now, having said that, I can see that this type of interuption gives you a great advantage and I see that you are making good use of that advantage. Because of these fantasy and emotionally biased interuptions you get to assert your logical position – over and over again! Man, the opportunity and service these hecklers provide is worth its weight in gold. Grist for the wheel, so-to-speak, and its free. Perry, you’re a genius. Any intelligent person wanting to honestly understand a Science/God awareness will appreciate the patience and respect you show the hecklers. You may never know just how many people you reveal God to through your logical terms, and I imagine that’s just fine with you. But thank God for the hecklers (even though I find them disruptive)Reply
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Perry says:May 23, 2012 at 6:35 amThe hecklers make for an outstanding market research test, because one debater in 100 will back off on his heckling and go to the mat with me and scour the entire web looking for a counter argument. Great way to vet the logic.Reply
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Davd H says:May 22, 2012 at 9:17 amThe next three paragraphs are from an article several years ago that is even MORE TRUE now than when it was written in 2009: As modern cosmologists rely more and more on the ominous “dark matter” to explain otherwise inexplicable observations, much effort has gone into the detection of this mysterious substance in the last two decades, yet no direct proof could be found that it actually exists. Even if it does exist, dark matter would be unable to reconcile all the current discrepancies between actual measurements and predictions based on theoretical models. Hence the number of physicists questioning the existence of dark matter has been increasing for some time now. Competing theories of gravitation have already been developed which are independent of this construction. Their only problem is that they conflict with Newton’s theory of gravitation. “Maybe Newton was indeed wrong,” declares Professor Dr. Pavel Kroupa of Bonn University’s Argelander-Institut für Astronomie (AIfA). “Although his theory does, in fact, describe the everyday effects of gravity on Earth, things we can see and measure, it is conceivable that we have completely failed to comprehend the actual physics underlying the force of gravity.” _End of Article Quote____ Theoretical scientists grounded in mathematics and/or physics are actively formulating new theories for how we got here. One of the latest “that explains it all” theories is the Multi-universe conjecture and its offshoots. Basically, the believers or speculators promoting the Multi-Universe concept say that we are here because a near infinity of “universes” have failed and failed and failed, but, in those multiple “tries” some of the conditions finally existed that created the precisely balanced universe we inhabit. Therefore, a CREATOR is not necessary to explain why we live and breathe in this universe with so many finely tuned factors. The Multi-Universe machine finally randomly generated our own universe. Even the promoters of this theory acknowledge that it may be impossible to ever PROVE this theory. So, it must be a matter of, ultimately, faith. Faith in our own amazing ability to reason out the Truth when smart people apply their brains and intuitions. And if the rest of us cannot understand whether they speak the truth or not, nevertheless, they have wondrously provided an Alternative to Belief in God as Creator. In the Multi-Universe camp it IS acknowledged that there may never be proof and some of them cite Gödel’s Theories on Incompleteness as a good and still valid reason why Proof may never finally arrive for the Multi-Universe theories. Other speculators hold out for indirect proof someday if we should detect some kind of reaction in our Universe to an impact from a “neighboring” Universe. Then perhaps existing physics will provide no other account for the cosmic effect except an intrusion from another Universe rumbling down the Multi-Universe conveyor belt. So, in the camp of Faith I believe there is another explanation that will someday in Eternity smack us in the face with its blatant OBVIOUSNESS. We have already seen the evidence, unmistakable evidence in this world, in our own universe, of an alternate reality completely outside of our own Universe. Everything we see, know, and experience was devised outside of this Universe in a mind that intended for us to be here as we are. That mind is alone responsible for our existence. Even the Multi-Universe theorists must acknowledge that for our own Universe there WAS a BEGINNING where matter and all physical and quantum laws and what we call Energy did not exist as we know them. Even the Multi-Universe theorists have to ground their theories on pre-existing forces OUTSIDE of this Universe or their models have no hope of argument. We experience the mind and intentions of those Deliberate forces in every single moment of our lives, whether we acknowledge or believe in their origin. And in our genetic code we carry literal messages, language formulated before Time itself, composed from beyond this Universe. Our bodies and our loved ones and all living things we observe have the literal evidence of a Creator embedded in our cells from Beyond Time, Beyond Space. I believe that God has already announced the Truth: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.” This is a scientific statment. It is a literal equation and will always be True. It is logical, it is rational, and it reveals our world’s incompleteness until God steps in and openly reveals a second Universe, the one He planned even before this one.Reply
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walter ford says:May 29, 2012 at 10:10 amGod is everywhere part of everything= not just outside the ” circle” ; not just an observer. Gödel’s theorum is null and void in terms of God. WaltReply
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 10:23 amThis statement would be consistent with an Eastern view of God, but not a monotheistic or Western view of God.Reply
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 11:40 amOn the contrary – this is not just an Eastern view. God is omnipresent and God is not just an observer. This is the orthodox Christian view.Reply
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Perry says:June 7, 2012 at 1:17 pmGod is omnipresent but that does not make the chair I’m sitting on God. Christianity and Judaism have never defined God as being one and the same with everything.Reply
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Richard says:June 7, 2012 at 1:24 pmIf I had a nickel for every time you misquote me.
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Richard says:June 8, 2012 at 3:16 amPerry says “See Gödel’s original statement”. As you now believe “Gödel’s original statement” is false (as God can disprove it) I see no reason to look at it. Your whole argument has fallen apart.
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Perry says:June 8, 2012 at 8:23 amGödel’s statement is entirely true, but it only applies to systems of component parts. It does not apply to God, Who is indivisible and Who is not a system.
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Richard says:June 8, 2012 at 3:21 amPerry says “that does not make the chair I’m sitting on God”. The orthodox view is that God is “everywhere present and filling all things”.
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Perry says:June 8, 2012 at 8:22 amFilling all things is one thing. Being all things is another. That’s pantheism, and that is not what Christianity teaches.
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Richard says:June 8, 2012 at 9:09 amPerry says “Gödel’s statement is entirely true, but it only applies to systems of component parts. It does not apply to God, Who is indivisible and Who is not a system.” I never said it did apply to God. Nevertheless, you continue to claim that God can provide a proof which disproves Gödel’s theorem. Therefore you claim that Gödel’s theorem is false.
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Perry says:June 9, 2012 at 8:50 amYou have misquoted me, again. According to you: “God can provide a proof which disproves Gödel’s theorem.” This does not disprove Gödel’s theorem, it is the one set of conditions that satisfies the requirements of Gödel’s theorem, and permits a logical universe at the same time.
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Richard says:June 8, 2012 at 9:14 amPerry says “Filling all things is one thing. Being all things is another. That’s pantheism, and that is not what Christianity teaches.” Indeed, Christianity does not teach pantheism. Nevertheless Christianity says that God is being-itself. The orthodox view is that God is “everywhere present and filling all things”
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Richard says:June 9, 2012 at 9:57 amYou say “This does not disprove Gödel’s theorem, it is the one set of conditions that satisfies the requirements of Gödel’s theorem, and permits a logical universe at the same time.” I don’t know what you’re trying to say here, because I don’t know what “this” and “it” refer to. You continue to claim that God can provide a proof of everything. If God provided such a proof it would contradict Godel’s proof. Again you vote for illogicality.
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Perry says:June 11, 2012 at 3:36 am“It” is the proposition that whatever is outside the largest circle you can draw is boundless, transcendent and immaterial, and not “Any effectively generated theory.”
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Richard says:June 11, 2012 at 4:04 amPerry said ““It” is the proposition that whatever is outside the largest circle you can draw is boundless, transcendent and immaterial, and not “Any effectively generated theory.”” There is no largest circle, as I previously pointed out. Whatever circle you draw there is always some mathematics outside it.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:08 pmYou’ll recall our recent conversation about how even an infinite line is infinite in only one dimension, and infinitely small in all other dimensions. No mathematical construct is boundless in all dimensions.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:17 pmPerry said “No mathematical construct is boundless in all dimensions.” An infinite dimensional space is boundless in all dimensions.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:34 pmHow is a truly infinite dimensional space, that is boundless in all dimensions, any different from the way I have described God right here for the last 2 years? If this entity is conscious, then I see no difference.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:37 pmPerry said “How is a truly infinite …” They are very different. See for example the Wikipedia article on Hilbert spaces.
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Al-Zamar says:June 14, 2012 at 12:21 pmRichard, you must be an intellectual sadomasochist. It is painfully obvious that Perry doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and that if he’s confronted with his own ignorance he will continue to obfuscate. Just give up Richard, and feel content knowing that you have spotted the error in Perry’s thinking, even if Perry is unwilling to admit it.Reply
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Richard says:June 16, 2012 at 4:33 amAl-Zamar, Yes, I find it frustrating when I make a clear logical statement and the response seems to be obfuscation. One can observe people coming to this site and having the same problem – and then they start to express their frustration – and then go away. I suspect that Perry sees this as evidence that they are “bad people” and that he is winning the argument. That is not the case. The ultimate objective of this site (together with other sites of Perry’s) is, it seems, to persuade people of the truth of an unorthodox version of Christianity. I think it is unsuccessful in meeting that objective. Most of those people who come here and say they agree were pretty convinced already. And almost everyone else has just gone away in frustration. I don’t think it is a very good sales technique to put so many people off.
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Perry says:June 16, 2012 at 2:41 pmRichard, Perhaps you could state what you perceive my argument and position to be, because I suspect we may not be understanding each other. Perry
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Richard says:June 17, 2012 at 9:41 amPerry says “Perhaps you could state what you perceive my argument and position to be” I’m not sure what you’re looking for here, as I’m already engaged in more than one argument, although my recent posts have not yet been put onto the site. And haven’t I just said what I perceive your position to be? I’d like to respond further, so perhaps you could expand on what you’re asking for.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:22 pmLet’s say your entire world of deductions D1, D2, D3 etc are based on a finite set of 10 axioms. Let’s say your axioms are {A1 A2 A3….A10}. Godel says that this set of axioms {A1…A10}, if it is consistent, necessarily rests on something outside this set that is not provable, because the set of 10 axioms itself constitutes a system. Richard, you have asserted that the “something” outside is an infinite chain of other axioms {A11 to Ainfinity}, which is an infinite regress. You can look up “infinite regress” on Wikipedia to find out why it is universally rejected by philosophers. The only alternative is going back to a single axiom A0, which is boundless and not composed of separable parts.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:34 pmPerry says “Let’s say your entire world… ” etc. Actually, if you read what I said, I never said there was an infinite chain of axioms. And to say that God is boundless and God is not composed of parts is two axioms already. And from those two axioms alone you cannot prove anything mathematically. For that matter, the statement “a single axiom A0, which is boundless” makes no sense. You are confusing axioms with the things they might be taken as referring to. An axiom is a proposition. A proposition cannot itself be boundless!
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:39 pmAnything that is boundless is necessarily not composed of parts, because in order to have a part, you would by definition have to have a boundary. Our IDEA of God is a proposition, which I write as A0. But God Himself is not a proposition. God IS.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 2:47 pmPerry said “Anything that is boundless is necessarily not composed of parts, because in order to have a part, you would by definition have to have a boundary.” A non sequitur. Of course something can be boundless and have parts. Infinite dimensional spaces have parts, for example.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 3:27 pmplease elaborate.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 3:33 pmPerry said “Please elaborate”. I refer you to the various articles on the web on Hilbert spaces or to a good degree course in mathematics. Infinite dimensional spaces have parts.
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Perry says:July 7, 2012 at 8:50 amA Hilbert space is not all possible dimensions and boundless possibilities. It is a SUBSET of the same. A Hilbert space is not God, and God is not divisible or made of component parts.
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Richard says:July 7, 2012 at 11:17 amPerry says “A Hilbert space is not all possible dimensions and boundless possibilities. It is a SUBSET of the same. A Hilbert space is not God, and God is not divisible or made of component parts.” I never said that a Hilbert space was God. I merely said that an infinite dimensional space has parts. An infinite dimensional space is boundless in all its infinite number of dimensions and it has parts. You said: “Anything that is boundless is necessarily not composed of parts, because in order to have a part, you would by definition have to have a boundary.” This is false.
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David H says:June 8, 2012 at 9:33 amGödel’s Theorem of Incompleteness only applies to this present universe. From God’s point of view and being He is the proverbial “the Buck Stops Here”. What God has promised is that He is going to End this present Universe and the laws that we think we know by inductive and deductive reasoning and experience. The Law of Entrophy, for instance, will no longer exist. And he guarantees that every mystery that perplexes us WILL be REVEALED. And that we humans who are blessed to be with Him will never be apart from Him. Prayer, as we know it, will also be done away with since our communication with Him will be so intensely instantaneous and we will literally, finally, look into his face and be intensely FILLED up with God’s own being. I am assuming that the point Perry is making is that the mystical or Eastern metaphysical context of “God is Everywhere, in Everything” is distinctly different from what God says about Himself in the Old and New Testament. The Eastern or metaphysical concept of God’s “omnipresence” usually maintains that God can in some way be revealed and even EXISTS in or inside of or enmeshed with or integrated with such things as rocks, flowers, trees, all things, animate and inanimate. And further, the mystical meaning of “God’s spirit” is interpreted to mean that to “know” and “apprehend” a rock, for instance, or a flower, is in itself a Divine Revelation of God in His essence. It sounds pretty and engaging but it leaves out the requirements of God, who condemned this approach very specifically. He has, in the fundamental Christian teachings, INSISTED in no uncertain terms that to know him you must seek HIM, not in flowers or rocks or meditating for oneness with the Earth in a Gaia-style worship, but in his Word and through the further Revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. He did not intend for us to consult flowers and/or the wonders of creation itself to find out about Him. The Christian scriptures directly say that God made his character known through literal words and then the deeds and words and promises of Jesus Christ. Not through rocks, or lovely waterfalls, or awesomely constructed plants, or breathtakingly beautiful mountain scenery. All of these things help to reveal parts of God’s nature but his Omnipresence is a spiritual omnipresence that can only be “tuned into” by reading his word, praying, and putting his word into your mind and heart. And if we reject his given path to know more about him then our learning stops at that point no matter how much we revere or even worship his creation. This is what Perry is referring to: if you think of God as inhabiting all things in the manner and belief of mystics you will NOT FIND GOD “at home”, so to speak, in any part of nature. He is only interested in inhabiting YOU. YOU, oh human being, are the only part of Creation that God has chosen to inhabit or to share himself with. If a true Christian believer goes into the woods and prays to God then he or she will find God speaking directly to their own spirits but not through the environment around them. Even further, God has already extended an INVITATION to know Him where He guarantees that He will even ENTER into your own being permanently. But to have that deep relationship available around the clock night or day you have to first accept God’s own terms. You cannot make up your own path from a smorgasbord of self-improvised options to reach God because you find his stipulations inconvenient or distasteful.Reply
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Perry says:June 9, 2012 at 8:59 amDavid, Bravo. To that I would add just one nuance – Romans 1: “What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” I absolutely believe Paul is correct on this point. God is not found in nature but beyond it. Inference to a design flowing from outside of nature is 100% inferred in not only the specific discoveries of science (fine tuning of the universe, genetic code, the logical power of mathematics) but also in the gestalt impression that nature makes upon us when we look at it. No one has any excuse for not believing in God and all will be held accountable for the mountains of evidence they have witnessed. As Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, “You’re gonna be dead LOOOOOOOTS longer than you’re gonna be alive.”Reply
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David H says:June 9, 2012 at 11:42 amPerry, your quote from Romans:1 just absolutely nails it. As I said in another earlier post it is going to be so astonishingly OBVIOUS one day soon in Eternity just how much clear evidence has been bashing humanity over the heads from cradle to grave that GOD lives and creates and has SOMETHING EVEN BIGGER PLANNED. As Richard Morgan said in his conversion testimony, once God gave him a divine revelation, (which Richard said he noted on his watch), speaking to Richard’s heart and spirit past science and philosophy, he saw the same things in this world as before but he saw them in a new transcendental light. As Believers we keep seeing into Eternity, whereas before we saw the same Nature, the same science, the same philosophies, but they ended at the horizon. I don’t just believe because I feel like it or want to be “good” or “holy”. God Himself Convinced me and gave me, if you will, extra-sensory perception. I now perceive the edges, at least, of His realm. It is EXCITING!Reply
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Richard says:July 7, 2012 at 5:26 amDavid H, You don’t want to be good or holy? You are enjoined to be good and holy. I note from Romans 1:6-7 that Paul is writing to ‘believers’. I note that Romans 1:30 has slander on the list of sins (as well as envy, strife, deceit and maliciousness). And I note that Romans 2, which immediately follows, says to the ‘believers': “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? 5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.” You cannot make up your own path from a smorgasbord of self-improvised options to reach God because you find his stipulations inconvenient or distasteful.Reply
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David H says:July 7, 2012 at 10:33 amRichard, You chastised me and prepared a whole “scripture-based” response keyed around your evident mis-perception/misreading of plain English: I said: “I don’t just believe because I feel like it or want to be “good” or “holy”. God Himself Convinced me and gave me, if you will, extra-sensory perception.” Your reply: “You don’t want to be good or holy? You are enjoined to be good and holy.” Richard, my statement is that what is LIBERATING is that as a believer, which I am, God’s “MUST BE’s” are now my “LOVE TO BE’s”. My own spirit now AGREES and WANTS to ACT SINCERELY on his Rules, Promises & “Strong Advice”. The Hebrew term for “holy” means to be set apart, to be reserved for a special purpose by God’s intentions. What it means now as a believer is that I, too, by my own desire WELCOME God’s purpose to separate me from what I might have clung to in this world. I AGREE and DESIRE in my own heart to accept this as a condition necessary for a Believer in Yahweh, Elohim, Yeshua. It doesn’t make some of His “enjoinings” easy at all. My spirit is inside some very strong flesh that is as lazy and rebellious as it ever was. But, something mysterious has happened to the direction and yearnings of my spirit, my inner nature, since I begged, yes, begged the Spirit of God to come inside me. I tried to dignify myself at first by phrasing it as “invited Jesus” but it was truly Begging at the time. I WANT to be “holy”. I WANT to be “good”. Even while my flesh is dragging my spirit around this frequently disappointing life on Earth I still DESIRE to meet God and know God on His own terms. Not simply “someday” when I die. But RIGHT this very minute. That is how I am communicating with God today, this hour, directly by His Spirit to mine. I am CHANGED forever inside. And things that I do on the outside have marked me as “different”.
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Perry says:July 10, 2012 at 7:59 pmI relate.
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Richard says:June 9, 2012 at 9:43 amNevertheless, God is “everywhere present and filling all things” “In him we live and move and have our being”.Reply
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Perry says:June 11, 2012 at 3:33 amNotice that Paul would never say “God is us” or “We are God.”Reply
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Richard says:June 11, 2012 at 4:02 amI never said that he did.Reply
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 3:29 pmOn your other site you have an article by Hugh Ross which you seem to approve of. In it he says “God can move and operate in at least two dimensions of time. In two dimensions of time, time becomes a plane, like a sheet of paper, length and width. In a plane, you can have as many lines as you want and as many directions as you want. It would be possible for God to dwell on a time line running through a sheet of paper that’s infinitely long, and that never crosses or touches the timeline of our universe.” This has God moving within space and time dimensions and has God subject to mathematical and physics descriptions. (“Dimensions” and the like). This is a thoroughly materialistic view of God, and so one can ask “who created these dimensions and who created this god that moves in them?” This god cannot be the true God. There would have to be a true God beyond this God. One who is truly transcendent.Reply
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Perry says:July 7, 2012 at 8:51 amYou are misunderstanding Hugh Ross. He is not saying that God is some 2- or 4-dimensional creature. He is saying that there are dimensions of reality with the created order that God has access to that we do not; that God has a more complex relationship to time than we do.
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Richard says:July 7, 2012 at 11:10 amPerry says: You are misunderstanding Hugh Ross. I quoted High Ross exactly: “God can move and operate in at least two dimensions of time. In two dimensions of time, time becomes a plane, like a sheet of paper, length and width. In a plane, you can have as many lines as you want and as many directions as you want. It would be possible for God to dwell on a time line running through a sheet of paper that’s infinitely long.”
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Perry says:July 10, 2012 at 8:00 pmRoss was in no way advocating what in your words was a materialistic understanding of God. I know him and his organization personally – I can assure you he was saying no such thing.
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Richard says:July 11, 2012 at 3:34 amPerry said: “Ross was in no way advocating what in your words was a materialistic understanding of God. I know him and his organization personally – I can assure you he was saying no such thing.” Unfortunately Ross said exactly this: “God can move and operate in at least two dimensions of time. It would be possible for God to DWELL on a time line running through a sheet of paper that’s infinitely long.” And you said exactly this: “How is a truly infinite dimensional space, that is boundless in all dimensions, any different from the way I have described God right here for the last 2 years?” And you also seem to suggest that a circle can be drawn outside of which God dwells. As I see it these are all materialistic understandings of God.
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Perry says:July 14, 2012 at 10:02 amWhy don’t you contact Hugh Ross’s office at http://www.reasons.org and ask if Hugh really meant that God is materialistic and is confined to just so many dimensions of time.
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Richard says:July 14, 2012 at 10:46 amPerry said “Why don&##8217;t you contact Hugh Ross’s office…” I don’t really want to start another posting exercise that would probably be as frustrating as this one. In any event, as I said, your view of God seems to be materialistic too.
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Nick says:July 1, 2012 at 1:40 pmSince all examples of code accepted within your definition of ‘code’ were created by humans, wouldn’t be more accurate (and honest) to replace the phrase ‘conscious mind’ with the word ‘human’. Then the syllogism would look like this: 1) DNA is not merely a molecule with a pattern; it is a code, a language, and an information storage mechanism. 2) All codes are created by humans; there is no natural process known to science that creates coded information. 3) Therefore DNA was designed by a human. If you accept your original syllogism you must also accept this one as it follows the same construct. To me, both arguments are flawed, and it is dishonest to use them to support an argument.Reply
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 2:26 pmThe logic is as follows: 1) The pattern in DNA is a code 2) All codes we know the origin of come from intelligence 3) The only source of intelligence we know is human 4) Humans did not exist when DNA was first formed 5) Therefore the source of DNA is non-human intelligence If you can prove that naturalistic, materialistic process generate codes (or forms of intelligence for that matter), I’ll write you a check for $10,000. The specification is online at http://www.naturalcode.org.Reply
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 3:08 pmWe see all around us forms of intelligence generated by naturalistic processes. I just saw a new-born kitten, for example.
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Perry says:July 5, 2012 at 3:26 pmThat assumes you know where life came from in the first place. You’re deriving your premise from your conclusion.
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Richard says:July 5, 2012 at 3:49 pmPerry says “That assumes you know where life came from in the first place. You’re deriving your premise from your conclusion.” No, I was merely responding to your false claim that a naturalistic process could not generate a form of intelligence. Intelligence is generated all the time from naturalistic processes. A kitten does not arrive out of thin air. And Eve wasn’t generated from Adam’s rib. And before we go any further, I will readily admit that we do not know everything there is to know about the evolution of DNA. Also, quite clearly, not everything in the evolution of DNA results from random processes. To take one example, viral DNA can get incorporated into other organisms’ DNA. And yes, cells are wonderful things. As I live in a strange and distant land, I’m about to go to bed.
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David H says:July 7, 2012 at 6:15 amRichard: Wow. You said “We see all around us forms of intelligence generated by naturalistic processes. I just saw a new-born kitten, for example.” You have been commenting on Perry’s forum for years now, claiming that you are “responding” to Perry’s points with your superior logic. Correcting Perry, denigrating Perry for things allegedly that he just doesn’t understand in his pro-God stance. Obviously you possessed the confidence to post that a “new-born kitten” was your logical argument to Perry’s challenge. This was your response to Perry’s conditions to win $10,000 — “If you can prove that naturalistic, materialistic process generate codes (or forms of intelligence for that matter)”. The condition is that a “naturalistic” process generates Codes themselves which make such creatures, for instance, as kittens. The Code and the Creature are inextricably tied together in this world. Perry’s challenge is to conclusively prove that a natural process generated that kitten’s genetic code. It does not matter if it is a kitten or a tiger. The question is not the kitten’s mere arrival. The question is: (to paraphrase) “Prove that Universal Processes alone, without Master Intelligence and Guidance, can generate every aspect of the rhododendron/dog/human/kitten’s DNA. ” In this case it truly does not matter that so-called “intelligence” of the life form produced is a condition. Whether a smart creature or non-sentient life form is immaterial, actually. The “intelligence” required is on the Coding side of the equation. That DNA-encoded life simply exists and is presently here is where present day science must start. At one time science was content enough before the discovery of DNA to posit that we are blobs of jelly, but admittedly smart jelly. Now science has re-framed the “smart jelly” dilemma to envelop the obvious superior coding of DNA with more “smoke and mirrors” arguments that amount to the Stage Magician who must misdirect our attention to effect a sleight of hand illusion. But this is the position that so much of present day science starts from. We are here, ergo, we presume no superior intelligence is necessary or warranted. Look around — we do not see God. Therefore, let us assume that God is not part of the “Natural process”. “Pro-God”ers cough loudly and respond:”You do NOT see evidence for God more and more? The encoding of DNA is not the final ‘Aha — THERE HE is!?'” The mystery remains that even the simplest life form requires such complexity of DNA from the very start. Where could the Code have come from out of “random processes”? The “simplest” strand of DNA is already plainly a code. Even scientists call it code. And in that DNA are already the mechanisms for decoding the organism ITSELF. All of the mechanisms are there for Repairing the DNA itself. For detecting what does not “match” its self-perception of what it “ought” to be. This “self-analysis and pattern matching” mechanism is ITSELF ALREADY ENCODED and COMPLETE. Further, the “Response Engine” for then generating the DNA strands that are to repair a mutation or defect is also defined and manufactured inside the simplest organism. The two-way detect-and-respond system for communicating these repairs, and the propellant system for transporting the specific strand of DNA code, and the timing clock for generating new enzymes to effect the repairs ALREADY EXISTS. The timing clock also “knows” when to DISASSEMBLE enzymes and proteins once a repair is made, to remove them from the repair site. The complex enzymes needed to sustain life second by second are generated from self-stored templates like complex recipes. Everything is orchestrated in a masterful symphony of detect, respond, repair, replicate, remove waste, gather energy, transform energy to fuel, break down fuel to power transformation and growth. All these capabilities inside the simplest, most “primitive” DNA code. And as for replication — AMAZING AGAIN. In Perry’s challenge, which he amended for your benefit to include “.. or forms of intelligence..” he assumes that everyone logically accepts that “forms of intelligence” (animals & mammals, for instance) are expressed inside a biological being, a body, that contains and expresses a pre-existing code. A kitten or any other life form, intelligent or NOT, is a Product of that process. A DNA embedded outcome. Scientists know that this IS CODE. Some scientist retreat to a nebulous “must have evolved over time” position which then absolves them of immediate responsibility to explain. Others conjecture that a “super race” CREATED our code and sent it across the galaxies like seed that will sprout in friendly conditions. And who created the code of the super race? Problem not solved. Other even more honest scientists must admit that there may be another already propounded consequential conclusion from such staggering evidence. “kittens” is your instinctive response to Perry’s challenge. I would almost assume that you were attempting “humor”. However, my first reaction was, Richard, that if that truly represents your best logic then it removes you from the serious debate for the time being.Reply
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Richard says:July 7, 2012 at 11:31 amDavid H: So, back to the usual derogatory remarks from you then. I said “We see all around us forms of intelligence generated by naturalistic processes” – and that is a true statement. We also observe that the DNA code has changed over time – it evolves.Reply
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Nick says:July 7, 2012 at 1:32 pmOkay, that seems to make sense, but the original syllogism still bothers me. You seem to be equating the two terms ‘code’ and ‘code we know the origin of’. This leads to the fallacy of four terms.Reply
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Perry says:July 9, 2012 at 7:30 amThe version of the syllogism that I’ve been using for about 2-3 years now is this: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not.Reply
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Richard says:July 9, 2012 at 7:59 amAnd before the discovery of Australia you would have said: 1. All swans we know of are white. 2. Therefore we have 100% inference that all swans are white and 0% inference that there are any that are not.Reply
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Perry says:July 9, 2012 at 10:11 amNo one argues there was value in discovering that black swans exist. Likewise I’ll write you a check for $10,000 if you discover a naturally occurring code. Specification is at http://www.naturalcode.org. Meanwhile what we have right now is 100% inference to design in biology and 0% inference to any other explanation.Reply
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Matt says:July 8, 2012 at 10:08 pmApologies if this has been addressed before, I’ve read a large number of the preceding comments and a large number yet remain. This feels novel compared to much of the prior discussion though. I’m thinking forward from your mention of physical events being analogous to mathematics – counting rocks/fingers corresponding to the integers, and pouring water into a bucket as corresponding to integration. Therein I have a point of curiosity; if I take as given the premises you lay out (that the universe in which we live is at heart a mathematical system, and hence subject to Godel’s Incompleteness), then what would the physical manifestation of the Godel-sentence for our universe look like? If I understand Incompleteness, then within a proof system either there are truths that cannot be proved (making the system incomplete), or statements that produce a paradox (making the system inconsistent). Deftly proved by exhibiting some unprovable, often self-referential, sentence. If, as you say, the physial universe embodies an incomplete proof system, then what physical artifact/event would correspond to an unprovable truth in that system? I don’t see how such a thing can exist – whilst our curent best attempts to formulate a model of physics might be unable to predict the outcome of some bizarre scenario, there remains the theoretically simple test of performing the experiment and watching what happens. I’m genuinely struggling to imagine a construction where the universe itself would be unable to reach a “proof” of some physical object’s behaviour, or where attempting to do so resulted in paradox. It seems like that would correspond to some physical event coming to a point where either nothing further was able to happen or two contradictory things happened at once … which sounds very much like absurdity. Thoughts?Reply
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Perry says:July 10, 2012 at 8:09 pmThe universe would be inconsistent if existing laws like conservation of matter or energy were violated. Many atheists posit that the universe popped into existence from nothing, for no reason at all. Such would be an inconsistent universe. Others propose that the universe is an infinite series of big bangs and crunches, which violates the laws of entropy. Again, if this is what happened, we have an inconsistent universe. If an object could simultaneously exist and not exist, the universe would be inconsistent. If 2 objects + 2 objects made 5 objects, it would be inconsistent. If the universe ever failed to obey the laws of mathematics, it would be inconsistent.Reply
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Matt says:July 10, 2012 at 8:58 pm@July 10, 8:09 (not sure if I’ve got this properly set to reply inline) “The universe would be inconsistent if existing laws like conservation of matter or energy were violated.” and so on with the other examples. So far as I can tell, the things you listed aren’t inconsistencies so much as impossibilities – things for which the axioms of our universe, insofar as we understand them, would return a definitive anwer of “false”, not possible in the system defined by those axioms. Even if we were to discover a way to violate mass/energy conservation, that would only mean that we were formerly mistaken about what the laws were, not that the universe had taken on an inconsistent state. What I’m looking for is something that could actually exist, but that the axioms of our reality would fail to decide on, the equivalent of (to borrow from the halting problem) a Turing machine that simulates the behaviour of your prediction algorithm with itself as input, but then does the opposite of what you predict. You seem to assert that such a thing should be possible – that from an “inside view” of our universe we would find inconsistencies that can only be resolved by appeal to the “outside of the circle”.Reply
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Perry says:July 14, 2012 at 10:16 amThink about how children learn “object permanence.” A baby doesn’t know that even though they can’t see an object, it still exists. Eventually toddlers learn that it went somewhere else, but it still exists. Laws like conservation of matter (which was eventually discovered to be intertwined with energy, e=mc2) are really a physical instantiation of mathematical laws. Without it, you couldn’t do addition and subtraction on an abacus. You said, “Even if we were to discover a way to violate mass/energy conservation, that would only mean that we were formerly mistaken about what the laws were, not that the universe had taken on an inconsistent state.” True, but you are presuming consistency when you say that. If we discovered a way to violate mass/energy conservation – WITHOUT ANY NEW DISCOVERIES OR LOOP HOLES – then the universe would be inconsistent. However, imagine that we found some way to add coded information to the e=mc2 formula – then the logic of conservation would merely be extended, not violated. One example that might satisfy your question is information itself. You cannot derive the rules of any communication system or language from the laws of physics. That’s because communication requires free choices (someone has to decide 1=on and 0=off, it’s a convention not a physical law) and that itself is undecidable by known mechanical means or the laws of physics. Based on everything we do know about codes, the genetic code directly infers an intelligence outside the universe: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not.Reply
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Matt says:July 17, 2012 at 2:12 pmwrt conservation violation, I see what you’re saying – if we found a way to “break the rules” without it being the result of some new breakthrough, it’d be at the very least a serious problem for the self-consistent ruleboook we’ve written thus far. But it remains that all we’re losing is the rulebook that _we_ wrote, not the rules that our universe truly operates by. It occurs to me that the universe acts less like an axiomatic proof system, where you can dream up anything you want then throw it at the system to see if it can be proved true or false, and more like a generative system that proceeds between states according to rules that preserve consistency. We don’t see impossible reality-defying results because there are no rules to take the universe into such a state, even if one (the “Godel sentence of the universe” I was imagining) could theoretically exist. Following that line of thought (universe as a closed system, moving between allowable states rather than proof-testing arbitrary constructs), something else occurs – if our universe is finite then there is a theoretical limit on how large a number you can express within it. If you put every particle in the universe to the task you’d still run out of configurable states long before you counted to infinity. I think this presents a challenge to your thesis – if there are numbers too large to be expressed (either in magnitude or in precision) then our universe is insufficient to fully express arithmetic; is not Turing-complete. Without that, Incompleteness doesn’t apply. To phrase it more concisely, whilst a theoretical proof system can deal in infinities like “for all natural numbers” and arbitrary self-referential statements, a physical universe is more constrained. I’ve gone on a bit of a ramble but I hope it makes the steps of thought I went through clearer than if I cut this down to just the end result. As a sidenote, I suspect that if you examined closely enough you could find the coding scheme of a communication system represented in the physical makeup of the sender and the reciever. A message detached from context might be meaningless, but the communicators are as much a part of the system as the channel (otherwise random noise would have to be considered a meaningful message, since it would be interepreted as such under some unknown encryption scheme).
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Perry says:July 17, 2012 at 3:44 pmYes, so far as we know our universe is finite. So it’s not a true Turing machine (which is a theoretical construct anyway). However the Church-Turing thesis is still vital to our understanding of math and physics because it says that the universe obeys rules. You’re also right, the coding scheme is implicit in the physical makeup of a sender and receiver. However it is not explicit the way a coding table is. To have communication requires encoder, message and decoder, and before that a coding scheme must be established in the abstract before those 3 things are built.
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Perry says:July 18, 2012 at 8:58 amMatt, I just thought of something. Ever heard the phrase “Turtles all the way down”? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down I suspect that a form of this position is true. Namely, what if there’s an infinite series of smaller and smaller subatomic particles? They keep discovering more and more; in science you never seem to get to the bottom of anything, the rabbit hole just goes deeper and deeper. What if a finite-sized universe has an infinite number of particles? After all, the infinite summation of half of half of half of half converges to one. Then you could have a turing complete finite universe. Seems appropriately paradoxical to me.
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Richard says:July 9, 2012 at 11:26 amYour statement that “we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not” has no more truth than the statement “we have 100% inference that all swans are white and 0% inference that there are any that are not” had before Australia was discovered. Actually it is less true: DNA is a naturally occurring code, and we have ample evidence of its evolution over time. Given that we can determine the differences in DNA between species at different times, I don’t see how you can possibly say that it doesn’t evolve. Surely you’re not saying that every change in DNA is caused by an intervention by God?Reply
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Perry says:July 9, 2012 at 12:12 pmWhere did you ever get the idea that I said it doesn’t evolve?Reply
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Richard says:July 9, 2012 at 12:32 pmDNA evolves so there is more of it over time in a highly evolved species. Equally as you go further back in time there is less of it in species that have evolved less. Things like bacteria which have been around a long time have a lot less. I don’t really see what point you are making.Reply
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David H says:July 10, 2012 at 3:57 amRichard, Your distortion in logic does NOT negate Perry’s syllogism. You have spent several years in this forum injecting the same incomplete understanding of syllogisms. First of all, you have NO Conditions stated in your try: 1. All swans we know of are white. 2. Therefore we have 100% inference that all swans are white and 0% inference that there are any that are not. What condition (otherwise you have no syllogism) would PRECEDE “All swans we know of are white”? The structure of your so-called premise can not in anyway be substituted because you have no truth table constructed with a Preceding Truth from which your Point 2 Condition can be introduced. Because you have no preceding condition your word substitution is an invalid attempt at a syllogism: Your “point 1? — “All swans we know of are white” does not equal Perry’s starting Point 1 “The pattern in DNA is a code.” Of course, your Point 2/Conclusion “Therefore we have 100% inference that all swans are white and 0% inference that there are any that are not.” likewise fails to controvert Perry’s syllogism at Point 3 “Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not.” You have not changed or controverted the logic of Perry’s syllogism with your malformed pseudo-syllogism. Construct your own original SYLLOGISM Completely that controverts Perry’s. That is your challenge, Richard. Grafting in your own “conditions” as if they can somehow superimpose Perry’s logic is a childish exercise if you have not the wit to construct the whole syllogism, not artificially impose terms here and there that cannot fit the syllogism you are trying to disprove. Perry’s syllogism takes two GIVENS in sequence. His syllogism satisfies the classical truth table. That DNA = Code is a GIVEN. Unless the meaning of “code” is completely rewritten out of a cabal of linguistic dictatorship some time in the future. But the scientific and mathematical and programmatic definitions have agreed on the basis of defining something as a “code”. DNA certainly fits squarely into that definition and is the only biologic code that has been discovered. Yet its compactness and simultaneous vastness far supercedes man-made code. Code it is. Accordingly, Perry’s syllogism is premised correctly. 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. “.. we have” must inescapably be framed within our current time-scape of science. All 3 points of Perry’s syllogism are true and you, again, inject false logic into the debate. As for your subsequent response– “DNA is a naturally evolving code”: DNA itself does not change as a language. The Source CODE of DNA is not “evolving” in the sense of becoming more perfect and more advanced. NO evidence of that. When a breeder creates a new breed of dog by selection of genetic predispositions he or she is utilizing the mix and match capabilities of existing DNA code by adding to the base and progressively preventing other DNA characteristics from being expressed. But the DNA as a code HAS TO STAY BASICALLY THE SAME OR BREEDING FALLS APART WITHIN A SPECIES as does life itself. When a species of lizard or bird is seen to have different characteristics between remote islands it is not the DNA itself that has changed. It is HOW the DNA responds to the environment of weather and weather cycles and food sources and other predators on the island, for instance, that will be expressed in adaptations within the species. But DNA as a fully designed language that incorporates all the possibilities for species change does NOT change as a language set. It is similar to how I can build many different Lego Men and Women out of the same Legos set. I can program in PHP and MySQL and javascript and html and come up with millions of different looks, designs, and functions for a website. Facebook is a combination of these codes. Another combination makes up Youtube. But it is the languages themselves underneath a user’s interactions over the internet, by staying consistent in their programming logic and programming functions that allows a designer to rework them into something that “appears” to be radically different in a browser or mobile device. Because we are humans who have to make mistakes and learn and improve we go back into our programming languages and revise them to incorporate better logic, faster functions, we can make minor changes and then propagate them to all corners of the globe for inclusion. But the language frameworks themselves stay intact or they are no longer PHP, no longer javascript but jquery, etc. What NO ONE has proven, not one scientist or scientific team, is that DNA — the very code and structure of DNA — assembled itself, programmed itself, and evolved itself first out of inert and unguided chemicals in a primordial sea. This is still why Perry can issue his Challenge! Even when scientists try to “cook” their results they still can not come close to visualizing how “nature itself” could possibly generate DNA.Reply
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Richard says:July 11, 2012 at 3:17 amDavid H, The usual derogatory remarks from your good self. If you want 3 statements you can have them. Before the discovery of very large birds such as ostriches. 1. The things that birds lay are types of eggs 2. All eggs that we’ve seen are smaller than 6 inches in diameter. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that the things that birds lay are smaller than 6 inches and 0% inference that there are any that are bigger. I stated up-front that DNA is a code so you don’t have to repeat that. Your statement that DNA does not evolve is false. This can be studied in bacteria (for example). Your statement that lizards or birds in different remote islands have the same DNA is false. Your statement “When a species of lizard or bird is seen to have different characteristics between remote islands it is not the DNA itself that has changed” is absolutely false. The DNA is demonstrably different. Humans other than identical twins have different DNA. Differences in DNA in different humans is being studied in detail. We can observe DNA evolving over time, gradually increasing in complexity. By the way, PHP DOES change over time, including the introduction of incompatible changes.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:July 12, 2012 at 4:07 pmRichard, At what point in human consciousness was an ostrich unknown?Reply
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David H says:July 12, 2012 at 2:08 pmRichard, we are certainly having fun here! N’est-ce pas? “Derogatory”? I challenge you to understand things in a clearer fashion after having spent several years in Perry Marshall Academy attending countless lectures. DNA … the code base of DNA, is basically the same if extracted from a Sri Lankan lizard or a member of the British Royal Family. The Communication protocols and mechanisms of DNA stay pretty much the same. I am not talking about the apparent complexity of the organism on the macro scale. I am not talking about the specific sequence that makes a lizard eat insects and the sequence that makes Prince Harry have red hair. When the DNA in bacteria is examined you find a remarkable structural integrity of the Code of All Life! From Dr. Daniel Jeffares, Copenhagen, and Dr. Anthony Poole, Stockholm, both evolutionary biologists: ” In modern organisms, genetic information is stored on DNA (deoxyribose nucleic acid) in units called genes. Genes code for proteins, which are responsible for the various activities that make a cell function. Some proteins, called enzymes, perform the chemical reactions that run the cell. One group of enzymes, the DNA polymerases, make DNA. The information for making those enzymes is stored in the DNA as a gene.” Drs Jeffares and Poole believe in Evolution, that Life evolved out of inert elements. They say this: “When most of us think about evolution, we tend to think in terms of simple organisms evolving into more complex ones. Simple chemical reactions evolved into simple cells, which later evolved into more complex organisms, and so on all the way up to humans. It’s no longer believed that humans are at the top of the evolutionary ladder, but evolution does tend to drive organisms towards greater complexity, does it not?” “However, this is not always so. Rather, those organisms that leave the most offspring behind, simple or complex, do best. Greater complexity is sometimes a consequence of evolution, but simplification can also be a winning strategy — it all depends on the environment. Nevertheless, most scientists hold that the first organisms on Earth were much like bacteria of today. But several features of the biochemistry of life suggest that bacteria aren’t so ancient after all. In fact, in some respects, the cells of our own bodies tell us more about the evolution of life than bacteria do. ” Evolutionary biologists such as these two Doctors can’t get away from what they themselves call the inevitable question: “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Because they, like you, Richard, believe in the theory of Evolution they also presume that if they can start life with RNA first, which is a more limited sub-set of DNA, that this will at some point reveal how DNA evolved. But the “evolution” of RNA is just as complex and mysterious. Some evolutionary biologists PREMISE that RNA creating itself before DNA helps them out. But nothing about the complexity of RNA points to a more explainable theory of evolution. So, I will repeat, Richard, we do not see the CODE itself, the intricate sets of instructions carried in DNA as Evolving as if they were still moving forward from “nature’s” organic lab where they first began to congregate and decided to form a band to attract the hottest girls. The lizard and the Prince are formed from a UNIVERSAL CODE. The strands of genetic information will vary in the numbers of instruction sets and specific sequences that will make the difference between four legs and scales gestated in an egg instead of an embryo developing a human with two legs and pinkish skin carried by Lady Diana. As for PHP, Richard, I should know very well how PHP has developed since I started using it twelve years ago. As I said, PHP is a HUMAN language that necessarily involves improvements. But at some point too many “improvements” then would make web sites crash built on older PHP code. And PHP took lots of human intelligence to come into being as a full-fledged code that was built and hand-coded and mind designed with the help of computers. The construction of DNA is just so unfathomably complex as a LANGUAGE that is can NOT be “natural”, as in evolved by natural processes. DNA, the language code set, how it talks to itself and builds and repairs living bodies and then passes itself along in a myriad of creative ways, is UN Natural! It is the MOST COMPLICATED LANGUAGE EVER SEEN BY MAN. AND IT IS WORKING EVERYDAY IN BILLIONS OF ORGANISMS. Richard, if, ala the movie “Contact”, scientists tomorrow held a press conference where they showed diagrams of formulas for building a cosmic porthole and a star map of one galaxy deep in space and these scientist claim they had found all of this hidden away inside the human genome would you not proclaim, justifiably, that “Aliens” had either had a hand in our creation, or had embedded this inside us millions of years ago until we were ready technologically to go visit them? Wouldn’t this be patently obvious that the only way such a detailed language and instructions could be a part of our DNA is to attribute it to the existence of super intelligent Alien races? I would have to agree that this is what it means. In even more compactly written language in our DNA is the complete instruction set for building the human brain and all of its sensors to feed information to that brain. With that brain and sensors you are completely equipped to find God. But if you search this forum for Evidence of God you cannot be conducting a serious search. He will not be found here no matter how many years Perry keeps this forum running. I invite you again, Richard. Go the simple route. In a quiet time, in a quiet place where you can concentrate and not be interrupted, set your deepest passion upon knowing God. Call out to him. Those few minutes will be more instructive and immensely richer to you than years spent hassling and haggling over niggling repetitious points. The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. Psalms 145:18Reply
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Richard says:July 13, 2012 at 2:33 amDavid H, You statement “DNA … the code base of DNA, is basically the same if extracted from a Sri Lankan lizard or a member of the British Royal Family” is demonstrably false. Your statement that DNA does not evolve is demonstrably false. Your statement that lizards or birds in different remote islands have the same DNA is demonstrably false. Your statement “When a species of lizard or bird is seen to have different characteristics between remote islands it is not the DNA itself that has changed” is demonstrably false. We can observe DNA evolving over time, gradually increasing in complexity.Reply
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Richard says:July 17, 2012 at 9:06 amDavid H said “I invite you again, Richard. Go the simple route. In a quiet time, in a quiet place where you can concentrate and not be interrupted, set your deepest passion upon knowing God. Call out to him. Those few minutes will be more instructive and immensely richer to you than years spent hassling and haggling over niggling repetitious points.” Thank you for your invitation. Should I infer from this that you consider that your deepest passion is to know God and my deepest passion is something else?Reply
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David H says:July 16, 2012 at 3:42 amRichard, you are quite obstinate in refusing to understand the crucial differences I have pointed out concerning the actual operating code of DNA. Let me quote another source: “Deoxyribonucleic Acid (or DNA) is the blueprint for all inherited characteristics in living things. It is a very long sequence, written in code, that needs to be transcribed and translated before a cell can make the proteins that are essential for life. Any sort of changes in the DNA sequence can lead to changes in those proteins, and in turn, they can translate into changes in the traits those proteins control.” “The Universal Genetic Code The DNA in living things is highly conserved. DNA has only four nitrogenous bases that code for all differences in living things on Earth. Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine line up in a specific order and a group of three, or a codon, code for one of 20 amino acids found on Earth. The order of those amino acids determines what protein is made.” “Only four nitrogenous bases that make only 20 amino acids account for all diversity of life on Earth. There has not been any other code or system found in any living, or once living, organism on Earth. Organisms from bacteria to humans to dinosaurs all have the same DNA system as a genetic code. ” The same DNA system as a genetic code for lizards and Princes. Again, I will insist with scientific backing that the mechanism of DNA allows every possible plant and animal. Not only on the Earth today but the animals and plants that would be termed “prehistoric”. The earliest organisms, even uni-cellular bacteria, could not have existed, could not have lived in the first place if their DNA was not already full-blown, completely constructed, completely coded to allow all life to be constructed within its framework. Richard, go find me one “demonstrable example”, as you claim you have, of DNA found in an “earlier, less evolved state.” I ask the question but I hesitate to believe now that you will even interpret the question correctly. However, I don’t know how to make things more elemental for you. Bring us one “demonstrable example”, as you claim you have, of DNA found in an “earlier, less evolved state.” Whatever scientists find is an organism that is/was perfect in itself. And with DNA that performed the same operations as your own DNA, such as transcribing genes and manufacturing RNA strands. Prove here your claim that DNA is “evolving” in the same chain of origin that you would claim is how DNA’s language and structure originally assembled itself in a primordial sea because it “triumphed and survived” over lesser, inferior DNA constructs. What is irrelevant is whether the DNA allowed a mouse or a dinosaur. The point to PROVE is how DNA got here in the first place so irreducibly complex and completely equipped to form life as dissimilar as mastodons from orchids.Reply
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Perry says:July 16, 2012 at 2:18 pmGents, For what it’s worth, there is a tiny fraction of organisms (0.1% or maybe far less than that) for which the genetic code table is slightly different than all the others. Aside from that, it is universal across all life forms, and the minor exception only shows that, just as any programmer would surmise, more than one coding convention is possible.Reply
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Richard says:July 16, 2012 at 4:15 pmThe code is different in all organisms except identical twins. To quote cosmic fingerprints: “The proper formal terminology is “The pattern of base pairs in DNA are a code.” From the beginning I’ve been very clear about the difference between the message and the medium. The molecule itself is the medium; the ordering of the base pairs defines the code.” We can observe the DNA code evolving over time, gradually increasing in complexity. It is completely and absolutely 100% false to say that the DNA code does not change over time. Hundreds of thousands of scientific procedures have shown DNA code differences in detail.Reply
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Perry says:July 17, 2012 at 6:28 amRichard, the essential triplet code – the codon to amino acids mapping that you find when you look up “genetic code” in any biology book – has not changed, to the best of our knowledge, in 3.5 billion years. It is known to be slightly different in a tiny handful of organisms.Reply
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Richard says:July 17, 2012 at 7:20 amI know that. However David is appears to be saying that the coding sequence of bases is the same in different species – and that is obviously false. To take one example, he says “So, I will repeat, Richard, we do not see the CODE itself, the intricate sets of instructions carried in DNA as Evolving” – and that is absolutely 100% false.
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Perry says:July 17, 2012 at 8:25 amI would also disagree with his statement.
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Richard says:July 17, 2012 at 8:48 amPerry says “I would also disagree with his statement.” Yes, David does seem to have completely misunderstood your thesis. What I am saying is this: DNA (by which I mean the DNA coding sequence) evolves over time. DNA evolves so there is more of it over time in a highly evolved species (i.e. the coding sequence is longer). Equally as you go further back in time there is less of it in species that have evolved less (i.e. the coding sequence is shorter). Things like bacteria which were around a long time ago have shorter coding sequences. This occurs naturalistically, therefore I do not understand why you say that intervention from God is required.
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Perry says:July 17, 2012 at 9:10 amI don’t think evolution requires intervention from God. What we do know from computer science is two things: 1) Codes are always designed, with no known exceptions, and 2) No code evolves by itself without being programmed to evolve. We know this from genetic algorithms. Neither Windows nor HTML nor any known code evolves simply by random copying errors and natural selection. Cells evolve by editing and re-arranging their own DNA, doing their own natural genetic engineering. Where they got this capability, nobody knows. It directly infers a grand design. Whether pre-programmed from the big bang, or whether it came later, it’s incredibly impressive. Great blog on evolution and the cell’s natural genetic engineering: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/
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Richard says:July 17, 2012 at 10:10 amGod is not mentioned in Shapiro’s book to my knowledge. I do not argue that DNA evolves simply by random copying errors and natural selection. In fact I said up front that it didn’t. However, DNA evolves naturalistically. You say that codes are always designed, whereas we know that the DNA code evolves. I agree with your statement that “Cells EVOLVE by editing and re-arranging their own DNA, doing their own natural genetic engineering”. Evolution again. No external materialistic programmer.
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David H says:July 18, 2012 at 4:05 am“”However David is appears to be saying that the coding sequence of bases is the same in different species – and that is obviously false.” “To take one example, he says “So, I will repeat, Richard, we do not see the CODE itself, the intricate sets of instructions carried in DNA as Evolving” – and that is absolutely 100% false.” Richard, Richard. You are again and again repeating your incomplete understanding of what I am saying to the point that you have Perry agreeing with your own mis-conjecture. Perry, I will ask you not to take Richard’s interpretation as a valid surmise for my own statements. The confusion here is probably because DNA stands for both the Coder and the DeCoder that direct all cell processes. DNA as a term that we use as a catch-all is inaccurately used when it covers too many meanings simultaneously. The “DNA sequence” or just “DNA” for short, that people commonly refer to is the OUTPUT of the DNA system. They “see the strand” as the expression of the organism itself. But, “DNA” also means the SEQUENCER itself, the CODER system that reproduced that strand to pass along to a reproduction of that cell. In that Sequencer are the LAWS that govern the repair and maintenance and replication for biological inheritance. The “Reader/Decoder system”, to simplify, that gets messages that a section of the DNA sequence needs to be repaired, perhaps due radiation, itself is a part of the underlying Framework of DNA. It remains intact and identical inside the DNA sequence for a dolphin as it does inside a Manx cat. This is true for the vast majority of life. I am not talking about the DNA sequence that you focus on as the “code for organism”. In the complete DNA sequence that gets replicated into a new cell, for instance, embedded in that sequence are some fixed components of DNA that don’t really change from dog to cat to water lily. It is these components, these bio-chemical instructions for how to INTERPRET and MAINTAIN the organism, that must remain remarkably unchanged or we have no continuance of life. This is the “DNA” I am making my case about. Again and again I make the distinction between the Code FRAMEWORK, and the final OUTPUT of an individual “DNA sequence” program that creates different animal and plant organisms. A stack of 100 different DVD’s look basically the same before labelling and they utilize the same technology to be recorded and played in a machine designed to play DVD’s. The binary sequence of recording and encoding using a specific video and audio codec (also designed code) enables us to place “Citizen Kane” or “Toy Story 3? on the same kind of blank DVD. If you look at patterns of reflectiveness marking the zeroes (burned darker and non-reflective by the laser) and ones (left untouched, therefore reflective) you will soon see that “Citizen Kane” is demonstrably different than “Toy Story 3?. The coding sequence is different. The sequence of binary 0’s and 1’s don’t match each other between the two DVDs. But, the actual CODE/Codes USED TO CONSTRUCT the recordings remains the same! The OUTPUT is different for each movie. The CODE BEHIND the whole process, that guided the output of the DVD code “Citizen Kane” all along the way remains untouched, unchanged, reusable over and over. That is the DNA I am referring to, the DNA framework standing both ABOVE and foundationally underneath that enables the mouse sequence and the sequence for a Great White Shark. This is what Perry is referring when he said in agreement: “Richard, the essential triplet code – the codon to amino acids mapping that you find when you look up “genetic code” in any biology book – has not changed, to the best of our knowledge, in 3.5 billion years. It is known to be slightly different in a tiny handful of organisms.” The amino acids mapping Perry refers to IS DNA in action. We are basically the product of an incredible assortment of amino acids always in a maelstrom of activity inside us. Richard, when you find a simple organism with a shorter DNA sequence you find a simple organism that is living and doing quite nicely for itself, including reproducing itself. But what you would find, DNA .. the FRAMEWORK used to construct that sequence still looking remarkably like it does today in you. Perry evidently agrees with the basic argument I am giving that the language, the framework, the codon where things get done and remembered and passed along and reproduced has been essentially the same from the earliest times. Wherever you find a fossil you may safely assume that the live specimen had this same codon in its cells. That is the MANUFACTURING FACTORY. The DNA sequence OUTPUT may have been “simpler” only in the sense that the sequence was not as long, but in no way was it “simple” when you understand the vast variety of operations, enzymatic processes, that must happen inside even the simplest organism.Reply
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Richard says:August 15, 2012 at 11:59 amYou cannot redefine the term “DNA” to mean whatever you want it to mean. DNA is the molecule together with a coding sequence. Your statement “So, I will repeat, Richard, we do not see the CODE itself, the intricate sets of instructions carried in DNA as Evolving” is 100% false and always will be. It is the evolution of this code that is fundamental. The fact that almost everything has the same codon to amino acid mapping quite clearly cannot explain the vast variety of life – quite the opposite in fact. It is a mere detail.Reply
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Shounak Bhattacharya says:July 19, 2012 at 6:15 amDear All, As per Kant, all pure mathematics are synthetic a priori. On the contrary, analytic judgement are those where the predicate is contained in the subject. If we consider the concept of recursive function, say Fibonacci series 0,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 expressed by: F n= F (n-1) + F (n-2) what we get is the earlier or next number by adding/subtracting the previous one. Take otherwise Fibonacci series or recursive function, the result is contained in the subject. In that case do we consider Fibonacci series analytic/synthetic?Reply
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Richard says:August 12, 2012 at 11:43 amMy posts of some weeks ago have not appeared on the site.Reply
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Perry says:August 12, 2012 at 9:57 pmBugs in our blog spam detection? We had some problems a few weeks agoReply
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Perry says:August 15, 2012 at 10:35 amRichard, This article reminded me of you: “Could Believing in God Harm Your Soul?” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/08/15/jeff-cook-could-believing-in-god-harm-your-soul/Reply
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Richard says:August 15, 2012 at 11:43 amPerry, Thank you for posting that link. I went on to read http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/07/07/they-dont-believe-because-your-god-isnt-desirable/ They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable And certainly many of the views expounded by David H seem to be the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. And it seems to me that you sometimes think of God as neither truly transcendent nor fully immanent – but rather as a sort of superman, a being amongst other beings, a person who is busy writing code. And you also seem to have a literal view of the Bible. However, Eve was not made from Adam’s rib. According to renowned theologians, the view that the Bible is infallible is simply idolatry. For that matter, the Bible does not say that the Bible is the Word of God. It says that the Word of God is God (John 1:1).Reply
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Perry says:August 15, 2012 at 3:35 pmI fully agree with your last statement. I also think a lot of Christians wrongly elevate the Bible to godlike status. This is a mistake. Not unlike what you said, Karl Barth the great Swiss theologian said the Bible is not the the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is man’s testimony to the Word of God, ie it is the word with a lower case w. The word for rib in Hebrew is chamber, it doesn’t really mean rib per se. I take it to mean that a part of Adam’s being was split off and given to the woman, making him incomplete. That resonates with my life experience – he is only complete when she is with him. The “They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable” article is great.Reply
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Richard says:August 16, 2012 at 2:50 amIt’s interesting that there are probably quite a lot of things we agree on. You are forced to take the rib thing non-literally. But it seems to me that you do try to demonstrate biblical total inerrancy, and I think that is a mistake. One of the problems I have with what you say is that you make a lot of statements about God that you seem to think are true literally rather than metaphorically. For example, you say that God is a person. If taken literally this is precisely saying that God is a superman. I don’t think that the Bible ever says that God is a person…Reply
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Perry says:August 16, 2012 at 7:22 amDepends on what you mean by “person.” I mean sentient being with will and emotions and a self. I don’t believe in inerrancy, it’s not defensible, nor is it necessary here’s my take on that: from my talk at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/top10/#9 9. “The Bible is riddled with contradictions and therefore cannot be the perfect word of God.” I’m going to take an interesting approach with this. I brought with me three different versions of the Bible. I’ve got a King James New Testament, a New Living Translation Bible and a New American Standard. I could have brought an NIV, but all you guys probably have one, because that’s kind of the popular Bible translation. Do they all read the same? No. I had to sign this thing before I came that I understood that Willow Creek has a doctrinal statement. One of the things in the thing that I had to sign was that I understand that Willow Creek says that the scriptures are inerrant in their original writings. That’s a very common thing that you’ll find in the Protestant church, that scriptures are inerrant in their original writings. Do we have the originals? No. What we have are thousands of Greek manuscripts and there are slight differences with some of them. You could make a whole little tree of this copying error and that. You could put it all together and we could open all three of these Bibles up to John 5 or Ezekiel 34 or Revelation 12 or any book and we could read them side by side. And rather than getting 12 decimal places of precision, I think what we get is more like there’s an outer edge on one side or the other on how you can interpret something, and then there’s something sort of in the middle. Maybe the King James seems to be here and maybe the NIV seems to be here, and maybe the Catholic Bible seems to be here. But they’re all kind of within this range of variation. So there’s some wiggle room, not like 12 decimals of precision, but more like maybe two. No matter what Bible you read, did Jesus rise from the dead in all of them? Is adultery a sin in all of them? Is it not all right to lie, cheat, and steal in all of them? Is there a debate between predestination and free will in all of them? Yes. I had this realization one day; “Hey, wait a minute! I don’t have to sit here and nitpick every last verse that some skeptic wants to pick a fight with me about and make me explain everything that doesn’t quite seem to fit together, because you know what? This is like a puzzle that you’re trying to put together and some of the edges are fuzzy and I can’t put it perfectly together. And that’s all right.” I was emailing back and forth with an atheist and he’s quibbling about the different tomb stories of the Resurrection. I don’t think they contradict each other, but in order to make them fit, you have to make a couple of assumptions before they fit. He’s trying to duke it out and I said, “I don’t feel like defending the idea that the Bible is infallible. I’ll just say for today that I have four stories that were pretty close! So what do you think?” He didn’t know what to do. I said, “Well, Jesus died on the cross, you are a sinner, God created the world, 12 disciples went out and preached. The story’s pretty clear. How many of these little nit picky things from the New Testament that you brought up because you found them on some website do you have to get all straight before you get the big picture here?” Try this on for size; the Bible is the word of God with a lower case w. But if we’re going to use a capital W, what is the Word of God? Jesus! Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is the written testimony, inspired by the Holy Spirit, testifying to the Word of God. There’s a verse that says, “No one can confess Jesus Christ is Lord apart from the Holy Spirit.” Let’s not put the Bible above the Holy Spirit. You realize if you want to sort out all those puzzle pieces, you need the Holy Spirit to help you do it. And a person who does not have the Holy Spirit is not even going to be willing to do that. That’s why they’re arguing with you. So when I get in these debates, I say, “Let’s just assume that this is like any other piece of history. Someone wrote it down as best they could, and here we have it. Let’s make a judgment from what’s in front of us. So what do you think?” Did they just make all this up? Like perhaps, Jesus didn’t really die; they pried him off the cross and he was almost dead and then he was in the tomb, and people in the Middle East had these clever ways of reviving almost dead people and then he popped out. He looked so good, he looked like Superman, and everybody said, “Wow! You’re the Son of God!” Yeah, that’s what happened! Sure, that’s what happened! Guys that are pulled off crosses when they’re almost dead always inspire people three days later to like change the world! That’s what happened!Reply
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Perry says:August 16, 2012 at 8:48 amGod as a person: Matthew 6:14 “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”Reply
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Richard says:August 16, 2012 at 9:07 amThe term “Father” is well-chosen. Because it is quite clear that a literal, material father is not being referred to. Most renowned theologians start with an exposition about which statements about God should be taken literally and which metaphorically. And they also discuss whether and which biblical statements should be taken literally. Even Aquinas does this. In my view (and in the orthodox view), the list of literal statements that can be made about God is a very short one.Reply
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David H says:August 16, 2012 at 4:51 amRichard, I have read the articles in these links. I have also reviewed “my views” expressed in my comments, many of them to you personally, in this forum. Where specifically do you think the “official theologian approved” view of God and Jesus Christ and “many of the views expounded by David H” diverge? What I do point out to you, Richard, is that you express such, I will say, “pickiness”. You seem perpetually offended. The only people, theologians and commenters in this forum, that you agree with are the people who say that you are justified to keep thinking of “God” as considerably less than what He has testified Himself to be — yes, in the Bible. But, in case you do not believe me, I have repeatedly invited you to jump into the waters that you hover around proclaiming that they are too deep, or too cold, or too hot, or too “unfriendly”, or too “unscientific”, etc, etc. This matter, for you, and for all who might entertain doubts is to finally ASK that God. Direct your deepest doubts not to Perry, nor theologians, nor mathematicians, nor philosophers. Richard, I have told my story in this forum of how I finally “asked” to KNOW. I have done so to help remove some of the mystery of what “true believers”, “born-again Christians” are talking about, what sort of literal process was involved that led to that born-again revelation. Unless Perry is less than who I deem him to be, he will agree with me that 25 years spent reading and responding in his Forums will not by itself introduce you to God and Jesus Christ in the way Perry knows the Father and Jesus Christ. Perry leads the horses to water but he can not make them drink of the Living Water with math, reasonable words, or a “more desirable” God. Despite all of his logic and discourses on math, philosophy, physics, etc, Perry has also made it clear that he believes the essential truths of the claims of Jesus Christ. It finally comes down to YOU and your own actions. Not to Perry or me. And yes, you are obviously not like me, and obviously not like Perry, are you? You yourself stress the differences between us. You use scriptures to try to point out what is “wrong” with me but you also reserve for yourself to challenge the truth of every scripture. Which rather invalidates the suitability of Biblical scriptures in your bag of argumentative tools. Having your cake and trashing it, too. While people may argue against the truthfulness of the Bible in every line and verse, it is the ONLY testimony of the life of Jesus Christ. No other book exists that makes the claims for Jesus Christ that this book does, whatever version or translation. If Jesus Christ existed then it is vitally important to read his words and his claims as IF they were the truth first. Believe the words first, for their own sake, and follow them to explore what was meant by this — “Yeshua answered and said to him: “Timeless truth I am telling you: If a person is not born again, it is impossible for that one to see the Kingdom of God.” Aramaic Bible in Plain English, John 3:3 If this is a lie, a hoax, a deception, then it will be revealed to you when you sincerely ask God, in sincere prayer, to have this experience, to be born again, which starts by throwing out all of your “arguments” about what you “think”. Appeal to the spirit of God by addressing Jesus Christ and ask Him to fill your heart and mind with Himself and to forgive you of your sins, whatever those sins may be. Ask Him to save you from your doubts and fears and to show you the Truth. It sounds “silly” and ludicrous, I well know, but we all have to start with a childlike state of innocence and abandon to begin this new life. It is an ancient path. Millions have been born again as Jesus invited them to be. Unfortunately, they are, according to Jesus, a minority of the world’s population. Someone like me invites you, Richard, because I want you to enjoy this experience. It is incredibly enriching and thrilling when it happens. And then the rest of Eternity begins and you will be very excited at the REALITY of that personal revelation. If it does NOT happen to you, Richard, THEN you can come and complain about me and “my views” with righteous indignation. Until then you only have personally uninformed opinions about what I am saying. And you can not possibly negate what I am saying until you have jumped into the same waters. Come on in, Richard, the waters are fine!Reply
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Richard says:August 16, 2012 at 9:24 amDavid H, Unfortunately, many of the things you claim to “know” are incorrect, as I pointed out to you a few months ago. It finally comes down to YOU and your own actions, as you say yourself. You say “Believe the words first”. However, in the final analysis, one is judged not on an intellectual assent to a set of propositions, but rather on one’s actions.Reply
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Richard says:August 18, 2012 at 12:33 pmDavid H, I wonder why you choose such an obscure passage as John 3? “Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” There are 8 different explanation about what this (water) might mean, none of them very convincing. Why not choose something clearer, e.g. Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Answer: Good Samaritan story plus “Go and do likewise.” Or: “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Answer: Sell everything you have and give to the poor. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins (Mark 11:25). “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.Reply
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David H says:August 20, 2012 at 8:06 amRichard, We obviously inhabit two different realities. In one of these “realities” you seem convinced that you have disproved me and my contentions. It is not up to me to fashion a more “desirable” God. The God I found is far more than desirable. He is the Bright and Morning Star. His son is the Lamb of God. He says “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” I am astounded, Richard, that you responded this way: “I wonder why you choose such an obscure passage as John 3? “Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” Richard, to YOU this is “obscure”, and “obscure passage”. It is spectacularly famous to Born Again Christians. It is KEY, PIVOTAL, absolutely not to be omitted at any time in explaining what Jesus is offering, even now, signifying what must happen, and afterwards to remind us of the walk we have before us — in the Spirit. You have, I guess, unwittingly revealed a crucial misunderstanding of the importance of the scripture. Here on earth we look at the water, we see the water, we drink of the water, we are born in water, we need the water. You focused exclusively on the water, solely on the “water” and did not understand one of the basic truths that Jesus took for granted that his disciples understood. They and He were already “born of water”. Jesus spent some time talking to his disciples about a NEW BIRTH that did not require water at all. It was Spiritual, it occurred in a new process only available through the literal, living Spirit of God and was integral to Christ’s whole mission on Earth. At first his disciples thought he was talking nonsense. Jesus was acknowledging that he and the world of people around him had all been “born of water”. But with him he had brought as part of the “New Testament” a brand new experience and REQUIREMENT. When he said “no one can enter the Kingdom of God” he meant precisely, explicitly that. UNLESS they had been “born of the Spirit” — something new and mysterious but most definitely a new REQUIREMENT. That Requirement is to pray to Him as I have suggested and suggested to you, Richard. The other scriptures you give were also “tests”. Jesus answered people in those examples with the biggest challenge appropriate to the audience asking. To the skeptical who had the most money and goods to lose he said “Sell everything you have and give to the poor.” It was a way of immediately shocking them and testing their hearts with the one demand that was the biggest challenge appropriate to who was asking for the “secret” to eternal life. The scriptures you also give are what Believer is expected to do who Believes first. Who is Born Again. You can not sweep away, as you do, over and over and over in your many preceding comments: “Verily (truly, it is the TRUTH, I am Jesus, I do not lie, I can not lie, I will never lie) I (the Way, the Truth, the Life) tell you, NO ONE (no one, none, no exceptions) CAN ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD UNLESS they are born of water (already fulfilled, and not talking about water baptism) AND (ADDITIONAL, NEW REQUIREMENT) THE SPIRIT. Richard this is child’s play. It is the simplest and most wonderful invitation. You don’t have to spend another minute trying to refute me or disprove me. I am only telling you what Jesus said and to tell you that I have discovered that if I followed this mysterious “obscure” scripture to its logical conclusion that it opened up the Heavens. If you have even the slightest twinge of curiosity, follow Him, Richard. You say to Perry: “You think I’ve not read John already? I’ve even quoted from John.” You have read John but you don’t understand why John wrote this book. Until someone finally explained to me a few years after college the incredible significance of “born of the Spirit” I too thought that I had “read John”. John did not write his book to go into “the Bible”. As far as John was concerned his book was all that was needed, all by itself, to open up the Divinity, the “Godliness” of Jesus Christ, the eternal life, the path to Jesus and the Father forever. ” Being Born of the Spirit” is not a myth. It is a literal “happening” that CHANGES you forever and an astounding change it is. It does not matter how many times you do not understand it or pooh-pooh it previously. When it happens it HAPPENS and then Jesus finally starts to make some sense, a lot of sense. But, you can’t hide behind other scriptures whose context you don’t completely understand yet. Being “Born of the Spirit” is the gigantic elephant in the room of Christianity that too many people ignore. Many “Christians” go to their graves never even seeing the elephant nor smelling him even though they heard vague rumors of “something Big & Amazing” all their pew-packing lives.Reply
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Richard says:August 21, 2012 at 5:21 amQuite remarkable. You say “The scriptures you also give are what Believer is expected to do who Believes first. Who is Born Again.” Of course this is not the case. For example, Luke 6:37 was addressed to “a great crowd of people” I can give you many more similar texts addressed to “Believers” and unbelievers alike. You can’t dismiss these scriptures whose context you don’t understand. Do you not realise that there are about 33 references in the Bible to the Last Judgement, and in every single one of them without exception it says that people are judged by God according to their conduct? There is no “free pass” for people who say they are Believers.Reply
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David H says:August 21, 2012 at 12:27 pmRichard. The day that you directly address the topic of “being Born of the Spirit” , which Jesus said is absolutely necessary to ever see Him in His kingdom, then I will have finally gotten one straight reply from you. This is the bridge you apparently dare not cross in all of your responses. Out of all the Bible that you quote, the most fascinating promise of it, to be Saved by the grace and mercy of the Father and the Son IS the “born-again” , “born of the Spirit” experience that you obviously treat with such skepticism that you ignore it in every response. Richard, I read the Bible for years. I got one after the other, over and over as gifts. I studied catechism in classes for several years. I recited it in countless Sunday School and Church School classes in the Presbyterian denomination. My mother was a Deaconess involved in church services for years. I trundled Christian filmstrips and projectors up and down Sunday school halls and saw great messages over and over. I sat in church pews for decades year round and prayed thousands of times. I pretty much knew the Bible like the back of my hand. The things you say over and over are certainly “scripture”, Richard. I was baptized and re-baptized. I sang for years in various church choirs. We sang all the great hymns and Christian anthems. Had I somehow been “born-again”? NO. Was I still a believer? Yes, in the way we devoted churchgoers conceive of our state of mind and “holy habits”. So, at one point in my life, Richard, I would be YOU in this forum. Your responses up to this point might well have been my own responses. This is why I keep pointing you to this truth. Finally accepting this necessity to ask to be saved and born again did not come easily to me. I was too proud in my own intellect and too full of self-satisfaction in my own churchianity. I had no idea really what I was asking for. I was floored, flabbergasted, majorly surprised, stunned, overwhelmed by what happened in the space of a few minutes after calmly opening my mouth . . . . . years later, forever changed, I cling to you, Richard, like, well, lint?
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Richard says:August 22, 2012 at 3:03 amYou choose to ignore the plain words of the New Testament and focus on “born again” which is something you don’t define. Why do you choose to ignore what Jesus says about what sort of actions result in eternal life? Why do you ignore almost everything on the synoptic gospels? Why do you ignore what the Bible consistently says about the Last Judgement? Why to you ignore what Acts and the Epistles say to “believers” who think they can do whatever they want and that they will not be judged adversely as a consequence? “We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome” “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High” “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.” “No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” “The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them” “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them”
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David H says:August 22, 2012 at 10:32 amConcerning Richard’s reply August 22, 3:03pm Richard, I AM focusing on one thing. Absolutely. But it does not mean I am ignoring you, as you ignore me. As we can see from your latest reply you just refuse to discuss the “born of the Spirit” issue. Every scripture you quote to me I can well explain to some depth. But those scriptures have an entirely new depth and meaning and significance after you have chosen to believe Jesus Christ. You have for the umpteenth time, Richard, downright refused to address the question at hand : It has EVERYTHING to do with the other scriptures you quote. But, they can only apply to YOU once you have attended to the question of a New Birth. Jesus said “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Jesus also said “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” And in the same conversation with Nicodemus Jesus said “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” After that conversation where Jesus repeatedly emphasized this “born again” with “verily, verily” and “ye must be” twice more, any Christian must ask “What does Jesus mean?” This sounds REALLY SUPER IMPORTANT! I have definitely identified that you hate to consider what being “born-again, born by the Spirit” might entail. And you run from it with all your might. You plainly do not believe Jesus for the literalness of his “MUST BE”, you think it is a lie, you think it is just talk, you insult me repeatedly for believing that I am born-again and urging you to consider for YOURSELF the deep and ultimate significance of the gift Jesus Christ brought. Richard, unless you are born-again , born of the Spirit, you cannot see the Kingdom of God. No less than Jesus guaranteed this. It is HE Himself who would ask you now what YOU mean by choosing to ignore his Mandate.Reply
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Richard says:August 24, 2012 at 4:46 amDavid, The usual insults and false accusations from you. And you continue to refuse to consider 99.9% of the New Testament. Let&##8217;s look at the only text you are prepared to consider. To be born anew entails a radical change of conduct. From before, where a person was not behaving like the good Samaritan, to after, where they are. This was Jesus’ response to the question “How do I inherit eternal life”.Reply
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Richard says:August 16, 2012 at 10:02 am“They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable” “We have not established that Christianity should be revered, nor that it is attractive, nor that it is worthy of affection. We prefer to pull out our five proofs for its “truth” and argue our misguided interlocutors into the Kingdom cold. This is a mistake, for most of our audience see such arguments as power plays, as manipulation, as simply another advertisement out there trying to entice them to buy something.” Yes. I think I would start my Christian Apologetics site by asking “Do you want to see more loving-kindness in the world?” That’s what Jesus wanted … See this story about the good Samaritan …Reply
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Perry says:August 16, 2012 at 3:30 pmThat’s somewhat what I had in mind when I wrote “7 Great Lies of Organized Religion” at http://www.coffeehousetheology.com.Reply
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Richard says:August 17, 2012 at 2:39 amYes, I looked at that. That still does plunge into things like questions about the believability of miracles, and so on. And to what extent does it focus on showing that Christianity is attractive, etc? I still like the look of my suggestion. Maybe there are plenty of sites that take that approach already. But it’s rather hard to find them amongst all the sites that take a different approach.Reply
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Perry says:August 17, 2012 at 6:32 amDid you subscribe to the email series? The first 7 are for the most part “Here’s how man abuses religion…. but here’s what Jesus did.” I’d like to suggest that you just sit down and read the book of John…. or watch the famous Jesus movie, which is in something like 100 languages.Reply
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Richard says:August 17, 2012 at 10:27 amYou think I’ve not read John already? I’ve even quoted from John.
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Perry says:August 17, 2012 at 10:32 amI’m not saying that at all. I’m just encouraging you to sit down and read the whole thing at once, again even. It does a far better job than I ever could.
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Richard says:August 17, 2012 at 10:38 amWhat do you think I need to be convinced about that I’m not convinced about already?
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Perry says:August 17, 2012 at 11:01 amI don’t know. I just love the book of John.
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Richard says:August 17, 2012 at 12:14 pmThere are some remarkable discourses and parables in Luke: Luke 6: Blessings and woes; love your enemies; on not judging others; builders Luke 10: The good Samaritan Luke 11: Woes on religious leaders Luke 15: Prodigal son Luke 17: The Kingdom of God is in your midst! Luke 18: The rich ruler: sell everything you have … Luke 19: 10 minas Luke 20: Caesar
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Erik V says:August 18, 2012 at 10:13 pmI think the most convincing argument “from design” is the argument of irreducible complexity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity That and the whole concept of information: DNA is jam-packed with information. The 4 molecules that comprise DNA have no information in and of themselves — they convey information only when arranged in a particular order (somewhat the 1s and 0s in binary code). DNA is required for a cell to function properly: it contains the instructions for building new proteins from amino acid chains (which have to be in a particular order or the protein falls apart or doesn’t function as needed. The question we have to ask ourselves is where did the information in genetic code (contained within EVERY living cell) come from?Reply
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Richard says:August 20, 2012 at 5:40 amWe actually know for certain that those sequences evolve. This has been studied in some detail.Reply
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Erik V says:August 27, 2012 at 8:41 pmCare to give a reference?Reply
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Richard says:August 28, 2012 at 2:53 amThe literature in this field is so enormous that I hardly know where to start. How about http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=evolution+of+dna+sequences Evidence for Evolution in DNA DNA has only come to be understood over the last century. The technology has been improving and has allowed scientists to not only map out entire genomes of many species, but they also use computers to compare those maps. By entering genetic information of different species, it is easy to see where they overlap and where there are differences. The more closely species are related on the phylogenetic tree of life, the more closely their DNA sequences will overlap. Even very distantly related species will have some degree of DNA sequence overlap. Certain proteins are needed for even the most basic processes of life, so those selected parts of the sequence that codes for those proteins will be conserved in all species on Earth. DNA Sequencing and Divergence Now that DNA fingerprinting has become easier, cost effective, and efficient, the DNA sequences of a wide variety of species can be compared. In fact, it is possible to estimate when the two species diverged or branched off through speciation. The larger the percentage of differences in the DNA between two species, the greater the amount of time the two species have been separate. These “molecular clocks” can be used to help fill in the gaps of the fossil record. Even if there are missing links within the timeline of history on Earth, the DNA evidence can give clues as to what happened during those time periods. While random mutation events may throw off the molecular clock data at some points, it is still a pretty accurate measure of when species diverged and became new species. http://evolution.about.com/od/Microevolution/a/Dna-And-Evolution.htmReply
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Erik V says:August 28, 2012 at 1:47 pmYou haven’t addressed the question: Where did DNA come from? you get proteins from DNA arrangement of amino acids. where did the order come from?
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Richard says:August 29, 2012 at 3:24 amYou ask “where did the order come from?” If by “order” you mean a particular sequence of bases, I have already answered that the sequences have evolved over time.
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Perry says:August 29, 2012 at 11:13 amYou need a code first before you can have evolution and replication. He is asking where did the code come from?
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Richard says:August 29, 2012 at 12:01 pmPerry says: You need a code first before you can have evolution and replication. He is asking where did the code come from? Perhaps I don’t understand the question. I thought that you agreed that the coding sequences have evolved – evolved from shorter and less complex sequences.
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Perry says:August 29, 2012 at 1:11 pmA coding sequence can’t come into existence by evolving from nothing, because you have to have a code first before evolution itself is possible. (By definition.) So where did the first (presumed to be) short and less complex sequence come from?
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Richard says:August 29, 2012 at 1:38 pmPerry says: So where did the first (presumed to be) short and less complex sequence come from? I don’t really see a problem here. For example: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorites.html “DNA Building Blocks May Be Made in Space”. In any event, it’s not too difficult to see that replicating molecules such as RNA or DNA can be formed. I think they would start off with very short sequences. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIE2bDetailsoforigin.shtml First replicators then “self-replication opened the door for natural selection. Once a self-replicating molecule formed, some variants of these early replicators would have done a better job of copying themselves than others, producing more “offspring.” These super-replicators would have become more common — that is, until one of them was accidentally built in a way that allowed it to be a super-super-replicator — and then, that variant would take over. Through this process of continuous natural selection, small changes in replicating molecules eventually accumulated until a stable, efficient replicating system evolved.”
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Perry says:August 29, 2012 at 1:54 pmAll this is pure conjecture. Show a working example of a natural code. Spec is at http://www.naturalcode.org. I’ll write you a check for ten grand if you can find one.
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 2:11 amPerry says: All this is pure conjecture. Show a working example of a natural code. Spec is at http://www.naturalcode.org. I’ll write you a check for ten grand if you can find one. The NASA article is certainly more than pure conjecture and the Berkeley states a reasonable hypothesis. Of course, we do not have proof of this at the moment. DNA is a working example of a natural code, so please send me the check.
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 3:52 am“DNA is a working example of a natural code.” Where is your proof?
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 2:22 amPerry says: A coding sequence can’t come into existence by evolving from nothing, because you have to have a code first before evolution itself is possible. (By definition.) So where did the first (presumed to be) short and less complex sequence come from? I think I have answered this question already. If a molecule of RNA is formed, it will, by definition, have some sequence of bases. So this is where the first sequences come from. When these molecules replicate, there is scope for evolution, as the Berkeley article points out.
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 3:53 amLet’s say we have your strand of RNA. The spec also calls for an encoder and decoder. Where are they in this scenario you describe?
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 4:41 amPerry says: “DNA is a working example of a natural code.” Where is your proof? Proof of what? That DNA exists in nature?
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 8:01 amProof of its origin.
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 4:57 amPerry says: Let’s say we have your strand of RNA. The spec also calls for an encoder and decoder. Where are they in this scenario you describe? Well, a next step is for RNA to synthesize proteins. A Google search on “evolution of protein synthesis” reveals some interesting articles, including http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/early/2010/07/06/cshperspect.a003681.abstract Synthesizing proteins means “coding for” protein synthesis.
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 8:04 amThat presumes encoding in advance. Show proof of concept. With ANY naturally occurring system. Empirical evidence, please.
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 10:17 amPerry says: That presumes encoding in advance. You relies are becoming somewhat cryptic. I’m not sure what you mean by “that”, but I don’t assume “encoding in advance”. RNA is able both to catalyze chemical reactions, like an enzyme protein. Of all the billions of differently sequenced RNA molecules that were around, some would have catalyzed useful stuff. To put it another way, the early RNA molecules with very short useful “codes” were selected from a very large number of differently sequenced DNA molecules. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 12:16 pm“Of all the billions of differently sequenced RNA molecules that were around, some would have catalyzed useful stuff.” —That is a highly subjective and speculative statement. Draw the communication channel with encoder, channel and decoder like the spec asks for.
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Richard says:August 30, 2012 at 12:54 pmSeems very plausible to me. We already know that short RNA molecules can catalyze simple chemical reactions which would enhance the creation of molecules which are building blocks of RNA molecules. A short RNA molecule has been synthesized in the laboratory with the ability to form peptide bonds. Short RNA molecules that can duplicate others have been artificially produced in the lab. As these things have been done in the lab so there’s no need to draw a diagram. This is all explained in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis
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Perry says:August 30, 2012 at 8:50 pmI’m not even asking for a complete cell. All I’m asking for is actual scientific evidence of a naturally occurring code. And none of the experiments you describe that have been done in the lab meet the spec. If you disagree, try making the diagram.
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Richard says:August 31, 2012 at 2:18 amI really don’t understand what you’re saying now. Your whole argument is based on the fact that DNA DOES contain a code, and therefore you must be able to draw the diagram yourself. Or are you now saying that DNA doesn’t contain a code? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis contains a perfectly reasonable hypothesis. The various experiments illustrate that short RNA molecules can reproduce, catalyze enzymes and so on – and so illustrate that each step described on that web page is reasonable.
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Perry says:August 31, 2012 at 5:27 amNone of the RNA world hypothesis experiments succeed in encoding or decoding anything at all. They’re just strings of molecules. They are not self replicating in the same sense that cells are. That’s because none of their base pairs contain code in the first place. Nor is there any mechanisms for reading or writing said code. Stringing some magnets together doesn’t make a hard drive, let alone cause the magnets to write software. If you think the RNA world hypothesis is reasonable, then draw a diagram of encoder and decoder for RNA scenario, as the specification requests. (I have already done so for DNA, see the diagram taken from Yockey’s book.) I believe you will need to actually attempt to do this for yourself before the shortcomings make themselves clear. Don’t take my word for it. Draw the diagram and label the components and post a link. If you can meet the spec with an empirically demonstrated system, I’ll write you a check for ten thousand dollars.
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Richard says:August 31, 2012 at 5:45 amThe article specifically says that they ARE self-replicating: The ability to self-duplicate, or duplicate other RNA molecules. Relatively short RNA molecules that can duplicate others have been artificially produced in the lab. The shortest was 165-bases long, though it has been estimated that only part of the molecule was crucial for this function. One version, 189-bases long, had fidelity of 98.9%,[14] which would mean it would make an exact copy of an RNA molecule as long as itself in one of every eight copies. This 189 base pair ribozyme could polymerize a template of at most 14 nucleotides in length, which is too short for replication, but a potential lead for further investigation. The longest primer extension performed by a ribozyme polymerase was 20 bases
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Perry says:August 31, 2012 at 6:20 amBut Richard, this is not the kind of replication that cells do, as John Von Neumann defined it. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_replication#Classes_of_self-replication: Early research by John von Neumann [2] established that replicators have several parts: A coded representation of the replicator. A mechanism to copy the coded representation. A mechanism for affecting construction within the host environment of the replicator. Exceptions to this pattern are possible. For example, scientists have successfully constructed RNA that copies itself in an “environment” that is a solution of RNA monomers and transcriptase. In this case, the body is the genome, and the specialized copy mechanisms are external. However, the simplest possible case is that only a genome exists. Without some specification of the self-reproducing steps, a genome-only system is probably better characterized as something like a crystal. Making a copy of a molecule is relatively trivial, especially when the molecule doesn’t even contain a code in the first place. Biological self replication is a whole different kettle of fish. It requires decoding the encoded message and building a structure according to instructions contained in the message. Nothing of the sort happens in any of the existing RNA world models. I’m not sure you understand the distinction yet. The best way to prove this to yourself is to try to show that the RNA world hypothesis meets the spec. Draw the diagram and post a link.
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Richard says:August 31, 2012 at 7:36 amI agree that it isn’t the same as the kind of replication that cells do. What we are looking at is steps along the way to that. Another step: “The ability to catalyse the formation of peptide bonds, in order to produce short peptides or longer proteins. A [short] RNA molecule has been synthesized in the laboratory with the ability to form peptide bonds”. “The ability to catalyze one step in protein synthesis, aminoacylation of RNA, has been demonstrated in a short (five-nucleotide) segment of RNA” Now, the type of protein that is produced depends on the coding sequence in the RNA.
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Richard says:September 1, 2012 at 10:00 amI am now going away, so I may not respond to posts for two weeks.
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David H says:August 28, 2012 at 4:18 pmErik V, meet Richard. Addressing the “question” is not his specialty. I cannot wait to see the exchange when you move up the ladder and discuss Epigenetics! But, first things first, as you say, where did that “order” come from? Best of fortune with this!Reply
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Perry says:August 28, 2012 at 8:47 pmI think you judge Richard beyond what is warranted.Reply
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David H says:August 29, 2012 at 4:24 amPerry, the rules in here are all yours. And your “moderating” has a distinct mindset to it. Richard often says things like this: “The usual insults and false accusations from you. And you continue to refuse to consider 99.9% of the New Testament.” These responses come from Richard instead of manning up, being civil, and civilly addressing the very direct questions I propose to him. I have been gentle and patient yet forthright. It is not my position to police your forum, obviously. If Richard intends to insult me he seems to have your full and unspoken consent to the point of being coddled by your remarks of support.Reply
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Perry says:August 29, 2012 at 11:14 amI acknowledge hurtful comments on both sides. I do think you judge Richard’s heart and motives beyond what is necessary.Reply
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Richard says:August 29, 2012 at 3:33 amThis from David H is remarkable. In fact, I do tend to address questions put to me, whereas David has conspicuously not addressed the great majority of the questions I put to him!Reply
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Denis says:August 30, 2012 at 2:48 pmI don’t get why you’re still arguing, the fish bowl cant create itself along with the fish, it would be impossible, second law of thermodynamics says so too. Something had to have created it, that’s it. This was probably said many times, sorry for repeating it.Reply
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David H says:September 1, 2012 at 9:13 amRichard, the link you provided as your own “reference” and “proof” of your position actually proves Perry’s point in every detail. The first few paragraphs do not even address how RNA and then DNA with all its enzymatic productions and coding and transcribing processes came from “nothing”, raw materials on Earth. Your reference instead describes some of the points that Perry is making and completely supports his declarations — scientists have been “cooking the books”, so to speak, in investigating the properties of RNA and DNA by trying to outwardly, and crudely, mash similar things together. Your Reference starts by saying: Deoxyribonucleic Acid (or DNA) is the blueprint for all inherited characteristics in living things. It is a very long sequence, WRITTEN IN CODE, that NEEDS to be TRANSCRIBED and TRANSLATED BEFORE a cell can make the PROTEINS that are essential for life. Any sort of changes in the DNA sequence can lead to changes in those proteins, and in turn, they can translate into changes in the traits those proteins control. Changes at a molecular level lead to microevolution of species. The Universal Genetic Code The DNA in living things is HIGHLY CONSERVED (“my note: specified code that is so incredibly efficient that its origin has to be contrary to the Law of Thermodynamics”). DNA has only four nitrogenous bases that code for all differences in living things on Earth. Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, and Thymine line up in a specific order and a group of three, or a codon, code for one of 20 amino acids found on Earth. The order of those amino acids determines what protein is made. (“My note: it has been noted by biochemists that IN NATURE it is impossible for these nitrogenous bases as free-floating compounds to link up: not in a brine, not in fresh water, not in any primordial soup. In fact, the presence of ANY water prevents the chemical reactions that could possibly “link” these four nitrogenous compounds as they are found existing in DNA. That we FIND DNA after the fact has been misinterpreted as “nature at work” when there is no known way for this to happen in natural processes, not even over long periods of time.”) Remarkably enough, only four nitrogenous bases that make only 20 amino acids account for all diversity of life on Earth. There has not been any other code or system found in any living, or once living, organism on Earth. Organisms from bacteria to humans to dinosaurs all have the same DNA system as a genetic code. This may point to evidence that all life evolved from a single common ancestor. (“My note: including gladiolus, roses, tulips, sequoias, whales, bumblebees, butterflies, etc.”) EVEN if you “allow” an unscientific premise, that nature fabricated one creature in the sea, how did it “begin to live on land” simultaneously while plants with root systems, photosynthesis, and bacteria, as a small for instance, ALSO somehow arrived at precisely the same moment to colonize land so that the creature who first slithered ashore had its needs met? Did green goo slide up and somehow develop roots, and capillaries to convey nutrients, the mechanism of systolic pressure to propel nutrients, the completely new DNA coding to transcribe and create a fern, a leaf, roots, seeds and the seed germination process, photosynthesis, etc, etc, etc? Perry is on very solid scientific ground. No one on earth truly has an idea HOW the complete instructions in an unimaginably complex code called DNA arrived at precisely the same minute that this code also was mysteriously endowed with instructions to replicate proteins and enzymes that had never existed in Nature for solely the purpose of forming and transcribing and perpetuating life that could make decisions for itself. There was NEVER A PURPOSE in “Evolution” if we are speaking of back-to-the-mud existence. There was NO NEED to “Evolve”. Evolutionary theory as a “from nothing” theory presupposes a “need” to “survive” as if this is an alternate God. Inanimate Earth would have survived quite fine. There are billions of lifeless planets presumably scattered throughout the universe to prove this. The premise of “survivability”, “better adapted” is an illusion when you try to use that conjecture to “explain” WHY and HOW Life came to be. DNA had to have been completely worked out and IN PLACE for even the first glimmering of life. However, DNA is such an unfathomably complex assemblage that it is precisely UNSCIENTIFIC to make up a fairytale about “natural processes + time”.Reply
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David H says:September 1, 2012 at 11:16 amPerry said at one point in this discussion ad infinitum — “Science is not about eliminating God. Science is about discovering how God gets things done. I would submit to you that it’s never been more reasonable to believe in God than it is right now, and there’s nothing in that at all that is weak or abdicates the search for knowledge and truth. Quite the opposite.” Quite so! Scientists have been staring point-blank into the face of God since “science” was created. When a scientist wakes up in the morning there are only two ways to face the day and its attendant events, only two ways to filter and process everything experienced: 1) The life and life processes I see, experience, and examine for clues to laws or origin have all come from a certain order that has no master overseer or master creator. Or, 2) The life and life processes I see, experience, and examine owe their existence to not just to a super intelligence, but to a super power who could not only devise the universe but had the supreme power to then create it and put it into process. I quite, completely, absolutely understand and am even sympathetic to the approach that because this is ALL HERE why not just take it for granted that attributing it to a supreme God is archaic, old-fashioned, primitive superstition? Gotcha! This is REASONABLE. I understand why people think this way, suppose this way, live this way, and defend this way. If I were a scientist I would start off my education, premises, deductions, inductions, theories and conjectures with the supposition that the universe and life ought to be able to explain itself to me over time if I pay close attention. No sense in letting primitives influence my experiments. After all, superstition is the one thing all cultures have from earliest times. Turtles on top of turtles, people made from corn, people made from blood, animalistic “gods” grinding up bones from a previous civilization to make a new people, on and on. Such superstitions can’t all be real, can they? These are no more than stories from fertile imaginations contrived around fires at night under distant moons in distant woods and shores. But, as a SCIENTIST I have to ruminate when I really probe one of our latest discoveries made just in the past few decades. DNA. As Perry has said, the more you probe, the more you discover, the more mystified you MUST BE concerning DNA. The spacecrafts Voyager 1 and 2 carried a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record -a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. Presumably when “aliens” encountered the craft and this golden record they would unmistakably attribute these fabrications to only one source — another alien life. Not coalescence of space dust over time, a chance impact of meteors or comets, but to living beings with brains and the capacity to alter their environment, and a deliberate intention to tell their story to other intelligent beings even if they were not yet convinced of their existence. DNA is such a story to a scientist who really looks at it in a completely secular fashion. Not swayed by myth or “religious belief”. A truly secular, truly UNBIASED scientist, a truly “unreligious” scientist who spends years dissecting the processes of DNA and understands how unmistakably it is a fact of INTENTION by a superior intelligence must reconcile what stares unblinkingly back from its codons and code bases. Only a scientist who has no politics, no religion, no biases, no devotion to any cause or platform can admit the truth and let the truth speak for itself: Ladies and Gentlemen of good and honest report. We are looking at the mind of God, spectacular evidence hidden away since the birth of life until just recently when our scientific instruments could finally begin to reveal the truth beyond the veil. Humans have the capacity for awesome insight and stupefying blindness depending on their mindsets.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:September 2, 2012 at 3:24 pmI have often wondered why seemingly intelligent people have such a problem grasping that life, being crucial, had to happen in an instant, not gradually over time. We all generally accept that the universe began all at once along with the beginning of time. We see that energy does not gradually increase, as in heating metal, but the temperature jumps to the next quanta. Why, then, is it so hard for those favouring evolution to simply accept that life happened in a single quantum leap? Bill Nye (the athiest guy) has a short video out in which he says that creationism is not fit to be taught to our children. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHbYJfwFgOU It is nonsense of course, but his main argument for why we should all believe in evolution is… “Why not?” There’s a scientific explanation if I ever heard one. Doncha think? Evolutionists would have you also ignore the fossil records. There are hundreds of thousands of fossils and fragments and what they show is that these species dating back hundreds of millions of years were not primitive in any way. Trillobite fossils 400 mya (million years ago) show detailed limb formations and complex eye structures that are similar to the eyes of bees and other insects today. There is nothing primitive about these animals in the sense of being incomplete and in need of evolving to a more stable form — they were complete and stable just as they were 4oo mya. Our own human brain does not always follow linear logic to solve problems. Very often when we are totally blocked and cannot break our thoughts through to a logical solution we feel defeated. This is a necessary place to mentally find ourselves because we cannot have a breakthrough unless we are totally blocked in the first place. If we still have some untried ideas we will go there first. It is only when we are broken and defeated does the mind make a leap when we least expect it and a brilliant thought comes to mind. We are all familiar with this phenomena and when it happens the idea is fully formed and we only have to write it down quickly before it gets away. The truth of the solution is often so clear we think, “Why didn’t I think of that before?” Crucial changes in life do not happen slowly over time. The emergence of new life is a crucial change just as a brilliant solution to a problem is. I think that when scientist choose evolution over a creator it is a sign of being full of themselves. In this way they get to keep playing with their imagination and inventing new scenarios. It helps to not have a creator at least one step ahead of them so they can then believe that there is still a chance that dropping a big bang on a stack of logs will result in the manifestation of a log house.Reply
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Justin Eckrich says:September 5, 2012 at 1:34 pmG’day Gents, After following this thread for most of my evening last night, and fully engaging my mind in the argument, I calmly put it down and decided it wasn’t for me to add or subtract from this discussion. However, out of nowhere, it hit me while I was driving today. (I don’t know why, but most of my eureka moments happen when I’m driving.) Here’s what ensued… Taken from the above article: “I am lying” is self-contradictory, since if it’s true, I’m not a liar, and it’s false; and if it’s false, I am a liar, so it’s true. So Gödel, in one of the most ingenious moves in the history of math, converted the Liar’s Paradox into a mathematical formula. He proved that any statement requires an external observer. No statement alone can completely prove itself true.” My revelation was simply this: The Liar’s Paradox does not prove either true of false, singularly, but proves both true and false simultaneously. The entire thread assumes that true and false cannot coexist, when in fact, that’s exactly what his theorem just proved. By stating “I am a liar,” he was both lying and telling the truth at the same time.Reply
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Justin Eckrich says:September 5, 2012 at 1:59 pmEssentially, he proved and disproved his theory simultaneously. “let God be found true, but every man a liar” Romans 3:4Reply
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David H says:September 5, 2012 at 2:56 pmAs Perry has stated in this forum — more and more science is discovering what God has been up to. THAT is WHAT SCIENCE IS! Discovering, hanging around picking up the clues as to what God has ALREADY DONE. I have commented a number of times here that DNA IS essentially a blueprint straight from the mind of God. No less than that. Literally the more you understand or discover about the mind-boggling complexity of the coding in DNA, in our human genome, for instance, the more you have to acknowledge that there is a super INTENTION involved. That Intention in all its phenomenal brilliance has to be from the being we call God. Here is the latest article from the Wall Street Journal, which I condense into the following paragraphs taken exactly as they are from the article By GAUTAM NAIK And ROBERT LEE HOTZ: Encode succeeded the Human Genome Project, which identified the 20,000 genes that underpin the blueprint of human biology. But scientists discovered that those 20,000 constituted less than 2% of the human genome. The task of Encode was to explore the remaining 98% of biological “desert”—so-called junk DNA—that lies between those genes. That desert, it turns out, is teeming with action. Almost 80% of the genome is biochemically active, a finding that surprised scientists. In addition, large stretches of DNA that appeared to serve no functional purpose in fact contain about 400,000 regulators, known as enhancers, that help activate or silence genes, even though they sit far from the gene itself. Encode data suggest that these baffling bits of genetic code play a key role in human existence—in regulating organs, triggering disease and, in the longer view, helping to nudge the human species atop the evolutionary tree. “Our initial understanding was of the genome as a simplistic structure and we were surprised that there were very few genes” found when the genome was first mapped, said Chris Ponting, a professor of genomics at the University of Oxford who wasn’t involved in the latest research. “Encode shows us how extraordinarily decorated the genome is.” For instance, researchers led by genome scientist John Stamatoyannopoulos at the University of Washington deciphered the intricate regulatory code that controls the human genome and discovered that genetic changes linked to more than 400 common diseases all affect the genome’s ability to control when, where, and how genes behave, not the genes themselves. Using a special enzyme called DNase1 as a molecular probe, Dr. Stamatoyannopoulos and his colleagues discovered nearly four million different places along the human genome where regulatory proteins called transcription factors locked onto tiny stretches of DNA—essentially words in the chemical characters of the human genetic text—to serve as switches that actively control genes or other regulatory proteins. On average, each transcription factor can affect up to 3,000 genes. “We created a dictionary of the genome’s programming language,” said Dr. Stamatoyannopoulos. “We could map millions of locations where we could catch regulatory proteins in the act of reading the information in the genome.” The unexpected level of activity seen in the genomic hinterlands may also help explain what makes us human. Compared with other species, the human genome has about 30 times more of the so-called “junk DNA.” Unlike simpler organisms, “what makes humans different is the tremendous complexity” derived from these seemingly useless stretches of code, said Mark Gerstein, a computational biologist at Yale University and a lead researcher in the Encode project. — The more scientists learn the more complex by many exponential numbers our genome becomes. Only a super mind could have worked out these sequences which also ALREADY have plans and contingency plans for situations that scientists have been unaware of. And are still unaware of. The human DNA is now known to be multiple times more complicated than what we knew just 3 years ago!Reply
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Perry says:September 5, 2012 at 5:38 pmHere’s another good article about this: “Junk DNA” turns out to not be junk at all (big surprise) – NY Times: http://t.co/vQboHeLK What I think is interesting is, biologists have known that junk DNA is not junk for decades; that DNA’s language is recursive and that genes refer to genes which refer to genes and genes are switched on and off by controlling elements, for many decades. This goes all the way back to Barbara McClintock in the 1940’s, who was ignored until the 1970’s. She won a Nobel Prize in 1983. Reductionist science (the flavor that posits life evolved by accident from the primordial soup) has a loooong history of severely underestimating the genome, and living things. Witness a century of people claiming that our bodies are full of vestigial organs, that parts of our brain are junk, and on and on and on. Witness how many terms in biology are derisive: “Degenerate code” “Junk DNA” “Vestigial organs” — all created by the hubris of people who think whatever they do not understand must be senseless, a product of lucky accidents. No creationist or intelligent design advocate, no matter how uneducated or naive, would ever come up with a term like “Junk DNA.” Is anybody else getting sick of not being told the whole story until 30 years later?Reply
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Richard says:September 8, 2012 at 11:48 amNobody ever claimed that all biological processes are random. As you say, McClintock’s work has been available for decades, so I don’t know why you ignored this part of the story. Vestigial. Someone has recently claimed a use for the appendix, but given the number of people it kills it certainly seems to do more harm than good. Junk. I’ve believed for decades that “non-coding” DNA is absolutely crucial in the way you describe. However, there does seem to be genuine junk too – for example, long sequences of repeats and, in humans, degenerate code for producing vitamin C. (Humans cannot produce vitamin C). Your comment on creationists etc will perhaps annoy absolutely everybody?Reply
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Richard says:September 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm“Only a super mind could have worked out these sequences”. As these sequences are known to have evolved, this is false.Reply
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David H says:September 7, 2012 at 6:08 am“As these sequences are known to have evolved, this is false.” Richard’s response, September 6, 2012 —————– Not one scientist, not one massive super-computer fueled project with biased mathematical formulas, nor ten-million projects, no where in between for that matter, has come close to showing, proving, or demonstrating HOW these astronomically complicated instructions sets (DNA) came from inanimate chemicals on Earth or from any other object in Space. As Perry has been saying and saying and saying the core ISSUES are way beyond Richard’s concept of “sequences”. That any creature’s physical characteristics (size, weight, color, minor anatomic features) changes over time due to the epigenomic influence or temperature, diet, predation, environment, changing food sources, etc. is NOT the mechanism that can hope to explain the ENGINE of DNA itself. Richard keeps bringing up over and over things that happen long after DNA is IN PLACE. The “sequences” Richard speaks of are completely encapsulated natural occurrences within the context of DNA the Master Machine. Richard points out over and over, permit the analogy, that the 1939 Cadillac Series 39-90 Fisher Fleetwood with a monobloc flathead V-8 engine with 346 cubic inches displacement has demonstrable differences between it and the 1975 Fisher Fleetwood with a 157.5 inch wheelbase and a 500 cubic inch displacement V8 engine. Richard’s term “sequences” falls so so short of what is NEEDED to deny that a super intelligence created DNA. As crudely designed as these automobiles are compared to the unfathomably complex design of not only DNA but its internal contingency plans and error-correction stratagems, Richard’s repeated assertions are comparable to saying that we can be sure that a 1939 Cadillac model compared with a 1975 Cadillac model shows “evolution of sequences”, therefore, Nature itself built the Cadillac factory that produced the various models. This assertion related to “sequences” continues to woefully MISS the point. Sequences exist INSIDE DNA. The “sequences” Richard keeps referring to are IN THE ASSEMBLY LINE of the DNA factory. The DNA encoding that can READ and INTERPRET and FABRICATE a complete life form FROM that “sequence” is SEPARATE and OUTSIDE and PRECLUDES and PRECEDES the specific “Cadillac sequences”! Unlike Human manufacturing plants for products DNA has remained the unimprovable FACTORY from the beginning of life. Richard keeps referring to what is a set of blueprints for a species, for instance. The “sequence” is what DNA USES to pass along a change in a species. That “sequence” is NOT the DNA we are focusing on itself! That an organism CAN respond and change within its species — “Cadillac” — IS THE FUNCTION ALREADY INCORPORATED, ALREADY IN PLACE, ALREADY CODED, ALREADY ENABLED IN DNA! Richard, in fact, corroborates and supports Perry’s position and my position. If you step back and keep going back and back down the corridor of time, you will find that NO ONE in Science can show you ONE example of that Cadillac factory and its machinery “evolving” over time. For the first Cadillac runabout to be built in 1902, that first model down the assembly line had to FIRST have the trained workers, the metalworking and upholstery and electrical knowledge ALREADY in the minds of the craftsmen and craftswomen, the manufacturing techniques IN THE MINDS OF THE FABRICATORS, detailed blueprints of how to construct each piece already worked out in complete detail. There had to be skilled engineers who IMAGINED IN THEIR MINDS, drew it up on paper and made small models of it in wood or clay. They had to call in experts who figured out IN THEIR MINDS how to fabricate each part that would fit into each part. They had to plan IN THEIR MINDS where to put each bolt and precisely how long and what circumference each bolt was to be. They had to decide IN THEIR MINDS on the spiral that would be cut into each bolt. Millions of intelligent decisions had to be made a few years ahead of the designed construction of the first plant that was to manufacture the 1902 Cadillac runabout. Just the engines themselves had to be consciously developed with great precision and intelligent intentions before they were built by Leland and Faulconer Manufacturing Company of Detroit. This is directly analogous to the fact of DNA. Not a single fossil or piece of amber with embedded insects or the deepest layer of excavations has yet to show ONE “proof” of a once living organism — plant or animal — which has something other than our familiar DNA at its core. We, all life, are the beneficiaries of an infinitely diversified, yet, bonded by a universal instruction set that has been in place since the BEGINNING. These are critical and scientifically valid distinctions to this “argument”. “Change” and “evolve” do not even apply to the EXISTENCE of DNA encoding. Scientists are trying to figure out HOW the world’s most superior computer DID not only make itself up out of inorganic elements but masterfully programmed itself to not only reproduce, but to design itself so that the same coding could provide for a stationary rhododendron with roots that would burrow down into soil to feed itself and an African gazelle so completely distinct in design and needs. Yet, both are marvelously dependent on the same universal DNA factory. I can fearlessly predict that scientists will still be working on this mystery with no solutions in sight when newer research establishes even more incomprehensibly complex functions embedded inside DNA. It is an enormous and mathematically improbable and definitely unprovable bias at work to not perceive the distinct issues that make DNA a Special Case of Proof of Intelligence and Purpose that so obviously predated life itself.Reply
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Perry says:September 7, 2012 at 6:52 amRichard, Another thing that you might be overlooking is that all changes to the genome that produce evolutionary progress are experimentally known to be non-random: transposition, epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer, hybridization, symbiogenesis. None of these happen by random copying errors. They all occur because cells have the ability to edit and re-arrange genes according to linguistic rules, almost exactly the way humans edit and re-arrange sentences in English. See James Shapiro’s book “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century” it’s a tour de force of documentation of all of this. Evolution itself requires linguistic capability just to exist. The ability to replicate does not in any way guarantee the ability to evolve. Origin of life & origin of information is one problem. Origin of evolutionary capacity raises the bar on that exact problem exponentially.Reply
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David H says:September 7, 2012 at 2:47 pm“Origin of evolutionary capacity raises the bar on that exact problem exponentially.” Perry, as you well know, that sentence is HUGE. Now that the latest Encode project and its related scientific papers from research peers have radically expanded the already staggering complexity of the human genome, I would like to see the ODDS recalculated regarding the probability factors of randomness (“nature”) producing what scientists are newly reporting. When you say “exponentially” you are talking about now adding a staggering amount of digits to what was formerly calculated as infinitely improbable.
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Perry says:September 7, 2012 at 3:12 pmYes. Not only did the first cell have to have metabolism, respiration and reproduction; nothing simpler is known to be self replicating. The simplest known cells are as complex as New York City. But on top of that, the first cells necessarily had to have error correction, so the biological information wouldn’t degrade. Plus the only known way for them to have evolved from that point is for them to also possess linguistic capability and predictive editing based on sensory inputs. Based on empirical facts that we actually know about evolution, anything less than that is not capable of evolving or adapting.
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Richard says:September 8, 2012 at 11:29 amPlease see http://exploringorigins.org/protocells.html
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Richard says:September 8, 2012 at 11:35 amTransposition, epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer, hybridization, symbiogenesis…. These are all natural processes. Also, I think I’ve said 3 times already that I do not think everything is driven by random copying errors.
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Perry says:September 8, 2012 at 5:27 pmYes, they’re all natural processes. They’re codes within codes. No one knows of a way to create a code, except to design one.
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Richard says:September 9, 2012 at 10:54 amPerry says: No one knows of a way to create a code, except to design one. You seem to be going round in circles. You’ve already explicitly admitted that DNA coding sequences have evolved. I do not really understand why you have not already sent me the check.Reply
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Perry says:September 9, 2012 at 9:21 pmFill in the form, for one process in which we are able to observe a code coming into existence. DNA is already here and we don’t know its origin, so it doesn’t count. To think you get to use DNA as your example is exhibit A of “begging the question.”
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Richard says:September 10, 2012 at 2:09 pmWe have already had the discussion about DNA evolving, so I don’t understand the point you are making. By your own admission DNA contains a code and has evolved. Therefore you should send me the check.
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Perry says:September 10, 2012 at 3:15 pmIf you still don’t understand why DNA doesn’t count, then it’s time for you to leave. I’m tired of this game and so is everyone else.
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Richard says:September 15, 2012 at 2:50 pmPerry says: it’s time for you to leave. I’m leaving. I was not playing a game. I tried my best. I will shortly cancel my subscription. Also I’ve had enough of being slandered and subjected to abusive remarks from David H. If you guys think you have won the argument or that your remarks will bring people round to your way of thinking then you are very much mistaken.
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Richard says:September 9, 2012 at 11:35 amDavid, I refer you to the responses I previously made to Perry, where I illustrate how DNA could evolve. It might be worth my remarking that the orthodox Christian view is that God upholds everything in existence. Whether evolution is true or false makes no difference to this. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Perry has stated that DNA sequences evolve, but he also seems to believe in explicit interventions by God conceived as a superman. So far, science has found no such interventions in the working of the universe. For example, planets are not moved by angels – which some people used to believe. If DNA is so perfectly designed how come there are all these heritable diseases? And surely a designer of DNA could do better at countering malaria than to give people sickle cell anemia? Equally, God has not explicitly “designed” the weather. Otherwise, why would he have tsunamis killing lots of people? He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust alike. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi,who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus.Reply
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Richard says:September 9, 2012 at 3:13 pmDavid says: The “sequence” is what DNA USES to pass along a change in a species. False. The DNA sequence for a mouse specifies a mouse. The DNA sequence for a cat specifies a cat. I’ve really no idea what you are trying to say. If you want to try to persuade me of something please try writing one paragraph using standard terminology and I will try to respond to that.Reply
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David H says:September 6, 2012 at 3:04 pmPerry, I read your link and I understand it when you take to task the “derisiveness” of certain terms in Biology. And, yes, the attitude of hubris automatically taken by “educated” people who deride what they cannot understand or explicitly explain When people first began to use “science” to deride the idea of life literally created by God they thought that “life” was a pretty simple sort of goo at the base level. It was easy then to “imagine” that the goo “came to life” the way a body of water becomes covered with scum that supports life or small organisms. But as relentlessly as we learned that life had a specific structure and code machinery INSIDE of enormously complex cells, just as relentlessly have scientists refused to acknowledge the staggering implications of what they were starting to see. The paragraphs below from the story Perry linked to at the New York Times website contain a very telltale word: “almost”. As in “..almost incomprehensible,” AND “almost inconceivably intricate.” The truth is these “almosts” do not belong. This is what scientists say after the fact. They certainly did NOT conceive of the complexity beforehand according to their testimonies. They are flabbergasted and stunned by their discoveries. Here is more from that article: NYTimes: The system, though, is stunningly complex, with many redundancies. Just the idea of so many switches was almost incomprehensible, Dr. Bernstein said. There also is a sort of DNA wiring system that is almost inconceivably intricate. “It is like opening a wiring closet and seeing a hairball of wires,” said Mark Gerstein, an Encode researcher from Yale. “We tried to unravel this hairball and make it interpretable.” There is another sort of hairball as well: the complex three-dimensional structure of DNA. Human DNA is such a long strand — about 10 feet of DNA stuffed into a microscopic nucleus of a cell — that it fits only because it is tightly wound and coiled around itself. When they looked at the three-dimensional structure — the hairball — Encode researchers discovered that small segments of dark-matter DNA are often quite close to genes they control. In the past, when they analyzed only the uncoiled length of DNA, those controlling regions appeared to be far from the genes they affect. The project began in 2003, as researchers began to appreciate how little they knew about human DNA. In recent years, some began to find switches in the 99 percent of human DNA that is not genes, but they could not fully characterize or explain what a vast majority of it was doing. The thought before the start of the project, said Thomas Gingeras, an Encode researcher from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, was that only 5 to 10 percent of the DNA in a human being was actually being used. The big surprise was not only that almost all of the DNA is used but also that a large proportion of it is gene switches. Before Encode, said Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, a University of Washington scientist who was part of the project, “if you had said half of the genome and probably more has instructions for turning genes on and off, I don’t think people would have believed you.” By the time the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, embarked on Encode, major advances in DNA sequencing and computational biology had made it conceivable to try to understand the dark matter of human DNA. Even so, the analysis was daunting — the researchers generated 15 trillion bytes of raw data. Analyzing the data required the equivalent of more than 300 years of computer time. –end of NYTimes quote. DNA is a LIFE MACHINE. It is a MACHINE just as much as any computer as any space rocket assembled from the work of thousands of our brightest mathematical and scientific minds. The only difference is that the DNA Machine is intensely “smarter” and more brilliant than any device designed by humankind. Infinitely more capable and accomplished. So infinitely more advanced that, in truth, we are looking at a MACHINE FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION AND TIME. DNA comes from Alpha and Omega on the infinite scale. It is from both the Beginning and the Ending of Time. Its intelligence is so much higher in scale than what scientific humans produce, obviously, that the myth of “Nature” as the Creator of DNA and Life must crumble under sheer logic and the very real mathematics of improbabilities.Reply
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David H says:September 9, 2012 at 3:46 amRichard said: “Transposition, epigenetics, horizontal gene transfer, hybridization, symbiogenesis…. These are all natural processes.” Perry responded: Yes, they’re all natural processes. They’re codes within codes. No one knows of a way to create a code, except to design one. “Natural processes” ARE DNA frenetically at work. “Natural processes” in plants and all mammals and all viruses and all bacteria in the whole world are CODED processes. That IS what we also call your “natural processes”, Richard. You cannot use the term “natural processes” without introducing the crux of this debate, again and again. Year after year in this forum you wind up at the same place with no support but plenty of denials to this: “No one knows of a way to create a code, except to DESIGN ONE”. If you bring back another article that you claim does refute this then you, again, fail to understand the foundational gravitas of the issue. You relentlessly ignore the Big Picture — and now with the latest news that DNA is not a mass of junk code you back up into a corner and sputter out that, well, the APPENDIX is just more trouble than its worth, ergo, we can safely ignore the masses and masses of well-documented science on the incomprehensibly complex DESIGN of DNA coding. As for the appendix, yes, there is a belief among some scientists that the appendix is just a remainder from a time thousands of years ago when people needed a slightly different digestive system, when they ate more rough vegetation, thereby requiring the extra organ to help break down the roughage. In other words, the appendix was wonderfully designed to help people live for thousands of years until Burger King and McDonald’s showed up with drive through window technology. Many caprolite studies, including a study just released in 2012 of early American Indian caprolites, show that our ancestors were forced to rely on much more fibrous food and grains than what we consume today. One mammal with a currently well-developed appendix is the koala: eucalyptus leaves are very hard to break down and the koala has a highly developed appendix to help in the digestion of these virtually indigestible leaves. For humans, who do not need it for this purpose, the appendix is regarded as a “vestigial organ”. Scientists from the Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina say the appendix acts as a safe house for good bacteria, which can be used to effectively reboot the gut following a bout of dysentery or cholera–very common diseases in history. The researchers say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role. Now back to the issue — DNA shows vastly superior design and “knowledge”. As Perry says, ALL life processes require a “language” IN PLACE from the very beginning of life that was ALREADY far more complex than any human language or any computer language we have today. The Editing Perry refers to is not hit-and-miss. A huge library of INSTRUCTIONS exists inside the tiniest of organisms, inside EVERY CELL. Those INSTRUCTIONS have to be READ by a DECODER. The READER is a separate coded organism able to detect and transmit information to and from the DECODER. The DECODER has to have a complete language and INTERFACE to PROCESS information coming in, sort it all out, respond by RETRIEVING precisely the correct set of coded instructions, and then pass them to the precise locations in the genome where other instructions have been passed that know how to Edit out a damaged strand of code. Amazingly, there has to be a constant process ongoing that detects what is missing or wrong or needed and makes the most appropriate response. But, Richard, all of this you have read over and over yet it leaves you curiously comfortable to simply deny the truth of it. “False” has become your frequent response. It is completely, absolutely, logical and demanded by the best scientific principles to point out the OBVIOUS — such coding, such language, such design (even scientists must use that term and DO) has always in scientific observations required a Designer who thinks and imagines any code first. That there is a God who has promised us brand new DNA, complete immunity to disease, no hunger, no sorrow, no Goodbyes ever, no aging, no arthritis, no heart disease, no blindness, no sadness for any reason, minds and hearts FILLED with JOY, giddy JOY for Eternity ought to be WELCOMED. The code we have embedded within us was written to take us from this stage of development and no further. This same code author has PROMISED that we are going to be resurrected into completely redesigned bodies that are so radically different that they have no flaws, no chronic diseases, no weaknesses. This is what DNA portends. This is the promise encoded into all of us. Wonderfully are we made, but far more wonderfully shall we live intact and joyfully forever in a completely redesigned Universe. You will see and live outside the concepts of Gödel’s theorem — if you choose to accept the reality and the promises.Reply
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Richard says:September 10, 2012 at 2:15 pmPlease see my discussion with Perry about how DNA evolves.Reply
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Richard says:September 9, 2012 at 3:01 pmDavid says: I would like to see the ODDS recalculated regarding the probability factors of randomness (“nature”) producing what scientists are newly reporting. It is clearly incorrect to equate randomness and nature. Nature is not random.Reply
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David H says:September 10, 2012 at 4:49 amRichard says: “It is clearly incorrect to equate randomness and nature. Nature is not random.” — There are many different definitions of “not random” depending on philosophy, mathematics, physics, statistical mathematics, etc. Thank you for agreeing with me that Nature is NOT Random. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. ” Romans 8:19-22Reply
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David H says:September 10, 2012 at 4:27 amRichard, it is true, you really don’t understand the issue. Granted. It does not make the huge flaws in your arguments go away, though. And no one appears able to explain the issue to you after a few years of trying. The huge distinctions necessary to enable you to understand the difference between a “Sequence of a mouse” and the DNA structure that encodes, transcribes, replicates, edits, repairs, second-by-second USING the “sequence of a mouse” have been painstakingly illustrated for you over and over. I have two possibilities to consider: 1) You skim as you read comments just enough to help you to prepare your same responses — therefore will never absorb the distinctions offered you. Or, 2) You cannot imagine down to that level. Perhaps both 1 and 2 apply. Here is what you NOW reply: David says: The “sequence” is what DNA USES to pass along a change in a species. False. The DNA sequence for a mouse specifies a mouse. The DNA sequence for a cat specifies a cat. — You certainly demand to have your cake and eat it too. I was using your own repeated terminology when I referred back to your use of “sequence”. And you are again Wrong and False and self-contradictory. Richard, the “sequence” is NOT a one-purpose, one-mission, use one-time and throw away instruction set. The articles you yourself reference ALSO make it clear that a “mouse sequence” can also pass along changes to another generation of mouse. Generating new life from a “mouse sequence” or a “Barack Obama sequence” always carry the possibility for some changes. Otherwise, you have FALSED yourself into a corner for the sake of simply disagreeing with me. By this point it is apparent that you just do not even understand what sequence means in this case. I have read now too many of your comments to not notice that the most basic issues have been muddled in your mind. But I don’t know if a refresher course will work now. You just said: The DNA sequence for a cat specifies a cat. Look at “DNA” in that sentence of yours. It is not an “XYZ” sequence. DNA is a language and a structure that exists across all species of life! DNA is millions and millions or more tiny little bits of CODE that instruct this cell how to BE a Cat every second of its life. That DNA MECHANISM is not CAT Originated. The specific properties BEHIND AND UNDERWRITING the STRUCTURE OF DNA STRANDS did not come into existence just with the Cat in question. The properties and mechanism of DNA as a UNIVERSAL SYSTEM had to exist first, fully worked out, in place, ready to respond no matter what creature or plant or bacteria was going to be “sequenced”. What you have been claiming over and over with your responses is that Perry is an IDIOT! Look at his body of work and it is simply scientific, particularly when he writes extensively on the uniqueness of DNA. He is not the only person to point out all of these factors. People a lot smarter than you or me, Richard, have dug down deep into the core principles and mechanisms and properties of DNA. “False” from you does not cut it. You have “Falsed” yourself North, South, East and West with contradictions simply to avoid the implications. DNA is an ingeniously advanced cellular language that had to exist as defined and complete as the New York City library and all of its volumes BEFORE a “mouse sequence” or a “primitive bacteria sequence” could be written or executed in the first cell. A DNA sequence for a cat or mouse is NOT the same item or mechanism we are discussing when we talk about DNA — the Universal System or Life Machine.Reply
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Richard says:September 10, 2012 at 11:35 amPerry is not an idiot and I have never claimed that he is. You have again failed to use standard terminology. What specifically do you mean by “the Universal System or Life Machine”? Please do not continue to use the term “DNA” incorrectly. To the extent that I can understand it I believe that your statement ‘DNA is an ingeniously advanced cellular language that had to exist as defined and complete as the New York City library and all of its volumes BEFORE a “mouse sequence” or a “primitive bacteria sequence” could be written or executed in the first cell’ is false.Reply
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David H says:September 10, 2012 at 2:33 pmNothing more to say.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:September 10, 2012 at 1:46 pmI have been following the posts in this blog for a while and I have concluded that Richard is playing a game with the information that David H and Perry take seriously. I don’t think it is wise to take Richard seriously. The evidence for DNA being a code is overwhelming and I don’t believe Richard to be a stupid man but, instead, it is obvious that there is a game being played. Harvard Scientists Write the Book on Intelligent Design—in DNA http://www.reasons.org/articles/harvard-scientists-write-the-book-on-intelligent-design-in-dna I enjoy intelligent discussions, but if I wanted to ruin such a discussion I would introduce nonsense and try to disfuse the whole conversation with arguments verging on, or being, extraneous. In this way a lot of noise can destroy a signal, or at least make the signal confusing. Noise should be eliminated or ignored. How many times has Perry asked Richard to fill out the form, but this will never happen when making noise is the main objective. How many chances to you give a person to be ‘real’ only to be mislead away into arguments that have already been answered? I, for one, am tired of the game. I know that Perry has this blog so that people can comment (thank you) and express their thoughts, arguments and opinions, but Richard has added nothing new for weeks. Same old — same old. The one good thing that comes from Richard’s recalcitrant arguments is the responses by David H, which I find informative and intriguing. It has been said that the heart makes a better master than a servant, and the mind makes a better servant than a master. Listening to the heart is essential to survival and directing the growth of human intelligence. In my opinion the belief in evolution from accidental occurrences is heartless.Reply
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David H says:September 10, 2012 at 6:13 pmEdward Cannell, I share your conclusion but did not want to be ostracized for speculating on the “game”. What was very, very refreshing, indeed, delightful, was to have you remind of us of “noise” and its power to obfuscate the true signal. I know Perry has written at some length in his papers about NOISE. It would be great to pursue some exciting and inspiring discussions without the static which has kept leading us away from the real issues, and exciting ones at that.Reply
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David H says:September 10, 2012 at 6:16 pmI am SO DIGGING this website! http://www.reasons.org/articles/harvard-scientists-write-the-book-on-intelligent-design-in-dna Thank you, Edward Cannell!Reply
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David H says:September 11, 2012 at 4:20 amThis one page is SPELLBINDING. If a reader does not SEE the Big Picture after reading this then he or she are simply not inclined towards honesty — intellectual, philosophical, or spiritual. http://www.reasons.org/articles/fyi-i.d.-in-dna-deciphering-design-in-the-genetic-codeReply
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Perry says:September 11, 2012 at 6:36 amDavid, I would like to recommend a book and a blog that you would immensely enjoy: 1) James Shapiro’s “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century” (2011). This is literally the first book ever published to properly explain in both broad strokes and great detail how evolution actually works. The atheist/Darwinist version makes no sense, as you know. Shapiro outlines the ingenious mechanisms by which DNA and cells adapt to their environment, engineering sometimes radical changes overnight. And he documents all this very thoroughly. 2) His blog on the Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/ An entry similar to your above article, “DNA as poetry”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/dna-as-poetry-multiple-me_b_1229190.html Also see 3) A wide ranging interview with him about the schizophrenia of Darwinism: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/07/the-evolution-paradigm-shift/ As for Reasons To Believe, I love Hugh Ross’s cosmology and the way he shows our modern cosmology fits the Judeo-Christian narrative perfectly. However RTB rejects evolution which I think is a mistake because one design with the ability to evolve into a million new designs is in my opinion far more impressive – speaks more impressively of God, in other words – than a million designs that did not evolve but were created intact. Shapiro does not bring religion to the table, he disciplines himself to do what scientists are supposed to do: Explore processes rather than stop and invoke God. I feel that ID falls short of the mark, because while it recognizes design, it doesn’t recognize the full capabilities that are designed in to the design. You can decide what you think about that, but in any case I really think you will enjoy Shapiro’s work.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:September 11, 2012 at 12:50 pmPerry, In contrast to RTB and the stand Hugh Ross takes on evolution do you have any evidence of evolution mutating a species to a greater perfection, or even a different potential? (curious — not a challenge) Do you refer to evolutional changes as fundamental change or something akin to acquiring a new potential? Personally, my mind is not set for or against evolution, but I do believe that regardless of the evidence, that may be found over time, that this universe is God’s creation and it will all point back to a Creator.Reply
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Perry says:September 11, 2012 at 1:00 pmYes, and Dr. Shapiro’s work shows this very clearly. We do observe new species in the lab and in the field. But it doesn’t happen the way traditional Darwinists tell you (random mutation + natural selection). It happens through: 1) Hybridization – two different species mate, similar to donkey + horse = mule, but usually the offspring is sterile. Occasionally it is not. This happens very rarely in animals but does happen. It happens all the time in plants. This is the #1 source of new species. 2) Symbiogenesis – two entirely different organisms merge cooperatively, ie algae + fungus = lichen. Or algae + protozoan = plant cell that can do photosynthesis. This is comparable to computer chips or companies being merged together. Profoundly complex and amazing that it can work at all, but organisms do this through their innate intelligence. After either of these events, cells edit DNA to “straighten out the mess” and refine the results of this sudden leap. The Darwinists don’t want you to know about this because it’s not even slightly accidental. Creationists are in denial that this can even happen at all on a large scale. RTB would probably deny that this can explain all biodiversity but I hope someday they’ll come around. In any case, read Shapiro’s blog, or his book if you can deal with phd level biology. This is just spooky fascinating stuff. Also see http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/new-theory-of-evolution/Reply
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Edward Cannell says:September 16, 2012 at 1:54 amPerry, I did check out Shapiro and read through a few articles. I don’t need to understand more than the basic descriptions of symbiogenesis and hybridization that you provided above, but I found his articles very interesting. Simplicity suits me as I am not going to ever get into arguing the fine points with anyone. In fact, I don’t want to win any arguments. As Richard is leaving he makes a statement about winning arguments or “think that your remarks will bring people round to your way of thinking.” This has never been my intention. I am not invested in what other people want to believe, but when the conversation turns to emotional arguments “to win over” this is when I want out of the discussion. And Richard’s take on this blog’s discussion, as an argument, is a common one for people that are heavily invested in winning over the minds of others. I always thought that there is some insecurity in the need to “win” as though just holding one’s own belief was not good enough to stand on its own. I have seen some church congregations that I thought were insecure for the same reason. It is wise indeed that proof is not provided as to God’s existence or what an insufferable bunch of people we would be without the need for faith.
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Richard says:September 14, 2012 at 12:15 pmYes, Shapiro’s book is remarkable. I agree with your statement “Shapiro does not bring religion to the table, he disciplines himself to do what scientists are supposed to do: Explore processes rather than stop and invoke God.” I don’t think that trying to associate him with statements about God writing DNA coding sequences is going to help his cause any. As to Genesis 1 fitting modern cosmology – it doesn’t. It has vegetation being created before the sun, moon and stars.Reply
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Alex Rankin says:September 30, 2012 at 4:57 amI disagree fundamentally with your thinking about ideas and about the world. At the point you claim “We can apply the same inductive reasoning to the origin of information,” it becomes obvious that you intended this article as an argument for the existence of God, and your reasoning begins to suffer in your quest to draw the conclusion you want, instead of one to where the argument truly leads. First, you argue that “In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.” To describe the genetic code in those words raises immediate issues. First, DNA as immaterial makes absolutely no sense by the accepted definition of DNA; it is a series of chemical relationships (it is physical). Therefore, material. More importantly, though, is what makes a symbol. Implicit in the idea of a symbol (alternatively, I could say “an identity”), is a name. A name is implicit in an identity. To put this another way, identification is implicit in identity. From here it follows that recognition is implicit in identity. To be recognizable, a name must be absolutely recognizable, that is, it cannot change spontaneously or without mutual recognition (it must be communicable). To be recognizable, a name must be mutually recognizable (cite Wittgenstein’s No Private Language argument). It is apparent now that a name must be an expression of language. Thus, identity is lingual; symbols are language; language as you describe it must be recognizable. What we see in the genetic code is not a “language” in the sense that it must be understood, or even understandable. Whatever the “reason” or “purpose” for human language might be – there are competing arguments concerning that – it is apparent that the genetic code’s “reason” or “purpose” merely are descriptive words we use to express what it does: genes are described so that they do something, specifically in forming and determining the nature of particular living things. If I assign a name in the world (if I identify “a something” in the world with a name), that something becomes separable from everything it is not (you established this in your repeated reference to circle drawing). The first problem that arises here is that everything that is not the particular name in question must be a name itself. The fact that one name has been assigned establishes an entire set of names, of identities; this is what Saussure calls the “langue,” and it is this assertion which was the basis for structural linguistic theory: a thing is determined by all the things it is not. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the idea of the relationship between language and the world that Wittgenstein expounds shows the flaw in all your attempts at applying Gödel’s logical principles to the world. Wittgenstein essentially argues that understanding is the result of logical relationships and distinctions, and that logic is contained in language – it is inseparable from language. All things that are not contained in language are not illogical in the sense that they break some sort of logical rule, but that they simply cannot be accounted for by logic; they are senseless. Our perceptions and sensations, unframed in language (logic), cannot be understood in the same sense that language can. Although one may be able to describe sensations in language, the language in no way captures what really the sensation is. Using the word “dog” does not express an objective entity, established a priori as distinct in and from the world; the word “dog” merely creates a logical distinction that one employing the logical system (language) can recognize and understand. Not accepting this conclusion means drawing a false connection between sensation and language. Stated in the 7th complete statement of the Tractatus, sensation of the world must be relegated to the realm of the unsayable, that which cannot be understood, that which is not truly identifiable in language. Earlier in your argument you make numerous claims about the world, such as that it is finite. Your assertions about the world, in view of Wittgenstein’s argument, are founded on an improper association between sensation and the framing of sensation through language. You mistake “the world” to be something accounted for by logic. Your third key point can be easily discarded. You claim that “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings,” referencing the “code” of DNA. Do we know the origin of DNA? Is it logically deductible? Consider your consciousness. Is it limited? Yes, it has scope by definition; for one to be conscious means they are conscious of peculiarities. Consciousness implies a relationship, or at least connection between the observer and the observed, the sensor and the sensed. The alternative is consciousness without limit, it means unlimited focus. No one thing, sensation, or idea could be meditated upon, because that would be imposing a parameter over what is immediately conceived. The idea of unlimited focus is oxymoronic. Take this example. The idea of the world, universe, whatever, is limited, we agree; the word we use as this identity is understood within a closed system. It is finite. That, however, does not mean that consciousness has a limited number of possibilities within that system. Say I take a knife and press its sharp point against the tip of my index finger. I have a sense of this particularity, I am conscious of it. Now move the tip of that knife one hundredth of a millimeter to one side. In a sense this is a completely different sensation, and I am conscious of something completely different. Now I tilt the knife at a 20 degree angle while still pressing against my fingertip; again, a different sensation. Now tilt it at a 21 degree angle. Now a 22 degree angle. Now heat the temperature of the knife up 22 degrees. Now heat it an additional degree. Now heat it another degree. All these constitute different particularities in consciousness, different sensations. If there was a consciousness of unlimited scope which contained the world, which related with the world in its juxtaposition to it, it would have to account for, to contain and recognize an infinity of potentialities for sense. This requirement is impossible as it does not fit the most basic definitive aspects of consciousness. Therefore consciousness must be within a system of relation, it must be enclosed. To be conscious entails one’s cognitive limitation. This defeats your fourth emboldened point, as well as the third: even if there is a necessary explanation for DNA outside of DNA, it did not have to be “written” by an outside intelligence, by an outside recognizer. Additionally, your definition of DNA as “information” in your second point is not a proof or even an argument for DNA to be understood as a language, written and understood before humankind’s recognition and interpretation of it. You merely assume that it is language because you have assigned logical parameters to it that allow it to be identifiable. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an atheist. To say the least, I have very strong sympathies for religion and would say that I believe in God. That said, the arguments you have presented contain several poorly defined terms and demonstrate a misapplication of Gödel’s theorem to reach your ends.Reply
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Perry says:October 1, 2012 at 6:34 amInformation is immaterial in the sense that a book is not simply paper and ink but an abstract pattern. In DNA, GGG is not Glycine nor are any of the 3 Guanine molecules incorporated into the amino acid Glycine. GGG is symbolic instructions to make Glycine. The pattern in DNA is encoded into messenger RNA and decode into Amino acids. In the Claude Shannon communication model, decoding is a synonym for “understood.” This happens whether the mechanism is conscious or not and the symbolic relationship exists independently of the names we apply to it. The genetic code is most certainly linguistic. Just go to http://scholar.google.com and search “linguistics of DNA” and start reading. Dr. Sungchul Ji of Ruters identifies 10 out of 13 characteristics of human language that are found in DNA. See “Linguistics of DNA: Words, Sentences,. Grammar, Phonetics, and Semantics” by Ji. The Human Genome project and the subsequent ENCODE project are efforts to understand the language of DNA. The origin of DNA is not logically deduced. It is inferred by simple scientific logic: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed. 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. All codes that we have ever observed coming into existence, do so by the conscious free choice of intelligent agents. That is necessary just to have 1=on and 0=off. If you can find an exception to this I’ll write you a check for $10,000.00. The specification is at http://www.naturalcode.org. It sounds as though you are saying that because your senses produce different outputs when given different inputs, then an infinite conscious being is impossible. I do not follow the logic.Reply
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David H says:October 1, 2012 at 12:34 pmAlex, I will politely but firmly contest a particularly cavalier assertion regarding what you understand Perry’s series of propositions to be. Specifically, you say: “Your third key point can be easily discarded. You claim that “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings,” referencing the “code” of DNA. Do we know the origin of DNA? Is it logically deductible? ” I think I can understand the linguistic mis-reference that throws you so far off track here. Let’s background the argument semantically and experientially. Whether we play with knives on fingers or forks on tongues let us make clear a few things that can be said regarding “code”. Perry and many experts on the matter all agree that the term “code” is not a purely hypothetical terminology for a mind construct. Perry has referenced works which lay out specific properties of code. And the FACT is that humankind made up the term “code” to define a HUMAN INVENTION. It is man who devised code on Earth — Earth and Man being our most relevant discussion locus. CODE. What it means, how it works, how it can be put to work to express, interpret, record, translate concepts, create, even. It has basic properties, rules, syntax, or it is something else. It is not CODE. However, for the FIRST TIME in Historical Science we have discovered a CODE outside of our human experience, a legitimate CODE as a system we call DNA. We know of a scientific surety, not hypothetically, that no human being who has ever lived on Earth devised, strategized, imagined, and created this code — DNA– and installed it into all living organisms. So when Perry uses this phrase — “All codes we know the origin of are designed” the chief POINT of this phrase is NOT “..we know the origin of ..”! In effect, this stipulation is SUPERFLUOUS. The truth of this statement is scientific and accurate and logical if it simply states: All codes are designed. All codes are designed. All codes are designed. Sufficient and accurate and complete. Take this test of your imagination. Pretend to wake up alive in 1939. Scientists are already fooling around with imagining a way to extract the enormous potential power locked up in atoms. Scientists are exploring cosmic rays, probing the cosmos, developing rockets, have already invented both television broadcasting and television receiving technologies, etc, etc. DNA had been investigated two years earlier in 1937 when William Astbury had produced the first x-ray diffraction patterns that showed DNA had a regular structure. And that is all scientists knew. Talk of codons and “genetic code” did not join the discussion or frame the scientific discussion until decades later. So, if in 1939 a scientist had presented a paper on code theory he or she would have been perfectly justified to state the obvious — All codes are designed. Reaction might even have been a confused retort: Right, Chap, quite correct, but what’s the point? You might as well say “All stars are self-luminous celestial bodies”. Tell us something we DON’T know! The POINT, Alex, is not this: “that we know the origin of” even though it seems somehow prudent or necessary to say so. We do NOT know the origin of any object we see that fulfills the full definition of STARS: A self-luminous celestial body consisting of a mass of gas held together by its own gravity in which the energy generated by nuclear reactions in the interior is balanced by the outflow of energy to the surface, and the inward-directed gravitational forces are balanced by the outward-directed gas and radiation pressures. We have theories on stars and their origins, we have speculations. But scientists have many valid discussions that can center around “Stars” without having to validate every discussion with “…that we know the origin of ..” We know what STARS ARE in the most important points. Just as in 1939, or 1956, or even 2012 this is true: All codes are designed. Just that simple. Inescapable conclusion. CODE has “design” EMBEDDED into its very meaning as a scientific definition. Code has too many improbably properties that REQUIRE INTENTION, a very highly focused INTENTION to fulfill a PURPOSE. Otherwise, you must make up a new definition for Code. What you and scientists are missing is that you can’t change the rules, the inferences, the logical deductions and inductions for DNA. Particularly when you see that DNA is like Code from the Far Distant Future. DNA is SUPER CODE times many exponents. You plainly do not see what CODE IS when you so ludicrously dismiss the MOST IMPORTANT POINT ABOUT DNA. You think you have swiftly defeated logic with this: “Do we know the origin of DNA? Is it logically deductible? ” Alex, you don’t even HAVE to KNOW the ORIGIN! DNA is the first Code in human discovery that surpasses all the codes we know, and we know all of them because human beings invented them. DNA is the FIRST CODE we DISCOVERED, sitting all by itself free of human association except that we share it or we do not think or exist. It is an inescapable convenience that we can be SURE that human beings had to think, devise, experiment, build on the shoulders of others, to create and use Code. Until the discovery of the Code in DNA it would not have been a subject of serious debate to say, to assert with confidence — All codes are designed. Ergo: Design is in all codes. The highest, richest, most complex example of coding in the Universe has thrown people for a loop. EVEN IF you do not believe in God. EVEN IF you are sure there has never been any other intelligence in the Universe but our own and ten billion other alien species it is NOT LOGICAL or Consistent with the most unjudgmental principles of great science to EXEMPT DNA as existing without Design.Reply
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Edward Cannell says:October 5, 2012 at 1:10 pmIn Lynne Mctaggarts Blog article she opens with this: More than 50 years before Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck wrote Les Recherches sur L’Organisation des Corps Vivants, the first book to set out a coherent and well-developed theory of evolution. Where Lamarck differed from Darwin was in his belief that the environment, rather than genetic coding, was responsible for changes in animals, and that these changes could be inherited. Read the full article: http://community.wddty.com/blogs/lynnemctaggart/archive/2009/05/05/Beyond-the-blueprint.aspx ———————————————— She goes on to reveal how lab experiments have shown (mice, of course) that a positive and healthy environment can build protein pathways to restore the functions of blocked genes (deliberately blocked) and that the results of (in this experiment) restored MEMORY and the ABILITY to LEARN are even passed down to further generations. When we think of a healthy environment we muct also think of all other life forms (and their DNA) that contribute to the environment, but the ability of the environment to restore health that goes beyond the limitations of DNA might suggest that a lonely species may not be able to survive on its own — such as the first species to appear on earth, as rigid evolution theory would have it. But with greater certainty we could say that in a healthy environment LIFE CARES ABOUT LIFE.Reply
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Chris Sarsons says:November 13, 2012 at 4:18 pmGreat debate raging here with intelligent, respectful arguments coming from both (or rather all) sides. I am an atheist but I have to say Perry’s article is interesting, appealing and well written. Regardless of the outcome of the debate raging about whether or not DNA is designed by a conscious being, there is still a giant leap in inductive reasoning to account for. “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.” As a professional scientist I can tell you that a statement like that would get any publication thrown out during the review process. You are making the huge and completely unjustified assumption that since all known codes are designed by conscious beings (namely humans) that all codes must be designed by conscious beings. This was were you lost me during the article and I would recommend you fill in a bit of reasoning here to strengthen your argument. While I recognize the inductive reasoning is used everyday in scientific fields everywhere, the leaps are never that big and unsubstantiated.Reply
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Perry says:November 13, 2012 at 4:59 pmChris, Great question. I have discussed this in great detail with many people. You can read more and follow this discussion to your heart’s content at http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/prove-god-exists/ and related links. I have written a rigorous specification for a naturally occurring code at http://www.naturalcode.org. If anyone can generate a code without designing one, I will write them a check for $10,000.00. The application process is explained on the website. Yes, I understand such a statement would be thrown out of most scientific journals, but that would not be because it is illogical or unsupported by inferential data. It would only be for its political incorrectness. All we need to do is apply the same standards of logic that we apply in forensics or in the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, and one would naturally conclude that the genetic code is a product of deliberate choices. Some people have been very taken aback by this statement, but I encourage you to read as much of the relevant literature as necessary, and see if you do not reach the conclusion that I have been accurate in the use of these facts. PerryReply
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Chris Sarsons says:November 14, 2012 at 11:42 amPerry, Thank you for the rapid reply. Your arguments against natural codes are interesting and well thought out but I am not entirely convinced. It seems to me that you have manipulated (I assumed unintentionally) the definitions of some key words in order to incorrectly prove your point. Let me start by reassuring you that your $10 000 is safe. You have created an unsolvable problem. Your definition of information: ““Information” is defined as digital communication between an encoder and a decoder, using agreed upon symbols” This definition specifically prohibits the possibility of natural code. The phrase “agreed upon symbols” not only implies a designer it necessitates one. However information does not require agreed upon symbols at all. If I made up a bunch of symbols and used it to create a document outlining my plans to assassinate the president (let me be clear this is a hypothetical situation and I have absolutely no plans to assassinate the president), it would take the secret service all of 5 minutes to break my code and come arrest me. Therefore I implore you to change your definitions or to take down your contest. Offering a reward for scientific advancement is used effectively in many cases (X-prizes for instance), but your contest in its current state appears to be a cheap trick to bolster your argument. Please do not misunderstand me,I believe you are an honest and intelligent man and this is simply an honest oversight and not purposeful manipulation. I’m not saying it is a cheap trick, just that it looks like one. The problem with arguing that political correctness in scientific journals prevents certain articles from getting published is that journals tend to be greedy. They are always searching for the highest impact publications. Nothing is higher impact than the nature of reality itself. In my opinion you have not successfully shown that all information necessitates a designer. You have very effectively shown that you can write a logically consistent argument which shows your very limited definitions of information and codes require a designer. You can’t prove something by manipulating definitions to support your predetermined conclusions. Moss grows thicker on the north side of a tree in the northern hemisphere due to increased water content on the side which receives less sunlight. If we assign a 1 to moss and 0 to bark of a naked tree we can observe all sides of the tree and determine which direction in north. The sun and the earth are the encoders, neither of which are conscious. You argue that DNA may have originated from some designer so the moss and the tree can not be considered natural encoders, but in this case they are the transmission medium not the encoders so that doesn’t matter. I walked into the forest not knowing which way was north. I walked out knowing which way is north. By any logical definition information has been transferred. I am conscious but the encoder is not. The symbols were not agreed upon between the sun and I but there is absolutely no reason they need to be. This is a natural code. A very simple code, but a code none the less. I will not be submitting my moss thought experiment to your contest because it does not meet your impossible criteria. Respectfully, ChrisReply
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Perry says:November 14, 2012 at 1:40 pmChris, My definition of information comes from Claude Shannon’s definition of a communication system (1948). No communication is possible unless there is agreement on both sides first. Especially if there’s no conscious intelligent agent like a human who can adapt to a situation. This isn’t a trick setup; this is just the most fundamental requirement for information to be transferred from point A to point B. If you look at what happens in DNA transcription and translation, and begin to hypothesize any stepwise way by which this might have emerged from something simpler, you will run up against the same brick wall. This is not a trivial problem. But it is almost always glossed over in the literature. Rare is an origin of life book that squarely addresses this question. The question could be stated like this: The ribosome reads the code, but the code contains instructions to build a ribosome in the first place. How can you have one without the other? Chicken and egg problem. This is to say nothing of the fact that so far as we know, nothing less than an entire cell can do this. It’s not even enough to just have a strand of DNA and a ribosome. It may appear as though I contrived this in order to win an argument; I did not. The real problem is that there is, so far as I can possibly tell, a basic ontological difference between communication and a purely material processes. In your moss example, it is only possible for the moss on the one side of the tree to be information after a conscious being has assigned meaning to the situation. I can only encourage you to examine this more carefully. I submit to you that I am neither overlooking anything nor being dishonest. Rather, I am likely the first person who has pointed out to you the true nature and magnitude of this problem.Reply
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Chris Sarsons says:November 14, 2012 at 4:35 pmPerry, I believe you are prematurely dismissing my moss example. You state in your article: “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings” The conscious human did not design the moss code. He just interpreted it. You are not allowing for the existence of information prior to decoding. The same way you would be crazy to believe an ordered string string of ones and zeros contains no information until it is decoded by your computer. In the moss case the ones and zeros are written by the sun and decoded by the humans. It doesn’t matter who or what interprets the information. The information exists, stored in the moss and bark, waiting to be decoded. The relative positions and motions of the sun and the earth determine create a code which once interpreted allows an observer to orient themselves on the earth. The observation reduces the overall entropy (thermodynamic entropy) of the system information is transferred from the moss to the observer. You argue that the code was designed by the human observer, but without prior knowledge of their orientation on the earth this is impossible. Information has to come from somewhere. The sun and the earth conspire (forgive the anthropomorphism) to store this information in the medium of moss and bark. This is a code and humans didn’t put it there. By the way your ribosome problem proves nothing. It is akin to the irreducible complexity argument put forth by creationists who argue against evolution by means of natural selection. Just because there is not YET (and yet is the key word here) a good enough understanding of biochemistry to describe a path of spontaneous organization of complex biological molecules does not mean god did it. That is a lazy and ignorant approach. No physical laws prevent such organization or even make it unrealistic. On a side note the chicken and egg problem is only a problem when you think about how to define the chicken and the egg. Lets broaden the problem to what came first: the egg, or the egg laying organism. Surely egg laying species evolved much earlier than the modern chicken. So lets go back to the very first egg laying species. Most likely we have to go all the way back to the origins of sexual reproduction. Since we know that cellular division of single cellular organisms predates sexual reproduction then we know that at some point an organism formed by meiosis must have gained the ability to reproduce sexually. The first sexual encounter would have required donated genetic material from each participating organism (the first egg if you will). Hence its quite easy to show the chicken must have first. Here I have made several assumptions but no matter where you draw the line of what constitutes an egg there was always an organism first which produced that egg and was itself produced by some other mechanism. Thus you must always conclude the chicken (or egg laying organism) came first). If we instead change to definition of what a chicken is to only include the modern chicken and not all egg laying organisms, we can say that the modern chicken certainly evolved from another egg laying bird species. Therefore no matter where we draw the line of what constitutes a chicken an egg laying bird came before the chicken. Therefore the egg must always come first. The reason I wanted to go into detail with the chicken and the egg is that its a good analogy for the DNA, RNA, ribosome, and protein problem. Early ribosome precursors were not ribosomes just as an early multi cellular organism is not a chicken. Early RNA precursors were not RNA just as whatever bird lay the first chicken egg was not a chicken. The cellular system did not always function in the exact manner it does now. Simpler versions could easily have existed (and almost surely did) prior to the development of the complex systems we see today. The reason the self organization of complex cellular systems is so often glossed over has nothing to do with people not recognizing the complexity of the problem but rather with people not willing to speculate mechanisms without any form of evidence (fortunately most scientists are not satisfied with “god did it”). Each time new information emerges in the field of biochemistry a brick is removed from your wall. It is only a matter of time before your wall ceases to exist all together and a cohesive explanation for the stepwise development of cells is discovered. I really appreciate the your efforts both in the article and in your commitment to giving personal replies to all those who ask questions of you. I truly believe you are doing an amazing thing here by providing a forum for intelligent debate. Thank you, Chris
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Perry says:November 14, 2012 at 7:06 pmChris, I agree, information is arguably available to be interpreted from moss or sunlight or whatever the input is. But no communication has occurred in a Claude Shannon sense until an intelligent agent has first assigned meaning to it. Yes, an intelligent agent can measure something and report the measurement. But there’s no communication taking place until that happens. Take the human being out of the picture, and outside of living things there is no system anywhere that we know of that is isomorophic with Shannon’s communication system. The thing about Shannon’s system is it always involves choices: 1=on, 0=off. 1000001 = a, 1000010 = b. Information is measured in bits. Bits are choices. Those choices are freely made. You object to my Ribosome argument not with any kind of evidence, but with a philosophical commitment that science will someday answer the question. You may be right and I 100% respect that. But for science to answer the question, a mechanism that makes choices such as 1=on, 0=off or GGG = Glycine, AAA = Lycine will have to be discovered in nature. And that will not be a law of physics as we currently know such laws, because the laws of physics are deterministic. Information communicates freely chosen options out of a range of possibilities. (Notice that in DNA transcription there is no direct physical connection between the GGG and the Glycine. The GGG gets zipped back into the strand of DNA where it was in the first place. It’s symbolic instructions to make Glycine.) No physical laws prevent such organization, and I never said they did. But just because laws don’t prevent you from building a computer doesn’t mean they build a computer by themselves. No one in history has ever shown how physical laws generate digital code. Nothing in your explanation answers this question either. If anything, your answer avoids the question. Descriptions early RNA precursors are nothing more than just-so stories about how this might have happened. No one has ever made a self-replicating molecule which replicates by reading a series of symbols. Read “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” by Yockey for an exquisitely clear, detailed explanation of this. Biologist and complexity theorist Stuart Kauffman summed it up well: “Anyone who tells you that he or she knows how life started on the earth some 3.45 billion years ago is a fool or a knave.” I fully understand, “God did it” is considered by some to be a lazy cop-out. However as I’ve shown in the Godel article, there has to be something outside the largest circle, something indivisible which is not a system. And even if we 100% embrace methodological naturalism and forbid all possibility that any sort of God would ever intervene in the universe, we’re still left with the proven fact that no system can explain itself. We’re also left with the fact that science itself originated with the idea that God made a universe according to laws which did not require a creator’s constant intervention. There’s a reason why science came from theology.
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Chris Sarsons says:November 14, 2012 at 10:42 pmPerry, I admit it may be possible that some of my previous arguments have stemmed from a misunderstanding of the subtle differences between information, codes and communication. I will hold off on any further comments along these lines until I have had the chance to read “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” as you suggested. I hope you understand (and I believe you do) that I never tried to explain the origin of life on earth. I agree with you completely that we do not yet have a complete theory on how life originated. I was merely trying to explain that early cell precursors would not need to resemble modern cells either in appearance nor function. While your argument for the necessity of an uncaused cause in the Godel article is well reasoned and well articulated I am not completely convince of its accuracy. However as this has been discussed excessively in previous comments I will not dive into that now and instead focus on your most recent reply. Lets assume there is something outside of the circle. I think it is a bit of a leap to assume it is responsible for the production of genetic code. How would such being interact with what is in the circle? By its very definition you have ruled out all possible matter and energy interactions. What we are left with is a impotent being (I mean this in the strict definition of lacking power, not as a petty cheap shot at god’s manhood) who not only lacks the power to interact with the universe but cannot even observe the universe as the transfer of information requires a medium (ie. matter or energy of some kind). Allowing this creator to intervene and put in place the codes which eventually developed into life requires a completely new branch of physics to be developed which allows something which is non-matter and non-energy to interact with matter and/or energy. ChrisReply
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Perry says:November 16, 2012 at 7:06 amChris, Welcome to the discipline of metaphysics, and the questions that theologians have written tomes about for thousands of years. Can a boundless immaterial being, who is the very cause of the universe, also interact with it? Is it really logical to assume that a boundless immaterial willful being who created the universe, is unable to affect it after it has come into existence? Is it logical to assume that such a being is impotent? Wouldn’t the default assumption be that this being can do whatever that being wants to do? Consider the opening statements of the book of John in the New Testament: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.Reply
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Udaybhanu Chitrakar says:November 23, 2012 at 2:18 pmHere is a quote of Sri Ramakrishna (An Indian mystic of Nineteenth century): “What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.” For clarification, Brahman is the Supreme Being (like God, Allah, Jehova) as per Hinduism. First, I will explain as to why no one has ever been able to say what Brahman is. Then I will show that Godel’s incompleteness theorem has also wanted to say the same thing in mathematical terms only. Can there be any container in the universe that can contain within it anything that has a size bigger than the universe itself? At most its capacity may be so large that it can contain the entire universe within itself. But that is the maximum limit. And when it will reach that limit, then and there its full capacity will be exhausted, and it will have no more extra capacity left to itself that will be needed to express what is there within it. That is why mystics’ oneness with God can never be properly expressed in words. And that is why no one will ever be able to say what God is. The mystic may be one with God, but he is not bigger in capacity than God, and so, when he will contain God within him, all his capacity will be exhausted, and he will have no more extra capacity to describe what he contains within him. To describe God, he will have to be God plus. But the creature cannot be greater than the creator. It can even be doubted as to whether God Himself does understand Him fully. God will have to treat Himself as an object when He Himself will try to understand Him. If objective God = subjective God, then subjective God will never fully understand objective God for the same reason as described above. In order that subjective God can fully understand objective God, objective God will always have to be less than subjective God. But how can the same God be less in one case and more in the other case? So God Himself will never understand Him fully, and there will always be some mystery surrounding Him that will forever remain inexplicable. It is due to this very reason that if the following question is put to God: Will You please try to explain to us who You are, God will have nothing more to say than this: I am that I am. Now let us see what Godel has tried to say in his incompleteness theorem. Nothing inside the circle can explain fully everything that is there within the circle. If we now equate this circle with the universe, then it becomes clear as to why being placed within the universe it is not possible for us to explain fully the universe, because we can in no way be bigger or larger than the universe.Reply
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joe w says:November 30, 2012 at 5:38 amI really hope you post this. Notice the real name. There seems to be somewhat of a misunderstanding and/or simplification of Godel’s Theorems in this discussion. I shall try to explain them more thoroughly using non-technical terms or I should say, without using the language (or code) of symbolic logic (which I don’t know how to reproduce on my keyboard anyway). It may still seem complicated, but that is the nature of the theorems. —– Here we go. I must first say that you are showing only one theorem here at top right and there are actually two, and you seem to meld them together into one, which is somewhat misleading. And also makes it incorrect. That is not what Godel’s Theorems prove. 1. Godel’s First Incompleteness Theorem proves that a number theory will contain statements that are true but cannot be proven within that theory. 2. Godel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem proves that a number theory that contains within that theory a statement that it is consistent must be inconsistent. a. Both theorems require that the number theories be ‘manageable’ in that they must have a finite number of axioms. b. Both theorems require that the number theories are formulated in the language of first-order arithmetic (an axiomatic system that contains the natural number theory, or at least a sufficient amount of it, within it and where the functions generated by the axioms generally produce sets, as opposed to second- or higher-order arithmetic, which can form sets of sets and supersets,etc.) c. The Second Theorem also requires (as does a ‘stronger’ version of the first) provability conditions, sometimes called decidability, or syntactic forms in it’s axioms. Meaning that addition, multiplication and a few more esoteric operations must be able to be ‘constructed’ from the original axioms. Note that subtraction, division, exponents, etc. do not necessarily need to be able to be ‘constructed’. —– ‘a.’,’b.’ and ‘c.’ above are what you are referring to when YOU state the theorem(s) at the top right of this page and YOU say “for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory”. Note, and this is a BIG note, that the first theorem requires constistency ONLY in the sense that IT’S AXIOMS CANNOT PRODUCE ANY CONTRADICTIONS (which is the DEFINITION OF CONSISTENT as regards these theorems) and the second theorem’s PURPOSE is to prove that a number theory following ‘c.’ above CANNOT be consistent. You CANNOT create a number theory that is consistent if you include ‘c.’. That is the whole point of the second theorem! The COMPLETENESS (there are more than one kind) these theorems refer to means that the number theories themselves MUST BE ABLE TO EITHER PROVE OR DISPROVE ANY STATEMENT THAT FOLLOWS FROM THEIR AXIOMS. So ‘1.’ which must include ‘a.’ and ‘b.’ shows that any number theory can’t be COMPLETE (it cannot prove or disprove all of it’s statements). And ‘2.’ which must include ‘a.’, ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ shows that a number theory can’t be CONSISTENT (it will produce a contradiction). Any number theory that follows ‘a.’,’b.’ and ‘c.’ is BOTH inconsistent and incomplete, not one or the other, which you keep saying can be true. The only way that can be true is not to use ‘2.’ and use only the ‘weak’ version of ‘1.’ which does not include ‘c.’ and does not prove anything about consistency at all, only completeness. So your theorem at top right is not sufficient to disallow both consistency and completeness. Only with both together will that be true. So if you want to include inconsistency AND incompleteness, you can, but you must either have BOTH or only incompleteness, whereby you would be ignoring the second theorem altogether and saying nothing at all about inconsistency. —– Not directly part of the theorems, but following from them, is the fact that you can introduce more axioms into the number theories to ‘fix’ the contradictions or to prove a before unprovable statement, but those axioms will only lead to new contradictions and new unprovable statements WITHIN THE NEW THEORY, which will then be susceptible to the theorems itself. In no way shape or form did Godel, as you say, “prove that any statement requires an external observer.” Nor did he in any way shape or form state, as you say in your analogy, that “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle – something you have to assume but cannot prove”. By your “circle” you are referring to the ‘follow up’ to the theorems where new axioms must be introduced or “referred to” from “outside” to “explain” them. From your above statement, what you have to add is “something you have to assume but cannot prove”. But what you have to add are axioms. They are the basis of logical statements, some of which statements will not be provable according to Godel’s first theorem. But Godel says nothing about the axioms themselves being provable. The axioms only have to follow ‘a.’, ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ above and if they don’t it is not a number theory that Godel’s theorems apply to anyway. —– That is all for now about the Theorems themselves. Now I want to talk about your two syllogisms, or the two I can remember if there were more. 1. The pattern in DNA is a code 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. I will for the sake of argument agree with your first two premises (though I don’t actually) and deal with just the logic itself. Your conclusion does not follow logically from your premises. As a matter of fact, no conclusion can be reached from those two premises. Your syllogism is set up in the form AIA which is an invalid form. Broken down, and put more formally it reads: 1. The pattern in DNA has a code. 2. Some codes are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. Which doesn’t follow or make sense. You put the qualifying phrase “all codes we know the origin of”, which in logical terms means “some codes”. Also your first premise is referring to the pattern in DNA not DNA itself. Which even if this did make logical sense would mean that the pattern is designed, not the DNA. If instead your syllogism read: 1. DNA is a code. 2. All codes are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. That would be in the valid form AAA and would be logical. But it would also assert as a premise that all codes are designed, which is what you are in actuality trying to conclude. Another valid AAA form would be: 1. All codes are designed. 2. DNA is a code. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. But again you would be asserting as a premise that all codes are designed. You will say that you are only inferring the conclusion, but that is nonmonotonic logic in this case. You cannot reach that conclusion based on the premises you put forth for they are insufficient. Your conclusion may or may not be true. And is certainly not 100% true, as you say, based on the premises given. —– As far as your premises go, ‘1. DNA is a code’ is debatable, but using your definition of “encoder, code, decoder” or however it was you put it exactly, I will let that one slide. But ‘2. All codes we know the origin of are designed’ is a bit trickier. You have put forth two arguments for this, or should I say challenges. You refuse to prove it yourself, but insist on someone giving you proof of the obverse, that ‘no codes we know the origin of are not designed’. Actually only one of your challenges is the obverse and there are countless examples of it everywhere. Any form of communication has an encoder a code and a decoder. Dogs barking, birds singing, dolphins doing whatever they do, a lion marking it’s territory. Plants even send messages to various birds and insects and each other by releasing certain chemicals. If that doesn’t work for you there is also neural coding in the human brain and other animals. Before you say “but those are all creatures constructed by the rules of DNA”, what you wanted was an example of a code that wasn’t made by a human and we certainly didn’t make our own brain or teach birds how to sing. The other challenge you put forth was to name a code that existed before DNA and I can’t do that because I don’t know of any. But that is not even in the most optimistic way proof that there wasn’t one. —– Your second syllogism reads: 1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system 3. Therefore the universe is incomplete This one is easy. Your first premise is completely untrue. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS POST!! It essentially deflates the entire concept of this webpage in one fell swoop. Godel’s Theorem does not state that or even claim to state that. It states that CERTAIN logical systems can be proven to be incomplete as long as they follow the ‘a.’, ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ parameters set out above. In fact, one example is that the CONSISTENCY and COMPLETENESS of arithmetic can be PROVED if transfinite induction is used as the axiomatic language instead of first-order arithmetic as is required in ‘b.’. Transfinite induction involves aleph, the symbol that looks like a fancy ‘N’ which denotes a form of infinity, and set theory and is far too complicated for me to get into here. But the important thing is that it is certainly non-trivial (which term you are not using properly here), it is extremely complicated and describes all of arithmetic. Which of course means it is a computational system and because it is not first-order arithmetic Godel’s theorems do not apply to it in any way and it can be PROVEN to be both CONSISTENT and COMPLETE. This completely undermines your whole purpose. Draw a “circle” around that if you want. It doesn’t need any help from “outside”. —– Even though your first premise is as far from true as can be and your syllogism is already proven false, I will move on to your second premise. The universe is simply not a computational system, non-trivial or otherwise. You have tried to refute this before, unsuccessfully in my opinion. The “universe” does not conform to any of the criteria set out by Godel’s Theorem. First and most obviously, the universe is not a number theory, which is all that Godel’s theorem applies to in any way. Especially since you don’t think that all the integers are contained in the universe, but that is beside the point. (Sidenote: You wrote – “The set of all integers is infinitely large. But is it boundless? No. If you lined them up East to West, they would occupy no space going north to south.” That is absurd on the face of it. How do you line up integers east to west? Do you pick them up and set them there? They are not little plastic numbers or something. And if you could do that at all, why couldn’t you lay them out over an area like a sheet or form them into a cube and since they are infinite you could fill the entire universe with integers! And have some left over to throw out of the ‘circle’ if you wanted.) Anyway. From ‘a.’ – Does the universe have a finite number of axioms? Yes, but only because it has NO axioms, because it is not a number theory or any other kind of theory. The universe is not a theory. From ‘b.’ – Is the universe formulated in the language of first-order arithmetic? Certainly not. It is not formulated in ANY axiomatic language, but if it somehow were even you would have to admit that it would as least require something beyond first-order arithmetic to explain it. It certainly has supersets and set of sets, etc. that are not allowed in Godel’s Theorem. From ‘c.’ – Does it have syntactic forms in it’s axioms, from which addition, multiplication, etc. can be constructed? Again, it has NO axioms. How would you contsruct muliplication from the universe itself? The concept makes no sense. Godel’s Theorems DO NOT and CANNOT apply to anything other than a number theory. Not the universe, not a Universal Turing Machine. Only a number theory. —– By the way, the ‘Church-Turing Thesis’ posits that ‘a function is algorithmically computable if and only if it is computable by a Turing machine.’ That statement has not been proven true or false. That is a completely different statement than your “the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness.” The fact that a Turing Machine can do arithmetic and do it correctly is not the thesis. It can and does. I’m using one right now and so are you. The unproven thesis is whether or not a function is effectively calculable if its values can be found by some purely mechanical process such as a Turing Machine. ‘Can a human compute a function that a Turing Machine can’t?’ That is what is unproven and again that has absolutely nothing to do with Godel’s Theorems, which can’t prove incompleteness in a machine anyhow. See the arguments above for the universe and replace the word ‘universe’ with ‘Turing Machine’. I have much more to say if you want, but this is enough for now. Please post this.Reply
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Perry says:November 30, 2012 at 6:39 pmJoe, First let’s get the easy stuff out of the way. If someone doesn’t think DNA is a code then they don’t understand codes or genetics. Dog barks, bee waggles etc don’t count as evidence of codes occurring without design since all are derivatives of DNA and we don’t know the origin of life. In order to prove codes don’t need to be designed someone would have to demonstrate a code coming into existence from non-living things. Since a code only exists in the context of an encoder and decoder, one must demonstrate the origin of all three, a complete communication system. I’ve written a spec for this at http://www.naturalcode.org and offer a $10,000 prize for the first submission that meets the spec. The burden of proof is not on me to show that codes don’t have to be designed, it’s on those who make the claim that codes don’t have to be designed. Your revised syllogism is misleading. Here’s a correct statement of it: 1. The pattern in DNA has a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. Based on the premises given, we have 100% inference to design and 0% inference to any other explanation. Now to universes and the church-turing thesis: Let’s replace “universe” with “turing machine” as you suggested. I quote you in bold, having made the replacements: The turing machine is simply not a computational system, non-trivial or otherwise. This is obviously false. You have tried to refute this before, unsuccessfully in my opinion. The “turing machine” does not conform to any of the criteria set out by Godel’s Theorem. First and most obviously, the turing machine is not a number theory, which is all that Godel’s theorem applies to in any way. Especially since you don’t think that all the integers are contained in the turing machine, but that is beside the point. A turing machine can contain as many integers as you want. From ‘a.’ – Does the turing machine have a finite number of axioms? Yes, but only because it has NO axioms, because it is not a number theory or any other kind of theory. The turing machine is not a theory. I’ll ask you: Would you try to suggest that mathematics has axioms but a computer program or language doesn’t? From ‘b.’ – Is the turing machine formulated in the language of first-order arithmetic? Certainly not. It is not formulated in ANY axiomatic language, yes it most certainly is. but if it somehow were even you would have to admit that it would as least require something beyond first-order arithmetic to explain it. It certainly has supersets and set of sets, etc. that are not allowed in Godel’s Theorem. If a turing machine performs 100% binary logical computations, does it require more than first order arithmetic to explain its operation? From ‘c.’ – Does it have syntactic forms in it’s axioms, from which addition, multiplication, etc. can be constructed? Again, it has NO axioms. How would you contsruct muliplication from the turing machine itself? The concept makes no sense. Can you use a computer to do multiplication? Godel’s Theorems DO NOT and CANNOT apply to anything other than a number theory. Not the turing machine, not a Universal Turing Machine. Only a number theory. Addition, subtraction, multiplication and integration apply to numbers and computers – it makes no difference which. The laws of logic in general apply to numbers and computers. Are you suggesting that Gödel’s theorems somehow are an exception? Does almost everything in math apply to physical objects except incompleteness? Why would this be so? Is it not true that the very calculations that Gödel used to formulate his proof can be carried out on a… computer? The only further step we need to take now is establish similarity between the universe and a turing machine. I obviously cannot PROVE that the universe is turing equivalent, but you will certainly find many suggestions that this may be so in the literature. But more importantly, the laws of physics and the entire conception of science for all practical purposes do assume this is true, because science assumes that the universe obeys mathematical laws and that our models and computations can in theory accurately describe the universe. You are free to reject this, but if you do, you reject the entire philosophical premise of science itself. Now to Gödel’s first and second theorems. Please forgive me if I am misunderstanding your first salvo, I am open to correction here. But I believe what you are saying is summed up in your statement: So if you want to include inconsistency AND incompleteness, you can, but you must either have BOTH or only incompleteness, whereby you would be ignoring the second theorem altogether and saying nothing at all about inconsistency. Gödel says that a system can be consistent or it can be complete, but it cannot be both. If you have a set of axioms X, which you cannot prove, you can add more axioms Y externally to prove the consistency of X, but then you have simply moved your uncertainty from X to Y because now you have to assume the truth of Y but you still cannot prove the truth of Y. Why can’t a formal system containing arithmetic prove its own consistency? One reason a system cannot prove its own axioms is in the very definition of the word “axiom”. If some particular statement is undecidable within a given formal system, it may be incorporated in another formal system as an axiom or be derived from the addition of other axioms. And “it is impossible to use the axiomatic method to construct a formal system for any branch of mathematics containing arithmetic that will entail all of its truths.” [REF http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1519018/incompleteness-theorem#ref1107614Reply
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joe w says:December 1, 2012 at 7:34 amHello again. You say “The burden of proof is not on me to show that codes don’t have to be designed, it’s on those who make the claim that codes don’t have to be designed.” That is not true. This is YOUR page, with YOUR proof (or inference or whatever you want to call it) of God, requiring that codes are always designed, therefore the burden of proof is on YOU. —– Your revised syllogism: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. Your syllogism is still set up in the form AIA which is an invalid form. You still put the qualifying phrase “all codes that don’t derive directly from living things”, which in logical terms means “some codes”. Your first two premises still don’t have any logical conclusion. That is partly because of the fact that your middle term is actually two different terms. middle term 1: code (one specific code) middle term 2: code that doesn’t derive directly from living things (a set of codes that may or may not include the first code) Not to mention that your second premise is unproven and is what you are ultimately trying to prove. Which I think is your main problem in attempting to formulate this syllogism correctly. Put either one of those two middle terms into your syllogism and it works fine logically. But you can’t put both. That is how a syllogism works. Technically your major term is also two different terms. major term 1: the pattern in DNA major term 2: DNA For example, the pattern in a carpet is not the same as a carpet. This whole syllogism is faulty logic. — Let’s rewrite your syllogism a little. Let’s replace all your terms with some other term. From this: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. To this: 1. The concept of God is an idea. 2. All ideas that don’t derive directly from living things are nonexistent. 3. Therefore, God is nonexistent. You don’t agree with that logic though do you? No you don’t and you shouldn’t because the logic is flawed. The premises are true. The conclusion should be true, but it isn’t according to you. Why not? It is in the exact same form and wording as yours, only your terms have been replaced with other terms (I could use other terms and it would still be untrue, Iused ‘God’ to get your attention). It is not logically true because the premises do not lead to that conclusion. Do you see? It has two middle terms. middle term 1: idea middle term 2: ideas that don’t derive directly from living things and two major terms. major term 1: the concept of God major term 2: God If my revised syllogism had only one middle term and one major term it would read like this: 1. God is an idea. 2. All ideas are nonexistent. 3. Therefore, God is nonexistent. Where the structure is logically correct, but the second premise (and possibly the first) is not true. So the conclusion can’t be true. Similarly with your syllogism. — You also gave this as an alternative: 1) The pattern in DNA is a code 2) All codes we know the origin of come from intelligence 3) The only source of intelligence we know is human 4) Humans did not exist when DNA was first formed 5) Therefore the source of DNA is non-human intelligence This polysyllogism is not correct either, assuming all the premises to be true. The conclusion does not follow from the premises given. The correct conclusion logically would be: 5. DNA is of unknown origin. Which may or may not be non-human intelligence. There is no way to tell this from your premises. Now let’s do the same thing with this polysyllogism as before and replace some of the terms with other terms in the exact same form and wording as yours. 1) The concept of God is an idea 2) All ideas we know the origin of come from intelligence 3) The only source of intelligence we know is human 4) Humans did not exist when God was first formed 5) Therefore the source of God is non-human intelligence You certainly don’t agree with that either, do you? I bet you don’t. The correct logical conclusion is: 5. God is of unknown origin. — I don’t know if you just don’t understand logic or if you are doing these things on purpose. I hope it is the former. I would hate to think you are purposely misleading people. Please keep in mind that I am not debating anything about God or DNA, only pointing out the flaws in your logical arguments. These syllogisms could be about anything at all or completely abstract. It doesn’t matter. They still are not correct. —– With regard to your other syllogism, I am not disputing the logic of it, only the truth of your premises. You did not refute my comments on the first premise or any of my ‘universe’ arguments from the second premise which is the whole basis of your syllogism. Instead you decided to refute my replacement of ‘universe’ with ‘turing machine’. Which wasn’t completely correct, I admit. I just didn’t want to go through and rewrite everything all over again, including only ‘turing machine’. But I will play along. — “‘The turing machine is simply not a computational system, non-trivial or otherwise.’ This is obviously false.” You are right. — “A turing machine can contain as many integers as you want.” This is semi-true. First we need to clarify what a Turing machine is. From wikipedia – ‘The Turing machine is not intended as practical computing technology, but rather as a hypothetical device representing a computing machine.’ Also a Turing machine is NOT the same as the set of instructions you give it. A Turing Machine is infinite and cannot be physically created. But you in the upper right state “a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can” and “Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic.” when you are talking about the Church-Turing Thesis, and you are not describing a Turing Machine, but only a real, physical computing machine. From wikipedia – ‘An integer is often a primitive data type in computer languages. However, integer data types can only represent a subset of all integers, since practical computers are of finite capacity.’ So, a true Turing machine if given the correct instructions can calculate all integers, but the physical manifestation of one, (which is what you are talking about) can’t. Even so, that doesn’t mean that the Turing machine contains all the integers. Only that it can produce them according to the instructions it was given. By the way,the Church-Turing Thesis (which as I pointed out in my last post, you stated incorrectly) only applies to Turing Machines (the infinite kind), not a physical computer. — “I’ll ask you: Would you try to suggest that mathematics has axioms but a computer program or language doesn’t?” I did not say substitute ‘universe’ with ‘computer language’. I said substitute ‘universe’ with ‘Turing machine’ remember. I said a Turing machine does not have axioms. By which I meant your physical manifestation of one. You can create a language that a computer can manipulate but that doesn’t make a computer a language any more than a human is a language. A computer (a physical Turing machine) has no axioms. A human has no axioms. Because they can both manipulate languages that have axioms does not mean that they themselves have axioms. — “‘It is not formulated in ANY axiomatic language’ yes it most certainly is.” A true infinite Turing Machine is, because it is a hypothetical, mathematical creation, something that cannot exist in reality, but a physical one is not, from the above explanation. — “‘but if it somehow were (formulated in axiomatic language) even you have to admit that it would as least require something beyond first-order arithmetic to explain it. It certainly has supersets and set of sets, etc. that are not allowed in Godel’s Theorem.’ If a turing machine performs 100% binary logical computations, does it require more than first order arithmetic to explain its operation?” Yes it does. First-order arithmetic does not provide solutions to higher math functions. It does not deal with sets, sets of sets, supersets, etc. A Turing machine given the correct instructions, CAN. First-order arithmetic is not the same as binary logical computations at all. They are two different things. If a system can provide solutions that first-order arithmetic cannot it is not subject to Godel’s Theorems. — “Can you use a computer to do multiplication?” Yes, but that does not mean that the computer itself is formulated by axioms or is subject to Godel’s Theorems. See explanations above. — “Addition, subtraction, multiplication and integration apply to numbers and computers – it makes no difference which. The laws of logic in general apply to numbers and computers. Are you suggesting that Gödel’s theorems somehow are an exception? Does almost everything in math apply to physical objects except incompleteness? Why would this be so?” As I explained in my last post, Godel’s Theorems are not all inclusive. There are many exceptions to them. The main one in this case being, as I just said above, if a system can provide solutions that first-order arithmetic cannot it is not subject to Godel’s Theorems. That is one of the conditions of his Theorems. You cannot then just apply them willy-nilly to any logical system you want. Including a Turing Machine, a physical manifestation of one, or the logical languages of computers (which are not based on first-order arithmetic). — “The only further step we need to take now is establish similarity between the universe and a turing machine. I obviously cannot PROVE that the universe is turing equivalent, but you will certainly find many suggestions that this may be so in the literature. But more importantly, the laws of physics and the entire conception of science for all practical purposes do assume this is true, because science assumes that the universe obeys mathematical laws and that our models and computations can in theory accurately describe the universe.” The laws of physics and the entire conception of science do NOT assume this is true. Anyone before 1936 (or so) certainly did not assume so, since the whole concept of a Turing Machine didn’t exist before then. A Turing machine is NOT equivalent to the universe, assuming the universe is finite, which you say MANY MANY times. A Turing machine is infinite, by definition. From wikipedia – “Turing gave a succinct definition…’…an unlimited memory capacity obtained in the form of an infinite tape marked out into squares, on each of which a symbol could be printed.'” So a physical Turing machine, which is infinite in size, cannot be equivalent to a finite universe. And you can’t put a ‘circle’ around one. Wait. I just found this that you posted awhile ago. “Yes, so far as we know our universe is finite. So it’s not a true Turing machine.” If you believe this, then why all the equivalence arguments in your last post to me? You were trying to refute my argument that the universe is not a computational system by saying it was equivalent to a Turing machine. You attempted to shoot down all the statements about a Turing machine then said “The only further step we need to take now is establish similarity between the universe and a turing machine.” You are contradicting yourself. — “You are free to reject this, but if you do, you reject the entire philosophical premise of science itself.” No I don’t, because the philosophical premise of science is not based on a Turing machine. From wikipedia – “Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.” If, as you seem to think (or maybe don’t, I can’t tell anymore), the universe and a Turing Machine are equivalent (though they can’t be due to the whole infinity thing just mentioned), that statement could read: ‘Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about a Turing Machine.’ If you agree with that, I don’t know what to say. — “Godel says that a system can be consistent or it can be complete, but it cannot be both.” GODEL DOES NOT SAY THAT AT ALL. I don’t know where you got that from. As a previous poster suggested, show me where he says that anywhere. I may just give YOU a $10,000 prize if you can prove to me that his theorems show that. His first theorem says that an axiomatic system cannot be complete. His second theorem says that an axiomatic system cannot be consistent. Both theorems need to follow the restrictions outlined in ‘a.’ and ‘b.’ in my previous post. Only the second theorem needs to follow the restrictions outlined in ‘a.’, ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ in my previous post. If an axiomatic system follows ‘a.’ and ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ it is both incomplete and inconsistent. If it follows only ‘a.’ and ‘b.’ it is incomplete and might or might not be inconsistent. Those are the only two options. An axiomatic system cannot be proven incomplete without also being proven inconsistent. It is not possible in Godel’s theorems to do so. There is no such thing as an axiomatic system that is inconsistent and complete in Godel’s theorems. ***YOU CANNOT USE THE SECOND THEOREM ON ITS OWN*** because it includes the first’s restrictions within it. I cannot stress this enough and it is one of the main flaws in the logic of your whole argument. Let me clarify the outcomes. According to Godel’s theorems: Incomplete and inconsistent. – possible Incomplete and consistent – possible (using only the first theorem) Complete and inconsistent – impossible Complete and consistent – impossible For more clarity to anyone reading this page, here are the definitions of completeness and consistency with regard to a theory that Godel’s theorems can be applied to: COMPLETE – IT MUST BE ABLE TO EITHER PROVE OR DISPROVE ANY STATEMENT THAT FOLLOWS FROM ITS AXIOMS CONSISTENT – IT’S AXIOMS CANNOT PRODUCE ANY CONTRADICTIONS — “Why can’t a formal system containing arithmetic prove its own consistency?” That is the proof of Godel’s second theorem which I cannot replicate here. It is extremely long and written in symbolic logic. Feel free to read a version of it in it’s entirety if you want here: http://web.yonsei.ac.kr/bkim/goedel.pdf —– Now I must clarify something **VERY important**, which you and many other people and websites (including ones you reference) do not seem to understand. FIRST-ORDER ARITHMETIC (which Godel deals with) is not the same as ARITHMETIC (which Godel does not deal with). ARITHMETIC is simply the manipulation of numbers using certain operations like addition, division, exponents, etc. and following the rules set down for their use. Like 2+2=4, 5*3=15, 3^2=9, the associative property, the distributive property etc. FIRST-ORDER ARITHMETIC (more unconfusingly also called FIRST-ORDER LOGIC or PEANO’S AXIOMS) is a set of axioms to describe the NATURAL NUMBERS (basically to explain how one number follows from the previous one). Godel’s first theorem requires that this be used (my ‘b.’ from my first post). You can then from first-order arithmetic derive the operations of addition and multiplication. Godel’s second theorem requires that this ‘broader’ form be used (my ‘c.’ from my first post). Please note that the NATURAL NUMBERS do not include 0 or negative numbers or ratios (which is why the theorems don’t need subtraction and division) and are not the same as the INTEGERS that everyone here seems to be so focused on. FIRST-ORDER ARITHMETIC deals with the individual members of sets only. SECOND-ORDER ARITHMETIC deals with individual members of sets and the sets themselves. HIGHER-ORDER ARITHMETIC deals with all that plus supersets, sets of sets, etc. None of these are the same thing as basic ARITHMETIC which I described above. They are a totally different ballgame. Godel’s theorems require the use of first-order arithmetic. They prove nothing about axiomatic systems that use second- or higher-order arithmetic. (Sidenote: For hyper-clarity I want to say that in ‘b.’ of my first post I said that first-order arithmetic is “an axiomatic system…where the functions generated by the axioms generally produce sets”. I should probably more clearly have said that the individual members of sets are produced. The sets themselves need second-order arithmetic to deal with them.) —– In your reply, I would particularly like you to address these statements I made above: “There is no such thing as an axiomatic system that is inconsistent and complete in Godel’s theorems. ***YOU CANNOT USE THE SECOND THEOREM ON ITS OWN*** because it includes the first’s restrictions within it. I cannot stress this enough and it is one of the main flaws in the logic of your whole argument.” And also address from my first post: “‘1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete’ Godel’s Theorem does not state that or even claim to state that. It states that CERTAIN logical systems can be proven to be incomplete as long as they follow the ‘a.’, ‘b.’ and ‘c.’ parameters set out above. In fact, one example is that the CONSISTENCY and COMPLETENESS of arithmetic can be PROVED if transfinite induction is used as the axiomatic language instead of first-order arithmetic.” That section shows that Godel’s theorems are not applicable to all logical axiomatic (or as you call them, non-trivial computational) systems. Which proves your first premise to be false. Also address my argument of your second premise: 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system without replacing ‘universe’ with ‘Turing machine’. Finally, please explain why your version (upper right) of the Church-Turing thesis is so different from what the Church-Turing thesis actually says. Reference my first post if necessary.Reply
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Perry says:December 1, 2012 at 8:30 amJoe, The DNA molecule itself is just a molecule. The *Pattern* in DNA is a code, i.e. GGG is code for Glycine; GGG is not itself Glycine. I normally do not bother to point out this distinction, but since you bring it up, this demonstrates the ontological difference between a pattern made from matter, and the matter itself. The pixels on your screen are not to be confused with my English words, which are immaterial. Pixels and English are not the same thing. Which by the way highlights the intellectual poverty of materialism, which by its very nature cannot explain or even describe information, because it denies the existence of non-material entities. You seem to be assuming I am making a deductive argument. I am not. I’m making an inductive inference. DNA is a subset of codes; human made codes are a subset of codes and we know their origin. What is the process of making a code? One has to decide what he desires to accomplish and assign meanings to freely chosen symbols, then build an encoder and decoder and communication channel. We do not know the origin of DNA or living things. Everything we do know infers that someone had to decide what he desired to accomplish and assign meanings to freely chosen symbols, then built an encoder and decoder and communication channel. This logic is no different from: 1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal. You cannot prove the Socrates is mortal [CORRECTION: earlier I said “man,” I meant “mortal” not “man”] without killing him, because the unstated assumption in #1 is that the men who have not died yet are also mortal. That’s why this is inductive not deductive. Your examples about God and ideas are incorrect, because you conflate the idea of God with God himself. The premise that the pattern DNA is a code is universal in all scientific literature since 1958. The premise that all codes we know the origin of are designed surely is easily disproved if an exception exists. And I’ll pay you ten thousand dollars if you can find an exception. The reason I’m talking about Turing machines is to formalize the concept of computability. The distinction between a theoretical infinite turing machine and a finite computer is beside the point. The point is that when you apply measurement to physical systems (which means assigning symbols to their parts), physical systems behave in a mathematical way and do computation. Yes, science existed before 1936. I understand that. But science itself (“F=MA” “E=MC^2?) hinges on the concept of computability, and Godel, Turing and Church define the relationship between math and science. I will have to reply to your Incompleteness section later – there’s much else to do today.Reply
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joe w says:December 2, 2012 at 4:39 amHello again, From my last post: “I don’t know if you just don’t understand logic or if you are doing these things on purpose. I hope it is the former. I would hate to think you are purposely misleading people. Please keep in mind that I am not debating anything about God or DNA, only pointing out the flaws in your logical arguments. These syllogisms could be about anything at all or completely abstract. It doesn’t matter. They still are not correct.” It does not matter if your syllogisms are about DNA or noodles or the color blue or God or turkey sandwiches. They are not constructed properly, so cannot prove anything by a deductive OR inductive argument. First let me reiterate that the statement ‘the pattern in DNA’ LOGICALLY SPEAKING (and I use the word ‘logically’ here in the formal way, meaning Predicate Logic) is different than the statement ‘DNA’, in the same way as my earlier example of ‘the pattern in a carpet’ is different from ‘carpet’. The exact words don’t have to mean anything. ‘The pattern in X’ is different from ‘X’. You wrote – “The DNA molecule itself is just a molecule. The *Pattern* in DNA is a code, i.e. GGG is code for Glycine; GGG is not itself Glycine. I normally do not bother to point out this distinction, but since you bring it up, this demonstrates the ontological difference between a pattern made from matter, and the matter itself.” That is precisely what I am saying. You cannot in a logical argument use two different terms and then interchange them whenever you want. If you want to make your syllogism more logically correct you should use one or the other, but not both. Either: 1. DNA is a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. or: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, the pattern in DNA is designed. Not this: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code. 2. All codes that don’t derive directly from living things are designed. 3. Therefore, DNA is designed. The latter is logically unsound because it has two different major terms and you just pointed out the difference between them yourself in my above quote from you. Again, the meaning of the terms is not at issue only the way you are logically using them. They do still all have two middle terms as well, which needs to be addressed also. And to be honest, I don’t see why you insist on using those two different terms all the time. Why don’t you just use one? If you could prove that one or the other was designed, it would be just as good. Wouldn’t it? —– You keep claiming that you are using inductive reasoning, which you are not. You are presenting these syllogisms with a 100% certainty. You wrote earlier: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code 2. All codes we know the origin of are designed 3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. That is DEDUCTIVE reasoning. From wikipedia – ‘If all premises are true, the terms are clear, and the rules of DEDUCTIVE logic are followed, then the conclusion reached is necessarily true’ From wikipedia – ‘Unlike deductive arguments, INDUCTIVE reasoning allows for the possibility that the conclusion is false, even if all of the premises are true.’ also ‘Inductive reasoning is probabilistic; it only states that, given the premises, the conclusion is probable.” If you say that a conclusion is 100% true then your syllogism MUST use the formal logic of deductive reasoning. If you use inductive reasoning, you MUST concede that your conclusion may not be true. You can’t have it both ways. — You wrote – “This logic is no different from: 1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal. You cannot prove that Socrates is mortal without killing him, because the unstated assumption in #1 is that the men who have not died yet are also mortal. That’s why this is inductive not deductive.’ That syllogism is completely and utterly deductive. It is almost always the example used when showing what deductive reasoning IS, for crying out loud. Check wikipedia, as one of thousands of examples of this. You seem to be getting caught up in the meaning of the terms, which don’t have any affect on whether something is inductive or deductive. 1. All apples are blue. 2. Baking is an apple. 3. Therefore baking is blue. is an example of deductive reasoning. It proves that EVERY INSTANCE of baking is ALWAYS blue. It is completely silly and untrue, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is deductive. 1. All apples are blue. 2. All baking we know of is an apple. 3. Therefore baking is blue. is an example of inductive reasoning. It shows that it is PROBABLE that baking is blue. It is also completely silly and untrue, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is inductive. —– Also, you continue to use the terms ‘inductive inference’ or ‘inference’ which is not a term used in logic, the term used in logic is ‘inductive reasoning’. ‘Inductive inference’ is a MATHEMATICAL TERM relating to the EXACT probability of correctly predicting the next individual term in a set and requires a computable probability distribution. ‘Inductive reasoning’ is a LOGICAL METHOD that shows that from certain premises a certain conclusion is probable. Those two things are not the same. —– You wrote – “Your examples about God and ideas are incorrect, because you conflate the idea of God with God himself.” First of all, I said they were incorrect. I used them as EXAMPLES of incorrectness if you recall. Secondly, that doesn’t change the fact that they, and your DNA syllogisms are structured incorrectly. I changed nothing except a few terms and kept your form and wording. —– You wrote – “The reason I’m talking about Turing machines is to formalize the concept of computability. The distinction between a theoretical infinite turing machine and a finite computer is beside the point.” No it is not beside the point. Your argument partially rests on the premise that the universe is a finite physical computing machine (from upper right of the website). The reasoning for that is that you imply it is equivalent to an infinite Turing machine which I showed earlier and you also said earlier, is not true. —– Still waiting for your reply to the Godel’s theorems arguments I made earlier. Also address my argument of your second premise: 2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system without replacing ‘universe’ with ‘Turing machine’. Finally, please explain why your version (upper right) of the Church-Turing thesis is so different from what Church-Turing thesis actually says. Reference my first post if necessary.Reply
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Perry says:January 27, 2013 at 1:04 amIf you want one syllogism, this is the one you should refer to: 1. The pattern in DNA is a code?2. All codes we know the origin of are designed?3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not. If you think that is deductive logic, then you don’t know the difference between induction and deduction. Perhaps you would be more comfortable with this arrangement: 1. 100% of the codes we know the origin of are designed 2. The pattern in DNA, of which we do not know the origin of, is a code?3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is also designed and 0% inference that it is not. I did not say my conclusion is 100% true. I said it was 100% inferred. This is a statistical syllogism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_syllogism General form: X proportion of F are G I is an F I is a G By the way at the very beginning of this thread you said you were not anonymous. “Joe W” is anonymous in my book. I would request that you tell us your full name. Infinite turing machines can perform computations. So can finite universes. The relevance to my argument is in this statement, which is above in the shaded area at the top of the page: “Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic.” The other relevant point is: “the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness.” Both statements would be equally true whether the Turing Machine was finite or infinite.Reply
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joe w says:December 2, 2012 at 4:51 amI want to ask for clarification of something. You wrote – “This logic is no different from: 1. All men are mortal 2. Socrates is a man 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal. You cannot prove that Socrates is mortal without killing him, because the unstated assumption in #1 is that the men who have not died yet are also mortal. That’s why this is inductive not deductive.’ As I mentioned in my last post, this is a deductive statement. At the top of your website you use this exact syllogism as an example of deductive reasoning as well. Please explain this.Reply
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Perry says:December 3, 2012 at 8:48 amYou are correct, I was incorrect and I stand corrected. Yes I did make a deductive statement. “All men are mortal” is an inductive statement. It could be phrased like this: 1) Socrates is a man 2) All men in history eventually died. 3) Therefore socrates will someday die too. This is similar in form to 1) The pattern in DNA is a code 2) All codes we know the origin of are designed 3) Therefore DNA is designedReply
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joe w says:December 2, 2012 at 5:29 amTo help you or anyone else understand, I will boil down one of my Godel arguments to its simplest form. For a theory to be: COMPLETE – IT MUST BE ABLE TO EITHER PROVE OR DISPROVE ANY STATEMENT THAT FOLLOWS FROM ITS AXIOMS CONSISTENT – IT’S AXIOMS CANNOT PRODUCE ANY CONTRADICTIONS Now pay attention. If a theory is INCONSISTENT it produces a contradiction. If a theory is COMPLETE it must be able to prove any statement that follows from it’s axioms. So for an inconsistent theory to be complete it must be able to prove a contradiction. It obviously cannot, so a theory cannot be both inconsistent and complete. So Godel could not have said (as you say he did): “A system can be consistent or it can be complete, but it cannot be both.” Do you understand now?Reply
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Perry says:December 7, 2012 at 4:12 pmJoe, By what method do you prove that a system’s axioms do not produce any contradictions? PerryReply
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joew771 says:December 8, 2012 at 8:18 pmThat is a seemingly simple question with quite a complicated answer. Without my teaching full courses in mathematics and logic on your page, I can only say that there are different ways of doing so, with different lengths of proof, depending on what theory you are talking about, and that it is sometimes impossible to do so (as Godel’s incompleteness theorems prove for certain theories). With respect to Godel’s theorems (which prove INconsistency NOT consistency) you must construct what is known as a ‘Godel sentence’. A ‘Godel Sentence’ is a sentence in the language of elementary arithmetics (first-order logic) that expresses a certain property of addition and multiplication of natural numbers. That ‘sentence’ will be different depending upon the theory and will be found to be contradictory, thus proving that theory’s inconsistency. This is all very technical stuff and whole books are written about it, so I can’t really explain too much more in depth here, but I want to clarify that a ‘Godel sentence’ is not a sentence in the usual sense. This next part is not important, I am only including it to show what a Godel sentence is and how technical proofs are. — (This is not written with the proper symbology, by the way, but it will give you an idea.) A Godel sentence is obtained by taking the general formula U T (y) , which has one free variable y , and substituting a particular closed term (that is, an expression of the form 1+1+…+1 with a certain number of 1s) into y . The term corresponding to a number n, denoted n(x). In Godel’s original proof, the formula U(y) is chosen so that, in the standard model, for any formula P , U T (‘#(P)’) holds if and only if P is not provable from the axioms of the theory T . The number n that is plugged in is chosen in such a way that that U T (n(x)) is equivalent, in T , to U T (‘#(U T (n(x)))’) . The fact that such an n exists is a consequence of the Diagonal Lemma. The Godel sentence is then defined to be the sentence U T (n(x)) . This has no free variables because the term for n has been substituted for the only free variable of U T (y) .
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joew771 says:January 1, 2013 at 2:49 amI have replied 3 times (now 4) without any sort of response or having my replies posted. Have I stumped you or is there is another reason you are not posting my comments or replying to them? I am also still eagerly awaiting the answer to this: Why is your version (upper right) of the Church-Turing thesis so different from what Church-Turing thesis actually says.
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Perry says:January 2, 2013 at 12:20 pmYour stuff is in the queue, it needs a thoughtful reply and haven’t gotten to it. Thanks for your patience.
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David H says:December 8, 2012 at 11:24 amMerry Christmas time, Perry and Joe! Joe W, you are working very hard to negate the claims Perry has made regarding Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Perry is passing along what has already been studied and concluded by many scientific minds who have accepted Gödel’s conclusions. For those of us who believe in a God who created these laws and axioms it is more than rational to speculate that there HAS to be a governor, a rule-maker, a “system” above/beyond the world-universe system we detect. And what we surmise is rational or “logical” in our system that we attempt to scrutinize with science, logic, and math is bounded in a way described by Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Yet, what exists above, on the other side of our system, while exerting its influence on our system, is probably completely free to provide its own logic and properties. Fundamental Christians, literal unabashed believers, believe God is where the Buck Stops. I personally believe that Gödel’s Theorem does not even exist above our system. I believe God completes and supersedes our feeble logic, even the superior logic of Gödel. As superior a logic as Gödel has provided us it is but looking through a glass darkly, as the scripture says. But HERE on Earth Gödel has given ALL of us major, major hints as to the inevitability of a superior system that shapes what we think we know and observe in this Universe. You claim to Perry: So Godel could not have said (as you say he did): “A system can be consistent or it can be complete, but it cannot be both.” And, Joe, you are so obviously wrong, flat dead, baseline, foundationally Wrong. Here is just one link– http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/math/Godel.html In this article I quote the author: “” Gödel’s contribution to the study of logic revolves around the discovery of a limitation on what one can sensibly seek from a logical system. Prior to his work, a great many mathematicians, vaguely headed by the likes of Bertrand Russel, were hard at work trying to prove consistency and completeness of the Zermelo-Fränkel formalism for set theory and logic, together with Peano’s axioms for the natural numbers. In so far as they were able to believe that this might fail, they expected the failure to show them how to replace their formalism with one which would be consistent and complete. Gödel derailed this project in the most spectacular manner possible: he showed that any logical system capable of supporting Peano’s axioms 1: could not be both consistent and complete; and 2: could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent.! Further down the page during the conclusion I quote another succinct summation: “… any logical system which can prove its own completeness is able to prove the fork, which will make n be in P, which will lead to an inconsistency: a logical system which can prove its own completeness is inconsistent, ane one which can’t prove its own completeness is incomplete (the example unproven assertion being completeness itself). ” Go then, Joe, to the following link; http://www.miskatonic.org/godel.html Here are Summations from Scientific works by 5 authors of books devoted to discussions and implications of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem. From two of those I will quote passages that go beyond Theorems to Philosophic implications for both scientists and philosophers. Rucker said “Although this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth … But, paradoxically, to understand Gödel’s proof is to find a sort of liberation. For many logic students, the final breakthrough to full understanding of the Incompleteness Theorem is practically a conversion experience. This is partly a by-product of the potent mystique Gödel’s name carries. But, more profoundly, to understand the essentially labyrinthine nature of the castle is, somehow, to be free of it. ” Jones and Wilson, “An Incomplete Education” said ” And it has been taken to imply that you’ll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows about itself. ” Perry is in good scientific company, better company than you, Joe. The problem is for you, Joe, that to attempt to “simplify” Gödel’s logic is to ignore its necessary complexity. You can remove a few “messy, complicated” gears from an illustration of the innards of a classic Rolex Oyster watch so that we can better glimpse the inner functions of the movement, but that “illustration” is not of a working watch anymore. The extra complications are needed to make the watch work. Your purely linguistic simplification of Gödel has no hope of demonstrating either truth or a lie.Reply
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joew771 says:December 8, 2012 at 10:33 pmDavid, You wrote – “Joe W, you are working very hard to negate the claims Perry has made regarding Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem.” Yes, I am because they are incorrect. —– The link you provided: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/math/Godel.html and from which you quoted this: ‘any logical system capable of supporting Peano’s axioms 1: could not be both consistent and complete; and 2: could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent.’ repeats exactly what I stated earlier. That there are only two options, that Godel’s theorems can prove that a theory can be BOTH inconsistent and incomplete or ONLY inconsistent but complete. They in no way ever say that a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent. — As far as your second quote and the whole rest of the link, there is a problem. The author used as his ‘Godel sentence’ (which he called ‘Godel’s Fork’, for some reason) this: “this statement cannot be proven true” which is not an actual ‘Godel sentence’ and cannot be used in applying Godel’s theorems. I refer you to this: http://www.cs.nyu.edu/pipermail/fom/2003August/007160.html I quote from that: “‘This sentence cannot be proven true’ immediately leads to a paradox if we assume… that it expresses a meaningful proposition. Godel sentences are not paradoxical at all. The difference is that “This sentence cannot be proven true” would have been about itself (and only about itself) had it been meaningful, while a Godel sentence is not about itself. The whole problem here is based on a misunderstanding. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding is based not only on popular, non-technical presentations of Godel’s proof, but also on careless statements that can be found even in advanced textbooks and papers… So again: a Godel sentence for itself is an arithmetical sentence. No more. Using different methods of coding it may (like any other sentence) be used to indirectly express all types of facts, including many which have nothing to do with the natural numbers.” Basically what this is saying is that an actual ‘Godel sentence’ (or ‘Godel’s Fork’) is not always in and of itself contradictory as that example is. A ‘Godel sentence’ will only be found to be contradictory within the framework of whatever theory it happens to be applied to. It may or not be contradictory on it’s own or when applied to another theory. Also that if not stated in the proper form and used incorrectly, a ‘Godel sentence’ can cause incorrect, or at least unrelated conclusions to be reached. And for clarity, every theory needs it’s own ‘Godel sentence’. There is not ONE ‘Godel sentence’ that applies to every theory. See also my reply to Perry’s last post (if it is posted yet) for more on Godel sentences. I wrote that reply before I read your post and I said that part of it was not important, but it is now, apparently. Also the author of that link used phrases like: ‘forbid an unless to imply what must otherwise arise’ and ‘unless’s constraint propagates rightwards along implication’ and ‘unless’s constraint can delegate to its demands (unless demands, unless)’ What? Is that supposed to be logic? —– You also quoted this from another link: “Although this theorem can be stated and proved in a rigorously mathematical way, what it seems to say is that rational thought can never penetrate to the final ultimate truth” and this: “And it has been taken to imply that you’ll never entirely understand yourself” The key phrases in those are ‘seems to say’ and ‘taken to imply’#8217;. Godel’s theorem do not ‘seem to say’ or ‘imply’ anything. They are mathematical proofs involving and about very specific axiomatic theories, and state very specific things about them. They DO NOT apply to all theories or all logical systems or the universe or the human mind or anything else. Only certain theories that follow certain rules. There are plenty of theories that can be proven to be both consistent and complete, that Godel’s theorems simply DO NOT apply to. See my above posts and the posts of several others that explicitly state this and that give examples of those. and you wrote this: ‘The problem is for you, Joe, that to attempt to “simplify” Gödel’s logic is to ignore its necessary complexity…Your purely linguistic simplification of Gödel has no hope of demonstrating either truth or a lie.’ I am not simplifying Godel’s logic. I am only stating what the theorems prove. The theorems prove that a logical theory with axioms based on first-order arithmetic cannot be consistent and complete. That is all they prove. Nothing else. You (and many, many, many others, including Perry) have somehow made them far more complex (in your own minds) and far reaching, so that they somehow apply to anything and everything. THEY DO NOT. I will use the same quote I used earlier in reference to ‘Godel sentences’ and apply it to the misuse of Godel’s theorems: “this misunderstanding is based not only on popular, non-technical presentations of Godel’s proof, but also on careless statements that can be found even in advanced textbooks and papers…”Reply
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Joew w says:February 24, 2013 at 11:12 amI missed this reply so I apologize for the delay in my reply. Since you use wikipedia, so will I. Here is a quote from that same article you used. “Unlike many other forms of syllogism, a statistical syllogism is inductive” and “Statistical syllogisms may use qualifying words like “most”, “frequently”, “almost never”, “rarely”, etc., or may have a statistical generalization as one or both of their premises.” Your statistical generalization is “which we do not know the origin of”. My name if you care, is Joe Waldenburg. I don’t know why that matters though. You said “Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic.” While that is not true at all, the physical system you have been referring to is the universe. And if that statement were to make any sense, the universe would certainly be capable of complex calculations, including 2nd and 3rd order arithmetic, which Godel’s theorems don’t apply to anyway. I can measure a whole bunch of things that can’t express arithmetic. A dog, a fan, a car, etc. All those things are physical systems, but they cannot express elementary arithmetic. You wrote – “Infinite turing machines can perform computations. So can finite universes.” That means nothing. I can perform computations. That doesn’t mean that I am the universe. Because two things can do the same thing, doesn’t mean they ARE the same thing. Still waiting the answers to my earlier questions.Reply
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Perry says:February 27, 2013 at 12:02 amJoe, I have a question for you. Do dogs, fans, cars etc obey the laws of physics, or not? I will be happy to respond to your questions if you could point out what I have not yet addressed.Reply
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David H says:February 27, 2013 at 9:59 amJOE, you have confused yourself. You yourself are a living “inconsistency” because your proofs and retorts are producing “a contradiction”. I copy and paste your claim from your post December 2 joe w @ 5:29 am “If a theory is INCONSISTENT it produces a contradiction.?If a theory is COMPLETE it must be able to prove any statement that follows from it’s axioms.?So for an inconsistent theory to be complete it must be able to prove a contradiction.?It obviously cannot, so a theory cannot be both inconsistent and complete. So Godel could not have said (as you say he did): “A system can be consistent or it can be complete, but it cannot be both.” I provided a response to you, Joew, and you returned December 8 @ 10:33pm with the same state of confusion and failure to understand “consistent” and “inconsistent” and “complete” and “incomplete”. You quoted me — ‘any logical system capable of supporting Peano’s axioms 1: could not be both consistent and complete; and?2: could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent.’ and then, Joew771, you add an absurdity — (your reply below) : ” … repeats exactly what I stated earlier. That there are only two options, that Godel’s theorems can prove that a theory can be BOTH inconsistent and incomplete or ONLY inconsistent but complete. They in no way ever say that a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent.” WHO besides YOU, JOE, made this alledged claim: “a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent”? As our good friend, Wiki, notes, you have produced a “straw man argument”. “Straw man” is a type of argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and to refute it, without ever having actually refuted the original position. So far what Gödel’s complete theories keep proving is that NO LOGICAL SYSTEM can be consistent AND complete. We are apparently living in a world system — universe included — which is NOT Complete AND Consistent. “Something” is missing which we cannot see or detect. When scientists weigh the “scales”, so to speak, they cannot get COMPLETE to sit equally across the teeter-totter with CONSISTENT. Unless they can figure out a way to negate, nullify, disregard Gödel. I don’t think you or me, Joe, are even remotely equipped to pull off the anti-Gödel theory. As my earlier response quoted — “… any logical system which can prove its own completeness is able to prove the fork, which will make n be in P, which will lead to an inconsistency: a logical system which can prove its own completeness is inconsistent, and one which can’t prove its own completeness is incomplete (the example unproven assertion being completeness itself). ” The emphasis of Gödel’s theory is that, apparently, up to this point with no serious theoretical challenge from the scientific community, there IS NO COMPLETENESS in any existing SYSTEM of LOGIC. That is the END product when all is said and done. “Consistency” of a logical system keeps turning out to be an illusion. DANG! IF you can PROVE that a given system is COMPLETE then that very “completeness” turns right around and IS ABLE to PROVE the “fork”, the diversion, the split down another path of axioms that must be called an “inconsistency”. And from that it must follow irreducibly that a logical system which can NOT PROVE its own completness is INCOMPLETE. This is the conundrum, the Gordian’s knot, the Mobius strip, if you will. Everything we know of is apparently part of an INCOMPLETE system. This is not the same as saying “chaos”. God has already stated that He has an Order in place. Therefore, from God’s point of view outside of our universe and laws and space and time, He provides the completeness and consistency, (yes, BOTH together with no contradictions) that Gödel’s theorems “detect” inside our universe. God said he is bringing a new universe with new physical laws and that is HE himself that will be the complete source of its power. A never ending power. Entropy will be one of the first laws to disappear. And Gödel’s theorems will also vaporize as no longer applicable.Reply
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Perry says:February 27, 2013 at 3:22 pmIf you read through the dialogues we’ve had on this page with multiple atheists, a very interesting pattern starts to emerge.Reply
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Joe W says:March 1, 2013 at 6:00 amI am not and never said I was an athiest. I am not decrying God. I am decrying this ‘proof’. It is illogical and misinterprets and misrepresents what Godel worked so hard to achieve. Godel and his mathematics have nothing to do with God. They merely state that there is a limit to the knowledge that humans such as us can have about mathematics, and since it is generally accepted that mathematics describe the universe, they also in a way state that we can never know everything about the universe. If anything they say that we cannot know how the universe came into being. Though that is a VERY broad interpretation. They certainly do not prove in any way that God does or does not exist.Reply
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Joew771 says:March 1, 2013 at 7:15 amYou still do not understand the meanings of the words ‘complete’, ‘incomplete’, ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ when it comes to Godel’s theorems or mathematics. You wrote – “I don’t think you or me, Joe, are even remotely equipped to pull off the anti-Gödel theory.” I am certainly not trying to prove Godel wrong. I think he is 100% correct. What is incorrect is the misunderstanding of his theorems, particularly the meaning of the aforementioned terms. You also quoted me and wrote – Me – ” … repeats exactly what I stated earlier. That there are only two options, that Godel’s theorems can prove that a theory can be BOTH inconsistent and incomplete or ONLY inconsistent but complete. They in no way ever say that a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent.” You – WHO besides YOU, JOE, made this alledged claim: “a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent” Well you misquoted me the second time there. The first quote is correct and the second quote I said that, “They in no way ever say that a theory can be ONLY complete but inconsistent.” But otherwise those statements are 100% true. I have explained the meanings of ‘complete’, ‘incomplete’, ‘consistent’ and ‘inconsistent’ several times now. I started off fairly complex and more mathematical and post after post made it simpler and less mathematical so that you and anyone else could understand it. It seems I have failed. I refer you to my previous posts, or if you are well versed in logic, I can go into far greater detail by going through his proofs. Though they are highly mathematical, and usually beyond the scope of most people, if you understand it, I will glady go through them in purely symbolic and mathematical terms and show you what you don’t understand. If you need me to simplify the meanings of those terms even further, I suppose I could do that as well. You said -“So far what Gödel’s complete theories keep proving is that NO LOGICAL SYSTEM can be consistent AND complete.” That is NOT true. Godel’s theorems DO NOT APPLY to systems that are not based on first order arithmetic. I cannot stress this enough. I have said it many times before and I do not understand why you and other people do not understand this. Not ALL systems are based on first order arithmetic, therefore Godel’s theorems DO NOT APPLY to all systems. Not the universe, or computers or Turing machines, or an infinity of others. And – “The emphasis of Gödel’s theory is that, apparently, up to this point with no serious theoretical challenge from the scientific community, there IS NO COMPLETENESS in any existing SYSTEM of LOGIC. That is the END product when all is said and done.” That is NOT true. Again, as I have said many times before in previous posts, not ALL logical systems are subject to Godel’s theorems. Only those that are based on first order arithmetic. There are many that are not and there are many that are complete. Arithmetic based on transfinite induction and Euclid’s Geometry among the many that are complete. I also again refer you to my previous posts regarding first order arithmetic, and it’s relation to Godel’s theorems. Once again, I have to ask, why is the Church-Turing thesis stated incorrectly at the top left of your page?Reply
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Perry says:April 3, 2013 at 7:03 amYou said: Godel’s theorems DO NOT APPLY to systems that are not based on first order arithmetic. I cannot stress this enough. I have said it many times before and I do not understand why you and other people do not understand this. Not ALL systems are based on first order arithmetic, therefore Godel’s theorems DO NOT APPLY to all systems. Not the universe, or computers or Turing machines, or an infinity of others. There is not something special about Peano arithmetic with respect to physical laws. Peano math is sufficient to express the laws of physics. I quote: Beyond basic arithmetic calculations, the mathematics that is applied in physics rarely calls on higher arithmetic but depends instead mainly on substantial parts of mathematical analysis and higher algebra and geometry. All of the mathematics that underlies these applications can be formalized in the currently widely accepted system for the foundation of mathematics known as Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, and there is not a shred of evidence that anything stronger than that system would ever be needed. Actually, it has long been recognized that much weaker systems suffice for that purpose. [REF http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/Godel-IAS.pdf ] “Peano arithmetic is sufficient to mimic any pattern however complex including the laws of physics and the weakly emergent laws of thermodynamics and fluids, chemistry and biology, and perhaps even psychology.” http://vixra.org/pdf/1101.0044v1.pdf This is why Freeman Dyson wrote: Gödel’s theorem implies that pure mathematics is inexhaustible. No matter how many problems we solve, there will always be other problems that cannot be solved within the existing rules. … because of Gödel’s theorem, physics is inexhaustible too. The laws of physics are a finite set of rules, and include the rules for doing mathematics, so that Gödel’s theorem applies to them. [NYRB, May 13, 2004]. Regarding the Church-Turing thesis: So far as I know all statements I have made about it are true. You are welcome to point out where I’m wrong. Before you do, please read these comments from previous conversations: http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-25568 “The three computational processes (recursion, ?-calculus, and Turing machine) were shown to be equivalent by Alonzo Church, Stephen Kleene, J.B. Rosser…Informally the Church–Turing thesis states that if an algorithm (a procedure that terminates) exists then there is an equivalent Turing machine, recursively-definable function, or applicable ?-function, for that algorithm. A more simplified but understandable expression of it is that “everything computable is computable by a Turing machine”.” Ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis The Church-Turing thesis means that formal mathematics can be expressed by physical devices as well by human beings. http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-25578 http://www.perrymarshall.com/articles/religion/godels-incompleteness-theorem/#comment-26080Reply
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David H says:March 2, 2013 at 1:15 pmJoe W, I understand you. It can get tedious sometimes when people (believers) seem that they are going to ridiculous extremes to connect some phenomena on earth or in the heavens with PROOF of GOD. I completely understand why we should all be careful about “proofs” that are extensions, perhaps too often unwarranted, scientifically invalid extensions of “logic” that we may carry determinedly to the very door of Heaven as if we have made a proof. The Truth is that no one will likely ever be able to make a PROOF of God. For those of us who believe that God is living and exists and is active right this moment it was never science or logic that ultimately flipped the switch from doubt or questioning to outright Belief in the Living God. That’s why these debates and forums are, unfortunately, fruitless. Gödel never meant or intended to “prove God”. He has pointed out a “curious thing” that has huge implications and Perry has rightly pointed out where those implications must point. Gödel’s systemic proofs are about as mysterious as Quantum Theory. No one can figure out WHY they should be “true” or “false”. That is, WHY they work. But to those who understand his theorems it is a bit like Alice down the Rabbit Hole. Once you stop falling you are in a different place. Theoretically when you attempt to wrap up the systemic logic of the universe Gödel shows that it is OPEN, there has to be another level above, outside, supra-normal, for the Universe to contain its laws and matter. Gödel’s theoretical implications strongly suggest a boundary even above all we observe. And, disturbingly for scientists and masters of physics and mathematics, we are apparently inside a world where we can never have the ultimate “theories of everything” that the popular press speculates are imminently arriving in the next 20 to 30 years. The cool thing is that you can be sure of God without a theory of proof and yet never for a single second diverge from science, math, and logic. You can be a rigorous believer in logic and simultaneously KNOW that God is alive and here and working every minute and even paying attention to YOU. And it makes PERFECT sense that Gödel’s theorems seem to work in any system of logic. This is what God deliberately created — a universe that IS incomplete but consistent with everything He planned for this epoch of time and creation. We are in a stage that is not going to last forever. The final COMPLETE Universe is coming. It will take the Power and Intent and Purpose and Plan of God to come to pass. An enormous expenditure of energy. “Enormous” is a laughably inadequate term! Joe, You could have a BREAKTHROUGH, an EPIPHANY, a direct God infusion, a Supernatural encounter with God right this minute. I am talking about a bonafide Miracle. Not metaphorically. Not in theory. The words out of your own mouth have the power to open up the reality of Heaven, of God, of Jesus Christ. Your own words have the power to open up the Gates of Heaven, to link you immediately with the very God of all of these arguments and discussions. Isn’t that much more fascinating than exchanging “did, did not” back and forth over the implications of Gödel? Once God’s Mind and Spirit literally fill you it will fascinate you to examine Gödel’s theorems again. That’s a promise from the Creator.Reply
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Joe W says:March 28, 2013 at 7:33 pmDavid H – “Gödel never meant or intended to “prove God”. He has pointed out a “curious thing” that has huge implications and Perry has rightly pointed out where those implications must point.” Perry has not rightly pointed out anything at all, because he is misusing and misapplying Godel’s work to something that it has no relevance to whatsoever. David H – “Gödel’s systemic proofs are about as mysterious as Quantum Theory. No one can figure out WHY they should be “true” or “false”. That is, WHY they work.” Godel’s proofs are not mysterious at all. They are rigorous and thorough logical and mathematical proofs. If they are mysterious to you, that only means you do not understand them. And if you don’t understand them you cannot apply them properly, which is what seems to be happening here. David H – “You can be a rigorous believer in logic and simultaneously KNOW that God is alive and here and working every minute and even paying attention to YOU.” Of course you can, I never said you couldn’t. But someone who is a ‘rigorous believer in logic’ would also not misinterpret one of the greatest feats of logic in history and use it inappropriately and apply it to something that is far beyond it’s scope. David H – “And it makes PERFECT sense that Gödel’s theorems seem to work in any system of logic.?#8221; It does not make perfect sense that the theorems work in any system of logic, because quite simply, they don’t. They only work in very clearly defined and limited systems. There are many logical systems that they do not apply to in any way and they certainly do not apply to anything and everything as Perry and you and others seem to think, as I have said and shown many times in my previous posts. Anyone who thinks they do, does not understand them.Reply
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Matt` says:April 3, 2013 at 7:47 amJoe, you’re putting up a brave effort, but arguing with these loons seems to be more or less pointless. In 300+ comment threads they’re yet to be convinced by any means or logic that Godel has nothing to do with drawing circles, that anything in existence isn’t subject to his theorems, or that the physical universe isn’t a system of formal logic. Or, come to that, that you can’t use “All X are Y” as a pseudo-premise in an argument intended to establish that a specific X is Y.Reply
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Perry says:April 3, 2013 at 8:41 amIf the laws of physics can be expressed with Peano mathematics, then incompleteness applies to the laws of physics and the universe. You are welcome to believe that the laws of physics are not mathematical if you want. But in doing so you have rejected science itself, since science is by definition the modeling of the physical universe with mathematical laws.Reply
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David H says:April 3, 2013 at 8:40 amJoe and Matt, One of the “loons” who obviously doesn’t understand the Universe as clearly as the two of you would be one Steven Hawking. He has apparently lots of time to think on these things and the mental equipment to come to conclusions or estimated guesses. Please refer to: http://www.hawking.org.uk/godel-and-the-end-of-physics.html Careful reading will blow your “arguments” out of the proverbial waters.Reply
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David H says:April 3, 2013 at 8:57 amJoe, perhaps if you could have gotten to Stephen Hawking with your insights some years ago he would not wasted his time addressing the APPLICABILITY of Gödel’s theorems. He obviously sees things radically different from you. I am lifting some quotes from Stephen Hawking: “This is very reminiscent of Godel’s theorem. This says that any finite system of axioms is not sufficient to prove every result in mathematics. Godel’s theorem is proved using statements that refer to themselves. Such statements can lead to paradoxes. An example is, this statement is false. If the statement is true, it is false. And if the statement is false, it is true.. .. “Godel went to great lengths to avoid such paradoxes by carefully distinguishing between mathematics, like 2+2 =4, and meta mathematics, or statements about mathematics, such as mathematics is cool, or mathematics is consistent. That is why his paper is so difficult to read. But the idea is quite simple. “First Godel showed that each mathematical formula, like 2+2=4, can be given a unique number, the Godel number. The Godel number of 2+2=4, is *. Second, the meta mathematical statement, the sequence of formulas A, is a proof of the formula B, can be expressed as an arithmetical relation between the Godel numbers for A- and B. Thus meta mathematics can be mapped into arithmetic, though I’m not sure how you translate the meta mathematical statement, ‘mathematics is cool’. Third and last, consider the self referring Godel statement, G. This is, the statement G can not be demonstrated from the axioms of mathematics. Suppose that G could be demonstrated. Then the axioms must be inconsistent because one could both demonstrate G and show that it can not be demonstrated. On the other hand, if G can’t be demonstrated, then G is true. “By the mapping into numbers, it corresponds to a true relation between numbers, but one which can not be deduced from the axioms. “Thus mathematics is either inconsistent or incomplete. The smart money is on INCOMPLETE (my emphasis). “What is the relation between Godel’s theorem and whether we can formulate the theory of the universe in terms of a finite number of principles? One connection is OBVIOUS (my emphasis). According to the positivist philosophy of science, a physical theory is a mathematical model. So if there are mathematical results that can not be proved, there are physical problems that can not be predicted. One example might be the Goldbach conjecture. Given an even number of wood blocks, can you always divide them into two piles, each of which can not be arranged in a rectangle? That is, it contains a prime number of blocks. “Although this is incompleteness of sort, it is not the kind of unpredictability I mean. Given a specific number of blocks, one can determine with a finite number of trials whether they can be divided into two primes. But I think that quantum theory and gravity together, introduces a new element into the discussion that wasn’t present with classical Newtonian theory. In the standard positivist approach to the philosophy of science, physical theories live rent free in a Platonic heaven of ideal mathematical models. That is, a model can be arbitrarily detailed and can contain an arbitrary amount of information without affecting the universes they describe. “But we are not angels, who view the universe from the outside. Instead, we and our models are both part of the universe we are describing. “Thus a physical theory is self referencing, like in Godel’s theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent or incomplete. The theories we have so far are both inconsistent and incomplete.” As I have also explained to you, Joe, you are most likely confused on these issues.Reply
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Gareth says:May 16, 2013 at 8:53 amInteresting article and a clear explanation of the theory, thanks. I’ve not read the other comments so sorry if this has been covered already. I think you’ve pushed the extrapolation too far when you say: The Incompleteness of the universe isn’t proof that God exists. But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary. It is not necessary to believe in God based on this theory. Firstly – reductio ad absurdum – this means there must be something outside of God… forever. In order for that *not* to be true, the theory must also *not* be true – which means the argument is circular and falls over. Secondly, and more importantly, there is no reason at all that the ‘thing’ outside the material universe has to be ‘god’ in any sense we understand it. Surely, what the theory proves is that there must be things outside of what we can *know* that we cannot prove – that is different from saying there must be (a) thing outside of what *is*.Reply
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Perry says:May 16, 2013 at 12:29 pmYou didn’t read the article very closely.Reply
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Gareth says:May 17, 2013 at 2:40 amPerhaps you could elaborate? I’ve now reread it. My question still stands I think. You’ve asserted that the thing outside has to be boundless but not shown why or why that boundless thing has to be god?Reply
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Perry says:May 17, 2013 at 2:05 pmIt has to be boundless – which is why, whatever it is, there can’t be something else that’s even bigger. From the article: Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. By definition it is not possible to draw a circle around it. If we draw a circle around all matter, energy, space and time and apply Gödel’s theorem, then we know what is outside that circle is not matter, is not energy, is not space and is not time. It’s immaterial. Whatever is outside the biggest circle is not a system – i.e. is not an assemblage of parts. Otherwise we could draw a circle around them. The thing outside the biggest circle is indivisible. Whatever is outside the biggest circle is an uncaused cause, because you can always draw a circle around an effect. ~~ I cannot prove that this is God. I can only observe that it is by definition metaphysical and immaterial. Whatever it is, it necessarily is also an exception to the atheist/materialist dictum of naturalism: “Naturalism is the hypothesis that the natural world is a closed system, which means that nothing that is not part of the natural world affects it.” If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…Reply
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William E. Donges III says:December 23, 2014 at 1:19 pmIt is my experience that mathematical and logical proofs for divinity are interesting philosophical exercises but useless theological ones. One can define deity into existence via a number of means as well, but semantic proofs for a deities existence prove vanishingly little about the nature of that which lays beyond the circle. I would argue that Godel’s Ontological Argument does an even stronger job then his incompleteness theorem in demonstrating the logical and mathematical necessity of God but the only thing actually proven is that the concept exists meaningfully and from a practical standpoint makes no differentiation between Allah, Lord Xenu, Zeus, or Odin.Reply
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Michael Cotton says:May 23, 2013 at 12:47 pmYou are sorely in need of an expert in this discussion. This entire page, while lengthy, is way too much of a layman’s gist idea of what Gödel’s theorem says. And to a couple previous readers’ comments, you cannot prove a mathematical theorem wrong if the original proof of it is correct. Mathematics is a deductive rather than an inductive system. The web we develop of implications between various assumptions is there to stay. Now to the more serious matter. Gödel’s Incompleteness only applies to an axiomatic system expressed strictly in the language of first-order logic which is both recursively enumerable and strong enough to contain our usual understanding of arithmetic in the natural numbers. The physical universe, all of science, philosophy, theology, etc… are things which do not fit that description. Most things outside of the realm of pure mathematics are not expressible in that way. Actually, much of what we do in mathematics (and even mathematical logic) are not recursive systems or are not confined to the first-order. First-order systems are actually quite restrictive. So your statement that “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language or philosophy” is absolutely false. While you may be correct that there exists a god or some entity like that, Gödel’s work doesn’t provide evidence for this. I have no opinion on that matter, but I do want to clear up this misunderstanding of such an important piece of my profession. Also, in mathematics we use theories of assumptions in which there is no such thing as largest in the sense of your circles. The ZFC system you have mentioned in a response to someone else in this thread is such a theory of axioms. You cannot consider a ‘collection of everything,’ so to speak. Even when dealing with infinities, the thread of ordinal numbers (through any chosen structure of sets we would choose to do our mathematics in) is unending in a way that does not allow us to quantify over it. So there’s another big problem with this argument you are trying to make. You can’t appeal to the use of a mathematical theorem like Gödel’s and then in the same argument appeal to a notion of ‘largest’ that, within mathematics, is known to be inconsistent.Reply
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Perry says:June 5, 2013 at 12:50 pmMathematics is not exclusively a deductive system, because every deduction that is ever made relies on further axioms that are arrived at through induction. Those axioms are not provable, and that is what Godel is saying. The web we develop of implications between various assumptions is only there to stay as long as the premises are correct. Some will be proven incorrect and mathematics will have to be revised. In this world, the process of revision will never end. Any system of logic which can be expressed in a way that is recursively enumerable and strong enough to contain our usual understanding of arithmetic in the natural numbers is subject to Godel’s theorem. This does include the physical universe and science, if our normal assumptions that such things obey mathematical laws hold. More generally, ALL systems of logic have deductions and rest on unprovable statements which have been inferred or assumed. There is always a set of things which you can logically state from the axioms and there is always an additional list of statements which are not provable.Reply
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stumbleupon_throwaway says:August 20, 2013 at 5:54 pmThis article made me cringe. Perry’s obviously not done his homework. > Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless. He’s heard of Set Theory. Nor does he have any understanding of the notion of a limit. Mixing supremums with infinity isn’t allowed. > The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time Despite what you might hear, entropy is time symmetric. The Laws of Thermodynamics are emergent, not fundamental. Some physicists hypothesize that the universe is little more than a random vacuum fluctuation. > A “theory of everything” – whether in math, or physics, or philosophy – will never be found. Because it is impossible. He intentionally conflates this with what physicists call the Grand Unified Theory. The ideas are related, but not identical. If anyone wants a less religiously-biased article on the slippery nature of logic, here’s an online book written by a guy who actually has a PhD in philosophy. http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Philosophy/axioms/axioms/Reply
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Perry says:August 21, 2013 at 10:53 am“Stumbleupon Throwaway?” Yet another anonymous detractor. Tell us who you are and use your real name. Your comments about entropy do not address in any way shape or form the origin of information. Please prove that entropy is time symmetric. Please provide evidence to support the hypothesis that anything like a universe can come from a random vacuum fluctuation. Sounds like pure conjecture. I am not mixing supremums with infinity. I am saying: that which is necessarily infinite is distinct from any mathematical proposition or physical entity.Reply
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stumbleupon_throwaway says:September 3, 2013 at 9:50 pm> “Stumbleupon Throwaway?” Yet another anonymous detractor. Tell us who you are and use your real name. Internet Safety 101: never give out personal information. I’d rather not be doxxed. The internet never forgets. A rookie mistake, but let’s ignore this one since it’s unimportant. > Your comments about entropy do not address in any way shape or form the origin of information. Oh, and I suppose you also think botany do not address in any way shape or form the structure of plants, and that the culinary arts do not address in any way shape of form the execution of producing baked goods. Comments such as these only confirm that you have zero understanding of what you’re discussing. Information and entropy are about as intrinsically linked as hot and cold. Educate yourself. Thermodynamic entropy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy Shannon entropy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory) > Please prove that entropy is time symmetric. Entropy lies in the domain of science. We can “prove” statements in the domain of Pure Mathematics and Analytic Philosophy (given whatever relevant axioms apply to that instance of the problem e.g. ZFC). But we can’t prove things in science. All we can really do is provide evidence which allows us to infer causality by isolating variables. The typical go-to example is how Relativity subsumed Newtonian Physics. Newtonian Physics isn’t necessarily “wrong” so much as it is a slightly less accurate approximation of reality. http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm As far as whether physicists have decided whether entropy is symmetric, it’s moot (debatable, not irrelevant). But at the moment, it looks pretty symmetric to me. I.e. Think about it in terms of statistics. It’s not strictly impossible for every single air molecule in the room to spontaneously rush to one particular side of the room, it’s just extremely insanely improbable. > Please provide evidence to support the hypothesis that anything like a universe can come from a random vacuum fluctuation. Sounds like pure conjecture. It is, indeed, pure conjecture. It doesn’t have a lot of experimental support. And does sound pretty far-fetched. But it sounds less so in light of physicists’ recent understanding of virtual particles, which physicists are pretty confident exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_genesis But whether it’s true or false isn’t what’s important. The more important point is that it’s considered a feasible theory, so you can’t say things like “… whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being. … Thus atheism violates the laws of reason and logic!” Actually, no. This not the only “logical” conclusion. There exist many other possible explanations (which would be clear to you if you’d read even a single book on any of the topics you’re discussing in your article). > I am not mixing supremums with infinity. You are most definitely mixing supremums with infinity. And I quote: “Whatever is outside the biggest circle is boundless.” A supremum is the biggest by definition. Infinity is boundless by definition. Literally. Look up their definitions. Better yet, open a damn math book for once. What you’re asserting is equivalent to asking McDonald’s for “a cheeseburger without cheese”. And to refute it mathematically, I shouldn’t need to because it’s considered common knowledge in the contemporary math/philosophy community. Zeno tried to argue something similar with “infinite smallest circles” and argued to an absurd conclusion. His flaw is that he (like his contemporaries 2.5 millenia ago) didn’t understand limits, an relatively recent innovation which is to calculus what an engine is to an automobile. The entire point of high school pre-calc class is to familiarize students with the notion of a limit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes#Achilles_and_the_tortoise And I can guess what you’ve been thinking. “Oh, but I never needed calculus classes. Divine inspiration taught me everything I need to know. My philosophical arguments are just as logical as the next guy’s, if not more!” Please. Don’t write another article until after you’ve (at the bare minimum) seen what the inside of your local library looks like. > I am saying: that which is necessarily infinite is distinct from any mathematical proposition or physical entity. Georg Cantor just rolled in his grave. Way to ignore the entire discipline he founded (set theory) in order to deal with infinities. Way to ignore the bare basics of the very field Godel’s work arose from (set theory). Way to once again, like so many other lay people before you, completely misapply Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems (plural because there were two, you idiot). The last guy (Michael Cotton) appears to have already gone over this. You can’t just apply Godel’s Theorems willy nilly. They only apply to special situations where you can map the problem to the number line, which does not include all logical systems. Far from. And the entire reason Godel used a number line is to prevent other mathematicians from inferring the exaggerated scope of the argument that you’re arguing for when you explain his theorems. In all likelihood, Darwin was likewise careful about exactly how he worded his text in “On the Origin of Species” because he’d preferred to avoid debating zealous theists until the end of his days. LOL, so much for that. > Mathematics is a deductive rather than an inductive system. Speaking of Michael Cotton, he’s right. Math is purely deductive by design. Deduction is the converse of induction, not the contrapositive. So what’s true of induction isn’t necessarily true of deduction. Specifically, deduction doesn’t suffer from what’s known as “The Problem of Induction”. You mentioned it in your post, but you clearly don’t understand what it really means. When an argument is derived from it axioms deductively, this means it’s a priori knowledge. I.e. if we know for a fact that all men are mortal, and if we know for a fact that Socrates is a man, then Socrates must be mortal. So long as our two assumptions are true, there exists no room for exceptions in our conclusion. When an argument is derived from its axioms inductively, this is posteriori knowledge. I.e. if we know for a fact that Socrates and his friends are all men, and that Socrates and all his friends are mortal, can we conclude that all men are mortal? No, we can’t. It’s possible that some men are not his friends. This opens up the possibility that those men who are not friends may be immortal. It’s also possible that they are indeed mortal. Effectively, induction is an invalid form of argument because its conclusion is not necessarily true 100% of the time. Besides being an example of the Problem of Induction, this is also an example of the Fallacy of Composition. But being invalid is not the same as being unreasonable. By no means is Socrates’s friends a representative sample of the population. But if this truly is the extent of your sample size, it’s not unreasonable to infer that all men really are mortal. The reason induction is still used is because it’s still useful/correct in certain situations, even though it’s not correct 100% of the time. We can probably count on the sun for rising again tomorrow. We’re all pretty confident that we’re correct. But our estimates say it will fade away into a brown dwarf 5 billion years in the future, so the sun rising again is not necessarily correct globally, for all instances, all the time in the same way that deduction is. Math is able to prove things in the strictest sense of the word because it’s a deductive system since each level of abstraction is directly derived from it’s axioms, no exceptions. Science is only able to provide an increasingly accurate best guess. It might not be 100% correct. But our present degree of confidence in its theories “such as theory of atoms” is so high, society finds it useful. One of the greatest traits of science is that it’s willing to admit it when it’s wrong. But not without good reason. The vast majority of articles published are rigorously (mercilessly) peer reviewed. When science does realize its mistake, it simply accepts this and moves on with the better theory. In this sense, it’s pretty humble. > No time in the history of mankind has faith in God been more reasonable, more logical, or more thoroughly supported by science and mathematics. This article on the other hand represents the height of arrogance. Imagine if I had walked into an astronomical observatory and said “Betelgeuse is my favorite planet. It’s a pity that the Romulans phase-jammed its tachyon core.” This is how bad your article is. Jimmies Rustled = maximum. But in spite of Poe’s Law, it appears you’re completely serious. Additionally, you’re arguing for your biasedly preconceived conclusion, not for the truth. I mean, Godel himself was deeply mystic. Einstein believed in God. Schrodinger’s wave function was inspired by the Vedas. But for fuck’s sake, none of them allowed their faith to tarnish their excellent work via motivated reasoning. There’s nothing inherently wrong with faith. But there is definitely something wrong with your shitty, zero-effort, ignorant, and misleading article.Reply
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Perry says:September 5, 2013 at 8:13 pmYou still have not explained the origin of biological information. Links to these Wikipedia entries about entropy do not answer this question. Please explain to me how you get a code without a designer. If you can solve this I will write you a check for ten thousand dollars. The specification for doing this is at http://www.naturalcode.org. In response to my question “Please prove that entropy is time-symmetric” the closest thing to an answer I can find is: “at the moment, it looks pretty symmetric to me.” Is that all the evidence you have? I asked you about the universe coming from a random vacuum fluctuation. You admit that it’s pure conjecture, then state that what is true and false isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that it’s considered a “feasible theory.” Really? What is the definition a “feasible theory” and where is your proof for its validity? You are equating supremums with boundlessness. A supremum is not boundless. A supremum is always finite, being defined as “the least element of T that is greater than or equal to all elements of S.” The fact that you prefer to cast insults in anonymity rather than sign your name under your own statements is telling.Reply
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Michael Cotton says:September 5, 2013 at 10:23 pmThat’s a serious problem. You are not connecting with what is the entire structure of mathematics. I said that the *web of implications* is there to stay. You see, in a formalist sense a statement in and of itself has no definite truth value. But an implication *between* two statements does. So whether or not some standard axiom system we use to build structures and establish relative consistency of things is provable or given isn’t a serious issue in the way you think. Also, you are again overestimating what a recursively enumerable set of axioms can be. So let me go ahead and give the REAL gist of how Gödel’s incompleteness works: Essentially, a set is recursively enumerable/definable/effectively enumerable/computable… (we have lots of different words that show up for these things and they are all sort of mutually standard) if it can be listed *in a nice enough way so that an automated machine could theoretically search through it to say both a YES or a NO (and actually halt in a finite amount of time to do so instead of keep searching forever) when asked the question of whether or not a given input belongs in the set.* Mathematically, this amounts to saying that the collection of assumptions, which is not just countable (which is an automatic restriction due to what’s allowed in first-order logic), but the whole system *can be coded into the counting numbers in a way that a machine can both perform and undo the coding. This essentially lets us look at our system as if it’s the counting numbers. Then, Gödel shows that the deductions themselves can be coded into counting numbers in the same very way. So in Gödel’s theorem we are restricting ourselves to a system that remains machine readable (not too restrictive) and ALSO machine decidable (very restrictive), and this lets us code everything nicely, the statements AND the proofs, as counting numbers. Again, a set being countable means we can biject it with the countable numbers, but the important bit here is that the assumed recursiveness of it all lets us do this bijection/coding NICELY, in the sense that we can actually move back in forward between our coded representations with an existing algorithm rather than some crazy pathological function. Now is where the fact that we want our system to contain our basic arithmetic axioms for the natural numbers. Since we’ve coded all our statements AND proofs as natural numbers (by that we mean the counting numbers {0,1,2,3,4,…}), and the system lets us perform the arithmetic (because we contain enough axioms to do so) on the coded version of our logical system, we can be talking about the natural numbers in our logical statements and proofs which are AT THE VERY SAME TIME coded by these numbers that they say things about! (I still think that’s super cool, so I got excited there for a minute) This lets us “diagonalize out” so to speak and produce pathological statements that say things about the exact same number that codes it. Like “There is no proof of me,” and such. Using such a trick, Gödels result follows. The important thing is that our allowed theory here has a lot of special considerations. At the time when this work was done, the theoretical notion of “computability” was being developed. The work of Alan Turing in that decade is especially important. Essentially the idea is to ask What, if given an arbitrarily large (but necessarily finite) amount of memory and speed, could a computer (still an abstract notion at the time) actually compute? Turns out, it’s definitely NOT anything and everything. And that’s precisely the problem with your interpretation. Could we code the physical world into a logical language? Actually, yes… but the language would be hideous (and possibly not first-order because we surely don’t know everything about the nature and structure of the universe). However, we can’t code anything we want in a *computable* way. The very same idea in the paper (1936) from Turing’s young but brilliant mind is still to this day our accepted notion of computability. AND that very same paper includes some examples of non-computable things. Godel himself once said that Turing provided the “precise and unquestionably adequate definition of the notion of formal system.” So I’m not making up connections here. Although I did notice that what you are calling the Church-Turing thesis is not what the Church-Turing thesis actually is… So you are trying to apply Godel’s theorem by saying it applies to everything, but your attempt to cite the computability theory that goes along with it as a reason for this interpretation is absurd. The computability theory is precisely why the incompleteness does not apply to absolutely everything. Your incorrect definition of the Church-Turing thesis says that the theoretical computing machine is subject to incompleteness. NO. You can’t mix those terms, because then you are being circular. The computing machine cannot compute everything, which is not what we’re calling incompleteness. The fact that a theoretical computing machine cannot compute everything is EXACTLY WHY our requirement that the formal system be computable means the Incompleteness Theorem cannot work the way you think. You ignored the ‘effective enumerability’ requirement because you didn’t understand what it means, and you tried to replace it with a layman’s guess. The problem is that effective enumerability means computability and that requirement on the system destroys your entire concept. This is unfortunately a classic case of one *believing* that they understand something when they don’t. We all do it, but the best of us react to the dissonance be reformulating our ideas when we are informed of our mistakes. You don’t seem to have made any attempt to do that, but I hope that my more thorough explanation will help. Best!, -CottonReply
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Perry says:September 7, 2013 at 12:54 pmMichael, Thank you for your thoughtful replies. I wish everyone who comments here was as cordial as you are. Allow me to summarize some parameters of this conversation. Turing provided the “precise and unquestionably adequate definition of the notion of formal system.” Part of this definition was, “Machine decidable.” In other words, machine decidable means that the statements can be reduced to 1’s and 0’s. Digitized. I believe you understand me to be saying that if a machine can’t compute something, or it never halts, it’s incomplete. That’s not what I’m saying incompleteness is. I’m saying that incompleteness is when a system must rely on something outside of itself in order to make a true statement. I believe I understand one of your objections to be: That I am saying Godel applies to anything and everything, willy nilly. Well, I did say this: “Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic.” So now let me qualify that a bit – by restating it: Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to all logical statements and logical systems that are machine decidable. Most people don’t exactly put it this way, but an essential premise of modern science is that the universe is machine decidable. In other words it obeys laws and those laws can be expressed, observed, tested, formulated etc. The universe is logical and mathematical. If that’s not true, science itself breaks down. Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic, because as soon as you start counting molecules or plastic pellets or measuring velocities, you’re doing math. Math accurately describes the universe. And as soon as you measure or observe anything, the universe is doing math. So: If all systems that do math rely on axioms outside of those systems and are therefore incomplete; And if the universe does math; Then the universe is necessarily also incomplete.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:September 10, 2013 at 8:04 pmHi Perry, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem got me thinking about spirituality and the search for truth with regard to the 80/20 principle. If we were to take every fact that is known and unknown and put it into 8020curve.com there would be one essential fact that is infinitely more important and more valuable than the rest. What is that fact? For it to be truly superior, it has to be beyond doubt, irreducible, bottom line truth. However, all facts are speculative to some degree. Even the sun rising tomorrow is speculative. So what is the least speculative fact? The least speculative fact is that you exist. Even if you doubt you exist, you have to exist to doubt it. Everything else is built upon this primary experience. It is the foundation for everything you experience. You have to know it before anything else can be known. Since it is the least reducible fact, then it is closest to truth. On the spectrum of speculative facts it is Infinity:1. It is the most profitable fact that deserves the greatest portion of our attention. All other facts are a waste of time because they just aren’t as valuable. Hence the best use of our time is gaining the masterful knowledge of this one fact: I am. IMHO meditating on this most basic experience of existence is the doorway to the Kingdom of Heaven within. It destroys egotism and establishes the mind in peace, certainty and eternity. It gives the ability to truly be quiet and listen to the whisperings of the soul and the world. It takes us beyond 80/20 to 1 and 0. If you disagree that the most profitable fact is your existence, then please let me know what you think the most valuable fact is.Reply
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Perry says:September 10, 2013 at 10:35 pmI don’t disagree with anything you said, but I look at it like this: All of us are on the 80/20 curve, all kinds of different places based on all kinds of criteria. And we exist. But notice that there is always that right side that goes infinitely high. Even the finite hints at infinity. The most profitable fact is God’s existence. It assures us that there is meaning; it’s the only grounds for positing a rational universe or the existence of objective morality and human rights.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:September 19, 2013 at 9:42 pm“Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.” Submission: 1. This written message constitutes information/code. 2. I am the encoder, this message is the code, you are the decoder. 3. I intend to prove that this written message “doesn’t come from a mind”. When we are looking at the origins of creation, then a deductive path is least speculative. It is the via negative. Let us examine what we know and see where it leads us. The Encoder It is presumed the code came from my mind. What is my mind? It is a collection of thoughts. Thoughts are observable objects; I see the thought. I am not the thought. Thoughts appear before me. Thoughts are part of the encoding process, but they are not the encoder. Where is the intelligence that created the thought that created the code? The intelligence that created the thought cannot be a thought. The intelligence came first and produced the thought. Thoughts are its product, but not the thing itself. I am the encoder. I am the intelligence behind the thoughts. The problem is that I don’t choose my thoughts. I don’t create them. They just appear. If I could choose I would choose only to have brilliant, happy thoughts and never have stupid, unhappy thoughts. But I have no such choice. I am simply the observer of thoughts. Since I am nothing more that the observer of thoughts I cannot claim to have created this code. If a great idea flashes into my mind I cannot say that I created it. It just appeared. I would be dishonest and vain to say that I created it. Likewise for dumb ideas – they have nothing to do with me – they just appear. If I could choose my thoughts I would choose thoughts that are much more articulate than what I am writing now. Hence, the information in this code is not created by me. Its origin is not my mind. It just appears by itself. Its origin is unknown. It may appear on a superficial level that I wrote this message, but when we look deeply with a scientific and rational approach, then we have to admit that I am not ultimately the creator.Reply
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Perry says:September 20, 2013 at 10:40 amWho decided to post your blog comment? (That could sound like I’m being a smart ass. I’m not. Sincere question.)Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:September 20, 2013 at 6:07 pmHi Perry, You ask a very good question. In all honesty I cannot claim that I decided to post this blog comment, as strange as that may sound. Why? Because when I look very closely at the facts I see that I am the observer of the decision process. The deciding process happened by itself. Thoughts appeared. A decision appeared as another thought. If you ask an alcoholic why they decided to ruin their life, if they are honest, they will say that they didn’t choose it. Nobody would choose that. Owning the decision making process is erroneous. When we see the error then we no longer praise or blame others for what happens in their life or ours. Things are just the way they are. Everyone is innocent. Life happens by itself.Reply
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Perry says:September 21, 2013 at 4:06 amYou’re living under a spell. And it’s time to break the spell. Now. You are an autonomous human being. Your thoughts are yours, your decisions are yours, and the consequences are yours to answer to. When you OWN that, then you will see a shift. You actually bring up a very interesting point that further underscores the poverty of materialistic science. Only a fool would believe that all the brilliant ideas, the ability to think, our capacity to model physical laws with symbolic mathematics, our ability to create, all the amazing things that humans do, is merely a product of random chemical reactions. To believe such a thing is the height of stupidity and denial of the patently obvious. Where do our thoughts come from? Where does art and music and brand new ideas come from? Most of us normally experience most of the time that our thoughts come from ourselves. Which comes from our experiences, what happened yesterday, what we ate for lunch, etc. But… what about those experiences where inspirations seem to come to us from the outside? J.K. Rowling says the whole story of Harry Potter came to her in a gushing torrent, all at once: http://www.jkrowling.com/en_US/#/timeline/it-all-started I was travelling back to London on my own on a crowded train, and the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head. I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one… I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me. Perhaps, if I had slowed down the ideas to capture them on paper, I might have stifled some of them (although sometimes I do wonder, idly, how much of what I imagined on that journey I had forgotten by the time I actually got my hands on a pen). I began to write ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ that very evening, although those first few pages bear no resemblance to anything in the finished book. When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately. As a creative person myself, having invented all kinds of ideas and concepts and tools, my own experience is absolutely that my best ideas come from outside myself. And…. not just many, but MOST artists will attest to the same. I know of no simpler indication that we are spiritual beings. There is a reason why music is named after “The Muse” which the Greeks acknowledged as a real thing that strikes you when you get a great idea. But as an autonomous agent, you are the editor, you get to decide what ideas to act on and what not to, and while I’m not sure JK Rowling was truly the originator of Harry Potter, she’s the one that got the transmission and she’s the author and she decided to take the steps to write a book and she enjoys the rewards. The ideas that “fall into your head” may very well be from the outside and you may not be in control of that – which is a wonderful thing in its own way. But you absolutely have control of what you do with them after that. To believe anything else is to go through life being a victim. I don’t know where you came to my website from, whether it was the business side or whether you got to this page from somewhere else. But the people who come here on the business side all know, it’s up to YOU to succeed or fail in business and you have to own your identity as an autonomous being if you’re gonna get anywhere in life. Andrew: Break the spell, friend, and live free. Oh, and by the way – the ability to DECIDE what to do – free will – is encapsulated by our ability to choose the symbols of any code, the meaning of any word. Somebody had to DECIDE way back when that 1=on and 0=off. They could have decided the opposite. And that decision is not algorithm or math, that is free choice. If humans have free choice then we are not Turing Machines and scientific reductionism cannot be true.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:September 21, 2013 at 7:35 amHi Perry, My ideas come mainly from the Vedanta philosophy of India. It is an ancient spiritual philosophy that rationally looks at life with the intention of discovering the truth, and understanding creation and divinity. Your queries about the origin of information and an encoder are not new. It is an old problem that was solved long ago. However, it requires a high degree of maturity to understand it. In the same way that most people do not understand advanced mathematics even if they try, most people do not understand rational spirituality. Competence in rational spirituality begins when one is willing to face facts and question appearances. >You actually bring up a very interesting point that further underscores the poverty of materialistic science. The poverty of science is that examines the object and not the subject. All the great spiritual traditions say similar things: know thy self, the kingdom is within, who am I?, etc. >Only a fool would believe that all the brilliant ideas, the ability to think, our capacity to model physical laws with symbolic mathematics, our ability to create, all the amazing things that humans do, is merely a product of random chemical reactions. To believe such a thing is the height of stupidity and denial of the patently obvious. Just because something is obvious doesn’t mean it is the whole story, or that the opposite isn’t also true. It is patently obvious that the sun rises in the east, moves across the sky and sets in the west, but it is also true that the sun doesn’t move at all. People are the same. They get up in the morning, go about their business and then go back to sleep, but there is also an unmoving centre within them – their soul. The vast majority of “spiritual” people give lip service to the soul but have no idea what it is and don’t even look for it. Your soul is your point of connection with God. It is your existence. It is the real I within you. And this point seems to be completely absent from this website. Everyone is investigating the world, but not themselves. >Most of us normally experience most of the time that our thoughts come from ourselves. Which comes from our experiences, what happened yesterday, what we ate for lunch, etc. This is why most “normal” people are so unhappy. The cannot see the distinction between themselves and what they see. They identify with and build an identity upon what they see, think and own: their body, job, car, status, partner, money. All these things are temporary and identification with them is the source of suffering. It causes suffering because the threat of loss creates fear and attachment. “I am old. I am poor. I am misunderstood. I am unloved. I am an artist. I am the owner of a Porsche. I am a Democrat.” etc All these are assumed identities that can cloud your real identity. These added identities can constantly change, but your real identity doesn’t change. The solution to suffering is the absolute clarity that you are not your car, your job, your body, your thoughts, your decisions, your ideology – you are you. You are independent and free, even if living in a jail cell. I am sure you have met the opposite: entrepreneurial millionaires with all the “freedoms” of the world who are caged in their own head. Spirituality boils down to identity. I am. Not I am this or that. I am is not a concept, it is you. It is an experience. People do not find this experience while they are busy babbling on about conceptual identities, “I am a person. I am responsible. I am a businessman. I am a Christian. I am successful. I am a failure. I am in control. I am intelligent.” While these titles have practical use in life, the vast majority of people believe that is who they are. Having forgotten themselves they suffer and live disconnected from their real identity, their soul. The nature of the soul is that it is silent, unchanging and liberating. Most people have forgotten their centre. >As a creative person myself, having invented all kinds of ideas and concepts and tools, my own experience is absolutely that my best ideas come from outside myself. And…. not just many, but MOST artists will attest to the same. This is my very point too. Only I say that ALL ideas come in the same way. But most people create arbitrary distinctions and say, “Well, this idea in my head came from inside my head and that idea inside my head came from outside my head.” A thought is a thought is a thought. To the enlightened mind inside/outside are arbitrary distinctions, but to the mind enmeshed in separation and boundaries there is a great distance between everyone and everything. Such a separated mind brings loneliness and isolation. >I know of no simpler indication that we are spiritual beings. I agree. A thought is simply created out of nothing. This is creationism. It is a divine mystery. Thoughts are not the product of some mechanism. Everything is created out of nothing, even decisions. But you have disagreed with this and insist on some mechanistic logic commanded by some deciding individual. >But as an autonomous agent, you are the editor, you get to decide what ideas to act on and what not to, The ego loves to be in control. It hates surrender. It hates to say, “I don’t know.” It is very uncomfortable with the unknown. It clings to authorship of action and insists, “I am in control” even when rational examination proves this to be both true and untrue. >Oh, and by the way – the ability to DECIDE what to do – free will – is encapsulated by our ability to choose the symbols of any code, the meaning of any word. Somebody had to DECIDE way back when that 1=on and 0=off. They could have decided the opposite. And that is not algorithm or math, that is free choice. If humans have free choice then scientific reductionism cannot be true. The co-existence of opposites is a fascinating topic. Up/down, left/right, happy/sad, theism/atheism, free will/determinism, science/faith. They are two sides of the same coin. Immature minds think in terms of one or other, but in reality both are always present simultaneously. The deluded try to say that the coin only has one side, which seems to be the content of this whole website. The truth is that life always has two sides. It is real and unreal, created and uncreated, personal and impersonal, rational and irrational – all happening simultaneously. This includes social and psychological situations. For example consider sadness. A person perceives sadness and says I am sad. Happiness appears to be missing. The sad person may say, “I know what happiness is and this isn’t it.” My point is that they are perceiving happiness at the same time they are perceiving sadness and comparing the two. Both are there. The happiness is unconscious and the sadness is conscious. By looking for the unconscious happiness you make it conscious. This neutralizes the sadness. A spirituality that accepts only one side is lop-sided and false. Everything has an opposite. You cannot have certainty without uncertainty. You cannot have faith without doubt. The more faith you have the more doubt you will have. Life is whole and it is balanced. Life comprises yin and yang. That balance is found in every point of creation. The 80/20 principle is yin and yang. The nature of yin (feminine, 80) is expanded, chaotic and entropic and the nature of yang (masculine, 20) is concentrated, powerful, practical and orderly. 80/20 is yin/yang and it is everywhere. It also appears as 50/50, 99/1, etc. So when you say that there is a decider, I agree. But I also acknowledge that the opposite is also true, even if it is not obvious. Basically, the message I want to share with you is that the encoder/decider problem has been around in various forms for a long time in the East and it was solved long ago, but it is up to each person to prove it to themselves. The answer is this: code is the product of individual intelligence and it is also not the product of individual intelligence. It depends on your point of view. (I’m not a physicist but it may be like the wave/particle phenomenon.) This is the paradox of yin and yang and when it is properly understood then one is reconciled with the certainty of divinity and the mystery of life.Reply
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Perry says:October 8, 2013 at 11:22 amIs what you just said true, or false?Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:October 9, 2013 at 5:43 pmIt is both true and false. It is true from the point of view of rational analysis. It is false because life is ahead of theology (as Emerson said) and life cannot be squeezed into concepts. The map is not the territory. Every point I make has an opposing view. The rational approach is not to take a side, but to accept the paradox that both are valid. Then you start appreciating the whole and see that opposites are actually complementary. IMHO the real purpose of considering Gödel’s Theorem – at least on this site – is to bring us closer to God. It can certainly do this if we look at it from a different point of view. Instead of questioning what is outside of Gödel’s circle, question what is inside the circle. When we follow a logical path we come to the same conclusion as St Thomas Aquinas – that God is indivisible, infinite, limitless, etc. Since God is infinite, how did the finite universe within Gödel’s circle occur? How did something come out of nothing? How did the divided come out of the indivisible? Short answer: it didn’t. That’s the logical conclusion => God is all there is – God is unchanging – the world is changing – the world is not real. God never stops being indivisible, unchanging, limitless. If he stopped then he would be a time-and-space-bound being, which he is not. Hence, he never changed into the world and the world is false. If you say that God is both changing and unchanging, then you have a division, and God is not divided. Many people think that the universe is real and God is unreal. But it is actually the other way around: God is real and the universe is unreal. While this may sounds like idle philosophy, for some people this is a direct and immediate and obvious experience that is independent of philosophy. *The Manifestation of the World* Now this is where it gets paradoxical and tricky and philosophically indefensible. Despite the truth that God doesn’t change, the world still appears even though we know that it has no basis in reality. So how do we explain it? It appears in the same way that a dream does. Imagine going to sleep and dreaming that you climb a mountain. Is the mountain real? No, even though it appeared to be at the time. Upon awakening you know that there was no mountain. Likewise with this world, when you wake up you realise that it was never real. But since you have to exist to know that, then it is like a lucid dreaming situation in which you know in the dream that the dreamer, dreaming and dream are all false. What is that status between real and unreal? We call it “phenomenal existence.” The phenomenon of the tree is there, even though it is not real. So the tree has a “phenomenal” reality, not really existing. The conclusion is that the world is neither real nor unreal. It just appears to be real. Another way of explaining the manifestation of the world is like this. God is without divisions, changes, limits or defining attributes. Mathematically we can notate this as 0. So how does God appear to emerge from Himself without losing his unchanging, unlimited, indivisible status? 0 = ( ) 1 = (( )) 2 = (( ),( )) 3 = (( ),( ),( )) So God remains unmanifest. He remains as Himself, as 0. This is not nihilism. It is the denial of the false and an affirmation of indivisible unity of God. If we put logic aside and indulge in the irrational and inexplicable, then we can say that the apparent moving, finite universe is God too (because God is all there is). Now accepting that God is everything and everywhere then where are you? How can any part of you be separate from God? You can’t be separate from God. You can’t be separate from life. But you can be separate through faulty perception. You can believe you are separate, but this is a false boundary. In the same false way that the universe emerges from God, you can emerge and be separate from God too. But this emergence is created by ignorance because nothing is outside or separate from God. Emergence is a denial of God’s unchanging nature. God doesn’t emerge into parts. He is indivisible. The emergence of parts (or fragments or finites) is a denial of the wholeness of God. Thus the path to God is the examination this false boundary between you and God. That boundary is individuality; “I am Joe. I am finite. I am limited.” Look at it until it is seen to be false. When you see through this you discover your real self: I am = existence = pure consciousness. Silent, stainless, undefined, indivisible, limitless, timeless being. It is you. It is I Am. It was before Abraham. Then many spiritual quotes make perfect sense. “I and the Father are one.” “Do not say, “Look it is here or look it is there, for the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.”” Luke 17:21 “Lord let me know myself and then I shall know thee.” St Augustine “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” Meister Eckhart Perry is not God, but the wave is not separate from the ocean. (The wave said to the ocean, “How do I become like you?” The ocean replied, “Just settle down.” ie Be still.) This is the glory of philosophy – that it reveals your true identity and reconciles you with God – experientially, here and now. So, Perry, do you agree with the logic that follows from God being indivisible and unchanging?Reply
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Perry says:October 16, 2013 at 10:26 amYou have just explained, very eloquently I must say, why I am not a pantheist or a panentheist, and why both of those world views are illogical. Pantheism says everything is God and God is everything. Monotheism says everything is most definitely not God and God is most definitely not everything. Monotheism says that God is infinite and unchanging and that God is separate and distinct from what He has made. The only way that pantheism can deal with the obvious contradiction between the constantly changing imperfections of the world is to claim that the world is an illusion. Any other conclusion brings you to a contradiction. So now one has to explain why everything that seems real, really is not, so that everything can still be logical and rational. You are right – God never changed into the world. God is not the world and the world is not God. God spoke the world into existence. Since God is separate and distinct from the world, then the world can have its own identity. And YOU can have your own identity. And you can finally accept the reality that neither you nor I nor the world around us is an illusion. It is real and it matters. This is not a dream. (Even if it was a dream, that wouldn’t solve the problem, because even a dream has its own existence.) God is real. You are not God. I am not God. The universe is real. You are real. Upon awakening you realize the mountain was real, we were real, and all of it did matter. Contradiction resolved.Reply
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The Dark Bear says:November 9, 2013 at 10:59 amWell, what happens when one draws a circle around God? One knows that conscience is also not a property of matter, the universe or existence. Who made God? Your simplification had me impressed till this point. And this is where you fail – you are trying to prove something that is inherently unprovable with a law that shows that something can not be proved.Reply
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Perry says:November 9, 2013 at 11:42 amYou cannot draw a circle around God. God is boundless. Nobody made God. Logic tells us that if we cannot accept infinite regress, we have to accept an uncaused cause and also accept that we cannot prove it.Reply
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Viet Hung Pham says:November 19, 2013 at 6:13 pmThe Most Beautiful Presentation on Godel Theorem that I’ve ever read! The Most Significant Explanation for Godel Theorem! Great Thanks to Perry Marshall! You are Great!Reply
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Brian says:January 4, 2014 at 2:44 pmAn economist was once given a puzzle. You are stranded on a desert island with only a big can of baked beans. How would you survive? That’s easy for an economist, provided you assume that you have a can opener. How will this story be changed if that economist is a Christian, or not? Taking the evidence on this page, the Christian will define himself as a defender of the faith and insist, come what may, that somewhere on that island lies a hidden, supernatural can opener. This is his dogma. The scientist economist will remember that thus far the can opener is only an idea in his head. Being a practical sort of fellow, he will probably define proof of the actual reality of his idea as something like an open can of beans. Until then, he will define his idea as speculative; awaiting further information, observation, evidence, etc. Using his creative imagination, he will more than likely alter his idea(s) as new evidence and insights come in. He may well end up redefining a can opener as a sharp rock with which he can bash the tin open. Meanwhile, the Christian will read his Bible and reassure himself that his idea of a can opener was God-given and therefore infallible. He may even use his pain due to an empty stomach as further proof that God really does exist. As for Gödel, I think his idea that if you are but a part of a whole, your understanding of the whole will be limited by the extent of your ability to observe the whole. To speculate beyond the limits of our point of observation is often helpful, provided we remember that we are speculating (ie uncertain). (Please excuse the sexist use of he/him/etc. I know some damn fine female economists, scientists and Christians. And I wish them all a very happy day.)Reply
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Perry says:January 4, 2014 at 10:29 pmOther than venting your prejudices, you have contributed nothing to this conversation.Reply
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Mary says:February 10, 2014 at 7:12 pmAren’t viruses and prions are examples of naturally occurring code? Prions have folded protiens within them that act in much the same way as DNA does in living organisms, the protiens contain the codes that express as the structure of the prion. Same goes for viruses, although some of them contain fragments of DNA or RNA, they only use them as tools to unlock the host cell. They do not use either RNA or DNA for their internal biomechanics.Reply
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Perry says:February 11, 2014 at 12:00 pmNobody’s ever seen a virus or prion spontaneously emerge without design.Reply
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Brian says:February 11, 2014 at 1:33 pmThis really is vintage Creationism, basicly a variation on the old assertion that “everybody knows that….” Who is everybody? Can you really say that nobody accepts Darwin’s theory of evolution? Natural Selection is a design process, otherwise known as trial and error learning; keep trying new ideas until something works. And yes, as anyone who has ever tried to fix a mechanical device without the benefit of a manual will assert, it can be a very tiresome process. And at such times it would be wonderful if an all powerful God would rock up with an all knowing helping hand. But if there is no God, the trial and error method will work, given sufficient time. And the more we explore the history of the Universe, the older it seems to be. So time is no barrier. Creationist may well be right in saying there is a God. But the design patterns we see in the Universe does not require a designer. Things can form an orderly pattern without an anthropomorphic designer. And until you can explain your opponents’ theory of a self organising system, you really are just arguing from a point of dogmatic, circular logic; you think there is a designer God, your opponent’s theory does not include a God, therefore his theory is wrong. In the meantime, good luck with your salesman’s training program. A dogmatic self belief seems to be a vital ingredient for success in that occupation. The rest of us are humbly trying to discover some truths within a huge sea of magnificent ignorance. And when it comes to faith in the existence of God, we really do not know. And its dishonest to tell our kids that we do know. And Creationism certainly proves one old adage; “oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” You just end up with a web of lies and half truths that denies a large proportion of the evidence and ultimately makes no sense at all. And we surely owe it to our children to see that it never replaces the science curriculum in our schools.Reply
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Perry says:February 11, 2014 at 3:01 pm“Natural Selection is a design process, otherwise known as trial and error learning; keep trying new ideas until something works.” Natural selection all by itself doesn’t design anything. At all. Ever. Natural selection requires replication and directed mutations. Replication requires codes and all codes we know the origin of are designed. If you can show me one counterexample, I’ll write you a check for $10,000. Specification for claiming your money is at http://www.naturalcode.org.Reply
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Brian says:February 12, 2014 at 3:29 amGood point. When the dust settles on Yockey’s work on the central role of information transfer in separating a living system from a non-living system, the conclusion seems to be that we don’t know how it happened and in his opinion we will probably never know. His writings on information theory are a bit too arkane for me to understand how he reached his conclusions. Your generous offer of $10,000 reward for discovering how an organic chemical mix was transformed into a self replicating living system of organic chemicals presumably indicates that you concur with Yockey that it is ideed a challenging task; and importantly that your dough is safe. However, a lack of knowledge about the origin of life does not prove the need for a designer; especially if we don’t have a clue how it was done. Nor does this gap in our knowledge undermine the basic proposition that the DNA molecule, however it originated, is capable of supporting natural selection. In fact, I think we both agree that the DNA molecule, with its ability to create slight differences between parent and child phenotypes, was well designed for the evolutionary job. The question is who or what was the designer process? My answer is that I really don’t know because there is insufficient information. However, in my opinion, self organisation of an increasingly complex system at a chemical and thermodynamic level is as good a theory as any. I therefore question your assertion that mutations must be directed, by which I presume you mean intentional. An alternative theory is that all we really need is a system for recognising when a mutation is an improvement on its parent formation; which is Darwin’s insight. The environment is the designer; by favouring one mutant over another. The discovery of dynamite is a good metaphor. Nobel did not intend to create dynamite but when he spilled one chemical into another one, he recognised the usefulness of the new product. According to your theory, a designer God would have thrown it in the bin because he would have recognised the potential evil which dynamite would visit upon the world. As I say, I really don’t know. But as I approach my death due to luekemia, I see no urgent imperative to rush out and cowtow to a angry God. There just is not enough evidence. However, if it is at all possible, I will send you a postcard from where ever I end up. Good luck in your search for wisdom.
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Perry says:February 12, 2014 at 11:54 am“However, a lack of knowledge about the origin of life does not prove the need for a designer; especially if we don’t have a clue how it was done.” We do have knowledge. The genetic codes is fabulously rich with linguistic ingredients and is eerily similar to protocols like TCP/IP – except that it is far more sophisticated than that. There is no form of self organization known to science that is capable of producing that. None. Random mutation + natural selection alone are most emphatically not capable of producing the variety that is seen in nature. The best-kept secret in genetics, which is actually very well known to any geneticist who knows anything, is that cells cut, splice, re-arrange and re-engineer their own genomes with a level of sophistication that puts human coders to shame. See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/does-natural-selection-evolution_b_1769524.html. All of James Shapiro’s work is outstanding. Also see http://www.perrymarshall.com/darwin for a tidy explanation of Natural Genetic Engineering. I WELCOME someone winning the money! It is not my goal for my money to be “safe.” If a natural source of codes is discovered it will be arguably the most important scientific discovery of the 21st century. Because it is like discovering natural “AI”. Most humans have always had an intuition that there is a designer. The utter absence of any laws-of-physics explanation that can even begin to account for the genetic code does directly and logically infer a designer. There is no other conclusion that is both honest and logical. Now you can reject that in hopes that science will someday fill the gaps and I am actually all for that. However science has never, ever completely filled any of its gaps and if you understand the very philosophical nature of science, it never can. Science cannot and will not ever answer ultimate questions. What science can do is point outside of itself and say “Logic dictates that there necessarily is a reason behind the order and structure in the universe.” Theology gave birth to science in the first place. This is why. It was the theologians (and certainly not any atheists) who first hypothesized in the middle ages that the earth and the universe were logical and rational and obeyed discoverable laws. The idea that science has somehow gotten rid of God is silly and ignorant. If you believe in cause and effect and reason and logic, then some form of God is the only LOGICAL conclusion. I understand the profound difficulties that God invokes. You have Leukemia after all. I am very sorry. My son’s close friend died of Leukemia at age 13. It’s a horrible disease. I sincerely pray that you can be healed and that it does not take your life. It is HARD to understand why things like this happen to people. Just yesterday I talked to a very good friend and colleague whose soul mate and lover has aggressive brain cancer. Only 2 weeks ago she was given DAYS to live. She’s still fighting. Why does this happen? I am a Christian and scripture does not flinch from this question for one millisecond. A third of the Bible is somehow concerned with the suffering that we all deal with. It confronts it head-on. So I would like to invite you to not let your emotions and your grief mess with your logic. Logic says there has to be a God, a Prime Mover. Our hearts question why he puts us through all this drama. The cross does not answer the WHY question but it assures us that he is right here in the midst of it with us, and he is as close as our next breath.
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Perry says:February 12, 2014 at 12:02 pmBy the way… I don’t mean to sound morbid, but Leukemia itself is a spectacular example of Natural Genetic Engineering. Cancer is evolution run amok. Cancer is when the intrinsic adaptive ability of cells goes off the rails and cells start mutating (evolving) to survive independently of your body. The unpredictability of cancer treatments is a testament to the innate intelligence of cells. Leukemia itself is not dumb or random or accidental. It is internally directed mutations that have ‘run off the rails’ so to speak. This by itself speaks of the profound programming that is in all living things. And yes, this fact raises the stakes on the God question. So please understand, I do not say this to make light of your situation, but actually to point out that the discomfort you are experiencing speaks to the innate ferocity and competence of nature. I do pray that you are able to become well.
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Mary says:February 14, 2014 at 1:46 pmHere is a perfectly inferred counter argument: Everything we know the origin of was NOT created by a god. Therefore, we have 100% inference that everything that was created was not created by a god.Reply
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Perry says:February 14, 2014 at 2:10 pmHahaha. Nice try. The philosophers have a name for this: “Begging the question.” AKA circular logic. Assuming in advance the exact thing you intend to prove. Note that I did not commit this fallacy. We do know, we have evidence, in fact incontrovertible experience that all the other codes in the world besides DNA have a designer. Thus a designer is 100% inferred for DNA.Reply
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Matthias Crandall says:February 17, 2014 at 8:10 amThe fact the you use such weak inference, i.e “there must exist something that cannot be encircled.” tells me that you are putting sentiment before reason. The positions you start from, are far from definitive, we do not know whether the universe is finite:http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html “the universe is rational” We also do not know this to be true either, in fact science is constantly discovering the irregular behavior of the universe. For instance does it seem rational that time is transient, and depends on relative speed? no, but it is true. Does is seem reasonable that physical particles can move from point a to point b without traveling the distance between them, no, but they do and we observe it all the time. For this, Reason alone is not a sufficient tool for discovering truth, nor is evidence. As you stated nothing can be definitively proven, but we can negate with certainty. This is how science works, can you prove yourself wrong? If not then it is a fun experiment, but it doesn’t really mean more than the rationale of Zenox’s paradox. Tell me why should reason and Logic supersede evidence and falsifiability?
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Perry says:February 17, 2014 at 10:29 amThe theory of relativity is entirely rational. The fact that you are even saying this at all suggests you must not even be familiar with the scientific method. Maybe you just lack an understanding of what it actually is. When empirical results do not conform to mathematics or reason and logic, it’s because the reason and logic needs to be extended. That is EXACTLY what science is. Extending reason and logic and scientific and mathematical models to account for empirical data. What you are advocating is irrationalism. And I don’t know how you can do that since if irrationalism is true then there is no foundation for you making any coherent argument or truth claim at all.
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Brian says:February 12, 2014 at 2:50 pm“Theology gave birth to science in the first place.” Perry, That is about as false an assertion as I can imagine. The Catholic Church used to burn at the stake anyone whose scientific discoveries contradicted their sacred Bible. It was only some thirty years ago that the Catholic Church finally agreed that the Earth did in fact rotate around the sun. 500 years to accept some contradictory new evidence, that really is an evolutionary pace of change. And please don’t pretend that Creationism is this open-minded, curious exploration as to whether God exists, OR NOT. In religion there is no possibility of the OR NOT, when it comes to the existence of God. What do you mean when you call yourself a Christian? Does it mean that on the basis of current evidence you favour the Christian narrative, but if new evidence were to appear you would give up your faith in God? Let’s face it, that is not the deal you signed up for. As a Christian you will defend what is written in the Bible until Hell freezes over. And frankly, people like Shapiro are a menace to society. For strictly political purposes, they peddle an amazing array of half truths like: “So a way to rephrase my question is to ask: Have we learned since 1859 about processes that can lead to organism change “independently of natural selection?” The answer is overwhelmingly positive.” He then lists a couple of new technologies, hoping to infer that God can achieve what science could not. But institutional science is the source of these epigenetic understandings. Science did not create them, but it did uncover the truth about them and then put them to use as a medical technology. The same political, non-scientific purpose runs through the various institutes of Creationist Science. In the 30 odd years they have been in business, to my knowledge they have not discovered one useful epigenetic fact. They are strictly there to nitpick others’ research, which they regularly misinterpret, for the purposes of political debate. That is because their purpose is not to journey into the unknown; it is to prove that God exists (which via their faith, they know already.) Their purpose is not the discovery of new information, they are just trying to convince the rest of us. So, when I was diagnosed with leukemia, it made no sense to pray to a God that required my faith in order to exist at all. Instead I turned to an Oncologist who had spent a lifetime engaged in genuine evidence based science and incidently has made some heroic progress towards alleviating the condition, especially in young people (I am an old fart, who will soon likely die of something else, anyway. But kids deserve our best efforts to alleviate these tragic illnesses.) Then Shapiro rocks up and says, “Ah ha, but can your Oncologist help you grow a third leg?” Give us a break. We will be in dire need a God if we ever let his brand of dogma loose in the science class. If your God really does exist, I am sure he will find a far more elegant way to reveal himself than through the half truths and unsustainable dogma of Creationism.Reply
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Perry says:February 12, 2014 at 5:49 pmName ONE scientist who was burned at the stake by the catholic church.Reply
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Brian says:February 12, 2014 at 8:44 pmGiordano BrunoReply
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Perry says:February 13, 2014 at 8:56 amFrom Wiki: According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “in 1600 there was no official Catholic position on the Copernican system, and it was certainly not a heresy. When […] Bruno […] was burned at the stake as a heretic, it had nothing to do with his writings in support of Copernican cosmology.”[43] Similarly, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1908) asserts that “Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy, nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited worlds, but for his theological errors, among which were the following: that Christ was not God but merely an unusually skillful magician, that the Holy Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be saved, etc.”[44] The church burning anybody at the stake is horrific. I am appalled that it happened at all. Still, the case for anyone ever having been burned at the stake for practicing science is weak. In actual fact the vast majority of the great early scientists were devout Christians. Rodney Stark, Richard Koch, Stanley Jaki and numerous others have soundly documented the growth of science from Judeo-Christian philosophy and theology.Reply
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Brian says:February 13, 2014 at 10:53 amHere is another data point for the history of the Catholic Church circa 1600, when you claim that they had no opinion on a heliocentric solar system> The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was false and contrary to scripture, placing works advocating the Copernican system on the index of banned books and forbidding Galileo from advocating heliocentrism.[7][8] Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point.[7] He was tried by the Holy Office, then found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, was forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. On 31 October 1992, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo affair was handled, and issued a declaration acknowledging the errors committed by the Catholic Church tribunal that judged the scientific positions of Galileo Galilei, as the result of a study conducted by the Pontifical Council for Culture. However, this was obviously a bit too theologically lax for some in the modern church: On 15 February 1990, in a speech delivered at the Sapienza University of Rome,[145] Cardinal Ratzinger (later to become Pope Benedict XVI) cited some current views on the Galileo affair as forming what he called “a symptomatic case that permits us to see how deep the self-doubt of the modern age, of science and technology goes today”.[146] Some of the views he cited were those of the philosopher Paul Feyerabend, whom he quoted as saying “The Church at the time of Galileo kept much more closely to reason than did Galileo himself, and she took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s teaching too. Her verdict against Galileo was rational and just and the revision of this verdict can be justified only on the grounds of what is politically opportune.”[146] The Cardinal did not clearly indicate whether he agreed or disagreed with Feyerabend’s assertions. He did, however, say “It would be foolish to construct an impulsive apologetic on the basis of such views.” I guess it all helps to fill the time while they wait expectantly for all those goodies in the next life. Pity about thje poor little mites who have to endure life in their orphanages in this life.
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Perry says:February 13, 2014 at 12:59 pmBrian, Tell us your full name. I’m weary of atheists being anonymous here 99% of the time. You have no argument from me that the Catholic Church bungled the Galileo affair. Not at all. But you are missing my point. My point is, without Christian theology there would be no science in the first place. Atheism certainly doesn’t get credit for the rise of science. I explain this in detail here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/faq/#christian The degree to which the church resisted science in the middle ages has been grossly exaggerated. Because aside from Galileo there are not a lot of other examples to choose from. They all get less minor from there. And clearly Galileo had allies within the church. Frankly modern creationists today are worse than the church was in the middle ages – and secular atheists are worse than the creationists. Secular atheists have no problem with censorship – the recent fracas at Ball State University over Intelligent Design being a case in point. And finally, atheists have been teaching a version of darwinism that has been empirically demonstrated to be false for 70 years now. The truth bears only a superficial resemblance to traditional “random mutations + natural selection = evolution” story that is taught in most textbooks. Best book on this subject is Shapiro’s “Evolution: A View from the 21st Century” http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-View-21st-Century-paperback/dp/0133435539/ref=sr_1_1
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Brian says:February 13, 2014 at 11:35 amHere is an alternative metaphysical fairy tale. I think it quite reasonably summarises the current state of human religiosity. Enjoy. http://www.spiritualliving360.com/index.php/reflections-atheism-in-the-wizard-of-oz-35451/Reply
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Brian says:February 13, 2014 at 7:34 pmWho said I was an atheist? Agnostic is probably a slightly more accurate label. And I am impressed that you have rejected Creationism and a Young Earth from your belief system. I used to be part of a community that called itself Christian; The Unity Church of Positive Living. It drew a lot of its inspiration from people like Emerson and Thoreau and the poet Walt Whitman. Collectively I believe that they were referred to as Transcendentalists; believing in transcendent divinity within. They were very helpful at the time, giving me the support of a loving community when my need was great. However, I have come to see that many of the traditional labels that we are using to describe faith communities are doing more harm than good. I was taught that the meaning of religion was to bind together. And I guess when we lived in our various local tribes separated from each other by an ocean or a mountain, these various tribal faiths did a reasonable job of harmonising the thinking and behaviour of the group. But we have evolved into a global community in which a Hindu is only a bomb throw away from a Christian. So we must question how helpful these labels have become, given their propensity to start wars. Why don’t we just refer to each other as people of faith, and leave it to the conscience of the individual as to what they actually have faith in. As you have indicated here, there are plenty of (fundamentalist) Christians with whom you have very little in common. I think the 12 Steps have some useful concepts for creating harmony and goodwill. They refer to a higher power. (I think it was Disraeli who said the wheels of diplomacy are oiled by ambiguity!) The term seems capable of uniting whatever differnces may exist between our two takes on reality. What do you think? The other thing I like about the 12 Steps is their request to the higher power. “We humbly seek a return to sanity.” Is that not a beautiful prayer? Especially when it is combined with the Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenty to accept the things I cannot change; The courage to change the things I can; and The wisdom to know the difference.” And now I promise that I will leave you in peace, before you put me on the list of the ten most wanted atheists; to be rounded up and shot at the EndTime!” Good luck in your journey, where ever it may lead you.Reply
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David H says:February 14, 2014 at 5:12 amI do not agree with referencing the Catholic Church and its rancid history as equivalent to “Christianity” for any and all arguments and discussion relating to the Truth and Existence of God and his Son Jesus Christ or Yeshua HaMashiach. Philosophical discussions have nothing to do with the life and purpose and the REASON for Jesus Christ. These are immaterial, fruitless, pseudo-pedantic blatherings which are the direct descendents of rabbincal and scholarly disputations over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. This is not about “serenity” or “peace” as we conceive of such notions. It is about a world which has already been created by the very God its inhabitants argue can not exist even as his shadow and his light loom largely into their every minute of existence. As Perry contends, scientifically truthful, the direction of life has to be determined by fiercely complicated (inherently intelligent) Code. CODE at the dawn of creation. Not just Code but and equivalent DE-Coder and instructions sets for Replicating life but the Factory inside the organism in such a way that you cannot say one thing precedes another. There is just no way, if you truly, truly understood the required complexity of any given organism, to dispute it by saying that “nature” assembles the code, the decoder, the replicator by itself. The Coded instruction set inside — not “just” directing every cellular division, growth, repair, movement, food ingestion, repair, maturation, and even death — arrived on the scene, had to have arrived as a Complete Library embedded into the simplest of organisms. For everyone who arrives here ready to do battle, you don’t get it if you dismiss all of Perry’s reference material regarding genetic coding. At some point you are fighting the very scientific basis that you profess to respect and indeed hold triumphantly superior to any notion of God. I work with code and programming in computers and there are layers and layers of transactions taking place when you drag-and-drop a picture into a folder on your desktop. Millions of lines of code are required in your monitor software, and millions of lines of code required in your computer operating system to not only run the internal processes but to interpret what your physical actions with a mouse and a drag button. And underneath all of those HUMAN BRAIN CODED instructions is the base hardware Coding that “knows” how to respond with its own computational processes to the millions and millions of lines of human brain DESIGNED code talking to it from above. The hardware, the physical silicon based chips themselves, can not process and make computations unless human brains in labs years before DECIDED how such chips would be manufactured to perform such processes. Then the chipsets themselves contain their own interpretational instruction sets in their own separate memories. Instruction sets have to be encoded by human brains. And everyone around the world who works in the chip industries has to AGREE on the coding standards necessary to write the required chipset instructions. Every single computation and line of code required to perform a “drag-and-drop” action is NEEDED to work flawlessly and to TALK seamlessly between processes inside computer chips to make this happen “seamlessly” to you, the user. And a minute flaw deep down inside just one component, down where you would need an electron microscope to examine it, is enough to negate the whole process if it happens at the wrong spot or the “right” spot in a substrate of silicon. Computers and everything we do with them required geniuses all over the world AGREEING on every single meaning of the Code. This world works via computers and the internet (another whole coding argument) because human brains Agreed on what and how to code and how, just as important, to DE-Code the same instruction set. Child’s play compared to the simplest processes of life. Please go really dig into the material Perry references. You cannot dismiss this unless you are more interested in advancing a pet theory or philosophy first than knowing the TruthReply
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Mary says:February 15, 2014 at 2:00 pmHere’s the thing – all known minds post date the emergence of DNA. You are inventing a solution that simply can not escape the fact that for all of our experience MINDS are a product of DNA and not visa versa.Reply
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Perry says:February 15, 2014 at 10:54 pmWe have a chicken and egg problem here. How do we solve it? We drill deeper. Simple minds create simple codes like Morse code. Brilliant genius minds create complex codes like TCP/IP or a Mozart symphony. DNA is more sophisticated than all of these. No man-made codes are even remotely as sophisticated or elegant as DNA. To our knowledge, codes have never come from rocks or snowflakes or chaos. Or warm ponds or random accidents. Therefore it would not be logical to conclude that DNA came from some mindless process. Thus DNA came from a mind more sophisticated than Mozart. If what you value is reason and logic, then that is the most reasonable inference based on the data we have.Reply
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Mary says:February 15, 2014 at 7:44 pmI should have posted this with my prior comment, but I really want to hear what you have to say. I don’t think your argument is as strong as it first seems Your ‘100% inference’ about the origin of the genetic code is drawn from examples of codes that all have their very basis in the genetic code, and so as you point out are hardly a proof for or against the origin of the genetic code.Reply
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Mary says:February 15, 2014 at 8:11 pmYou are trying prove your point by using a set of examples (codes) all of which derive from the genetic code which is the very thing you are trying to prove the origin of.Reply
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Perry says:February 15, 2014 at 11:22 pmIf someone says, “Produce a brand new code that has never existed before with a brand new alphabet, a physical substrate that has never been used for codes before, and a completely novel syntax – and it has to conform to a very special set of requirements and here they are…” then where do you get one? Can you get it by stirring chemicals together? No. Can you extract one out of DNA? No. No code all by itself is capable of generating brand new codes. That’s why “Strong AI” still only exists in science fiction. Can you get one out of some species in biology, at will? Not that I am aware of. So where can you witness that the instantiation of a brand new, totally novel code? You go to the smartest computer programmer or linguist you can find and ask them to do it. The inference therefore is that codes ultimately come from minds, nothing less. Webster’s Dictionary: MIND 2a the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasonsReply
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Mary says:February 15, 2014 at 11:01 pmPerry, if I give a bee waggle as an example of a code, you will say it is not valid because it derives from DNA. So it is not a type of code that can be used against your argument. But we have to apply this both ways. So as you say, an example of a code that has its basis in the very genetic code is not a proof AGAINST the genetic code. And obviously not a proof FOR your notion either. It doesn’t work either way.Reply
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Perry says:February 15, 2014 at 11:10 pmThe reason bee waggles aren’t helpful in this discussion is because they are products of animal intelligence, genetically hard-coded and/or instinctual. Human made codes are more useful because they are freely chosen and new ones can be invented at will. We’re all intimately familiar with the experience of creating a new code, even if it’s just an acronym. The real point though is that there is no evidence of any kind that codes can come from anything LESS than minds or DNA. Codes only come from things equal to or greater than minds or DNA.Reply
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Mary says:February 16, 2014 at 6:14 amSure, but you say “all codes we know the origin of come from a mind” – to use as a premise to prove the genetic code also came from a mind. But all codes we know the origin of, including computer codes, ultimately have their basis in the genetic code. So you are essentially using derivatives of the genetic code to prove the origin of the genetic code, which invalidates your argument. That’s my first objection. My second query is about the mind behind DNA. You gave the example of Mozart. Now, isn’t my syllogism below perfectly airtight and inferred 100%? Aren’t the premises true, the 2nd being your conclusion? P1) All minds we know the origin of come from a code ( 100% empirical confirmation) C2) DNA comes from a mind (your conculusion) 3) Therefore this latter mind comes from a code (modus ponens) proves with 100% confidence that the possible mind behind the dna comes from a code, too. Necessarily. This syllogism proves with 100% confidence that the possible mind behind the dna comes from a code, too. Necessarily.What prevents me from doing that? If induction and modus ponens are valid ways to derive conclusions for you, then they should be valid to derive conclusions for me too, I hope, and if they are, then my conclusion is true with 100% inference.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2014 at 7:47 amMary, Minds do not ONLY come from code. A code alone is just a code, nothing more. You still need an entire cell before anything useful happens at all. There is a popular myth out there proposed by Dawkins et al that a “replicator” began to replicate in the ocean and then over time a cell emerged. 90% of the steps in that story are utterly devoid of evidence. There are no such replicators. Nobody has anything but the vaguest fiction story about how such a thing would turn into a cell. It’s a tooth fairy unicorn story. The actual fact is, every single cell on earth functions as though it has some sort of mind. That’s because every cell in existence has the capacity to cut, splice and re-arrange its DNA based on hundreds of sensory inputs. This is how and why bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. There’s nothing random about it. Such is the chasm between life and non-life. No one has ever shown that just having code, or even a genetic code, is sufficient to produce a mind. What we do know is that by a process of strategizing and planning – a process we are very familiar with – excellent codes can be created by minds. It is most emphatically a “top down” process, not a “bottom up” process. So everything we actually know indicates that INTENTIONALITY is a prerequisite for the existence of any code. Thus intentionality precedes life. Because life is intentional. Everything I have said today is 100% supported by experience and evidence. The counterargument has no support from experience or evidence.Reply
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Mary says:February 17, 2014 at 9:58 amHere is a brilliant research article on how codes can arise naturally; Nature 459, 239-242 (14 May 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08013; Received 11 December 2008; Accepted 24 March 2009 Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions Matthew W. Powner1, Béatrice Gerland1 & John D. Sutherland1 RNA evolution and the origins of life Nature Review (16 Mar 1989) Peptide nucleic acids and prebiotic chemistry Nature Structural Biology News and Views (01 Mar 1997) RNA-catalysed nucleotide synthesis Nature Letters to Editor (17 Sep 1998) Nucleoside Synthesis under Potentially Prebiotic Conditions They all have many further references and citations. All show how the genetic code may have emerged. So far however no design proponant has offered any such information.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2014 at 10:23 amIf the authors can show that their discovery formally matches the criteria I’ve outlined at http://www.naturalcode.org I’ll pay them $10,000. I’m 99.9999% sure it does not.Reply
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Mary says:February 18, 2014 at 2:46 pmHow is that related with the premises of my argument? Isn’t the cell, that will ultimately generate the mind, not coming from a code? If you want to attack my conclusion, you need to attack my premises and/or the way the conclusion follows from them. After all, you expected we do the same with your original argument, which you claimed stands on its own feet (because of the laws of inference and evidence). I hope we are not witnessing yet another case of special pleading. How the code generates the mind and what Dawkins thinks do not undermine the obviously true premise: all minds, we know the origin of, derive ultimately from a code. No code -> no mind. Bad code -> possibly defective minds or no minds at all. 100% empirical evidence. Therefore, if a mind is at the origin of DNA, then this minds derives from a code. 100% inference as well, I am afraid.
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Perry says:February 18, 2014 at 4:05 pmMary, Cells do not come from code all by itself. Cells come from cells. Nothing less. All minds we know of come from living, functioning cells. You cannot look at the code in isolation as though its mere existence will generate more cells and more codes. Life requires nothing less than a living functioning cell with a genome. And all living functional cells are SMART, in the truest sense of the word. Cells are SMART enough to re-arrange their own DNA to adapt to threats and this is why evolution is possible.
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David H says:February 17, 2014 at 9:58 amThe movie CONTACT was made from a novel by the late Astrophysicist Carl Sagan who was famously agnostic. His wife said after his death from cancer in 1996 that neither she nor Carl ever expected to be reunited with each other. In CONTACT, thanks to SETI, an organization really created by the drive of Sagan, mankind intercepts signals from the star Vega, 25 light years away, that are discovered to be a series of prime numbers repeated over and over. At least that was the interpretation of what they were hearing. What could only be an INTENTIONAL code sent by intelligent beings. The interpretation that a pattern that seemed to spell out a series of numbers that matched our own mathematical discoveries on Earth had to mean just one thing: another superior intelligence on a planet orbiting Vega. What ELSE could it be? After all, it was a CODE. And Sagan in his story assumed we all instinctively knew that this was rock solid evidence for other intelligent life in the universe. And the fact that this could ONLY be CODE (intentionally written by great intelligence) also removed from scientific speculation in the movie that this was just a pulsating quasar intermittently transmitting with no intention or intelligent guidance. NO, now “we” knew that a Transmitter had to be responsible, a construction of BEINGS. Then, as a result of that faith in mathematical probabilities, money, time and human and equipment resources were focused on finding out all they could from these transmissions. Further investigation revealed audio and video signals that under DE-CODING resolved to an Earth transmission from the 1936 Olympic Games of Adolf Hitler’s welcoming address. The movie, and Carl Sagan, confidently assumed that we the audience would instantly identify with the worldwide elation and confirmation portrayed in the movie of having verified Extraterrestrial Intelligence and Life. But wait, there’s more! the same scientists who decoded the audio and video signals because the “aliens” embedded a KEY, a super decoder ring, that could only be recognized by other Minds, now had another bigger blockbuster. Jodie Foster’s character, Dr. Arroway, learns that the signal contains more than 60,000 “pages” of what appear to be technical drawings. The pages are drawings are meant to be interpreted in three dimensions. This reveals a complex machine allowing for one human occupant inside a pod to be dropped into three spinning rings. Hmmm, this is similar to the story of DNA. Isn’t it? Not too long ago in science we thought we all life was essentially blobs of cells who had figured out how to cooperate and synergistically use each cellular specialty to give life to the whole. Even Gregor Mendel’s observations and speculations on “genomes” and genetics in the 1850’s and 1860’s could not advance beyond his experiments until the technology to peer far more deeply into cells was invented. Then in 1868 a young Swiss physician named Friedrich Miescher isolated something no one had ever seen before from the nuclei of cells. He called the compound “nuclein”– nucleic acid, the “NA” in DNA (deoxyribo-nucleic-acid) and RNA (ribo-nucleic-acid). Around 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick presented the structure of the DNA-helix, the molecule that carries genetic information from one generation to the other. They had needed the technique of x-ray diffraction photography to reveal hitherto unknown features of the DNA molecule. When DNA structure was discovered we on this Earth received our “prime numbers”, so to speak, through an x-ray microscope, rather than a radio telescope. And every successive discovery concerning DNA and RNA over the years since up to this very day has far surpassed the complexity and impact of the diagrams in the movie Contact. The point I want to make now is that NO ONE in the world, and none of Dr Sagan’s scientific peers, that I can recall or Google, dismissed or sneered at the conjectures premised in the movie. Sagan, who intimately guided the whole scriptwriting process and the filming process, was not derided for unscientific conclusions and premises. Did not everyone intuitively understand the developing suppositions? Signal received from space. Possibilities for bogus noise or Earth generated hoax removed. Prime numbers. Prime numbers. We KNOW these are Prime Numbers because the signals have distinct Patterns that we KNOW “nature”, even Cosmic Nature, cannot randomly assemble and pulse from a natural radio source. Sagan’s reputation, even in a science fantasy, was intact, according to all critics. His fantasy was based on solid science and the math of probabilities. He was not derided for nonsense so far. Next, in Contact, more de-coding of what is now a “much more complex” signal. It’s not just Prime Numbers, Prime Numbers after all. They are a cover, a wrapper for more complex Code. The emergence of Audio and Video signals that replicate an Earth transmission are accepted as genuine alien reception because of the AGE of the SIGNAL. Already embedded from a time decades earlier. PROOF then that MINDS created this CODE because other MINDS (the movie scientists) know how to DECODE following INSTRUCTIONS created in another solar system. Then, finally, the clincher: “pages” of diagrams. DRAWINGS obviously conceived from creatures with eyes and appendages to manipulate and demonstrate what their eyes see. All DECODED on Earth from a complex Set of Instructions created Intentionally many decades ago and after the Hitler television transmission. It was Sagan’s own gold disc on the Voyager satellite and the television signals that signalled INTELLIGENCE to the alien world. They recognized and decoded these things for themselves, even how to play the Gold disc from Earth. No one of scientific prominence has ever dismissed these premises of Carl Sagan’s as invalid. There are approximately 3 billion (3,000,000,000) chemical letters (otherwise known as bases) in the DNA code in every cell in your body. If you tried typing the whole genetic code out (typing at 200 letters per minute) it would take 29 years of nonstop typing. Let the same scientific community, or Perry’s forum visitors, pore over all known discoveries concerning DNA that more than meet the “unbiased scientific mind” definition of Intelligently Designed Code and suddenly so many return nothing but scorn for the so obvious case for GOD in the LAB.Reply
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nick says:February 18, 2014 at 11:31 amOK, applying computer science to biology is an apples/oranges comparison. Given that the environments for each are immensely different, and mutually exclusive, your continued comparison to it is nothing more than disingenuous tactical word play, and you know it. You can extol the virtues of information theory all you want, and make comparisons between computer code and DNA. It still does not equate them, and does not place them in direct correlation. Evolution does not require DNA to exist(in its entirety) , as you claim on your cosmicfingerprints site, first, just because a computer science pioneer made a genius statement about computer code. We don’t know where it started, but evolution makes more sense, because almost everything about religious origins has already been proved fictitious, fallacious, and ignorant. You simply cannot create the link between computers and biology, just because you see something you want to use. If you are going to use DNA as evidence of some supreme mind, you must first give a plausible case that such a mind even exists. No god has ever been proposed that was of any value in the real human world. Also, a proof of naturally occurring code is egg fertilization. The code is written spontaneously, with no act of intelligence whatsoever. The code was not written by itself, but by external circumstances, reactions, environment, conditions, etc. You are setting up a straw man, here. The genetic code is only inferred to have arisen from intelligence by those grasping at anything on which to base some form of ‘reasoning,’ for the existence of a god that the faithful refuse to relinquish. You state this inference with such an emphatic absolutist fervor as to be easily labeled a zealot. You keep pounding the line with ONLY one view. You flatly refuse anything else… That, in itself, infers far more than your ‘information theory’ ever could. DNA does not have digital information. Are you aware of what the term ‘digital’ means? You’re way off on that, and not just because of terminology. Digital information can only be produced/created/derived electronically. Further, the egg fertilization process does not derive from genetic code, absolutely. It uses DNA, but derives from it only what is needed. It is an apt rebuttal of your argument. You keep referring to Information theory as though there is no refutation left for anyone that seeks anything other than your already established view of the beginnings of the universe. The ‘landmark 1948 paper’ is not the end all, be all of information theory. How many pioneering thinkers have eventually been refuted, by those who follow in their footsteps? While I don’t share your passion for ‘information theory,’ I do find myself intrigued by DNA and genetics. Unless you are a geneticist, your view is exactly that: a view. Genetic code may or not be ‘literal code,’ but you are the only one I have ever heard cling to this so literally and so adamantly… It is not a universal fact, it is the best explanation we have, at present. It likely is debatable, but only by far greater minds than yours or mine. I’m not going to directly contradict you, on this, because I don’t have the background to back up a statement of that magnitude, and that kind of absolutist claim is best left to fundamentalists. Just as you claim that the code would have to come before the genetic ‘rewrite,’ wouldn’t your god have to come before the DNA? Shouldn’t that god be ‘irrefutable?’ Should there not be overwhelming evidence of its existence? Evolution still makes sense, whereas absolutely NO religious explanation ever has. Can you show me some irrefutable proof that states that ‘rules of a code are not derivable from physical law?’ On what did you base that statement? What thesis did you publish that shows that to be true? What have you read that demonstrates that to be fact? What symbols exist in DNA to which you could possibly be referring? What symbolic relationship could you possibly be referencing? You appear to be assuming that DNA, in its entirety, was written in a single process, and came into existence as a whole, This is an ignorant assumption; one which I attempted to demonstrate was not the only possibility, and that there is another possibility that actually makes more sense. Evolution is a far more likely candidate for having brought about the authoring of DNA than any theistic superstition. At present, the egg fertilization is the best example that I have at my disposal, given my current level of information. I will research a response, and present it, when I am versed enough to speak without speaking from ignorance. I have researched Yockey. I found that you and those who speak with you have actually hijacked Yockey’s work, for your own purposes. I further found his daughter’s (Cynthia Yockey) blog on the topic of her father’s work. Here is a short excerpt, therefrom: “So, Hubert P. Yockey points out, the discovery of DNA, the genetic code, the genome, the sequence hypothesis, information theory and coding theory, and the tools of gene sequencing have allowed scientists to elucidate WHY Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the Origin of Species is such an apt explanation for the phenomena of biology and therefore now deserves to be called Darwin’s LAWS of Evolution and the Origin of Species.” This is a direct quote, as well: “One of the most cunning arguments that religious people make to deceive people into believing that their religious dogma should be accepted in the scientific marketplace of ideas is that Darwin’s theory of evolution is “only a theory” — in order to capitalize on lay people’s incorrect belief that “theory” and “speculation” are synonyms in science — and that therefore their “theory” of Creationism/Intelligent Design is equivalent and should be taught in schools along with Darwin’s theory of evolution because it’s “Darwin’s theory,” not “Darwin’s LAW.”” I am, by far, more inclined to accept Yockey’s own daughter, as an authority on the subject of her father’s work, than you. Further, the very fact that there are irrefutable citations, from his own family and from himself, which prove that you are doing exactly what I have suspected, all along: disseminating, for the purposes of your own preconceived dogmatic fallacies, prove the disingenuous nature of your ‘argument,’ and its purpose… You consistently quote Yockey in: “”The reason that there are principles of biology that cannot be derived from the laws of physics and chemistry lies simply in the fact that the genetic information content of the genome for constructing even the simplest organisms is much larger than the information content of these laws.”” You are willing to make this statement, while directly correlating computer code. Are you even remotely aware of the dichotomy you are presenting? You are going on, about things for which I have easily been able to uncover virtually irrefutable evidence. Here is the link to Yockey’s Amicus Brief: http://ncse.com/files/pub/legal/kitzmiller/2005-10_amicus_briefs/2005-11-16_Hubert_Yockey_reply_to_FTE_amicus.pdf In it, Yockey takes exception to the hijacking of his work for the purposes of propagating the intellectual carcinogen known as “Intelligent Design.” Yockey, himself, criticises ID, for its hijacking of his work and papers. NOTHING that I have been able to find on Yockey depicts him as anything other than an agnostic, who sought to apply information theory to biology. Never once, in any of his work, did he equate this to any form of evidence for creationism. Again, theists hijacked his work, as they always do, with the results of science. While you have regurgitated his words, you have not accurately delivered his conclusion or his message. I expected no less, but to be able to confidently call you out on this (I must admit) is genuinely satisfying. If you read this article: http://wasdarwinwrong.com/kortho33.htm you’ll discover that the term “creation science” is an oxy-moron, as it deserves to be known. Theists have hijacked Yockey’s work (much to his annoyance) in the same manner they have attempted to label Einstein a ‘believer.’ Your entire argument was dismantled with just ten minutes of research and objective reading. There is actually more information readily available about Yockey’s work being hijacked by ID people than there is about Yockey’s actual academic publications (you have to dig a little deeper, for that). Your assessments of Yockey’s work and what they ‘infer’ are, hereby, summarily dismissed.Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2014 at 2:10 pmAnother anonymous atheist. 99% of those who come here and only use their first names are cowards. Please use your full name. Tell us who you are and what your credentials are for discussing this topic. Information theory applies no differently to biology than it does to computer science. In either, a code is a system of symbols for communication. Look up “claude shannon dna genome” in Google Scholar and you’ll get thousands of articles over the last 60 years. You can argue with Claude Shannon and Von Neumann and a thousand other scientists if you want. Yockey’s opinion of ID people doesn’t change the fact that all codes we know the origin of are designed. Show me ONE naturally occurring code and I’ll write you a check for $10,000. Specification is at http://www.naturalcode.org. If you know anything about my work you know I am a staunch advocate of evolution. See http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/new-theory-of-evolution/Reply
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Mary says:February 18, 2014 at 9:48 pmPerry, I simply hope you understand that you ultimately cannot give me an example of a code that doesn’t come from DNA, directly or indirectly? I can use your logic perfectly in the opposite way against your argument.Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2014 at 10:55 pmAnother way of saying what you are saying is that life ONLY comes from life. We also know that the majority of instructions to build living things (though not all) come from the information that is encoded in DNA. Life comes from life. That is the ONLY properly scientific statement you can make with full proof and evidence. Beyond that we have to make inferences. Does life come from code? Strictly speaking, no it does not. Code is not sufficient. Does code come from life? Yes, it is correct to say that. Cause and effect says life had to begin somewhere. The code had to come from somewhere. So what can we infer, based on what we do know? We know that code always and without exception is generated as a result of an intelligent being’s ability to make conscious free choices. We do not know of any other source of codes. Therefore we have 100% inference that the code came from an intelligent being’s ability to make a conscious free choice. We know how to make codes but we do not know how to create life. If humans someday attain the ability to create life, we can be fairly sure it will be the smartest people in science who manage to pull it off. Therefore whatever created life was intelligent. We have no evidence whatsoever to support or infer an unintelligent cause for the origin of life.Reply
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Mary says:February 19, 2014 at 1:14 pmI could, again, use the same argument to prove the contrary. Since all intelligence we know the origin of come from a code, i infer, based on this knowledge that intelligence is the result of codes. You need to provide external reasons Perry, otherwise we will be stuck in this mutually excluding and “equally” valid inferences. I hope you can see that ?Reply
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Perry says:February 19, 2014 at 2:53 pmMary, No, I’m sorry but you are wrong. The intelligence we know of did not just come from code. It came from an entire living cell. If you disagree, show me a code that produces intelligence apart from the miracle of life.Reply
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Mary says:February 19, 2014 at 8:00 pmIf you have a problem imagining a mind created by a code without a cell, I wonder why you have no problem to imagine a code created by a mind without 100,000,000,000 cells If you disagree, show me an intelligence that produces code apart from the “miracle” of life (and the relative neuron cells). In other words, the presence of living cells is an empirical precondition for both arguments. Requiring it for one and not for the other is special pleading, I am afraid.
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Perry says:February 20, 2014 at 8:08 amYes. All the minds we are familiar with have billions of cells. What you have stated here is what we empirically know: Life only comes from life. So the question is, does the sophistication of life infer an even greater Mind, or are we justified in assuming some kind of bottom-up simple-to complex process where life comes from mere matter?
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Mary says:February 20, 2014 at 4:58 pmNote: I can stop posting if you want, if you do not intend the replies to be long conversations. Yes, and as I said *everything* we know about intelligence also suggests that it is always the result of information. Same point, again. An even greater mind would require even greater information, it’s back to square one. And how can you imagine a mind that operates in the complete absence of any information whatsoever? Ever seen a brain with no information in it? Do you believe that this notion belongs to the set of things we know about? Of course not. I’m sure you can see that. You say code all by itself is not sufficient to produce a mind, hence my point is moot, but you cannot have a mind *without* a code. The code is a requirement – based on all minds we know the origin of.Reply
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Perry says:February 20, 2014 at 9:12 pmSo we have two choices: 1) Information, minds and cells come from blind material processes, or 2) Information, minds and cells come from a higher intelligence Do we have evidence for (1)? Actually, no. None whatsoever. Do we have evidence of (2)? We have the fact that in quantum mechanics, all events are only potentialities until perceived by a conscious observer. We have Godel’s incompleteness theorem which says if the universe is rational, it necessarily depends on a boundless indivisible entity. We have the spiritual experiences of literally billions of people. We have the fact that if God does not exist, absolute morality does not exist either, and there is no objective criteria for human rights. We have the extreme fine-tuning of the universe and the anthropic principle. We have the fact that humans everywhere are irrepressibly religious. We have Godel’s ontological proof which was recently validated algorithmically. We have the fact that the argument I give at the top of this very web page is remarkably compatible with Aquinas’ Via Negativa. We have Aristotle’s argument for the existence of God which is remarkably sophisticated, yet elegant. We have the logical necessity of an uncaused cause. And I have not even brought up any theological arguments. Does the scale tend to tilt more to one side than the other? I for one think the inference to a Mind outside of space and time is quite robust.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:February 21, 2014 at 4:30 pmHi Perry, Last week I made a submission about a code that does not come from a mind. It fits all your criteria. However, I haven’t heard anything back. Can you please let me know your thoughts on the matter. I’ve had some more thoughts since then. They are below. I’ll repost my submission as a second comment. Kind regards, Andrew Sanderson New Zealand * Astrology In the Bible * Right at the beginning of the Bible, God says He created the sun, moon and stars to convey information: “And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.” (Genesis 1:14, KJV) In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus Himself acknowledges astrological code. “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars.” (Luke 21:25, KJV) Whatever way the word “signs” is interpreted, it simply means “meaningful information.” The Bible also says: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.” (Psalm 19.1-2, NIV) I know that in some churches some people do not like astrology. In my opinion, they are throwing the baby out with the bath water. Yes, it is true that gossip magazine astrology is superstitious and preys on the lower nature of people. Yes, it is true that some people get confused about free will. But it is also true that there is merit in understanding astrological code – as pointed out by God and Jesus in the Bible. I believe in free will and that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7). IMHO astrology is a record of our past actions. Thus we are not compelled by some exterior force, but by the momentum of the actions we have sown in the past. We are 100% responsible for our lives and if we want good results then we need to do good actions. It is hard to understand how information can come from mindless inanimate objects in the sky, but it is also hard to understand how burning bushes speak, seas are parted, people walk on water and rise from the dead, heal by faith, experience miracles and are visited by angels. Some of these things we take on faith, but others we know are true from our own experience. In my view, astrology is empirical evidence of God’s word. To deny that there are signs (i.e. meaningful information) in the sun, moon and stars is to contradict the teachings of Jesus. * The Skeptics Society * There is no doubt that astrology is unpopular in the scientific world. It is received by scientific people with about as much warmth as a priest at a Richard Dawkins convention. But all the scientists I’ve met who have denied astrology – I’ve discovered that not one of them has studied it to any degree. Not one. It makes me very skeptical of the scientific community when their biases override empirical evidence. Evidence for astrology is easy to come by – you can do blind tests in your own home. Or watch this clip of the founder of The Skeptics Society. Michael Shermer – on his own TV show – does blind experiments and reveals that there is an astrological code. See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6k7xa1NrCc So I think your philosophy is best: “When empirical results do not conform to mathematics or reason and logic, it’s because the reason and logic needs to be extended. That is EXACTLY what science is. Extending reason and logic and scientific and mathematical models to account for empirical data.” Astrology is not outside of science – it’s just not yet understood. * Conclusion * God says there is a code. Jesus says there is a code. Churches say there is a code. Skeptics say there is a code. The evidence shows there is a code. Do you acknowledge that there is an astrological code? If I have not provided enough proof, then please let me know what standard you require.Reply
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Perry says:February 21, 2014 at 6:31 pmThe decoder is a human, without a human no decoding takes place. Therefore this doesn’t count. The encoding and decoding ALL have to happen independently of any human. I didn’t see your post from last week, it might have been caught in a spam filter. I do not really know what to make of astrology. Christians have traditionally avoided astrology and it is not generally spoken well of in the Bible, for example “Keep on, then, with your magic spells and with your many sorceries, which you have labored at since childhood. Perhaps you will succeed, perhaps you will cause terror. All the counsel you have received has only worn you out! Let your astrologers come forward, those stargazers who make predictions month by month, let them save you from what is coming upon you. Surely they are like stubble; the fire will burn them up. They cannot even save themselves from the power of the flame. Here are no coals to warm anyone; here is no fire to sit by. That is all they can do for you—these you have labored with and trafficked with since childhood. Each of them goes on in his error; there is not one that can save you. (Isaiah 47:12-15) I suspect that it may have legitimacy or be useful in some respects but I distrust it. In the Bible it tends to be associated with mysticism and idolatry.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:February 21, 2014 at 9:29 pmHi Perry, I just googled DNA and found this: “Basically, DNA goes through a machine that reads the code and creates proteins based on what the code says. These proteins are very specific, complex molecules that influence every trait of an organism – what color you eyes are, how tall you are, whether or not you have a lot of body hair, is all dependent on what your DNA says.” So let me change my submission. The decoder is not the astrologer, but the human body. The human body is created according to astrological code – independent of any mind. The astrological codes “influence every trait of an organism – what color you eyes are, how tall you are, whether or not you have a lot of body hair.” The astrological code conveys information to the body and creates a predictable form. Just like DNA. In DNA and astrology an objective language exists that carries information about the form of the organism. In both cases it may be read objectively by human researchers. Both astrological code and DNA operate independently of any mind and occur naturally. In Michael Shermer’s video, the astrologer correctly predicts physical features in the blind experiments – such as one subject’s loud voice. The loud voice occurred independently of the astrologer reading the code. It is my speculation that the astrological code and DNA are correlated and convey the same information – ie two ways of looking at the same thing. As far as astrology being related to mysticism and idolatry, a similar charge may be levelled at science which is rife with atheism and morally questionable attitudes to human life (ie nuclear weapons, genetic engineering, abortions, etc.) Or to religion with its history of immorality and superstition (ie burning witches, keeping slaves, priests molesting children.) In their pure form science, religion and astrology are avenues for people to search for truth and a deeper understanding of life. IMHO sincere ontological research is ultimately a gateway to theology.
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Perry says:February 22, 2014 at 8:53 am“The human body is created according to astrological code – independent of any mind.” You would need to prove that by showing that astrological forces can create NEW codes or cells or humans, independently of any other existing life.
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Andrew Sanderson says:February 21, 2014 at 4:32 pmHi Perry, Here is my submission on information that doesn’t come from a mind. Kind regards, Andrew Sanderson. “Show an example of Information that doesn’t come from a mind. All you need is one.” Information that doesn’t come from a mind is found in astrology. Real astrology is a language that conveys information in an objective way. It has been acknowledged and seriously studied for thousands of years. For many people, their only understanding of astrology comes from newspapers and gossip magazines. That kind of astrology is superstitious nonsense and gives real astrology a bad name. It is irrelevant to this submission. Astrology meets the criteria of a naturally occurring code. 1. Humans can design the experiment, with all manner of state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, ideal conditions etc. They just can’t cheat: the submitted system cannot be pre-programmed with any form of code whatsoever. The position of the planets in the solar system is naturally occurring and is not programmed by man. 2. Since the origin of DNA is unknown, the submitted system cannot be a direct derivative of DNA or produced by a living organism. Bee waggles, dogs barking, RNA strands and mating calls of birds don’t count. Such codes are products of animal intelligence, genetically hard-coded and/or instinctual. The position of the planets is not the product of a living organism. 3. The origin of the submitted system must be documented such that its process of origin can be observed in nature and/or duplicated in a real-world laboratory according to the scientific method. The planets are plain for all to see in the night sky. The exact positions of the planets are determined by astronomers with very accurate technology and methods in real-world laboratories according to the scientific method. 4. The submitted system must be digital, not analog. The system of astrology is a language with an alphabet and syntax, as described below. 5. The submitted system must have the three integral components of communication functioning together: encoder, code, decoder. The encoder is the solar system. The code comprises the locations of the planets in houses and signs of the zodiac. The decoder is the astrologer. 6. The message passed between encoder and decoder must be a sequence of symbols from a finite alphabet. The finite alphabet comprises: * The Inner Planets Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn * The Signs of the Zodiac Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. These 12 signs of the zodiac are 30-degree divisions of the ecliptic. * The House System Houses 1 to12. These 12 houses are 30-degree divisions of the ecliptic. The first house starts at the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. 7. A symbol is a group of k bits considered as a unit. We refer to this unit as a message symbol mi (i=1, 2, …. M) from a finite symbol set or alphabet. The size of the alphabet M is M = 2^k where k is the number of bits in the symbol. For a binary symbol, k = 1, M = 2. For a quaternary symbol in DNA, k = 2, M = 4. 8. A character is a group of n symbols considered as a unit. We refer to this unit as a message character ci (i=1, 2, …. C) from a finite word set or vocabulary. The maximum size of the character set C is C = M^n. For a standard computer byte, M = 2, n = 8, C=256. For a triplet group of quaternary symbols in DNA, M = 4, n = 3, C=64. 9. The submitted system must be labelled with values of both encoding table and decoding table filled out. * Encoding Table * The encoding table is an ephemeris or astrological software. You can look at some free online software here: http://mykundali.com At the time of writing the planets are located as follows according to mykundali.com: Planet………Sign……………………Degrees………House Sun………………Aquarius…………00-55-03…………12 Moon……………Cancer………………17-20-00…………5 Mars……………Libra……………….02-03-35…………8 Mercury……Aquarius…………05-19-52…………12 Jupiter……Gemini………………17-02-49…………4 Venus…………Sagittarius…22-33-40…………9 Saturn………Libra…………………29-00-43……….8 The time of birth of the person is required – preferably down to the exact second, but the nearest minute is usually good enough. The date and location are also required to discover the encoded table. The encoded table is usually displayed graphically as a “chart.” * Decoding Table * Below are basic decoding tables that are standard amongst Eastern and Western astrologers. The principles of decoding astrological code is found in many books on astrology. I am familiar with the astrology of India and I speak mainly from that point of view. While Indian astrology has some different calculations and methods to other cultures, there is a lot of commonality between them. Likewise languages such as French, German, Spanish and English all use a common alphabet to convey the same information but in greatly different ways. * The Basic Meanings of the Planets * The planets may be interpreted in many different ways, but their meaning essentially parallels the archetypical royal court. Sun……………King Moon…………Queen Mars…………Military General Mercury…Prince Jupiter…Priest Venus………Courtesan Saturn……Servant * The Basics of Interpretation * The primary factor for decoding is looking at each planet and the house and sign it is located in. The qualities of the planet are modified by the house and sign. Here is a simple table for interpretation. Sign……………………Ruler………………Exalted………………Debilitated Aries…………………Mars…………………Sun…………………………Saturn………… Taurus………………Venus………………Moon………………………………………………… Gemini………………Mercury……………………………………………………………………… Cancer………………Moon…………………Jupiter………………Mars……………… Leo………………………Sun………………………………………………………………………………… Virgo…………………Mercury…………Mercury………………Venus…………… Libra…………………Venus………………Saturn…………………Sun………………… Scorpio……………Mars…………………Moon………………………………………………… Sagittarius…Jupiter……………………………………………………………………… Capricorn………Saturn……………Mars………………………Jupiter……… Aquarius…………Saturn………………………………………………………………………… Pisces………………Jupiter…………Venus……………………Mercury……… * A planet is comfortable if it is located in the sign that it rules. It will give good results. eg Mars in Aries. * A planet will give very strong or positive results in its sign of exaltation. eg Sun in Aries. * A planet will give weak or negative results in its sign of debilitation. eg Saturn in Aries. * The Meaning of the Houses * The 12 houses are abstract divisions of the ecliptic at the time of birth. Each house is 30 degrees. The first house starts at the eastern horizon at the time of birth. Each house has many different meanings. Below are the primary meanings: 1. Self 2. Wealth 3. Siblings 4. Home/Mother 5. Children 6. Enemies 7. Spouse 8. Transformation 9. Good Fortune 10. Career/Father 11. Gain 12. Loss * Examples of Interpreting the Code * – Venus in Libra in the 2nd house indicates wealth and luxury. – Mars in Cancer in the 4th house indicates a disturbed home life, disruption with the mother and the relationship with her. – Mercury in Gemini in the 5th house indicates intelligent children. – Saturn in Aries in the 7th house indicates major difficulties in the relationship with the spouse. – Jupiter in Cancer the 9th house indicates extremely good fortune, wisdom and higher education. – Sun in Aries in the 10th house indicates a stellar career (like Al Pachino who has this.) These are extremely basic examples of how to interpret a chart. It is certainly much more complicated in practice. The examples above are like looking only at nouns in a sentence. Like any language, to properly decode the message we need to consider the whole context – all the other qualifiers like nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, commas, speech marks, apostrophes and exclamation marks. In astrology these qualifiers are just as numerous and include aspects, the location of other planets, house rulers, etc. These qualifiers give more meaning and make the language more accurate. * Codes with the Code * There are also abstract methods of decoding such as the “navamsha” chart which is calculated by dividing each sign into ninths. This makes a sub-chart which has no direct correlation to the night sky but is used by the vast majority of Indian astrologers because it reveals what a person is like on the inside. This is one example of the many codes that are found within the original code. It can be astonishing how much valuable information these sub-codes reveal. For example, I emailed my birth details to an astrologer in another country who I had never met, talked to or had any contact with. He looked at my chart, determined a certain sub-code, recorded his findings in an mp3 and emailed it back to me. The sub-code revealed specific information about how my particular body works and what foods I should and shouldn’t eat. This has been extremely helpful to me. He told me accurate information that no doctor has ever been able to tell me – even when I stand right in front of them. I spent quite a bit of time trying to reverse engineer the calculation of this sub-code but without success. Fortunately, I met someone who showed me how to do it. Since then I have amazed people with practical information about their own body. It’s the type of information that can’t be gained through medical tests or observation. It is a unique system of diagnosis that I am certainly glad to have discovered. * Computer Generated Interpretations* There is software around that will automatically generate interpretations of charts by applying the principles of astrology. Sometimes these programs can be very accurate. Unfortunately most of them are vaguely accurate and generalised. They are like the early versions of online language translators – you can see what they are trying to say but they don’t really translate well. But it is not because it cannot be done. With the help of the enormous resources of companies like Google, online translators have improved dramatically. If Google were to give astrological software as much time and attention then I am sure they would produce automatically generated interpretations of a much higher quality. My point is that astrological code follows objective principles of interpretation. The system works regardless of the beliefs of the person. It is simply reading the code. 10. For the submitted system, it must be possible to objectively determine whether encoding and decoding have been carried out correctly. For example when you press the “A” key on the keyboard, a letter “A” is supposed to appear on the screen and there is an observable correspondence between the two. In defining biological gender, a combination of X and Y chromosomes should correspond to male, while XX should correspond to female. For any given system, a procedure should exist for determining whether input correctly corresponds to output. Information about a person is encoded in astrological language. It describes the characteristics of the person. This is a fact. I have a lot of experience with this and know it to be true. * How to Prove Astrology * 1) Get an astrologer to look at your own chart If you have an accurate birth time, then email it to a random competent astrologer and get them to send you a recorded mp3 interpretation about your chart. It is very surprising how much someone can know about you only from your birth details. Do this with a number of other competent astrologers and they will all give you similar interpretations. This simple blind experiment should be enough to prove that a code is being read. If you don’t have an accurate birth time then there is a process called “rectification” in which the astrologer looks at your life – your career, education, marriage, children, etc – and works backwards to find the chart that fits. A friend of mine asked me to look at his chart, but he didn’t know the time of day he was born. So I worked backwards. Out of the 24-hour period of his birthday I determined that he must have been born at 2:35am. Some time later I met his mother and asked if this was correct. She confirmed it and said, “How do you know that?!?!?” I discovered it by aligning the circumstances of his life and his personality with a corresponding chart. Contrary to popular belief, charts change quickly throughout the day. There is a very wide range of possibilities on any given day. 2) Get an astrologer to look at the charts of your friends and family If you have friends or family with an accurate birth time (ideally down to the minute) then I hesitate to say it but there are plenty of astrologers on Fiverr.com who could give you an interpretation quickly and cheaply. There is no guarantee of competency, but it should be enough to prove that at least some level of information may be reliably extracted. For the purposes of genuine investigation into the astrological code I recommend using only experienced, highly skilled astrologers in the same way that you would prove the efficacy of heart transplants by only going to a qualified heart surgeon. Some charts are easy to read while others are complicated and difficult. So even if you don’t have an accurate birth time sometimes it is still possible to get meaningful information. If the person was born on a day when the Moon was very close to another planet, then it won’t matter what time of day they were born because the effect will be clear. The Moon (ie the queen in the royal court) represents the mind and emotional nature. If Mars (the general) is located a few degrees away from the Moon then martial qualities will be evident in their mind and emotional nature, like anger. If Venus (the courtesan) is close to the Moon then qualities of art, beauty, romance, sexuality will be prominent in them. If Saturn (the servant) is close to the Moon then the person will have limited emotional expression, melancholy and a serious disposition. (If you need a chart to experiment with you can borrow mine. Send my birth details to a good astrologer and he or she will tell you what I am like. Send it to a few and hear the same story repeated. There are a few clear characteristics that they will all pick up on.) 3) Learn some basic astrology principles and look at the charts of famous people Another way to prove the astrological code is look at the lives of famous people. Birth details of famous people are plentiful on the internet, like at http://www.astro.com which has the birth details of 23,000 celebrities. Plug the details into some software to determine the location of the planets at their time and place of birth and then apply the principles of astrology to interpret the code. Have a look at Adolf Hitler’s chart. His Mars (the planet of war) is really strong. Or look up some Hollywood stars. Predictably you will find many with Venus strongly placed because Venus indicates arts, movies, drama. Or look up business leaders or religious figures or adventurers (like Edmund Hillary) or sports people and see the predictable common elements in their charts. * Difficulties with Astrology * In my experience, I have found that there is definitely a lot of code/information in astrology, but it’s also easy to misinterpret it. Nevertheless, even if only a little bit of information can be reliably gleaned from a chart in blind experiments, then it still proves the conveyance of information. It is not necessary for the astrologer to get it all right. Astrologers often make mistakes when trying to predict the future. Personally I don’t use astrology to predict the future. Rather I use it to understand more about the present. When I look at someone’s chart I gain insight into their personality and life. Some things are very clear, other things are not. So while I don’t expect perfect knowledge, I do find it very useful. I am not trying to prove that astrology is a perfect science. Like most sciences there is still a lot to learn. But for the purpose of this submission, I am trying to show that there is a conveyance of information that did not originate from a mind. * Some Personal Experiences * As an amateur astrologer I have looked at many charts and been able to reveal to people information about their lives. While astrology is a hard subject to master, the first 50% is relatively easy. And by knowing a little bit you know a lot. So even with my basic knowledge I have been able to look at charts and identify types of career, illnesses, good and bad relations with spouses, siblings and parents, personality traits, their emotional condition and many more things. When my cousin was about 12 years old he asked me to look at his chart. There were a lot of really strongly placed planets. I told him that he had an exceptional chart that indicated a lot of talent and wealth. He went on to win prizes for his studies in finance, beat very strong competition to land prestigious corporate positions and is currently amongst an elite crowd doing an MBA at Stanford University. He is as rational and pragmatic as they come, yet he has to admit that I identified his success a long time before it began to express in his life. As skeptical as he wants to be, he cannot deny that what I told him was correct. Astrology can be simple. I know a woman in The Netherlands who has the Sun (the king in the royal court) well placed (in Leo) in the 11th house of gains. A simple interpretation would be “gains from the king.” Her husband died while she had a child under the age of 14. This qualified her to receive financial payments from the Crown (government) for the rest of her life. A man consulted me about his chart. The principles of astrology indicated a seriously strained relationship with an older sibling, injuries to his head and lower back pain. It turned out his older brother was a deadbeat drug addict, as a teenager he’d nearly died from a head injury and he did suffer from lower back pain. I have endless stories like this. Astrology for me has become very ordinary and normal. I have learnt to recognise the planetary archetypes in people without even having to look at their chart. Some people can easily spot other archetypes like the Mother, Father, Warrior, Priest, but I see them as Sun, Moon, Mars, etc. Sometimes I’ll look at someone and see a really strong Mars quality and then when I look at their chart and apply astrological rules – unsurprisingly – the planet often features prominently. My point is that the astrological code doesn’t exist just on paper – it is plainly obvious in everyday life to those who are trained to see it. If you look at the charts of astrologers you will likely find a strong Mercury. Mercury indicates intelligence and skill with analysis and language, which are definitely required for astrological study. Genuine astrological research is very popular and has grown rapidly with the advent of software and the internet. Nevertheless, most people don’t know much about it. Most people don’t appreciate how profound, complicated, rational, fascinating and real it is. * The Case Against Astrology * Frequently, I hear people summarily dismiss astrology, but they don’t know what they are talking about. They are uneducated. Any genuinely open-minded investigation will quickly reveal that there is at least some truth to it. And a deep and serious investigation will reveal that there is a profound and undeniable truth to it. Astrology was known to many ancient cultures. There is nothing new about astrology. However, recently some religious and scientific groups have closed their minds to it. But the simple fact is that it works regardless of personal beliefs. Skeptics try to explain why astrology cannot possibly be real and drift into arguments about causation, probability, precession (which has been adjusted for in India for a very long time), etc. These arguments are meaningless because facts trump skepticism. Without knowing how it happens, astrology does contain a code. I offer no comment about free will or predetermination. I am simply presenting a code/language/information that did not come from a mind. * Conclusion * Astrology reveals detailed information that comes from interpreting the planets in the sky. It gives information about a person that can be read from their chart objectively and independently using pre-established principles of interpretation. It conveys information just like a book, except it doesn’t come from a mind.Reply
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David H says:February 22, 2014 at 4:31 amAndrew, nice try, I will say. But, so demonstrably, Astrology is a pseudoscience. What you are “decoding” is a language developed by humans dating back at least to the Sumerian and Babylonian culture and revised and modified over the centuries. I am surprised that you truly missed that HUMAN MINDS devised all of the astrological symbology that you are so expert in “decoding”! The “meaning” is completely a human construct, a layer of interpretation applied to what the night sky displayed over seasons. Right? Hitler believed so much in his own astrologers that he defied military intelligence and lost his war to establish the Third Reich. His astrologers guaranteed that their interpretations of the signs “in the stars#8221; augured for victory during World War 2. His generals couldn’t pound any sense into Hitler’s astrology enamored brain. THANK GOD. Astrology is a poor, poor tool for predicting anything important that could not be guessed by other means, including “hunches”. If Astrology was valid it would be in the toolkit of bonafide scientists and not the almost exclusive property of television and website soothsayers. When the farthest a prediction derived by “astrology” can go, after thousands of years of use and no improvement in deductive powers, is to say “Mars is strong in your house, Adolph, keep on keepin’ on!” then I say, stop the nonsense. Andrew, it is your very faith in falseness that blocked you from the seeing the true meaning of the scripture you quoted: You claimed — In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus Himself acknowledges astrological code. “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars.” (Luke 21:25, KJV) — Jesus was most assuredly not even referencing the “astrology” of his time. The “signs” he refers to are NOT Astrological signs at all. “There SHALL BE” is an important series of words to note. As an astrological wise man do you not read before and after such a “one liner”? Before verse 25, to put things into needed context: Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” And Jesus spends the next couple of paragraphs telling them how they will recognize the times of his Return to Earth. When he then switches from Earthly events to heavenly events his “signs” are not Astrological, are not confirmations of Astrology, but REAL LITERAL EVENTS that will be readily seen and identified by all of humanity not as minute perturbations of the mythical houses of the Zodiac. And you only cherry picked one sentence from your “example” of Jesus’s faith in Astrology. Let’s pick up where you conveniently left off: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” — Andrew, this is quite a Big difference from the Truth of Jesus’s own words and the false case you have tried to make. Right? “. . .for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” The SIGNS are huge visible events, catastrophic, frightening PHENOMENA in the skies that will shake the Zodiac, the houses, the planets, the stars into a jumbled mess of permanent disarray. These unprecedented events in the skies will powerfully demonstrate that it is GOD ALMIGHTY who left his Word to believe and obey and to walk in faith by. The Word of the Everlasting God. Not the timid, pagan-inspired, pagan practiced ruminations of people who flee the light of truth and retreat to ancient myths to hide from God. The God who will even shake up the false foundations of astrology forever.Reply
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Mary says:February 23, 2014 at 2:16 pmPerry, There are two sets; 1. The set of codes of known origin. And 2. The set of codes of unknown origin. For your syllogism to have any merit set 1. must be known to be identical to set 2. – which is clearly not the case. At best you have a weak inference drawn from an argument from ignorance. Given that all known codes derive from minds, and all known minds derive from DNA your syllogism is not only a weak inference and an argument from ignorance, it is also circular and begging the question. The fact that you start off with the premise that DNA is a code, and you go on to say that all codes we know the origin of come from a mind, while ignoring the fact that all minds we know the origin of come from / or at the bare minimum *need* DNA, shows that your premises hide a circular logic. The simple fact remains that syllogisms of the form you are employing can be wrong. They prove nothing and are at the very best no more than an inference. It is just unsound reasoning, and not at all a persuasive case. An argument is valid if it is impossible for its premises to be true while its conclusion is false. In other words, the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. An inference, even a ‘100% inference’ as you like to refer to it – remains an inference and not a certainty. Now you could argue about probability but the fact remains that it is not IMPOSSIBLE for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Which by definition renders your syllogism to be invalid. So let’s examine your argument further; The sequence of base pairs in DNA is a code. All codes that we know the origin of come from a mind. Therefore DNA came from a mind. Now the glaring problem here is that DNA is not a code we know the origin of. The simple fact is that it is not in the set of codes of known origin, and therefore the conclusion can not be drawn from the set of codes of known origin. In order for your syllogism to work DNA would need to be in the set of codes of known origin. You can not draw the conclusion from a premise that is formed from a known characteristic of a set that DNA is not a member of. A valid syllogism would be; The sequence of base pairs in DNA is a code. All codes come from a mind. Therefore DNA comes from a mind. Now that syllogism is valid, however it is not sound because the second premise is not in fact known. By adding the caveat, ‘of known origin’ you have invalidated your syllogism. If you remove that caveat your syllogism becomes valid but not sound. An inductive argument can be valid and yet still false, all you need is a counter example. In your case, the examples given to you like bee waggles and ant pheronomes were dismissed because they originate from DNA – which of course would also exclude all of the examples you use to draw your premise. So even if your argument were valid (which it is not) the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning is that inductive reasoning is reasoning in which the premises seek to supply strong evidence for and NOT ABSOLUTE PROOF OF the truth of the conclusion. The conclusion of an inductive argument can only give a conclusion that is probable, not as you seem to imagine a proof, a certainty or a fact. Which is why you simply need a better case. Your case is simply insufficient – we do not have experience of codes of unknown origin. classical example of an incorrect inductive argument: All swans we know of are white. Therefore all swans are white. Note how it takes the exact same form as your argument; All codes we know the origin of come from minds. Therefore codes we do not know the origin of come from minds. The nature of inductive reasoning is that it draws uncertain conclusions from limited experience. In the end, you are conflating 2 different sets of code, which are not conflatable.Reply
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Perry says:February 23, 2014 at 6:29 pmMary, I appreciate the fact that you follow the logic and you know the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning. But beyond that you are contributing nothing that I myself have not already said at least 50 times. I have made it perfectly clear that there are 999,999 codes we know the origin of and ONE that we don’t. We have to INFER that DNA is designed because we cannot PROVE it. How many times have I said that??? 250 at least? But the ratio supporting the design inference is, to put it a bit informally, 999,999:1. Yes it is a white swan / black swan problem. Now when you spend any time considering what is actually involved in creating a code (which I am deeply familiar with, because I am the author of the book “Industrial Ethernet” and because I spent 8 years of my life entrenched in the battles over dominance of dozens of different digital communication protocols in the automation industry) the inference to Design is not merely strong, it is blazingly obvious to anyone who has basic common sense. Not only that, as you begin to peel the layers of the genetics onion and discover how much MORE sophisticated and elegant it is than anything man made, the conclusion is inescapable. You are always free to reject that line of reasoning. But you become an inconsistent hypocrite as soon as you apply inductive reasoning in some other department of your life. Which inevitably you will, and probably sometime in the next 25 minutes. As you say, “The nature of inductive reasoning is that it draws uncertain conclusions from limited experience.” You do it EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. By your own standard of judgment, you will be judged.Reply
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Roger Willcocks says:February 23, 2014 at 7:10 pmOh but I cannot resist the temptation. I’m not an expert in genetics, my Master’s in the subject was over ten years ago now. But while “sophisticated” and “elegant” it is also, obtuse, chaotic, error prone, excessively redundant, deadly and a host of other things. But you keep saying only a “mind” can devise a code. And that’s not true. Firstly, life is not a code, life is a process. The only thing a code requires is rules. The only thing a process requires is rules. And rules don’t need a mind, they don’t need an originator, they don’t even have to make sense. They do need to be relatively stable, and not immediately self contradictory. Both of which are conditions imposed simply by the fact that we exist. If we didn’t exist, we could not observe the fact that the conditions do or do not apply, so the fact we exist is at best extremely weak evidence of anything at all.Reply
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Perry says:February 24, 2014 at 7:51 amYou have heard all kinds of accusations that DNA is full of “junk code” and that it’s “excessively redundant” and these are immature, premature judgments by people who could not create life or re-create that code if their life depended on it. You have been sold a bill of atheist propaganda. DNA is the code that built your children and your pets and your eyes and your ears. The Junk DNA hypothesis has been overturned, by the way, see http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/science/far-from-junk-dna-dark-matter-proves-crucial-to-health.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Until you can build an eye as good as the ones God gave you, you are in no position to criticize. If you say that anything besides a mind can create a code, I have ten thousand dollars waiting for you. Just show me an example that meets the spec at http://www.naturalcode.org and I’ll write you the check.Reply
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Mary says:February 24, 2014 at 10:02 pmFine, I accept your explanation of your use of inductive logic in your reply. But you ask for a code not known to come from an intelligence. Acacia pheremone communication is an example of a code not known to come from an intelligence, whether it is ‘genetically hardwired/instinctual’ or not. Not to forget that it was not intended to be proof of a naturally occuring code – it was an example of a code not known to come from an intelligence. Doubtless you will say that it is a derivative of DNA (as are all codes if you trace them back far enough) , but it does not change the fact that this instance of code comes about through non intelligent means. So, all our experience does not tell us that codes are always originated by an intelligence. There are many exceptions, codes found in nature like the above, for example.
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Perry says:February 25, 2014 at 7:37 amYes it is a derivative of DNA. So it does not further your case at all. Not to mention the fact that by any reasonable definition of “machine intelligence” every cell in existence is intelligent. How intelligent? Watch this – it will fascinate you http://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html
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David H says:February 25, 2014 at 5:34 amRoger, In the past 10 years since you got your “Masters” in “the subject”, imputed to be in some field of “genetics”, may I guess that you did not actually find a job in the field. Moving on to THIS amazingly non-scientific presumption on your part: “The only thing a code requires is rules.” “The only thing a process requires is rules.” “And rules don’t need a mind, they don’t need an originator, they don’t even have to make sense.” Starting with “The only thing…” The ONLY thing? The ONLY thing?? By prefacing “the only thing” do you think you have denigrated, downgraded, reduced, or maybe even eliminated the significance of “a code requires rules”? Let’s take it from the part of the sentence you evidently have to acknowledge with no imagined diminishing qualifiers: a code requires .. rules. Definitely. No small thing at all. But rules are such strict things, are they not? The speed of light, the force of gravity, molecular motion, intermolecular forces of attraction or repulsion between neighboring atoms, molecules or ions, and the stronger intramolecular forces, the forces which keep a molecule together, Dipole-dipole electrostatic interactions between permanent dipoles in molecules…. The list of RULES operating at this moment in the universe and Keokuk, Iowa are a staggering immense list of just the RULES science has so far discovered. And every Rule that science catalogs and continues to observe, attempt to explain, and finally attach a label and description (as best as they can) is an OBSERVATION of a Rule, a principle, a force that indeed RULES OVER our present moment of life. Every Rule already in place. Every rule already harmonized to work as a synchronous, synergistic, inexplicably complex and balanced orchestra of BEINGNESS. You say, Roger: “And rules don’t need a mind, they don’t need an originator, they don’t even have to make sense.” PROVE THAT. PROVE ANYTHING in that string of illogical, (I must be honest) arrogant nonsense. I would wager a philosophically minded fish in a fishbowl proclaims the same stuff in Fish Forums. This fish is so supremely confident that he arrived in his bowl by “natural processes” that somehow happened between the glass walls of his little world. The sand, the kelp, the bubbling aerator oxygenating the water for his life sustainability, the natural “rain” of fish food floating down from above at predictable intervals if Roger Fish has a time sense. For a fish his or her existing world of Aquarium is PROOF that there is no NEED for such myths as the surrounding world of Air where other Aquariums are mass produced and made “fish friendly”.Reply
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Perry says:February 25, 2014 at 7:38 amIf Roger was ever asked to create a digital communications protocol similar to TCP/IP, he would not be nearly so flippant about his “rules.”
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David H says:February 24, 2014 at 4:59 pmI have been following this forum for a few years now. Every, and I mean, EVERY SINGLE “argument” that has been posted here in the past month or so that posits to teach the rest of us something new has been posted over and over in the same form, same arguments, same…. ignorance. The refutation to every single naysayer has been made over and over. Convincingly, scientifically, mathematically, you have been trumped. You have been answered. And your ignorance on genetics and what constitutes life and “intelligent design” and Gödel’s theorems and genetic code embedded in living cells that can divide into a whale or a house fly or Lady Gaga is mind-boggling indeed.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:February 25, 2014 at 4:02 amHi Perry, This post is in four parts: 1) Clarifying the standard of proof you require 2) Proving the Astrological Human Blueprint 3) Astrology as a spiritual code 4) Astrology in Genesis ************************************************* (Part 1) Clarifying the standard of proof you require Andrew: “The human body is created according to astrological code – independent of any mind.” Perry: “You would need to prove that by showing that astrological forces can create NEW codes or cells or humans, independently of any other existing life.” Can you please explain your requirements a bit more. DNA seems to be the gold standard in this matter of codes, but as far as I can tell DNA does not create “NEW codes or cells or humans, independently of any other existing life.” I don’t see why astrology needs to be proven to do things that even DNA doesn’t do. * DNA Doesn’t Create Independently * Please correct me if I am wrong, but DNA is a code and it doesn’t actually create anything all by itself. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum. DNA => sends information (via RNA) => to ribosomes => that create proteins Thus the extent of the DNA’s job is sending information. The ribosome does the creating. It is like a man who sends his “code” to a woman and the woman creates the baby. The man does not act alone. Nor does DNA. DNA simply conveys information from matter in one location to matter in another. The information in DNA helps to create protein, but it is only one part of a creative process that depends on “other existing life” – amino acids, ribosomes, etc. DNA doesn’t create anything out of thin air. It does not create new matter, but uses information to rearrange existing matter into new forms. * Chemistry and Biology * Perhaps the point you are trying to make is that inanimate DNA leads to the creation of animate things? That DNA is the point where chemistry turns into biology and life begins? Is that what you are pointing at in this discussion about the origin of life? The problem with this is that all biological things never stop being chemicals. And the animation that is attributed to chemicals actually exists independently of chemicals. => Chemistry + animation = biology. => Animation = biology – chemistry. It seems this whole analysis of DNA and code is to discover the origin of life – the origin of this animating principle. Is that fair to say? * The Definition of Life * Some say that the definition of life is something that eats, breathes and poops. To me that is a mind-numbingly narrow definition. When your body dies and stops eating, breathing and pooping – do “you” die? No, of course not. I know some readers may say that what happens after death is speculation – and it is – but the distinction between you and your body may be clearly observed within you now. You can clearly distinguish the part that dies from the part that doesn’t. You can isolate the essential “you” that is absolutely independent of eating, breathing and pooping. It is the valuable “I Am” that I have mentioned in previous posts. It is the clear distinction between the mortal and immortal parts within you. It is clear experience of your soul (which you are) as distinct from the body (which you have). So while DNA participates in the chemical process of rearranging matter, it does not create animation. It does not create the essential you. It does not create souls. It doesn’t create “life.” I assume that you are not trying to convince me that chemicals created life – that microscopic matter created souls that animate bodies. That is the evolutionists’ point of view. Likewise, I am not trying to convince you that astrological forces created life – that macroscopic matter created souls that animate bodies. Both play a part in the transformation of matter by passing information, but neither are truly independently creative forces. That creative force belongs to the Creator, who is inferred by the codes found in DNA and astrology. * Proof of Astrology * So when you ask me to prove that astrological forces are an independent creative power, I think that even DNA doesn’t meet that standard. It is like asking me to prove that a man can create a baby independently of all other existing life. DNA comprises atoms that combined to make a molecule containing a code. The solar system comprises atoms that combined to make a planetary system containing a code. The codes send information that participates in rearranging matter, but they are the effects of a higher creative force, not the cause. So can you please clarify what you mean when you ask me to prove that “astrological forces can create NEW codes or cells or humans, independently of any other existing life.” *********************************** (Part 2) The Human Blueprint Andrew: “The human body is created according to astrological code” Perry: “You would need to prove that” In the same way that homing pigeons know the way home, or butterflies fly from Canada to Mexico to trees their ancestors visited – I speculate that the human body at some level is aware of the wider environment at birth, including the positions of the planets. It may be that the body takes a snapshot of the solar system at birth and uses it as a blueprint for building the body. But no matter how the body gets the astrological information, it will build the body according to that information. “We are born at a given moment in a given place and like vintage years of wine we have the qualities of the year and of the season in which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything else.” – C.G.Jung You don’t choose how tall you will be, or the colour of your hair. These things are given. And so are strengths and weaknesses in the body. These strengths and weaknesses and other physical, mental and emotional characteristics can be determined long before they physically manifest by looking the location of the planets at the time of birth. How can I prove this to you? Here are some ways that I’ve mentioned before, plus some new ones: 1) Get an astrologer to look at your own chart 2) Get an astrologer to look at the charts of your friends and family 3) Learn some basic astrology principles and look at the charts of famous people 4) Consult an authority. If you wanted to know if climate change is real, you’d find the smartest people who were most educated in that area. You can do the same with astrology. 5) Biblical testimony. Consider the statements of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and God in Genesis. 6) Revelation. The truth about things can be determined through spiritual insight – ie you “get it” in an intuitive flash. Direct knowing instead of intellectual speculation. 7) Inference. Astrology has been studied for thousands of years by advanced cultures all around the world. This infers that it has merit. 8) Blind experiments. I can supply you with birth times of people with physical afflictions and you can hire an astrologer to look at the charts and determine the physical affliction in a blind experiment. 9) Research. There are over 26,000 books at Amazon.com on astrology. Like any subject, a small percentage of them will be genuinely good ones. It was a book by Edward Tarabilda about health and astrology that lead to me discovering my body’s underlying dietary needs. He discovered the precise astrological formula that I mentioned in an earlier post. His work is advanced, but he is one of the good ones. 10) Perception. Go to a university graduation ceremony. Look at the types of physical bodies that go with each department. As a whole, the people in each department will have distinct physical themes. I went to a graduation and as the various departments crossed the stage I sat there thinking, “Engineering is represented by Mars and that group of engineers displays a lot of Mars’ physical traits. Venus represents the arts and those fine arts graduates all look Venusian. And those geologists are Saturnian.” The physical traits of the planets follow the archetypes of the royal court: Sun (King) – bright, radiant, energetic, confident, balding, pronounced nose and chin, average height Moon (Queen) – watery, well nourished, motherly, sensitive, milky eyes, pale skin Mars (General) – short to medium, fiery, energetic, square jaw, muscular, masculine, powerful, intense, thin waist, red eyes Mercury (Prince) – nerdish, youthful face, talkative, eyes move quickly, a mixture of the other planets’ physical traits Jupiter (Priest) – solid, grounded, deep voice, steady, balanced, cheerful, thick hair, cool skin Venus (Courtesan) – soft, gentle, beautiful, luscious, colourful, feminine Saturn (Servant) – tall, thin, low energy, slow, crooked features, dry skin, dull eyes Some may say the university departments are created by similar minds associating together. Yes, there are psychological similarities – but I’m talking about innate physical characteristics – like height. This university parade made me laugh just watching it. It was such a clear demonstration of the physical astrological code. Though I must admit it is much easier to spot these trends if you are experienced in profiling. *********************************************** (Part 3) Astrology as a Spiritual Code While pondering the relationship between astrology and the process of creation, I realised that astrology does create something that chemistry doesn’t. Astrology creates creative people. I know this introduces a “mind” into the equation and is thus outside the brief, but for the sake of interest I’ll discuss it. The astrological code creates creative people – like musicians, inventors, writers, geniuses and poets. Pure inspiration doesn’t come from DNA. Proteins didn’t write Mozart. A series of chemical reactions wasn’t the inspirational force behind Psalms. The heights of inspiration and creativity do not have a material origin. People know this when they experience it. I’m sure you know this in your own life. Is your creativity a product of some genetic binary code? Are your spiritual experiences merely chemicals bubbling in your brain? Is your identity limited to your body? Are you more than flesh and bones? Why are some people exponentially more creative and inspired than others? Lucky genes? God blesses some more than others? The answer is found in astrology. Astrology is a spiritual code. It creates inspired and creative people in the same way that it creates uninspired and uncreative people – by the location of the planets at the time of birth. (As explained before, I don’t think astrological code is random, rather it’s a record of what we have sown in the past and hence our responsibility.) In astrology, Venus is a planet of incredible inspiration. It makes artists, musicians, poets and creative geniuses. Venus is renowned for it depth of beauty and love. It is even beautiful in the morning and evening sky. Mercury is another planet that creates inspired geniuses. It creates brilliant mathematicians, linguists and writers. Mercury people have intelligence that can invent, synthesise and be flexible. The other planets can also give wonderful gifts, but when I think of pure creative inspiration and genius I think of Venus and Mercury. It is not that creative and inspired people are channelling a planet in the sky, no more than they channel the Greek goddesses the Muses. Pure inspiration comes from some high place, but the astrological code reveals who will receive it and who won’t. If your planets are well placed at the time of birth you’ll get a lot, and if poorly placed then not so much. Astrology also reveals when people will go through phases of huge creative productivity and other times of artistic drought. Maybe you can look back over your life and identify periods when your creativity began or ended. For some people it’s as if someone had flicked a switch, for others just a general increase or decrease. It’s not that creativity and inspiration can’t be developed, but some people hit the ground running with an open connection to this external, higher creative force. Astrological code creates creative people. It creates them the moment they are born. *************************************** (Part 4) Astrology in Genesis While ruminating on astrology and the creative process I thought about this. Maybe you will find it interesting. In the old Eastern and Western astrological traditions, they believed that life was created in “seven days” – like it says in Genesis. The seven days are: Sunday……….…Sun Monday…………Moon Tuesday………..Mars Wednesday…….Mercury Thursday…….…Jupiter Friday………..…Venus Saturday…….…Saturn The old astrological traditions say that creation happens in a sequential way. That sequence is reflected in this ordering of the planets. The ordering is very important. These are the inner workings of how astrological principles participate in the manifestation of the world. So in the beginning there was pure potential. Then according to astrologers (and apparently Genesis) there was light (the Sun), then water (the Moon), territory (Mars), knowledge (Mercury), abundance (Jupiter), reproduction (Venus) and then rest (Saturn). Day 1 – And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (1.3) Sun (King): Sun governs light. Day 2 – And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (1.6) Moon (Queen): Moon governs water. Day 3 – And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. (1.9) Mars (Military General): Mars governs territory. Day 4 – And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. (1.14) Mercury (Prince): Mercury governs knowledge. Day 5 – And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. (1.22) Jupiter (Priest): Jupiter governs expansion and abundance. Day 6 – So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (1.27) Venus (Courtesan): Venus governs male/female interplay. Day 7 – And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (2.2) Saturn (Servant): Saturn governs rest. In my mind, Genesis and astrology are correlated. The number of the days mentioned in Genesis correlates with the number planets in the sequence. The themes of the days correlate with the themes of the planets. And the ordering of the days matches the ordering of the planets. In astrology the Sun represents people who come first – like kings, leaders and winners. And Saturn represents people who come last, rest or are finished. So according to astrological principles, the first day of the week is Sunday, and the last day of the week – Saturday – should be the day of rest. The astrologers also say that this process happens not just at the beginning of the universe, but as a cycle in every moment. Life is ever in a state of becoming – it’s always being created – tomorrow hasn’t been created yet. I know this is very esoteric, but it shows how astrology participates in creation. It shows how life unfolds according to codes and principles. This astrological sequence is like the 80/20 principle and other laws that are found universally. You won’t see them under a microscope, but nevertheless they govern creation. ************************************** So, Perry, please let me know if I have my facts right about DNA and the standard of proof required for the astrological code. As you can see, I do not present astrology is as a proof for atheism. I believe that atheists haven’t really grasped the facts. I believe astrology strengthens your case that “codes that do not come from a mind” infer that there is a greater mind behind the scenes. ***************************************Reply
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Perry says:February 27, 2014 at 9:01 amThe DNA transcription – translation process, which is DNA -> RNA -> Amino acids is a complete encoding / decoding process. This encoding and decoding is observable and identifiable as such by humans, but does not require our creation or intervention in order to happen. We merely recognize it is already taking place. It is black and white and rigorous. It is digital. Nothing ambiguous about it. If you want to demonstrate a naturally occurring code, you have to discover a process that includes encoder, message and decoder doing their work, without designing one. Your example of astrology requires a human to decode the message. So it doesn’t meet the specification. You will see this clearly if you draw a diagram as the spec asks you to do and begin to label the components. In the astrological view, the solar system is the encoder but the human is still the decoder. So it doesn’t count. In order to accept your astrological account of Genesis, I have to assume in advance that it’s permissible to impose the astrological conceptions onto the Genesis story. However if I have no prior knowledge of astrology, I would never get astrology OUT of the Genesis story. Or the rest of the Bible for that matter. I invite others to comment on this. Genesis and astrology are correlated in your mind because you come to Genesis with a prior “lens” of astrology to begin with.Reply
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Mary says:March 5, 2014 at 4:32 pmIncidentally, the fact that random strings contain more information explains the origin of new information in our genome. Natural selection operates on strings containing always something new. And this novelty comes from the imperfections of the duplication mechanism that introduces noise. No design needed, for random noise is the best source of new information Nature can choose from, as Shannon showed.Reply
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Perry says:March 5, 2014 at 6:10 pmShannon did NOT show that. He showed the exact opposite. Have you read his work? In any case, prove your assertion. If you can I’ve got $10K waiting for you.Reply
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Perry says:March 5, 2014 at 6:13 pmOh, and by the way – this is for Mary and also everyone else – From now on, everybody uses their real first name and last name. No more anonymous people. I find that people with actual evidence and arguments to present aren’t ashamed to use their real identity.Reply
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Tim Kaplan says:March 5, 2014 at 10:01 pmI’ve come to the conclusion that ultimately, as believers, we see evidence for God, Atheists do not; Evidence is subjective. There is no objective yardstick by which evidence turns into proof. For me, daybreak is evidence, the unity of the universe is evidence of a creator. The Atheist cannot fathom why, which I can understand, but I simply ask that they acknowledge that they their position is also unfathomable to the believer. I must be able to demonstrate that a piece of evidence, to convince an Atheist, is not explainable by any other means except through God, and also get through his preformed notions. Since I lack total knowledge of the universe, I cannot do that. Both the believer and unbeliever interpret the world through a circular process of self affirmation. They both start off with assumptions about the existence or non existence of God, and filter everything they see through that lens. We choose what to believe on the basis of inclination. Since we know nowhere near enough about the universe to *know* the existence or non existence of God, we have to choose whether to believe or not. We choose based on what we desire. That choice is: a meaningful universe created with a purpose that spills into eternal life and where justice is inherent, or a random accident within an accident, where our actions have no consequences apart from the immediate physical. I desire to live in a created and meaningful universe, so I choose to believe in God. The other choice, the far less attractive of the two, is also based on a desire. I believe it stems from the desire to not be judged. The very idea of being held accountable for how one lived their life is sickly to a lot of Atheists. I might be wrong about the nature of the desire. But it is a desire. It is a motivation. But I find Atheists never like to admit that their “belief” is based on a desire.Reply
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Perry says:March 6, 2014 at 8:42 amYou are certainly right, it is based on desire. People see what they want to see. I would also add that a lot of atheists are disappointed in how the world is, and it is distasteful to them to grapple with the idea that God could still care about people despite all the horrors. Another point which needs to be made is consistency. Atheists have no problem inferring an outside cause that they have no direct evidence for, like aliens and panspermia, which some would consider to be an explanation for the origin of life. The movie “Contact” shows atheists clearly believe that intelligible digital signals from outer space are evidence of an alien civilization, but they refuse to make the same inference with respect to the origin of the genetic code. It’s hypocrisy. Also: We DO have evidence for God. We have tremendous documented support for miracles for example, see http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles – included peer reviewed papers, videos, etc. Is faith required? Yes it still is but it is no leap. It is a small jump – and it is logical.Reply
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Tim Kaplan says:March 9, 2014 at 9:51 pmI decided, for once, to use some of my marketing/algorithm knowledge towards promoting rational belief in God, so I ranked a video on Google pointing to this page. If you go into Google and type ‘irrefutable proof for intelligent design’ you’ll see a video at the top of page 1 titled ‘irrefutable proof of intelligent design’, it’s not really a “video”, it’ just a single slide quoting you + a link to this page, but it’s enough for someone interested in the subject.Reply
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Perry says:March 10, 2014 at 8:18 amCool. I’ll take all the SEO juice I can get!Reply
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David Hunter says:March 11, 2014 at 4:01 pmBecause we were all made by one God we have some common things built into us human beings. We know WHICH God we are all talking about when the question is simply asked “Do you believe in God?”. We know that “Yes I believe in Gaia, Yes I believe in a Oneness, Yes I believe in Teojushin the earth goddess of the Gashin cult of Korea” just is not going to truly answer the question. The GOD in this question looms over all of us. Because we all know instinctively or culturally that if WE, our little selves, ME, my little self were to take the leap that it is a HUGE leap into the unknown, in one way. But, we also know that what we DO know we don’t like about “believing in God”. Ridicule from friends, family and society is one very real possibility. But the biggest “known” is that we would have to CHANGE drastically. We KNOW that much. We love to do our own thing. We love to decide for ourselves what is right and what is not right. We love to make up our own minds about everything in this world from moment to moment. And we know that this “GOD” may have some pretty strongly stated ideas and helpful nudges to shut down some of our choices. To believe in God is to give up things. Certain emotions that may be destroying our lives but, hey, I will give them when I am good and ready to. Some day. And since we don’t know what new emotions and thoughts God is going to give us in the bargain we can’t know which is preferable. To still be ME or to go with the God thing. As unbelievers have said — Lord knows you won’t catch me lifting my arms and acting like a lunatic — babbling and singing and, for God’s sake, “Praising Jesus”! Spare me! The truth that bubbles around unspoken in all of the back-and-forths of this forum is that no amount of logic or math or theorems has the power to lead you to God. If such things were so powerful no one would still be smoking cigarettes. Most smokers know people who have died from cigarette caused cancer right in their own spheres of acquaintance or even close family. So Gödel’s theorems and study of the supreme code embedded in DNA are hardly going to rattle your tree if you are afraid to submit any part of yourself to whom you know to be the God of Israel. This forum will not bring any epiphanies to non-believers who parry Perry with conjectures. Remember the popular song by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, sung by Dionne Warwick? “You’ll never get to heaven if you break my heart so be very careful not to make us part You won’t get to heaven if you break my heart Oh no!” I am going to do my very, very best not to break the heart of Yeshua HaMachiach, my Lord, my SAVIOR. The Way, the Truth, and the Life. And for you who do not believe: You’ll never get to heaven if you don’t take His heart Oh no!Reply
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Perry says:March 11, 2014 at 4:30 pmBravo! Beautifully put. I especially like “The truth that bubbles around unspoken in all of the back-and-forths of this forum is that no amount of logic or math or theorems has the power to lead you to God. If such things were so powerful no one would still be smoking cigarettes.” The good news is, the truth about cigarettes does influence those who are on the fence.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:March 14, 2014 at 1:19 amHi Perry, >Your example of astrology requires a human to decode the message. In the astrological view, the solar system is the encoder but the human is still the decoder. No, this is not correct. No human mind is required to decode the astrological message for it to work. The human body builds itself according to astrological code. No human mind is involved in that process. Your height and the colour of your hair and eyes are given, along with physiological strengths and weaknesses. They are not determined by a human mind, but they are revealed in the astrological code. The process is naturally occurring in nature. The code is not designed by man. It doesn’t need to be interpreted by man. Encoder (solar system) => message (red hair) => Decoder (the body makes red hair) Encoder (solar system) => message (tall) => Decoder (the body is made tall) No human mind is involved in this process. I don’t think I can be any clearer than that. To prove this, I propose a blind experiment. I write a letter like the following and you send it to an astrologer of your choosing: Dear astrologer, Please identify the common physical affliction in the following five people: Person A: 1:23am, June 1, 1980, Kansas City Person B: 12:01pm, July 15, 1962, Honolulu Person C: 4:59am, February 22, 1975, Madrid Person D: 5:11pm, August 9, 1990, Tokyo Person E: 9:44pm, March 3, 1934, Paris Regards, Perry. (These dates and times are fictional and just for example) I’ll select people that all have the same physical affliction – such as deafness – and let you know what it is in advance. You send these birth times to an astrologer of your choosing from this database: http://www.councilvedicastrology.com/vedic-astrology-teachers.html. These are qualified and competent astrologers. I’ll send you the money in advance to pay for the astrologer. I’m happy to put my money where my mouth is. When the astrologer reads the code and correctly determines the common physical affliction, it will prove that a code is embedded in the birth time. If there is no code, the astrologer won’t be able to get it right. The astrologer doesn’t cause the physical affliction (e.g. deafness). ******* The astrologer is simply reading a code and identifying what nature has already created. ********* Perry, are you willing to participate in this blind experiment? Would you accept the success of this blind experiment as sufficient proof that astrology contains a code that: 1) Doesn’t come from a mind 2) Satisfies all the requirements in the Origin of Information Challenge 3) Wins the $10,000 prizeReply
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Perry says:March 14, 2014 at 10:39 amAndrew, read the specification. This does not meet the spec. “Since the origin of DNA is unknown, the submitted system cannot be a direct derivative of DNA or produced by a living organism.” Your example requires and presupposes living things in the first place. If I wanted this sort of example I could just use tree rings.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:March 15, 2014 at 12:55 amPerry, the origin of astrological information is the solar system. There is no DNA on Mars or Jupiter or Saturn or any of the planets creating astrological code. The code is not originating from DNA. It is not a derivative of DNA. The code is not produced by a living organism. “Since the origin of DNA is unknown, the submitted system cannot be a direct derivative of DNA or produced by a living organism. Bee waggles, dogs barking, RNA strands and mating calls of birds don’t count. Such codes are products of animal intelligence, genetically hard-coded and/or instinctual.” It is very clear what your intention is with this statement: the origin of the information cannot come from DNA or a product of DNA. It can’t be pre-programmed by DNA. The solar system doesn’t come from DNA. Astrological code clearly satisfies the intention of this statement. ************ Codes from bee waggles and tree rings obviously have a biological origin. Encoder (bee) => code (waggle) => Decoder (other bees) Encoder (tree) => code (ring) => Decoder (botanist) The origin of the astrological code are the planets in the sky, which are not biological. Encoder (solar system) => message (tall) => Decoder (the body is made tall) Codes from trees and bees have a biological origin. Astrological code does not have a biological origin. They are not comparable. *********** There are three parts to the process: encoder, code, decoder. The first two are most relevant to this challenge because they show that there is a code and where it comes from. The code and its origin are the whole point of this challenge. In my proposed blind experiment, I say that the human body is the decoder. In that experiment, the astrological encoder-code-decoder is a complete, verifiable system. DNA has no influence whatsoever on the origin of astrological code (planets in the sky), so its presence in the decoder is irrelevant. Likewise, there are astrological forces present during the DNA encoder-code-decoder process, but we don’t say that invalidates it. Both the astrological and DNA processes stand on their own, despite the presence of the other. ***************** Astrological code doesn’t just influence biological organisms; it also influences the weather and earthquakes, which do not contain DNA. There is a famous astrologer here in New Zealand called Ken Ring who publishes weather forecasts a year in advance for 64 locations around the country, plus for Australia and Ireland. He is a household name and his is work is popular throughout New Zealand with fishermen, farmers, sportsmen, wedding planners and other people whose work is influenced by the weather. I have a friend who is a professional photographer and he uses Ken’s work because it helps him select good days for outside photo shoots. Of course, the science people reject it as bitterly as they reject the Bible, but his work is still very popular with many practical people. For most people, it is not much of a stretch to believe that the moon and other planets influence the weather and that Ken Ring has found a way to decode the message in advance. I’m sure the solar system was producing a predictable code that affected the weather on Earth before biological life appeared. Astrology doesn’t require or presuppose living things in the first place. It is naturally occurring and independent of living things. *************** Perry, please answer this one question: do you believe that there is an astrological code that doesn’t originate from a mind? Yes or no?Reply
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Perry says:March 15, 2014 at 10:48 am“Encoder (solar system) => message (tall) ” Tall what? Tall organism made by instructions which came from DNA. I am not convinced of your theory about astrology in general but that doesn’t matter anyway. The point is what I said yesterday. To win the prize, nothing in the system can be a living thing. End of story.Reply
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Andrew Sanderson says:March 16, 2014 at 2:55 am“Encoder (solar system) => message (tall) ” Tall what? Tall organism made by instructions which came from DNA. If Saturn is 0-30 degrees above the horizon at the moment of birth, then prior to considering the position of the other planets, that is a message from the solar system that the person will be tall compared to the rest of the population. >I am not convinced of your theory about astrology in general I offered to prove it to you in a blind test, then you would be convinced. But you didn’t take up the offer. It seems that you don’t want to be convinced. You’ve already said, “I suspect that it may have legitimacy or be useful in some respects but I distrust it.” The fact is that there is an astrological code. It is information that doesn’t come from a mind. It is verifiable. The Origin of Information Challenge has been met, but I feel you are lawyering the specs to avoid acknowledging it. I’ve been studying astrology for 20 years and I have found it to be a powerful tool for opening the mind – especially because of the origin of the information. It forces the mind to confront the mystery of life. It shows a cosmic order in life. It yells that there is a greater mind at work. It provides an alternative to the arrogant sciences that think that life is a soulless product of “billiard ball” physics. At an advanced level, astrology is the study of wisdom and love. It shows that we cannot escape the consequences of our actions – thus there is no injustice in life, despite appearances. It also factually demonstrates that life is intimately aware of every single person. It expands puny, disconnected individuality to an awareness of cosmic entanglement. You cannot study astrology and not become in awe of creation. Imagine a person who goes to an art gallery everyday and appreciates an artwork. Eventually the artist hears about this and says, “Let me meet this person who admires my work so much.” Likewise when you sincerely appreciate the mysterious design of life, then eventually you attract the attention of the Designer. A deep study of astrology attracts divinity. It is not the only way to attract divinity, but it is one way. So, Perry, astrology is highly relevant in the Origin of Information Challenge. Personal information comes from the sky! It’s amazing. It is a “landmark discovery in the history of science [to] alter our fundamental understanding of the universe.”
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Perry says:March 18, 2014 at 9:05 amAndrew, Astrology has been around for millennia. I am sure there is already a blind scientific study by now that you can refer me to.
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Andrew Sanderson says:March 18, 2014 at 3:41 pmI haven’t found any scientific studies that prove astrology and I suspect there aren’t any. The closest I found is Michael Shermer’s blind experiment on YouTube. There is a study by a Frenchman called Michel Gauquelin in the 1950s who tried to demonstrate a statistical relationship between Mars and athletes. It was a good idea, but the experiment’s design wasn’t convincing. Some things we know are true but are inherently difficult to prove, like Euclid’s five postulates. Or Christianity. After two millennia and billions people, is there one scientific study that proves the existence of God? How long did it take to prove in court that smoking is bad for you? 50 years? There are many things that science has rejected as pseudoscience but are true – acupuncture is a good example. It’s now funded by government bodies and insurance companies even though science struggles to explain how it works. I hear scientists sniggering at the idea of chi, but for some people chi and auras and energy in the body are as obvious as the words you are reading. Faith healing, intuition and angels are also without peer-reviewed scientific proof, but that doesn’t mean they are not real. They are just hard to prove. I have witnessed many miracles, but would they meet the rigors of scientific testing? Nope. Over the years my faith in science has got less and less. I used to wear glasses and was emphatically told by a number of board-certified optometrists that eye exercises do not work and that my eyesight would never get better. After practicing some meditation techniques my eyesight did improve. I stopped wearing glasses and I was told it was due to a misdiagnosis in the first place! Now my vision is like blu-ray despite the science on the matter. My eyesight improved due to neuroplasticity, which used to be a dirty word among neurologists because the vast majority didn’t believe in it. Science is especially bad when it comes to existential questions. It has its model of reality, but it is very limited and easily falls apart. For the scientific model of reality to be real, it has to overlook some pretty basic facts. The scientific view is that there is an objective world that exists independently of any individual, but this cannot be proven. A few hours ago I looked out my window at my neighbour’s house. Since then the house may have burnt down or been covered in graffiti or hit by a truck or snatched by aliens or it may have simply ceased to exist for no apparent reason. The fact is I cannot speak for the existence of the house. I can say nothing. I don’t know its current status or if it exists at all. All I have are outdated memories. This is where the scientific approach completely fails – it is based on the unchallenged assumption that there is an objective reality – a world “out there.” Then it speaks with certainty about things that are obviously speculative. Who can really say how things are? Who can say if the Sun will rise tomorrow? Who knows what really happened in the past? In actuality, all possibilities exist and anything can happen at anytime – despite the apparent laws of physics. So when scientists try to tell me what is real and what isn’t, I just remind myself that they don’t even know what is going on behind their own back. (Turning around just continues the problem.) My point is that while science is practical for some things, it is not good at determining reality. I hope you understand what I am trying to say. Nevertheless, astrology can be proven in blind experiments as I proposed earlier. Others have tried in the past but it is a complicated matter. Even for me to find five charts that are easy to read and have a common physical affliction would require quite a bit of time, effort and cost. And even then it would rely on the astrologer being competent. So there are a lot of difficulties in objectively proving astrology. The easiest way to prove it is subjectively: personal experience. Either study it yourself or get an expert to read your chart. My friends said that I shouldn’t waste my time on this challenge because the bias against astrology is so great. It challenges scientific and religious views of the world, which makes it extremely unpopular. I have accepted that you are not going to accept my submission even though I know it to be valid. I like thinking these things through and writing about it, so it hasn’t been a complete waste of time. In fact, I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to voice my ideas. So thank you, Perry.Reply
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Perry says:March 19, 2014 at 12:27 amI’m not sure about angels, but faith healing IS confirmed in peer reviewed scientific literature, see http://www.coffeehousetheology.com/miracles, the link to “Southern Medical Journal.” Heck you don’t even need scientific studies, you can watch people being healed in real time on video, such as Delia Knox. Her story is on my page for all to see. Psychic phenomena such as remote viewing and telekinesis are also well supported by scientific studies. See “Margins of Reality” by Jahn and Dunn. If astrology is anywhere near as valid as you say it is, it should be VERY easy to prove and frankly the studies should already be out there in abundance by now. Consider that faith healing is a relatively rare thing in the US; but horoscopes are in every newspaper every day. Burden of proof is on the astrology advocates. If there is none to be found thus far, I encourage you to ask why until you find the answer.Reply
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Simon Vlahov says:March 31, 2014 at 2:19 pmEven if Godel’s theorem is a proof of metaphysics, it is not proof of the existence of the “Christian”God. I agree that the ultimate reality must be indivisable, uncaused cause and infinite. However, there are many possibilities about its nature. Concluding that it is a sentient, conscious being is a huge leap in faith, having nothing in common with Godel’s hypothesis. It can be just an assembly of Platonic forms (universal mathematical laws). That will explain the ordered, information-bearing structure of the material world. Secondly, this endless metaphysical “substance”can be in fact divisable – it can be the mental energy of many monads, or gods. God is not necessarily one. Even though he be infinite, according to Hilbert’s Hotel Infinity paradox, there’s always a place for an additional god or even for infinite number of such gods. There is no sufficient reason that will thwart the existence of an infinite number of gods, provided that one exists. The monads may be mentally, not materially separated in this infinite reality. Also the proposition that the infinite reality is necessarily a conscious being is quite influenced by Western culture – a Hindu would say that it represents an unconscious life force that seeks to actualise itself. The taoist would call it the Dao, the Muslim – Allah and so on…Reply
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Perry says:April 1, 2014 at 7:54 amNowhere have I ever said that this proves the Christian God is the real God. It certainly is a vote for deism or theism and it shows that if atheism is true, the world is necessarily irrational. It does infer monotheism, as there is no place in Godel’s logic for an infinite number of gods. That would be equivalent to infinite regression.Reply
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Patrik Öbrink says:April 16, 2014 at 5:10 amThis was a great revelation for me. Thanks, Perry.Reply
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Don Lauder says:May 28, 2014 at 1:14 pmHi Perry, I refer to a comment you made almost four years ago: — Perry says: July 8, 2010 at 4:36 pm I mean that the universe cannot explain itself, just like your fish cannot explain itself. It has to come from something. It is not self-existent. So far as is knowable to modern science, time itself began with the big bang. Einstein’s spacetime theorems indicate that if there is no space, there is no time. Time is not infinite and never at any measurable point will become infinite. Time is finite. There is a finite number of seconds in the past and that will always be the case in any rational system of time measurement. And yes there most certainly in an edge to the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Size_of_the_universe Everything we know about the universe indicates that everything about it is finite. — It would seem science has advanced (or just changed its mind?) since then. The Wikipedia article you mention now starts with the sentence: “The size of the Universe is unknown; it may be infinite.” Thus, if the universe is infinite, then it becomes in essence what you are describing as God (inifinte, boundless, complete, not applicable to Gödel’s Theorem). If the universe is God, then where does that put God as defined by theologians?Reply
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Perry says:May 28, 2014 at 3:05 pmThe Wikipedia article may have changed (this is Wikipedia after all) but Einstein’s space-time theorems have not. So far as I know, space and time are intertwined so if the universe is of finite age, then its size is finite as well. We have no hard facts whatsoever to suggest that the universe is infinitely large, so far as I know. I am open to being corrected.Reply
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Matthew Grimm says:January 25, 2015 at 12:53 amThis is a very interesting subject matter, which Gödel himself dealt with extensively, and is perhaps the most ignored, yet powerful, of the numerous works he accomplished in his lifetime. He and Einstein were actually close friends during their years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and they discussed mathematics, physics, and their varying conceptions of God at length (as well as many other subjects). Gödel himself originally pursued physics during his earlier education, but instead switched to mathematics, believing it to be much more fundamental. However, what he pursued as a mere “intellectual hobby” was met with his unparalleled intellect, and with a level of understanding and ability that surpassed many of the most well-renowned individuals in their respective fields; and in this particular case, Einstein, and his own theories of relativity. I will make a foolhardy attempt to summarize his discoveries, but in order to grasp the full scope and implications of the following materials, I highly suggest reading the book “A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein” by Palle Yourgrau, which is the absolute best available exploration and analysis of the following information. In addition, one may want to study the concept of Gödel Universes/Constructable Universes. Gödel had, in the eyes of those who best understood him, considered his work to be primarily philosophical. He would utilize various disciplines (logic, mathematics, physics, etc.) and construct examples which pushed these systems to their logical extremes, in order to discover their implications, limitations, and inconsistencies. His work, in turn, was often at odds with the advocates of the systems he studied. Empiricist and logical positivist dogmas had persisted throughout the intellectual zeitgeist, but in Einstein, he found a matching enthusiasm for rationalist conceptions of reality and metaphysics. Their shared beliefs, as well as their many disagreements, led to many extensive, rich, and colorful dialogues covering all sorts of interests. In turn, Einstein’s own work became a topic of discussion and interest. The scientific consensus (then and now) is that the General Theory of Relativity shows that we live in an existence with 4 dimensions, 3 spatial, and one of a space-time composite. However, Gödel found the dominating interpretations to be inconsistent and inaccurate, for philosophical as well as physical reasons. He created the following “proof by contradiction” (assuming the opposite of his desired conclusion (that the concept of time and relativity theory are incompatible), and showing it led to absurd/contradictory conclusions). In his demonstration, he created many different mathematical models of a special kind of universe with a curved geometric topology that contained “world lines” which were closed loops (resulting from an even distribution of matter that created a geometrically-balanced warping of space-time). He then demonstrated that such a construction was consistent with the mathematics of General Relativity. Following this, he showed that typical “intuitive” conceptions of time are not logically consistent with the “little t” of Relativity Theory. Time, as it is traditionally understood, is approached in one of two ways. One school of thought is that time is a dynamic, continuous flux of ceaseless change, and that we are forever imbedded in the now (the past no longer exist, the future does not exist yet). Einstein’s claims of the implications of the Special Theory of Relativity, however, are highly problematic for this belief. It states that each event has a separate, unique inertial frame of reference; there is no shared “now” between events, or in any moment, “past,” “present,” or “future.” The other competing theory of time is that the past, present, and future exist simultaneously, even though we only experience “our” frame as we move from one to another. This is supplemented by the notion of the “arrow of time,” a concept in physics often linked with the principles of thermodynamics/entropy. In this model, time is a vector, having a set direction/pathway, and events are ordered such that no event can ever occur before a chronologically-previous event (ex: Gödel discovering his Incompleteness Theorems before he was born). These intuitive assumptions seem logical, but following from the belief that the General Theory of Relativity had demonstrated a union between space and time, Gödel showed such a thing would lead to the possibility of the aforementioned “closed time-like loops.” Following one of these loops (which he proved to be physically possible) would result in a journey where one moves continuously towards the future, until arriving at event preceding the beginning of the journey. Often, this is assumed to be a case for time travel, but it is not. The same “world lines” could lead to trajectories which violate the ordered nature of the “arrow of time,” i.e. where you could theoretically reach Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems before his birth. In essence, he showed that any universe which operates in accordance with the mathematics of the Theories of Relativity absolutely cannot support any idea of time. The fourth dimension of Einstein’s physics is entirely spatial, time is an illusion. His work is much more far-reaching and well-supported than just what I’ve discussed; I barely scratched the surface of his other justifications/methods of proof. I’ve only presented the simplest mode of argument, but there are many more, and equally thorough, exacting, and rigorous. Any discussion regarding the relationship between the concept of time and God, or time at all, especially within Godel’s worldview, is rendered inept, inconsistent, and naive. Our intuitions and senses fail us in providing an accurate account of reality, only rationality can suffice to remedy our misconceptions. This is the main reason why these results have practically gone ignored in the physics community-rationality relies on logical devices, where science depends on the experimental and observable. Since scientists can’t study a Godel Universe (only it’s mathematics), many have attempted to formulate ad hoc principles to prevent these results from being relevant, none withstanding scrutiny and critical thinking. However, for many, such a strange, counterintuitive understanding of Einstein’s theories (which even Einstein himself misunderstood and doubted entirely until he couldn’t find any evidence disproving Godel’s results) is very difficult to accept; it requires the vast majority of modern science to be revised. This, indeed, is a tough pill to swallow. Regardless of the controversies and ignorance, the implications are very well-suited to the characteristics of God. There is nothing that has yet to be revealed, no dominion inaccessable to the God of Godel’s beliefs. Although we may experience “time” as a confabulation of our mind, it does not actually limit the actuality and totality of existence into chronological segments. Everything is, and always will be (in fact, “always” is a poor choice of words, because it implies time exists at all). This couples nicely with Godel’s determinism and idealism, and can explain his hesitancies towards anything that claimed to limit the order and rational construction of existence. Also, having space requires energy (this can be seen in a vacuum), so an infinitely sized universe would require infinite energy to sustain it. I hope this is helpful in stimulating further thought, I apologize for my inability to do so in fewer words.Reply
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David says:June 1, 2015 at 9:32 pmVery interesting is right! In your synopsis, Godel’s conclusions sound incredibly similar to the “spherical one-being” described by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenedes. As being must be everything except non-being, Parmenedes concludes that everything that is, is one constant being of finite completeness. Thus anything that is, cannot move because it is already where it is. The Atomists, and later Aristotle, had some problems with this theory- namely that movement can and is observable -but they remained incapable of completely disavowing its implications, only succeeding in compounding it with emerging theories. At first glance, Godel seems to have assembled a mathematical formulation of the paradox of movement parsed out by Parmenede’s contemporaries. Echoes of the immovable oneness rung through my mind when I discovered the ideas of Godel. I have to read more though, as first impressions can often be very misleading.Reply
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Nicooo says:June 14, 2014 at 5:26 amWell, nice talk about Godel’s Theorem and its relation to the existence of God. I think however that even if the existence of god is indeed one (intuitive) possibility (but by calling it God, we kind of assimilate it as a system, which means there would be something outside it), your explanation at the end is a little dubious to asses God is a necessity for science to exist. First you said : – “we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial.” This seems to me much debatable. Why do the Genetic code would be the origin of information ? Can’t we for example describe the existence of matter, energy, space, time as information ? –> Therefore your induction from codes to God is not that obvious for me (in addition to be just one possible induction). It is actually very intuitive for people who believe in God, but not at all for the others I think. – “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being.” That said, I think this relation between Religion/God/Phylosophy/Metaphysics/etc. and Godel’s Theorem is interesting. In a sense, I think that without really noticing it, most of us get the intuition behind Godel’s theorem when we reflect on ourself, the world, god etc. NicolasReply
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Perry says:June 17, 2014 at 7:54 amThe exact definition of code is crucial here and the definition is at http://www.naturalcode.org. By that definition, matter, space etc are not coded information.Reply
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Rb says:July 11, 2014 at 8:58 amYes, Godel’s Theorums are incredibly important and interesting and most of what you write is interesting and correct, but you draw several “conclusions” which are misleading and aren’t necessarily true. For example: “But… it IS proof that in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” Not necessarily. God in today’s world is a very specific entity, the odds of that being the real answer seems pretty slim. Now, the idea of a “God-Like” entity, something so advanced/powerful/whatever that “created” us isn’t out of the question. But to say that because we can’t explain life one MUST believe in God is just not true. We don’t really even have an inkling of the ways the universe truly works or what else is out there, what if the answer is that it’s all spontaneous? We would never know, as per Godel’s Theorems, but that doesn’t make it any less viable an option. You can’t use his theorem to “prove” that something is or isn’t outside of the system (which is the entire point of the Theorems…). Short version; For a rational, scientific model of the universe, you don’t necessarily need God/a God (assuming as much is contrary to Godel’s Theorem’s).Reply
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Perry says:July 11, 2014 at 11:07 amYou have said nothing of any substance, beyond your own arbitrary opinion. Say something rigorous. And if you expect any of your posts to be approved, use your real name, not initials. Anonymous cowards not allowed.Reply
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Rob says:July 11, 2014 at 6:24 pmI must have missed the ‘o’ earlier in ‘Rob’, my apologies for being a “coward”. Anyway, also sorry if I didn’t come across clearly before, I will attempt to do better. What you are putting forth is that “in order to construct a rational, scientific model of the universe, belief in God is not just 100% logical… it’s necessary.” That is your opinion that you have drawn from your understanding of Godels Theorems and your live-view/view on the Universe, but that does not make it fact all of a sudden, any more than any other person’s view. Just because his Theorems say that one must accept at least some sort of “unknown” to account for the Universe/Life/etc. doesn’t mean that the only logical way to understand it is with a God (that’s not to say that I do or don’t believe there is some sort of God who has had a hand in this, my opinion is irrelevant to the point being made). We know so little about the Universe currently, it is entirely logical to accept that the “unknown” could be something that no one has or can conceive of that isn’t anything like what we may call a God. To say that is the ONLY logical way to understand the Universe may be your opinion, but it certainly isn’t fact. Maybe I am missing something, in which case I hope you correct me. I truly am trying to engage in a deeper understanding of Godels Theorems, that is what brought me to this article in the first place haha it is well written and easily understandable.Reply
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Perry says:July 15, 2014 at 2:10 pmRob, I salute you for replying. Last name from now on too. Not just first name. No anonymous people here. Yes you are actually missing quite a bit. When you say “We know so little about the Universe currently, it is entirely logical to accept that the “unknown” could be something that no one has or can conceive of that isn’t anything like what we may call a God” — you are merely appealing to what we don’t know so as to avoid reaching any conclusions. That will not do. Go back and read the article carefully and follow the logic point by point. There is no need for me to expound upon it or explain it further. No one can do the work of understanding the article for you except you. Read it as many times as necessary and grasp WHY the conclusions are what they are. They are based on what we DO know. They are also based on what Godel proved is impossible to know for certain. Then and only then can you respond based on specific points made.Reply
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Matthew Grimm says:January 25, 2015 at 1:09 amRob, I salute your curiousity. My first, initial attempts at understanding Godel’s work were very misguided, and they led me to many misunderstandings. I can say, however, that at least in my opinion (which used to be entirely contrary to Godel’s beliefs, and was formed forcibly when I finally began to grasp the irrefutable truth and entirety of his conclusions (where I finally had to admit my previous atheistic conceptions were illogical-a process that required MUCH research and rigorous proof)), Perry’s logic is equally irrefutable; it parallels the logical deductions of Godel himself. This may seem a bit heady and uncertain now, so I encourage you to extensively study logic, mathematics, and the other fields Godel excelled in, and try your best to apply that understanding to Perry’s previous outline, and I believe you will see that he is entirely spot-on. Best of luck on your quest for knowledge!
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Dave Kay says:October 21, 2014 at 11:08 amPerry, what is your definition of God? DaveReply
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Perry says:October 21, 2014 at 11:32 amSee in my article above – the “Via Negativa”Reply
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Hazal Badem says:October 25, 2014 at 4:30 pm“Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem definitively proves that science can never fill its own gaps. We have no choice but to look outside of science for answers” nothing can never fill its own gaps. We have no choice but accept that no matter where we look for answers there will be more answers to look for.Reply
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Matthew Lashmit says:November 5, 2014 at 7:39 pm“There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove” This is logically false. All we can say is that the Universe is not calculable by us, because we are part of it. And because it is incalculable by us, we cannot claim that the universe is in fact axiomatic, and thus we cannot induce that there is necessarily something outside of the Universe.Reply
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z08840 says:November 21, 2014 at 1:57 pmAccording to our arrangement with Pigeon (aka Timucin Tiger ), who is trying to justify his moronic kinda “ideas” by proper scientific works (yeah, this is ridiculously funny, but true – he is trying to disprove evolution citing works on evolution – such a stupid boy :), I’m publishing it here: In the publication: http://www.krusch.com/books/evolution/Information_Theory_Evolution_Origin_Life_Yockey.pdf on page 8, paragraph 2.1, which states: “Life is guided by information and inorganic processes are not.” I found it’s either — not clear – for example, does it mention only naturally occurring processes, where “naturally” means not made by humans; or — wrong, where my justification is: — computers are inorganic; — computers operate on physical processes; — computers are driven by information (programs); I’ll accept any objections to my justification except the one Pigeon is busting his ass on – that scientists in peer review can not be wrong. Everyone is welcome.?Reply
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Perry says:November 21, 2014 at 8:00 pmComputers come from humans who are living beings who are derivatives of DNA. So they don’t count. Nowhere in the purely physical world are encoding/decoding systems known to exist.Reply
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z08840 says:November 21, 2014 at 8:23 pm>Computers come from humans who are living beings who are derivatives of DNA. So they don’t count. count as what? the point was statement either wrong or not clear – you appeal it’s not clear and inorganic natural processes were meant answer accepted Pigeon, you are welcome to disagree with your idol >Nowhere in the purely physical world are encoding/decoding systems known to exist. emission spectrum – see belowReply
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z08840 says:November 21, 2014 at 3:07 pm>All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. it’s false claim – emission spectrum is a naturally occurred code – for example, we are getting information of stars’ chemistry through this codeReply
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Perry says:November 21, 2014 at 7:58 pmProve it by satisfying the requirements at http://www.naturalcode.org – complete with encoder, message and decoder, with associated tables, and I’ll write you a check for $10,000.Reply
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z08840 says:November 21, 2014 at 8:31 pm>Prove it by satisfying the requirements at http://www.naturalcode.org why it should satisfy your requirements? emission spectrum satisfy code requirements – it’s a system of rules to convert information – specifically information about atoms’ structure into wavelengths – it doesn’t required neither encoder nor decoder – please, notice my argument – we FACTUALLY gathering information about chemistry of stars by decoding messages in form of lightReply
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Perry says:November 21, 2014 at 9:30 pmIn your situation, no human = no encoder or decoder. Therefore no code is defined. Definitions are important. Mine comes straight from an engineering communication theory textbook. Read Yockey’s book “Information Theory, Evolution and the Origin of Life” for more information.Reply
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z08840 says:November 21, 2014 at 9:43 pm>In your situation, no human = no encoder or decoder. in OUR situation: 1. it’s irrelevant – encoder and decoder is not required on our situation 2. how you think information about atoms’ structure is coded into wavelengths? sure, encoder is here – physics; decoder: a) let’s say we built spectrograph b) let’s say cloud of gases – perfect decoder >Definitions are important sure, I provided proper definition you are welcome >Mine comes straight from an engineering communication theory textbook yes, I have one pigeon pointed to this work – could you please cite definition directly? Code is …(continue please) PS and could you please remove this default checked checkbox “Would you like my free mini-course, “Dysfunctions blahblahblah”? no, I don’t like it, checkbox is annoying
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Perry says:November 22, 2014 at 12:34 amNo encoder + no decoder = no communication system. The source I reference is at naturalcode.org.
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z08840 says:November 22, 2014 at 12:08 am>Therefore no code is defined. >Mine comes straight from and. BTW, you are committing equivocation fallacy: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/definition >Therefore no code is defined. #1 of above >Mine (i.e. provided on http://www.naturalcode.org) #2 of above besides in meaning of first – it perfectly defined (i.e. mapping exists) – else how we decode this information
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z08840 says:November 22, 2014 at 1:02 am>No encoder + no decoder = no communication system. sure firstly, we are talking about code, not communication system – let me remind you the issue: “All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings.” secondly, I provided you encoder and decoder, but please, don’t begin discussing it – the question is “firstly” >The source I reference is at naturalcode.org this source is produced by you as I already mentioned – don’t see why we should go with your nonsense when we have conventional definition – code is a system of rules to convert information – in Yockey, for example, genetic code perfectly fits this definition: “The genetic code is a mapping of the mRNA code letters in the genome on to the code letters of the proteome.” page 19, p2.2.3 so, my argument stand still – emission spectrum is a naturally occurred code
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Perry says:November 22, 2014 at 2:33 pmThis is the last time I will approve any of your messages or reply to you while you are anonymous. You must use your full first and last name from now on. No anonymous atheist cowards allowed. Code is meaningless without a communication system. My definitions and Yockey’s are absolutely identical. As Yockey says, the cell encodes the message into mRNA and decodes it into proteins. The transcription/translation process is encoding+code+decoding. When you fully apprise yourself of the issues and the definitions, that will become clear. Emission spectrum is not a naturally occurring code because without a human around to assign meaning, no encoding or decoding has ever taken place. It is only light being absorbed by lifeless objects. No meaning has been assigned to the components of the spectrum and no digital message has been encoded. This is in stark contrast to genetic encoding and decoding, which happens entirely independently of our being there.
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Gary Kulsrud says:January 2, 2015 at 5:21 pmIt is different when the Circle is defined / generated through the Center from the Right : A Singularity Free Origin.Reply
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Gary Kulsrud says:January 3, 2015 at 4:04 pmGodel’s Incompleteness Theorem is Incomplete…! : Exclusively Left-Handed Logic.Reply
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paul says:January 25, 2015 at 10:06 amIt seems to me a very week scientific and logical argument to say “we can never know what is outside the circle; therefore god is outside the circle”.Reply
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Perry says:January 26, 2015 at 4:04 pmDear Anonymous Paul: Use your real name and I will be happy to respond.Reply
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Bas van Dam says:February 1, 2015 at 7:25 amMy deduced Gödel paradox: “I believe in Gödel” Which leaves me with the paradoxical induction: “Gödel is God.” The big plus of Gödel is i’ll never be done learning; there’s no end to knowledge!Reply
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Merne Asplund says:February 17, 2015 at 5:30 pmI was with you up to the “We can apply the same inductive reasoning to the origin of information:” section. –In the history of the universe we also see the introduction of information, some 3.5 billion years ago. It came in the form of the Genetic code, which is symbolic and immaterial. -OK, fine. –The information had to come from the outside, since information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time. -Wait, why? You just said the code was genetic material. That isn’t matter? You’re mixing words here. We’re not dealing with “information,” we’re dealing with DNA. –All codes we know the origin of are designed by conscious beings. -Except the codes we’re talking about which is DNA. –Therefore whatever is outside the largest circle is a conscious being. -no.Reply
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Perry says:February 17, 2015 at 5:34 pmA code is defined as a system of symbols for communication. A symbol is abstract. Look up the definitions. Take a look at the literature. Paper and ink make a book but they alone do not make Shakespeare or any other content. You have to have symbols which are made of letters and words and language. If you can produce a code that is not designed I’ll write you a check for $10,000. Specification is at http://www.naturalcode.org. There you will find a rigorous definition of codes and communication systems, based on standard engineering definitions.Reply
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Merne Asplund says:February 17, 2015 at 6:22 pmMaybe the genetic code is the outlier to the rule. After all, there are always more things that are true than you can prove. “information is not known to be an inherent property of matter, energy, space or time” -I still attest that this is playing with semantics. DNA is an inherent property of life on this planet.Reply
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Perry says:February 18, 2015 at 7:00 amDNA *could* be the outlier, the one exception. It is in fact the one and only code we don’t know the origin of. And yes of course DNA is an inherent property of life on this planet… but everybody knows there is no guarantee that just because you have a planet, you get life. Nobody has any scientifically verifiable idea where life came from. Or the genetic code. Presently having zero evidence that codes can come from anything but intelligence, and seeing that 99.9999999% of the codes out there DO come from intelligence, the inference is obvious. All that we currently know about science (including information technology, which is a branch of science) clearly and unambiguously indicates design in nature.Reply
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Mike Eiford says:March 1, 2015 at 12:32 amThank you for this presentation–Hofstadter introduced me to Godel, Escher, and Bach, on my way through for 3rd time—your arguments re: Godel was very informative-and easily understood. I congratulate you on you firm, polite insistence on logic, and self identification. Also very much appreciated the last bit in DNA possibly being the one instance of natural code.Reply
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Perry says:March 6, 2015 at 6:58 pmThank you for saying thank you. I believe in firm, polite insistence on logic. I wish I’d insisted on self-identification from the very start of my blogging.Reply
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Eudoxus says:March 27, 2015 at 9:26 amGreat article. Thank you. You have forgot to state that the Greeks have been knowing and were expressing the limits of logic since ancient times. The Ancient Greek Literature is not complete. Is is good to refer to the historical. It all started with Epimenides Paradox. “Epimenides the Cretan says, ‘that all the Cretans are liars,’ but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epimenides_paradoxReply
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Don Lauder says:April 20, 2015 at 12:52 pm“There has to be something outside that circle. Something which we have to assume but cannot prove” I am not seeing how both of the above sentences can be true. The 2nd sentence above is the Incompleteness Theorem – there exists a true statement that can never be proven. The first sentence could just as easily be “Nothing exists outside the circle.” Including either possibility just leads to a larger system that is still subject to imcompleteness.Reply
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Perry says:April 20, 2015 at 4:11 pmNothing is not an axiom.Reply
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Don Lauder says:April 20, 2015 at 6:40 pm“Nothing exists outside the circle” is not nothing either. It is a statement that evaluates to either true or false. But if you prefer, how about “Everything that exists is inside the circle.”Reply
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Perry says:April 21, 2015 at 7:59 pmYou are free to assume there is nothing outside the circle as long as you acknowledge that the universe is therefore irrational.Reply
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Don Lauder says:May 1, 2015 at 5:32 pm“You are free to assume there is nothing outside the circle as long as you acknowledge that the universe is therefore irrational.” That is one obstacle I have to accepting your conclusions. The only reason, according to Gödel’s theorem, that the universe would be irrational if there is nothing outside the circle would be if the universe were a system based solely on first order logic. Even so, the incompleteness deals with the un-provability of certain truths, not necessarily with something missing in the sense that “missing thing” can only be elsewhere.Reply
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Perry says:May 4, 2015 at 5:20 pmIf there is absolutely NOTHING outside the universe, then not only would it be impossible to prove a statement from within the universe, it would be impossible to prove it any other way either – since in your model, you have no recourse to any other points of view. Which contradicts your assumption – which is that your statement is true (“nothing is outside the universe”). That’s because there is no basis for verifying that. It would not even be possible for you as an observer or as a person making a postulate to make any such statement. In other words, your statement itself puts YOU outside of the universe, making statements about it. So it is self-contradictory. Even as a thought experiment. If the universe is not reliant on something outside itself, then it is complete. And if it complete, it is inconsistent.Reply
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Don Lauder says:May 7, 2015 at 4:05 pmThanks for the additional input. I’ve tried to process as much of it as I can but am still stuck on a few points, so please bear with me. I will respond by paragraph to your previous reply: Paragraph 1 – Godel’s theorem says there are always unprovable statements. You can look for that proof wherever you want, but you won’t find it because by definition it does not exist. If you try to create the proof by expanding the system, then you only create a new system with a different unprovable statement. If you create the largest system possible, then the proof of the unprovable statement is not outside the system; it can’t be, because if it is, then either the system was not the largest possible or the statement was not unprovable to begin with. Thus, there are statements that are impossible to prove. If you accept Godel’s theorem, then the theorem itself is proof that there are provable statements, and thus there are also statements that are possible to prove. I don’t see how anything can change that, unless that’s what you mean by “If there is absolutely NOTHING outside the universe, then…” which leads me to: Paragraph 2 – I am not exactly making the assumption that there is nothing outside the universe so much as asserting that you have not shown that to be an impossibility. If it is not impossible, then you cannot discount the possibility that nothing is outside the “circle.” I *think* you are saying it is an impossibility because of essentially two statements: (1) For any circle, even the largest circle possible, that circle cannot contain “everything,” and (2) If the circle does not contain everything then there must be something outside the circle. I agree with (1), but I disagree with (2). For example, if “everything” is defined as proof of all true statements, then (1) is true, but (2) is false. Paragraph 3 – Not sure I follow at all. If the statement “there is nothing outside the universe” puts one outside the universe and is therefore self-contradictory, doesn’t the statement “there must be something outside the universe” do the same thing? Paragraph 4 – I’m under the impression that there are theorems that are both complete and consistent. Maybe those are beyond first-order logic, but then if those theorems apply at all to the universe just as first-order logic does, then it would seem to follow that the universe itself is also beyond first-order logic and so can also be both complete and consistent. Is it impossible for something to be both complete and consistent?
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Perry says:May 13, 2015 at 11:10 pm1. Godel is not just about various unprovable statements, about axioms. It’s about the fact that some things which your entire system of logic hinges on are necessarily unprovable. If, that is, your system is logical. If your system is illogical, then you can have 100% provable statements. One of the implications of this is that if we assume the unprovable axiomatic statement that: the universe is contingent on a boundless immaterial entity, …then we have grounds for believing that the universe is logical. Conversely, if you assume there is nothing outside the universe, then you can believe that if you want but the universe is therefore illogical. 2. It is entirely possible there is nothing outside the universe. if that’s true, the universe is illogical. A logical universe cannot contain proof of all true statements. Example: If the statement “God exists” is true, the universe cannot prove it. 3. “There must be something outside the universe” is a statement whose vantage point is neutral. “There is nothing outside the universe” is a claim to know the unknowable. It’s an attempt to prove a negative. 4. The only theorems that are consistent and complete are those which are trivially simple. The whole point of Godel’s work is that it’s impossible for an “effectively generated theory” (a system with some level of sophistication) to be both consistent and complete.
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Ryan Gregory says:May 5, 2015 at 1:41 pmPerry, I am writing a research paper comparing Godel’s incompleteness to Aristotle’s unmoved mover. I thought that you would find the comparison invigorating. Any input you offer would be highly valued.Reply
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Perry says:May 13, 2015 at 11:10 pmI don’t have specific input at this time but I hope you’ll post a link.Reply
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