Socialism and You: A Thought Experiment

Sorry I've been away for a few days, I've just been busy.  However, a friend of mine recently posted something on facebook that got me to thinking, and I thought I'd spill some words here now.

The basic premises of socialism aren't so bad.  In fact, when people think of how great America used to be, it was largely because of a special kind of socialism that worked.  For this thought experiment, I want to focus on telephones, solar panels, and cars.

For a bit of preface, Bell Labs is important here.  If you're not familiar with them, I'd suggest reading up a bit.  The important bit to remember here is that they were amazingly innovative, essentially creating and effectively implementing the transistor.  This allowed for a wide range of products which would come to change the way America functioned since.

It wasn't so long ago (through the 1960s) that telephone services were largely run through Bell Telephone, a subsidy of the United States Government (not so different in this respect from the postal service).  This led to a unique situation, one that we've largely moved away from today.  During this period in time, the phone company would own the equipment in your house, including the telephone.  Today this probably seems odd, given how everyone likes to have their own cell phone.  However, it did solve one problem, and that was the ability of the phone company to provide service to essentially anyone.  If the phone malfunctioned, it was simply replaced.  Again, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but bear with me.

Let's move forward another ten years or so.  NASA was a similar subsidiary, responsible for countless innovations, but most notably for this illustration: the solar cell.  The thing most people know as a silicon chip, usually blue, which can be placed in the sun and generate electricity.  Let's imagine for a second what might have happened if we had adopted a similar approach.

Power companies were similarly a type of subsidiary for a very long time as well, even until much more recent deregulation in the early part of this century.  Imagine for a moment if the power company had been installing solar panels on the roof of most of the houses to which it supplied power, and had set up infrastructure conducive to allowing feeding that energy back into the grid.  We could have had a power grid which would have been much less prone to outages, and therefore more reliable.  This would have given the same sort of push to create innovation like we see in the current communications market, also.  Now, as it stands, we will have to play nearly fifty years of catching up just to come close.  This scenario even allows for the replacement of faulty equipment at no 'cost' to the end user: the costs would be divided among the base of users exactly as the cost for a new phone would have been.

Now, let's move to the realm of automobiles.  The employees of a car manufacturer (who are typically unionized in the same fashion as the employees of those other industries) would be similar subsidiary employees of the government.  Instead of worrying about what you'd do when your car breaks down, you simply take it to the nearest Car Service shop, and it's fixed in much the same way.  This could have allowed for much better infrastructure also, as it would have given much more incentive to the government (and subsidiary car companies) to develop the best automobiles in their own self-interest.  A car which gets only 200,000 miles would no longer be seen as practical, nor a car that was not as efficient as reasonably possible.

We're actually moving toward a world where the car scenario is becoming more plausible.  Self-driving cars are fast approaching, and electric vehicle technology is only improving.  Imagine, if instead of owning a car, the car could drive itself.  No longer would the car you drive to work have to sit most of the time.  It could be functional, and provide transport for countless individuals.  Similarly, since the car would be owned in much the same way as the phone in the previous example, if it breaks it's simply fixed or replaced. This keeps the people who perform those functions in a job, and even grants greater incentives to make those jobs better.

Nothing in this scenario limits your own ability to go out and buy something better.  It does, however, provide much more opportunity for people who might not reach the same kind of earning threshold as yourself.  Like it or not, the number of physical labor jobs in the past century has decreased massively, and it's not likely to increase simply because someone might want it to.  One hundred years ago, it took around 50% of the population to produce enough food to feed the population.  Now, it takes less than one percent.  Automotive assembly lines require far fewer people than in the past, and so on.  Computer manufacturers and software developers no longer need the same kind of human labor they once did - you can even compile simple programs from your phone if you were determined enough, which would have taken years of man-hours in the past.

Again, I'm not saying capitalism is bad, or that it can't work.  I'm simply saying that, in perhaps another hundred years, 'capital' won't necessarily be a thing.  When's the last time you actually had to use cash to buy something?  When money is digital, it's just a fancy way to count the time you've worked.  There's absolutely no reason this couldn't continue.  Be a productive member of society, log your hours on your bankcard (as you probably already do), and you get the things you want and need to survive and thrive.  Your consumption of other folks' service keeps them working, and their consumption keeps you working.  The problem with modern capitalism is that less and less of the capital is actually going back into the pool.  This kind of socialism also solves that problem, by creating a logical demand for workers in whatever fields are being demanded.

I realize this might be a bit out in left field for some of you, but I guarantee that socialism isn't evil, and that capitalism isn't either, in their purest forms.  Think back one hundred years, and I'm sure people would swear we'd still be doing things basically the same way as we had been.  Think back ten years, however, and I bet you can't even imagine using the same phone today as you had then.

Peace!

Determinism

To those of you just joining my blog, and to those who've been here since the beginning, welcome!  I'll be taking a break tonight from my series of 125 Rebuttals, to address a very old topic which I think could use some breaking down.

Context is Everything.

I was party to a Twitter debate recently, concerning free will.

If you believe these are impossible freedoms, then you must agree that uncaused free will is an illusion. https://t.co/7YbvdbUJmN

— Religulous (@religulous) March 4, 2016

You can view the context at that link, but I'm going to skip ahead a bit to this part:

@LarryJFJF @religulous @acce245 Really guys, determinism and free will get on just fine. See https://t.co/Iuh7oVyuKR

— Marvin B. Edwards (@MarvinBEdwards) March 4, 2016

 That's the important bit, because I promised I'd address the claims that exist within the context of that blog post.  I shall be as respectful as I can, and I'll do my best to avoid copying the full text here.  It's typically much easier to address points when they're directly on this page, however, so there will be some of it here.  Fair use and all that.  I recommend visiting his site, if for nothing else than to verify that I'm actually addressing the arguments he makes.

What is Determinism?

In keeping with the flow of his blog, I'll address each section in the same way it's presented.  I'll first start by saying that he's not using the reasonably standard definition of determinism, which google gladly provides as follows:

de·ter·min·ism

dəˈtərməˌnizəm/

noun

PHILOSOPHY

1. the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will. Some philosophers have taken determinism to imply that individual human beings have no free will and cannot be held morally responsible for their actions.

For handy reference, here's his definition.

 Determinism is the belief in the reliability of cause and effect. We are so used to living in a deterministic universe that it would be difficult to imagine anything else.

 Suffice to say, his basic definition isn't actually that far from this mark.  It is via illustration, however, that the actual terms he's using to define 'determinism' aren't actually what he's intended.

Given is the example that there exists a dial, which can be adjusted from complete determinism to complete non-determinism.  Adjusting this dial one way, and reality maintains consistency.  Adjust it the other, and it loses all consistency.  The example specifically mentions objects literally changing to other objects.  This is a fallacy of false correlation, for one, because it doesn't actually address the argument of will, but rather of the consistency of the universe.  Apples do not spontaneously become bananas (but some subatomic particles can spontaneously become others, etc), and even if they did, it says nothing about the actions that may be performed upon it.  The consistency of the universe isn't really part of the greater argument of determinism, which deals with our ability to interact with the universe, not the universe's ability to spontaneously change.

Even so, in a universe which could spontaneously change, that doesn't rule out the fact that a complete lack of consistency (his definition of determinism) would have no bearing on freedom of will, or even its existence.  It's entirely possible that the spontaneity would have its own rules.  However, I'm getting off-track here, so let's continue.

The claim is then made that "we need a deterministic universe." While it may be true that organisms might not develop via evolution in such a universe lacking consistency, it in no way rules out that organisms like us could just crop up, completely 'indeterminate' of past or future.  Surely we need a deterministic universe to do things which we can do in our universe, but there's no evidence that things like us couldn't exist in some other universe.  It sounds like a fine-tuning fallacy, so I'll leave it at that.

His next statement is basically correct, regarding how science presumes rationality (although this isn't strictly true - if the universe were not rational, science would observe that too).  I'll leave it stand for now, because we find out something interesting in the next paragraph:

But there is another side to determinism that really bothers people. If cause and effect are perfectly reliable, then the future can only unfold in a single way. This bothers us because it makes us feel like the future is out of our control.

Well, it might bother some of us, but it's not what I'm here to discuss.  I want to call this a fallacy of composition/division, but I'm not sure it is exactly.  It's definitely a modified Appeal to Consequence of Belief fallacy, which is a form of Appeal to Emotion fallacy.  There's absolutely nothing stating that we are in control of the future.  Lots of things beyond our control can happen.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, it shows a more basic misunderstanding of cosmology and quantum sciences.  That's where that composition/division fallacy works in.  The macro universe doesn't work like the micro.  Some things really are going to happen whether we like them or not.  Other things we might actually be able to have influence over.

I will take one moment here to say that I think the idea of 'will' is merely an idea.  As a complex organism, we have at our disposal an open system, rather than a simply closed one like the entire universe.  Entropy becomes important here a bit, because we can actually harvest energy and use it for purposes other than what it would have been used 'naturally.'  That is, if you exclude humans from the rest of nature.  Arguably, building rockets is one of the natural outcomes of a planet like earth existing long enough around a star.  Everything we are comes from nature.  This doesn't mean we are forced to do one thing or another, but simply that anything we do is natural.  This'll probably be an important part later, so I thought I'd simply take a moment now to mention it.

But [the idea that the universe only has one outcome] is an illusion. To be true, determinism must include all causes. One of those causes is us.

Actually, we're not a cause, unless we're also an effect.  Your parents had a choice to give you birth, presuming you survived your birth and are now able to read this.  If not, sorry about your luck, I guess?  I mean, you're not going to be reading this anyway.

The laws of nature don’t just hold atoms together and keep the planets in orbit. They also keep our blood running, give power to our muscles, and provide the neurological framework in which we think and feel.

Again, all of those things are because atoms get held together.  The strong force and weak force are pretty important, but don't really have a lot to do with entropy at the level we tend to experience it.  Similarly, it doesn't have much bearing on will.  If anything, it introduces a case where 'will' doesn't actually exist, but we do indeed still have the ability to make choices.  I'd call this a quasi-will universe, wherein when a system becomes complex enough, it can indeed start to use the laws of nature to its benefit.  Which is a pretty damning argument against free will, considering that most things don't choose how to use their energy, but rather work to utilize it in the most efficient form.  In fact, your body is doing this as you read these words.

I'm gonna let some of that stuff sink in.  Let's take a small intermission here.

Since we're on the topic of free will anyway...

I wonder if that video will be important later?

What are we?

Well, there's a loaded question fallacy.  It presumes we 'are' something.  I'm something of a nihilist,  but for the sake of not wanting to drag this out forever, I'll grant that one.  Here's what he says we are:

We are purposeful causal agents in a deterministic universe.

Well, maybe.  Again, the entire universe may not be deterministic, and even if it is, one of the effects is that the determinism can determine that some aspects aren't. It's a bit meta, this argument, but I'm sticking with it.

Like any other biological organism, we come into this world with a built-in purpose: to survive, thrive, and reproduce.

Well, for a particular definition of purpose, I completely agree.  I don't like using the word purpose, however, because it implies something that isn't actually part of the given defintion.

And, more so than most biological organisms, we have evolved a complex brain that helps us adapt our behavior to our environment and to adapt our environment to our own needs.

See, that's what I was afraid of.  We didn't consciously decide one day that we need a bigger brain.  It's literally deterministic: our brains grew because people with larger brains tended to mate together. and produce offspring who, on average over long periods of time, happened to have larger brains.  This is a fallacy of conflation (ambiguity), such that two different definitions of purpose are being used here.  I really don't like that word.  Here's what google has to say on it:

pur·pose

ˈpərpəs/

noun

noun: purpose; plural noun: purposes

1. 1.

   the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.

   
   

   • a person's sense of resolve or determination.

     
     
   • a particular requirement or consideration, typically one that is temporary or restricted in scope or extent.

     
     

There is indeed a reason why we exist: because of progeny.  There is exactly the same kind of purpose to our brain: it exists because we selectively bred for that trait, whether we were conscious of it or not.   It certainly helps us make decisions, lots of which are done autonomously, but a few of which might be conscious.

The second sense of the word can literally be seen as following from this: mating is the purpose of sexuality.  Hunger is the purpose for eating.  Logic is the purpose for wanting to figure things out, to make the first two easier.  As an asexual, I don't find people sexually attractive.  I still feel those purposeful urges (not so different from needing to use the bathroom, or eat).  I don't think there's any special purpose in not having sexuality, any more than there is in having it.  But I digress, let us continue.

The rest of this section does not argue effectively that it is the case, even though it's the conclusion which is given absent logical premises to support it.

In short, we cause stuff, we make stuff happen. And we do these things for a purpose: to survive and thrive as individuals, as societies, and as a species.

Again, pure determinism actually does account for that.  We do things because things cause us to do them, and some things happen because of the stuff we did.  It's what I'd call a fallacy of ignoring a common cause, or perhaps a false dichotomy.  No argument has been made effectively yet, for the conclusion provided, and it ignores any argument in-between (as well as the argument that it could simply not exist, or be consistently inconsistent like some kinds of entropy/open systems, etc).

What is Free Will?

Now here's the part of the article where things should start to get interesting. It is, after all, the whole point of the prior two sections existing, one presumes.

Within a deterministic universe, we decide what we will do.

Actually, you just argued against that in the previous two sections.  In a deterministic universe, it's actually impossible to do that.  I think that generally our universe is deterministic: stars will die, black holes will collapse, and so on.  I think that specifically, some things aren't bound exactly this way.  In fact, he also made this argument earlier.  I stick by my assertion that a quasi-will state exists for any sufficiently-advanced organism.

The “free” distinguishes our own decisions from cases where someone forces us to do what they want, against our will. In those cases, our will is not free, but subordinate to theirs.

The only problem is, if you're arguing for free will from determinism, it's certainly a choice whether or not to obey the coercion.  You can hold your bladder indefinitely if you so desired, but you might die.  It would likely be extremely painful, but there's nothing (apart from your own physical limitations) that actually stops you doing that, or so free will actually argues.  If we follow this backwards a bit, let's imagine that a person wants something badly but can't afford it.  Is the person coerced into stealing it simply because some other factors limit that person's income?  Most people would say that theft is an act of free will, however, there is definite coercion (in the form of a price, or of laws, or any number of other factors) which should limit free will.  The same goes with speed limits.  Do you actually have free will to violate speed limits, or do you not have free will since you're being coerced into not doing that?

Again, this kind of argument for free will breaks down as a false dichotomy.  However, in either a quasi-will, or will-free scenario, the choices are best framed as "what's the most advantageous?" It's not dissimilar at all from other natural biological processes, like evolution or mating pressures.

I'm going to skip the next couple sections, as I think the last couple paragraphs here have addressed most of the arguments presented there.  This will give you a good opportunity to consider both sides as well, if you're able to, that is.  Maybe you feel as though my side, or his side, is coercing you into thinking one or the other is correct.  It's a bit of a (modified) slippery slope, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Myths of Incompatibility

Well, as I discussed earlier, the two are not mutually exclusive necessarily. It's merely my claim that 'will' doesn't exist as presented here, and possibly doesn't exist at all, unless it exists in some quasi-state (which makes the most sense, I think), like a will of advantages as I posited a couple paragraphs ago.

Since we're on the idea of the future and the past being set in stone, let's take some words from an expert.  Sit back, make some popcorn, grab a beer or draw some tea.  I think you'll enjoy this.  It's only nine more minutes.  If you've read this far, you owe yourself something nice like this video, don't you think?  I do.  Also, this video is quite lengthy, but you only need to watch perhaps the first 8-10 minutes to get my point.  By all means, I suggest watching the entire thing.

As should be quite apparent now, the idea that the past and the future are separable is not such a strong idea.  Partially, this is because time doesn't move just one direction, and partially this is because of observation.  Your observation that you move forward in time is dependent on something we've possibly not figured out yet.  Why do we only experience time in the direction that we do?  Why does the future not seem determined, even though every bit of evidence shows us that it probably is?  It probably has something to do with the observation itself, collapsing the waveform that is 'choice' into the one you actually observed in this direction in time.  It's entirely possible that every 'choice' you could ever make was made simultaneously.

While his argument didn't delve into it here, it's the same argument against a god having will.  If a god can literally see everything that exists all at once, it would be impossible for it to draw any meaning from anything.  For it would observe everything, including the infinite observations where it isn't necessary, and it wouldn't be able to react to any of them.  You might ask why, and I'd tell you simply that it's because such a god could only observe the things it could observe.  If it observed everything in this way, it would make literally every choice ever.  If it didn't, it wouldn't, and it would be forever prohibited from it.  This is why we say it's complicated to think about things outside of nature, the universe, etc.  We've gotta master this one before we try jumping on toward the next one.

If you managed to get all the way here, congratulations!  You have some wonderful mental stamina, and I look forward to your continued readership!

125 Rebuttals, 10 through 12

This is a post in a series dealing with this site. If you're new here, welcome!  I see that my blog is getting nearly a hundred people per post viewing it now, so thanks a bunch!  If you're simply returning and enjoying, thanks also!  I'm glad my work is interesting to you, and I welcome any feedback at all.  Now, back to where I left off.

It looks like we're going to have another rapid-fire day ahead of us, so let's dive in!  As a reminder, if you've a specialty here, feel free to let me know if I make any technical mistakes.  Also, just to break up the flow, here's a neat set of pictures I took some time ago.

Apparently Google will sometimes turn a series of pictures into a .gif file automatically.
I'm actually impressed, Google.  I just wish you were better at notifying me of things.

It's a pertinent picture, I think, because it shows an amazing display of evolutionary traits.  Butterflies and grass, two things that have adapted to their environment.  Good luck little butterflies, even though you're likely dead because that photo is several years old now.  I hope you had wonderful lives!

10: The Argument from Transitional Fossils

Alright, I'll quit being lazy.  Time to capitalize things again.  Let's see what kind of logical breakdowns we have today.

The evidence of the words of Charles Darwin
1. “As by this [evolution] theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them in the fossil record? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?”—Charles Darwin (1866)

We need to put this in context, because it's actually quite important here.  From the first few paragraphs of chapter six of The Origin of Species, from whence the quote was mined (around page 131 in that edition), we can see that Darwin is actually setting up these headings with the actual purpose of discussing them.  He acknowledges that they are indeed points of contention (at the time) for which some science still needed to be done. In the hundred and fifty years or so hence, we've discovered the answers to most of those questions.  Note also that this isn't a premise.  It's simply a cherry-picked quote so dearly out of context that, were it anything else, it might tear the fabric of time.

But I digress.

2. Even the few transitional forms claimed by  scientists to be good ones are very questionable and what to say about not finding innumerable transitional forms.

Well, it's terribly incorrect, this premise.  Ring species, like the salamanders found in the greater California area, are literally a set of species in transition.  If you'd like, I can go into more detail on those later, but suffice to say, they are an excellent example of how speciation happens.  Another excellent example is the Mule/Hinney.  Horses and donkeys are starting to become divergent, such that they can still reproduce, but the offspring are (in the case of the mule) born sterile, and are a distinctive species from either parent.  This is a prediction of the divergence of species.  It's probably similar to exactly what happened between Humans (that's us) and Neanderthals.

But again, I digress.  The premise is false, it's an appeal to authority (and a bad one), and it lacks a citation.  Also, god of the gaps.

3. The work of a designer and his creation is obvious. All men call him God.

Again, nope and nope.  First, not all men believe in a god.  A large portion of religious people are Buddhist, for example, a religion that is generally atheist.  Buddhists don't necessarily believe in a god, though most do believe in Nirvana or something similar.  However, I'm moving beyond my scope here.  False premise, false assertion, Argument from heaven, moving on.

4. God exists.

It's interesting to note that the argument is supposedly from transitional fossils, but no fossils were mentioned.  I feel as though I'm really aiming low to keep going, but I'm a dedicated son of a gun, so away we go.

11: The Argument of Information.

I bet it's not.  This might be the most ironic one yet.  Did I mention I'm not reading these before I address each one?  I'm hoping that, in this veritable goldmine of futility, I'll find at least one compelling argument.  Wish me luck as we delve further!

1. There is matter or energy.

Well, actually, there's both.  It's a false dichotomy, in part because it's not an either/or, and in part because they're both the same thing in some frames of reference.  YAY SCIENCE!

2. It is useless or inactive to direct the origin and make of complex life forms without information and consciousness.

[citation needed]
I'd like to know why the author thinks it is useless, or what's even meant by inactive.  Similarly, I can't really make sense of the rest.  Is PSH implying that organisms can't exist without consciousness, like bacteria or plant seeds?  Do trees have thoughts, can cabbage contemplate its own existence?

Also, information is sometimes used to describe matter / energy relations.  It doesn't mean 'information' in the same statistical way you're probably thinking of it right now.  These glyphs you're looking at, that make words on this screen, are one kind of information.  When we're talking about the 'information' of a cell, or of a photon, we're not talking about the same kind of information; we're generally talking about energy, and its attributes, like the polarity of a photon, or the chirality of a strand of DNA or something.  Again, it can change based on the context, so we shan't dwell upon it here, where no context is given.

3. The DNA displays a huge level of coded,

Not really

specified, complex information.

Only because we give it arbitrary meanings.  It's really not so complex a system as you make it out to be.

Many DNA strands have 100 million, or even billions of  segments

This is actually basically correct.

(one segment is called a nucleotide. Nucleotides are the building blocks, namely purines: adenine, guanine; and pyrimidines: cytosine, thymine and uracil).

 Again, basically correct.

4. Even  scientists are amazed by the amount of information in the DNA and every day they discover new things about it.

PSH is on a roll.  This is also correct, it's amazing how much 'information' a strand of DNA can hold.  That is to say, it's amazing how the multitude of base pairs can react with its surroundings (like RNA) to fabricate very complex things.  As complicated as it looks, however, it's still chemistry, and it's still governed by the same laws that make vinegar and baking soda interact in your kitchen.  Well, basically the same laws, but we'll discuss that later perhaps.

5. Proponents of materialism have no answer to the question what generated the first DNA strands, and the information stored in it.

Well, I'm not sure what materialism has to do with anything here, but let's roll with it.  Basically, either DNA is or is not material.  Ignoring this special pleading fallacy, we do have some idea, actually.  very simple versions of RNA, over time, became specialized to the point that they became something like DNA, which pretty much every organism shares now.  The proto-RNA to DNA change may have happened relatively quickly, who can say.  It's probably much more logical, for whatever reason, for there to be separate DNA and RNA within a cell, to create the interaction.  It's entirely possible that DNA evolved covergent with RNA, and the two became specialized over time in unison.  It's not terribly important how you think about it for now, because the mechanism that would have produced it would have been the same.

6. Therefore, there must have been a first, super-intelligent designer of not only of one DNA code but many of them.

Well, there's only one DNA code on earth, and that's the DNA every organism shares.  Sure, each one institutes it differently, but it's literally the same AGTC coding.

7. That creator all men call the all-powerful, all-knowing God.

Again with this.  I grow weary of hearing it.  Especially when it follows such floundering.

I think I said it once before, and I'll say it once again.  If your god is letting such bad logic define him, even if he's real, I think I'd stop believing in him.  I don't mean in the sense that I'd think he's not there, but more like when someone says they don't believe in a sports team.  I'd give him absolutely no quarter.  The fact that this particular sort of argumentation is so common among theists, when it's supposedly one of the most important things in their life, seems bad.  God, the most important thing ever, but no respect is given by the arguments presented.  It seems really disrespectful to the gods they believe in, to use such faulty logic to defend them.  If I were a theist (and even when I was), I really wouldn't want such terrible logic defending something I hold so dear.

Anyway, enough caveats. Back to the grind. But first, the weather.

I play the harmonica. I'm don't have any fancy equipment, but I play.

If you enjoy it, let me know!  If you don't, let me know!
If you just want me to get on with it, here we go.

12: The Argument of Co-option

Well, I've not heard of this one, methinks.  Let's find out what's going on.  Maybe it'll be the diamond in the rough.

1. Co-option in microbiology means borrowing parts of systems from different places to form a new system. When in this way a new system is generated it has a new function. This proves evolution.

That's interesting.  I've never heard it put that way before, but it's true that some things were co-opted by other things. After all, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.  It's important to note that this explains where mitochondria came from.

2a. But in the evolutionary scheme not all the systems were available by co-option.

That's absolutely correct.  Some systems had to develop independently so they could be co-opted.  Others make no sense to co-opt.  There's a reason plants have chloroplasts and you don't.  Animal cells simply don't make good use of solar energy that way, but plant cells do.  It's really as simple as that.  Early animals didn't co-opt it because it simply didn't make sense generally.  Sure, some cyanobacteria and stuff do, but chloroplasts suit them well, because they're relatively simple compared to a human or a cat. [citation needed, probably]

2b. In the simple example of E-coli only 10 out of 40 components can be traced back as having been developed by co-option.

Neat.  Again, false dichotomy fallacy - not everything must be co-opted.  In fact, by definition, it should only tend to happen when it's mutually useful, and that's what we see.  It even happens environmentally, cleaner fish will clean larger animals in return for protection.  Bacteria in your gut evolved to live there.  The fact that they help with nutrient absorption is kinda the reason they're there, regardless whether or not it's a byproduct of why gut bacteria initially developed in the gut.

2c. The rest of the 30 components are unique and new. There are simply no known homologues to them.

Wonderful.  Again, there don't have to be.  One of your premises, supported in fact by your further premises, is that evolution is evidently true (read:proven).  Again, there's no purpose, no guiding light, telling things why they have to do things.  Things just kind happen, and that's that.  The fact that, sometimes, one process benefits another, is not evidence that it's impossible for two processes which have no bearing on each other to exist.  This is a false corollary!  A new kind of fallacy!  Haha, many discoveries were made today, mark the day!

      These 30 components were not available for co-option in hypothetic ancestral lines leading from e.g. a bacterium with no flagellum.

Science-sounding stuff pulled out of context and then not put back into a context. This is really just sloppy.  Also, the premise admits that it could have been co-opted from elsewhere, whatever thirty other traits it supposedly references.  I'm not even going to bother looking up a source for this, because we can all guess what comes next.

3. This again proves the existence of a designer who is no one else then God.

Actually, it does exactly the opposite.  It shows that evolution is evidently true, and uses evolution to explain how symbiosis works. Good job!  PSH is literally so disingenuous that he's claiming that the premise supports exactly the opposite conclusion from what was actually shown in the premise.  Imagine if I said this.

1. Clouds are made of raindrops
2. Raindrops form around dirt nuclei
3. Those nuclei can be any number of very tiny particulates
4. Some raindrops form because of tiny ice crystals instead of dirt
5. Clouds don't actually contain any raindrops because some raindrops don't contain dirt

I've kept you all here more than long enough, and I appreciate you stopping by!
Again, I'll take just a few seconds to mention my Patreon, link in the sidebar.

125 Rebuttals, 6 to 9

This is a post in a series of rebuttals to this forum post.

Thankfully, the next few points are rather concise, so let's zip right through.

6: Argument of the Protocells

1. “Protocells may have formed in a salty soup,” says chemist Wilhelm Huck, professor at Radboud University Nijmegen. (July 2, 2013) 
2. DNA and RNA molecules, however they emerged, may have clustered together without a cell membrane at first. 
3. But despite the interesting story Wilhelm Huck admitted: “A functioning cell must be entirely correct at once, in all its complexity.”

Basically a fallacy of appeal to authority.  Just because an authority makes a claim (and likely out of context), doesn't mean the claim is valid.   Similarly, as nearly as I can tell, the claim is in reference to a specific bit of research the chemist was doing.  He appeared to be explaining that, in order to call it a cell, it must contain the fundamental bits associated with a cell.  It's not an implication that a cell couldn't be any simpler, but that a recreated cell must have its constituent parts to be called a cell.

Again, I don't know why I'm reiterating this - PSH is just going to mine things out of context anyway.

4. This conclusion points to the supreme designer all men call God.

No, it doesn't.  A premise wasn't even introduced here, and it clearly does no such thing.

5. God exists.

 Again, PSH doesn't understand formal logic.

7: The argument of emerging from the ooze

I'm really getting tired of capitalizing the titles, so I'm not doing that anymore.  If PSH can be lazy, so can I.

1. George Poinar at Oregon State has tried to understand the evolution of nematodes (roundworms) that originated a billion years ago as one of the earliest forms of multicellular life.  He says, “They literally emerged from the primordial ooze.”
2. The article enumerated all the parts that would have had to emerge. In one of the paragraphs we read, “But they are functional animals, with nervous and digestive systems, muscles, good mobility, and they are capable of rapid reproduction and learned behavior.”
3. Although Poinar wrote a book on nematode evolution, he admitted, “There’s still a huge amount we don’t know about nematodes.”

It seems that this article is the one in question.  Again, it'd be really swell if PSH could simply learn how to attribute things, but I'm guessing that's never going to happen.  That's actually a really interesting article, and I suggest you all go read it now. FOR SCIENCE or whatever.

4. And he did not explain how something so complex could emerge from ooze.

Except that he kinda doesn't have to, because literally, it's like saying that some creatures emerged from the water and became land-dwelling creatures.  It's not as though the ooze had sentience.  It's a medium in which things would have grown.  Nevermind that evolution and abiogenesis deal with that anyway, and the scope of the book is about how nematodes developed, not necessarily about how they came into existence.

5. This again points to the work of an intelligent designer all men call God. God exists.

It does no such thing. Argument from Heaven (god of the gaps argument).  Now PSH is getting so lazy he isn't even making the conclusion separate from a premise.

8: The evidence of panspermia

Again, I discussed this at a few points, but let's humor it here on its own.

1. In 1981,

Really reaching here.

Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule, published a book, declaring that “directed panspermia” was responsible for life on earth.  

 Actually, it was that it could have been, for life on earth, not that it absolutely was, as the premise would lead one to believe.

2. Crick admits that this does not explain how nearly all our plant and animal species came into existence. Nor does it explain the transportation problem.  Centuries of travel through the cold of outer space would be required. This theory is a desperate, gasping effort to provide a solution to the question of how living creatures originated, a puzzle which thousands of scientists in 150 years of diligent work have not been able to solve. Very few intellectuals have accepted panspermia.

This is just a jumble of stuff that the author is attempting to compress into a coherent idea.  Essentially, cherry-picking again.  I'm not going to go into any specifics here, except to say this statement is a load of something.  Crap, probably.

Again, it's important to note that panspermia only addresses life on earth. It doesn't discuss how that life formed, wherever it formed.

3.  Life cannot originate from matter.

That's right, boys and girls, we're not made of matter! Oh wait.  That's an unfounded premise.

 4. Panspermia also means that all the species were designed by an intelligent designer all men call God.

Panspermia makes no such claims.  Google it, the blog will be here until you return.

5. God exists.

Again, that's not a conclusion which is supported by the premises that don't exist here.

9: The argument of extraterrestrial life origin.

Well, this ought to be fun. Again, it encounters the same pitfalls as panspermia, because it still doesn't address how life began. Evolution does, and does so quite nicely.  I like how the idea that aliens could have started life somehow argues that god is an alien.  This would mean that god couldn't create the universe, since god would by definition exist within it.  But I digress, let's see where it goes from here.

1. Vladimir I shCherbak of al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Kazakhstan, and Maxim A Makukov of the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute have come to the conclusion after researching for years that we, as human beings living on earth, are not originally from the earth planet, nor that we are alone in the Universe.

Good for them!  I'd love to see their paper, but I'm getting tired of googling everything.  Also, Kardashev makes similar claims, as do other people.  Again, appeal to authority fallacy, and since he'll probably claim that their authority is moot later, we'll just move merrily along.  Can't have it both ways, either they're authority gives them credence or it doesn't: special pleading fallacy.

2. shCherbak and Makukov say that “our genes could have an intelligently designed ‘manufacturer’s stamp’ inside them, written eons ago elsewhere in our galaxy.”

Sure, it could have.  I'm almost certain the paper doesn't actually show any such evidence, though.  Fine, I'll hit the google machine one last time today.

WOW!

The absolute level of idiocy displayed by this argument alone is staggering.  I don't think the journal is a proper peer-reviewed journal, for one.  I don't think SETI is working under any presumption that codes in our DNA might contain messages from aliens.  I mean, if a code could survive for that long, evolution probably wouldn't work. Again, I'm not going into specifics here.  It's from an intelligent-design website, no less, and the authors of the speculation are from a theistic university in Kazakhstan.

3. Such a ‘designer label’ is an indelible stamp on our DNA of a master extraterrestrial civilization that preceded us by many millions or even billions of years.
4. Writing in the journal Icarus, the two scientists say that such a signal embedded in our genetic code would be a mathematical and semantic message that cannot be accounted for by Darwinian evolution. They call it ‘biological SETI’ — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — that’s been ongoing for over four decades now without finding anything.
4a. “Once fixed, the code might stay unchanged over cosmological timescales; in fact, it’s the most durable construct known. Therefore, it represents an exceptionally reliable storage for an intelligent signature. Once the genome is appropriately rewritten, the new code with a signature will stay frozen in the cell and its progeny, which might then be delivered through space and time.”
5. Makukov and shCherbak assert that simple arrangements of the code reveal an ensemble of arithmetical and ideographical patterns of symbolic language. This includes, they say, the use of decimal notation, logical transformations, and the utilization of the abstract symbol of zero. They write: “Accurate and systematic, these underlying patterns appear as a product of precision logic and nontrivial computing.”

Stuff from some article, probably.  I'm just gonna go ahead and move along, since I have absolutely no way to discern the claims without paying for the paper.

6. This theory is called panspermia or the theory that life on earth originated from organisms coming from outer space or that it came to our planet carried by meteors and asteroids which got seeded before being flung across space to land here.

Well, at least it got that right.

7. This latest panspermia theory makes it sound less like serendipitous happenstance and more like a well thought out experimental endeavor with a purpose, by entities who wanted to leave their signature behind on a part of the universe.

Certainly, it sounds that way, but lots of things that happen by chance can be seen as intended.  It's our mind's natural response to find patterns or purpose behind any given thing.  A rock that hit a planet which contained some life, picked up some of that life (probably bacteria or simple molecular structures) and flung them here, where some of it thawed out and started growing again.

If you think it's hard to get things to grow when they've been frozen, just stick some moldy bread in your freezer.  In fact, soak it in liquid nitrogen if you want.  Then thaw it out in a sterile bag or something.  See if the mold keeps growing.  Hint: it probably will.  You've just done a panspermia experiment, bringing life to a lifeless bag.

8. This theory although un-testable or un-falsifiable is still supported by the view of Anthony Flew, a renowned British philosopher belonging to the analytic school of thought. 

Actually, I just showed you a great way to test and falsify it.  In fact, go ahead and stick it in a vacuum for a bit as well.  See if you can't get anything to survive.

9. For more than half a century he was considered the world’s leading atheist, advocating the need for believing that one should always presuppose the non-existence of God until empirical evidence proves otherwise. However, in December 2004, Flew, aged 81, based on scientific evidence, had changed his mind and accepted the existence of God because a super-intelligence was the only good explanation for the origin of life.

Actually, he probably changed his mind for other reasons.  Argument from authority fallacy also.  If I wake up tomorrow, and a respected marine biologist tells me the oceans are made of ice cream now, that doesn't make it true.

10. Flew specifically stated that biologists’ investigation of human DNA “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved.” That’s exactly what Messrs shCherbak and Makukov are now reporting.

Again, argument from authority.  Flew can say that there are innumerable teakettles orbiting the moon, and that faeries visit him nightly.  Simple assertions don't make something true.  Evidence that can be tested does, though.

11. God exists.

Oh it's the premise that's false without end, it keeps getting claimed over and over again.  Some people started preaching it, not knowing how or why, and they'll continue preaching it until the day they die cause it's the premise that's false without end...

Peace until next time!

125 Rebuttals, #5

Alright, just a reminder, I'm rebutting the logical fallacies contained within the arguments found here.

5: The Argument of the Ancient Protein as the Origin of Life

Well, if past performance is any indication, this is going to be an interesting one.  Wonder how PSH is going to define 'ancient protein.'  

1. The primeval proteins, described (Aug. 8. 2013) in the journal Structure, could reveal new insights about the origin of life, said study co-author José Manuel Sanchez Ruíz, a physical chemist at the University of Granada in Spain.

Alright, so first, we need a source.  Unfortunately, PSH doesn't know how to do anything other than copy and paste text from other people, so I had to go and find it on my own.   The article doesn't contain the word primeval, though it does contain the phrase 'origin of life' three times.  For some context, here's one of those quotes:

To summarize, we have shown that protein 3D structure determination can be reliably carried out with laboratory resurrections corresponding to Precambrian nodes dating up to approximately four billion years ago, i.e., close to thThis leads me to believe that, since the author of the blog post didn't simply just link to the blog, that it is indeed a plagiarism.  Seeing as how the arguments mostly appear to exist on that blog, I'm going to switch gears here.e origin of life. This result is remarkable, given the large number of sequence differences (up to ∼50%) between the extinct and extant proteins, and demonstrates the possibility of incorporating a time scale of several billion years to expand the sequence space for 3D structure determination studies, i.e., a time scale over which we may expect significant changes in protein structure to occur. We have furthermore shown that critical evolutionary issues regarding fold definition, fold age, and the identification of ancestral and derived structural features can be readily addressed based on putative ancestral structures. The results and analyses reported here thus support that laboratory resurrection targeting Precambrian nodes followed by 3D structure determination can be a powerful approach to explore the poorly understood evolution of protein structures.

Journal, Conservation of Protein Structure over 14 Billion years, Aug 8 2013, Paragraph 9

So, the statement made by PSH, ripped once again from the Proofs of God's existence blog, doesn't carry any such citation either, just a literal rip of the argument.  The ultimate post does indeed include a link, so I guess that counts as attribution.  Since I can't say whether it's the blog owner's post or not (though it seems to be at this point), I'm going to work from the premise that it is, and continue in this vein.

As you can see by the quote from the article, and the article itself, 'primeval proteins' aren't mentioned.  It's actually not even talking about RNA as the origin of life, since it's actually talking about the fact that they were close (i.e. after) to the origins, not the actual origins themselves.  This is so intellectually dishonest, and such a false premise, that I shan't dwell on it any longer.

2. Exactly how life emerged on Earth more than 3 billion years ago is a mystery.

Wonderful. Good thing you pointed out that, in fact, you do not know.  Again, argument from ignorance fallacy, possible poisoning the well / guilt by association.

Some scientists believe that lightning struck the primordial soup in ammonia-rich oceans, producing the complex molecules that formed the precursors to life.

It's possible that electricity helped catalyze some reactions, but it ignores the fact that things like table salt form without it, and are natural, self-replicating procedures.  Lightning didn't just strike a salt bath and make bacteria.

Others believe

Who?

that chemical reactions at deep-sea hydrothermal vents gave rise to cell membranes and simple cellular pumps.

Again, who?  Also, it's possible, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.  I mean, the hydrological activity wasn't what created it, but rather chemical reactions that were permitted by the conditions, but I digress.  It's probably just bad wording.

 And still others believe

Seriously, PSH, it doesn't matter what people believe. It matters only what can be shown with evidence.  Some people believe that gnomes steal their underwear, but like any belief, it doesn't mean anything here.  Unless you're meaning the other definition of belief, which requires evidence.  Which you don't, which is a modified fallacy of ambiguity.

that space rocks brought the raw ingredients for life — or perhaps even life itself — to Earth.

And again, that's something that may have happened, but as I discussed yesterday, whether it was panspermia or not, that's not even part of the question at this point, because those organisms had come from somewhere. Imagine I purchase a cake.  The cake is in my house.  It was somewhere else.  Taking this analogy one step further, it's a bit like saying that since cakes come from stores, the wheat used for the flour didn't have to be grown.  It's a non-sequitur, plain and simple.  This argument is invalid here, for one because this is supposedly a premise, and  for two because it doesn't address origins.

3. It seems that the complexity of thioredoxin, a class of small redox proteins known to be present in all organisms, suggests intelligent design.
    a. They then recreated the protein in the lab. The original “fossil” protein was incredibly stable, bound to many different chemicals and functioned well in a highly acidic environment.
    b. “That makes a lot of sense because 4 billion years ago, many people think that the temperature was high and the oceans were acidic,” Sanchez Ruíz told LiveScience.

Well boy howdy, what do you know.  The article PSH is referring to here is literally where the quote from the first premise was ripped from.   Also, literally the first few points.  What a disingenuous bastard PSH is.  This is literally the definition of plagiarism.  Same goes to that Proof of Goddamn But The Author Is An Imbecile blog or whatever.  The LiveScience article is discussing something in a different context.  Again, the argument made by PSH is that ancient proteins might be the origin of life.  The article from LiveScience is dealing with the fact that the proteins were recreated.  Which is what we'd expect if the guys doing the science are on a correct hypothesis.  It's important to note that LiveScience is not a peer-reviewed journal, but rather an interesting place to read up on science.  This is a great example of how a statement can support one thing in one context, but not another thing in another context.  This, folks, is why it's important to give proper attribution and context to whatever sources you rip from.

Think for a second, about what I've just done.  I'm arguing points on a forum thread post, ripped verbatim from a blog without attribution, ripped verbatim from a science news article without attribution, to support a claim where no claim was made in the original context.  This kind of mental gymnastics is Olympics-level stuff, if the Olympics were giving prizes to the worst offenders.

Let's do some rapid-fire stuff on the next few points, since it's basically the same tripe.

4. A BBC article pointed out several problems with this resurrected theory.

Which article, and which theory?  For crying out loud, you'd think if this were important to the point, PSH would at least link to it.  Maybe it's not really terribly important.  Luckily, our fair PSH's morals don't change in a few sentences, so finding the article was relatively simple. To their credit, the BBC really seems to cover this better than LiveScience.  Also, that statement is pretty much a lie.  Here's an actual quote from the article.

    a. Prof Eric Gaucher of Georgia Tech, US, helped with the ancestral gene sequence reconstruction and commented: “A gene can become deactivated by as few as one or two mutations.

    b. “If our ancestral sequences were incorrectly inferred by having a single mistake, that could have led to a dead gene. Instead, our approach created biochemically active proteins that fold up into three dimensional structures that look like modern protein structures, thus validating our approach.”

Here, let me put that in context.  From the selfsame BBC article:

They then used modern bacteria to convert the ancient gene sequences into a chemically active protein that could be measured to determine its molecular structure and the properties of the ancient protein.

The thioredoxin protein is an enzyme which can break sulphur bonds in other molecules and has a number of metabolic functions in cells. It is shared by almost all life on Earth, from the simplest bacteria to complex animals including humans, indicating that the ultimate single-celled ancestor of all life on Earth would also have had the gene.

Prof Eric Gaucher of Georgia Tech, US, helped with the ancestral gene sequence reconstruction and commented: "A gene can become deactivated by as few as one or two mutations.

"If our ancestral sequences were incorrectly inferred by having a single mistake, that could have led to a dead gene. Instead, our approach created biochemically active proteins that fold up into three dimensional structures that look like modern protein structures, thus validating our approach."

The group used molecular clocks to date the evolutionary branches back in time and linked them to geological changes in Earth's environment.

Changes in the protein's length appeared to occur in fits and starts, with its helix structure suddenly lengthening at the point that cells started to develop a nucleus (the transition from prokaryote to eukaryote), paving the way for higher life.

The results suggest that biological systems might evolve at the molecular level in discrete jumps rather than along continuous pathways, as has been suggested from studies of the evolution of species. 

This quote is pulled so vigorously out of context that the actual context of the quote argues against the point PSH is trying to make.  This is called quote mining, cherry picking, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence, among others.

5. Even bigger problem is the dismissal of the main tenet of neo-Darwinism namely the gradual evolution.“The results suggest that biological systems might evolve at the molecular level in discrete jumps rather than along continuous pathways, as has been suggested from studies of the evolution of species.”6. Finally, Sanchez Ruíz has a great doubt whether the designed protein in the laboratory had anything to do with a hypothetical lonely protein in an imagined hot sea:“There is no way to make absolutely certain unless we invent some kind of time machine…But we know that the properties we measure for these proteins are consistent with what we would expect of 4-billion-year-old proteins.”7. One more problem of this earliest thioredoxin protein is that it is not simple, but complex, stable, and possessing multiple functions. And what would it function with, if not a cell filled with many other proteins and genes? 8. Another speculation in the theory of Ruiz is that thioredoxin arose on Mars and then was transported to Earth in meteorites.  “Four billion years ago Mars was a much a safer place than Earth…Maybe we have resurrected Martian proteins. Maybe the last universal common ancestor (the first life) formed on Mars and transferred to Earth.” 

And the rest of that is exactly the same.  Apart from being unable to stick to one piece of evidence, now our brave PSH (and I'm presuming the PSH in the forum is the same as the PSH from the blog, now.  I'm thoroughly convinced now he's disingenuous enough to plagiarize himself and not realize it) takes quotes from those sources and mixes them up, destroying context to paint a picture that doesn't exist.  Literally, what he's doing is akin to this, taking literal segments and making them say something else:



Fair use fair use fair use....

But I'll remove if it they want me to.

I don't like simply ripping off other people.

Am I really going to do all 125 of these?  Sometimes it seems hard, but I honestly enjoy it. One of the hard bits of doing something that was written completely, at some point in the past, is that sometimes it feels like I'm just repeating myself over and over and over...

9. However, no life or products of life have yet been discovered on Mars, and shifting the origin of thioredoxin from earth to Mars still does not explain how a complex protein arose at once.

 That's right.  The cake analogy from above.

10. All in all, after considering all the impossibilities and unexplained things, intelligent design by the greatest designer who all men call God is the best explanation.

Oh, and we did it again.  Again I shall remind you, gentle readers, that not one shred of evidence was given in support of anything.  Even if we take the arguments at face value, and pretend that they are arguments against the premises presented therein, no premise of a false dichotomy was even introduced here.  Not once did PSH provide one shred of evidence that some other method of nature could produce it, nor that it could simply have existed for ever.  Nowhere does he provide a single premise in support of any god, let alone his own.  This is the simple appeal to heaven fallacy, or the god of the gaps fallacy more specifically.

The presumption is, if someone can't explain something to one particular individual, that somehow invalidates the reasoning of the argument.  Here, however, we actually do have a neat dichotomy.  It's entirely possible that it's being explained correctly, and PSH is simply too daft to understand it.  Well, that's not really a dichotomy per se, because there are other options.  Perhaps PSH is simply willfully denying, or is too dishonest to allow any honest ideas into his mind.

Tune in next time when we tear down another fun, logically incoherent argument.  Speaking of which, I almost forgot.

 11. God exists.

Actually, I'm not quite done. There's one more fun logical structure I can throw in here.  Also, I just realized, this argument for god actually runs contrary to Irreducible Complexity, since PSH is letting it be valid that they did, indeed, replicate the RNA structures in a simpler way.  Remember, this is one of the foundational points of this set of premises.

acce245's Argument that Some Other God Exists

1. Creationists can't seem to agree what god exists.
2. There's tons of evidence that maybe their god doesn't exist.
3. Buddhists think Yahweh doesn't exist.
4. Christians think Allah doesn't exist.
5. Muslims think Yahweh doesn't exist.

Conclusion: None of those gods exist.  Ergo, leprechauns must exist, because they created the universe.

I'm sure I won't change PSH's mind, but if you want a fun argument to throw around with a creationist, have fun!  Just remind them, those same scientists they quote will likely be deistic, if religious at all, and they also claim that PSH's god doesn't exist.  It's a fun way you can apply learning in your daily life.

Peace to all of you, and until next time, think rationally!