Darwin's Black Box - Michael J. Behe and Intelligent Design

This whole discussion re Evolution v ID has been and is mind blowing. I have decided to re-read Behe's. Darwins Black box again to reformulate everything he says. Maybe what I am saying is not very clear. I realise if someone were to ask me to argue for ID I would be hard pushed to articulate what I know which makes me realise it's all a jumble in my head. Too much too fast methinks. I need to slow down and get it ordered and concise. Think with a hammer comes to mind.

Since you brought this up, I think it may be time for this post. It may help clear some ideas.

As I keep reading, I keep thinking about all this. Often I do more of the latter and reading is slow. -_-
So I often take some notes about ideas that come to mind. They are just various notions and observations from different points of view, restating of the same ideas in different ways, various examples, and so on. They're not sorted in any particular way, and there isn't necessarily any continuity in this. Just random points that I want to share and that I hope might give others some insights and sort of clear some things up.



Darwinism has only ever been able to account for simple adaptation. No new complex system has ever been shown to have appeared by random mutation.

Darwinian evolution is a theory that has become widely accepted as "fact" without any evidence. (Largely because it came a century before any real evidence was scientifically possible.)

Darwinists have continuously been confusing change in degree with change in kind. A deer's antlers can evolve into shorter antlers, longer antlers, simpler antlers, more complex antlers, sharper antlers, thicker antlers, wider antlers, lighter antlers, or just about any kind of antlers. What Darwinists fail to acknowledge is that antlers can't evolve into wings, fins, or microwave transmitters.

Microbiology shows insurmountable obstacles to Darwinism, and it might be worth pointing out to people that in Darwin's time, microbiology didn't exist. Back then, biology was orders of magnitude more simple than today, and thus his theory may have seemed somewhat plausible (at least if you didn't think about it too much).

When people say something has evolved (implying Darwin), it's worth considering to just add the word "randomly" before "evolved" to give them a more accurate sense of what they're saying. Because randomly is exactly how Darwinian evolution works. "Giraffes have randomly evolved a long neck." This already makes it significantly more absurd to add "so that they could reach higher" or some other made up comment. "Birds have randomly evolved wings." "Humans have randomly evolved from monkeys." You could also say "accidentally" and it would still be perfectly in line with how Darwinism is supposed to work. Maybe when people hear it like that, they'll give more thought to whether it makes sense. (Which they apparently otherwise don't do.)

Another option is to rephrase things as "monkeys have (randomly) mutated into humans". Sounds a lot weirder and more dubious, but according to Darwinist principles, it's more accurate!

(Something you can tell people: ) Name one example of something complex and functional in our world that has "evolved" by RANDOM steps.

Take the Rubik's cube. Twisting it around in all directions is akin to what random mutation does. So you can get hundreds of different configurations of colours, including some interesting patterns. That's more or less what Darwinism does. But at the end of the day, no matter how much you twist it, the cube is still a cube. Nothing new was created, nothing evolved. The idea that random mutation is limitless and could have created all the life forms we know from a single cell is as bizarre as the idea that twisting Rubik's cube long enough could produce a bicycle.

It's interesting to see how whenever Darwinists try to explain evolution, they can't seem to avoid words that imply design, intelligence, and purpose, even though they vehemently deny that these things are actually involved. They even say things like "well it looks like life was designed, but it wasn't". This invokes the saying, "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck..."

Imagine ocean waves on the shore moving grains of sand on the beach randomly. This can create some patterns in the sand that may occasionally look interesting enough to catch your attention. The notion that RM+NS can create complex functional systems is akin to the notion that the ocean waves can build a sand castle with battlements, windows and knights on horses. The disconnect between moving grains of sand around and building a castle is the same as the disconnect between what RM+NS really does and what DWs claim it can do.

If we look at mutations that damage or improve the code, it goes beyond just the fact that the damaging ones are 100 times more common. Let's say you have 100 specimens that will get a mutation that NS will keep. 99 of them will get a damaging one, and 1 will get an improvement that doesn't break anything. (Note that it doesn't really get anything strictly "new". Just a previously unused variation of its existing code, which just happens to offer some advantage at the moment.) But it doesn't stop there. All 100 mutations were picked by NS, so the 1 that's good (and usually comes late) won't spread any more than the other 99. (More likely less because it came later than most.) But where does it go from there? Those 99 have practically no chance to restore their code to its former functionality (the chance to get ANY improvement may be 1:99, but to get a specific one, restoring it to a previous state, would be MUCH lower), but the 1 has a good chance to get another mutation somewhere down the line that will break the part that was previously improved, simply because it happens to offer some advantage that is more essential at the moment than preserving the code. (Preserving the code is not something NS understands.) In other words, what breaks is unlikely to ever get fixed, but what gets improved has a decent chance to get broken later. So even if you get a temporary improvement, the chances that you'll be able to build upon it further are much lower than the chances that it will break at some point.

An example with numbers: Say you have a code that consists of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. With random mutation, you can replace any number with any of the others (like replace 3 with 5), switch them around (switch an existing 3 with an existing 5 next to it), delete any number, or duplicate any number or sequence of numbers any number of times. You can now create an infinite number of sequences of numbers (presumably of any length) with this code, which is very nice, but you'll never get a 7 or 8 or 9. So if you see another code that does have 7, 8, and 9, it could not have evolved from the first one by a process of random mutation.

A new feature kept by NS may just be something useful under particular temporary conditions. Once the conditions pass, the feature is not useful anymore, but as 99% of such features break the DNA code, the organism has "evolved" to be "worse" with nothing to show for it in the long run. (For example malaria gains resistance to a drug by breaking a gene, we stop using the drug because it doesn't work anymore, so the malaria doesn't need the mutation any longer but can't fix the gene.)

Darwinists use the reversed logic of "if the simple is possible, the complex must be possible too" to infer all of evolution from observed simple adaptation.

What if everything in the world worked like Darwinian evolution?
- You could build a house by randomly throwing bricks around. (It would just take a bit longer.)
- You could compose a symphony by randomly hitting the piano without knowing how it works.
- You could write a book by randomly hitting the keyboard.
- [your own example]
 
To quote Tuatha de Danaan again: "I realise if someone were to ask me to argue for ID I would be hard pushed to articulate what I know which makes me realise it's all a jumble in my head."

There is a particular issue that's unclear to me as well.

If we were created by 4D, how did organic life originate in the first place? I mean, if 4D beings evolve from 3D beings but 3D beings are created by 4D, there's a bit of a paradox there. And I don't think non-linearity of time can quite explain that. There's a sequentiality of events (3D->4D) that has to somehow hold regardless of how you look at time. (If you travel in time to 1800 and die there, on the world's timeline, you die "before" you're born, but that doesn't change the fact that you "first" had to be born [in 19xx] before you could die. Your body cannot die before it's born, from the point of view of the body itself. So 4D guys travelling back to seed their ancestors doesn't make sense to me.) Something had to somehow come first. So what and how?

In the eventuality that, as an alternative to DW, I tell somebody we were seeded by "aliens", I expect they inevitably ask me where the aliens came from. (Not what place - an evolutionary question.) I don't have an answer for that. Plus I think that suggesting ID to people without explaining the designer properly doesn't breed much confidence. It really does sound like a lazy excuse. So what do we know about this?
 
Since you brought this up, I think it may be time for this post. It may help clear some ideas.

As I keep reading, I keep thinking about all this. Often I do more of the latter and reading is slow. -_-
So I often take some notes about ideas that come to mind. They are just various notions and observations from different points of view, restating of the same ideas in different ways, various examples, and so on. They're not sorted in any particular way, and there isn't necessarily any continuity in this. Just random points that I want to share and that I hope might give others some insights and sort of clear some things up.



Darwinism has only ever been able to account for simple adaptation. No new complex system has ever been shown to have appeared by random mutation.

Darwinian evolution is a theory that has become widely accepted as "fact" without any evidence. (Largely because it came a century before any real evidence was scientifically possible.)

Darwinists have continuously been confusing change in degree with change in kind. A deer's antlers can evolve into shorter antlers, longer antlers, simpler antlers, more complex antlers, sharper antlers, thicker antlers, wider antlers, lighter antlers, or just about any kind of antlers. What Darwinists fail to acknowledge is that antlers can't evolve into wings, fins, or microwave transmitters.

Microbiology shows insurmountable obstacles to Darwinism, and it might be worth pointing out to people that in Darwin's time, microbiology didn't exist. Back then, biology was orders of magnitude more simple than today, and thus his theory may have seemed somewhat plausible (at least if you didn't think about it too much).

When people say something has evolved (implying Darwin), it's worth considering to just add the word "randomly" before "evolved" to give them a more accurate sense of what they're saying. Because randomly is exactly how Darwinian evolution works. "Giraffes have randomly evolved a long neck." This already makes it significantly more absurd to add "so that they could reach higher" or some other made up comment. "Birds have randomly evolved wings." "Humans have randomly evolved from monkeys." You could also say "accidentally" and it would still be perfectly in line with how Darwinism is supposed to work. Maybe when people hear it like that, they'll give more thought to whether it makes sense. (Which they apparently otherwise don't do.)

Another option is to rephrase things as "monkeys have (randomly) mutated into humans". Sounds a lot weirder and more dubious, but according to Darwinist principles, it's more accurate!

(Something you can tell people: ) Name one example of something complex and functional in our world that has "evolved" by RANDOM steps.

Take the Rubik's cube. Twisting it around in all directions is akin to what random mutation does. So you can get hundreds of different configurations of colours, including some interesting patterns. That's more or less what Darwinism does. But at the end of the day, no matter how much you twist it, the cube is still a cube. Nothing new was created, nothing evolved. The idea that random mutation is limitless and could have created all the life forms we know from a single cell is as bizarre as the idea that twisting Rubik's cube long enough could produce a bicycle.

It's interesting to see how whenever Darwinists try to explain evolution, they can't seem to avoid words that imply design, intelligence, and purpose, even though they vehemently deny that these things are actually involved. They even say things like "well it looks like life was designed, but it wasn't". This invokes the saying, "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck..."

Imagine ocean waves on the shore moving grains of sand on the beach randomly. This can create some patterns in the sand that may occasionally look interesting enough to catch your attention. The notion that RM+NS can create complex functional systems is akin to the notion that the ocean waves can build a sand castle with battlements, windows and knights on horses. The disconnect between moving grains of sand around and building a castle is the same as the disconnect between what RM+NS really does and what DWs claim it can do.

If we look at mutations that damage or improve the code, it goes beyond just the fact that the damaging ones are 100 times more common. Let's say you have 100 specimens that will get a mutation that NS will keep. 99 of them will get a damaging one, and 1 will get an improvement that doesn't break anything. (Note that it doesn't really get anything strictly "new". Just a previously unused variation of its existing code, which just happens to offer some advantage at the moment.) But it doesn't stop there. All 100 mutations were picked by NS, so the 1 that's good (and usually comes late) won't spread any more than the other 99. (More likely less because it came later than most.) But where does it go from there? Those 99 have practically no chance to restore their code to its former functionality (the chance to get ANY improvement may be 1:99, but to get a specific one, restoring it to a previous state, would be MUCH lower), but the 1 has a good chance to get another mutation somewhere down the line that will break the part that was previously improved, simply because it happens to offer some advantage that is more essential at the moment than preserving the code. (Preserving the code is not something NS understands.) In other words, what breaks is unlikely to ever get fixed, but what gets improved has a decent chance to get broken later. So even if you get a temporary improvement, the chances that you'll be able to build upon it further are much lower than the chances that it will break at some point.

An example with numbers: Say you have a code that consists of numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. With random mutation, you can replace any number with any of the others (like replace 3 with 5), switch them around (switch an existing 3 with an existing 5 next to it), delete any number, or duplicate any number or sequence of numbers any number of times. You can now create an infinite number of sequences of numbers (presumably of any length) with this code, which is very nice, but you'll never get a 7 or 8 or 9. So if you see another code that does have 7, 8, and 9, it could not have evolved from the first one by a process of random mutation.

A new feature kept by NS may just be something useful under particular temporary conditions. Once the conditions pass, the feature is not useful anymore, but as 99% of such features break the DNA code, the organism has "evolved" to be "worse" with nothing to show for it in the long run. (For example malaria gains resistance to a drug by breaking a gene, we stop using the drug because it doesn't work anymore, so the malaria doesn't need the mutation any longer but can't fix the gene.)

Darwinists use the reversed logic of "if the simple is possible, the complex must be possible too" to infer all of evolution from observed simple adaptation.

What if everything in the world worked like Darwinian evolution?
- You could build a house by randomly throwing bricks around. (It would just take a bit longer.)
- You could compose a symphony by randomly hitting the piano without knowing how it works.
- You could write a book by randomly hitting the keyboard.
- [your own example]


Well Mandatory Intellectomy.......you have done the leg work for me. I'm going to print your description out and
re-work so it becomes my clear and concise model. When I can claim it as my own I will then remember and understand the nuances and depth of the DARWINIAN THEORY. I cannot thank you enough for the trouble you have taken in giving me a very strong grounding. and for condensing all of the 42 pages of information printed above. You have given an old age pensioner a mighty boost and a brilliant base to start from. Thank you again.
 
And I think that it is probably commitment to truth that is missing. That is, an ideal that is placed above our own subjectivity, or a love for something higher. So with that you have an ideal towards which you are aiming, which can been seen as religious type of experience, and on the other it can also be seen as a lifelong scientific enterprise.

Dominant strands of science and religion do not focus on what is fundemental, on trying to understand, but on promoting a certain worldview. It's like their minds have been hijacked by certain assumptions that with time became so rooted in their identity that they are unwilling to let go of them. I understand that beliefs are hard to let go of, and it sometimes feels like dying, but is it really worth keeping illusions?

Both science and religion think that they have discovered something that is concrete about the world, and then build stories around that, everything that doesn't fit into their assumptions is discarded as illusions. For instance, materialistic reductionist science can't explain consciousness (not to mention a bunch of other things), so it's discarded because their theories can't account for it. Instead of throwing away the theory, they throw away the fact! With religion we have the idea of an omnipotent, benevolent God, which can't account for evil (along with a bunch of other stuff), and instead of letting go of the assumption about an omnipotent God that stands outside everything else, they throw away facts. We obviously can't arrive close to understanding if we keep discarding what is.

Interesting, you guys are discussing something that is paralleled in what I'm currently reading in Douglas Axe's book "Undeniable". He relates how invaluable were his experiences with the Darwinian crowd and how naive he was when he used to think that he could change his former colleague's thinking with a <2 hour presentation of his research with what should have been "the obvious for everyone to see". It reminds me of "it is not where you are, but who you are and what you see". He also says:

"The scientistic view introduced in the first chapter—scientism—is the most striking example of an embellished version of science that has risen to prominence. The reason adherents to this version hold science to be the only legitimate source of truth is that they also hold to materialism. This commits them to the idea that there isn’t anything but physical stuff, and because science is the only way to know the truth about physical stuff, this leads them to conclude that science is the only source of truth. The materialist commitment itself, though, is completely unnecessary to science and therefore a harmful embellishment."
 
To quote Tuatha de Danaan again: "I realise if someone were to ask me to argue for ID I would be hard pushed to articulate what I know which makes me realise it's all a jumble in my head."

There is a particular issue that's unclear to me as well.

If we were created by 4D, how did organic life originate in the first place? I mean, if 4D beings evolve from 3D beings but 3D beings are created by 4D, there's a bit of a paradox there. And I don't think non-linearity of time can quite explain that. There's a sequentiality of events (3D->4D) that has to somehow hold regardless of how you look at time. (If you travel in time to 1800 and die there, on the world's timeline, you die "before" you're born, but that doesn't change the fact that you "first" had to be born [in 19xx] before you could die. Your body cannot die before it's born, from the point of view of the body itself. So 4D guys travelling back to seed their ancestors doesn't make sense to me.) Something had to somehow come first. So what and how?

In the eventuality that, as an alternative to DW, I tell somebody we were seeded by "aliens", I expect they inevitably ask me where the aliens came from. (Not what place - an evolutionary question.) I don't have an answer for that. Plus I think that suggesting ID to people without explaining the designer properly doesn't breed much confidence. It really does sound like a lazy excuse. So what do we know about this?

Well, I don't see a paradox with the 4D creation of 3D. I may be totally reading this wrongly but I think all stemmed from above. From DCM to 6th. From 6th down to 4th. From 4th down to the last 3 levels. From that original concept the ball started rolling . Souled 3D arrived only 309,000 yrs ago according to the C's so I guess 4D were the front line of material creation all the way along. The fact that's it's all happening at once, i.e past present and future, is the paradox which we will have to take with a pinch of salt because of our limited 3D concept of time. This no time business cannot be understood by us .Basically what I am trying to say is that 4D were created from above.
 
Souled 3D arrived only 309,000 yrs ago according to the C's

On Earth! This says nothing about souled 3D elsewhere. And note that there is no native 4D on Earth yet. That's supposed to be some of us soon. (Also I think that time was just 3D STO switching to 3D STS, but that's beside the point right now.)

My understanding of densities is that as you learn, you progress to higher density. So 6D is there because they've completed the lessons of 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D. We are currently learning 3D lessons in order to progress to 4D, right? If it gets created from above, and some have to climb from 1D to 6D, it doesn't make sense to me that some 6D would be created without this progress.

Of course I can't be too sure how exactly this works, so I wonder what others think. It may be difficult for us to understand, but I want to know, and learning is fun!
 
Behe said in DBB:
Most of us love to think that our ideas are ours - or at least, if someone else has suggested it, that we agree with them only after careful consideration and consent. It is disturbing to think, as Blum claims, that many of our significant ideas about the way in which the world works are simply picked up without thinking from the cultural environment we are in.

There is so much pressure from others, parents, family, society, various groups through our live to think in their way and is connected with acceptance. To try to think in a different way from others brings certain consequences. Even that is sometime hard could be one of the indicators that you're on the right track.
 
On Earth! This says nothing about souled 3D elsewhere. And note that there is no native 4D on Earth yet. That's supposed to be some of us soon. (Also I think that time was just 3D STO switching to 3D STS, but that's beside the point right now.)

My understanding of densities is that as you learn, you progress to higher density. So 6D is there because they've completed the lessons of 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D. We are currently learning 3D lessons in order to progress to 4D, right? If it gets created from above, and some have to climb from 1D to 6D, it doesn't make sense to me that some 6D would be created without this progress.

Of course I can't be too sure how exactly this works, so I wonder what others think. It may be difficult for us to understand, but I want to know, and learning is fun!

Don't forget that the C's told Laura that they are "us" in 6D, implying that Laura is both here in 3D and also in 6D. So clearly linear time doesn't work as an answer
 
So 4D guys travelling back to seed their ancestors doesn't make sense to me.) Something had to somehow come first. So what and how?
This is actually a known situation just from Einstein's relativity:


In mathematical physics, a closed timelike curve (CTC) is a world line in a Lorentzian manifold, of a material particle in spacetime that is "closed", returning to its starting point. This possibility was first discovered by Willem Jacob van Stockum in 1937[1] and later confirmed by Kurt Gödel in 1949,[2] who discovered a solution to the equations of general relativity (GR) allowing CTCs known as the Gödel metric; and since then other GR solutions containing CTCs have been found, such as the Tipler cylinder and traversable wormholes. If CTCs exist, their existence would seem to imply at least the theoretical possibility of time travel backwards in time, raising the spectre of the grandfather paradox...


A variation of Everett's many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics provides a resolution to the grandfather paradox that involves the time traveler arriving in a different universe than the one they came from; it's been argued that since the traveler arrives in a different universe's history and not their own history, this is not "genuine" time travel.

This would ultimately still require future states of all universes to pre-exist which is known as the B theory of time:


B-theorists argue that the flow of time is an illusion, that the past, present and future are equally real... The B-theory of time has received support from the physics community.[17][18] This is likely due to its compatibility with physics and the fact that many theories such as special relativity, the ADD model, and brane cosmology, point to a theory of time similar to B-theory.
 
Don't forget that the C's told Laura that they are "us" in 6D, implying that Laura is both here in 3D and also in 6D. So clearly linear time doesn't work as an answer

session 941210 said:
Q: (L) Are you alternate selves extending into higher densities?
A: At your current reference point in space time, we are you in the future.

Curiously, they said in the future, but I suppose this doesn't really get us too far anyway. It could just be adjusting the language to our level of understanding or whatever.

So let me restate the question another way: Whoever came first, out of all densities, what created them?


@John G:
Thanks, though this is all rather complicated (and theoretical), and I'm not smart enough to make much sense of that. =/
 
I posted a long reply on Sott that might possibly be of some interest: On 'universal' Darwinism's intellectual feint -- Sott.net

It's a reply to a guy who seems like an example of those smart and reasonable people who, however, believe what they were taught and whose trust in Darwinism is invigorated by the ridiculousness of its only perceived opposition - Creationism.

After I posted it, I realised how bizarre it is that I can actually explain stuff like this. A few months ago, I knew almost nothing about microbiology. Learning really is fun.
 
My understanding of densities is that as you learn, you progress to higher density. So 6D is there because they've completed the lessons of 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D. We are currently learning 3D lessons in order to progress to 4D, right? If it gets created from above, and some have to climb from 1D to 6D, it doesn't make sense to me that some 6D would be created without this progress.

Notice that progression towards higher densities implies that they already exist, otherwise there would be nothing to progress towards. So maybe all densities just are, and always were. I think that the "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" problem comes down to the assumptions we are making, and a lot of it has to do with with the dominant ideologies through which we view the universe, such as the idea that God created everything out of nothing, and the view of origin of life out of a cosmic soup. Those are speculations and imagination in the end. We never really percieve things that arise out of nothing, it doesn't really make sense when you think about it, so we have nothing to base that view on.

It could very well be that there never was a starting point as we usually think of it, and maybe there will never be a finish. If the process is one of the universe becoming aware of itself and awakening, which is implied by "all there is is lessons", then everything already is, and at the same time isn't, and is becoming.

Those are just a few speculative thoughts on the subject, and I hope it makes at least some sense.
 
Notice that progression towards higher densities implies that they already exist, otherwise there would be nothing to progress towards. So maybe all densities just are, and always were.

Oh, I'm sure the densities themselves have existed from the beginning (if there was such a thing). I was (incorrectly) referring to them in the sense of "life(forms) in that density".

It could very well be that there never was a starting point as we usually think of it, and maybe there will never be a finish. If the process is one of the universe becoming aware of itself and awakening, which is implied by "all there is is lessons", then everything already is, and at the same time isn't, and is becoming.

Those are just a few speculative thoughts on the subject, and I hope it makes at least some sense.

Yeah, I think the question of whether the universe has a beginning and end is still more or less unanswered. And we may be far from being able to understand what that even means. I've tried many times to think of how the universe could begin and "what if it hadn't?" and to imagine that nothing would ever have existed and how come things exist... At some point I always have to stop because I feel like my head is going to implode.
 
So let me restate the question another way: Whoever came first, out of all densities, what created them?

I certainly don't know the answer to that, but I think part of the conundrum here is that we are so used to think in materialist or dualist terms. We cannot help but picture a God who "creates stuff". However, the universe doesn't seem to be about "stuff", but all about mind and experience. It's all thoughts. How do you create thoughts? You think them. So it's an experiencing mind that creates everything. And what is non-existence but another thought? Seen in this light, non-existence doesn't exist, strictly speaking.

Therefore it seems to me that the universe must necessarily exist, always. It's not a satisfactory answer, but maybe it makes sense if we stop imagining "nothingness" as empty physical space, which doesn't make any sense if everything is based on experience and thoughts. Non-existence is just another thought. But the thought is still there, creating something.

This reminds me of Gurdjieff's ray of creation - at the absolute (i.e. 7th density?), there are two rays, or two thoughts: being and non-being. Everything, including all the richness and manifestations of the different densities, flows from there.

As for who came first, who created whom etc., the Cs have often spoken of the cyclical nature of these things and how intertwined everything is - every mind seems to be actively involved in the process of creation; so maybe we have a small role to play in the "creation" of 6th density, 6th density has a large role to play in creating 4th, which creates 3rd, which simultaneously creates 4th... Don't know, just some thoughts on this.
 
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