tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post74225978919750115..comments2023-09-11T01:18:18.763-07:00Comments on Natural Right and Biology: Roger White on Origin of Life Explanations 2Ken Blanchardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09580209017016829598noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-40248819204369675692012-12-21T21:59:10.206-08:002012-12-21T21:59:10.206-08:00M.F.: I think you interpreting chance to mean prec...M.F.: I think you interpreting chance to mean precisely "not-designed". That is a very important distinction, but there is still a difference between "unintentional biasing" and chance. <br /><br />If we find a stone formation that looks a little bit like a bear because of the way that wind and water have carved it, that is chance. The fact that a real live grizzly bear looks like a bear is not chance. Its mother and father were bears. <br /><br />Darwin explains how you get designed things by means of unintentional biasing. As to why the Kosmos produced a planet on which life emerged, it is conceivable that there is some force acting from the beginning of K, analogous to natural selection, that pushed K in that direction. White, I gather, thinks that such an explanation for life is weak. <br /><br />It is conceivable that the conditions for life and its emergence were mere matters of chance, like the rock that looks like a bear. Apparently, the scholarly consensus is that that is untenable. <br /><br />Having distinguished between chance and unintentional biasing, we can now say that if White and the consensus are both right, then intentional biasing is the only viable explanation. We report. You decide. <br /><br />The question as to what came before that is the famous cosmological question. Is it conceivable that K has always existed just as it is (with all the biasing laws) and that the only explanation is that it just is? Or do we require a creator-God who Himself just is? Big question. Ken Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09580209017016829598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-67114563241636388562012-12-21T18:15:19.611-08:002012-12-21T18:15:19.611-08:00Thank you for taking the time to explain. I unders...Thank you for taking the time to explain. I understand your distinction a bit better now, but I think I agree with White's idea that unintentional biasing doesn't work the same way something like a pebble arrangement does. While certain factors such as the movement of the waves might explain something like the arrangement of the pebbles, eventually, if you ask "how and why" enough, assuming you can always get to the bottom of those answers, there eventually has to be something that happened before everything else did. And if nothing else had happened yet, you wouldn't have anything like the constant action of the waves to attribute its happening to. Eventually, unless I'm missing something big (which is quite possible!) it's got to boil down to chance or design. M.F.noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-42569557471006213892012-12-20T10:36:06.380-08:002012-12-20T10:36:06.380-08:00MF: the constant action of the waves pushes the pe...MF: the constant action of the waves pushes the pebbles uphill, towards the shore line. The smallest pebbles get pushed the farthest, which is why the beach is full of sand. Larger pebbles tend to end up away from the shoreline, in rough proportion to size. <br /><br />Thus there is a bias in the action of waves toward a certain arrangement of pebbles. If you were to mix the pebbles up in a perfectly random assortment of sizes and then allow the waves to work, the arrangement described above would reappear. <br /><br />Likewise, if you consider the arrangement of male guppies in pools going up a mountain. The males go from almost camouflaged in the lowest pools to very brightly colored in the highest pools. <br /><br />Two forces of selection are at work: sex selection and predator avoidance. In the lower pools there are many predators. Males that stand out much don't survive long enough to mate. In the upper pools where there are fewer predators, brightly color males can survive to mate, and the brighter they are the more visible and attractive they are to females. <br /><br />A scientist named Endler remixed the assortment of guppies and placed them in five tanks with similar sand and plants. In each tank there were similar numbers of dull and brightly colored males. Then he placed predators in each tank to reflect their populations in the pools. Tank 1, many predators, Tank 2, fewer, etc. In a short time the situation in the wild reasserted itself. Dull males in Tank 1; flamboyant males in tank five. That is unintentional biasing. <br /><br />It is different from chance because chance will produce a variety of arrangements each time and depends heavily on the original state. Unintentional biasing will produce the same pattern every time regardless of the original state. Ken Blanchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09580209017016829598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-223797477664258632.post-69994875272714666482012-12-20T08:01:44.575-08:002012-12-20T08:01:44.575-08:00I found this discussion fascinating, but I am havi...I found this discussion fascinating, but I am having some difficulty understanding what "unintentional biasing" is, unless it's just another form of chance.<br /><br />You describe it as "Pebbles arranged in order of diminishing size as they a near the shoreline." Ok - that makes sense - but why are they arranged that way? Isn't it either because of chance or design? M.F.noreply@blogger.com