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From: MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com>
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On 8/03/2025 11:34 pm, jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Mar 2025 15:34:30 +1100, MarkE <me22over7@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 7/03/2025 9:29 pm, Ernest Major wrote:
>>> On 06/03/2025 00:45, MarkE wrote:
>>>> On 5/03/2025 3:31 pm, MarkE wrote:
>>>>> Is there a limit to capability of natural selection to refine, adapt
>>>>> and create the “appearance of design”? Yes: the mechanism itself of
>>>>> “differential reproductive success” has intrinsic limitations,
>>>>> whatever it may be able to achieve, and this is further constrained
>>>>> by finite time and population sizes.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> <snip for focus>
>>>>
>>>> Martin, let's stay on topic. Would you agree that there are limits to
>>>> NS as described, which lead to an upper limit to functional complexity
>>>> in living things?
>>>>
>>>> How these limits might be determined is a separate issue, but the
>>>> first step is establishing this premise.
>>>>
>>>
>>> First, natural selection is not the only evolutionary process. Even if
>>> one evolutionary process is not capable of achieving something that
>>> doesn't mean that evolutionary processes in toto are not capable of
>>> achieving that.
>>
>> Natural selection is the *only* naturalistic means capable of increasing
>> functional complexity and genetic information.
>>
>> All other factors have only a shuffling/randomising effect. In every
>> case, NS is required to pick from the many resulting permutations the
>> rare chance improvements.
>>
>> Without the action of NS, all biological systems are degrading over time.
>>
>>>
>>> Second, you've changed the question. Evolutionary processes have
>>> limitations, but those limitations need not be on the degree of
>>> functional complexity achievable. Evolution cannot produce living
>>> organisms that can't exist in the universe. (You could quibble about
>>> lethal mutations, recessives, etc., but I hope you can perceive the
>>> intent of my phrasing; for example, I very much doubt that evolution
>>> could result in an organism with a volume measured in cubic light years.)
>>>
>>> Applying this to functional complexity, physical limits on how big an
>>> organism can be, and how small details can be, do pose a limit on how
>>> much functional complexity can be packed into an organism. But such a
>>> limit doesn't help you - humans are clearly capable of existing in this
>>> universe, so aren't precluded by that limit. You need a process
>>> limitation, not a physical limitation; I don't find it obvious that
>>> there is a process limitation that applies here.
>>>
>>> You say that the first step is establishing the premise. That is your job.
>>>
>>> That there are things that evolution cannot achieve (a classic example
>>> is the wheel, though even that is not unimaginable) doesn't not mean
>>> that evolution cannot achieve things that already exist; one of the
>>> reasons that ID is not science is it's lack of interest in accounting
>>> for the voluminous evidence that evolution has achieved the current
>>> biosphere.
>>>
>>
>> The limits of NS are not simply due to physically possible organisms.
>> It's much tighter constraint. The mechanism of "differential
>> reproductive success" is a blunt instrument, rightly described as
>> explaining the survival but not arrival of the fittest.
>>
>> To elaborate my hypotheses (not proofs):
>>
>> 1. NS, along with any other naturalistic mechanisms, do not have the
>> logical capacity to fully traverse the solution space, regardless of
>> time available. Some (many) areas of the fitness landscape will be
>> islands, local maxima, inaccessible via gradualistic pathways (e.g.
>> monotonically increasing fitness functions). These are however
>> accessible to intelligent design.
>>
>> 2. The time/material resources of the universe allow exploration of only
>> a small fraction of even the accessible solutions. Again, this
>> constraint does not apply to intelligent design.
>>
>> Does the burden of proof for these hypotheses rest exclusively with ID?
>> Not at all. Naturalism, if being intellectually curious, honest, and
>> open-minded, will ask the same questions and seek to answer them.
> 
> 
> Assertions without evidence do not an argument make.  Your expressed
> hypotheses above make it clear you have no idea how genetic drift and
> natural selection work.  Both are capable of setting allele
> frequencies to either 100% or 0% aka "arrived".  This is Genetic 101.
> 
> Your hypotheses also express a simplistic understanding of the meaning
> of "fittest".  It does not mean the fittest among all possibilities.
> It does mean the fittest among extant features; features which don't
> exist at some arbitrary time and place need not be considered.
> 
> As you say, a reasonable discussion needs to be limited to "possible"
> features; no organisms transmuting elements or quantum jumping.  What
> you don't say is an hypothesis for how intelligent design gets genetic
> material not available to natural selection.  Without that,
> intelligent design and natural selection necessarily are limited to
> the same solution space.  Or, like Behe, do you allow intelligent
> design to magically *poof* features into existence?
> 

You're finally getting it! To creatures like us, special creation by God 
looks like magic, yes. God conceives in his mind and speaks into existence.

Moreover, I have a working hypothesis that humans can never fully 
understand how humans work, because that would require what seems to be 
the contradiction of a system being "greater" than itself in order to 
"comprehend" itself.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that therefore we should give up on 
science. Not at all.