Sunday, September 14, 2014

William Dembski: Conservation of Information in Evolutionary Search

University of Chicago Computation in Science Seminar

2 comments:

  1. It was nice to see James Shapiro in the audience,,,
    ,,, IMHO, James Shapiro, although he is not an Intelligent Design proponent, none-the-less, has also done tremendous work in exposing the sheer inadequacy of the ‘bottom up’ neo-Darwinian framework,,,
    For instance,,,
    Why the ‘Gene’ Concept Holds Back Evolutionary Thinking – James Shapiro – 11/30/2012
    Excerpt: The Century of the Gene. In a 1948 Scientific American article, soon-to-be Nobel Laureate George Beadle wrote: “genes are the basic units of all living things.”,,,
    This notion of the genome as a collection of discrete gene units prevailed when the neo-Darwinian “Modern Synthesis” emerged in the pre-DNA 1940s. Some prominent theorists even proposed that evolution could be defined simply as a change over time in the frequencies of different gene forms in a population.,,,
    The basic issue is that molecular genetics has made it impossible to provide a consistent, or even useful, definition of the term “gene.” In March 2009, I attended a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute entitled “Complexity of the Gene Concept.” Although we had a lot of smart people around the table, we failed as a group to agree on a clear meaning for the term.
    The modern concept of the genome has no basic units. It has literally become “systems all the way down.” There are piecemeal coding sequences, expression signals, splicing signals, regulatory signals, epigenetic formatting signals, and many other “DNA elements” (to use the neutral ENCODE terminology) that participate in the multiple functions involved in genome expression, replication, transmission, repair and evolution.,,,
    Conventional thinkers may claim that molecular data only add details to a well-established evolutionary paradigm. But the diehard defenders of orthodoxy in evolutionary biology are grievously mistaken in their stubbornness. DNA and molecular genetics have brought us to a fundamentally new conceptual understanding of genomes, how they are organized and how they function.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/why-the-gene-concept-hold_b_2207245.html
    and,,
    How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. – 2013
    Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611
    The Genome is a Read-Write Memory System – James Shapiro – video
    https://vimeo.com/74618934
    Although I disagree with Dr. Shapiro in regards to his proposed mechanism of ‘natural’ genetic engineering instead of Intelligent Design, my hat is off to him for his boldness in proclaiming the neo-Darwinian emperor has no clothes,,
    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1-DyHm9JQ68/UMJCQEssiLI/AAAAAAAAIDQ/ixEjQ_jd3BA/s1600/emperor_has+no+clothes.gif

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  2. Evolutionism must see life/biology as finally entirely a thing of material parts.
    yet the bible says gods spirit frought life to the material world.
    so splitting up the elements will never show life. It will kill life because life needs the connection to material and so the truth is always hidden.
    A clue is that putting elements together never can or will creatre life.
    sorry science fiction.

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