Pigliucci Challenges Randomness (Religion)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 23, 2010, 19:44 (5416 days ago) @ dhw

dhw,-I'll try one more time to reconcile the analogy, but it might be fruitless. -Also I was hoping to start discussing Pigliucci's ideas about direction in evolution but as I understand it--the issue isn't even with natural selection, its purely about origins and therefore I cannot really bring it in. I noted this in my recent post to David in the "return to irreducible complexity" thread. (Not the Pigliucci issue, but the issue of the questions that are really being asked.) -Now, the basic syntax and structure of language we can agree is is some variation on subject and predicate. This structure is a relationship; it's something that has no cause but it is an existing structure nonetheless--like a physical law. It's something that is deduced from the nature of language, but no early primate sat out and said "we have a subject and predicate" and then invented language based upon that. -Where the language analogy will cause us issues in this discussion, is that man really was able to do whatever he wanted in terms of creating language; any sound can represent any other thing. There was no preordained system to determine what meant what prior to invention of the verbal symbol. -In other words, with language, you can put any sounds you want in this relationship:-_______________ XOR _______________
and it won't matter or affect the outcome of the meanings that are derived from it. -However, when we're dealing with physical laws, there is a cause-effect relationship involved that CAN'T mean whatever we want it to mean. -When we have the word '01' and we place it into the relationship XOR with another word, '11' the only result is '01.' -Before I go further, are we on board?

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"