subjective science

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Do you think I would supply an article that I thought was badly written and didn't support my views?

You should just answer the two questions.

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Do you think I would supply an article that I thought was badly written and didn't support my views?

So suppose scientific research shows there is some kind of intelligence in evolution, maybe DNA as some kind of computer that can respond to conditions outside or some such, would you then make the leap from intelligent design to the intelligence being god?

Originally posted by @sonhouse
So suppose scientific research shows there is some kind of intelligence in evolution, maybe DNA as some kind of computer that can respond to conditions outside or some such, would you then make the leap from intelligent design to the intelligence being god?

Not if you are an atheist, because you would have to admit that intelligence comes from a higher source of intelligence, but that doesn't fit into your narrow paradigm.

Originally posted by @dj2becker
I'm guessing the article would have been well written if it supported the notion that natural selection is a non-intelligent process, which would fit in nicely with your comfortable atheistic beliefs?

Where exactly is "intelligence" involved in the notion that DNA affects the phenotype?

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
Where exactly is "intelligence" involved in the notion that DNA affects the phenotype?

Have you read the article I posted?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151218085616.htm

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Have you read the article I posted?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151218085616.htm

I read the abstract of the referenced article, and it apparently makes no claim that natural selection is an "intelligent" process.

What's "intelligent" about DNA affecting the phenotype?

Originally posted by @dj2becker
Not if you are an atheist, because you would have to admit that intelligence comes from a higher source of intelligence, but that doesn't fit into your narrow paradigm.

I wasn't asking about me, I was asking about YOU. What would you think if indeed DNA was found to have some kind of computer like aspects that could select traits, and it was shown that was the source of 'intelligent design'. Would you then see that as a sign of god?

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
Where exactly is "intelligence" involved in the notion that DNA affects the phenotype?

Where would what you call 'intelligence' come from if not through evolution?

If evolution cannot produce intelligence, then what would you say is actually taking place between your ears? It couldn't be called intelligence, because (according to you) there is only one way it could have occured. If you rule out supernatural intervention then all you have left is evolution, and if you rule out evolution then what does that leave you with, except to argue against the very existence of intelligence itself. You can't reasonably claim to be intelligent if you claim intelligence doesn't (or can't) exist, can you?

Or... is there a 3rd possible explanation for intelligence?

Originally posted by @lemon-lime
Where would what you call 'intelligence' come from if not through evolution?

If evolution cannot produce intelligence, then what would you say is actually taking place between your ears? It couldn't be called intelligence, because (according to you) there is only one way it could have occured. If you rule out supernatural intervention then all you hav ...[text shortened]... (or can't) exist, can you?

Or... is there a 3rd possible explanation for intelligence?

"Intelligence" (relatively speaking) evolved.

That doesn't make the process of evolution itself "intelligent."

Glad to have cleared that up for you.

Originally posted by @kazetnagorra
I read the abstract of the referenced article, and it apparently makes no claim that natural selection is an "intelligent" process.

What's "intelligent" about DNA affecting the phenotype?

I read the abstract of the referenced article

I read the article. The summary doesn't contain enough information for anyone to know what the article attempts to explain. You should take your own advice and actually read the article before dismissing it out of hand.


"Dr Richard A. Watson is part of the Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Southampton."
"Richard A. Watson is a senior lecturer in the natural systems research group at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science. He received his BA in AI from the University of Sussex in 1990 and then worked in industry for about five years. Returning to academia, he chose Sussex again for an MSc in knowledge-based systems, where he was introduced to evolutionary modeling. His PhD in computer science at Brandeis University (2002) resulted in 22 publications and a dissertation addressing the algorithmic concepts underlying the major transitions in evolution. A postdoctoral position at Harvard University's Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology provided training to complement his computer science background. He now has over 50 journal and conference publications on topics spanning artificial life, robotics, evolutionary computation, population genetics, neural networks and computational biology. At Southampton, he's building his research programme and leading preparation of a new MSc in complexity science. He is the author of Compositional Evolution: The Impact of Sex, Symbiosis, and Modularity on the Gradualist Framework of Evolution (MIT Press, 2006)."
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/ifls/about/staff/raw.page

Glad to have cleared that up for you.
Glad to have done the same for you.

Originally posted by @lemon-lime
I read the article. The summary doesn't contain enough information for anyone to know what the article attempts to explain. You should take your own advice and actually read the article before dismissing it out of hand.

Here?

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(15)00293-1

How much did it cost to access it so that you could read it?

Originally posted by @fmf
Here?

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(15)00293-1

How much did it cost to access it so that you could read it?

This was the link dj2becker posted:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151218085616.htm

I posted this link explaining who Dr Richard A Watson is.
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/ifls/about/staff/raw.page

This is the link you posted:
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(15)00293-1

It didn't cost me anything to access and read those links.

Originally posted by @lemon-lime
This was the link dj2becker posted:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151218085616.htm

That's the summary.

You said that "the summary doesn't contain enough information for anyone to know what the article attempts to explain."

You told another poster to "actually read the article before dismissing it out of hand".

The article is available here:

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(15)00293-1 It's from Volume 31, Issue 2, February 2016, of Trends in Ecology and Evolution, p147–157.

You said: "I read the article".

It costs USD 35.00 to access it from where I live. How much did you pay?

Originally posted by @fmf
That's the summary.

You said that "the summary doesn't contain enough information for anyone to know what the article attempts to explain."

You told another poster to "actually read the article before dismissing it out of hand".

The article is available here:

http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(15)00293-1 It's from Vol ...[text shortened]... I read the article".

It costs USD 35.00 to access it from where I live. How much did you pay?

This was the summary...

"Summary:
Evolution may be more intelligent than we thought, according to researchers. In a new article, the authors make the case that evolution is able to learn from previous experience, which could provide a better explanation of how evolution by natural selection produces such apparently intelligent designs."

The full text of the article follows the summary.
(scroll down from summary to see full text of article)

Originally posted by @lemon-lime
This was the summary...

"Summary:
Evolution may be more intelligent than we thought, according to researchers. In a new article, the authors make the case that evolution is able to learn from previous experience, which could provide a better explanation of how evolution by natural selection produces such apparently intelligent designs."

The full text of the article follows the summary.
(scroll down from summary to see full text of article)

You are mistaken, the article is found in the February 2016 edition of Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

The text at the link dj2becker gave is a bit of advertising puff and a kind of summary - not written by the academics who produced the actual article itself - complete with click bait words like "intelligent behaviours", "apparently intelligent", and "appears to be so intelligent" - to point people to the academic article in the journal.

The puff summary [perhaps what wolfgang59 had in mind when he described it as badly written] is surely not what you mean when you referred to "the article".