This is nothing but speculation, and represents the nullification of science by providing the answer: "It's Aliens!" It is functionally equivalent to arguing for intelligent design.
Dark matter as intelligence substrate is a testable hypothesis (though not to our present instruments), although there is no evidence to support the theory right now.
These two propositions are quite different, and there's nothing wrong with a bit of idle speculation, as long as one keeps in mind that it is unlikely to accrue evidence either way in our lifetimes. (Though I suppose inasmuch as our physical theories gain understanding of dark matter as a strictly physical process, that does reduce space for the 'dark matter as information-substrate' hypothesis even further).
Disclaimer: I am no expert on either ID or evolution theory. Most of my info comes from reading Meyer and Dembski, who are both pioneers of ID, so I'm clearly biased. Please take anything I say with a grain of salt.
Original comment:
Oh, and when did evolution theory come up with a "testable hypothesis" (not a simulation) for stuff like protein evolution, the Cambrian explosion, and DGRNs? Because until evolutionists can fully explain and demonstrate how and why the above don't contradict with the current model, evolution theory also reduces to metaphysics.
You can't claim that your theory is "proven" when there are aspects of biology that don't fit with your theory. It's like saying gravitation is true when there is 1 m^2 of area on Earth where gravity breaks down.
These short lived living things, routinely "evolve" in predictable and unpredictable ways, in front of the researchers proverbial eyes.
Evolution has been proven to be much more than a "hypothesis".
Take the example of DGRNs (mentioned in my previous comment). It is proven that even a slight change in the structure of a GRN completely breaks embryonic development. In other words, if a random mutation is introduced during gene development, the embryo will simply die. So how do entirely new species form if embryonic development is basically impossible? The same applies to protein evolution.
I would be more accepting of chemical evolution if the time scale we were considering was much longer. Many people have computed the approximate probabilities required to get a functioning protein from random mutations, and it turns out that it simply isn't feasible given the age of the universe, and this planet.
You're ignoring a huge body of evidence: the fact that all living organisms on Earth use the same genetic material and the same genetic code. This is strong evidence for common descent, and common descent is an obvious prediction of the theory of evolution and requires highly implausible ad hoc hypotheses on any other assumption.
> how do entirely new species form if embryonic development is basically impossible?
It isn't impossible; it's just unlikely, because beneficial mutations are rare. But this is part of evolutionary theory.
> Many people have computed the approximate probabilities required to get a functioning protein from random mutations
These computations ignore the fact that natural selection is not random. That means the sequence of events from one functioning protein to another is not a random walk through the space of all possible proteins, as the computations assume.
(Computations based on permutations and combinations of atoms also ignore the fact that chemical reactions are not random; only a vanishingly small fraction of all possible mathematical combinations of atoms actually occur, the rest are chemically impossible.)
This process builds up a cumulative pile of evidence supporting the theory. On the other hand you construct a test of the theory that can disprove it. So far no such test has been found to disprove evolution.
It's true that we don't yet understand every single biological mechanism and every single facet of developmental biology and how they relate to natural selection. However that's not sufficient to 'disprove' evolutionary theory. To do that you'd need to actually prove that evolutionary theory could not explain them - not that it's unlikely it could explain them, but that it's impossible. As it happens the number of thing evolution has not explained is getting smaller as we find the connections and demonstrate them.
So on the one hand we have vast troves of experimental and observational results successfully explained by evolution and this trove is increasing rapidly. On the other hand, we have some mechanisms or results where it's not yet completely clear if or how evolution explains them, but this number is decreasing. Finally we have no tests that have disproven evolution. At this point this makes Evolution through natural selection one of the most practically successful and predictive theories science has ever produced, right up there with quantum mechanics.
Has it predicted and explained everything in its domain? No. but few theories have yet done that. Even quantum mechanics still has some odd edge cases that are tricky to figure out.
So the thing about 'proving' scientific theories is that it's morevlike 'proving' a piece of forged metal. You test it to see if it breaks. Science is really about usefulness. It's test show whether a theory is useful in solving some call of problems. Evolution through natural selection has so far passed every test it's been given in which a colclusuon has been reached. That's encouraging evidence that it will pass the others as well.
Meanwhile ID has nothing to show whatsoever. It's an intellectual dead end. Personally, I'm very glad my Christian faith doesn't hinge on it.
On top that, there has been a harsh dismissal of ID theorists by the evolution community, even though ID has been correctly pointing out significant flaws with evolution. For example, there was an incident a while back of a journal editor being severely reprimanded for accepting to publish a paper that slightly mentioned ID.
Of course, ID itself hasn't been providing alternative hypotheses to evolution that are, well, testable. It's important to note that ID theory in and of itself is not pushing for "God", but rather an intelligent entity in general. So for instance, ID would agree with the idea of the whole "universe simulation theory".
As you've stated, evolution is more fleshed out then intelligent design and the fact that it's a Scientific Theory means that it was well tested via the Scientific Method that is established to cast doubt[2]. Just that statement is so powerful because a group of folks actually attempted to disprove and/or prove via a method that is reproducible. ID is merely a suggestion that has almost no way to be proven/disproven. Centering an argument on a possibility is always entertaining when taken with a grain of salt, however, when a hypothesis becomes a counter argument to a Scientific Theory, credibility is difficult to achieve.
The crux of my issue with your comment is that you use the word "theory" interchangeably. While evolution is a Scientific Theory, ID is a theory[3] (lower case t), defined by "an idea that is suggested or presented as possibly true but that is not known or proven to be true". Comparing the two is disingenuous.
[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve [1]http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/wp-content/uploads/2011... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory [3]http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theory
Perhaps, but my thinking is that such a design choice could have a significant advantage we haven't noticed yet.
> Scientific Theory means that it was well tested via the Scientific Method that is established to cast doubt
This is a central issue I have with evolutionary science in general, and neo-Dawrinism in paricular. It has become somewhat of a "cult" within the scientific community. No single evolutionary biologist wants to risk his/her career attacking a particular aspect of evolution, which is partially why ID theorists are doing most of the attacking. Another problem is that evolutionists want you to present an alternative if you do end up attacking the theory. The argument I've seen is "don't attack if you can't come up with an alternative!". But if the theory is flawed in the first place and isn't able to explain a number of important issues, why should your theory be accepted as truth?
In a nutshell, evolutionary scientists don't want the scientific method to apply to areas where evolution is weak, to avoid discrediting the theory. Remember, if evolution theory is proven to be false, Darwinists (and naturalists) won't have an alternative.
> In a nutshell, evolutionary scientists don't want the scientific method to apply to areas where evolution is weak, to avoid discrediting the theory. Remember, if evolution theory is proven to be false, Darwinists (and naturalists) won't have an alternative.
If a Scientific Theory is verified to discredit evolution, then all those Darwinists and Naturalists will have plenty of things to work on. Besides being Nobel Prize worth and exciting because of the possibilities.
I now regret replying to your comment and putting in the work. A shame.
What I'm saying is: This person isn't actually a troll. He's not doing it to mess with you. He really does believe what he's saying, and you cannot convince him otherwise until he relinquishes the core idea that led to it, which in this case is his religion.
What you are really saying is that is his/her core idea is wrong and this leads to behaviour that clothes itself as trolling ("cannot convince him otherwise until he relinquishes the core idea that led to it, which in this case is his religion").
He/she could easily say the same thing about your core idea, so I fail to see how this adds to the discussion.
That's a really good point. I partially hoped that at least there would be a good counter argument to gain an insight into why the individual has formed such ideas.
I even linked to the BYU paper that was counter to my beliefs, which had interesting points that can create a thoughtful conversation.
However, I didn't realize that regardless of how I said something, I was attacking a core idea of a person, which isn't a good way to start a conversation.
I'm fairly confident that the main reason that ID theorists push ID is because of religion. Like, extremely confident. Also, very few attacks against evolution theory are scientific. I'll explain why below.
> But if the theory is flawed in the first place and isn't able to explain a number of important issues, why should your theory be accepted as truth?
It is an accepted fact within the scientific community that all scientific theories are flawed. They are approximations at best. Einstein's theory of general relativity is probably one of the most complete & supported theories that we have, but there are things that Einstein's theory can't explain (like gravity).
This is why I said most of ID theorist's attacks on evolution theory are unscientific. Because pointing out what a theory doesn't explain is not enough. You must either find empirical evidence that contradicts either a supporting hypothesis or models based on the theory. These types of empirical contradictions are why Lamarkian evolution theory is no longer popular.
What's amusing to me is that the current process by which scientific theories are created, challenged, disproven, and modified very much resembles Darwinian evolution in action. The same goes for belief systems as they battle for resources (individual's attention and faith), the fittest ideological strains survive, and the strains that aren't able to replicate die out. Christianity itself is an amazing example of evolution over the centuries, having mutated into tens if not hundreds of different strains, all of which continually compete for resources, while some strains can only be read about in the history books such as the Byzantine Orthodoxy, the early Puritans, and the street preacher Methodists.
They are not interested in the world. They are interested of persuading you that "something" created the world. They don't care of science, they care about crafting a message that will drive more peoples into churches.
Do note that Dembski does not feel this line of inquiry is interesting anymore[0], and Meyer's credentials of a doctorate are not in natural science but philosophy and history.
[0] https://billdembski.com/official-retirement-from-intelligent...
This is a legitimate scientific question but - since we have pretty much zero evidence suggesting this has happened, we have to assume we're studying a "virgin" universe. But if physics was somehow manipulated by aliens, science should be capable of eventually figuring this out too - at the very least just because if you have a capability of doing something, then it's easier to notice evidence of someone else doing that thing in the past.
In your other comment:
> Could the speed of light have changed because of aliens weaponizing physics in past wars?
Because the speed of light is a dimensional constant, it doesn't make sense to say it could have changed in the past. Only dimensionless constants, like the fine structure constant, can hypothetically be different at other points in space and/or time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimensionless_physical_constan...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
the idea had some pretty serious consideration of serious scientists though.
As for dimensionless constants, the way I see it, it simply suggests that something else must be changed to get a meaningfully different c.
The fallacy here is in the assumption we had a complete idea of an immutable theory of physics, the universe and everything, when that is clearly not the case. It's the same handwavery as from theologists, as dear as it might be, that many physicists aren't or weren't free of, as well.
Edit: TL;DR: An axiom is not something that is provably unprovable, it something that remains to be proved.
Yet you assume the axiom could have been proved wrong by aliens, which would give the opposite of the axiom as new universal law, which would be paradoxical. Thus, the axiom couldn't be wrong nor right, for it's not a statement, it's a paradox devoid of meaning. If that's what you implied, I might as well just be missing how that is useful. I understand that Hilbert's axioms of Geometry work the same way, so I am not dismissing the idea of axiomatics. I'm just saying that the axiom defines space and time under the presumption of an understanding of laws. Thus I think, obviously the conclusion, universal laws wouldn't exist or could be broken is rather unpractical, to put it mildly.
However, I am not (ever) sure what I am even saying. So take it with a pinch of salt. On the one hand, if axiomatics are part of our logic framework for laws, an axiom couldn't a priori define laws. On the other hand, I'm tossing the idea around for a while, that our understanding of logic arises by proving itself into existence, so we prove axiomatics a viable framework simply by using it to axiomatize.
In the likely case the the previous paragraph is written ineligibly: all I am saying is, that axioms should be self evident, so it isn't really worth the many words, except as an exercize in formalizing unfinished ideas in a dialog. Just to see if get any immediate push back, in case I am wrong, or ignorance, in case the topic is really self-evident or absurd or whatever.
Wasn't there some quote which went something like: "A good scientist gives the right answers. A great scientist asks the right questions."
Also, theorizing an entity beyond our understanding is fundamentally different from theorizing an entity beyond our universe.
No, they are functionally and ontologically equivalent.
The article is amazing, and remember us to be humble, because we don't have all the answers and there's a lot yet to be seen.
So there's no answers in the article: only questions.