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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 10/30/2004 : 05:36:15 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by JerryB
*******JerryB, you've failed at the latter, and with every post the likelihood of the former becomes even more remote.********
LOL...Have a great life, my friend. You are posting way above your IQ level. If you'll go over to talk-origin, your secular humanist religion will experience revival! Thanks for your posts.
Hmph. Savant verlch with a snotty attitude.
I await the answer to my question:
"Who or what is the intelligence behind all of this design?"
I might also ask why this 'intelligent designer' laid out the fossil record in such an orderly fashion?
Further, what's up with us having spines better 'designed' for a quadraped? That's the sort of thing that would get an engineer fired in a heartbeat.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 06:17:27 [Permalink]
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Just for the hell of it:
quote:
Flatworms of the species Convoluta roscoffensis are green because their translucent tissues are packed with Platymonas algae. The algae live, grow and die inside the bodies of the worms. Their photosynthetic products are used as food by the worms, and the algae recycle the worms' uric acid waste as food for themselves. The worms' mouths are superfluous and do not function after the larvae hatch: worm plus algae plus sunlight is a self-contained unit. For what divine design purpose do the flatworms have mouths, as other flatworms have?
http://www.freewebs.com/oolon/
Nice design on that flatworm, eh? A neat, tidy, symbiotic relationship. But oops, the designer seems to have forgotten something. Could this extracurricular mouth hint at (gasp) evolution? Could there have been a time when the little feller actually used that mouth for ingesting food and wasn't dependent on algae?
Edited to add; maybe it's not such a hot design after all. What would become of the algae if something were to kill off the flatworms, or the other way 'round? Extinction might get a twofer.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 10/30/2004 06:31:49 |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 08:07:49 [Permalink]
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*******"Who or what is the intelligence behind all of this design?"*****
Let me guess. You think it's you?  |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 08:17:44 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by JerryB
*******"Who or what is the intelligence behind all of this design?"*****
Let me guess. You think it's you?
That is a snide remark, not an answer. Juvenile sneering won't cut it.
Again: Who or what is the intelligence behind all of this design? I might further inquire as to what this intelligence was, oh, I dunno, let's say 'doing/being' before 'it' started designing.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 10:50:01 [Permalink]
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Jerry wrote:quote:
However, a thermodynamic system is defined as matter or space that can be boiled down to a system with distinct system boundaries that energy can flow across into and out of the system.
And how, precisely, does "complex macroevolution" fit that definition?
quote:
You wanted to calculate the odds of a head coming up which is 1/2 chance or .5 as expressed as a decimal.
No, I didn't. I wanted you to defend the assertion you've repeated several times:quote:
Thus when your odds are f/n = 1/10^150 you have statistical odds of that pattern coming up 1 time every 10^150 flips.
This as scientifically impossible as one could not flip them that many times.
Since you're ignoring the possibility that they will flip all heads on the very first time, your assertion is illogical and unmathematical. Yes, if one flips the coins more than once, the probability of flipping all heads on one of those "flip sets" rises towards (but never reaches) one, but every single flip has a 1/10150 chance of coming up all heads, even the first.
But the real problem is that you assume biological organisms must have been tossed together randomly. Even the Design Inference allows for "regularity," though. You must ignore regular processes (natural laws) in order to make your case. You claim life is either due to entirely random chance or due to design, but that's just a false dichotomy, illogical and unscientific. Evolutionary biologists claim that abiogenesis occured due to natural laws acting over time.
Straw men, false dichotomy, arguments from authority, appeals to ignorance: Jerry, your illogic is astounding. Until your logic is ironed out, your math simply doesn't matter at all. It's just "window dressing" on a clapboard house with no roof. It is irrelevant until you actually start arguing against what science tells us, and begin defining your terms properly.
Oh, but let's not wait:quote:
CSI is defined as the upper probability bound in information theory in which that information could have been created by natural processes.
Things which have CSI - by definition - cannot be created naturally. I see. Can you determine, scienctifically and mathematically, that the first modifiable self-replicator had CSI?quote:
Perhaps other life-forms are anaerobic and constructed on some sort of methane breathing system with no proteins at all. We just don't know and therefore you have no logical basis to draw this conclusion.
Actually, you used the term "astronaut," which by definition includes behaviours which would require much more than 500 bits to specify. It makes absolutely no difference to your argument whether these "astronauts" are made of proteins or Jello, they would necessarily contain CSI themselves to be "astronauts."quote:
Nor do we know that astronauts cannot come from other universes or even different dimensions in this universe. You do understand that whatever designed this universe had to have come from outside it, don't you? Any other option is scientifically implausible.
Sorry, this argument just doesn't stand as logical.
You're right - your argument doesn't stand as logical. First, you need to demonstrate the necessity of a designer before claiming that it comes from outside the universe. We don't know, scientifically, that there is an "outside" of the universe, anyway. Your argument is scientifically implausible.quote:
I stated that SLOT forbids the complexity in complex macroevolution. This is not the same thing as the broader category: evolution.
But you have yet to properly define "complex macroevolution."quote:
I covered this one as well:
"The second law states that with any spontaneous reaction, entropy will tend to increase. If S is entropy and 1 and 2 are events, then the second law states as a tendency matter/energy will disorder:
S2 > S1
Macroevolution is the antithesis of this concept in that it states with any spontaneous speciation entropy will tend to decrease and matter/energy order:
S2 < S1"
You have yet to demonstrate what it is about "complex macroevolution" that is precisely the same as thermodynamic entropy.quote:
ID predicts that matter/energy will tend to disorder. So does SLOT.
And what, precisely, does matter and/or energy have to do with the concept of "complex macroevolution?"quote:
No it doesn't.
Just more denial, Jerry, without evidence to support your view.quote:
You are posting way above your IQ level.
Juvenile insults. A brilliant capper to your hypocritical posting history here, Jerry. You've dug yourself such a deep hole, do you need a new shovel?[Edited to correct a typo - Dave W.] |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 12:33:57 [Permalink]
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Hey all--
I've been trying to follow along in this debate, but it's been fast and furious. Plus, I seem to know much less than I thought about our hard sciences. (Thankfully, we always have the humanities!)
Anyhow, I'm not sure if they've been posted in this thread, but I have two questions, directed largely at Jerry, but answerable by anyone. (And if they've already been adressed, just direct me to the right place!)
First, what, exactly, is the ID theory? I think I have the thrust of it, but perhaps Jerry or someone could, in a sentence or two (or perhaps a paragraph), spell it out in a clear and concise way.
Second, what, if anything, does ID predict about the natural world? I understand from some of what Jerry is saying that ID is, in fact, a science. If so, then one should be able to make predicitons with it which will confirm or refute the theory.
This should probably start out something like "ID predicts that . . ." and should at some point be followed with something like "this is confirmed by . . ."
I ask this in part because I'm unclear about some of the things ID has to say, but also because this thread is getting long and the points and counter-points are getting muddled. Perhaps this will focus the discussion a bit! |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 12:34:15 [Permalink]
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While I have not participated much, I have followed this thread with intrest. Apart from some esoteric number juggling, I don't think Jerry has much of a shovel. Simply put, there is no emperical evidence of an outside designer. All of the math in the world will not negate the evidence of the useless mouth of a flatworm or an inflamed appendix.
So, I will not bother to ask again the who or what question. Y'see, Jerry fails to realize that a simple and perfectly acceptable answer is, "I don't know."
That's an answer that is given every day, throughout science. And that's the answer that drives science onward because while it is acceptable, it is not satisfactory.
"I don't know."
Only the truly faithful are certain without evidence. Mathmatics are all very well and very necessary, but as far as the ToE is concerned the fossils of soft-bodied animals from the Burgess Shale are far better evidence than equasions on paper.
Ah, how I yearn for the discovery of the Devonian Bunny or the Cambrian Croc. The scientific chaos would be most entertaining.
And if Dembski's ID science is any guide, he makes mediocre barbeque as well. :phooy:
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 12:49:02 [Permalink]
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Cuneiformist, as I understand it, and very basically put, ID proposes that all species were created in their 'finished' forms by some outside influence, a supernatural being of some sort. As Dave has stated, ID is more of a political movement than a scientific one. It is mainly a wedge issue to ultimatly sneak unsupported, creationist blather into the science classrooms.
I posted this link earlier, but it's way back down the road. It will explain better than i could, so here 'tis again:
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13479 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 13:15:39 [Permalink]
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quote:
Filthy:
All of the math in the world will not negate the evidence of the useless mouth of a flatworm or an inflamed appendix.
I'm with Filthy on this, and most everything ells for that matter…
But I do have a suggestion for an answer that Jerry could use for the problem of bad designs. Since he says we do not know who the designer is, that might also imply that we do not know how smart the designer is. Maybe the designer is an idiot. That would explain a few things, eh? Also, apparently there is no need for quality control for those powerful enough to create all the life we see on Earth. Our designer might be the halfwit son of an omnipotent cockroach, playing with his jr. science lab set in the basement of God Manor… If ID sticks, and there is no reason to think it will since it has already been debunked, I think we will have to conclude that the designer is, at the very least, incompetent… |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 15:05:19 [Permalink]
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Kil wrote:
quote:
Maybe the designer is an idiot. That would explain a few things, eh? Also, apparently there is no need for quality control for those powerful enough to create all the life we see on Earth. Our designer might be the halfwit son of an omnipotent cockroach, playing with his jr. science lab set in the basement of God Manor… If ID sticks, and there is no reason to think it will since it has already been debunked, I think we will have to conclude that the designer is, at the very least, incompetent…
Or malevolent. After all, it gave us cancer, multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, ALS, and muscular distrophy, just to name a few. You'd think that an entity with the power to "poof" things into existence, fully formed and ready to go, would have thought it through a little better and designed us so as to not fall victim to such out of whack biology. Unless the infliction of pain, suffering, and early death was part of the design. Take your pick, stupid or just plain mean. Then there's AIDS, ebola, bubonic plague and the like, which must have been designed, right?. Again, either by a not so smart or not so nice entity. And of course the design of the human being allowed such characters as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Uncle Joe Stalin, and everybody's favorite example of design gone bad, A. Hitler to "poof" onto the planet. Either it didn't see that coming, or designed it into the system. |
The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 15:10:37 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
Hey, astropin: has this sort of massive derailment happened to every thread you've started? 
No kidding-- you'd think verlch had started it! |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 15:20:09 [Permalink]
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So, you don't disagree with the observation that you are, in fact, arguing for a supernatural creator?
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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JerryB
Skeptic Friend
279 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 15:20:22 [Permalink]
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********That is a snide remark, not an answer. Juvenile sneering won't cut it. *********
Ah come on, we can't take life too seriously. Gotta keep a sense of humor. But I will clear this designer deally whacker up in detail below although just like about every other question you guys keep asking me, it has already been covered.
Kil:
*******Maybe the designer is an idiot.******
The designer could theoretically be an idiot. I don't know who/what the designer was as I have no scientific evidence that points toward the identification of one. But don't blame the fact that joints stiffen up at age 50, the eye sight begins to go at age 45 and all the banes of the human body on a designer.
Designed systems are at their best when they are new. The second law of thermodynamics takes it from there and evolution begins to degrade the design in biological systems over generations. Just common sense.
Cuneiformist
There is no overall theory of ID just as there isn't with most sciences. For example you would stammer a bit if I demanded you give me the theory of anesthesiology or the theory of chemistry.
Also, it's largely non-scientists that repeatedly demand predictions from the field of ID as scientists understand this prediction deal is largely misunderstood. All sciences do not necessarily make predictions. Darwinism doesn't, for example.
But with this said, intelligent design does make several predictions:
1) With sexual reproduction over time, genomes will tend to become more disordered.
2) The building blocks of life, DNA and RNA will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
3) Complex homochiral proteins will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
4) Complex specified information will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
5) Irreducibly complex systems will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
6) Redundancy in organisms will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
7) Complex symbiotic systems will only be designed by an intelligent agent or preprogrammed code designed by an intelligent agent.
8) As genotypes become more disordered over time, phenotypes will as well.
Now let's get this designer mess clarified.
Its true that when something is designed for a purpose there must be a designer but ID makes no effort to identify one. We are aware that if the designer were a deity or an astronaut, the identity of this designer could not be precisely identified through scientific analysis. If the designer were a god, would we expect to be able to find and scientifically analyze the foot-prints of God? Would we expect to discover a spirit with a stethoscope or a CAT scan? Could we perhaps have the C.O.B.E satellite beam down pictures of the designer for us to examine? No, even to ponder this is quite silly.
So, ID embraces no particular designer and espouses that it has no idea who/what the designer was/is. The designer could have been a deity, an astronaut, a previously existing race of highly intelligent earth creatures or even seeded on earth by meteorites as the panspermian/atheist side of ID espouses. We would have no way of knowing because we have discovered no evidence to point us in a given direction.
Articles placed under the auspices of our science for study are often artifacts, chemically formulated substances, patterned items, DNA, organisms, organs, cells and cell organelles that were initially conceived millions and sometimes billions of years ago.
We understand it is not scientifically possible to go back in time and empirically seek conclusions of a designer thus, we don‘t go there. Musings on the nature and identification of the designer we leave to the philosophers and the th |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 10/30/2004 : 15:26:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
I posted this link earlier, but it's way back down the road. It will explain better than i could, so here 'tis again:
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
Thanks for the link, filthy. I had a general idea about what ID was, but am glad to know more. I'm also very aware that ID has much of its origins in (and continues to exist largely because it is) a religios/political movement to move aside evolution in our schools in favor of teaching a pseudo/overt supernatural explanation for the origins of life on earth.
This is evident in certain aspects of the site you linked, which bother me. For instance, can the followers of any other scientific theory or idea actually say that it has a five year plan to have 30 books or 100 journal articles published, or to have a certain number of universities having it as the "dominant view"?
Honestly-- scholarship should not work by simply trying to wedge its way into the mainstream. Indeed, it works quite the opposite way-- a sort of "if you build it, they will come" idea.
In my own field, there's a debate about whether or not Sumerian was the language behind the earliest cuneiform documents found ca. 3,200 BCE. I follow the very minority view that it did not. Can you imagine all of us getting together and writing up a non-Sumerian manifesto where we write that we're going to try and get published in so many journals, or try to get our view to appear in a Discovery Channel special, or to be taught as the main view in some graduate Near Eastern Studies progam? Hardly. Better is to simply put forward our best evidence. If it works, people will accept it. If not, we either a) keep trying by presenting more evidence, or b) abandon the theory if our evidence isn't any good.
That's real scholarship. Not, apparently, this ID crap.
But again, perhaps Jerry can present a better case... |
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