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> How is the supposed Designer supposed to know how the climate of the
> planet is going to evolve over the next thousand millennia? Or, for that
> matter, how do you encode several hundred billion genomes into just one
> (deterministically)?
Those would fit with the definitions of omniscient and omnipotent. One nice
thing about religion is that you can make the creator anything you want.
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Mike Hough wrote:
>> How is the supposed Designer supposed to know how the climate of the
>> planet is going to evolve over the next thousand millennia? Or, for that
>> matter, how do you encode several hundred billion genomes into just one
>> (deterministically)?
>
> Those would fit with the definitions of omniscient and omnipotent. One nice
> thing about religion is that you can make the creator anything you want.
Indeed. If we assume that God was the designer, all of this is quite
easy to accept. But this guy is trying to claim that this is a real
scientific theory. As in, a mere mortal could have done all this.
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Mike Hough wrote:
> From the wiki article: Behe eventually testified under oath that "There are
> no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design
> supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed
> rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system
> occurred"
>
> That says it all, really. While scientists must provide sound experimental
> or empirical evidence to support a hypothesis, ID proponents merely point
> out the things that scientist do not know for certain and use that to
> dismiss everything else. Something you often hear in the scientific
> community is "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
Except when they're talking about whether there's a God. Then absence
of evidence--and evidence then is defined to exclude any observation
that cannot be duplicated--*is* evidence of absence.
> The only logical conclusion one can make is that ID is not a science.
On the other hand, it is a valid criticism of a theory to point out that
it does not explain certain observations, and that at times biologists
explain the existence of a certain feature by stating nothing more than
that it evolved.
Indeed, neither abiogenesis nor macroevolution have actually been
observed in nature (or accomplished in the laboratory); they are both
assumed to have happened without any direct supporting evidence.
Regards,
John
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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> activist federal judge
>
> I remember once the supreme court said something like
>
> "Activist? Of course we're activist. You come and stand in front of us
> and ask us to make a decision. Who do you expect to act, Donald Duck?"
>
> How can you be an "activist" judge, if your job is to make the decision
> about what was intended by a particular law?
That's easy. You pretend the law requires "interpretation," and issue
the interpretation that fits what you wish the law said.
Regards,
John
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John VanSickle wrote:
> That's easy. You pretend the law requires "interpretation," and issue
> the interpretation that fits what you wish the law said.
It burns! It BURNS!! >_<
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And lo On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:41:26 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> did
spake thusly:
> Tim Cook wrote:
>> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> According to his book, all the species that now exist were "programmed
>>> into" the first lifeforms when the Intelligent Designer first built
>>> them. Over time, these species came and went, according to the
>>> Designer's original plan.
>> Well, if you make your program well enough, and let it run for
>> however-many aeons, and it spits out huge varieties of things, couldn't
>> you say that, in a way, they were "programmed into" the first things?
Depends. If I create a programme that just spouts 16 random 0 and 1's and
I stop it at 16 1's was that result programmed in? On the other hand if I
wrote the programme such that tests if a 1 appears and if surrounded by
1's (assume circular) keep it steady when 16 1's appear is that programmed
in?
> He made it sound as if all the species that would ever exist, and the
> exact time that they would arrise and die out was pre-ordined in the DNA
> of the first lifeforms. In particular, that the "unused" parts of the
> DNA are actually the encodings for later lifeforms.
Sound's like he's been reading Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children
without clocking to the bit about them being fiction.
> All of which is *highly* implausible. How is the supposed Designer
> supposed to know how the climate of the planet is going to evolve over
> the next thousand millennia? Or, for that matter, how do you encode
> several hundred billion genomes into just one (deterministically)?
And yet IIRC frog dna contains multiple context situations dependant on
the temperature of the frogspawn.
> Of course, he could be right... but it's not falsifiable.
Or to be precise it doesn't present any form of experimental ability
regardless of current ability. I'm thinking of String Theory here which is
currently untestable, but happily provides rigid experiments that could be
provable.
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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Too many people get stuck on the idea that humans and intelligent life are
like the goals of a deterministic process when nothing could be further from
the truth. Evolution has no agenda, people are not special and it is simply
the best stratigy for the evironment is going to be the one that comes to
dominate.
The idea that evolution was "programmed" at the start makes the assumption
that the programmer had knowlege of all the environmental changes that would
happen over 1,000,000,000 or more years. A premise that sounds somewhat less
likely than the premise of natural selection.
So, no. there was no magical programmer to set everything in motion. There
is no merit to discuss ID in a scientific framework.
--
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Halbert wrote:
> Too many people get stuck on the idea that humans and intelligent life are
> like the goals of a deterministic process when nothing could be further from
> the truth. Evolution has no agenda, people are not special and it is simply
> the best stratigy for the evironment is going to be the one that comes to
> dominate.
As an aside, the most successful organisms on this planet... are not
humans. By any stretch of the imagination.
If you happen to be a human-sized organism, then certainly humans are
the most visible lifeforms around here. But, truth be told, the most
numerous animals are unicellular. By some considerable margin.
Also, people tend to look down on animals such as living fossils and so
forth. As if "yeah, they were great in their day, but superior organisms
have evolved now". But you know what? Unsegmented worms are *still* here
today, which means that one way or another they *still* manage to
compete successfully with the "superior" organisms around them.
The goal of evolution is not to come up with more and more sophisticated
designs. It's to come up with STUFF THAT WORKS. However clever or dumb
that might turn out to be.
> The idea that evolution was "programmed" at the start makes the assumption
> that the programmer had knowlege of all the environmental changes that would
> happen over 1,000,000,000 or more years. A premise that sounds somewhat less
> likely than the premise of natural selection.
> So, no. there was no magical programmer to set everything in motion. There
> is no merit to discuss ID in a scientific framework.
Er, yeah.
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John VanSickle wrote:
> That's easy. You pretend the law requires "interpretation," and issue
> the interpretation that fits what you wish the law said.
Why would it be in front of the judge if it didn't require interpretation?
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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John VanSickle wrote:
> Except when they're talking about whether there's a God. Then absence
> of evidence--and evidence then is defined to exclude any observation
> that cannot be duplicated--*is* evidence of absence.
Absence of evidence *is* evidence of absence, tho. Basic probability theory.
Which is more unlikely: The unicorn you don't see is in the room, or the
unicorn you *do* see is in the room?
> On the other hand, it is a valid criticism of a theory to point out that
> it does not explain certain observations, and that at times biologists
> explain the existence of a certain feature by stating nothing more than
> that it evolved.
"Failure to explain an observation" is quite different from "theory's
prediction contradicts observation". In any case, "it evolved" is an
explanation that's disprovable.
> Indeed, neither abiogenesis nor macroevolution have actually been
> observed in nature (or accomplished in the laboratory);
Abiogenesis has been accomplished in the lab now. Macroevolution is easy to
observe in the lab as well.
Unfortunately, those who wish to continue disbelieving proof will dismiss
both with the True Scotsman argument.
> they are both
> assumed to have happened without any direct supporting evidence.
The direct supporting evidence for abiogenesis is "life is here now, life
wasn't here 1 second after the big bang." :-)
The supporting evidence for macroevolution is legion. Including all the
fossils, for example.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Ouch ouch ouch!"
"What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
"No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."
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