Invisible wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> Basically, its Beheistic math. Use an equation in a way that makes 
>> "no" sense, with just plain made up numbers in some places, and 
>> implausible ones in others, then hope, knowing you will probably be 
>> right, that most people won't have the slightest damn idea how 
>> incorrectly you "used" the math, or how big a lie you just told, thus 
>> convincing them its a rabbit your pulling out of the hat, not what's 
>> left of their brains:
>>
>> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/durstons_devious_distortions.php 
>>
> 
> OK, that's pretty impressive.
> 
> How is it possible to stand up in public and emit outright provable 
> *lies* like this? Seriously... is there actually no law against 
> deliberately trying to mislead people?

If there was, they would have to close like.. 90% of the churches in the 
country. lol But, seriously, its the whole "freedom of speech" thing, 
combined with the *entirely* unequal protection that religion gets when 
its adherents "claim" to be talking about "Truth". DI people function in 
a state of flux. If the attack on them is about "factual" information, 
they claim its "religious", therefor exempt from attack, if its the 
validity of a religious assertion, they claim that their view is 
actually "scientific", and therefor cannot be challenged theologically, 
and since the vast majority of people either don't care, or have grown 
up with a failed science education, which leaves them unable to address 
the flaws in "either" perspective, they can do this with impunity, with 
almost no chance of being challenged.

The problem for them is, of course, the moment they take "opinion", and 
try to present it as "policy", people that do know the difference show 
up, like at the Dover trial, and rip "both" sides of their argument to 
shreds, exposing in the process, their real intentions. Same has been 
happening in some school boards, thankfully, where saner minds have 
fired, elected replacements for, or simply backed down, due to possible 
lawsuits, from promoting this BS. Then again, you also have cases like 
one woman in the Texas state board who "admits" that she thinks that 
public schools, which must follow "standards" in their education are 
"unconstitutional", and has actually stated that she thinks its her holy 
duty, or some BS, to do everything in her power to intentionally 
undermine them. Pretty sure she isn't the only one, and that the only 
thing making it even stupider is that some of them, like her, mean 
"destroy", while others mean, "corrupt with creationist and extremist 
religious views", which are two mutually exclusive goals. You can't, 
"make schools more religious", and, "completely destroy and replace them 
with home schooling and private schools", at the same time. Not without 
shooting your own movement in the foot in the process.

Unfortunately, both groups are shooting the next generation in the head, 
as a means to their general ends. :(

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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On 4-2-2009 16:33, Darren New wrote:
> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> And lo On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 22:07:50 -0000, Darren New 
>> <dne### [at] sanrrcom> did spake thusly:
>>
>>> Only to clueless people.   It seems to me that the evidence is 
>>> sufficiently overwhelming that anyone who doesn't already believe 
>>> that evolution occurs.
>>
>> Ah but they don't deny evolution, they deny unplanned evolution.
> 
> I think you'll find a whole bunch of the faithful who don't believe "we 
> descended from monkeys."

Apes! Beware of the librarian.

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On 4-2-2009 6:45, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 3-2-2009 23:07, Darren New wrote:
>>> andrel wrote:
>>>> We know that God did survive,
>>>
>>> Do we?
>> well 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.' implies 
>> that He was there before the big bang. He is still here, so He 
>> survived. (All from the perspective of someone that believes God 
>> exists of course).
> Interestingly, as someone pointed out, there is never any mention of God 
> "making" the sea, just breathing on one that was already there, as a 
> means of "starting" the whole mess... So, not much of a "all powerful" 
> god, if he had to start with something that was already there...
> 
>>>
>>>> so why not another form of life?
>>>
>>> Because God isn't a form of life?
>>
>> That is an interesting position.
>>
> Technically true though. Life implies certain properties. With the 
> possible exception of "reproduction", which even crystals can manage.., 
> its a bit unclear what "life processes" he has, which qualifies him as a 
> "life form". But, maybe that is being a bit too nit picky. We are 
> talking about something you can't provide non-self referencing evidence 
> for "reproducing" either.

I think that according to the bible he made adam and eve in his own 
image (from which we can e.g. infer that God has nipples). You can 
easily argue that that is 'reproduction'. Genesis 6 starts with: "1 When 
men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to 
them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, 
and they married any of them they chose." I don't know what the 
canonical interpretation is but it seems that either he had actual 
children or he considers men close enough to count as his sons.

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> I think that according to the bible he made adam and eve in his own image 
> (from which we can e.g. infer that God has nipples). You can easily argue 
> that that is 'reproduction'. Genesis 6 starts with: "1 When men began to 
> increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the 
> sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married 
> any of them they chose." I don't know what the canonical interpretation is 
> but it seems that either he had actual children or he considers men close 
> enough to count as his sons.

Makes me wonder about vestigial organs. Does God have a tail? A third 
eyelid? If we go by what we know of the earliest humans, God could very well 
be Neanerthal.

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Patrick Elliott wrote:

>> How is it possible to stand up in public and emit outright provable 
>> *lies* like this? Seriously... is there actually no law against 
>> deliberately trying to mislead people?
> 
> If there was, they would have to close like.. 90% of the churches in the 
> country. lol

Well, not really.

"I believe that God created the world." That's factual. There's 
(presumably) no lie in that.

"God did create the world." This may or may not be true, so you can't 
really prohibit somebody saying it.

"This equation from this paper *proves* that God created the world." 
This is immediately and trivially falsifiable. This is a lie - an 
untruth created for the expressed purpose of misleading people.

> But, seriously, its the whole "freedom of speech" thing, 
> combined with the *entirely* unequal protection that religion gets when 
> its adherents "claim" to be talking about "Truth". DI people function in 
> a state of flux. If the attack on them is about "factual" information, 
> they claim its "religious", therefor exempt from attack, if its the 
> validity of a religious assertion, they claim that their view is 
> actually "scientific", and therefor cannot be challenged theologically, 
> and since the vast majority of people either don't care, or have grown 
> up with a failed science education, which leaves them unable to address 
> the flaws in "either" perspective, they can do this with impunity, with 
> almost no chance of being challenged.

Pretty crazy stuff.

OTOH... for what a man would wish to be true, that he more readily 
believes. I guess that explains why anybody would fall for this nonesense.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:17:44 +0100, andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>> I think you'll find a whole bunch of the faithful who don't believe "we 
>> descended from monkeys."
>
>Apes! Beware of the librarian.

The most sensible comment in the whole thread. ;)

Or.

There is no god because He was found guilty of crimes against humanity.
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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On Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:49:56 +0000, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>OTOH... for what a man would wish to be true, that he more readily 
>believes. I guess that explains why anybody would fall for this nonesense.

As the troll king said in Peer Gynt. "Be true to yourself-ish."
-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/durstons_devious_distortions.php

> OK, that's pretty impressive.

> How is it possible to stand up in public and emit outright provable 
> *lies* like this? Seriously... is there actually no law against 
> deliberately trying to mislead people?

  I must admit I didn't really understand that article at scienceblogs.

  What I understood from that long text was, basically:

1) "He uses a value of N which is way too small, thus he is misusing the
entire equation and he is a pseudoscientist." While the article notes that
since N is a divisor and not a factor, using a value of N which is too
small actually favors the evolutionary side rather than the creationist
side, but that still matters: He is using the equation wrong, and thus
everything he says is BS.

  I don't really get it. He is using a divisor which is too small,
making the overall result way larger than it should be, making his point
*weaker* rather than stronger, and he *still* gets diminishingly small
probabilities for the evolutionary processes. I suppose that if he had
used the correct value of N, the result would have been even worse from
the evolutionary point of view. Yet this article makes it a bit point
that he is using a value which is too small.

2) "He ignores the value M(Ex) and replaces it with something else." Then
I fail to see how the article explains what would have been the correct
value for M(Ex) and why it was wrong. The article just says it's wrong,
without really saying why, or what it should be.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> 1) "He uses a value of N which is way too small,

Not just that's too small, but is unrelated to the actual value of N in any 
way. It's too small because he wants it related somehow to the wrong value 
on top.

What he's doing is taking (say) the formula which is the equivalent of "for 
what percentage of time that you roll two dice do you get a total of seven." 
Instead of having "number of combinations that total to seven divided by 
total number of possible pairs of dice", he's saying "roll the dice three 
times. Note it doesn't come up seven any of those three times. Probability 
that it comes up seven is 0 / 3."

> 2) "He ignores the value M(Ex) and replaces it with something else." Then
> I fail to see how the article explains what would have been the correct
> value for M(Ex) and why it was wrong. The article just says it's wrong,
> without really saying why, or what it should be.

M(Ex) is the number of ways you can get the result you're looking for by 
arranging proteins (not the way they happen to be arranged today, which is 
what Durston says). You divide it by all the possible ways you can arrange 
proteins (not all the ways that they've already been arranged, which is what 
  Durston says).

Durston doesn't do anything with M(Ex).

The formula says "the likelihood of a random protien doing X is the number 
of protiens that do X divided by the total number of possible protiens." 
Makes sense, yes?

Durston says "The likelihood of finding exactly how we evolved is 1 divided 
by the largest possible number of evolutionary changes in history up to now."

The two would seem to be entirely unrelated.

-- 
   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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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> 1) "He uses a value of N which is way too small,
> 
> Not just that's too small, but is unrelated to the actual value of N in 
> any way. It's too small because he wants it related somehow to the wrong 
> value on top.
> 
> What he's doing is taking (say) the formula which is the equivalent of 
> "for what percentage of time that you roll two dice do you get a total 
> of seven." Instead of having "number of combinations that total to seven 
> divided by total number of possible pairs of dice", he's saying "roll 
> the dice three times. Note it doesn't come up seven any of those three 
> times. Probability that it comes up seven is 0 / 3."
> 
>> 2) "He ignores the value M(Ex) and replaces it with something else." Then
>> I fail to see how the article explains what would have been the correct
>> value for M(Ex) and why it was wrong. The article just says it's wrong,
>> without really saying why, or what it should be.
> 
> M(Ex) is the number of ways you can get the result you're looking for by 
> arranging proteins (not the way they happen to be arranged today, which 
> is what Durston says). You divide it by all the possible ways you can 
> arrange proteins (not all the ways that they've already been arranged, 
> which is what  Durston says).
> 
> Durston doesn't do anything with M(Ex).
> 
> The formula says "the likelihood of a random protien doing X is the 
> number of protiens that do X divided by the total number of possible 
> protiens." Makes sense, yes?
> 
> Durston says "The likelihood of finding exactly how we evolved is 1 
> divided by the largest possible number of evolutionary changes in 
> history up to now."
> 
> The two would seem to be entirely unrelated.
> 

Yep. He's not even using the "same" equation, he is just pasting it on 
the board and hoping no one notices him deleting bits, and replacing 
others with entirely unrelated bits. Its like he did this:

2 + x = 5, but I don't like 5, so lets make it 12, and since I don't 
know what X is, I will use 1, and since 2 + 1 is not 12, every scientist 
on the planet must be an idiot to believe that any value of x, when 
added to 2 will produce 5.

Or, the way I described it in the comments (more or less), Durston sat 
down and worked out how many ways you could get a full house, 
incorrectly concluded that full houses are the **only** winning hand, 
and that the only *real* full house is two jacks and three 4s, since its 
the one he won with last week in his one and "only" hand of poker, then 
proceeded to go around telling other people how dumb they where because 
they thought any bigger hand, or other "way" to get a full house existed 
at all, and that it was totally impossible to win with any hand that 
wasn't a full house, even if the other player only had a pair of twos. 
He isn't just using the rules wrong, he doesn't even own a copy of the 
rule book. He isn't just making bad guesses about the odds of anyone 
getting a full house, he fails to even "consider" the possibility that 
some other sort of hand "could" win, or that there is some "other" way, 
other than the one he saw, that could produce the one he "knows" won.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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