>>>     As for math, would you say that, for example, the branch of mathematics
>>> called geometry studies how the real world works or not?
>
>> Which geometry? Euclidean geometry? Elliptic geometry? Hyperbolic
>> geometry? Some sort of non-homogeneous geometry?
>
>> Pure mathematics studies these geometries purely for their own sake. One
>> or other of them /may/ correspond to the real world.
>
>    The very word "geometry" means "measuring land" (from ancient greek
> geo = earth/land, metri = measurement).

And the very word "atom" means "cannot be cut". Not without a particle 
accelerator, anyway...

(For that matter, "electron" means "amber". Science and technology is 
littered with terms made up of Greek or Latin words, the literal meaning 
of which are utterly inappropriate considering what the term means today.)

> Geometry is one of the oldest
> branches of mathematics (probably only preceded by elementary arithmetic)
> and was, indeed, motivated by real-world applications (such as measuring
> the area of a piece of land and dividing land into equal parts by area).
>
>    If that's not science, I don't know what is.

Personally, I would make the separation that "Euclidean geometry" is a 
mathematical theory, while "the real world conforms to Euclidean 
geometry" is a scientific theory.

(And, for that matter, a scientific theory which has been falsified as 
thoroughly as Newton's laws of of motion have been falsified. In other 
words, it's incorrect, but it's close enough to being correct as to be a 
useful simplification, most of the time...)

Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For 
example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world 
situation (except something really abstract like network topology). 
Certainly it doesn't describe the physical shapes we see with our eyes. 
And yet, it is a perfectly valid and self-consistent mathematical theory.

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On 1/7/2011 9:28 AM, Invisible wrote:

> No sane Designer would have designed it this way.

Other than your belief that you would have done things differently, what 
is the basis for this claim?

Regards,
John

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On 1/7/2011 11:02 AM, Paul Fuller wrote:

> And yet, the uninformed masses have no problem saying that "it is
> obviously too complex to come about by chance and therefore must have
> been created".

This claim does not come strictly from uninformed masses.  It is also 
made by people more knowledgeable than you and I put together.

Regards,
John

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On 1/7/2011 11:51 AM, Invisible wrote:

> I've seen a lot of arguments for and against whether ID should be taught
> in schools alongside evolution. For me, these all miss the main point:
> ID is not a scientific theory. It may or may not be correct, but it's
> not testable. Because it doesn't /predict/ anything.

Actually, it does.  It predicts, among other things, that the genetic 
code for organisms may have features of no present use, but which may be 
of use by descendant creatures.  An intelligent designer, especially one 
of the intellect required to design a eukaryotic cell, would have some 
capacity for anticipating future changes to the environment and can 
front-load the genetic code in preparation for this.

Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the 
public dime, because it is a matter of public debate, and is therefore 
incompatible with the principles that underlie a free society.  What 
invariably happens, when the government is allowed this power, is that 
the people who are in the wrong will go running to the government to 
have their view imposed by fiat, and all conflicting views suppressed to 
one degree or another.  At the present moment a person who is skeptical 
that natural selection is sufficient to explain the entirety of 
observable living systems is subject to exclusion from participating in 
scientific and educational endeavors, even when the topic has no bearing 
on the origin of life.  But in times past it was the other way around. 
"But we're not ignorant like they were then."  Actually, it's because of 
a shift in political connections.

As a practical matter, I of course oppose the teaching of views I 
disagree with, but I also oppose the forced teaching of views that I 
agree with, because that breeds resentment--especially if someone gets 
drunk with power and exceeds his authority--and I don't want my views 
getting blamed for some idiot's power trip.

Regards,
John

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>> No sane Designer would have designed it this way.
>
> Other than your belief that you would have done things differently, what
> is the basis for this claim?

OK, well sanity is something that medical professionals cannot strictly 
define, even for human subjects. So let's leave that out.

What I can say is this: If we had some idea *why* the designer designed 
life, we might be in a position to debate whether the way life works 
matches this goal or not.

ID helpfully omits to specify what the motivation was. With no design 
goal, we can't say a lot. Similarly, ID helpfully omits to specify 
anything about the designer (or designers) at all, so we have nothing to 
go on.

What we /can/ say is that no /human/ designer would have designed life 
this way. But that's probably obvious from the fact that humans have 
never designed anything even approaching the complexity of life. But, 
more particularly, artefacts designed by humans exhibit certain specific 
qualities.

Most obviously, man-made devices are highly discrete in their design. 
The task to be performed is split up into separate subtasks, which are 
performed by lots of little independent, orthogonal units, even if 
that's a less efficient way of doing things.

Compare the computer and the human brain. (No, the don't do the same 
thing. The resemblance is vague at best. But, very loosely, you could 
claim that both are giant signal processors, essentially.)

A computer has a CPU, connected by a narrow bridge to a completely 
separate RAM. It has several I/O devices, sometimes with their own CPUs 
and RAMs, needlessly duplicating functionality already present. In 
short, it is a collection of complex systems connected by simple 
interfaces. (Here "complex" and "simple" are obviously relative terms.)

Now consider the human brain. Rather than having one lump of tissue that 
receives sensory inputs, and a separate lump that stores memories, and a 
separate bit that compares one to the other, and another bit that 
generates motor outputs, what you /actually/ find is that all these 
circuits are all tangled up together. There are no "memory neurons" and 
"comparison neurons". Rather, the brain's ability to compare things or 
to remember things is an emergent property of a large network of more or 
less identical neural components, wired up in different combinations.

A human designer would have built a brain with lots of separate 
compartments. Evolution has built one with lots of related and some 
unrelated functions all tangled up together.

So, we can conclusively say that a human wouldn't have designed this 
organ this way. If we actually knew something about the hypothetical 
designer of ID, we might be able to test that claim as well. (But, 
helpfully, we cannot.)

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On 1/7/2011 1:05 PM, Darren New wrote:
> I'm not sure why you have a job in IT instead of a job in teaching.

I taught computer literacy to fifteen-year-olds.

Teaching requires, in addition to subject matter competency, skill in 
classroom management and lesson planning and presentation.  I was hired 
having a CIS degree, but with no training in the other areas.  If you 
don't know what to watch for, the kids will go crazy.  Toss in the kids 
who weren't raised right (for whatever reason), and the situation 
becomes unmanageable.

Additionally, a typical school teacher takes an enormous amount of work 
home.  That takes its toll as well.

I quit after seven months.  My replacement worked for less than two 
years before moving on as well.

Regards,
John

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On 10/01/2011 04:01 PM, John VanSickle wrote:

> Teaching requires, in addition to subject matter competency, skill in
> classroom management and lesson planning and presentation. I was hired
> having a CIS degree, but with no training in the other areas. If you
> don't know what to watch for, the kids will go crazy. Toss in the kids
> who weren't raised right (for whatever reason), and the situation
> becomes unmanageable.

I would have thought the biggest problem is that kids don't want to 
learn anything, don't give a damn what you're talking about, and will 
basically go to any lengths to avoid being taught.

_That_ is why I'm not a teacher.

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> Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For
> example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world
> situation (except something really abstract like network topology).

Err, you do realise why it's called Manhattan geometry?

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>> I've seen a lot of arguments for and against whether ID should be taught
>> in schools alongside evolution. For me, these all miss the main point:
>> ID is not a scientific theory. It may or may not be correct, but it's
>> not testable. Because it doesn't /predict/ anything.
>
> Actually, it does. It predicts, among other things, that the genetic
> code for organisms may have features of no present use, but which may be
> of use by descendant creatures. An intelligent designer, especially one
> of the intellect required to design a eukaryotic cell, would have some
> capacity for anticipating future changes to the environment and can
> front-load the genetic code in preparation for this.

ID asserts that "life was designed by an intelligent, concious entity". 
That's all it says.

Now, if you mean "life was designed by an intelligent, concious entity 
AT THE START OF EARTH'S HISTORY", then you start to be able to make some 
predictions.

The first prediction is that the genome of every creature that has ever 
existed and will ever exist must have been somehow encoded into the very 
first lifeform(s) that the designer seeded the planet with.

By a trivial pigeon-hole argument this is laughably impossible.

It also pre-supposes that the designer knew exactly what habitats would 
exist in 4 billion years' time, which is also absurdly impossible.

(The best human scientists, equipped with mountains of measurement data, 
cannot even predict what the weather will do in 5 days' time, never mind 
what it will do over geological time. And you're suggesting that the 
designer /could/ predict all of this with /no measurement data at all/? 
I think not.)

To see how severe the problem is, consider the video I watched the other 
day. D. Attenborough visited an ancient lava flow in New Zealand. In one 
place, it had cut off an area of forest about 300 yards across. And in 
this one tiny island of green surrounded by barren rock, there lives an 
entire ecosystem of plants and animals. There are species of fruit flies 
there that live in this 300 square yard patch of ground, and live 
nowhere else on the face of the Earth.

You seriously expect me to believe that some designer 4 billion years 
ago could have predicted that the lava flow would move in this exact 
direction to leave this specific patch of green free for colonisation? 
Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

> Be that as it may, I am against the teaching of life's origins on the
> public dime, because it is a matter of public debate, and is therefore
> incompatible with the principles that underlie a free society.

Well, that's a nice idea, but do we not teach children about World War 
II, because some lunatic claims that it didn't happen? Do we not tell 
them that the world is round, because a few lone idiots claim that it's 
flat?

Isn't part of the job of education to get the facts straight, so that 
kids know what to believe?

Now, that's not always possible of course. There are cases where we 
really aren't sure what the facts actually are. And IMHO that is a 
useful lesson too. If you're talking about the /origin/ of life on 
Earth, nobody has really conclusively figured that out yet. There's a 
bunch of plausible theories, but nobody is really anywhere near sure. 
But if you're talking about the /evolution/ of life... apart from a few 
lone crackpots, everybody unanimously agrees on the matter. So that's 
what we should teach.

Personally, I think they /should/ teach ID in schools. As an example of 
how to tell the difference between scientific fact and crude falsehood. 
(Apparently some people can't do this yet...)

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On 10/01/2011 03:59 PM, scott wrote:
>> Mathematical theories exist independent of the physical world. For
>> example, the Manhattan geometry surely doesn't describe any real-world
>> situation (except something really abstract like network topology).
>
> Err, you do realise why it's called Manhattan geometry?

Because it applies to the topology of the streets of Manhattan?

Like I said, I'm sure there's lots of other, similarly abstract things 
to which it also applies. It does /not/ however apply literally to the 
three-dimensional space that we all see around us.

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