FFT: TJG ponders the design inference- objecting mindset

_{kairosfocus

April 13, 2017

Atheism, Design inference, Evolutionary Incoherence, Food for thought, Intelligent Design, rhetoric, specified complexity}

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. . . through a case in point:

>>tjguyApril 12, 2017 at 2:28 am

rvb8 @2

Thank god (heh:), the obvious has been consigned to the rubbish bin of understanding, and we now prefer evidence, experimentation, and the unobvious, to the vacuous, empty, ‘obvious’.

What is the problem with this way of thinking?

He just assumes this “obvious” thing too will be relegated to the dustbin of understanding. That is what he believes – which is great, but it is nothing more than opinion/belief/worldview deduction, etc. right now.

It is just as possible that the Materialist view of OoL will be relegated to the dustbin of understanding.

And get this!

He thinks that since we were able to learn how earthquakes work that we can also learn how life evolved. He equates the two things!

Now, again, anyone see any problems with this claim?

They are incomparable! One is vastly more complicated than the space station while the other is a simple deduction of natural law and forces at work in nature that can be studied, tested, and verified. If they could verify OoL in the same way, no one would have any problem with their claim, but they can’t. And, given the complexity of the problem I think it is likely they might never be able to do so.

But this is the great hope of the Materialist – that one day they can find a way to show that life could evolved all by itself. That’s their great hope and desire and this hope and desire clouds their judgment when it comes to interpreting the data.

For them, NOTHING is too difficult for evolution or blind random natural processes!

NOTHING! Complexity be damned!

So it really doesn’t matter what anyone finds in future. It doesn’t matter how complex the thing might be. That makes no difference.

Since they do not believe in God, anything & everything that exists, even if can’t be explained, is still thought to have come into existence by pure random natural processes – including their own thoughts (Now there’s a thought to chew on for a while! – heh:) Anyway, that is what they believe.

Well, as is obvious from this post, we all have beliefs that cannot be shown to be valid by science. Some will choose to believe in natural miracles of chance (In this case, Chance is science.) that so far are impossible to explain.

Others though who are not bound by the Materialist worldview, might choose a different interpretation of the same data. They may choose to see life as possible evidence of a supernatural Creator.

Neither side can prove their own beliefs are right, but both sides feel they have good reason/evidence on which to base their beliefs.

So be it. Each to his own. For me, I do not think it is rational or logical to compare thunder or earthquakes with life itself, but I too have a bias. Of course, I have the added benefit of experiencing a relationship with God that also influences me to the design side of things. I’m firmly with Barry here and I think his OP makes a whole lot of sense.

RVB8 is free to believe whatever he wants to believe or thinks is true. NO one can make up his mind for him. He has to trust his own evolving thought processes to lead him to the right conclusion – as we all do.

After all, according to his worldview, his brain evolved in a way to lead him to believe in random natural processes as the answer to the problem of OoL and my brain evolved in a way to lead me to believe in God. So be it! There is nothing I can do about it! We are both slaves to the processes of nature that formed our brains and continue to form our thoughts so ultimately, we can’t help what we think/believe.>>

DfO, in 34, adds a sobering thought:

>>rvb8 and Seversky don’t hold to materialism because they don’t see evidence; they don’t see evidence because they hold to materialism.>>

Substantially, it seems that first of all objectors need to be reminded on the design inference explanatory filter:

Here, we make an ordered sequence of explanatory inference: mechanical necessity > blind chance plus same > design, on FSCO/I.

This is by no means a leap to unwarranted conclusions on what seems obvious.

Then, a bit later, such objectors need to ponder the self-referential incoherence of evolutionary materialism and its fellow traveller views.

Food for thought. END

Comments

Seversky @20 Thanks for the comments.ayearningforpublius_{April 15, 2017
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ayearningforpublius @ 20
Only let’s substitute in place of Papa, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. We see the brothers overcome by joy in seeing things not seen before. In their enthusiasm, they jump up and down around Papa and try to share the joy of their new found view of life. Papa scolds them soundly: “Who are you to lecture me on the realities of the universe and life? I have a PhD from a prestigious university such as Oxford and have lectured and taught many thousands. I have written best selling books and have been called ‘the smartest man in the world.”
Both Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne are professional scientists. I'm sure they have a grasp of the known physical causes of color-blindness and understand how these glasses correct it to some extent. Why do you think they would deny this and be so dismissive towards the children who benefited from it?
“What you think you see in all this silliness is merely the appearance of colors … illusions. We in the sciences know full well that the mountains of evidence show far fewer colors than you claim to see.” “Now straighten up your thinking and fall in line with my thinking — else I write you both out of the will.”
Need I remind you that Dawkins wrote a whole book around the theme that our appreciation of the beauty of natural phenomena such as rainbows is not diminished but enhanced by a scientific understanding of how they work? This reads more like anti-a/mat propaganda. If they are offensive to some believers in the manner of their rejection of poorly-evidenced religious beliefs, it should be understood as a natural reaction to the way that atheism has been treated by the great religions throughout much of history and is still regarded by many to this day. You should also understand that what passes or has passed for Christianity is equally offensive. I was raised as a Christian and became atheist gradually but, either way, versions of Christianity such as the almost pure hatred preached by the Westboro Baptist Church or the crass commercialism of the prosperity gospelers or the boarding schools for Native Americans are all good reasons for Christians to practice the virtue of humility that they preach. Equally, as has been pointed out many times before, there have been non-Christian or atheist regimes which have perpetrated the most appalling atrocities. Regardless of belief, we are all at fault to some extent. We are all weak, fallible and ignorant creatures - even the strongest or cleverest - and we owe it to ourselves to make allowances for the same failings in others. Christian or not, I still regard humility, charity and compassion as among the greatest human virtues.Seversky_{April 15, 2017
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Building on my illustration @17, we have the two young color blind brothers in the same yard as the older Papa. Only let's substitute in place of Papa, Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. We see the brothers overcome by joy in seeing things not seen before. In their enthusiasm, they jump up and down around Papa and try to share the joy of their new found view of life. Papa scolds them soundly: "Who are you to lecture me on the realities of the universe and life? I have a PhD from a prestigious university such as Oxford and have lectured and taught many thousands. I have written best selling books and have been called 'the smartest man in the world." "What you think you see in all this silliness is merely the appearance of colors ... illusions. We in the sciences know full well that the mountains of evidence show far fewer colors than you claim to see." "Now straighten up your thinking and fall in line with my thinking -- else I write you both out of the will." Just then Papa's 5 year old granddaughter comes to his side tantalizingly waving a pair of the "magic" glasses. "But Papa ... the balloon really is blue."ayearningforpublius_{April 15, 2017
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AYP, excellent -- and I hope one of my all time favourite physics profs gets a pair. I well remember how he explained to me what it was like to see without full colour vision. Only, worldview induced blindness is unfortunately even harder to break. In many cases it is like the story of the prodigal son, you have to be reduced to the pig pen to realise -- having hit rock bottom -- what you did not see before. There is a reason why the Greek word we translate repentance -- metanoia -- literally means a change of mind. KFkairosfocus_{April 15, 2017
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RVB8, do you not see your projection in ascribing to us being "baffled" by nature? The natural world is indeed mysterious and deep, but when you project to people like GP, SB, EugeneS, JDH, etc. or even the undersigned and others you are talking to people with advanced qualifications in the sciences and/or mathematics and/or computer science, in some cases phil too. I suggest that you set aside the silly caricature that we must all be fundy creationists with suspect agendas, who are ignorant, stupid insane and/or unduly wicked. (I admit that we all struggle with virtue in the face of the easy road to do the evil; the moral issue would be those who have become utterly corrupt or are enmeshed in the schemes of those who are.) I suspect though that what you really mean is Nature, i.e. the evolutionary materialistic scientism perspective and/or its fellow travellers. That is no mystery either, it is a self referentially incoherent system incompatible with our being here as responsibly and rationally free creatures capable of a serious discussion driven by the merits of fact and logic i/l/o worldview level considerations. That is, it is necessarily false, through undermining rationality. The reality is, it is a common sense issue to recognise what FSCO/I is, and it is a fairly simple step to extend the game of twenty questions or the like to understand a description language capable of specifying functional configurations as a chain of structured y/n q's, as in the end AutoCAD does. This allows us to understand how complex, functionally specific organisation is richly informational. It is trivial in this digital age to look at how a bus width of n bits leads to 2^n possible addresses and thereby to understand how we get a configuration space. I admit, that is the easy backdoor route that avoids dealing with the concept of phase space, but it is good enough. FSCO/I then takes on full force where we naturally see why there are islands of function due to the need for properly arranged and coupled components to achieve relevant function. We can then readily see the difference between:
ORDER: asasasasas . . . as RANDOMNESS: fghwugiuehgirejjjhphugourkkd754kou78du[6;ki and, ORGANISATION: such as this s-t-r-i-n-g of glyphs spelling out a message
Order in the natural world whereby there is a reliable pattern on given initial conditions is normally regarded as the result of mechanical necessity, leading to a search for the underlying ordering law and dynamics. Chance gives rise to high contingency with stochastic distributions not biased towards functionality based on FSCO/I. It often appears as scatter in experimental results, or patterns familiar from tossing dice or fair coins, or more exotically, sky noise etc. Functionally specific organisation beyond a reasonable threshold of complexity is beyond the search capacity of the observed cosmos or the sol system, and it is on trillions of cases, the reliable result of intelligently directed configuration. That is, FSCO/I, for cause, is an empirically reliable, analytically plausible sign of design as key cause. That would be readily tested, by trying to show the first two factors giving rise to FSCO/I. Years ago, objectors used to try that, dozens of times. Uniform failure. Random text generation is now up to about 2 dozen ASCII characters in coherent English, a factor of 10^100 short of the conservative sol sys threshold 500 bits. The 1,000 bit threshold is the square of that, it utterly dwarfs the search resources of the observed cosmos. Now, the above outline is based on common sense science and math, drawn out to introduce a few new points. That is good, because it means ordinary people are just as knowledgeable on this as experts and can see how experts committed to the evolutionary materialist scheme struggle to address a supertask that was not on the table when their favoured darwinist scheme became dominant. That is why OOL research is a mess, and given that we can readily see that OO body plans would require 10 - 100+ mn bases of genetic info, far beyond the threshold, where for every additional bit the config space DOUBLES. The sort of resorts in the face of that challenge are revealing about the elites of our civilisation and its key institutions. Now, of course, if I and others are wrong, there should be any number of ready to hand cogent refutations on the Internet. Nope, not fallacy laden dismissals and attacks. Actual demonstrations of FSCO/I by credible chance and/or necessity, for one. Let us see one: ______________ Not dismissals on sniffing about "big numbers" but actual demonstrations of how we get to OOL then to OOBP without increments that run into the island of function challenge. (I call this the continent of function thesis.) I start by pointing to the distribution of protein fold domains in AA sequence space and wider organic chemistry. Go find us some molecular and genetic stepping stone missing links that amount to 100k - 1 mn bases for 1st cell based life and 10 to 100+ millions for origin of body plans: ____________ While you are at it, address the search for golden search challenge, by which it is easy to see that searches in a config space are subsets, so that the space for searches of a space of n configs, comes from the power set, of scale 2^n possibilities. So, magic bullet search algorithms are positively loaded with functional information. (And indeed this is where Dembski and Marks et al have discussed active information as the injection that allows us to intelligently overcome search challenge -- and this is of course already published in the literature, as is the world of Abel and Trevors et al that speaks to search challenge and universal etc plausibility bounds.) Let us hear your response, which at this stage might as well be a shot at the still open after several years darwinist essay challenge. Remember, potentially, one shot one kill for ID. ID is utterly falsifiable in principle. Just, rather unlikely at this stage to actually be falsified in fact. KFkairosfocus_{April 15, 2017
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Pardon me please for copying a comment from another thread, but I think it is appropriate. Take a look at these dramatic videos of people having color blindness seeing color for the first time … https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601782/how-enchromas-glasses-correct-color-blindness/?utm_campaign=add_this&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post and https://youtu.be/XSD7-TgUmUY I’m wondering if these episodes illustrate how many people (including myself in past years) develop a type of blindness towards what is obvious to many others. I’m thinking of folks like RVB8 and Armand Jacks on this site, and Darwinian popularizers such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne. In such cases, it seems like no amount of intellectual effort and argument sways the hardened mind to even consider an alternative view of evidence that is right before our eyes. I say evidence rather than proof, because each will interpret what we are presented through the glasses of our particular world view. But often, as in my own particular case, we are surprised when we find ourselves looking through lenses of a different sort and see things for the very first time and are touched dramatically in an entirely new way, and a way that we can’t easily deny. As in these color blind folks seeing colors for the first time, we can no longer insist that the orange ball is in fact green. Perhaps the best we can do is continue to press the evidence of modern science in hopes that onlookers will find themselves suddenly, or not so suddenly, looking through corrective lenses. Lenses that continue to illustrate and illuminate the designs in nature that are all around and within us.ayearningforpublius_{April 15, 2017
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hi. my name is Mung. i don't believe anything. I am not the product of anything. I don't exist. Physics is not my father, and Chemistry is not my mother. I don't exist.Mung_{April 14, 2017
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WJM, I agree with you, I am the product of chemistry and physics. I do react to you through my brain which operates, and originates, through the laws of chemistry and physics; I thought that was plain? I know that you, and most of the posters here accept a personal God to eaxplain the, 'gaps'; fine! I prefer a rational answer. Chemistry and physics, my love for my partner, my friendships, my love of reading, are more rationally explained by chemistry and physics, than they are by Jesus making me believe I enjoy these things. My biggest problem is that good writers, thinkers, readers, and intellectuals, such as yourself, Kairos, etc, are so baffled by nature!rvb8_{April 14, 2017
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Groovy:
Yeah so what if it were retracted. Why was it not re-issued with the offensive words expunged? BECAUSE THESE RESEARCHERS PISSED OFF THE IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN MATERIALISTS and they had to have their heads chopped.
Do you know this as s fact or are you simply jumping to a conclusion you want to be true? Retractions are made in every journal. Well, except BioComplexity. That is one of the checks and balances of the peer review system. If there is a major flaw in the paper that is not caught by the reviewers, it can be identified by others and a retraction made.
Notice you can’t go with my challenge to you which is @46
Since I am not familiar with the subject, how do you expect me to respond to the challenge?Armand Jacks_{April 14, 2017
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A Jacks: They claim to be able to detect design in nature yet have not published their work in peer reviewed journals Of course they have. BECAUSE THEY CAN - detect design that is - like these Chinese researchers who got their paper past peer review. Now they (or the translator) did make the mistake of identifying the designer as being identical to the creator which is what I.D. doesn't do. : http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0146193 Yeah so what if it were retracted. Why was it not re-issued with the offensive words expunged? BECAUSE THESE RESEARCHERS PISSED OFF THE IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN MATERIALISTS and they had to have their heads chopped. The point is, their paper passed peer review and they state in the paper that they detect design just as archaeologists do. KF, WJM and others have published hundreds of thousands of words here at UD Yes they have as has yours truly and yet you seem to keep wanting more and more to come here to read those words. Notice you can't go with my challenge to you which is @46 here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/more-astonishing-things-materialists-say/ BECAUSE YOU CAN'T.groovamos_{April 14, 2017
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RVB: And the religious are free to believe whatever they want, unless it is unconstitutional, or against the law, for example, vast swathes of both Testaments. There you go. What passes for reason by the contributor. He thinks there are certain thoughts that are unlawful or "unconstitutional". I mean why even bother with this dude if they actually think like this. Obviously it was a waste of my time asking if the contributor could identify the information repository that built his (/her/hez/whatever) face. Except for that avoiding the challenge question does have didactic value for everyone else.groovamos_{April 14, 2017
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KF, WJM and others have published hundreds of thousands of words here at UD and on other obscure blogs yet, to the best of my knowledge, have never attempted to publish any of this ID work in a peer reviewed journal. Why is that?
What do you mean by "ID work"? Perhaps you could point out where I've posted anything anywhere that can be referred to as "ID work"?William J Murray_{April 14, 2017
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AJ:
Science (evolution, chemistry, physics, geology, etc.) conduct research in an attempt to explain HOW things work.
How things work is often best defined as how they don't work, within specific contexts. When you lay down a natural law, you are actually constraining possibilities from an infinite realm of "whatever". This why falsifiability is an important criterion in science. Sufficiency is not sufficient for a fact. Necessity is necessary. That can only be established by whittling down alternatives. In that respect, ID is perfectly suitable as science. I would even go so far as to propose that it is what evolution would be if it were properly practiced in a math-theoretic fashion.LocalMinimum_{April 14, 2017
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Armand Jacks: Science (evolution, chemistry, physics, geology, etc.) conduct research in an attempt to explain HOW things work. ID twists itself in knots to avoid this fundamental aspect of science ...
Okay, let's start basic. HOW did you design post #7? Specifically HOW did you steer your brain chemicals? If you don't have an answer, then the question arises: do you agree that you are the intelligent designer of post #7? If your answer is "yes", why do you agree without knowing HOW? If your answer is "no", why not? The problem, Jacks, is that you are making a category mistake — intelligence is based on freedom and can never be mindless, blind and mechanistic.Origenes_{April 14, 2017
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F/N: When defeated on the merits, change the subject, it seems. It needs to be noted for brief correction, that peer review is in effect an appeal to authority that became systematised by the US Govt post WW2 as a means of filtering off what to fund; as just one example Annalen Der Physik in which Einstein published his famous 1905 papers that transformed physics was at that time of the more traditional type, run by an editor who served as chief evaluator of quality. As with any appeal to authority, it is no better than the underlying assumptions, facts and logic. And, when ideology gets baked in to the institutions, the system can actually hinder progress. Thus, the pivotal issue is, the facts and logic -- to the merits we must go. In this case, they are actually readily accessible to common sense science: what is the observed source of functionally specific complex organisation and/or associated information? Given search challenge in large spaces, is it plausible for such to emerge by blind chance and/or mechanical necessity? The answers are fairly obvious, and directly apply to the copious text in alphabetic code found in the D/RNA of the living cell. If one trots out the cell's self-replication, that too is understood from von Neumann's kinematic self replicator architecture, it involves a huge increment of FSCO/I. To top off, after dozens of papers have been published in the peer reviewed literature and hundreds more that provide inadvertent support, the attitude remains, showing that the problem is not evidence or reasoning, but ideological commitment. And that is one of the key reasons for this blog, not only to present the scientifically grounded case but to assess the linked science and society issues. And the degree of opposition up to and including stalking shows that it is very important to shine even a small candle on a hill instead of putting it under a bushel. So does the latest game out there, abusing monopoly power to suppress search results etc. The persistence in trying to snuff it out speaks for itself. KFkairosfocus_{April 14, 2017
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Science (evolution, chemistry, physics, geology, etc.) conduct research in an attempt to explain HOW things work. ID twists itself in knots to avoid this fundamental aspect of science because they would be forced to admit that their mysterious designer is actually their flavour of god. They claim to be able to detect design in nature yet have not published their work in peer reviewed journals. They claim that they can't get published in peer reviewed journals because they are being censored by some sort of global conspiracy. Yet when asked to publish one of their rejected papers along with the reviewers' comments here at UD so that it can be discussed, they go silent. KF, WJM and others have published hundreds of thousands of words here at UD and on other obscure blogs yet, to the best of my knowledge, have never attempted to publish any of this ID work in a peer reviewed journal. Why is that? KF has made some very good arguments here. I may disagree with them for various reasons but with some significant reformatting, and removing the condescending tone, they could easily be published in a peer reviewed journal. I am curious as to why he has never done this. I have found that submitting papers to peer reviewed journals, even when they are rejected, is an excellent way to obtain constructive criticism of your ideas and methodology. I don't know what they fear.Armand Jacks_{April 14, 2017
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RVB8- You are sadly mistaken about what your position is, you say you accept the findings of science on matters of Ool ,life without design, etc but when asked for said evidence, findings you decline every time. So the conclusion I draw is that you believe or have faith in materialist, evolutionary scientists who have said they have the answers , evidence, data, but when asked they cannot produce this evidence either. You really need to do what I did and accept nothing on face value,do the work of looking at all sides of the argument, dont accept opinion ask for data form your own opinion. Ernst Boris Chain saved countless millions of lives through his work on refining penicillin , into a form we could take to fight off infection.This Nobel prize winning scientist called Darwinian evolution a fairy story that has so little facts supporting it he cannot believe it has been so widely accepted.Now are his words worth a second look, this man was no charlatan , but an outstanding scientist who produced real testable results, so is it worth reviewing the evidence for Darwinian evolution based on this mans pedigree I believe so . I have not just taken his word I have looked for the evidence and came to the same conclusion he did, Darwinian evolution is a fairy story with little or no evidence to support it , I suggest you look at the evidence yourself and stop trusting Dawkins, Shubin, Coyne et alMarfin_{April 14, 2017
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William J Murray @4 Absolutely devastating post! In my opinion it deals with the most convincing argument(s) against materialism.
W J Murray: … as an atheistic materialist – RVB8 must assume that his views, faith, beliefs and knowledge, and that of a religious person, are exactly the same and come from exactly the same source: they are the effects of happenstance chemical interactions generating a sensory or thought effect.
I would like to stress that not only do chemical laws generate individual words, chemical laws (obviously) also string words together into e.g. arguments. RVB8 does not draw a conclusion based on understanding but instead based on chemical laws. Mental items, like words, are not connected by mental laws but instead by chemical laws. Therefore, under RVB8’s view, individual mental phenomena can be viewed as (emergent?) powerless isolated islands sitting on top of chemical events. Mental items, like words, are produced and strung together by stuff that doesn’t give a hoot about truth, meaning, logic, purpose, coherence and so forth. RVB8 is not a rational being who understands “all men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man” and follows up with the conclusion “Socrates is mortal” based on understanding and logic. No, understanding and laws of reason don’t cause anything in the physical conglomerate RVB8 — only chemical reactions do.Origenes_{April 14, 2017
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KF said: “RVB8 is free to believe whatever he wants to believe…” To which RVB8 said:
True.
As a materialist, RVB8 should have said: "No, I believe whatever happenstance chemical interactions cause me to believe." RVB8 then spends some time trying to purchase some separation between his belief and faith and the belief and faith of the religious, as if they are two different things and come from two entirely different foundations, when - as an atheistic materialist - RVB8 must assume that his views, faith, beliefs and knowledge, and that of a religious person, are exactly the same and come from exactly the same source: they are the effects of happenstance chemical interactions generating a sensory or thought effect. RVB8's sensation that his views are not faith-based from a "religious mould" is just a sensation produced by happenstance chemical interactions in his body - which is exactly what is going on, from an atheistic/materialist perspective, in the religious believer. Such sensations have nothing to do with what is rationally or categorically true or accurate; they are just the sensations and words produced by whatever chemicals happen to be interacting in whatever particular manner in the physical body we call RVB8. So, his attempt to distinguish himself, thoughts and views as something categorically different from the motivations and mind of the religious occurs in contradiction to his own worldview. Categorically, RVB8 believes and says and thinks what he does for exactly the same reason as the religious: happenstance chemical interactions that may or may not reflect anything "true" or "factual" about the world and/or ourselves. He then posts what he thinks is an argument against the scientific legitimacy of ID theory, but why? He has no way of actually knowing of ID is scientifically legitimate or not, because "he" is, and "he" thinks, whatever happenstance chemical interactions dictate. His "knowledge", from the atheist/materialist perspective, comes from exactly the same source as the IDist's knowledge that ID is science - happenstance chemical interactions put those thoughts and sensations in his head. Why is RVB8 arguing with IDists and the religious? Does he consider the effect of what chemistry and physics has produced in those people to be an erroneous result? How can the natural result of physics and chemistry be "erroneous"? They say and believe what they say and believe because of chemistry and physics - nothing more, nothing less - the same reason RVB8 says and thinks what he does. So, every time RVB8 and other atheistic materialists argue with an IDist or the religious, they are actually arguing with chemistry and physics. One might as well attempt to argue a river out of its course or attempt to argue rain out of a cloud as argue a physical body into changing its physical course/output. Every time an atheistic materialist argues, they are putting on display the self-contradictory, reason-annihilating inanity of their worldview for all to see. It doesn't even matter what they are arguing about - to argue at all (for such a person) is an exercise in existential futility. It is only under the assumption that RVB8's worldview is incorrect that any argument can have any value. It is only under the assumption that humans have access to a supernatural mediator of truth and a supernatural capacity to override physical processes and effects into accordance with that truth that such arguments can possibly have any meaningful effect. Make no mistake, RVB8 will continue to argue as if truth can be discerned in spite of physical system resistance, and as if that truth can forced upon our physical states, even while denying that any such commodity or capacity exists. He will argue as if knowing true things makes some sort of difference even while insisting that physics and chemistry don't care about such things. RVB8 is Don Quixote, ranting and raving at storms and earthquakes that their effects are wrong, wrong, wrong, begging the volcano not to erupt and the wind to stop blowing as if such appeals and arguments matter one bit to the physics and chemistry generating such behaviors.William J Murray_{April 14, 2017
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RVB8, I suggest -- again -- that you need to ponder the chain of warrant challenge and where it points: we all, necessarily, have finitely remote first plausibles constituting the faith points in the heart of our worldviews. The issue is whether such embed ideological question-begging or are reasonable, responsible faith-points. In that context I suggest that you would do well to ponder that evolutionary materialistic scientism is self-referentially incoherent, thus self-falsifying and woefully ill-advised in its notion that big-S science captures the field of credible knowledge and can relegate "faith" to the dubious fringes of delusion. [Cf. Lewontin's inadvertent cat-out-the-bag moment, here.] Which is what seems to drive a clear pattern of contempt on your part directed towards evangelical Christians. I think you need to carefully reconsider. As for dismissiveness to the core design inference and to work that has built on it in the teeth of hostile censorship and unjustified career busting, I simply suggest that over four dozen articles in the literature suffice to show the superficiality of your dismissiveness. And in that context, there is such a thing as common sense science, indeed much of technical science is glorified common sense with technical insights. All the huffing and puffing in the world, all the preening on the approval of a self-selecting elite, ideologically dominated magisterium cannot suffice to overturn the force of just the simple observation that in the heart of life, in D/RNA, we find alphabetically coded text in copious quantities, FSCO/I that has precisely one credible, empirically warranted source:intelligently directed configuration, aka design. KFkairosfocus_{April 14, 2017
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Kairos, "RVB8 is free to believe whatever he wants to believe..." True. And the religious are free to believe whatever they want, unless it is unconstitutional, or against the law, for example, vast swathes of both Testaments. However Kairos, I do not 'believe' these things. Belief implies 'faith', and I do not have 'faith' in science, that would be a sectarian statement. I, 'accept' the findings which science has found most probable through experimentation, without using the words 'faith' or 'belief'. Now scientists do speculate when hypothesising, therefore in some instances, OOL, life beyond the stars, the word 'belief' is used. This is because they apply the known rules and laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, which apply throughout the universe, and simply have to extrapolate without seeing. This is not 'faith, belief' in the religious mould, but 'belief', because what we know works here, and throughout space, 'WILL', also work on knewly discovered Planet 'X'. ID simply says our faith is outraged, no one has seen it,and the absolute creationist howler, 'were you there?' etc Now that is 'belief', 'faith'. Taking the Word of God, that we are 'specially' created, and denying Natural Forces the same, (actually far more potent), design capabilities. Kairos, "but both sides feel they have good reason/evidence on which to base their beliefs.' Well,there is no other 'side', at least not one that resembles the definition of modern science. The ID movment has Anne Gauger and 'green rooms', 'fart videos', and websites that don't allowing postings. It has, lawyers, advertising campaigns, and talking heads. Most recently it is flogging a seminar, which judging from continuous, and repeated desperate posts, is not being noticed as much a hoped. The deadline for the 'Summer Seminars on ID', has been extended four times, why? The reason given by the DI is lame. This seminar features speakers,from the top, "ranks of scientists and scholars in theID movement..." Including, Michael Behe, Stephen Myer, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells Paul Nelson, Jay Richards, Douglas Axe, Richard Sternberg, Rober Marks, Scott Minnich, John West, Bruce Gordon, and David Klinghoffer. Only Cornelius Hunter, and Wesley J. Smith missing, oh, and the only women,Anne Gauger.' Several questions; Why do these names never change?; Will they be repeating the mantra, or are there new data?; Where are the chicks? (Not even Anne?) You can take this post as mockery if you will, but those questions, and particularly the one pertaining to the utter homogeneity of the ID movement, reflect deep, deep, structural waknesses in ID. Structural fault lines that scream, 'we need legitimate laboratories, and the pubisihing of peer reviewed articles'; 'we need new avenues of invetsigation, and we must build upon IC, and SI'; we need minorities, women, and faiths other than, Christians, Jews, and the Moonies'. Do this, and 'belief' in ID, might advance to scientific, 'acceptance'.rvb8_{April 13, 2017
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TJG is well worth headlining as more food for thought, and DfO makes a little cameo appearance, too. The design inference objecting mindset. KFkairosfocus_{April 13, 2017
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