Ya Can’t Make This Stuff Up!

_{Barry Arrington

February 9, 2012

Intelligent Design}

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In response to my last post DrREC wrote: “what is Barry Arrington’s exposure to the practice of science that trumps that of a scientist who has “been around the scientific block” as he put it?”

This is unintentionally hilarious. In the post I criticized scientists who appeal to authority instead of evidence and logic. DrREC, a scientist, responds by . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . an appeal to authority! Beautiful. Thank you REC.

Comments

Just a minor correction, Chas: "ID purports to be a legitimate science, suitable even in its current state to be taught in class as part of biology lessons." No. ID purports to be THE legitimate science. And has an awful lot of empirical evidence to support it. You have yet to think up a word that means, 'design', but doesn't. You want a term that doesn't imply intelligence and purpose, but you can never find one, of course, because, in that regard, our language is built on the most widespread, empirical evidence of every race and nation on earth. Could you imagine a College of Art and Random Pattern-Making? Well, there are 'artists', I believe, who throw pots of paint at a canvas, but it's not art as most people understand the word, is it? Do you think it has merit? Akin to Mother Random-Nature's merit, maybe?Axel_{February 11, 2012
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The thing is that in an area that is so viscerally emotive for atheists, the people here really don't believe that there is anything of worth that they can learn from you. And that feeling is only exacerbated, when you often come across as doppelgangers of Harry Enfield's disaffected adolescent, Kevin. As for Elizabeth's endless prevarication enlivening the debates, I'll pass on that. We need that like a hole in the head. I used to post regularly to a liberal site in the US, called Democratic Underground, but finally had enough when posts of mine which included bona fide scientific articles were moved from the Science threads to Pseudo-science, etc. What's more, atheists swarmed all over the Religion folder, with their customary puerile jibes. Basically, they seemed more far interested in promoting various(sic) sexual agendas than economic justice.Axel_{February 11, 2012
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covered in the stink of Catholic doctrine
Try oxy-clean-> maybe tomato juice first, then a deep cleanse in an oxy-clean hot bath. Just burn the clothes. It's easier.Joe_{February 11, 2012
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"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - M. Planck That is why UC posters are not greatly exercised by the departure of their atheist critics. You think we are fools, and we think you are; but, unlike you people, who seem to have an insatiable passion for arguing with theists on any and every forum, we know that arguing with you only makes two fools. That is not a wise-crack. It's the truth. People don't change their world-view because of an argument. We are comfortable in our faith/knowledge. But I think you people are fearful of a paradigm change, as Tolstoy pointed out: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."Axel_{February 11, 2012
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Hello again Bydand- the following is from "Signature in the Cell":
The theory [Intelligent Design] does not challenge the idea of evolution defined as change over time nor even common ancestry, but it does dispute the Darwinian idea that the cause of all biological change is wholly blind and undirected.- page 4
Joe_{February 11, 2012
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Anyone who puts their mind to anything can strive to persuade others on conclusions. Lawyers who put their minds to science can strive to engage in conclusions. not many do but many Lawyers do lots of unrelated things to law that demand intellectual attention. Lawyers are smart too. In fact they tend to care more about smart things. However anybody can compete with anybody despite what they did in their late teens and early twenties.! Its on the merits and no complaining .Robert Byers_{February 11, 2012
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There are very few (25 since 2007)- many of these in the last few days discussing her ban. Do let me know if she denounces the crap going on in that thread then. Or does she just turn a blind eye to all of it and tolerate it? Because the 'right people' are engaging in it? Anyway I look forward to you picking up on any insulting behaviour by any party on UD. Go for it. You see if I tolerate or allow myself to be associated with what goes on at AtBC. The only difference here is that UD has a constant influx of threads, and I don't read them all. On AtBC? There's just one thread in particular that's relevant. It makes things hard to miss. By the way, it seems you've read those threads now. I take it you'll be denouncing the behavior you've seen, yes?nullasalus_{February 11, 2012
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This is just an apology for ad hominem attacks. Buddy, there's only one of us here who's defending ad hominem attacks, and that's you. You tried to wordsmith your way into establishing that sitting around for years, digging up RL pictures of your opponents to post, mock, deface, screaming about how you think they're all gay, etc, is... you know, some kind of intellectual, reasonable activity. Yes, I know. You'll say sure, you defended the behavior, but the arguments fall on their merits. That still has you defending, even encouraging, that vile crap. Me? Not at all. To say it’s “worth noting” is to say we should accept an ad hominem argument, No, eigen. At no point did I say that "the people at AtBC are what they are, so their arguments are all invalid". You keep swinging at phantoms, which is fine, because I love pointing it out. I said that mutual respect is a standard for discussion - one I hold to, and one I think others should hold to. If people act like they do at AtBC - something you've defended, even praised - then no. They, personally, are not worth discussing anything with. Show me where I said 'therefore their arguments are all wrong'. What was that? I didn't say that? Well then, we'll just chalk your reply up to 'yet more hopeless BSing'. That’s a criterion I’m quite sure you would not appreciate being used on you as a Catholic — dismissing what you say because you are covered in the stink of Catholic doctrine. Heh. That's happened before, eigen. I've mostly received it from atheists, but I've also received it from a few Christians. And guess what I did when I received that? I stopped dealing with them - the conversation ended. I didn't obsess over them for months or weeks, much less years. And I continued to engage the arguments, because - this will blow your freaking mind - I don't need to tolerate dealing with a complete lack of respect to engage an argument, or even find criticism. I just wait for the critic I can respect (I know your being mired in AtBC's antics may cloud your judgment here, but they do exist), or I engage the argument detached from the critic. Again, eigen - the guy who is covered with feces and screaming an argument doesn't need to be allowed into the room. The fact that he's *gasp* a critic (with arguments!) doesn't mean his antics should be tolerated. He should be, and should expect to be, ostracized until he apologizes and cleans up. By the way, will you be apologizing and denouncing what goes on at AtBC? Digging up, posting, and defacing RL pictures of people? The insults? Or are you just going to let yourself stay covered in crap?nullasalus_{February 11, 2012
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@nullasalus
But when the AtBC people start screaming, yet again, about their being banned here, it’s worth noting just who we’re talking about. It’s like someone covered head to toe in feces complaining about being ejected from some creationism debate in the course of their screaming loudly about the truth of evolution. “See? See? They don’t want to talk to me because they’re afraid of the TRUTH!” they’ll cry. Someone should really point out, “You think the crap may have anything to do with it?”
This is just an apology for ad hominem attacks. If someone from AtBC is the "most loutish" and they post a cogent, civil post, or series of posts, here, those posts stand or fall on their own merits. What is said here on UD is not contingent on comments made at AtBC, or worse, to use the unfortunate language you used -- "who they are". To say it's "worth noting" is to say we should accept an ad hominem argument, that what is said here does not stand or all on its own merits, but is a function of "who we're talking about". That's a criterion I'm quite sure you would not appreciate being used on you as a Catholic -- dismissing what you say because you are covered in the stink of Catholic doctrine. It would be fallacious and unprincipled to say you should be discounted based on "who we're talking about", and by your Golden Rule, you'd not appreciate being on the business end of the argument you are advancing, here.eigenstate_{February 11, 2012
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My post #21 was a reply to someone, but without the use of the reply button. I figure that there are advantages to doing this, where everyone looking for a recent post can find it. The advantage to using the reply button is that the contributor to whom you reply can look quickly to see the responses to their posts. The way it turned out in post #21 is I got neither of these advantages.groovamos_{February 11, 2012
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@StephenB,
Again, from experience, I have found that you will go to any length to avoid the task of advancing and responding to rational arguments. On a recent thread, for example, when I explained that a physical law is what it is and cannot also NOT be a physical law, you disputed this unassailable point in order to evade the implications of the argument, namely the existence of a “first cause.”
I've tried, repeatedly, to get you to disambiguate on "physical law". I've offered the term "models" (referring to human-devised rules and frameworks that attempt to describe, explain and predict the dynamics we observe in nature), and "nature", as the physical environment itself, operating however it does. That's sufficient to get some clarity on distinguishing between model-of-nature and nature, map and territory. Even so, you refuse to clarify or even pose your question in non-equivocal terms. I can repeat the summary of my earlier at-length explanation: models can and do change all the time, and are constantly being revised; nature is what it is.
On being reminded of the law of non-contradiction, you promptly, and without a qualm, denied it in order to maintain your contradictory position. In this case, you needed a physical law to be what it is and also to be something else, so, shazaam!!!–you declared it to be so. For you, the law of non-contradiction is a “useful tool” except on those occasions when it reveals the poverty of your non-arguments, at which time, it can be safely discounted. That position alone renders you unfit for rational dialogue.
See, here is why your confusion over "law" as a term mangles the conversation. I'm not "reminded of the law of non-contradiction" as a PRESCRIPTIVE LAW. The LNC is a tool, a mechanism for reasoning. It doesn't dictate to reality how reality is or must behave. It is a means we use to render reality intelligible. Descriptive, and practice rather than metaphysically imperative, incumbent on nature. So, nature doesn't give a rip about the LNC. We humans reverse-engineering how reality works use the LNC as a tool. Superposition, as I've said, is problematic for our conventions of LNC-based semantics. That's not due to something I contrived, that's how our tests and experiences and models that work reveal nature to behave at the quantum level. Putting your fingers in your ears and calling upon the LNC-as-magic as a superstition doesn't make the cognitive problem go away. Nature is NOT like your example of the 5'9" person being "potentially" 6'4" at some later point. That example indicates ignorance of the phenomenon. You have to tell me that the person, we are going to use YOUR example, was both 5'9" and 6'4" AT THE SAME TIME, and while BEING THE SAME PERSON. If you don't think that's problematic, bringing your example more in line with the observations of QM, then you still have not grasped the empirical witness we have now firmly established, over and over. Telling me "it can't be" won't curry favor with reality. It is what it is. That doesn't mean the LNC is tossed out. Not hardly. It does mean however that the semantics we are accustomed to applying, and forms of negation and identity we typically invoke, are problematic. Nature at Planck scales isn't like nature at the scale of you holding your red ball, or looking through a telescope at Jupiter. You can simply pull the "unfit" ripcord, but it doesn't make the problem go away. Your magical view of the LNC, and causality as well, get dashed on the rocks by the experience of science. That doesn't mean that any of those problems are insuperable, or that revised epistemologies and semantics can't be constructed that are coherent, rigorous AND performative, but your superstitious axioms won't get you there. You'll have to get beyond them if you are going to learn and understand the things you are currently avoiding.eigenstate_{February 11, 2012
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thanks, I usually copy to clipboard before posting but the down side of "usually" has gotten me frustrated occasionally.groovamos_{February 11, 2012
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Magical powers? So you think that consistently applying the law of non-contradiction to the real world is to confer upon it "magical powers." LOL This is a good example of why I no longer take you seriously. I have found that you will go to any length to avoid the task of advancing and responding to rational arguments. On a recent thread, when I explained that a physical law is what it is and cannot also NOT be a physical law, you disputed this unassailable point in order to evade the implications of the argument, namely the existence of a “first cause.” On being reminded of the law of non-contradiction, you promptly, and without a qualm, denied it in order to maintain your contradictory position. For you, the law of non-contradiction is a “useful tool” except on those occasions when it reveals the poverty of your non-arguments, at which time, it can be safely discounted. That position alone renders you unfit for rational dialogue. It is a bit of an oddity, though, that you assault the reputations and reasoned arguments of prominent ID proponents with the same undisciplined passion that you assault reason itself. Going on and on about their alleged deficiencies, you conveniently fail to elaborate the reasons for their failings, except to repeat the same uninformed anti-ID talking points that anyone could find at Wikipedia or any anti-ID website. I find no evidence that you have done the requisite reading. Indeed, based on the texture and quality of your comments, I suspect that have you never even read the FAQ at this site. How can you hope to engage in rational dialogue without doing the requisite (and readily available) homework, a task that could be accomplished in a very short time. But that is not all. Claiming to have studied and abandoned ID science, traditional Christian Theology, and Theistic Evolution, and finding all of them intellectually vacuous, you dare not specify which arguments you found wanting and why. How timidly convenient that is. Even so, you do not scruple at the prospect of writing 1000+ word posts complaining about arguments that you don't even bother to summarize--alluding to everything by name and elaborating on nothing in detail.StephenB_{February 11, 2012
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Liz hasn’t squealed about unfair treatment. How could she? She was banned, it seems. Others, however, were - please take a look at who I was responding to in some cases when I brought up that '1000+ comments' point. Regarding '26 posts at AtBC since 2007!' - take a look at when some of those posts were, and what was in the thread. Nasty, vile stuff. And there was not a peep from her, much less anyone else. The 'loutishness and nastiness' is tolerated and encouraged. Yes, there is loutishness and nastiness at AtBC. It isn’t supposed to be the acme of scientific and philosophical precision, and civil discourse. And people are two-faced. Are you without sin in this department, before you cast that stone? Gosh, really? You mean AtBC isn't meant to be anything more than a petty, very personal, collective hatefest? Well hell, you caught me offguard! Wait, wait. No, it didn't. It was kind of my point. As for your claim - uh, actually in this department, yeah. I've got plenty of sins, but no, hitting a public forum with some group of maladjusted people, ranting with hatred on the order of years about strangers I've argued on the internet with, finding pics of them to alter, muttering about how they're probably all gay and.. etc, etc? I admit, I've not been engaged in this. Dare I say, most people haven't, critics or otherwise. Do you really think the point of that passage is 'Everyone sins, so never point it out when anyone does anything you dislike, and certainly never hold it against someone'? If so, you're deluded. Go to AtBC and quote them the end of that exchange: "Go and sin no more." Let me know how that goes over. As to earning your respect? Well, why should anyone care to? Who said they should care to? By all means, don't. I'm just some anonymous guy on the internet. But if someone wants my time and attention, that's mine to give - and that means meeting my standards. And if someone else has that standard, I won't be criticizing it. Some people refuse to argue with people who use pseudonyms - I don't complain. I walk. But when the AtBC people start screaming, yet again, about their being banned here, it's worth noting just who we're talking about. It's like someone covered head to toe in feces complaining about being ejected from some creationism debate in the course of their screaming loudly about the truth of evolution. "See? See? They don't want to talk to me because they're afraid of the TRUTH!" they'll cry. Someone should really point out, "You think the crap may have anything to do with it?"nullasalus_{February 11, 2012
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OK I think I see what you're talking about RE: #2. Some of these comments are unenumerated on this thread. It's either a bug, or the result of the parent comments being deleted. I'm guessing that when a parent comment is deleted, its replies are orphaned, hence no proper enumeration.material.infantacy_{February 11, 2012
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@KF, None of this is new or challenging, you aren't listening to the objection. It doesn't help to say things like this:
If low, then the default conclusion is law of mechanical necessity
And:
f: So, which is the second default? CHANCE
The default, per science, is ignorance, or agnosticism. That's how the epistemology works. It doesn't make your case better to say "mechanical is the first default". It makes the problem worse. That's not a knowledge building, and I don't have to say anything more than "false positives" to point out the poverty of this heuristic. It's an extended exercise in question begging, as here:
g: That is, unless there is a degree of complexity and specificity involved that puts us in a too narrow, separately describable zone T in a field of possible outcomes W, the inference is that chance is best explanation.
That's precisely the question at hand -- you don't know, and cannot estimate what is "too narrow". That's what the entire controversy turns on.
j: it is only under fairly strict conditions that we end up in the third inferred explanation, cheerfully accepting that intelligence could in principle mimic either necessity or chance, in order to be practically sure that we only infer intelligence when it is seriously implausible for necessity or chance to be viable explanations for the aspect under investigation.
And more question begging. If you have warrant to make this inference, you don't need the explanatory filter. The EF adds no probative value. Conversely, if you don't already have warrant for the inference -- matching up available agents and their capabilies with putative designs or effect phenomena -- the explanatory filter can't help you. It's wholly underspecificied. And to keep on the main point I have here, it's arguing by defaults, where intuitive solutions win as conclusions not on their positive case merits, but on the perceived limits or problems with other avenues of explanation. That's radically subversive of scientific epistemology. It removes a key, anchoring concept that underwrites scientific epistemology -- the null hypothesis as a positive, testable model. ID, per the explanatory filter, is missing the enabling anchor this epistemology. That's ID's prerogative. ID could just overtly declare it's an exercise in theology, or social activism. It can define itself as it likes. But the claims of being scientific are at best equivocal, abandoning the essential core of scientific epistemology in favor of a casual, fuzzy, we'll-just-assume-this-because-those-other-ideas-seem-problematic approach to knowledge. I suggest this response nicely confirms my point about the epistemic problem of 'design-by-default'. "mechanism-by-default' is NO better. What you've not understood is that "default" is the major fail point in "design-by-default", not "design".eigenstate_{February 11, 2012
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While I'm not an admin: RE: #1, threaded comments are sorted first by the related thread. Newer comments will appear above older ones if they are replies to a specific comment in the hierarchy. This is not without its faults. Specifically, it can make following a thread difficult (and frustrating) from a timestamp POV. RE: #2, comments will appear in timestamp sort order after being sorted by the thread to which they replied. If an older comment receives a reply, that reply will be grouped with the original comment, then sorted by timestamp. This produces a nested effect, which can make following the entire thread impractical. RE: #3, when that happens, click the back button and scroll all the way to the bottom of the newly loaded page. Your comment will appear contained in the bottom-most comment box. It loses its place in the comment hierarchy, but the content remains intact. However long comments are best authored in a text editor of some sort, and copied into comment boxes when completed. This is the lowest risk option, and is bound to produce less frustration with lost content. Alternately, as a rule of thumb, copy the contents of the comment box to the clipboard prior to posting with the "Post Comment" button. That way, if there is an error with the submission, the comment can immediately be "pasted" into a new comment box. Best, m.i.material.infantacy_{February 11, 2012
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--eigenstate: "I don’t reject LNC (Law of non-contradiction), and couldn’t make the points I’ve made without it. I just don’t have a magical belief in its powers." Magical powers? By that, of course, you mean that you don't think it can be consistently applied to the real world, which is, of course, to deny it. Again, from experience, I have found that you will go to any length to avoid the task of advancing and responding to rational arguments. On a recent thread, for example, when I explained that a physical law is what it is and cannot also NOT be a physical law, you disputed this unassailable point in order to evade the implications of the argument, namely the existence of a “first cause.” On being reminded of the law of non-contradiction, you promptly, and without a qualm, denied it in order to maintain your contradictory position. In this case, you needed a physical law to be what it is and also to be something else, so, shazaam!!!--you declared it to be so. For you, the law of non-contradiction is a “useful tool” except on those occasions when it reveals the poverty of your non-arguments, at which time, it can be safely discounted. That position alone renders you unfit for rational dialogue.StephenB_{February 11, 2012
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So an atheist naturalist in the 19th century comes along and invents something called Darwinism, for the role of handmaiden to scientific materialism. And this philosophical stance of course is your “methodology”. And my training is not up to taking on the “naturalist” Darwin?
If you perceive biology, including evolutionary biology, as containing nothing more than a methodology defined by Darwin, then what can I really tell you? You're a million miles out, but do you really care? You're an electrical engineer, and you know how designs work, and you are convinced that biological entities are designs in EXACTLY the same sense. Well, bully for you. You are entitled to pursue that viewpoint to the extremes of your rhetorical impulse. But organisms aren't machines. They just aren't. My assertion vs yours. But there is more to it. Understanding the manner in which organisms work, and the way evolutionary processes operate upon them, is vital to understanding biology and evolution. If you don't want to understand biology and evolution, then fair enough - but don't keep whining at the people who do, simply for not seeing the resemblance that you do, or not making the connection to immortality or societal consequence that many here do. ID purports to be a legitimate science, suitable even in its current state to be taught in class as part of biology lessons. But many of the people who are pushing that viewpoint know little biology. You don't think that's an issue? Ultimately, if pursued in the way it is here, ID will sink into mere Creationsim - the thing it is at great pains to distance itself from. Creative attempts to undermine the peer-review process, or to demonise scientists for arrogance or other human failings - well, it might work, as an alternative tack to actually doing some science. Worth a try, anyway. But that's politics, not science. Let's get one thing straight, though - your comments are directed at me, convenient whipping-boy for a viewpoint that you clearly despise. But I have never called anyone ignorant, or an IDiot, or anything else (I confess to exasperation). I HAVE constantly urged people to try and better understand the subject they wish to criticise, and have taken a deal of trouble attempting to discuss the topics I can discuss, from a scientific pov. No-one has shown any real interest in this. At least Joe attempts to take the science on, even though he seems to have a deep-seated need to misrepresent and misunderstand it. I was probably naive in thinking that a scientific position might welcome scientific discussion. Still, I'm interested in all kinds of worldview, not just my own, so if that comes up I'll discuss it too. And it has been very telling, to see how the group of people here, that aspires to a higher moral standard, views a group of people whose subject (for reasons that are not entirely clear to me) threatens that standard or even (in some cases) their aspirations to immortality. I'm sure you couldn't give a damn, but I do not regard my moral standards as in any way inferior to yours, just because I study and accept evolution. I really can't perceive any legitimacy to the claim of the moral high ground advanced by the "saved", certainly not on the evidence here. The bottom line is that, for a myriad of reasons I could rationalise to hell and back, you do not WANT the materialist position to be true. Why in hell should you invest any time in understanding it? It's easy to just "do a Luskin", filtering and spinning the work of scientists in a way that has scientists apoplectic not because of the worldview-challenge, but simply because it's bad science. So ...
I actually read this morning one of the contributors to antievolution.org fantasizing about one of the UD personnel fist-f__ing a donkey. Science at its worst, coming from your side of the debate. I’m actually thankful it is in full view, especially to the young folks watching all of this. Very entertaining, I’m having a good time at it.
Yes, nice piece of rhetoric. Someone who holds the same position as me on something (and maybe only that thing) said "fist-f---" on the internet in relation to someone who holds the same position as you on something. Let's show all the young folks what irredeemable reprobates scientists (rather, their internet supporters) are.Chas D_{February 11, 2012
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DrREC, I know you're reading this. You should be ashamed, using a semi-bad work like p---k. If you can't argue nicely, you shouldn't argue at all. If you don't know how to argue politely, the UD way, take a tip from Rabbi Moshe Averick's "Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist" which has been featured prominently on this blog: "True devotees of naturalism Talmudic sources describe the practices of an ancient pagan cult called Ba'al Pe'or. The adherents of this sect showed their devotion to their god by first defecating in front of his statue and then proceeding to engage in some of the more standard types of debauchery. Defecation as a form of worship might seem odd to us in the 21st century, but the obvious meaning behind this act was to proclaim the glorification of, and an exclusive devotion to the physical and material aspects of existence. If it were suggested that the above described scatology would be an appropriate expression of their own absolute commitment to naturalism and materialism, I imagine the reactions of Lewontin, Hitchens, Dawkins, Ruse, Dennet, Pinker, et al., would be comically squeamish (althought I don't rule out the possibility that they could surprise me). Despite that, my guess is they would still feel right at home in a post-worship philosophical discussion with the naturalist/materialist "theologians" of the Ba'al Pe'or seminary." "Nonsense of a High Order: The Confused and Illusory World of the Atheist" by Rabbi Moshe Averick Page 225 Kindle Location 3824 Take that and change "Lewontin", "Hitchens", "Dawkins" etc to "Arrington", "O'Leary", "Kairosfocus" etc and see how nice and polite argument can be when you restrain yourself to the type of arguments ID people use.dmullenix_{February 11, 2012
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ES:
ID can’t brook that paradigm. It equivocates on “best”, and “best” in the hand of the ID leaders becomes “my intuition”, or “God as a default”, or just “design as a default” — the designer-of-the-gaps problem. If we don’t have a detailed step by step chemical pathway for abiogenesis, not just a plausible pathway, but the actual, historic, historically detailed pathway, then God is the best explanation.
This is yet another willfully false statement in the teeth of the truth you know, or could easily know. It is at minimum, culpably negligent. Let's take the per aspect explanatory filter, as is discussed here in the first of the ID foundation series posts, with a flowchart for handy reference; and which has appeared at UD over and over again. It also features in the FAQ, which you seem to have failed to read seriously before commenting adversely and even personally. It also featured in corrections directed to Dr Liddle, on exactly this matter. In steps:
a: We examine an object or phenomenon, and pick a first aspect of interest, to examine across causal factors, necessity, chance and agency (in the wider context that that which has a beginning has a cause). b: The first question is on hi/lo contingency of outcomes, i.e. more like a dropped object falling at 9.8 N/kg or more like a die tumbling to read a value. If low, then the default conclusion is law of mechanical necessity. c: If so, the law is to be identified, tested and if confirmed integrated into theories or models. This is straightforward scientific method for cases similar to Galileo's exploration of a swinging pendulum. d: but what if under sufficiently similar initial conditions, we see quire diverse possible outcomes,i.e. high contingency? e: It is known that chance and intelligence can be responsible for such. f: So, which is the second default? CHANCE g: That is, unless there is a degree of complexity and specificity involved that puts us in a too narrow, separately describable zone T in a field of possible outcomes W, the inference is that chance is best explanation. h: there is actually a reasonable controversy on this, as say 100 years ago many would argue that chance is not a real factor, e.g. it could be argued that if we could sufficiently specify the initial conditions, we could predict the outcome of a tossed die. But since then quantum theory with its genuine randomness and chaos theory with sensitive dependence on initial conditions, has brought chance into lay as a genuine causal factor worthy of discussion. As the marbles in boxes discussion, App 1 my always linked though my handle shows intuitively, Laplace's demon is out of a job. (And BTW, within the past year there was a sharp discussion here at UD on exactly this point.) i: So, we have in hand two successive defaults: necessity and chance. j: it is only under fairly strict conditions that we end up in the third inferred explanation, cheerfully accepting that intelligence could in principle mimic either necessity or chance, in order to be practically sure that we only infer intelligence when it is seriously implausible for necessity or chance to be viable explanations for the aspect under investigation. k: of course we go on to investigate other aspects and synthesise an overall causal picture or model that can be empirically tested.
So, plainly ES, you have not done due care or diligence before making adverse comments, and this is the THIRD time today I have had to draw you up on this. Neither God nor design serve as a default explanation. Just the opposite, necessity and chance do. What is really at work then is evidently that you object to cases where on tested reliable sign, design is a warranted inference, but this inference cuts across what he dominant, evolutionary materialist school of thought wishes to insist on. For concrete instance, the coded digital information that is at the heart of cell based life and of new body plans. 100 - 1,000 k bits of for the first, 10 - 100 mns apiece for the second, where just 1,000 bits of info specify 1.07 * 10^301 possibilities, so many that the whole observed universe, across its lifespan, could not sample 1 in 10^150 of possibilities. On basic sampling theory, let's use the needle in the haystack picture, and just 500 bits for that, the size of sample in that case would be comparable to a one straw sized sample to a hay stack that is light days across. Such a sample, by maximum likelihood, would pick straw, even if a solar system were lurking in it. This is of course very close to the reasoning behind why the 2nd law of thermodynamics works, in light of statistics of microstates of systems. Coded complex functional information is highly specific and is not going to be typical of the field of possible states or configurations. So, it is maximally implausible that such would arise by blind chance and necessity on the gamut of the observed cosmos. And the latest assertion, that somehow there is a continent of function that can be traversed by incremental changes yielding say the tree of life, is so strained as to be revelatory of desperation. There is but one empirically warranted source of dFSCI, design. Let's focus on this relevant case as it can be easily tested by random text generation experiments. So far we are up to picking from 10^50 possibilities, but nowhere near 10^150 possibilities, 10^100 times that. And to my certain knowledge this test case has been put forth any number of times at UD over the years. If you wish to provide another causal explanation than design, kindly provide an observed case in point. And even your suggestion that the empirical tests we specify are counsels of perfection, that too is a material distortion and misrepresentation. Your dismissive, distorting words above simply underscore that you have no empirically warranted alternative to design, but are reasoning in a frame of anything but design. Good day GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{February 11, 2012
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Questions to the admins: 1. Why, when I posted above (#21) today, did my post go not to the bottom but up above some posts from yesterday, so that someone looking for the most recent, would miss mine? Can you guys fix the chronology? 2. Why are posts both enumerated and not? 3. Why, if one clicks on the "Post comment" button before answering the verification question, does the page disappear along with the contributor's typed input, and another page is presented? Would it not be better to conserve the work and let the contributer try again without having wasted the input?groovamos_{February 11, 2012
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@KF,
Pardon me, but have you actually read what has been seriously argued re the 2nd law, in terms of its statistical underpinnings, as opposed to what you may be able to dredge up from whoever, wherever? Yeah, this is an area I have a lot of experience in. As I keep saying, if some is willing to do the math and apply the concepts, the folly of these arguments -- and I've made the SLoT objection from creationists an area of interest for many years now, just because of a long running interest and applications (via info theory computing stuff I've worked on as well as computing resources for physicists back in my younger days) -- is a matter of examination, not rhetoric.
2: the proposed evolutionary materialist mechanisms — and in particular, the chem evo mechanisms — imply the origin of beyond astronomically isolated complex organised states and structures on chance plus necessity, when
First, you're confused on "organized", as Bruce David was. "Order" and "organized" are only meaningful to SLoT as thermodynamics -- that's the "T" in SLoT. As a college student I got off on the wrong track in physics when the TA took the liberty to explain "order" with the analogy of a recently cleaned and straightened up (everything in its place) kid's bedroom and a messy, cluttered, can't-see-the-floor kid's bedroom. "Order" vs. "Disorder" this was meant to teach. As a bit of opening pedagogy, I can see that as an example one might choose, but it took several weeks into class to get that misconception worked out. My class mates and I ended up talking to a PhD student who straightened us out, mocking the "messy room" analogy for order as counterproductive. Q: Which bedroom has more "order" per the SLoT: a) the neat, recently thoroughly cleaned room, or b) the room that has all the contents of the closets thrown on the floor, drawers empty, sheets all messed up, and garbage strewn all about? A: Burn both bedrooms down, thoroughly, and measure the heat energy generated by the fire for each. THAT is your thermodynamic answer. In practice, there isn't an appreciable difference in terms of thermodynamic entropy, and it has NOTHING to do with whether the room is "neat", or cleaned in such a way to make things appear what the mom of the house would call "orderly". "Organised states and structures" then are not measures of entropy as such. All that matters is the energy available to do work in that system. Second, "chance plus necessity" encapsulates the whole of physics. Without physical principles hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms are astronomically unlikely to combine as water. But with the necessity of physical principles -- hydrogen's tendency to pair up so two electrons can orbit two nuclei, for example -- water formation does NOT exhaust the probabilistic resources of the universe. It's downright inevitable under conducive conditions. Biology is a whole lot more complex than that, but it's matter of scale and degree. Physical principles drive host of interactions and combinations, demonstrably, that your probability calculations don't even ACKNOWLEDGE, let alone integrate into your calculations.
3: the evidence of the equivalent to a still warm pond or the like and related analyses would be that, by overwhelming implausibility, we would get nowhere near such organisation on the gamut of the observed cosmos.
No, you've got perfectly NO model for any kind of calculation like that. All I have to do is say "show your math" and the con is exposed. You've not got even a START on what the formative resources and interactions were. The best knowledge out there is exceedingly sketchy and volative as conjectures put forward by the people who are expert on these questions. It's an exceedingly important question from a human political standpoint, but it's a matter of exceedingly esoterics and likely intractable forensics as a matter of science. It's not a phenomenon we are equipped to reverse engineer, given the past time and the non-fossilization of the targets of our investigation. Any implausibility you want to assign -- and your whole objection hangs on this point -- is NOT grounded on any knowledge of the context or actual pathway taken toward the first (or any) biological life forms and structures. This is easily to discredit from me if you are not just blowing smoke -- show your math. But you wont' because you can't, and you know it, and I know it, and you know I know it. And yet, you persist, disingenuously, in making these assertions, over and over, regardless.
4: Look, it is overwhelmingly improbable that by forces at work the O2 in the room you are sitting in would unmix itself and go into a corner, leaving you choking. (And this is mere order, not organisation.)
So, let's test your connections here, then. What would the THERMODYNAMIC entropy of room A with diffuse, highly probable microstrates for the 02 molecules, and what would the THERMODYNAMIC entropy be of room B, the same room as A, but with all the 02 molecules clustered together in some fantastically improbable configurarion where all the O2 is in a small 10cm corner of that room? Your answer will tell me/us a lot about your understanding of thermodynamic entropy. I'll hold on the problems of viewing the configurations of ideal gases as your model for biology/OOL until later. When a leaf converts sunlight into glucose -- stored, available energy -- it's not a statistical accident that plant happened upon.
5:There is nothing physically forbidding it by force, but the number of states consistent with available energy in which the molecules are mixed so overwhelms the number of isolated ones that the chance of that happening by chance and necessity without intelligent intervention is essentially zero, on the gamut of our observed universe.
It's not a matter of available energy. Again, this shows you are confused about what thermodymamic entropy measures, and how it is derived. Statistically unlikely microstates are unlikely because of the statistical summing of the stochastic movments of each molecule. It's no more energy based than the observation that "7" is statistically going to be the most common roll of two fair dice over large numbers of rolls. What do you suppose the internal energy of Room A vs. Room B is, in the example above? Do you think that "all the 02 over in this little corner of the room" has some different internal energy value for that room (room B) than room A? If so, why? Nothing in biology or evolution depends on such microstates or configurations in a phase space, which is why this kind of answer just makes people who understand this stuff scratch their heads.
6: That is the context in which the sort of comparison to monkeys at keyboards typing at random producing Shakespeare by chance was developed, for example.
Yes, and that's the core mistake, the signal that you're not talking about, or even familiar with biology as a physical process, as a function of physics. No one but the creationists imagine that biology or negative entropy is a "tornado-in-a-junkyard" process. It's not even close enought to earn the label "strawman" what you are offering. By the approach you are advocating, we should be amazed and astonished in the ability to water to form, given the astronomically small odds of H atoms form H2 molecules and then adding oxygen to form H20. That's an absurd and ridiculous process to believe could ever happen in you monkeys-typing-Shakespeare model, this "just so story" of how water forms.
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There aren't any testable hypotheses wrt to blind and undirected processes producing a living organism from non-living matter nor constructing new, useful multi-protein configurations. I would say that is a fair statement wrt ID.Joe_{February 11, 2012
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Hi Joe. I'm asking this in all seriousness. That list above - evolution has no testable hypotheses, no evidence accumulated, &c.- is that a fair statement of the position of ID? - or is it your own personal take?Bydand_{February 11, 2012
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@Chas D:
ID wishes to operate within the realm of ‘science’ – and then complains, bitterly, because there are all these darned scientists cluttering the place up with their non-ID-friendly methodology and their standards and their many-years-studying-the-subject. You don’t wish your science to be held up to the standards of science. It could just be about the arguments, but if you present an argument on – say – genetics before a geneticist, a bus driver and a mathematician, who would be best placed to evaluate it? Do you never call on expert witness?
'scuse me but I work towards a PhD in electrical engineering, and earned an M.S. in the field. I look at the evidence and I am very pro-ID as a result. The vast majority of the world's population looks around and are amazed on a daily basis at the order, harmony and yes, design, so apparent in all existence (excluding human affairs), and don't need to be constantly corrected by a bunch of self-important professionals, Dawkins included: hilarious. And you know what? I don't see too much bitter complaining from my side of this argument. And to tell you the truth, I'm having a ball exercising my rhetorical impulse here, "bitterly" hardly fits. So far as "darned scientists cluttering the place up with their non-ID-friendly methodology" : So an atheist naturalist in the 19th century comes along and invents something called Darwinism, for the role of handmaiden to scientific materialism. And this philosophical stance of course is your "methodology". And my training is not up to taking on the "naturalist" Darwin? Or one's everyday experiences in living are truly no basis for the average person to EVEN CONTEMPLATE teleological matters, and worse get called "ignorant" for doing so? Gimme a break. Its as if the only persons in your mind qualified to take on a bogus science have to have been trained in the bogus science. And you guys wonder why some scientists are getting a hugh black eye from this debate. And thus everyone else has to wonder no more why the disgustingly vile vituperation comes from mainly one side, almost exclusively. And from "professionals" no less. I actually read this morning one of the contributors to antievolution.org fantasizing about one of the UD personnel fist-f__ing a donkey. Science at its worst, coming from your side of the debate. I'm actually thankful it is in full view, especially to the young folks watching all of this. Very entertaining, I'm having a good time at it.groovamos_{February 11, 2012
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@eingenstate:
No, the design inference from ID doesn’t employ the mainstream paradigm.
That doesn't have anything to do with what I said. I said the way to the design inference is through the current mainstream paradigm- Newton's First rule mandates that. The explanatory filter mandates that. ID is the best explanation because others have been considered and didn't measure up. But anyway apparently you are still angry and that has caused some confusion on your part. perhaps you would like to try-again...Joe_{February 11, 2012
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@Joe,
Ya see the way to the design inference is through the current mainstream paradigm. That means if that position just did it right we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
No, the design inference from ID doesn't employ the mainstream paradigm. Think of how many times you've heard appeals here to design conclusions as the "inference to best explanation". That's some disingenuous wordsmithing there, all hinging on "best". The best explantions in science are well defined -- build a model, show it can be falsified, deduce entailed predictions, and then see how the model performs by empirical testing and validation. I've been using Einstein's GR which entailed predictions about the precession of Mercury's perihelion. There is a non-controversial framework for what is the "best" explanation: if Einstein's predictions is borne out in our observations, where other competing models made no such predictions, and made other predictions that failed, GR is the best on that question. ID can't brook that paradigm. It equivocates on "best", and "best" in the hand of the ID leaders becomes "my intuition", or "God as a default", or just "design as a default" -- the designer-of-the-gaps problem. If we don't have a detailed step by step chemical pathway for abiogenesis, not just a plausible pathway, but the actual, historic, historically detailed pathway, then God is the best explanation. I can't say enough disparaging things about that stance as intellectually impoverished, but that is not the point of my raising it. Rather, it's just that ID uses "best explanation" to totally upend and invalidate the mainstream semantics of the word in science. That should not be surprising to anyone, given the ID movement's (as opposed to whatever we might identify as the "ID science") animus toward science as the (suspected) breeding ground of godless materialism. ID as science is a "put the system on trial" legal strategy. That's ID's prerogative, but it does not, and cannot operate with the mainstream paradigm. It is committed to overthrowing the mainstream paradigm. Mainstream science has good social equity, though, due to the stupendous successes it has produced in commerce, medicine, technology, agriculture, and just about every other area of human endeavor you could name.eigenstate_{February 11, 2012
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You missed the mark, mark.Joe_{February 11, 2012
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CD: That's a gratuitous personal attack, walk it back. I have suggested that a misbehaved child under my parenthood would receive a spanking for the sort of misbehaviour I have seen at and around UD, I have nowhere indicated any intention to threaten or attack a woman. In short I am pointing out that some of what is going on here is childish misbehaviour and rudeness beyond the pale of adult conduct. That this would be pounced on and twisted into the insinuation that I am going around threatening physical violence to women, is outrageous, and a sure sign of the sort of problem Barry has had to prune back. KFkairosfocus_{February 11, 2012
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