Why science can’t study the supernatural – A physicist’s view

_{Denyse O'Leary

February 7, 2012

Mind, Physics}

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boo — Oh please, let us guess just this once: You were going to say ... Boo! Right?

Why can’t the paranormal and spiritual realms be subject to scientific analysis? The materialist says “Because they don’t exist.” and therefore all signals are spurious and a waste of resources.

The intelligent design theorist says “coherence is not just a sign of extra dimensions, but a sign of front-loaded purpose”. Therefore the paranormal might not be “spooky action-at-a-distance” but a design feature of simultaneous causation. If A is correlated to B, it may be that A doesn’t cause B, or B cause A, but previous design C causes both A and B such that they are correlated.

Lipstick and breast cancer are correlated, but neither causes the other.

But if we look at the meta-studies, if we ask, what is the benefit of studying the paranormal versus ignoring it? We find the curious phenomenon that the Enlightenment advanced precisely where it ignored the paranormal. Thus it would seem that studying the paranormal wasn’t merely a distraction, but a degradation of science.

Stanley Jaki argues in “The Savior of Science” and several of his other books, that bad metaphysics, such as looking for paranormal effects, waylaid the nascent scientific progress of the Greeks, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Caliphate and even the Jewish Kabbala. Only the severe discipline of the Enlightenment materialism could negotiate the shoals of bad metaphysics.

I’ve come to a similar answer, though phrased a little differently. Inasmuch as the paranormal and spiritism are “personal”, possessing the characteristics of contingent personality, then it is dangerous to study them as a machine. This is like BF Skinner studying humans as if they were a computer program.

Economists can tell you the danger of doing this. Not only does this give the wrong answer, but it even gives the wrong questions. What makes people people, and what makes the divine divine is precisely the personal, and therefore science does a disservice to theology when it reduces the personal to machinery. But worse, it invites the ghost into the machine.

More precisely, the Bible condemns even the exploration of the occult, because of its parasitic relationship to persons.

We all understand computer viruses. And thanks to global warmists, we are beginning to understand the power of positive feedback and what money does to our science models. But we have yet to understand what psychology does to common sense, or what evolutionary biology does to our sanity.

Inasmuch as the paranormal is personal, it is forbidden for the same reason that the occult is forbidden–it infects our mind.

Thoughts? – UD News

Comments

From The Deniable Darwin:
Sheer Dumb Luck Chance alone," the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jacques Monod once wrote, "is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of creation." The sentiment expressed by these words has come to vex evolutionary biologists. "This belief," Richard Dawkins writes, "that Darwinian evolution is 'random,' is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth." But Monod is right and Dawkins wrong. Chance lies at the beating heart of evolutionary theory, just as it lies at the beating heart of thermodynamics. It is the second law of thermodynamics that holds dominion over the temporal organization of the universe, and what the law has to say we find verified by ordinary experience at every turn. Things fall apart. Energy, like talent, tends to squander itself. Liquids go from hot to lukewarm. And so does love. Disorder and despair overwhelm the human enterprise, filling our rooms and our lives with clutter. Decay is unyielding. Things go from bad to worse. And overall, they go only from bad to worse. These grim certainties the second law abbreviates in the solemn and awful declaration that the entropy of the universe is tending toward a maximum. The final state in which entropy is maximized is simply more likely than any other state. The disintegration of my face reflects nothing more compelling than the odds. Sheer dumb luck. But if things fall apart, they also come together. Life appears to offer at least a temporary rebuke to the second law of thermodynamics. Although biologists are unanimous in arguing that evolution has no goal, fixed from the first, it remains true nonetheless that living creatures have organized themselves into ever more elaborate and flexible structures. If their complexity is increasing, the entropy that surrounds them is decreasing. Whatever the universe-as-a-whole may be doing -- time fusing incomprehensibly with space, the great stars exploding indignantly -- biologically things have gone from bad to better, the show organized, or so it would seem, as a counterexample to the prevailing winds of fate. How so? The question has historically been the pivot on which the assumption of religious belief has turned. How so? "God said: 'Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let fowl fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."' That is how so. And who on the basis of experience would be inclined to disagree? The structures of life are complex, and complex structures get made in this, the purely human world, only by a process of deliberate design. An act of intelligence is required to bring even a thimble into being; why should the artifacts of life be different? Darwin's theory of evolution rejects this counsel of experience and intuition. Instead, the theory forges, at least in spirit, a perverse connection with the second law itself, arguing that precisely the same force that explains one turn of the cosmic wheel explains another: sheer dumb luck. If the universe is for reasons of sheer dumb luck committed ultimately to a state of cosmic listlessness, it is also by sheer dumb luck that life first emerged on earth, the chemicals in the pre-biotic seas or soup illuminated and then invigorated by a fateful flash of lightning. It is again by sheer dumb luck that the first self-reproducing systems were created. The dense and ropy chains of RNA -- they were created by sheer dumb luck, and sheer dumb luck drove the primitive chemicals of life to form a living cell. It is sheer dumb luck that alters the genetic message so that, from infernal nonsense, meaning for a moment emerges; and sheer dumb luck again that endows life with its opportunities, the space of possibilities over which natural selection plays, sheer dumb luck creating the mammalian eye and the marsupial pouch, sheer dumb luck again endowing the elephant's sensitive nose with nerves and the orchid's translucent petal with blush. Amazing. Sheer dumb luck.
Joe_{February 9, 2012
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The EVIDENCE says living organisms are not reducible to matter and energy. The EVIDENCE says only life begets life. So you guys need to get a life and some evidence...Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Elizabeth, Evos think that living organisms are reducible to matter, energy, necessity and chance. Urey/ Miller added ENERGY to a mixture of gases to get amino acids. And allegedly that is how living organisms arose- via energy being added to the earth. So the argument goes that given energy and time we can get a living organism from non-living matter. THAT is the fallacy I am talking about. Again you need to read eigenstate's posts in this thread to understand my position. As for my second point- well you have demonstrated it in your response. The fallacy is thinking there would be "things on earth to do the work required to get a living organism". And yes, I know evos think both are true- THAT is the fallacy as they are not.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Living organisms order disordered chemistry.
That's just a bald assertion.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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“Secondly, all you have to do to find testable hypotheses for evolution common descent and heritable variation in reproductive success is to use Google Scholar to locate papers in which such hypotheses have been tested. They are countless.”
1- That is NOT evidence for any mechanism, so you lose 2- Again you are equivocating I take it you didn't understand the post you are responding to.
It’s perfectly possible that abiogenesis occurred more than once, and that we are the result of some kind of symbiosis between more than one common ancestral population.
I said it was a bit dated. However now you should understand why we wouldn't expect one tree of life.
So evolutionary theory does not stand or fall by the hypothesis that we have a single common ancestor.
You totally missed the point. How typical. The point is we can have universal common descent without any regard for the mechanism. 6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.
Well, the hypothesis is that these mechanism account for the patterns we observe in lviing organisms, including, most notably, their fittedness to thrive in their environments.
That is as vague and meaningless as the "theory". And what "tests" has it passed? As far as anyone knows prokaryotes only give rise to prokaryotes. Humans only give rise to humans. There aren't any tests that demonstrate otherwise. but anyway all that is moot because obvioulsy you didn't grasp what I posted.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Dr Liddle, the known physicist count for this thread includes Drs Sheldon and Selensky. You could count me in at one step lower in the academic rankings. All of us are arguing the design side of this matter. What is that telling you? Can you answer tot he issues I have summarised, for instance? And of co8urse ES is precisely correct to highlight the issue of statistics at the foundation of the 2nd law. Notice, Dr Sewell’s point in the end is a statistical, probabilistic one. KF
Not a lot, I'm afraid kf. I know rather a lot of physicists (indeed I'm married to one, and I work with several more, and Some Of My Best Friends and all that), and they all agree that Granville Sewell's work is fallacious. As for the issue you raise, well, tbh your argument simply isn't making any sense to me, for reasons I've given in previous conversations on this subject. As far as I can tell, I don't think your concept of FSCO/I is sound, as I tried to demonstrate to you in our discussion about Chesil Beach. At best, it is extremely unclear. What does the bolded below mean,for instance:
So, when we see a functionally constrained system, which is built up from many components in particular arrangements that are specific to observable function, then that system is necessarily in a highly constrained, low entropy state, relative to the sea of possibilities for the same components.
?Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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How the “First Replicator” may have got round the thermodynamic problem of creating and sustaining that initial ordered state is a different matter, but once started, Life is simply a chain reaction pulling order from disorder, with ongoing energy input.
I don't see that it's a different matter. Most OOL theories propose some kind of temperature gradient that gives rise to convection cycle, where endothermic reactions happen at the top and exothermic at the bottom. As soon as you've got a cyclical energy storage-and-release system, you've got the potential for feedback loops, and thus for nonlinear self-perpetuating patterns. In another part of the internet there's a long-running and acrimonious thread (actually many, scattered over several boards) about a wind-powered cart that goes downwind faster than the wind. It clearly works. And yet people still insist that it can't, because it violates the 2LoT - and that it's a perpetual motion machine. Obviously it isn't, because it stops when the wind stops. But that doesn't convince the Unbelievers. And nor does it violate the 2LoT. Although it was, admittedly, Intelligently Designed :)Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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Hi Lizzie. You said,
I have not read his book,but I have read his paper:A second look at the second law, in which he himself writes, in conclusion:
Of course, one can still argue that the spectacular increase in order seen on Earth does not violate the second law because what has happened here is not really extremely improbable. Not many people are willing to make this argument, however; in fact, the claim that the second law does not apply to open systems was invented in an attempt to avoid having to make this argument.
His first sentence is,of course, correct. However, his second sense is doubly wrong. It is precisely the argument of evolutionary biologists that what has happened on earth is “not really extremely improbable”, so his statement that “not many people are willing to make this argument” betrays complete ignorance of evolutionary theory. And the idea that “the claim that the second law does not apply to open systems was invented in an attempt to avoid having to make this argument” is simply false. The claim is made because it is demonstrably true.
I agree that many people regard as not improbable the proposition that life arose from inanimate chemicals and then became more and more diverse until the present day. But that is exactly the bone of contention, isn't it? I would argue that first, it is on its face highly improbable, and second, there is no actual evidence for its claimed probability. No one has even a viable theory of how life could have arisen initially in any way that is remotely probable, and there is no evidence that Darwinian processes can have produced any macro-evolutionary change without repeatedly overcoming impossibly huge probabilistic barriers. Secondly, the Second Law does apply to open systems. That is precisely his point. The mathematics of the Second Law can be paraphrased as, "The amount of thermodynamic order in an open system cannot increase faster than that which is imported across the boundary of the system." So I'll repeat my original point. ID implies that the only phenomenon capable of violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics is intelligence. This has major implications for the nature of intelligence.Bruce David_{February 9, 2012
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Well, there are a couple of vitalists here. I can't remember whether Joe is one.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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Hi Rob, Thanks for a very thought-provoking post. So if I understand you rightly, you would oppose psychic research, since at best, it merely uncovers scientifically unproductive long-range (spatial or temporal) correlations between various kinds of mental phenomena, rather than true causal connections?vjtorley_{February 9, 2012
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Joe says that living things are not reducible to matter and energy. I wonder if he simply means that an organism so reduced is no longer "living"(in which case, he can hardly be argued with) or whether there is something other than matter and energy with which living organisms are imbued. A conundrum.Bydand_{February 9, 2012
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You are obvioulsy a twisted and confused person.
That's the first thing you've got right today! But back to thermodynamics:
That said even if living organisms require matter and energy to stay living, that does not mean living organisms are reducible to matter and energy. Only an ignorant person would make such a correlation, and here you are.
Living organisms order disordered chemistry. Or, they turn the ordered chemistry of other 'ordered' living things into their own 'order'. And they use energy to do the work. At a very basic level, something like a chemoautotroph takes the energetic electrons in, for example, hydrogen sulphide, and using that energy alone, constructs carbohydrate from CO2 and water. It is not thermodynamically favourable to make glucose from CO2 and water. So energy has to come in. Then something eats the chemoautotroph - a rich fauna operates at deep-sea vents feeding directly on sulphur-feeders. Crabs, tube worms, fish. Then something eats that, converting crab-ordering into fish-ordering. Then we eat the fish ... whenever an organism uses the consumed energy to do work (including creating its own 'ordered' form) it siphons off a little of the trapped energy. The 'exhaust gases' of this system are CO2 and water. Now, you are correct that there is a mysterious 'something' additional to the matter/energy flow. There is some kind of organising principle at work - something causes these various kinds of "orderer" to actually do that ordering. But at no point does this organising principle step outside the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Without energy, living 'orderers' cannot order. DNA utilises energy to sustain and replicate itself, without violating any thermodynamic principle. How the "First Replicator" may have got round the thermodynamic problem of creating and sustaining that initial ordered state is a different matter, but once started, Life is simply a chain reaction pulling order from disorder, with ongoing energy input.Chas D_{February 9, 2012
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In that case, Joe, I will simply rephrase my claim: "Secondly, all you have to do to find testable hypotheses for ~~evolution~~ common descent and heritable variation in reproductive success is to use Google Scholar to locate papers in which such hypotheses have been tested. They are countless." However, I'll make a couple of comments on your 5 and 6, as there are some small straw men lurking there:
5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
It's perfectly possible that abiogenesis occurred more than once, and that we are the result of some kind of symbiosis between more than one common ancestral population. And a single common ancestor seems unlikely. Most current OOL theories propose a set of conditions in which Darwinian-capable self-replicators tended to form from non-replicating materials. So we'd have to say we simply do not know whether there is a single root of to the tree of life or whether there were several contributing branches. We do know that the tree is bushy at the base. So evolutionary theory does not stand or fall by the hypothesis that we have a single common ancestor. Indeed, it is completely independent of it. What it does posit is that given a population of self-replicators replicating with variance in reproductive success in the current environment, is that adaptation to the environment will occur. And this of course has been observed in real time.
6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms.
Well, the hypothesis is that these mechanism account for the patterns we observe in lviing organisms, including, most notably, their fittedness to thrive in their environments. No scientific theory ever includes the clause that "this theory is completely sufficient to account for" the observed phenomena. It is in the very nature of scientific models that they are never assumed to be sufficient. This is a very important point, because I think a lot of the angst in discussion here rests on the idea that evolutionary theory (by which I mean your 5 and 6 more or less) is the theory that life is "natural". It isn't. It's the theory that a specific set of natural processes resulted in the the observed pattern of life. Those two things may sound similar but they are crucially different. The first is untestable. No matter how well our theories fit the data, we simply cannot rule out that the whole thing was set in motion by an omniscient God who knew, and intended, every single event that occurred, and made sure that no other event that we might imagine could have occurred, did. The second, however, is eminently testable, and has passed a whole series of tests with flying colours. That doesn't mean that the theory is true; it does mean that it is a highly successful theory.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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StephenB, I didn't realize how difficult it was to discuss these topics without a long series of definitions of the words. "Paranormal" usually excludes the miraculous. "occult" definitely excudes the miraculous. That's because "miracles" are attributed to God, "paranormal" are attributed to people, and "occult" are attributed to demons etc. Only if one ignores final causes, can these three categories collapse into "supernatural". Which, come to think of it, is another reason for rejecting the use of the word "supernatural". My original post was intended to lump "paranormal" and "occult" into the same category, but not "miraculous". That is, there is no danger than studying the miracles of God will cause a man to fall into idolatry, but there is every danger that the occult and the paranormal will do so. One more definition, and I'm done. Idolatry is not just the worship of images. It is not just the worship of man made stuff. Idolatry is recursion, the worship of something we define, whether it be images, money, power, nationality, race, sex or creed. Because idolatry is the presence of positive feedback, of runaway recursion, of attitudes allowed to become reality. Even good things, when put into a recursive position, will become idols. And idols eat us. They have to eat us, because we are their power, their energy, their source of food and existence. "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."Robert Sheldon_{February 9, 2012
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Hi Joe:
A couple of evo fallacies:
I take it that the statements you have numbered below are statements that you think are a) true and b) denied by "evos". I am addressing them on this assumption.
1- Having enough energy available to do the work does not mean the available energy can do the work required
This statement is true as far as I can parse it. It is certainly true that having lots of energy does not, alone, mean that I can use it to do work. I have lots of heat energy in the walls of my house right now, but I can't use it to make myself a cup of tea. But it is not true that "evos" believe that the statement is false, nor is it true that any evolutionary theory is based on the assumption that it is false. Nobody proposes that a seed can grow into a tree without the input of energy, nor do they propose that result is a decrease in entropy. As a result of sunlight reaching the leaves of the tree, carbon dioxide and water were converted into a form of energy that could be used by the tree, namely sugar, which was subsequently broken down by the tree, releasing heat. That heat represents the increase in entropy. It cannot do the work that the original sunlight could. No energy has been lost, but entropy has increased, and there is thus now, in the universe, less energy available to make trees than there was before the tree grew. There is still some energy stored in useful form, and I can chop down the tree to burn a fire, but I won't get anything like the energy out of my fire than went into growing the tree. And when the fire has burned down there will be even less usable energy around.
2- The sun provides energy but that does not mean that energy can produce a living organism
Well, again, this statement is true, but "evos" do not believe it is false. The reason the sun can provide the energy needed to produce a living organism is that the sun's energy is in a form that can be used for work on earth. This is because it is at a higher temperature than we are. Heat can flow from the sun to earth, and things on earth can use it to do work. However, as a result of doing that work, heat is dissipated, and total entropy increases. A planet orbiting a vast dead sun, with the same energy as our sun but at the same temperature as the planet, would not be able to produce solar-powered life-forms. In other words, nothing, including living things, violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and "evos" don't say that anything can. So you do indeed have two straw men, there, Joe. Both statements are true, and "evos" are happy to agree that they are true. Indeed, we frequently do, in response to the claim that life violates the 2LoT. Or perhaps you think the statements are false, but evos believe them? In which case, I retract my accusation that you have erected two straw men here, and change it to "you have made two mistakes".Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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Gregory, The derivative of a function has different properties than the function, which was a mistake that I made in the first paper I wrote after getting my PhD. (I had assumed that if f(0)-->0, then df/dx(0)-->0. It took the referee a year to straighten me out. The only time I can say that peer review worked.) So the meta-study is not the same as the study. Metascience is not the same thing as science. And if we attempt to study the methods of science--say, Methodological Naturalism--we cannot employ the same tools as science. The History and Philosophy of Science field knows this, and uses tools of philosophy to discuss the foundations of science. This point is made over and over again, but never seems to stick, that Methodological Naturalism, or Logical Positivism, would disqualify its own criteria; the philosophy of what makes things true does not pass its own "truth test". Okay, is this a problem? Absolutely. Because it means that either all science is "hypocritical" or that science is "incomplete". Goedel makes the same argument for math. Poythress and a few other theologians argue that religious metaphysics establish the foundation of modern science, because otherwise we get into these navel-gazing recursive definitions that go nowhere. Solipsism. Anti-realism. Spiritism are all examples of circular-logic philosophies that destroy science. And one, if not the main purpose of ID is to show that MN does the same thing to science--it eviscerates it, distorts it, sends it into cul-de-sacs of useless investigation. This is what Jaki attributes the cause of the still-birth of science in all other cultures. But then what rescues theology from the same fate? Or for that matter, how do we handle psychology or any of the sciences that think about our thinking? We can handle recursion, and indeed, must handle recursion every day, but we do not use the tools of science. We use the tools of personality, of persons. All those things your mom told you to do, be polite, say you are sorry, don't be bossy, keep your promises--are person-tools. None of them make any sense to, say, astronomy. Everyone of them matters when dealing with people, with psychology, with theology. So you see, we actually do make this separation between things and people every day, it is just that MN materialists have falsely convinced us that the mind can be studied as if it were a machine. The outcome of that false view, is a series of "discoveries" that reveal more about us than the object of study--Freud's "discoveries" are all about Freud, Jungian psychology is all about Jung, etc. And when we think we have achieved some power, some control, some possession through these "tools", we are like Margaret Mead thinking she was describing "coming of age in Samoa" when all she was getting was projections of her frustrated desires. This is why most of paranormal research turns out to be junk. Not because the people are crooks or cranks but because the tools they use are traitorous. Irving Langmuir discusses this problem in his essay on "pathological science". Whenever we deal with recursive things, we must be very, very careful. Positive feedback is an enormously powerful force, that no amount of care can control. It is like an unstable computer solution (the mistake that cost me an extra year to get my PhD), that no amount of damping or diffusing can prevent from exploding. Therefore we must discard all tools that show this trait, and only use tools known to have stable properties. Well, that's been broad brush, but if you have some borderline cases, perhaps some analysis can separate the recursive part from the materialist part, which might allow progress in both fronts.Robert Sheldon_{February 9, 2012
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Well what are you arguing about then? If you aren’t anti-evolution, what do you think “our side” is actually proposing?
As I have been saying- Why are you even here seeing that you don't have a bleeping clue as to what is being debated even though it has been spelled out many times over many years? This is somewhat dated but it gets the point across: Evolution has several meanings. The meanings of evolution, from Darwinism, Design and Public Education: 1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature 2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population 3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor 4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification, chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations. 5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor. 6. “Blind watchmaker” thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors solely through an unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; that the mechanisms of natural selection, random variation and mutation, and perhaps other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, are completely sufficient to account for the appearance of design in living organisms. The debate isn't as black & white as saying it is evo #6 against IDists, Creationists and theistic evolutionists. However it is obvious that evo #6 is what is being debated. (Theistic evolutionists are a different breed. They don't seem to acknowledge that evo #6 is what is being taught in our public school system. And therefore don't appear to understand the issue. The TE's I have debated with tell me that humans were an intended outcome of the evolutionary process, which is OK for evo #5 but defies evo #6. IOW TE's are closet IDists.) Creationists go with 1-4 (above), with the change in 4 being built-in responses to environmental cues or organism direction as the primary mechanism, for allele frequency change, culled by various selection processes (as well as random effects/ events/ choice of not to mate/ unable to find a mate). The secondary mechanism would be random variations or mutations culled by similar processes. IOW life’s diversity evolved from the originally Created Kind, humans included. Science should therefore be the tool/ process with which we determine what those kinds were. With Creation vs. "Evolution #6" the 4 main debating points are clear: 1) The starting point of the evolutionary process. (What was (were) the founding population(s)?) 2) The phenotypic & morphological plasticity allowed/ extent the evolutionary process can take a population (do limits exist?). 3) The apparent direction the evolutionary process took to form the history of life. (ie from "simpler" bacteria-like organisms to complex metazoans) 4) The mechanism for the evolutionary process. With ID vs. Evo #6 it is mainly about the mechanism- IDists go with evolution 1-5, with the Creation change to 4 plus the following caveat in 5: Life’s diversity was brought about via the intent of a design. The initial conditions, parameters, resources and goal was pre-programmed as part of an evolutionary algorithm designed to bring forth complex metazoans, as well as leave behind the more “simple” viruses, prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes. IDists understand that if life didn't arise from non-living matter via some blind watchmaker-type process, there is no reason to infer its subsequent diversity arose soley due to those type of processes (point 1 up top). What does the data say? Well there isn't any data that demonstrates bacteria can "evolve" into anything but bacteria. Therefore anyone who accepts evolution 5 or 6 has some splaining to do. Preferably splainations with scientific merit.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Except for the fact that ID is not anti-evolution, which makes you an equivocating loser.
Well what are you arguing about then? If you aren't anti-evolution, what do you think "our side" is actually proposing?Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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So … I LIED that eating a chicken would be a demonstration of the reducibility of living organisms to matter and energy?
I didn't say that. You are obvioulsy a twisted and confused person. That said even if living organisms require matter and energy to stay living, that does not mean living organisms are reducible to matter and energy. Only an ignorant person would make such a correlation, and here you are.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Joe:They argue that living organisms are reducible to matter and energy. Chas: And so they are. Joe: Evidence please. Ya see if you had suchj evidence then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. IOW you lied.
So ... I LIED that eating a chicken would be a demonstration of the reducibility of living organisms to matter and energy? Bwahahaha. We are having this .. er ... "discussion" due to your cluelessness on the second law of thermodynamics. May we lock you in a room without food, and periodically check up on your entropy? This is your stock MO. You run out of half-intelligent things to say (...) and pull out that lame, dog-eared "evidence" card. Even on such straightforward matters as energy flow through living systems! There is a vast literature. I can't imagine what your standards as regards evidence would be, in light of your credulous swallowing of UFOlogy and crop-circlism. Perhaps if I donned a big silver suit and flattened some corn... It is evident that you barely grasp the subjects on which you pontificate so prolifically - and you have no shame on that score whatsoever. You see oafishness as a virtue - I've seen your blog. "Gee, if a dumb ol' guy like me can see why science is such baloney...". Yuk yuk yuk, etcetera.Chas D_{February 9, 2012
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Well, firstly, it is not a lie to say something that you believe to be true, and I believe my statement to be true.
I don't care what you believe. It is obvious you cannot support that belief.
Secondly, all you have to do to find testable hypotheses for evolution is to use Google Scholar to locate papers in which such hypotheses have been tested. They are countless.
Except for the fact that ID is not anti-evolution, which makes you an equivocating loser.
As for straw men, you posted two in your post 18.
Chas said the same thing and he is being proven wrong. Go figure...Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Joe, it’s because ID refuses to consider the design processes that it is bad science (well, there are other reasons but that’s one of them).
That- the design processes- is a SEPARATE question. Geez Dembski goes over that in "No Free Lunch" Ya see we still don't know how Stonehenge was designed or constructed, but we know it was designed and constructed by agencies. Your position doesn't have anything to offer pertaining to "how". So it is pretty pathetic for you to insist ID needs that when your position doesn't have a clue. Also ID does not posit the designer is supernatural. What ID says is that if the designer is supernatural, so what? Science only cares about reality. YOUR problem is tat you cannot even test your position.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Well, firstly, it is not a lie to say something that you believe to be true, and I believe my statement to be true. Secondly, all you have to do to find testable hypotheses for evolution is to use Google Scholar to locate papers in which such hypotheses have been tested. They are countless. As for straw men, you posted two in your post 18.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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Joe, it's because ID refuses to consider the design processes that it is bad science (well, there are other reasons but that's one of them). Simply inferring a pattern that you think is only producible by an intelligent designer is completely useless unless you hypothesise the kind of design and implementation processes that would have led to the observed pattern. This is because there are other contenders, e.g. Darwinian evolution. But, as you say, most IDists refuse to go there. One good reason for not doing so, is of course, if you posit that the designer is supernatural, and there is no scientific test for the supernatural. But that's your problem not ours.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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But you declared the following an evo fallacy: “Having enough energy available to do the work does not mean the available energy can do the work required”.
Yup read eigenstate's posts. That is a response to what he has been posting. They argue that living organisms are reducible to matter and energy.
And so they are.
Evidence please. Ya see if you had suchj evidence then we wouldn't be having this discussion. IOW you lied. And living organisms do violate the second law.
No they bloody don’t!
Yes, they bloody do!Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Chas: 'Evos’ don’t (1) argue that energy is always free and available, Joe (who else?): tat’s not what I said
Fair enough. But you declared the following an evo fallacy: "Having enough energy available to do the work does not mean the available energy can do the work required". There are, I admit, a few of ways to read that, in the context of it being an 'evo fallacy', and it is not at all clear what the fallacy is, if not my first reading. What is it that evos argue on energy availability and the work it needs to do that is fallacious? How much more energy does it take to make (say) a chicken than is available in its feed?
- you have reading issues and an agenda that doesn’t allow you to focus.
Are you familiar with the term 'irony', Joe?
(2) argue that energy can produce a living organism They argue that living organisms are reducible to matter and energy.
And so they are. Try eating a chicken.
And living organisms do violate the second law.
No they bloody don't!Chas D_{February 9, 2012
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What strawman have I erected? Please be specific. And I have pointed out your mistakes. You just refuse to be corrected. As for lying, well it is a lie to say the theory of evolution produces testable hypotheses and you say that all the time.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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Well, Joe, obviously I disagree, and, indeed, consider that the straw man erecting is being done by IDists around here. And I'm delighted to have your word now for the garbled versions of Darwinism I often see: Garwinism. But of course you, and other IDists think the reverse. In other words, neither "side" thinks the other side is fairly representing their own position. That situation will only be resolved only by people taking the time to try to understand what the other is saying. It will not, IMO, be resolved by one side telling the other side that they are stupid. That's the reason civility matters in these discussions: because it gets in the way of actual discussion. I don't actually mind you calling me "dense" if you point out the mistake you think I am making. But if it is a substitute for reasoned discourse then, then you are wasting both my time and your own. I do, however, mind you accusing me of deliberate dishonesty, because that not only does not contribute to the discussion, it undermines its very basis. This is why I tend to ignore posters who accuse me of lack of integrity, but on the whole am reasonably happy to trade jocular jibes with someone who merely calls me "dense". It's not as though I'm not fully aware of my own occasional density. But I don't lie.Elizabeth Liddle_{February 9, 2012
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‘Evos’ don’t (1) argue that energy is always free and available,
tat's not what I said- you have reading issues and an agenda that doesn't allow you to focus.
(2) argue that energy can produce a living organism
They argue that living organisms are reducible to matter and energy. And living organisms do violate the second law.Joe_{February 9, 2012
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A couple of evo fallacies: 1- Having enough energy available to do the work does not mean the available energy can do the work required 2- The sun provides energy but that does not mean that energy can produce a living organism
Strawman erection, Joe? You complain about Elizabeth's supposed strawmen? Then offer a twofer? 'Evos' don't (1) argue that energy is always free and available, nor (2) argue that energy can produce a living organism. They would rarely even mention the 2nd Law were it not for the perennial Creationist error that Life violates it.Chas D_{February 9, 2012
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