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Author Topic:   Evidence to expect given a designer
PaulK
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Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 317 of 373 (647826)
01-11-2012 1:04 PM
Reply to: Message 315 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


quote:
Sigh) Look "intent" is not established it is DETECTED!!! I have however ESTABLISHED that one of the best ways to "detect" intent is to look for specificity
If you mean that intent is directly observed, then you have a problem.
I would add that you have yet to establish that your specificity really is a good method of detecting intent, the more so since intent is part of your definition (requiring that we establish intent before concluding that your specificity is present). So I suggest that you correct your definition of specificity to remove the misleading reference to intent so that we can really discuss it's merits.
quote:
Furthermore I have very well defined what I mean by specificity and given several real life scenarios in which real scientists use-- looking for specificity (rather that is the actual word they call it or not) to detect intelligence.
Obviously you haven't defined it very well since even your latest definition has an obvious problem. And no, you haven't actually shown that anybody uses your specificity at all.
quote:
I have pointed out that many working biologists describe the code in DNA as being very specified. I have also pointed out that there is no observable evidence that we can look to in biology, that explains where this code (clearly recognized) in DNA, came from.
You seem to miss the distinction between SHOWING and mere assertion. Merely claiming something does not make it true.
quote:
Therefore, devoid of any other observations, the most logical conclusion based on observation is that it came from an intelligent source.
That would be questionable even if there were no other observations. Even if you restrict the question to the first DNA there is still cause to believe that it was preceded by RNA based life. And relying on a lack of observation is -as has been shown - a very unreliable way of coming to conclusions.
quote:
The fact that we have never observed "nothing" ever. means the complimentary way of making that statement is to say, "we have only observed that something requires something else in order to be." BTW your comment about observing nothing produce nothing was quite hhhilllaaarioooouuus. I got sody pop up my nose on that one.
Okay, so your first "scientific observation" was nothing of the sort, just a lack of observation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 315 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 328 by Just being real, posted 01-14-2012 6:45 AM PaulK has replied

  
Panda
Member (Idle past 3712 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


Message 318 of 373 (647827)
01-11-2012 1:04 PM
Reply to: Message 316 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
JBR writes:
Time is a human invention... a tool if you will, invented to think abstractly.
So...nothing got older before humans existed?
You are equivocating between 'naming' with 'creating'.
We decided to call duration 'time' - we did not create it.
Time existed before mankind.
I really wonder how you could think otherwise.
Straggler writes:
If time is something (which surely it must be) then - By definition there can be no time when there was nothing.
Straggler's point stands.

If I were you
And I wish that I were you
All the things I'd do
To make myself turn blue

This message is a reply to:
 Message 316 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 329 by Just being real, posted 01-14-2012 6:45 AM Panda has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 319 of 373 (647829)
01-11-2012 1:11 PM
Reply to: Message 316 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
Here is an interesting comment for you. Suppose "time" is not a "something" but merely a human measurement to measure change.
The one observation that fights this interpretation is entropy. Entropy is always increasing as a whole. We can see this in distant galaxies. This increase in entropy happened before Earth was even a planet and well before the first modern humans stared at the stars. The march from low entropy to high entropy is real and independent of human observation.
Of course, this really isn't getting us any closer to the question posed in the opening post. I, for one, would like to see any cdesign proponentist explain why their model would ever predict a nested hierarchy for genetics and morphology. This is my biggest sticking point with ID.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 316 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 320 by NoNukes, posted 01-11-2012 3:05 PM Taq has replied
 Message 330 by Just being real, posted 01-14-2012 6:45 AM Taq has not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 320 of 373 (647841)
01-11-2012 3:05 PM
Reply to: Message 319 by Taq
01-11-2012 1:11 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
Taq writes:
Of course, this really isn't getting us any closer to the question posed in the opening post. I, for one, would like to see any cdesign proponentist explain why their model would ever predict a nested hierarchy for genetics and morphology. This is my biggest sticking point with ID.
I'm sorry Taq, but I'll have to admit that the final sentence in the above quote almost made soda come out of my nose.
ID makes one and only one testable prediction; namely that the theory of evolution cannot explain at least one observed biological feature. Regarding everything else, there is just ad hoc hand-waving and/or Bible study about what a Designer might or might not have a motivation to do.
Of course the lack of any real testable predictions should be of no surprise to anyone. The entire purpose for ID is to moderate the effects of teaching of the theory of evolution in k-12 classrooms given that outright bans on teaching the ToE has been found to be unconstitutional. ID is required to actually predict jack doodly-squat nothing. The heavy lifting of actually attacking the evidence for the theory of evolution is left to other branches of creation science.
Just having methods, logic, mathematics, and organization does not make an inquiry scientific. Astrology and other forms of numerology have all of those things. Sorry DB.
Yes, your observation was completely correct, but I think the problem with ID is far more fundamental than your statement hints.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.
Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 319 by Taq, posted 01-11-2012 1:11 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 324 by Taq, posted 01-11-2012 4:30 PM NoNukes has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 321 of 373 (647846)
01-11-2012 3:18 PM
Reply to: Message 314 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


Just being real writes:
With a little clip here and a little soldering there (onto an intelligently designed threaded coaxial) your naturally formed wires are turned into an intelligently designed antenna.
The process used to design the antennae is the same one used by evolution to design species. Evolution tries out random changes, a longer beak here, slightly shorter legs there, then it tests the organism in its environment to see how successful it is, which means that the most successful organisms contribute more of their changes to the next generation. Then it repeats this over and over again for generation after generation.
The genetic algorithm tries out random changes for the antennae, a little clip here, a littler soldering there, then it tests the antennae in its environment to see how successful it is, which means that the most successful antennae contribute more of their changes for the next iteration. Then it repeats this over and over again for iteration after iteration.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Wordsmithing.
Edited by Percy, : Typo, more wordsmithing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 314 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 331 by Just being real, posted 01-14-2012 6:45 AM Percy has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 322 of 373 (647849)
01-11-2012 3:23 PM
Reply to: Message 315 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


Look "intent" is not established it is DETECTED!!! I have however ESTABLISHED that one of the best ways to "detect" intent is to look for specificity.
How?
Furthermore I have very well defined what I mean by specificity and given several real life scenarios in which real scientists use-- looking for specificity (rather that is the actual word they call it or not) to detect intelligence.
No.
I have pointed out that many working biologists describe the code in DNA as being very specified.
No.
To clarify, you may have pointed it out, but it isn't true.
Therefore, devoid of any other observations, the most logical conclusion based on observation is that it came from an intelligent source.
But we have other observations. Actual observations, not just stuff you've made up.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 315 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(3)
Message 323 of 373 (647859)
01-11-2012 4:27 PM


Another example from my favourite snail man, Steve Jones.
LET'S TURN TO THE second issue: natural selection. People often think of natural selection as something almost magical. But it isn't. It's extraordinarily simple. I first witnessed natural selection taking place in a soap factory in Liverpool in the 1960s, where I worked after leaving school.
Detergent was made then as it is made now: by forcing boiling hot chemicals at great pressure through a nozzle. As the mixture zooms out, the pressure drops, and it breaks into a vapour that is sucked away and a powder which is then sold as detergent.
The nozzles were a damn nuisance. They were inefficient, kept blocking and made detergent grains of different sizes.
Unilever and various other companies hired mathematicians and physicists in an attempt to improve the situation. But they didn't do very well; it turns out that the physics and maths of the transition from liquid to powder is quite difficult to understand.
So, almost in despair, they turned to the lowly biologists and asked if they had anything to add. What the biologists did was to apply Darwinian natural selection.
They made 10 copies of the nozzles, with slight changes absolutely at random. Some nozzles were longer, some shorter, some had a bigger or smaller hole, maybe a few grooves on the inside. But one of them improved a very small amount on the original, perhaps by just one or two per cent.
Based on the improved nozzle, they made another 10 slightly different copies, and repeated the process. After only 45 generations — which would be an utterly trivial instant in evolutionary time — they had a nozzle that worked many times better than the original. This was without any forethought of any kind, only by a simple application of evolutionary mechanisms.
Full moon, Jupiter, and Jupiter’s moons

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 324 of 373 (647860)
01-11-2012 4:30 PM
Reply to: Message 320 by NoNukes
01-11-2012 3:05 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
Yes, your observation was completely correct, but I think the problem with ID is far more fundamental than your statement hints.
You are completely correct, but I would rather approach ID with the hope that something fruitful can come from it, even if it is rotten to the core. I have had some very intriguing conversations with Mike the Wiz about ID. None of us came away with our minds changed about anything, but at least we were able to actually discuss biology which interests me more than a diatribe on the political motivations of ID supporters.
I realize that a lot of us have been around this debate for quite some time. We have even developed our own shorthand (e.g. PRATT's). Yes, we are jaded to some degree. We have seen dishonest creationist after dishonest creationist. However, we still need to remember that there are lurkers who are new to this debate. The more we can show the absence of anything approaching science within the ID ranks as it relates to biology the better we make our point. Pointing to one of the fundamental observations of biology (the nested hierarchy) is a great way of doing this, IMHO. ID just can not explain biology. Ever.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 320 by NoNukes, posted 01-11-2012 3:05 PM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
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subbie
Member (Idle past 1254 days)
Posts: 3509
Joined: 02-26-2006


Message 325 of 373 (647868)
01-11-2012 4:47 PM
Reply to: Message 314 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


But it's been busted.
Your failure to understand it does not equate with it being busted. It simply equate with you not understanding.
Time to move on.
This I agree with. You are either unwilling or unable to understand my point. In either event, it's apparent that further attempts to explain it to you will be futile.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson
We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat
It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate
...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist

This message is a reply to:
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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 326 of 373 (647878)
01-11-2012 5:08 PM
Reply to: Message 324 by Taq
01-11-2012 4:30 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
None of us came away with our minds changed about anything, but at least we were able to actually discuss biology which interests me more than a diatribe on the political motivations of ID supporters.
ID should be allowed to grow beyond the political motivations of the initial ID advocates. But it hasn't done so, and I have yet to see an argument that it has done so from DB, JBR, mike the wiz, Behe, or anyone else. Assertions yes, but not much more.
But your point is well taken, and in any case, I didn't sneeze diet Sprite onto my lap top.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. The proper place to-day, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)

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 Message 324 by Taq, posted 01-11-2012 4:30 PM Taq has not replied

  
Straggler
Member
Posts: 10333
From: London England
Joined: 09-30-2006


(1)
Message 327 of 373 (647949)
01-12-2012 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 316 by Just being real
01-11-2012 12:40 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
JBR writes:
The problem is we run into a logical stalemate.
Yes. That's my point. By the terms of your own argument there is a logical stalemate.
You want to reject "something from nothing" on the basis that it has never been observed. Indeed given that we are "something" it is by definition impossible for us to ever observe a state of nothingness.
But the exact same problem applies to "infinite in time". We have never observed this. And by virtue of the fact that we are finite in time it is impossible for us to ever observe this.
So the two options you put forward are identical by the terms you yourself have also put forward. Yet you embrace one and reject the other and proclaim that you are making some sort of logical distinction rather than simply demonstrating your subjective bias for some "infinite in time" designer.
JBR writes:
If we are going to assume based on observation that everything that has ever existed is finite because that is all we have ever observed, then how do we rationalize this mathematically? Finite things can not logically or mathematically also be infinite. Therefore we have no other choice but to conclude that there must exist something that we have yet to observe which can satisfy this logical dilemma.
Why doesn't something from nothing equally resolve this self appointed dilemma of yours?
JBR writes:
Suppose "time" is not a "something" but merely a human measurement to measure change.
Unless you are suggesting that before humans joined the ontological party changes were occurring without duration you seem to be making a distinction without a difference.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 316 by Just being real, posted 01-11-2012 12:40 PM Just being real has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 332 by Just being real, posted 01-14-2012 6:45 AM Straggler has replied

  
Just being real
Member (Idle past 3935 days)
Posts: 369
Joined: 08-26-2010


Message 328 of 373 (648253)
01-14-2012 6:45 AM
Reply to: Message 317 by PaulK
01-11-2012 1:04 PM


If you mean that intent is directly observed, then you have a problem.
No my friend, I meant exactly what I said: "intent" is not established it is DETECTED!!! If I use a "detector" to detect police radar, I have not "directly observed" the radar waves, I have detected them. We use a distinguishing quality or attribute explicitly set forth; as Intended for, applying to, or acting on a particular thing: Something particularly fitted to a use or purpose (specificity)... to spot intelligence. And the key to DETECTING specificity is looking for any event or object which exhibits a pattern that matches a "foreknown" pattern that was completely "interdependent" of the first. The observer must be able to recognize it from a completely independent experience. This is any pattern that produces a recognition response of a functional response. When an observer sees this, he has not observed intent, he has however detected the clues that we commonly look for to tell if something is specified.
And we do this every day. We see a bird's nest up in a tree and it instantly invokes a recognition response in us from a completely independent experience, and we know this bowl shaped clump of twigs were arranged that way for a specific purpose. To suggest that specificity is not detected this way turns us into a bunch of bumbling idiots who can't tell our asses from a hole in the ground. Perhaps you are comfortable with that description, but I am not.
Me: I have pointed out that many working biologists describe the code in DNA as being very specified.
You: You seem to miss the distinction between SHOWING and mere assertion. Merely claiming something does not make it true.
Wow... for real? Well since it seems to be far too difficult for you to go and back read before making accusations, I will help you out sir. In message 113 I actually "SHOWED" how several biologists refer to the code in DNA as being specified. In message 271 I actually "SHOWED" a list of several biologists who directly attribute this to an intelligent source. Thus contrary to your accusation that I am merely claiming and not "SHOWING"... you are wrong --again.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 317 by PaulK, posted 01-11-2012 1:04 PM PaulK has replied

Replies to this message:
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Just being real
Member (Idle past 3935 days)
Posts: 369
Joined: 08-26-2010


Message 329 of 373 (648254)
01-14-2012 6:45 AM
Reply to: Message 318 by Panda
01-11-2012 1:04 PM


Re: Evidence for a designer
So...nothing got older before humans existed?
You're confusing things wearing out with the measurement we use to gauge the rate of that change. Your question is a little like suggesting that I am claiming that before they invented feet or meters, that the moon touched the earth. Our bodies wearing out is no more a result of time than the distance to the moon is a result of the metric system.
We decided to call duration 'time' - we did not create it.
That is correct. Therefore change existed long before humans. But the entire construct of the increments we use (and call time) did not exist. We are so proud of our units of time that we have become completely intrenched in them to the point that we even consider them to be literal as if they are a place to be traveled to. We have forgotten that they are merely man made increments to measure the rate at which things change. We can not travel to the "place" of 1955 (as in the moving Back to the Future) because 1955 is not a place it is only a chalk mark on the wall to remember the way things were.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 318 by Panda, posted 01-11-2012 1:04 PM Panda has replied

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Just being real
Member (Idle past 3935 days)
Posts: 369
Joined: 08-26-2010


Message 330 of 373 (648255)
01-14-2012 6:45 AM
Reply to: Message 319 by Taq
01-11-2012 1:11 PM


The one observation that fights this interpretation is entropy. Entropy is always increasing as a whole. We can see this in distant galaxies. This increase in entropy happened before Earth was even a planet and well before the first modern humans stared at the stars. The march from low entropy to high entropy is real and independent of human observation.
Yes and I said nothing about the change of the state of things, I said that time is merely man's invention to measure the rate of this change. Again this idea is easily testable with the mind experiment of decreasing the rate of change in the entire universe to zero. At that point we would say that "time" had stopped, when in reality only change had stopped.

This message is a reply to:
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Just being real
Member (Idle past 3935 days)
Posts: 369
Joined: 08-26-2010


Message 331 of 373 (648256)
01-14-2012 6:45 AM
Reply to: Message 321 by Percy
01-11-2012 3:18 PM


The process used to design the antennae is the same one used by evolution to design species.
Oh it was? My bad... Now if you will just be so kind as to point out to me who it was that was there to observe the process of evolution and know they are the same... I would greatly appreciate it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 321 by Percy, posted 01-11-2012 3:18 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
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