The Power/Reality Of Demons And Supernatural Evil.

Quetzal,Besides checking up on message 7, to edge, on the thread, the best scientific method, Is it science, You'll find ideas about "cascades" in my 1972 book, Populations in a Seasonal Environment, Princeton University Press, I have a graph showing the decline of open-nesting birds in the presence of an increase in blue jays, due to human feeding stations. When discussing this with others, there were no data, but I anecdotally noted that we had wood pewees nesting on the K-State campus where crows were nesting. The crows kept the blue jays away. I submitted a grant proposal in 1973, (rejected) trying to test these ideas with parula warblers, crows, and blue jays, using feeders. But my main claim to fame is my paper in the 1977 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, on the Regulation of Plant Communities by the Food Chains exploiting Them, followed eventually by my (hopeful) tour-de-force, "Food chain dynamics, the Central Theory of Ecology" in Oikos, 1987.Not that Diamond needed to get or got any of these ideas from me, (although we did attend the MacArthur Memorial Conference together, where I was discussing them.) Nor did I ever use the word, cascades, which is pretty sexy, or apply the concept as Diamond did. Even what I did do was heavily borrowed from Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin, and it's development heavily dependent on Oksanen's brilliance. But, the Fenno-scandians insisted I write the Central Theory paper, and it validates the idea somewhat as Darwin's "Origin..." validates evolution.My reservations about evolution, by the way stem from my days at Princeton, where I saw on Henry Horn's door, the sign,"The origin of specious by the selection of natural means."You'll have to ask Henry whether he was putting evolutionists down. Hope you get a better answer than I did.Stephen

Hey, Quetzal,I just noted that my name on post 7, the best scientific method, has been changed to Stephen ben Yeshua, from Stephen Fretwell (see post by Minnemooseus). You'll have to search under the Fretwell name, on the topics that have taken off.Stephen

Quetzal,The conservationist urge is sensible to both evolutionary and creationist thinking, but the tactics will be different. This would be worth exploring, and of interest to the moderators here.Stephen

Rrhain, Nah, I just wanted you to beg, so it wouldn't look like I was blowing my own horn....Princeton Univ Press, Monographs in Population Ecology.Acta Biotheoretica, 1969, (with HL Lucas and others). Territorial behavior and habitat selection in birds.American Naturalist, 1974, with CC Smith, Optimal size and number of offspring; 1982, with Oksanen, Food Chain dynamics.Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 1977. The regulation of plant communities by the food chains exploiting them.Oikos, 1987, Food Chain Dynamics, the Central Theory of Ecology.Current Ornithology, 1986. Population Regulation in the Dickcissel.These are approximate. I actually like a paper in Am Nat, 1978, on rich and poor communities, and one on Junco populations, Bird Banding, 1972 (?).Thanks for asking. You're just saying that!We should discuss applied epistemology sometime. See how you arrive at conclusions....Or maybe, as we used to say on other playgrounds, "Oh, yeah? Well it takes one to know one!"Or how about,"You wish!" or "But for the grace of God,..."

Hey, Phatboy,I first wanted to thank you for your reports, and to affirm to you, as a professional epistemologist, anecdotes are useful in the process of getting to the truth.Second, the Bible Codes studies by Witztum and his colleagues, best summarized in a book by Satinover, prove scientifically beyond a reasonable doubt that Genesis was written by some person who was not human. The devil is discussed there, and basically proved beyond reasonable doubt to be the best explanation for your experience. You should learn from the experience, to study diligently how to minimize the influence of the demonic in your life.You will also need to "receive the love of the truth" since the sorts of demonic manifestations you observed are unusual. It's more likely that demons of doubt will stir up skeptics to "darken counsel." You are supposed to be learning how "answer" them.Do you know about the book, "Pigs in the Parlor?" You'll like it.Stephen

Rrhain,First, the discussion of Moby Dick re Witztum's Bible codes is, as Jehovah put it in the codes, a darkening of council. I regard it as a straw man, since it comes from some reporter's discussion of the Codes, and was never reviewed by Witztum himself as an acceptable form of rebuttal.Second, the "codes" in Moby Dick are not (very) implausible. The ones in Genesis are. If you scramble the letters in Moby Dick, you still get "codes" largely as found in the original writing. If you scramble the letters in Genesis, the codes disappear. Of course, chance alone produces "codes." Witztum and his colleagues went to great lengths to set up theoretical and monte carlo examinations of the chance probability of the codes they found. They found it very, very unlikely that the codes they found occured by chance.Third, I actually would expect implausible codes in Moby Dick, and there's a website, Bible Code digest, that explores this. They also report the code study of what Jehovah thought about Moby Dick, where the critic's name was coded (in Job, of course, the only book in the Bible discussing harpooning whales) in revealing verses. Codes, implausible ones, come from supernatural beings, including muses, which I daresay Melville would have confessed to seeking and using.Fourth, the way a scientist rejects an idea as implausible is he finds the idea unconfirmed. There are many other efforts to confirm the codes which have been successful.Fifth, the Moby Dick code critics are untrustworthy authorities, based on their failure to abide by accepted rules of scientific proceedure. They basically censored Witztum and Gans' efforts to rebut the Moby Dick critique.You have to really badly want the Witztum study to be discredited, to pay any attention at all to that Moby Dick critique. This is called wishful thinking. Not generally recommended.As to my acting like a jerk (another of your posts), it's what fallen humans do. I just wanted to encourage you to believe that, if I can make it to the truth, so can you.Stephen

Rrhain,Check this out:Bible Code Digest.com - Moby Dick ArticleStephen

Sidelined,I checked out the site you presented, and regard it as a straw man argument. Drosnin is denied by the authors of the code as really understanding it. Moreover, as I understand Witztum's paper, Thomas has missed the point entirely. So, I'm not impressed.But thanks for the tip.Stephen

Phatboy,You ask, Satinover's reply to this question directs up back to the biblical idea that we are at war, with an enemy who is sending deceiving messages and disinformation. Then, when at war, if we want to know whether a given message is really from our commander and chief (the Lord of Hosts), it is customary to put codes in the message that identify the author as a trustworthy one.Normally, such "signature" codes contain no useful information. Only that the surface message is really directives from headquarters. Satinover however describes how the Israelis used the codes to save thousands of lives during the Gulf War, by predicting the date that the scud missile attack would come.Skepticism kills. Captains of sailing ships were, for 50 years skeptical of James Lind's treatise on limes and scurvy, killing maybe 100,000 sailors unnecessarily. Doctors in Obstetric hospitals killed thousands of new mothers and their babies with childbirth fever, because they were skeptical of Semmelweis' studies on anti-sepsis and hand washing. Today, most cardiovascular deaths are occuring because the National Academy of Sciences is skeptical of Matthias Rath's and Linus Pauling's studies on vitamin C. Love believes all things.

Sidelined,About Thomas and Witztum's paper. Thomas exposes his ignorance of what Witztum did, by focusing on Drosnin, who Witztum and others accuse of misunderstanding what they did. It was Drosnin, not Witztum, who made the assertion about Moby Dick. The best control in Witztum's paper was a scrambling Monte Carlo developement of statistical probabilities associated with the proximity of certain minimal skip phrases. Monte Carlo tests are non-parametric, and extremely robust. They showed that, although the phrases they found were highly probable to occur, it was very unlikely that the minimal skips of the phrases would occur as close together in the text as they did. Thomas never uses statistics this way. His estimates of the number of expected occurances, that were confirmed (duh!), proves only that he doesn't know what rare events to look for, or how to show that they are rare.If you haven't read carefully the site on Moby Dick that I gave earlier, your accusation of me of not reading carefully was projection.

Rrhain,Well, you've made some interesting epistemological choices, which you are free to do, as I am. Most of what you say is simply untrue, and cannot be confirmed with quotes or analysis or any facts from the rebuttals of the Code critics. It is standard practise in science publication, in my experience, to never publish a rebuttal of a refereed article, without allowing the rebutted authors to review (they are peers, after all, and no more likely to have an ax to grind than the critics.) And, normally, a answer to the critics is also considered playing by the rules.And the codes are statistically improbable, unless Witztum and a dozen other statisticians/mathematicians are lying.But, your choice precludes you from understanding all this. Perhaps other readers have made different choices, and will check out the material available.Pity to see such energy wasted on unsupported assertions.StephenConfucious say, "Ostrich with head in sand soon become pile of lion shit."

Schrafinator,Not being a Code Researcher myself, I read critiques and rebuttals, efforts by honorable or acknowledged scholars and scientists, to replicate, debate, and judge the work. If a professional statistician or mathematician describes a work following the original protocol for statistical testing, to replicate or confirm the findings, and fails, then I would question the Codes. The existing critiques, according to the original authors, did not follow the original protocols, the materials and methods as published. They would have pointed out the differences to the critic in a peer review, but were not allowed such review. They would have published their rebuttal, but they were not allowed to do that either, because (according to documents they have in hand), the journal involved said that "there was insufficient interest for further discussion." Not, I noted, that there was insufficient evidence of a failure to follow protocols.Now, at one point, having a doctorate in biomathematics, I bought a Code program and was going to start doing some testing of my own. And, if push comes to shove, that's what I will do. Meaning, if some confirm, but others do not, and the controversy becomes respectable, I might be able to make a contribution, or at least satisfy myself. But, as a forensic judge of debates, this is a no-brainer. The critics are cheating, and really, when called on it, have little or no evidence that the original authors are mistaken. (There is one website, replicating a study by Gans, that failed to replicate. Gans is slow but sure in responding. So, I'm waiting here.) But there are so many confirmable, respectable replications, and the research field is expanding so fast, that it has become a research programme in the Lakatosian sense. Which means that there almost certainly has to be something there, the only question might be, what is it? Failures to replicate in this case recommend ad hoc revision of the hypothesis, not the "utter nonsense" of the critics.I am especially distressed by the weakness, and the religious bias, of the Moby Dick Codes refutes argument. In some religions at least, the postulated existence of Muses would lead us to expect codes in all sorts of art, where the Muse signed the art or literature, just as God is supposed to have "signed" the Bible. The existence of improbable codes anywhere would confirm these religious beliefs. Comparison of the sophistication of the Codes in different places would then allow us to compare the powers of the various gods, belief in which are the basis of these religions. Might be a useful contribution of science to the human inclination to be religious.

Primordial Egg,To honor Moose's gentle guidance, I'll just thank you for the tip, which I found most useful, and comment on topic. To wit,Let's suppose there are demons. If so, what evidence might manifest to confirm their presence? I suggest that the Codes study that Rips participated in ought to be redone, with and without prayer for deliverance from demonic influence. The suggestion (finding, given confirmation by one of the committee members) that experts made a lot of mistakes might be evidence that demons were messing with the study.It seems reasonable, as well, that demons, if they exist, could and might put codes into works they inspire.We would predict, then, that spiritual individuals praying against demons would have better success getting improbable codes from the Bible, and less success getting codes from misleading literature, compared to atheistic scientists.Since demons are postulated by the Bible, this prediction is utterly scientific.Stephen

Abshalom,The beauty of science is that supernatural inventions, or models, can be shown implausible through proper testing. Of course, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially this baby. Clearly, if there does exist ontologically a malign supernatural agent, they will be expected to work by generating distracting covers, false, "invented" versions of themselves. Inventions that only enhance their evil agenda.But, if they are smarter than we are, and more powerful, we need a very protected laboratory to research them. This we must seek God to obtain. Epistemologically, we will never know any more about Satan than he wants us to know, unless there is a God more powerful than he is to help us. It's the only way we can win, so we have to play that way. And it works, or has for me. God does have Satan on a sort of leash, and does teach those who ask how to "wrestle with principalities and powers."I appreciate the way you hate evil.Stephen

Schrafinator,Isn't there some rule here about unsupported assertions? Check out the Journal of Scientific Exploration for evidence that you are simply making unsupported assertions. Or ignore that reference and stay ignorant, and lose the debate.Believe the lie, and then you die.You ask, Factors that lower fitness, defined by population genetics. As :ae: as noted, evil has to be defined relative to some subject, of course. Evil, to some genome, is the set of factors that lower its long-term reproductive value. Drives it to extinction.As I have noted, evolutionary thinking appears to lower the reproductive value of those who choose it, probably because it is not true, is a demonic lie designed to deface and destroy creatures beloved by their creator, and made in His image. The demons, for reasons of their own, hate and are at war with this Creator. But He is more powerful than they are, so the demons try to hurt Him by hurting His creation. They appear to be doing very well with you.Evil, of course, is best defined in regard to the most enlightened subject in the system. You may not define something as evil to you, but it remains evil (scientifically) if it destroys you or your species, because, being more intelligent than you, it has deceived you.At least, this a minimalist approach that the science of population genetics would bring to the subject.Stephen