Supernatural information supplier

Hello Lithodid-Man,I first of all must ask the administrator for a little leeway here as I think what you are asking is not so much for me to pass your science trivia tests as what my motives are. With that in mind, I will make you a deal: I will take your test, if you will take mine.My motives here are two-fold: (a) I hope to spur others to think about the conclusions they may have drawn from their experiences and the info they have studied. (b) I hope, in so doing, to be motivated to do the same. And I can tell you it is working; I have spent more time reading and studying since joining this discussion than I did the entire two years previous.Now I don't know what you mean by "cut and paster" but the only cutting and pasteing I have seen recently in this thread has come from Loudmouth, and I appreciate the fact that he has taken the time to post some interesting articles (or portions thereof) for perusal. I also don't know what article you are referring to as I have read several. And I have no idea what AiG is.So, with all of that in mind, here is my test:1) What should the goals of a college education be?2) Has naturalism and materialism unduly influenced those goals over the last 100 years?3) What is the fatal flaw of Darwinian evolutionary, materialistic and naturalistic logic?Dennis

Yes, I think you have a point. But the difference comes in when you have a Chinese farmer running around claiming to have the fossil remains of some missing link and the press taking the claim at face value and putting stories out that are premature at best. For scientists, at least there is the check and balance system of prestige, recognition, tenure, etc, (even though I think it is heavily weighted in favor of Darwinists, but then that would tend to keep scientists who have some prestige or reputation to protect from making any claims in the ID camp, thus making it harder to explain the proliferation of such writings).

Good questions. What are your answers then? I suspect that the "evos" here have done a lot more of that than the majority of the other side.We have asked, rather a large number of times for a step-by-step example of where the thinking has gone wrong when the natural world is studied. This has not, that I've noticed, been forthcoming. It begins to seem to me that people bringing this point up haven't thought it through themselves yet. Still waiting.As a side note,
This topic is about the supernatural information supplied, the thread is still (days and days later) reusing my post title of "The Definition of Information" and we haven't had a quantifiable, clear definition of information yet. (Somewhere, in some thread someone agreed that Shannon information was ok but I don't think it has been followed up on much. Or wasn't when someone noted that that information can easily be supplied by the evolutionary process.)

Hi dshortt: Your questions are very good ones, and important to the EvC debate. They are not, strictly, related to Intelligent Design. If you'd like to persue them, might I suggest a new thread?

Yes, I agree a new thread is in order. Suggestions?

Hey NosyNed, Thanks for the reply.I will wait for LM to respond before I supply what I believe on those issues. Or maybe a new thread would be the best way to deal with them?I would like to pursue the Definition of Information further, and I guess the problem I have with Shannon is there is no provision for meaning. If the DNA is present, but the biological machinery is not present to give it meaning, do we truly have information? Potential information perhaps.I know this may cut back to origins, but origins is everything in terms of worldviews.You wrote:"I suspect that the "evos" here have done a lot more of that than the majority of the other side."Maybe it is like two sets of people trying to communicate who don't even speak the same language. Maybe agreeing on some definition of terms is the first place to start. Or maybe creos are just approaching the problem from a "top-down" approach, whereas evos are committed to a "bottom-up" approach. I think that I will save anymore I have to say on this for the other thread, if there is to be one.Merry Christmas to allDennis

I'm not an admin, just another GUM (Great Unwashed Masses). However, if you start from the second paragraph, and simply copy-paste the rest of that post as a new topic proposal, I think that would make an excellent OP.

1) What should the goals of a college education be?Depends on the person. For myself at this time the goal is to finish and get my PhD. My reasons for starting college in the first place are long outdated and forgotten but I cannot imagine any other path. I am 1000 times improved by the entire process, especially graduate school. My hope would be that the goal of a college education for anyone would be to better themselves.2) Has naturalism and materialism unduly influenced those goals over the last 100 years?NO. I don't understand the question even. How would materialism and naturalism have any affect on the goals of a college education? If you mean that theology has been removed from the GE's of most universities I agree that has occured. But how or why that should affect anyone's goals of a college education I don't get. I went to a Christian college for my undergrad work and had mandatory theology classes. These were some of my favorite courses and I think I am a better person overall for having taken those courses (I don't mean in any spiritual sense, in that I have more knowledge in more diverse areas than I would have otherwise).3) What is the fatal flaw of Darwinian evolutionary, materialistic and naturalistic logic?There is no fatal flaw. In almost 150 years of attempts to find one all have failed. Darwinian NS has stood the test of time admirably. Like any good theory in science it has been expanded and modified, but nothing outside of what Darwin would have understood or recognized. Please tell what you are hinting at here.As for my accusations of you being a cut and paster. This is referring to the fact that you nearly word for word used the current creo argument against bird evolution. I am not convinced you were reading the journals Archaeopteryx or Paleobiology one day and just happened to notice articles disproving the bird-dino connection. Those opinions are very tired reworked creationist arguments. Are you calling Protoavis a "fully-formed bird" because you studied the material and came to this conclusion? Or because you read this misinformation somewhere and are parroting it? Because the fact is no real paleontologist, including the author, has ever referred to Protoavis as a "fully formed bird".

Hey Lithodid-Man,Thank you for the response. Your willingness to engage me on these questions speaks highly of you as a man and as a scholar. I would enjoy dialoguing further with you, and that opportunity will present itself in the fact that I am going to take the suggestion of a previous poster and start a new thread based upon these same three questions.Meanwhile, may I present you with several fossil evidences of birds pre or co-existant to :-A bird embryo found in China from the enantiornithine species dating to 121 million years ago.-Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee; "Protoavis is a true bird, closer to modern birds than .-The Confucius bird, dating to 153 million years ago which includes body feather and a beak.-Liaoningornis, a fully formed modern bird except it had teeth dating to 120 million years ago.-Eoalulavis, dating 25 to 30 million years before which includes very modern bird-like wing structure.-And lastly, bird-footprints in Argentina and South Africa, morphologically identical to modern birds and predating Archaeopteryx by 55 million years or so.You wrote:"My hope would be that the goal of a college education for anyone would be to better themselves."So there is something "better" we should all strive for? What exactly does it look like? Would that bettering of oneself include a search for ultimate truth, ie, "the way things really are"? And will the tools of Darwinism and naturalism lead us there?ThanksDennis

Hey Dennis,
I don't want to get into bird evolution aqs I know it is way off topic, but none of your examples mean a thing to discount Acheaeopteryx's position as a "dino-bird". Nearly all of the fossils you mention are from the Barremian Age of the Cretaceous, about 120 mya, 33 mya younger than Archaeopteryx. Possible exceptions are Confuciusornis which is of unknown age, probably Barremian but possibly older (originally thought to be late Jurrasic, this idea has lost favor). Even if so changes nothing, Confuciusornithidae are probably a separate line of bird evolution not related to modern birds. Enantiornitheans represent another lineage of birds unrelated to extant birds. Heads up: Chatterjee pretty much stands alone in his opinion of Protoavis. Here is an excellent summary: Dinosauricon – Dinosaurios These are excellent questions. Again I have to say I can only speak for myself and stick to discreet definitions of the terms. I think about these questions a great deal.I base my personal philosophy (applicable to me) on the idea that the unexamined life is not worth living. If I do something I ponder why, if I hold an opinion a reduce it to basic arguments. If I plan an action I like to (if possible) consider possible outcomes. I operate under the idea that there is truth to be found pretty much anywhere you look provided you can spot the baby in the bathwater. In these things I am a better ME than I was in the past. My college education has helped this as I was exposed to new ideas that I could sort through. Even the concepts and ideas rejected contribute to my improvement. Now I am not claiming complete success in the above at all, not even close. I am working on self-improvement this way and it works for me.The slippery slope I navigate with this is at what point I begin to feel myself 'worth more' than another who doesn't examine themselves. I can claim it is a personal philosophy but this breaks down after a few logic steps. Especially when viewpoints come into conflict.I am going to discuss a few examples to make this point. I have a close relative who is very similar to me in many ways. As kids we did the same things, etc. In school he was the golden child, I was second best (in our family). After we moved apart we communicated often and would spend hours debating just about everything. Now, almost 20 years later, he hoards guns, spews on endlessly about the UN, One world government, etc. etc. He calls himself a "tax patriot" and has a giant poster of Timothy McVeigh on his wall with "American patriot" printed on it. He scares the hell out of me. However, we continue to talk (much less often). Invariably when he talks the conversations drifts to religion and politics. He always starts with this "I was thinking one day about.... and went down to the library to look it up.... and no one thinks for themselves....I form my own opinions..." At the same time I am googling his points and finding them word for word from a printable Birch Society pdf or some such thing. He pretends to have thought this out but is reading. Now the question arises, whose opinion is worth more? Not based on content, but based on how much actual thought went into it. So I can think "well I don't agree but I respect your opinion" or I can say, "Screw your opinion you mindless jackass, you didn't look anything up and you are wasting my time spouting this lunacy, there is no law requiring all presidents to pledge allegiance to the UN, no mandatory barcodes on the hands of EU members, etc". So I am forced to be polite and dishonest with myself or admit I am an intellectual snob of sorts.So now, full-circle, this is why I jumped on you about the bird issue. Maybe unfairly, if so I am sorry. But I tend to get extremely frustrated when I take the time to learn and study something then have my work trod upon by an assertion cut from a creationist page or book and the proponent putting their viewpoint up as equal to mineI have another relative, a cousin, who has spent a good portion of his adult life in prison and jail. While he is an intelligent guy, he just does stupid things. He will get out of jail and decide he wants to get high. Now my point here isn't to judge him for that although I don't understand it. If I were him, given my constant examination of consequence, and wanted to do what he does I would cautiously make contacts, remain in the privacy of my home, or such thing. He goes out to a bar, gets severely liquored up, then buys his garbage, and does it parked on the side of the street. So he inevitably goes right back to prison. In comparing our two personalities, the conclusion I draw is that he lacks the ability to use past events as tools to predict the future. He is always quite surprised by how short his freedom lasts yet seems incapable of changing it. So I see him on the far side of the "self examined life" spectrum and wonder if he prepresents an oddity or is actually more toward the norm of the repeat criminal population. I don't believe that ultimate truth itself has much to do with betterment. However, the search might. Provided it is a search. I think people can better themselves in other ways besides ultimate truth. A martial arts master might strive their entire lives for some kind of unreachable perfect balance that is purely internal. In the process they achieve personal happiness on some level. Someone might study stained glass making and find the same thing, I don't know. Whether it be physical, religious, academic, in all cases there are people examining their lives.The tools of Darwinism and naturalism are leading us to a better understanding of the processes that led to the natural world as it appears today. I wouldn't call it ultimate truth, but it does help explain the "way things are". Not accepting supernatural arguments has gotton us a very long way. To the value of this perspective it is irrelevant whether or not 'GOD' exists. If I say lightening is the work of God and therefore unknowable then I get nowhere in explaining it. If I believe God created a very naturalistic world that runs on a set of laws I can learn and understand then I am on the way to understanding lightening. The same goes if I believe in pure naturalism.

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Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

Hey Lithodid-Man,Thanks for the reply. I have answered the latter part of your reply in a new thread titled "Darwinism, education, materialism's fatal flaw." Hope you will join me there. I took the liberty of copying the bulk of your response to my new message in that thread, hope that was okay.The one example you don't address is the bird footprint fossils found in Argentina and South Africa. The whole proposition that birds are descended from dinos seems to be in controversy, what with one lineage which is more like modern birds pre-dating another lineage, and the controversy of which fossils belong to which lineage. But the larger point for me is that none of the fossil evidence proves or disproves either Darwinism or ID/creationism. It is subject to interpretation, and that interpretation is based on a preexistant philosophy.

Hi,Like Nosey, I'm interested to see a working definition of 'information' from any creationist that attempts to fit in with the real world and adress real arguments made by the ToE Unlike Nosey (I suspect), my understanding of maths is fairly glacial (ie I'll get there in the end, but it will take a while), so I tend to get confused when people start talking about Shannon etc .Therefore could I try and direct you back to what you were talking about with Percy and talk about genes and proteins. OK, before we tackle the origin of the information can I ask you if the following scenario is an increase in information: Imagine an organism with all of the mechanisms for protein sythesis etc. Its' genome has one copy of gene A, which then gets duplicated so there are two copies. One of the copies then gets a mutation which changes its' function, so the organism now has gene A, and gene B.To me this is an increase in information due to mutation as the genome goes from efectively saying "make gene A" to "make gene A and gene B".

Hey Ooook,Thanks for your prompt. You wrote:"I'm interested to see a working definition of 'information' from any creationist that attempts to fit in with the real world and adress real arguments made by the ToE."What is this ToE? What do you mean by real world?Also:"Imagine an organism with all of the mechanisms for protein sythesis etc. Its' genome has one copy of gene A, which then gets duplicated so there are two copies. One of the copies then gets a mutation which changes its' function, so the organism now has gene A, and gene B."Alright, I will go along to see where you are headed, but it still seems to me that without the biological machinery necessary to give "meaning", what we have is just more potential info. If I am babbling in the woods and nobody is around for miles, am I supplying any info? But lead on, I am listening.DennisThis message has been edited by dshortt, 12-23-2004 06:22 AMThis message has been edited by dshortt, 12-23-2004 06:24 AMThis message has been edited by dshortt, 12-23-2004 06:25 AMThis message has been edited by dshortt, 12-23-2004 06:26 AM

Ooops, lazy old me. ToE = Theory of Evolution In other words I would like a definition of information that relates to what we know about biology and not an obscure analogy like a computer program (or someone babbling in the woods ). That’s why I presented my over-simplified scenario. OK then, but before I go headlong into it I need to discover what you would class as information and whether you would accept evolutionary processes as capable of increasing it. In order for me to find out where you’re coming from you’re going to have to answer the question. I’ll try and explain my position better, forgive me if you think this is a bit repetitive, and ask for clarification if I get confusing: The genome now has a new gene it didn’t have before. Surely that is an increase in information? If not, then explain why not. And what would you consider an increase in this scenario? Remember, I’m not asking about the origin of information, just whether you would consider it an increase.

Now you have introduced a new term "meaning". Then you use the term info again. Information has a definition. Meaning you know need to supply a definition of.The arguement from many anti-evolutionists is that new "information" cant be supplied by the evolutionary mechanisms. We are NOT talking about the origin of life or those mechanisms. We are saying that once there are living evolving things then the mechanisms can supply all the changes needed to explain life on earth.The idea that information isn't "useful" without some attached semantics is valid. However, there are mechanisms in living things to supply the semantics. Any changes in the genome may or may not be "meaningful". If they are not they either produce no change or kill the organism. The mechanism of natural selection adds meaning be stripping out all the harmful 'meaningless' changes. The result are 'meaningful' changes.There is no need to a supernatural information supplied once the basic mechanisms are in place.Now we back up to the origin of life. Research so far shows that there may be simpler mechanisms that can also support an evolutionary process. We haven't demonstrated that with a great deal of firmness yet. "We don't know" is hardly a good basis on which to step out into the supernatural.