My position explained

So much delusion, so little time. What is wrong with saying 'a change in probability'? why make up a new technical term for something which is easily described with the current language. In maybe this is the root of the problem, if scientists used the words stroonth and plar instead of fitness and success you would have no objection to them, even if they meant exactly the same thing. Well thats great, an evolutionist told you, so it must be true, but you can't tell us who or where or back up the statement in any way. And since you have such conclusive proof we can therefore dismiss all of my argument, how nice for you. So despite absoloutely no evidence on your side you are going to ignore any alternative possibility. So what probability are you choosing, I suggested 1 as the most obvious as that will be when the given outcome will always occur. As to what point this determination arises in the course of a die's roll, that would be a tricky bit of physics to workout, but not theoretically impossible. It is even harder to work out what point the probability of an eye evolving in the universes development would be, simply claiming that Richard Dawkins 'implies' that it is very early is insufficient. Are we talking the human eye, the invertebrate eye or light sensitive pigments? It may be theoretically possible to determine the points at which specific probabilities of a specific entity arising became 1 but it would be a phenomenally complicated task for even 1 entity given the massive complexity of the systems involved. And you have yet to show what actual use this information would provide, it would certainly be interesting as a way of reconstructing in fine detail the evolution of life on earth say but it would be almost completely useless beyond that. It would not produce any predictive tools which could be applied to systems to say how they would evolve, all it could give us would be a starting point for the probabilistic evolution of the system and a probability distribution for varying outcomes. Is this supposed to be some sort of argument for the begining of the universe, when it was 'smaller then[sic] a human brain', being when the probability of the eye evolving became 1, if so it is phenomenally weak. Certainly a lot of things will have been ruled out of possibility as things resolved in the first few instants of planck time, but I can see absoloutely no concievable rational basis for you thinking that any of those resolutions would have brought the probability of the eye evolving to 1, unless you are taking a massively deterministic viewpoint diammetrically opposed to the one you held in our previous discussions. I never implied that generals would use such a word, I was asking if you would describe a battle as intelligent since you claimed decision/determination required intelligence and battles can be described as having decisive moments. the language is already avialable in science for describing the point at which a probability of something happening becomes equal to 1. I'm hurt Syamsu, after all this time and many posts you can't tell the difference between me and Mike.The fact that science can describe things as the evolution of a probability matrix towards a point at which a specific probability reaches 1 in no way brings any suggestion of intelligence into the mix. Except in as much as you choose to call such an occurrance determination and then conflate it with the human act of determination.I'd be happy with 'probabilistic designer' if you like.TTFN,WK

That's what I think sometimes yes, that I'm deluding myself that scientists ignore decision. But for a seemingly absurd position, there is evidence of the absurd, such as Dawkins exclaiming that chance is the enemy of science. And a simple question of what to name the point at which a probability changes is met with no simple answer. I'm still playing devil's advocate here a bit, I'm just trying to encourage people to pick a book from the shelf and find the name for it that is in use. The name for the point where a probability changes. I don't know it, but it seems inconceivable to me that there isn't one, or many different ones.The current common name in use is decision, I guess. I prefer to call it determination in a science context, that is more neutral. Change in probability is good enough as a definition of that, but the point needs a name because it is referred to much. It already has a name, or many names, in common language, so why not give it a name within science, a name that is more clean, that doesn't have so much associative meaning?You object to the name "decision" because it implies intelligence you say. Well I don't care so much, name it "chorigin", whatever. Point is that you don't want any name at all, for quite obvious reasons, because even if you invented a new word for it, it would still point to intelligence, because of the basic equivalency in meaning to human choice. In a human choice, the probability of something changes as in "chorigin", or whatever you wish to call it.I knew I was responding to your post, but I was making a sidecomment to Mike, because I want his comment on the potential for decision as a pointer to intelligence. If maybe the creation vs evolution debate would dissolve if evolutionists meaningfully acknowledge decisons. The discussion about whether or not an omnipotent intelligent designer owns those decisions some way, being more a question that is much outside of the scope of science.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Well, for reference, there are any number of animals (mostly "primitive" sessile types) which don't have a differentiated digestive system. However, of more derived vertebrates the champ has to be the river turtle Rheodytes leukops from Australia. It's about 200 mm long, with a 100 mm long cloaca lined with bursae from which it derives some 2/3 of its oxygen. IOW, we have a turtle that poops, breathes, and reproduces through the same hole. Fascinating, no?

Thanks Q, though I have to admit I knew about the turtle. Something that breathes through its ass has to make some news somewhere, and it definitely sticks in one's mind.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I just realized a better way of expressing what I meant when I told Mike that Xians could be called "nihilistic".It is true that they certainly began, as a movement within Judaism, as a form of nihilists. The message of Jesus is that the moral rules and beliefs the jewish faith held were not absolute and not grounded in an objective reality. He came and removed them.One can credibly argue that it was a replacement of one set of absolute values for another, by the guy that sets the rules, but that does not completely erase how it would be viewed by those who do not believe in Jesus. It would certainly be nihilism.But there is more nihilism than this. From Mike's own words we see that to him, and this goes for many Xian fundies, there is nothing in this material world, this life we are living, including valid purposes or reasonable morality unless there is something beyond this life to grant it these things.That is clearly a nihilist position from the perspective of this life, and anyone living in this material world. That is why the stated moral and psychological positions of many Xians seem distrubing to atheists, because they seem so desperately nihilistic regarding this life they must invent a cosmic psychological life preserver.Clearly from the words of such types, let's take Mike as an example, if we were to discover concrete proof Xianity was false and only a mechanical world existed, he would fall into a moral and existential despair. That is his own claim.Thus he is the nihilist.But in thinking this out I guess I understand better why he just doesn't get that he is insulting atheists when he says they are bleak, purposeless, nihilists or naturally aligned with such things. He is not taking the time to step out of his own mindset. Maybe the psychological nihilism within him is so strong, that he can't get around it.In any case it does appear that he is so set in his worldview that he believes if others toss away the life preserver he wears, they must be reduced to the same worldview he has regarding material life.This is not necessary. It is mere projection to think that is so.Surely there are atheistic nihilists out there... even evolutionary theorist atheist nihilists... but we do not have to share that worldview. Indeed maybe that is why many atheists are atheists, they did not feel reduced by living in a temporal, material world and so must look for something eternal outside themselves to create meaning.Hope that clears some things up.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Animals are not part of the process that makes man apart from them.So, let's split that hair completely and show where the animals were created in the same manner as man.It appears to you that you have shown exactly that, but you have not.

-------------I think you should limit yourself in the creation vs evolution debate to what can be commonly accepted, by people of all, or most religious persuasions. So I think you should make a position for the creation vs evolution debate separate from how you believe organisms came to be.-----------What a gas. The next thing you know, someone will ask you to limit yourself in something.....or the other.

FYI...I track with Mike the Wiz's first post basically. I personally lean toward God not using animal evolution with lots of time and death, but animals and humans are put on a different level by God, so it is possible. I tend to think it more probable that God put animals on the earth without too much time for speciation, as that would make it possible to put all animal kinds on the ark if there weren't vast numbers of species. I do recognize, though, that some interesting language is in the account, literally "vegetate vegetation" when talking about plants. So, I accept that there may have been periods of time for veggies to grow and animals to spread. I certainly don't agree with animal to human evolution regardless.Finally, there are some scientific reasons that lead me to speculate that the earth "IN IT'S PERFECT FORM," that is when God's creation was finished, is not much older than some thousands of years based on form of things we can observe today. (e.g., saltiness of oceans, spiralliness of galaxies, rotation speed of earth, etc..All to say:1. God may have taken some unknown amount of time to make his creation
2. I lean toward favoring a less chaotic process with animal and plant life
3. I think humans were made quite differently and uniquely
4. I think when creation was done, only some thousands of years have passed since.

PecosGeorge responds to me:

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Animals are not part of the process that makes man apart from them.

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That's not what the Bible says. Where do we find that humans are made any differently from any other animal in Genesis 1 or 2? Heck, Genesis 2 describes both:Genesis 2:7: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Genesis 2:19: And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.So if Adam was formed from the "dust of the ground" and animals were created "out of the ground," how does conclude that they were not made in the same manner?Remember, Genesis 7 says that animals have the breath of life, too, just like humans:Genesis 7:22: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.So if they were both made from the ground and both have the breath of life, how does one conclude that they were made differently?Besides, isn't that what god reminds Adam of when kicking him out of Eden?Genesis 3:19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

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It appears to you that you have shown exactly that, but you have not.

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Then get off your butt and show me where I've gone wrong. How strange that in this debate between us regarding what the Bible says, I have been the only one actually quoting it.Where in the story of the creation of humans and animals in Genesis do we find a different description of the methodology god used regarding the two?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Maestro232 writes:

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I tend to think it more probable that God put animals on the earth without too much time for speciation, as that would make it possible to put all animal kinds on the ark if there weren't vast numbers of species.

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Oh, lord...not the "kind" argument. Um, since the flood, according to biblical chronology, happened about 2250 BCE, are you seriously claiming that the animals went from a single instance to the literally millions of species we see today?If you argue this, you are more of an advocate of evolution than the most ardent biologist. You would literally need each individual in a generation to be its own species. And of course, the problem with that is that since there is only a single individual of that species, there is nobody for that individual to breed with and thus all life dies one generation after the flood.And, of course, nobody noticed this. For four thousand years, nobody seemed to notice that they started with a male and female sabretooth tiger only to find she gave birth to a litter of Siamese kittens.Your problem is that there are vast numbers of species. Millions of species of beetle alone.

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Finally, there are some scientific reasons that lead me to speculate that the earth "IN IT'S PERFECT FORM," that is when God's creation was finished, is not much older than some thousands of years based on form of things we can observe today. (e.g., saltiness of oceans, spiralliness of galaxies, rotation speed of earth, etc..

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Actually, all those things point to an earth that is billions of years old.

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I think humans were made quite differently and uniquely

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Why? The Bible says the exact opposite. Genesis 2:7 and Genesis 2:19 both claim that humans and animals were created from the ground. In Genesis 3:19, god reminds Adam of this fact. In Genesis 7:22, the Bible points out that all life on the dry land has the breath of life, just like Adam does from Gen 2:7.Where in the creation story do you find humans and animals being created in different ways?I want chapter and verse.

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I think when creation was done, only some thousands of years have passed since.

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Physically impossible. The world cannot be as it is if it were only a few thousand years old. Everything about the earth points to it being billions of years old.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Just a quibble, because I know you'd do it to me, but my friendly neighborhood entomologist assures me that the current figure is more like 400,000+ beetle species.But yeah. "An inordinate fondness for beetles", as they say. In other words, a butt-ton of beetles.

crashfrog responds to me:

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Just a quibble, because I know you'd do it to me

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Quibble away. I made a mistake. Misremembered. Doing some research on my own, there's about a million named species of insect which apparently make up about 85% of all known animal species. However, the estimated number of actual insect species on the planet is 20-30 million.Of the named species, the largest group are the beetles (350-400,000 species, Order Coleoptera) followed by butterflies/moths (165,000, Order Lepidoptera), flies (120,000, Order Diptera), and wasps/bees/ants (105,000, Order Hymenoptera). These four orders make up about 80% of named insect species.It would seem the ark wasn't really a boat...it was a terrarium.

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

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I certainly don't agree with animal to human evolution regardless.

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But humans are animals.Why do we spend so much money, time, and effort on laboratory tests using other species of mammals in order to understand the effects of some disease or drug, the results of which are reliably generalized to humans?In particular, why do we do AIDS testing on primates if we aren't so closely related to them?More importantly, why are the results of these tests reliable if we aren't animals?Also, why do we share a broken vitamin C gene with other primates if we don't have a common ancestor?If we aren't animals, what are we?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-23-2004 04:38 AM

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"History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose."--Thomas Jefferson

Maybe this is why scientists never come round to the subject of intelligence. They are too busy naming every single last insect, every star in the sky, and every grain of sand on the beach, so that they never get around to giving a formal commonname for the point where a probability changes.regards,
Mohamamd Nor Syamsu