What exactly is ID?

I don't believe I'm understanding this statement the way you intend me to.The Rosetta Stone is a human artifact, made by humans, with human writing on it, in two languages that we were familiar with, from other human artifacts, but did not understand, and one language that we did understand, at the time that it was discovered. There is no doubt that it was designed, by humans.But the purpose that it is famous for, deciphering Demotic and hieroglyphic script and understanding that the latter was phonetic rather than pictographic, as had been previously believed, was not the use for which its makers intended it in any way. Its actual reason for existence is to glorify one of the Ptolemies in any language his literate subjects might understand.This is a good example of irreducible complexity, in that if any of the three languages was missing -- Greek for the meaning, Demotic for the phonetic relationship to Coptic, hieroglyphic for the meaning of the pictorial alphabet -- then it would not have been able to perform this unintended and serendipitous function. And this irreducible complexity appeared entirely by accident, through a slow reduction in other features, ie every other potentially decipherable polylingual Egyptian text that had ever existed.Unless you mean God had the libraries of Alexandria burned and then sent Napoleon to deface the Sphinx in order to be able to later accomplish this miracle?

As I suspected, I wasn't following your argument properly.I had the idea, when reading your comments about Mount Rushmore, that you were talking about some hypothetical future edifice, once the sharp edges and tool marks had eroded away and the various plaques decribing its construction and tour guides yammering on about it were gone. Someone standing off in the distance could still see several big heads, but there would probably also be people who argued that it was just an illusion formed by natural processes, the way they do when Elvis appears on a burnt pop-tart, for example.In such a case we ought to be able to go in there and do some science and settle the question as to which view was true, and I had the idea that you were saying that this was similar to the science Dembski was describing in relation to biological systems. You were making more sense to me than you ever had before.But now I see that this was all in my head. You were talking about the actual Mount Rushmore we have right now! As with the Rosetta stone, the main point of your argument is that inferring design has nothing to do with an opinion about who the designer might be, it could be Charlton Heston or Mork or whoever. This is part of the wedge strategy: religious interpretations being forbidden in public education due to the separation of church and state, the question of who the alleged designer may be must be left open.

Nail on the head. Here is my favorite quote on this matter http://www.pcts.org/journal/young2002a.html

There's a fundamental difference between evolutionary theory and creationism, which is that the theory of evolution, and the modern evolutionary synthesis of which it is a key component, are science.To comprehend this difference properly, it is necessary to understand what science is and does, and what it is not and does not do. Science never proves anything, it never even tries to prove anything. The idea of ultimate truth is beyond its scope, it simply serves to provide the closest approximation to the observed facts that general theories are capable of being. One may see scientists and/or science teachers occasionally "prove" something in a debate, which is to say, win the debate by having better evidence and more convincing explanations. But this is just cake; while doing science, they never seek to prove their hypothesis.Quite the contrary, all their efforts are, and must be, to disprove their hypothesis. This is the only way science can advance. The hypothesis makes a prediction: if lighter and heavier objects fall at the same speed, then when I drop this feather and this anvil they should hit at the same time. *drops things* Wow, they don't! What's wrong with my hypothesis? I must change it, to something that I haven't yet disproven. (Lighter and heavier objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum, in case you missed that class.)Creationism absolutely cannot follow this method. To do so, would be to work to disprove the Bible. This sort of open honest method is forbidden by priestcraft and slave morality. Setting up a theory, say that God drowned everyone except 8 people and several pairs of critters, is fine. Proposing that if that theory were true, then the geological record would show a huge layer without stratification, with only a few thousand layers of stratification on top of it, is not fine. Looking at the record and recognizing that the theory is simply false, must be abandoned, is absolutely forbidden.So in its attempts to resemble science, creationism has no choice other than to attempt to disprove vast swathes of overwhelmingly-confirmed science. It cannot do this by experimentation though, as it does not have the intellectual capacity or resources and anyway, doing so would only make its case worse and worse. So it mimes the process by simply proposing pseudo-theories which serve to "plausibly" disprove much of the evidence science has built its theories out of, by not requiring those components for its own case and by offering intangible solutions for various "gap" issues like This-or-that Anomaly and These-or-those Bacterial Wonders."Intelligent Design" is a perfect example of such a pseudo-theory. It makes no falsifiable predictions, proposes no experiments, explains no mechanisms, and tells us nothing about the actual world that we did not know, and many things we know to be false. Its "science" consists entirely of trying to disprove or discredit real theories, often in the most transparent way. The Discovery people love to name-drop Crick for his ideas about panspermia. What they fail to point out is, panspermia doesn't actually help their theory at all, all it does is open up range for experimentation about one tiny variable detail of the prevailing theory. To be clear about this: animate crud falling from the sky, does not support design by a designer, at all (though throwing the word "alien" around with a straight face helps them blur this distinction for the gullible.) All it does is provide an alternative to the not-particularly-critical idea of animate crud bubbling up from the ocean. It's still prebiotic complex chemicals, no matter where it forms!It isn't science, it isn't faith, it's simple idolatry, the worship of some traditional interpretation of some poetry as being "literally true" in a very limited and disrespectful way.

Hardly. The most alluring in a pseudo-logic sense is thusly This isn't a real prediction though, it shows something that has to not happen in order to falsify ID, which, isn't happening. Do you accept that ID is thereby falsified? Of course not.Dembski has already prepared the groundwork for this one, if ever we develop even significantly more evidence that bad designs are intrinsic to this shebang we have here. Again, to make this clear; the prediction is a method to "prove" ID, not a method to falsify it. The prediction isn't happening. This doesn't falsify ID for believers; and if it did, they can simply cant about "intelligence" vs "optimality".Meyer even pretends to argue with Dembski about defective trucks. But there are bugs in them! Literally! We have a permanent case of spotted fever, and couldn't live without it. Species go extinct all the time. Does this falsify ID? Not science.PS: If the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory is true, then everything will be found to be either a) more like pasta than it once was; or b) degenerated from its more original pasta-like state ...Edited by Iblis, : Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

I actually knew a Hindu-Muslim at one point.Really he had just added Allah to his collection, you know? Had a bit of mosque decor up against the east wall of one room, facing Mecca, in between some voudun guys on one side and Yahweh and three Jesuses on the other. Basically every once in a while, when he got the yen, he liked to kneel on his prayer-rug there and bang his head against the ground and chant some Arabic. Not 5 times a day though, closer to 5 times a year.I told him that sort of thing was just going to get him killed. He said "Yes, yes, it is so. Many times already I have been killed." A shrug and a sly half-smile, and he was off, burning incense to the Laughing Buddha and polishing his Kali again. Uhm, no, it's about the deleterious ones. Hence the name. The neutral ones don't do much of anything, again hence the name. Oh, if they pile up long enough you get an emergent property, which may be good or bad, but nature just kills it. As long as the population is big enough to where the genes involved aren't the sole representatives, the species gets right over it.Don't let me discourage you though. You are really just courting martrydom at this point anyway, right?Shame you aren't Muslim yourself. They are a lot more fun to watch when they martyr ....

No, your point was that ID can't be Christian because it's compatible with astrology. Her point was that it isn't science because it's compatible with astrology.It's no damn good for anyone....I wonder if astrologers get mad about being lumped in with such a useless idea? At least they help people feel better about their daily lives.

Yep, excellent documentation.Now here's a factual basis for discussion. He asserts that ID is not creationism because ID is incompatible with Christianity. She asserts that in fact it is science that ID is not compatible with, as demonstrated by the loose redefinition process extending the concept to obsolete and unfalsifiable concepts. This opens the question as to intentional distortion of the facts. He responds by claiming that was what he was saying all along, which is clearly false. It is difficult to understand how this could just be a mistake or lapse of memory.. . .We had a similar controversy during the course of the trial, didn't we? Message 24You gave the guy the benefit of the doubt. Someone else pointed to the actual facts. You, being an honest scientist, adjusted your theory to fit the facts. You did not advance the claim that that was what you really meant all along.

Begging the question. Astrology is psychology formulated using the terms of astronomy, it relies on the mythological associations of named heavenly bodies to stimulate archetypes in our alleged collective unconscious. Science has investigated it, and these are the documented results.It is not a science, because it is an art, an unfalsifiable art that works by means other than those it uses for misdirection. There is no supernatural connection between distant planets and human nativities, the head of the person delivering the baby has more gravitational and radiational impact on the newborn child than anything in the sky. The most reliable form of astrology is the tropical horoscope, which is categorically false in the sense that the actual signs have shifted by about 27 degrees since it was established due to the precession of the equinoxes. Nevertheless, it works like a charm, because it is the astrology most clients believe in, and beliefs are more important than facts in psychological manipulation.Furthermore, your claim that astrology is incompatible with Christianity is plain nonsense. Every fundamentalist I have ever met believes in numerous concepts from astrology, they they tend to refer to it falsely as astronomy. For example, they believe that the alignment of distant planets can have a significant effect on the earth, causing mass catastrophes; and that the tides affect our personal metabolism and moods.Gravity is the weakest of the fictional "forces", the only reason it even causes tides is because of the massive volume of liquid involved in the displacement process. Do you have access to a large swimming pool? Go measure the water mark at high and low tides. And that's thousands of gallons!Why do you not know this stuff? Why do people drag things like astrology, genetics, RNA error, Josephus and the Septuagint into arguments when they have no familiarity with the material and thus vulnerable to systematic attack? Are you guys even trying to win these arguments, or is this some kind of kamikaze mission?

Your point is nonsense, ID is in fact creationism, as has been demonstrated to you over and over again.Your claim that astrology is incompatible with Christianity is easily demonstrated to be false by making reference to Daniel chapter 7, in which he uses it to produce what is very commonly believed to be Biblical prophecy. First he examines the western sky above the point where the sun set to establish omens about what is falling and declining in the world. He makes note of the appearance of Leo, Ursa Major, and Leo Minor, identifying them with the prior empires of history.Then he looks east to see what is rising and, as appropriate for the season when Leo is setting after the sun, he doesn't see anything for a while. Pisces is a fairly insubstantial member of the Zodiac. Finally what rises under Pisces is visible, which is Cetus, the whale, commonly represented in mythological planispheres from that day to this as a great beast having several heads and horns. Using this as his platform he preaches the destiny of the Greek empire, which will crush and break up all the others but eventually be defeated by God's Chosen People.St. John the Divine does something similar in Revelations 12 and 13, but because it is live material rather than an example already compromised by excessive use in instruction, if you want me to explain it to you you will have to pay cash up front. And when I'm done explaining it, you will find you have changed a lot of your opinions, without really understanding quite how that happened. But, you will be a better person ...Just to cap this one off, what did you think that business about the Star of Bethlehem was?

Dr. A isn't available right now, he had to leave the office unexpectedly. But I believe what he was trying to stress for you, in his own inimitable way, is that in many many well-attested cases it has been seen that a number of people who have attached themselves to the ID movement do not act in an honest manner. You are going to need to sift the wheat from the chaff very carefully when using these sites, even when they appear to be quoting real scientists. Aren't these exact places, very conveniently, the areas where such "gaps" appear? And these gaps are then systematically closed. Isn't it a little disrespectful to any real deity that might be out there to continually associate him with things that are soon to be explained away, thereby only casting further doubt on his person? There are two kinds of faith, that espoused by Luther, consisting of blind belief; and that advanced by Paul, in which belief is a tool to get at the evidence for things unseen. The one is delusion, the other a concise summary of the scientific method. These gaps do close. Believe it!

Nonsense. Here's the current version of "the soup" Microparticle - WikipediaHere's the best candidate for a PNA PAH world hypothesis - WikipediaEdited by Iblis, : thanks Percy

Of course not, it's academic acceptance that is quantified by majority. Every working scientist is out there trying to investigate something that the majority doesn't follow yet and/or disprove something believed to be true. This is how the scientific method works.But if you want to do it, you have to do it with hypotheses, predictions, experiments, and replicable results. Rhetoric won't cut it. Sure, this or that looks wonky, so? Someone is hammering away at those rough edges as hard as they can, hoping for the Nobel prize or at least some good publication. If evolution is so wrong, there must be a million parts of it that are wrong. Pick out any one of them, form a new hypothesis, make a prediction based on the hypothesis, do some experiments until you are confident in your results, publish and wait while others replicate them, rinse and repeat.The ID people aren't doing that. They, like you, are whining about naturalism and materialism and the morale of society like this was a pep rally instead of the science club. Weren't you saying somewhere that you could quantify genetic information? If so, please do it here, we need it bad in this thread. All our IDists are flat-earthers and Jedi disciples and such thus far, someone who could do real information theory would be an excellent addition to the topic.

Mmm, I specifically asked him to argue that one in this thread. My bad, where did I go wrong? Have we not been begging both of the other live proponentsists to quantify genetic information for us? And this guy is trying to do it using actual scientific terms, too.Sorry, I didn't realize this thread was exclusively for Jew/Wizard baiting.

No worries, I wine a lot myself. And whine. And keen, and wail, and moan. Mostly though I howl and gnash my teeth Yep yep, I don't recommend that you exclude any possibility you can imagine a way to test for in your hypothesis. But do note that "supernatural" phenomena are horrifically dicey when it comes time to take a picture or repeat your experiment. Are they? Link me to some hypotheses with predictions, experiments, and peer-reviewed replicable results. Good good, but allow me to stress for you that the information itself isn't binary, that is bits. Though you can feel free to count it that way, in comparison with other information that can be digitized. But it's actually a variation of quaternary, with the variant being a way to distinguish coding in RNA from DNA. Ask me, anyone, if you need more of this. You do understand, however, that the sun and other stars are sending us complex information about where the heavy elements of which we are constructed come from? And that back in 2003 we managed to finally notice messages from the Red Rectangle nebula explaining where our original pre-nucleic acid scaffolding could be found? These don't appear to be coming from intelligent beings, but rather from the hot gas itself, in a perfectly natural manner. But they are very complex, and quite specified, and, of course, information.