An Unfortunate Relapse; More Dissent from Darwin

[busterdog]

Hang on a second, I was over in the creationist forum before viewing the clip of the film 'Expelled', according to Ben Stein though not in as many words, evolutionary biologists are rigid, inflexible with regards to the toE, and fiercely opposed to any criticism of it, a revision would suggest that the ToE isn't perfect something Darwinian scientists can not stand to hear apparently

Seems to me the creationists want to have their cake and eat it too.

Since we are the persecuted minority, how can you tell? Are you implying that we are intolerant? How do you get to that, because we argue?

I have no problem having my cake and eating it too, by the way.

 

[shernren]

Darwin may be like a long tail cat in a room full of rockers, but so what? As for your "wooden sword", why does that have any content? I find none. Enough with the freakin' metaphors, like "self-organizing."

What the h e double hockey sticks are you people talking about?

All I need to say in response is that you have not made any substantive response to my posts #22 and #25, particularly where I defined self-organization:

"... self-organization is just a physical property of the system, something that can be described mathematically in many cases. It's the tendency of a system to stay away from its equilibrium state by means of self-interactions. Life is self-organization."

Which of the following concepts don't you understand: equilibrium? far-from-equilibrium conditions? dissipative systems? Tell me and I'll help you - unless the truth is too harsh for you.

Try talking about ID without talking about the (presumed) character or politics of the people involved. It is a very simple concept, like "self-organizing." Both are a bit vague in similar ways.

Certainly:

ID has no explanation whatsoever for the twin nested hierarchy of phylogenetics which evolution explains.
​

There you go. I didn't need to say a word about the hidden agenda of fundamentalist Christians too embarrassed to say "God" instead of "Intelligent Designer" to show that their views are scientifically ridiculous.

 

[busterdog]

All I need to say in response is that you have not made any substantive response to my posts #22 and #25, particularly where I defined self-organization:

"... self-organization is just a physical property of the system, something that can be described mathematically in many cases. It's the tendency of a system to stay away from its equilibrium state by means of self-interactions. Life is self-organization."

Which of the following concepts don't you understand: equilibrium? far-from-equilibrium conditions? dissipative systems? Tell me and I'll help you - unless the truth is too harsh for you.


Certainly:

ID has no explanation whatsoever for the twin nested hierarchy of phylogenetics which evolution explains.
​

There you go. I didn't need to say a word about the hidden agenda of fundamentalist Christians too embarrassed to say "God" instead of "Intelligent Designer" to show that their views are scientifically ridiculous.

Now we are pushing the boundary of fibbing. ID is also a mathematical relationship just like "self organization." It fits your bloody definition.

You are kind of funny asking me if I know what equilibrium is. Seems you really think these "arguments" are worth "winning" at all cost. What's up with that?

"The twin-nested hierarchy" is more word salad. You might was well refer to snipe-related, left-handed Kranitz rods. Its just more vague concepts dressed up to try to improve on the rather simple, and perhaps vague "common designer" issue. "Common designer" is obviously right at the theoretical/a-priori bedrock of unprovable assumptions, which is exactly where "neoDarwinism" now finds itself. You keep confusing specialized words with real conceptual bedrock. You also keep proving Mark right by refusing to deal with the logical correspondence of ID and neodarwinism. Its like you are afraid to touch the ID lepers.

 

[MinervaMac]

Since we are the persecuted minority, how can you tell? Are you implying that we are intolerant? How do you get to that, because we argue?

I have no problem having my cake and eating it too, by the way.

No, I'm saying you want to pick fault with evolutionary biologists revising the ToE as new data and new techniques become available, but at the same time you want to paint evolutionary biologists as a bunch of people who don't take kindly to new ideas or any kind of criticism that the ToE isn't perfect. Two mutually incompatible things.

If the latter were true there would be no revisions of the ToE don't you see, and as the former is true then the portrayal of scientists as this close bunch who gang up and ridicule all those who dare criticise the almighty ToE is ridiculous. The ToE is constantly being revised and updated, that is what science is all about, not confirming what is already known, New ideas are welcome and accepted. The reason creationism isn't accepted is because it is not science, not even in it's tarted up alter ego of Intelligent Design.

 

[busterdog]

No, I'm saying you want to pick fault with evolutionary biologists revising the ToE as new data and new techniques become available, but at the same time you want to paint evolutionary biologists as a bunch of people who don't take kindly to new ideas or any kind of criticism that the ToE isn't perfect. Two mutually incompatible things.

OK. I will bit. I am a young earth creationist open to new ideas and I am willing to change and consider new data.

Now, I want to publish a text book for elementary school kids and and endowed chair for creation science at Harvard (for me or someone like me). And I want to start next week. That ok with you?

If the latter were true there would be no revisions of the ToE don't you see, and as the former is true then the portrayal of scientists as this close bunch who gang up and ridicule all those who dare criticise the almighty ToE is ridiculous. The ToE is constantly being revised and updated, that is what science is all about, not confirming what is already known, New ideas are welcome and accepted.

So, the guys in Expelled, The Movie who said they were persecuted by Darwinists are liars?

In CF, if you deny the essential tenets of Darwin, you are not entitled to your point of view. You are considered an idiot. Evolutionists exclude all others fundamentally.

Now, you may say creationists refuse to ackowledge basic facts of life. But, if you can say with a straight face that evolutionists do not exclude all nonevolutionists from the category of worthy scientific inquiry, then you need the reality check.

The reason creationism isn't accepted is because it is not science, not even in it's tarted up alter ego of Intelligent Design.

Its "not science." Oh ok, then my problem is portraying evolutionists as people who "ridicule" others when all they do is exclude all creationism from the category of science. I think that speaks for itself.

My thesis is that neoDarwinism is Intelligent Design, except they have this foolish quibble about metaphysics. You can't presume to be as vague and maleable as a proponent of "self-organizing" and then presume to exclude creationists and ID'ers.

 

[MinervaMac]

OK. I will bit. I am a young earth creationist open to new ideas and I am willing to change and consider new data.

Good for you.

Now, I want to publish a text book for elementary school kids and and endowed chair for creation science at Harvard (for me or someone like me). And I want to start next week. That ok with you?

Sure, providing you do what all other scientists have done who have had their findings published in childrens text books. Please, come up with a hypothesis, research your hypothesis, publish your findings in a peer reviewed journal, allow your fellow scientists to critique your views, perform their own experiments on it to see if they come up with the same results, if not then I would advise you to go back to the lab, keep trying until you get something that other scientists can reproduce in their own labs, after that please take part in conferences and scientific conventions to present your ideas, this may take some time as in order to have information published in a text book it needs to be accepted by the majority of scientists - patience is a virtue here. Once you've done that it will automatically be recognised that creation science is a legitimate avenue of thought and I'm sure those nice people in Harvard, or Cambridge or elsewhere will be more then happy to open up a department for the study of creation science.

But you don't want to do that, you don't want to go through the hassle that all other scientists have had to go through, you don't think the scientific process applies to you, you want to jump from an un-tested hypothesis to being published in text books and chairs in scientific departments without going through all the donkey work.

So, the guys in Expelled, The Movie who said they were persecuted by Darwinists are liars?

I wouldn't be surprised if they spiced things up a bit for sensationalism value.

In CF, if you deny the essential tenets of Darwin, you are not entitled to your point of view. You are considered an idiot. Evolutionists exclude all others fundamentally.

Well it's not stopped you from giving your point of view.

Now, you may say creationists refuse to ackowledge basic facts of life. But, if you can say with a straight face that evolutionists do not exclude all nonevolutionists from the category of worthy scientific inquiry, then you need the reality check.

I don't say that, evolutionists in general do not give creationist research the time of day.

Its "not science." Oh ok, then my problem is portraying evolutionists as people who "ridicule" others when all they do is exclude all creationism from the category of science. I think that speaks for itself.

Yes, it shows they have great common sense.

My thesis is that neoDarwinism is Intelligent Design, except they have this foolish quibble about metaphysics. You can't presume to be as vague and maleable as a proponent of "self-organizing" and then presume to exclude creationists and ID'ers.

 

[shernren]

Now we are pushing the boundary of fibbing. ID is also a mathematical relationship just like "self organization." It fits your bloody definition.

Really? Show me the mathematics of ID, then. I can show you my math; can you show me yours?

For example, given that an aquatic creature has scales and fins, and assuming that it is Intelligently Designed (and nothing else), what is the probability that it has gills?

Suppose that we parametrize the many possible designs of cilia by how many core fibers they have. What is the expected distribution of number of core fibers in cilia design against prevalence in unicellular organisms, assuming that they are Intelligently Designed?

Suppose there is a pond in which there are fish with distinct left-handed vs. right-handed morphology, with matching predators. Suppose further that the fish are Intelligently Designed. What is the pattern for the distribution of left-handed fish vs. right-handed fish with time, and why?

If my definition has blood on it, it is only because ID was really intellectual hara-kiri from the beginning. Self-organization has equations; it makes predictions; it is testable. ID? Michael Behe himself admitted under legal oath that any standard by which ID is science also would admit astrology as science.

You are kind of funny asking me if I know what equilibrium is. Seems you really think these "arguments" are worth "winning" at all cost. What's up with that?

Well, what is it? If you don't know what it is, how can you possibly be qualified to comment on its various explanations and subtleties? It's not about winning or losing; it's just really about whether you even know what you're talking about at all.

"The twin-nested hierarchy" is more word salad. You might was well refer to snipe-related, left-handed Kranitz rods. Its just more vague concepts dressed up to try to improve on the rather simple, and perhaps vague "common designer" issue. "Common designer" is obviously right at the theoretical/a-priori bedrock of unprovable assumptions, which is exactly where "neoDarwinism" now finds itself. You keep confusing specialized words with real conceptual bedrock. You also keep proving Mark right by refusing to deal with the logical correspondence of ID and neodarwinism. Its like you are afraid to touch the ID lepers.

Can you answer mallon's "common designer" challenge then? http://christianforums.com/t6873573-the-common-designer-challenge.html Go on! ^^

 

[busterdog]

Really? Show me the mathematics of ID, then. I can show you my math; can you show me yours?

For example, given that an aquatic creature has scales and fins, and assuming that it is Intelligently Designed (and nothing else), what is the probability that it has gills?

Suppose that we parametrize the many possible designs of cilia by how many core fibers they have. What is the expected distribution of number of core fibers in cilia design against prevalence in unicellular organisms, assuming that they are Intelligently Designed?

Suppose there is a pond in which there are fish with distinct left-handed vs. right-handed morphology, with matching predators. Suppose further that the fish are Intelligently Designed. What is the pattern for the distribution of left-handed fish vs. right-handed fish with time, and why?

If my definition has blood on it, it is only because ID was really intellectual hara-kiri from the beginning. Self-organization has equations; it makes predictions; it is testable. ID? Michael Behe himself admitted under legal oath that any standard by which ID is science also would admit astrology as science.



Well, what is it? If you don't know what it is, how can you possibly be qualified to comment on its various explanations and subtleties? It's not about winning or losing; it's just really about whether you even know what you're talking about at all.



Can you answer mallon's "common designer" challenge then? http://christianforums.com/t6873573-the-common-designer-challenge.html Go on! ^^

Nonsense. Your books are cooked from the start. See Altenburg.

You go first and explain why your math rules out the "common designer" as the reason for the snow flake, the spin or quarks or your cilia. That is, show that your predictive model arises from a particular cause, not just that the calculation works from a given point of beginning.

Oh you can't or won't or don't like my question? Well, then i guess I win. (That is how we play this game, right? I am learning from you after all.)

There is no common designer challenge. Just as the "self" in "self-organizing" is completely unable to meet any similar challenge.

Its the Watchmaker again and again. Period. This is ID:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0803/S00051.htm

But he reminded me in our phone conversation that Darwin doesn't explain how life begins, "Darwin starts with life. He doesn't get you to life."
Thus the scramble at Altenberg for a new theory of evolution.
But Kauffman also describes genes as "utterly dead". However, he says there are some genes that turn the rest of the genes and one another on and off. Certain chemical reactions happen. Enzymes are produced, etc. And that while we only have 25,000 to 30,000 genes, there are many combinations of activity.
Here's what he told me over the phone:

"Well there's 25,000 genes, so each could be on or off. So there's 2 x 2 x 2 x 25,000 times. Well that's 2 to the 25,000th. Right? Which is something like 10 to the 7,000th. Okay? There's only 10 to the 80th particles in the whole universe. Are you stunned?"​

It's getting pretty staggering I told him. But there was more to come as he took me into his rugged landscapes theory – hopping out of one lake into a mountain pass and flowing down a creek into another lake and then wiggling the mountains and changing where the lakes are – all to demonstrate that the cell and the organism are a very complicated set of processes activating and inhibiting one another. "It's really much broader than genes," he said.
Kauffman presents some of this in his new book Reinventing the Sacred .
And natural selection is back in the equation.
In his book Investigations (2000), Kauffman wrote that "self-organization mingles with natural selection in barely understood ways to yield the magnificence of our teeming biosphere". He said he's still there, but now thinks natural selection exists throughout the universe.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman06/kauffman06_index.html

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Introduction[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Stuart A. Kauffman studies the origin of life and the origins of molecular organization. Thirty-five years ago, he developed the Kauffman models, which are random networks exhibiting a kind of self-organization that he terms "order for free." He asks a question that goes beyond those asked by other evolutionary theorists: if selection is operating all the time, how do we build a theory that combines self-organization (order for free) and selection? The answer lies in a "new" biology:[/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]"While it may sound as if 'order for free' is a serious challenge to Darwinian evolution, it's not so much that I want to challenge Darwinism and say that Darwin was wrong. I don't think he was wrong at all. I have no doubt that natural selection is an overriding, brilliant idea and a major force in evolution, but there are parts of it that Darwin couldn't have gotten right. One is that if there is order for free — if you have complex systems with powerfully ordered properties — you have to ask a question that evolutionary theories have never asked: Granting that selection is operating all the time, how do we build a theory that combines self-organization of complex systems — that is, this order for free — and natural selection? There's no body of theory in science that does this. There's nothing in physics that does this, because there's no natural selection in physics — there's self organization. Biology hasn't done it, because although we have a theory of selection, we've never married it to ideas of self-organization. One thing we have to do is broaden evolutionary theory to describe what happens when selection acts on systems that already have robust self-organizing properties. This body of theory simply does not exist." (Chapter 20, "Order for Free", The Third Culture, 1995) [/FONT]
​

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
* * *
[/FONT] [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] But the failure to prestate the possible preadaptations is not slowing down the evolution of the biosphere where preadaptations are widely known. Thus, ever novel functionalities come to exist and proliferate in the biosphere. The fact that we cannot prestate them is essential, and an essential limitation to the way Newton taught us to do science: Prestate the relevant variables, forces acting among them, initial and boundary conditions, and calculate the future evolution of the system…say projectile. But we cannot prestate the relevant causal features of organisms in the biosphere. We do not know now the relevant variables! Thus we cannot write down a set of equations for the temporal evolution of these variables. We are profoundly precluded from the Newtonian move. In short, the evolution of the biosphere is radically unknowable, not due to quantum throws of the dice, or deterministic chaos, but because we cannot prestate the macroscopic relevant features of organisms and environments that will lead to the emergence of novel functions in the biosphere with their own causal properties that in turn alter the future evolution of the biosphere. Thus, the evolution of the biosphere is radically creative, ceaselessly creative, in way that cannot be foretold. I find this wonderful.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] I believe this fact means that the evolution of the biosphere is non-algorithmic. It cannot be simulated, certainly with continuous spacetime and quantum mechanics playing a role. [/FONT]

 

[busterdog]

Sure, providing you do what all other scientists have done who have had their findings published in childrens text books. Please, come up with a hypothesis, research your hypothesis, publish your findings in a peer reviewed journal, allow your fellow scientists to critique your views, perform their own experiments on it to see if they come up with the same results, if not then I would advise you to go back to the lab, keep trying until you get something that other scientists can reproduce in their own labs, after that please take part in conferences and scientific conventions to present your ideas, this may take some time as in order to have information published in a text book it needs to be accepted by the majority of scientists - patience is a virtue here.

That this happens as you infer is pretty much a lie. See Expelled. That is not how Darwinism is studied and written about. Its not how creationism is evaluated. Unless you want to admit that Darwinism doesn't work in several fundamental areas, as Altenburg proves. But, the TEs are all too chicken to just face it.

 

[Mallon]

That this happens as you infer is pretty much a lie. See Expelled. That is not how Darwinism is studied and written about. Its not how creationism is evaluated. Unless you want to admit that Darwinism doesn't work in several fundamental areas, as Altenburg proves. But, the TEs are all too chicken to just face it.

What's "Darwinism"? Do you mean "evolution" or "neoDarwinism"? Because no one subscribes to Darwinism anymore. There's a difference, believe it or not.

And with all these recent appeals to the movie Expelled (which no one here has even seen yet, to my knowledge), I'm starting to wonder if the YECs here are aware that the door swings both ways:

http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2007/09/when-acceptance-of-biological-evolution.html

Not to mention many of the evolutionary creationists who have been dismissed from the communion table for their beliefs. I make no bones about the fact that I was dismissed last year. I no longer held to the tenets of my church. If those martyred professors don't hold to the tenets of science, why should they expect to be kept on (and given tenure, for that matter)?

 

[mark kennedy]

So dishonest people aren't liars, and deceived people aren't deluded? You really have a way with words mark.

I don't think you are deluded, just mislead and on the wrong horse. I don't really know why you pursue this so zealously, nor do I care.

If I am taken in by "the spirit of the age", then pray tell what this spirit might be?

In a word, 'Darwinism'.

Perhaps it is the denial of the existence of God - but I believe God exists. Perhaps it is the denial of supernatural miracles - but I believe miracles happen and I have witnessed them firsthand. Perhaps it is the denial of the inspiration of the Bible - but I believe that the Bible is divinely inspired and in fact the text leads me to reject creationism as much as scientific facts do. Perhaps it is the denial of orthodox doctrine - but I am a Calvinist Trinitarian and people far more fundamentally creationist than me have propounded far worse heresies than I have.

It's you attack on Creationism that I think is ill founded. You say that you believe in this and that but I don't see you all the interested. I don't think the theistic evolution even qualifys as a heresy because it has no marks of theology of any kind. I don't know what you believe about God but I have often seen God defined in very different terms then I would recognized as traditional Christian theism. My problems are either Scriptural or Scientific, I don't blend the two.

The fact is that if this "spirit of the age" has left me a Bible-believing, miracle-trusting, Trinitarian Christian, then perhaps it is not much of a spirit at all. Perhaps the dogmatism is only in your head.

That's great that you survived the Darwinian attack on religious conviction which leads me to wonder why you attack fellow Christians with such a passion.

Really? You are not the enemy? But you have said yourself:

You can embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history or you can embrace Darwinism as a substitute, you can't have it both ways because Darwinians won't have it.

That's right and I stand by that statement. I don't think you are as friendly to Christian theism as you pretend to be. There are just no many conflicts that arise when you just say, I believe it, so what? I have known people who believe the serpent in the garden was a literal snake. I generally listen politely to their thoughts and share what insights I can about it being a proper name. I certainly don't dog their steps and join the crowd in attacking them on nit picky points like you have done me in the past.

By the way, still think an uncorrected transcript error is not a mutation?

Well to me, if I embraced the Scriptures as redemptive history (and I do), then anyone who did not would be an enemy to me in some way, since they are enemies with God to reject His Scriptures. And if I believed that all Darwinism was predicated on rejecting the Scriptures as redemptive history, and I believed that all who rejected the Scriptures as redemptive history were enemies in some way, then I would have to believe that all Darwinism was an enemy to me, and that all Darwinists are.

What you attack or reject in the privacy of your own thoughts is your buisness. What you do on these boards is simply to attack people and never without a group of supporters. I'm really not impressed with your statement of what you believe because I know how semantics work. If you really are as fundamentalist (Calvanists are die hard fundamentalists by the way) then you should understand that a literal understanding of Genesis is the most common interpretation.

You are right that I am not your enemy. But it is only precisely because I embrace the Scriptures as redemptive history. Doesn't that throw a spanner in your tidy dualism? If Darwinism is antithetical to Christianity, how can I be a Darwinist and yet not your enemy?

Darwin certainly thought it was possible. The man was an agnostic his whole life and considered his view as not having any affect on a persons religion whatsoever. Still it is the seemingly benign aspects of Darwinism that makes it so dangerous and apparently you don't see the danger.

In any case, my "stubborn refusal" to accept Creationism is really just a reasoned view of the evidence at hand. You and your views have consistently failed to explain almost all the physical evidence surrounding evolution, whether they be cranial capacities or genetic traits. Even creationists when they try, by "baraminology", to separate animals into kinds, cannot avoid lumping humans with apes - they can only separate them on shoddy theological bases instead of biological facts. I was once a creationist too. Physical evidence has brought me where I am, and physical evidence will get me out - if only you had any!

First of all the burden of proof is on evolutionists, not me. I ask fundamental questions about the genetic mechanism for the most highly conserved genes affecting vital functions like the brain and there is no substantive response. The logical course would be to look at known genetic mechanisms for adaptive evolution but you guys can't even do that. Darwinians just keep chanting the mantra of 'mutations with beneficial affect' and it's absurd when looking at something as highly conserved as the human brain.

One other thing that has raised my incredulity to critical levels, you do the same thing to the Scriptures. When the text doesn't line up with your worldview you simply ignore it or distort the clear meaning. These generality neither confront me nor impress me, you forget, this isn't my first rodeo.

Of course God did indeed act in a special creation event: God used evolution to create humanity.

That is not special creation, there you go again.

 

[busterdog]

What's "Darwinism"? Do you mean "evolution" or "neoDarwinism"? Because no one subscribes to Darwinism anymore. There's a difference, believe it or not.

Which is why fighting ID is not a game worth the candle for you neoDarwinians.

And with all these recent appeals to the movie Expelled (which no one here has even seen yet, to my knowledge), I'm starting to wonder if the YECs here are aware that the door swings both ways:

http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2007/09/when-acceptance-of-biological-evolution.html

OK, evolutionists should not be persecuted academically.

Not to mention many of the evolutionary creationists who have been dismissed from the communion table for their beliefs. I make no bones about the fact that I was dismissed last year. I no longer held to the tenets of my church. If those martyred professors don't hold to the tenets of science, why should they expect to be kept on (and given tenure, for that matter)?

And Tibetan monks should expect to be shot for protesting. It is indeed logical. I understand that there are shades of gray in those who advocate ID and shades of gray for the degree of academic persecution. All of it is predictable and lots of it is probably tolerable. I am just asking that the core concept of ID be acknowledged to be what neoDarwinism accepts: unexplained, nonrandom mutuation, which could be just about anything, including God.

 

[MinervaMac]

That this happens as you infer is pretty much a lie. See Expelled. That is not how Darwinism is studied and written about. Its not how creationism is evaluated. Unless you want to admit that Darwinism doesn't work in several fundamental areas, as Altenburg proves. But, the TEs are all too chicken to just face it.

From a trailer of a film that hasn't been released you can with full authority state that the scientific process is a lie, well that's remarkable.

You do not know how Evolution is studied or wrote about, if you did then you would know that Evolutionary Biologists do not spend day after day confirming what is already known, you would know that they spend their time revising and improving our knowledge of Evolution and their findings get published and critiqued, and other scientists will do their own research and gradually, over time they win over the majority of scientists to get a consensus. This is how the scientific process works in all fields, geography, chemistry, biology and physics.

 

[busterdog]

From a trailer of a film that hasn't been released you can with full authority state that the scientific process is a lie, well that's remarkable.

Eeeek! Good thing that's not what I did!

 

[shernren]

Nonsense. Your books are cooked from the start. See Altenburg.

You go first and explain why your math rules out the "common designer" as the reason for the snow flake, the spin or quarks or your cilia. That is, show that your predictive model arises from a particular cause, not just that the calculation works from a given point of beginning.

Oh you can't or won't or don't like my question? Well, then i guess I win. (That is how we play this game, right? I am learning from you after all.)

Snowflakes are hexagonal because they were designed to be hexagonal, and because the tetrahedral arrangement of electron groups in a water molecule lends itself during hydrogen bonding to hexagonal arrangements far better than any other.

Electrons in atoms have spins because they were designed to have spins, and because applying the boundary conditions of a harmonic oscillator well on the wavefunction of an electron causes quantization of the z-magnetic moment.

Hadrons are made of quarks because they were designed to be made of quarks, and because quark triplets are one stable arrangement of quark-gluon combinations.

Cilia have variable filamentary structure because they were designed to have variable filamentary structure, and because they were diversified via evolution from their initial TSTS-like precursor.

See, the reason we take offense with ID is not because it has an intelligent design. It is not as if we want to look at the world and scour clean any trace possible of God. No, certainly not! God be praised in all ways for all things. Rather, we take offense with ID precisely because it prevents us from praising God in all ways for all things. For again, take a look at the way you posed that question:

You go first and explain why your math rules out the "common designer" as the reason for the snow flake, the spin or quarks or your cilia.

And take a look at the way I posed my question:

For example, given that an aquatic creature has scales and fins, and assuming that it is Intelligently Designed (and nothing else), what is the probability that it has gills?

Intelligent Design is scientifically useless even if the universe is intelligently designed for the simple reason that it doesn't predict anything, doesn't exclude anything, doesn't support anything, doesn't refute anything. The universe could be Intelligently Designed and be devoid of life (certainly seems intelligent considering all the damage humans have wrought), could be Intelligently Designed and have a biota that looks exactly like it evolved, could be Intelligently Designed and chock-full of hippogryphs, centaurs, unicorns and lightning-scarred wizards running around waving wands, could be Intelligently Designed and filled with swarms of nanomachines intent on remaking the universe into more copies of themselves, could be Intelligently Designed and ... whereas our biosphere, if indeed it evolved, can only look the way it is, with respect to the twin nested hierarchy and the observable characteristics of allele distribution and its change over time.

Furthermore, Intelligent Design believes that natural hypotheses and mechanistic explanations rule out an Intelligent Designer. Anything that evolved can't possibly be designed; therefore evolution tells us that there is no God and this materialistic nihilism must be countered with anything, even if it is with pseudo-scientific hogwash that has been admitted by its own founders to be on par with astrology. But see? They have prevented us from praising God in all ways for all things; it is no coincidence that ID publicly distances itself from Christianity and uses the offend-nobody term "Intelligent Designer" instead of "God". How can anything so ashamed of His name and His gospel ever help us praise Him? By contrast we see God as much in the mystery of evolution and an evolved biota as we would if we were surrounded by centaurs and mermaids; we are able to praise God under the microscope as we praise Him anywhere else - something that the ID people will never be able to do if their wedge is broken and they are proved wrong.

 

[shernren]

I don't think you are deluded, just mislead and on the wrong horse. I don't really know why you pursue this so zealously, nor do I care.

"Deluded" or "misled", you are really just playing with words and finding the most socially-acceptable way to tell me that I'm dead wrong and I don't know it.

I have a career ahead of me as a scientist; I am passionate to make it known that science and Christianity both intersect and do not want anyone to be turned away just because they got the impression from creationists that to be a Christian you must throw away everything of the empirical method and the advances it has brought us. In contrast, you write a lot for someone who doesn't care ...

In a word, 'Darwinism'.

It's you attack on Creationism that I think is ill founded. You say that you believe in this and that but I don't see you all the interested. I don't think the theistic evolution even qualifys as a heresy because it has no marks of theology of any kind. I don't know what you believe about God but I have often seen God defined in very different terms then I would recognized as traditional Christian theism. My problems are either Scriptural or Scientific, I don't blend the two.

That's right, I've often seen God defined in very different terms than I would have recognized as traditional Christian theism too! For example ClearSky has been spending half a thread telling me that God changes - wait, she's a creationist, no?

Clearly creationism is no guarantee of good theology, nor is theistic evolution any guarantee of bad theology. Why should my attack on creationism be ill-founded if I can be a Calvinist, Bible-believing Christian without it? If I can be all that without creationism then what good is it? Go ahead, ask me what you will about God. I am not convinced that you will find anything different from what you believe about God. As I have said before and will say again, I believe that I am inherently sinful as a human, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins and that His atoning sacrifice avails for the propitiation of my transgressions before God's righteous judgment because He has imputed His righteousness to me. What more can you ask from a Christian?

That's great that you survived the Darwinian attack on religious conviction which leads me to wonder why you attack fellow Christians with such a passion.

The only reason I survived the Darwinian attack on my religious conviction is because I was not convinced by Christians like you who would tell me that Darwin and Christ are incompatible. If I had taken the bait creationists set out I would not be a Christian today. Why do I fight creationism? So that more people will take the path I took.

That's right and I stand by that statement. I don't think you are as friendly to Christian theism as you pretend to be. There are just no many conflicts that arise when you just say, I believe it, so what? I have known people who believe the serpent in the garden was a literal snake. I generally listen politely to their thoughts and share what insights I can about it being a proper name. I certainly don't dog their steps and join the crowd in attacking them on nit picky points like you have done me in the past.

And yet, what are you doing right now? Not dogging my steps? Not attacking me on nit-picky points? I have already made clear my entire view of salvation and my approach towards reading the Bible; it doesn't sound half a bit different from what you do, really, and yet you insist that I am not as friendly to Christian theism as I pretend to be. If I am pretending to be a friend to Christian theism what can I actually be but an atheist wolf in sheepskin? Really, for someone who calls me a relentless attacker you ought to take a look at what you're saying about me ...

By the way, still think an uncorrected transcript error is not a mutation?

Sure, and if you can correct me, go ahead!

What you attack or reject in the privacy of your own thoughts is your buisness. What you do on these boards is simply to attack people and never without a group of supporters. I'm really not impressed with your statement of what you believe because I know how semantics work. If you really are as fundamentalist (Calvanists are die hard fundamentalists by the way) then you should understand that a literal understanding of Genesis is the most common interpretation.

Firstly - never without a group of supporters? Really. Just look back over this thread and tell me that I replied to your statement with "a group of supporters". MinervaMac and mallon only came later. If we're talking about genetics, sure, I don't want to be there without sfs or gluadys, since my area simply isn't biology and definitely not the intricacies of evolutionary population genetics. And hey, if people want to join in, I see no problem with it.

And who died and allowed you to define what a Calvinist is? Why can't a Calvinist accept evolution? Don't forget that many of Darwin's defenders were themselves Reformed theologians, including Bavinck and today John C. Collins.

Darwin certainly thought it was possible. The man was an agnostic his whole life and considered his view as not having any affect on a persons religion whatsoever. Still it is the seemingly benign aspects of Darwinism that makes it so dangerous and apparently you don't see the danger.

Then tell me what is wrong with my Christian worldview. Tell me what evolution has done to my beliefs other than, well, allowing me to accept evolution. Slippery slope arguments don't work on people who aren't falling.

First of all the burden of proof is on evolutionists, not me. I ask fundamental questions about the genetic mechanism for the most highly conserved genes affecting vital functions like the brain and there is no substantive response. The logical course would be to look at known genetic mechanisms for adaptive evolution but you guys can't even do that. Darwinians just keep chanting the mantra of 'mutations with beneficial affect' and it's absurd when looking at something as highly conserved as the human brain.

One other thing that has raised my incredulity to critical levels, you do the same thing to the Scriptures. When the text doesn't line up with your worldview you simply ignore it or distort the clear meaning. These generality neither confront me nor impress me, you forget, this isn't my first rodeo.

"High conservation" is simply the historical serendipity of not having had mutations; you've never shown us any "mechanisms" for genetic conservation either, so your case doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. Meanwhile, creationist baraminologists who try to use genetic criteria to separate out the various "created kinds" find that they can never biologically differentiate between apes and humans, and have to invoke a priori theological reasoning to make the cut. If you won't listen to us, perhaps you'll listen to them?

That is not special creation, there you go again.

Why not? God establishes a relationship with His creatures; that's the most special thing I could ever imagine.

 

[busterdog]

Snowflakes are hexagonal because they were designed to be hexagonal, and because the tetrahedral arrangement of electron groups in a water molecule lends itself during hydrogen bonding to hexagonal arrangements far better than any other.

Electrons in atoms have spins because they were designed to have spins, and because applying the boundary conditions of a harmonic oscillator well on the wavefunction of an electron causes quantization of the z-magnetic moment.

Hadrons are made of quarks because they were designed to be made of quarks, and because quark triplets are one stable arrangement of quark-gluon combinations.

Cilia have variable filamentary structure because they were designed to have variable filamentary structure, and because they were diversified via evolution from their initial TSTS-like precursor.

See, the reason we take offense with ID is not because it has an intelligent design. It is not as if we want to look at the world and scour clean any trace possible of God. No, certainly not! God be praised in all ways for all things. Rather, we take offense with ID precisely because it prevents us from praising God in all ways for all things. For again, take a look at the way you posed that question:



And take a look at the way I posed my question:



Intelligent Design is scientifically useless even if the universe is intelligently designed for the simple reason that it doesn't predict anything, doesn't exclude anything, doesn't support anything, doesn't refute anything. The universe could be Intelligently Designed and be devoid of life (certainly seems intelligent considering all the damage humans have wrought), could be Intelligently Designed and have a biota that looks exactly like it evolved, could be Intelligently Designed and chock-full of hippogryphs, centaurs, unicorns and lightning-scarred wizards running around waving wands, could be Intelligently Designed and filled with swarms of nanomachines intent on remaking the universe into more copies of themselves, could be Intelligently Designed and ... whereas our biosphere, if indeed it evolved, can only look the way it is, with respect to the twin nested hierarchy and the observable characteristics of allele distribution and its change over time.

Furthermore, Intelligent Design believes that natural hypotheses and mechanistic explanations rule out an Intelligent Designer. Anything that evolved can't possibly be designed; therefore evolution tells us that there is no God and this materialistic nihilism must be countered with anything, even if it is with pseudo-scientific hogwash that has been admitted by its own founders to be on par with astrology. But see? They have prevented us from praising God in all ways for all things; it is no coincidence that ID publicly distances itself from Christianity and uses the offend-nobody term "Intelligent Designer" instead of "God". How can anything so ashamed of His name and His gospel ever help us praise Him? By contrast we see God as much in the mystery of evolution and an evolved biota as we would if we were surrounded by centaurs and mermaids; we are able to praise God under the microscope as we praise Him anywhere else - something that the ID people will never be able to do if their wedge is broken and they are proved wrong.

Interesting. Going to take some thought to respond.

The underlying assumptions about where one is going and what one is resisting require much sifting.

 

[shernren]

Interesting. Going to take some thought to respond.

The underlying assumptions about where one is going and what one is resisting require much sifting.

Oh, take your time. It's probably going to end up being placed two posts above mine or something anyway so it will look like you responded to me even before you saw what I wrote. ^^

 

[busterdog]

Oh, take your time. It's probably going to end up being placed two posts above mine or something anyway so it will look like you responded to me even before you saw what I wrote. ^^

The thread is "self-organizing."

I am working on a reply with Mark Kennedy.

We are back to a familiar, bedrock debate. It is the philosophical position one takes on Bayesian logic and just-because-it-is-ism.

Maybe time for a new thread.

Assuming that you are still with us at that time, that will mean that you were not crushed by an asteroid. Does that mean you were lucky, that your relationship to space is one that self-organizes, or that God loves you? Or that God would prefer to subject you to a slower and more horrible death at a later time?

Dawkins uses Bertrand Russell's teapot atheism, which I think is the same problematic logic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxqy32SFW-w We are talking about causes and relationships as remote and unknown as Russell's teapot. I think Dawkins and Russell betray genuine intellectual inferiority on this point, quite frankly. There is some elegance to it, but I think the Bible rightly calls this just plain foolish.

And let's put it this way: before we get to the question of whether the logical problem supports Darwinism or the exclusion of ID, let's see if we can't get a handle on the logical problems of atheism.