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2005 Top Award for Evolution -AAAS

SamCJ

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Beastt said:
In assuming that scientists can tell the difference, you also seem to be assuming that scientists have apparently natural examples of both so that they may compare. I believe this to be the first error in your logic. If you can assume for a moment that everything we consider to be naturally formed is without intelligence, then perhaps you can start to see the problem with what you propose -- no sample of intelligent design to use for comparison..

It requires an assumption by extrapolation that supernatural or alien intelligence is similar to man's intelligence. We have many examples of man's intelligence that could be used for the comparison. There are many who argue that such intelligence is lacking among their opponents on this site. Perhaps the first step is to figure out how to distinguish between intelligence and stupidity in man. The difficulty of developing objective rules defining them suggests to me that I may be asking science to do the impossible.

Beastt said:
I think we first must determine that there are both intelligent examples in nature and non-intelligent examples. If we can do that, we might be able to move to the step you suggest. But I find it highly unlikely that we will do better than to find out that all examples of nature can be adequately and accurately explained without including an unseen intelligence factor.

Look around you. You will see many examples of intelligent design. Now go out into the woods and find a rock. A likely random creaton. Do not confuse a brick with a rock.

(I am being patronizing. Sorry. Why did you not mention these obvious ideas?)
 
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pantsman52

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SamCJ said:
Look around you. You will see many examples of intelligent design. Now go out into the woods and find a rock. A likely random creaton. Do not confuse a brick with a rock.

This has to be designed, right?

delicatearchimg18134kf.jpg
 
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SamCJ

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pantsman52 said:
This has to be designed, right?

delicatearchimg18134kf.jpg

Sorry, I don't beleive you have this "around you" while you are posting it on the internet in response to me.

This is a typical misrepresentation of my point. It is very annoying. You need to find some way to address the actual ideas you are confronted with rather than making up ideas to shoot down. But I will not hold my breath.
 
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J

Jet Black

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jamesrwright3 said:
No one has shown so far that intelligence is not needed to form a living organism.
reproduction forms living organisms every 20 minutes in a petri dish at room temperature, with not a trace of intelligence in sight, except for the lab tech who set up the petri dish and filled it with agar, though strictly this is not required - bacterial reproduction occurs even outside agar dishes.
 
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Beastt

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SamCJ said:
It requires an assumption by extrapolation that supernatural or alien intelligence is similar to man's intelligence. We have many examples of man's intelligence that could be used for the comparison. There are many who argue that such intelligence is lacking among their opponents on this site. Perhaps the first step is to figure out how to distinguish between intelligence and stupidity in man. The difficulty of developing objective rules defining them suggests to me that I may be asking science to do the impossible.
If you're going to use examples of design conceived and executed by man, then the best you can hope for is to determine what man did and did not design. We already have a pretty good grasp on that. I don't think it plausible to suggest that supernatural creation would find enough common ground with man's creations to allow man's creations to serve as an appropriate model.

SamCJ said:
Look around you.
Looking around me is what has lead me to believe that there is no intelligent designer and no god.

SamCJ said:
You will see many examples of intelligent design. Now go out into the woods and find a rock. A likely random creaton. Do not confuse a brick with a rock.
The examples of intelligent design I see are mostly that of man which makes them other than examples of supernatural design. Though Intelligent Design likes to tip-toe around the topic of who the intelligent designer is, if all we're trying to find out is what was designed by man and what wasn't, we shouldn't have too much trouble. But, if we're attempting to find an intelligent designer other than man, we first need to determine if we have examples of intelligent design, (not of man), to work from or if everything can be adequately explained without an intelligent designer.

That's where we should probably have a good look at the principles of Occam's Razor and spend a bit of time thinking about why those principles so often lead us to accurate conclusions. If an intelligent designer isn't necessary, suggesting one when you have no designer to point to and no clear evidence that one exists is unnecessary complexity, arbitrarily injected into the postulation and therefore, a violation of logic principles.

SamCJ said:
(I am being patronizing. Sorry. Why did you not mention these obvious ideas?)
I'm being very nice... so far. I didn't mention your ideas because I find them to be other than helpful for this situation. Certainly we know bricks are designed by man. But that doesn't mean that nature can't mimic such shapes or that we didn't mimic nature in first designing bricks. Spheres can be formed without intelligence using gravity and centrifugal force. They can also be formed intelligently. Being able to tell the difference seems to be little more than a task of seeing how they are made. Suggesting that the oblate spheroid shape of most planets arises from the same kind of intelligence as the shape of a bowling ball is suggesting that either gravity, centrifugal force or both, retain some level of intelligence.
 
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Elduran

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Jet Black said:
well to be fair to the man, he did try to submit the papers, but wouldn't be cross questioned, and so the papers were rejected.
I was under the impression that he was listed as an expert witness for the defence but eventually declined to testify?

It was a while back, and I was probably stressed about something at the time ;)
 
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rjw

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SamCJ said:
Only my knowledge of the world. Are you saying you do not suspect it?


That's not my argument.


Nothing.

No.


No.

NA. Atheists demand that of IDists as shown by your reply before this one.



"Evolution" is presently all about randomness, because atheistic scientists exclude the possibility of intelligence. It is inherent in the word "evolution."
Do you ever read any text books or journals on biology or evolution?
Not much. I read this article: http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/NCBQ3_3HarrisCalvert.pdf


I don't.

A sample count I made here that seems to be confirmed by various things. The posts of theistic evolutionists are relatively scarce here.




"...certainly neither side can hope for anything close to "proof." Although Spetner denies that he is "obliged to prove a non-existence" of such a chain of mutations, his whole effort in the correspondence seems to be directed to just that aim. Evolutionists have the job of defending the reasonableness of such a series of mutations. I believe that Spetner would agree with this."

I concentrated on the highlighted portions.



That is not my point, as I have tried to explain.


Show me where I said it was.



Perhaps if you quote the particular phrase that has misled you...?



Not easily. It was someone's notes about his email communications with Spetner dealing with "intelligent design." I think that is what I searched.



Pass. I cannot find what this relates to.



Several evolutionists here have said the process cannot be observed and they referred me to a link that said it was a "mistake." Others said the exact cause is unknown.


The same link said 1 in 100 million. Later other writings said more frequently and not well known.

Not easily.



Partly. I say "partly" because there have been no observations past, present or future of the process or the precise causes, evolutionists' assumptions are necessarily based on circumstantial evidence, which is scant.


We have better circumstantial evidence of the things I am not arguing about.




I hope Jones had something better than that. I think that is a misrepresentation of the ID viewpoint. It certainly misrepresents mine.



Find my post about the Mandelbrot set and look at Beastt's post on this thread about the deceptiveness of randomness-- it creates evidence of intelligence. Why do we think it looks intelligent? That is what Dembski is trying to answer. Evolutionists seem to me to say that because the patterns of the mandelbrot set look like a product of intelligence but are actually a product of an "irrational" fomula that makes dots in random order, we cannot consider the fact that a design looks like a product of intellignece to
constitute evidence of intelligence. I believe that argument is flawed. I hope Dembski or others can determine some rules to distinguish whether apparent intelligence is a product of real intelligence or just randomness.




Have you read "Does God Play Dice?" by Ian Stewart. I was in the middle of it when I got sidetracked by this site. Einstein spent 2/3rds of his life trying to prove the negative, and never did.



Weather systems may be deterministic or random or controlled by God on unbelievably minute levels. They are certainly more predictable than mutations. Gravity conforms to a clear formula and seems very predictable.
The answer doesn't matter to me much although I have read a lot about it and it is pretty fascinating.



Pass. I leave it to the scientists, but I doubt many are concerned about whether God is playing dice with the rain.



What are the laws governing the random mutation?



I did not make that claim. I said it is possible and I want the question to be explored.




Well, I made him in my own image and likeness or maybe it is vice versa.



What is your life's meaning to you? I do not remember if I ever knew. Are yu an atheist. What is the meaning of one's life to an avowed atheist?



Bummer.



Ohmm.



I have not yet found their reaction to Jones opinion in any detail. I am anxious to see it.


I'm not very impressed by that.



Apparent intelligence is everywhere, like I explained a little fuller above.

Well SamCJ, I am going to stop here. I have already asked many questions of you and this should be enough for now.




Gidday SamCJ,

I just wish to focus on just one aspect of your last repy for now. I am doing so because it appeared central to your opening argument.

Roland:- Where in the article do you find the AAAS making the claim that randomness was relevant to understanding the chimp genome?

To this, you replied:-

SamCJ:- "Evolution" is presently all about randomness, because atheistic scientists exclude the possibility of intelligence. It is inherent in the word "evolution."

You do not answer my question. You argued that the AAAS claimed or implied that “randomness was relevant to the understanding of the chimp genome”.

Now the relevant part of the news article was about the sequencing of the chimp genome, the fact that it uncovered a 4% difference between human and chimp genome and how this built on Darwin’s concept of evolution. But where did the AAAS make the statement you claim? How was it even implied in that article?

When you write “Evolution is presently all about randomness” what do you mean? Do you mean “Evolution is only about randomness”?

Atheistic scientists exclude the possibility of intelligence in everything. Does this mean therefore that everything is about randomness – according to the atheist?

If atheists exclude the possibility of intelligence with respect to evolution and therefore you argue “evolution is all about randomness” then are you arguing that there are two evolutions - since both theists and atheists accept conventional mainstream evolution, randomness and all – that is they reject ID?


Regards, Roland.

PS Yes I am an atheist. I have been since my early 20s.

PPS Re my query to your claim that 90% on this site are atheists. I did a very quick count on this thread, based only on the little symbols at the top of each post. I found - 7 atheists, 5 Christians, 1 Deist, 2 Agnostics, 5 Unknowns. That is, out of 17 different posters, only 7 were confirmed atheists while 6 were confirmed theists.
 
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SamCJ

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Beastt said:
If you're going to use examples of design conceived and executed by man, then the best you can hope for is to determine what man did and did not design. We already have a pretty good grasp on that. I don't think it plausible to suggest that supernatural creation would find enough common ground with man's creations to allow man's creations to serve as an appropriate model. ..

I disagree.


Beastt said:
Looking around me is what has lead me to believe that there is no intelligent designer and no god..

Surely you do not believe your watch resulted from randomness as opposed to an intelligent designer.


Beastt said:
The examples of intelligent design I see are mostly that of man which makes them other than examples of supernatural design. Though Intelligent Design likes to tip-toe around the topic of who the intelligent designer is, if all we're trying to find out is what was designed by man and what wasn't, we shouldn't have too much trouble. But, if we're attempting to find an intelligent designer other than man, we first need to determine if we have examples of intelligent design, (not of man), to work from or if everything can be adequately explained without an intelligent designer. .

I disagree.

Beastt said:
That's where we should probably have a good look at the principles of Occam's Razor and spend a bit of time thinking about why those principles so often lead us to accurate conclusions. If an intelligent designer isn't necessary, suggesting one when you have no designer to point to and no clear evidence that one exists is unnecessary complexity, arbitrarily injected into the postulation and therefore, a violation of logic principles..

Evidence of evolutionists that intelligence is unnecessary to any species of life is scant. Of course, scientists are no where near establishing the no-need for intelligence in abiogenesis. If intelligence is needed for the first cell, its involvement in speciation is more credible.


Beastt said:
I'm being very nice... so far. I didn't mention your ideas because I find them to be other than helpful for this situation. Certainly we know bricks are designed by man. But that doesn't mean that nature can't mimic such shapes or that we didn't mimic nature in first designing bricks. Spheres can be formed without intelligence using gravity and centrifugal force. They can also be formed intelligently. Being able to tell the difference seems to be little more than a task of seeing how they are made. Suggesting that the oblate spheroid shape of most planets arises from the same kind of intelligence as the shape of a bowling ball is suggesting that either gravity, centrifugal force or both, retain some level of intelligence.

Rocks have been created on earth for about 4.5 billion years. Scientists have examined jillions of them. If one were found that was randomly created by natural causes alone in the shape of a brick, it probably would have been front page on the NY Times.

Your choice of spheres is probably the only intelligently designed geometric shape that resembles a shape created by nature. Discuss the brick.
 
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SamCJ

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rjw said:
Gidday SamCJ,

Now the relevant part of the news article was about the sequencing of the chimp genome, the fact that it uncovered a 4% difference between human and chimp genome and how this built on Darwin’s concept of evolution. But where did the AAAS make the statement you claim? How was it even implied in that article?


With due respect, Roland I think I have made myself clear enough concerning my OP. I bet I have rephrased it 4 or 5 times.

rjw said:
When you write “Evolution is presently all about randomness” what do you mean? Do you mean “Evolution is only about randomness”?

No

rjw said:
Atheistic scientists exclude the possibility of intelligence in everything. Does this mean therefore that everything is about randomness – according to the atheist?

I think so.

rjw said:
If atheists exclude the possibility of intelligence with respect to evolution and therefore you argue “evolution is all about randomness” then are you arguing that there are two evolutions - since both theists and atheists accept conventional mainstream evolution, randomness and all – that is they reject ID?

Explain theistic evolution for me. I don't get it.

2 important questions you did not respond to:
1. Don't you suspect AAAS was trying to influence public opinion in favor of no-ID in their awards selections?
2. What are the laws governing mutations that result in speciation?
 
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pantsman52

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SamCJ said:
Sorry, I don't beleive you have this "around you" while you are posting it on the internet in response to me.

This is a typical misrepresentation of my point. It is very annoying. You need to find some way to address the actual ideas you are confronted with rather than making up ideas to shoot down. But I will not hold my breath.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought the topic at hand was discerning what is and is not intelligently designed. My mistake.
 
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HairlessSimian

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SamCJ said:
Dembski is trying to figure out how to distinguish random causes from intelligent causes by looking at the result because the cause is not available for observation. I do not know whether he has accomplished that yet. If you tell me that it is impossible to do, I will not believe you unless you are able to present one hell of an argument on the subject. I understand the difficulty, but I do not want atheists squelching the effort just because the results my offend their adopted religion. Archeologists do it all the time without scientific complaint.

You brought up the point that archaeologists search for intelligence (so why not evolutionists?) in a previous thread. I responded then that, of course, they do, because they're in the business of studying ancient humans. There is a big difference that I hope you see between archeologists and biologists.
 
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HairlessSimian

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SamCJ said:
1. Don't you suspect AAAS was trying to influence public opinion in favor of no-ID in their awards selections?
2. What are the laws governing mutations that result in speciation?

1. No, not overtly. Besides, who cares? It's a minor point to build a thread on.
2. The laws of chemistry, thermodynamics and kinetics/statistics.

Question: How do you find evidence of the supernatural? of an Intelligent Designer?
Answer: When the laws of nature are violated.

Question: Do we have evidence of an (non-human) Intelligent Designer?
Answer: No, insofar as the laws of nature have not been apparently violated.

 
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