Царь Славян wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:To state that you cannot infer intention from an object is to state that you cannot infer design from an object.

Non sequitur. If design exist, intention existed. But we don't actually have to know what exactly the designer intended todo, for us to infer design. If you find a super complicated device, made by super advance aliens, you would have no idea what it's for. You would not know their intention, but you could infer that the device is designed.

Царь Славян wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:You have absolutely destroyed the tenuous foundation on which design inference exists even before you have really thought about it.

No, you keep repeating this but this is not ture. What I have destroyed is YOUR SUPPOSED design detection method that hinges upon intentionallity. My method does not.

Царь Славян wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:That's how weak the hypothesis is. It doesn't even resist logical prodding, it has no chance of ever being testable, ergo, it is not scientific.

How many times do I have to keep repeating myself? Natural laws and chance. If an object can be explained by any of those two then the design hypothesis is falsified. Those are the forces that can render a design hypothesis null and void. I said it at least three times already. Why are you pretending I didn't say it?

Царь Славян wrote:If you have no definition for reason then how can you claim it's a human characteristic in the first place?

Царь Славян wrote:According to you, isn't cognitive abillity [sic] of the brain, the same thing as any other natural process?

Царь Славян wrote:No, saying atheis [sic] is true, means saying either It is true that God does not exist, It is true that someone does not believe in God.

Царь Славян wrote:

Viraldi wrote:What`s the problem? NON SEQUITUR if not IGNORATIO ELENCHI

Explain why.

Царь Славян wrote:So your point is?

Царь Славян wrote:This is my definition, so I'm the reference.

Viraldi wrote:orgulous

Царь Славян wrote:

ID is just creationism in pseudo-scientific clothing.

ID has no creation story, therefore it's not creationism.

And you can't cherry pick.

Depends no what's to be picked.

In biological evolution, there are four main processes: natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection and migration. Evolution is about the change in gene frequencies over time.

That's pretty much fine with me.

A apparently small genetic change can lead to large differences in morphology, biochemistry, physiology, behavior etc. Sometimes, a significant amount of genetic change can lead to relatively little change in phenotype. It all depends on the nature of the genetic change. For example, there are many isopmorphs of a protein that can do the same job, so different organisms can have a diverse DNA sequences and a different amino acid sequence, and yet in many cases, the protein or enzyme may work the same or in a similar manner.
Changes in signaling regulatory genes [or even some Genetic Regulatory Networks or pathways] can lead to profound changes in morphology at any level. Within species, for example, you can have size polymorphism, sexual dimorphism and specialization of castes, such as in the social hymenoptera.

In development, the embryo's four dimensional geometry changes according to the expression of homeobox genes and other transcription factors. These Genetic Regulatory Networks are both highly conserved in the early-expressed traits, and evolvable in the later expressed traits. (Davidson, 2006).

Okay, I agree. Is this supposed to be an argument against ID or something?

It is quite clear that your knowledge of biology is totally inadequate for you to make even a basic assessment of how biology works.

Really, how did you come to this conclusion?

As a consequence people like you are vulnerable to any crackpot pseudo-explanation that comes along.

I would disagree. I'd rather say that people who believe that they came from rocks are the ones who don't know much about biology.

Unless you can put aside your pre-conceived ideas and loo at the evidence objectively [with no thought as to whether or not you like the conclusions or implications], then you have no hope of ever gaining even a basic understanding of science or nature.

How do you know I haven't already done that? And maybe it is you, wishing to see evidence of having been brought about from a rock, that has this preconcieved ideas? Maybe people didn't come from rocks. Did that ever cross your mind? Maybe you should drop your beliefs about people coming from rocks and look at biology objectively?

Царь Славян wrote:

DogMendonça wrote:Царь Славян

Are you a creationist?
If so, why? Did it came after or before religious belief?

I'm not a creationist. I'm an ID proponent. Why? Becasue that's the best current explanation for certain features in nature.

Царь Славян wrote:

It's probably subjective, but for example, if someone thinks they can fly like Superman, I would think that it is a stupid idea!

Why?

Царь Славян wrote:

Probably wrong choice of words, as you are a creationist.

I am? Since when?

Царь Славян wrote:

What I meant was that the universe is not exactly friendly for life.

Yet we're still here. And in order for us to be here for a second, it has to be finely tuned for life to exist in the first place. Because if the universe didn't support life, we would be here int he first place. Because biologically relevant structures couldn't be formed. Thus, there would be no possibility of life existing in the first place. Yet here we are...

Царь Славян wrote:

If I was the creator, I would probably make it so that the universe would be more friendly to life. And I would not create cancer and other illnesses like that.

That's very nice of you. But maybe somebody else would.

In order for anyone to say that "the universe was engineered for life", you have to have evidence. Where is your evidence?

I'm not saying that the whole universe was actually designed for life. I'm saying that the design hypothesis is a good starting position for scientific explanation. There is no way to actually show that the whole universe was designed. And the reason why the design hypothesis is a good working hypothesis for science is because we can describe many features of the universe with engineering principles. It makes for a good scientific inqury.

Царь Славян wrote:

Non-sequitur. How do you go from a hostile to life universe to design? Where is the logical sequence and the evidence?

Because in order for life to exist in teh first place, the universe has to support it. So out of all possible ways the universe could exist, this one exists. One of the possible explanations is design.

Царь Славян wrote:

Really? No evidence for the multiple worlds interpretation of QM? Someone is very behind on their studies of physics. In fact, there are two major interpretations of Quantum Mechanics at this point, and both are backed up by evidence. One is the multiple worlds interpretation, and the other is the Copenhagen interpretation. The multiple worlds interpretation is also backed up by the experiments on quantum computing.

The Copenhagen interpretation fails the first test of being considered as science. It's logically flawed. It's interpretation that particles can be at two places at the same time is logical fallacy. An apple can't be in two places at the same time. Neither can a particle. And no, just because it's smaller won't help. Because a small apple, no matter how small, can't be in two places at the same time. Thus the interpretation is logically flawed. And if it's logically flawed it's mathematically flawed. And if it's mathematically flawed, then it's physically flawed, thus wrong. Physics can't violate math, and math can't violate logic. Please also keep in mind that nobody ever saw a particle. It's not an observation that a particle is at two places in teh same time, it's an interpretation, and a flawed one at that.

As for many worlds interpretation, it's not logically flawed, there could be more than this one universe. But as I said we have no evidence for them. And making things up without any evidence isn't science. Unless you can show me some evidence.

Царь Славян wrote:

Again: multiple worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Try "The Fabric of Reality" by David Deutsch or "The Search for the Multiverse" by John Gribbin.

Is there actually an observation of another universe there?

Царь Славян wrote:

How do the teeth and the eye imply design?

Teeth could be also designed, but it's a stretch, so I'll let that go. But an eye, among other things is a photo sensitive lense. And it's to improbable to have come about by chance. And we have no natural laws, to account for the eye. Thus, we can infer design from the eye.

Царь Славян wrote:

If I was the designer, I would make it so that everyone's teeth was always perfect, and the same for eyesight. If there is a designer, then he should be fired because he is totally incompetent. If he knew anything about design and engineering (as you claim), then he would have designed people with backup systems, with interchangeable parts, and so on and so forth.

Again, that's very nice of you, but this is at best an emotional not a scientific argument. You don't know the designer's intention for designing something. Just because you would design something in some way, doesn't mean someone else would also. Look at how many different car designs we have. Obviously different designers chose to make things differently.

Царь Славян wrote:

First of all, there are no backup systems. Where is the heart's backup system? If the heart goes, then goodbye. Even if you can get a new heart, you need all sorts of immuno-suppressants in order for your body to accept the heart.

Does that mean that the heart itself is not designed? There is no backup for a car's engine. If it goes out, your car stops. Thus cars are not designed. Rigth?

Царь Славян wrote:

In a well-designed system, you only need to shut it down, replace the faulty part, and there it goes without much else needed. In a well-designed system, you leave room for adding functionality, and for improvements.

A badly designed system is still designed.

Царь Славян wrote:

Let's take a computer for example: if you do buy them as they are served to you, then you may not understand it. However, I mostly like to built my computers, and to choose every part that I put in it. So, I choose the motherboard, model and manufacturer, the CPU, how much memory I will put initially, HDDs, graphics cards, USB, Firewire, eSATA, etc. And I will probably buy some stuff to extend my computer's capabilities and add them internally, not externally. There are more slots usually than I would need, very probably... Now, where is my improvements in the supposed design of me? Can I grow wings and fly? Absolutely not. Can I have a protective exoskeleton? No, nothing like that. Can I see in the infrared or something? I need external devices, that translate the infrared into visible light.

How does any of that make any sense to you? Computers are engineerd. They can be further engineerd and added to. So can human beeings. There is a thing called genetic engineering. In due time when people will have more information about how genomes work, we will be able to furhter develop ourselves. Just we can't develop ourselves further, that doesn't mean we were not designed. Besides, pleople have come very far in medical science. Some people get surgery to have a new heart put in when the original one fails. Obviously we can be engineerd just as computers do. Just because we don't have shops around the corner to buy organs like we have for computer hardware, says nothing about original human design.

As I said, if people are intelligently designed, then the designer must be pretty stupid and should be fired.

Which still means we were designed, only you dislike the design. That is all.

I'm not saying that the whole universe was actually designed for life. I'm saying that the design hypothesis is a good starting position for scientific explanation. There is no way to actually show that the whole universe was designed. And the reason why the design hypothesis is a good working hypothesis for science is because we can describe many features of the universe with engineering principles. It makes for a good scientific inqury.

A badly designed system is still designed.

Царь Славян wrote:

Flat out bold faced lie. ID is creationism in every possible way. Fuck, we even have the transitional forms in the books that were written after the 1987 courtcase that struck down creationism. Almost every single ID proponent, and certainly all of the founders of the ID movement and the members of the ID-"thinktank" The Discovery Institute have openly admitted to religious motivations.

Just because you invent a new label and attempt to avoid naming who's doing the designing doesn't mean we suddenly forget the history of the ID movement. Noone is fooled. It's Creationism, deal with it.

Derive the creation story from the main ID postulates and compare it to any other form of creationism and let's see if it's the same.

Wait... you are actually going to defend cherry picking data? ROFL.

I didn't say data. I said it edpends on WHAT is going to be picked. If we are going to be picking cherries, then yeah, I'll cherrypick...

It's simply obvious that you have no clue how changes can result in phenotypic and morphological change.

You base this assertation on?

Especially your complete lack of understanding of proteins have been made explicit for all to see in this thread.

Cite us all an example.

Your consistent handwaving at all the papers presented that shot down your assertions testify this fact quite convincingly.

What exactly did I handwave?

I guess he read this thread.

That doesn't explain how he came to that conclusion.

Says the guy who once again equivocated a horribly oversimplified Abiogenesis with Darwinian Evolution.

I don't remember saying that abiogenesis = evolution.

There you go with your "from rocks" nonsense again, equivocating Abiogenesis with Evolution through mutation and natural selection.

No, I'm not equivocation anything. I'm just combining those two flawed ideas and presenting your creation story to you.

Царь Славян wrote:

That is engineering science (logistics etc). The references don't refer to biological studies that use the words evolutionary search. Everyone knows that genetic algorithms are very useful for solving real-world problems and engineers especially so but science in engineering is far different from science in biology when it comes to using the right words for activities that have no agency to those that have agency behind them.

What's the difference? What's the difference between an evolutionary computer search, and natural evolution? Here is a nice chart I made. Please point out where the difference in these 4 steps both processes have to take in order to produce the outcome.

This has to be a language problem - a goal is a desired outcome. When someone has a goal then they have an outcome in mind for some activity e.g. a finish line in a race. With Evolutionary systems there is no desired outcome as there is no desire. The desire is only for things that have agency.

So immediately you use the word "goal" it is semantically overloaded to mean "agency". You are thus presuming a designer.

No, I'm not. You can use any word you wan't. Evolution has a goal set up by the fitness function of nature. And you don't have to call it a goal but it's an equivalent of a goal in computer search.

To have a goal implies agency whilst outcome (or result etc ) is indifferent to agency. There is a lot of difference between the outcome if I close my eyes and kick a ball with no care for where it will end up and it crosses the boundary of playing field between the goals or if I have my eyes open and aim for the goal.

Goals can be set up by natural properties without agency. If you don't want to call tehm goals, you don't have to.

And we now come full circle - Abiogenesis.

Your understanding is just not right - we know with the Miller and Urey experiment and other experiments as well as studies of space that it is trivial to get the precursor chemicals for life - organic chemicals such as amino acids. Sure we haven't the
exact stepping stones for abiogenesis as it has probably occurred on Earth but then that took nature billions of years and humans have only be at this for 50 years or so we should expect some delays.

You can get the building blocks for anything in nature. But you can't get the information. There are natural building blocks for mountains, but not for Mount Rushmore.

As I said "tooling marks that would suggest an assisted and un-natural weathering". The incongruence is the toolchain in use to form the object. If the designer managed to teach lichen to erode the rocks to set patterns then we would have problems. But we don't we have scree slopes and tooling marks.

This is interesting actually because with flint napped tools it is actually quite hard to work out man-made napped tools from just random rocks that are napped by natural events of rock movements. They highlighted this problem at the National Museum of Prehistory at Les Eyzies.

How do you know that chance could not have produced those marks? You call them tool marks. But how do you tell them apart from what chance could have produced?

Science hasn't yet established that the flagellum are non-natural. Like SETI all the signals to date are naturally occurring (and I've had my PCs running on SETI@home since May 1999). If Science could establish that the flagellum are non-natural then this would be fantastic in the same way that if SETI found a signal that was un-natural.

Irrelevant. I have said that ID is doing the same thing as SETI. What is the difference in your opinion?

The result would be trusted through the sheer weight of support from the broad cross section of scientists. The current claims of design cannot simply be trusted because they do not have this weight of support.

Majortiy opinion is painfully irrelevant to science.Every idea is at first in the minority. It needs time to get to majority. And just because it's in teh minority now, doesn't mean it's wrong.

...and vast anounts of gasses and carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and sulphur and phosphorus and sodium and chlorine and.......

Actually there won't be much "Earth".

We know that in a very short period of time organic chemicals can form and the bacteria contain these very same organic chemicals. What we don't know is the pathway from the organic chemicals to the autocatalytic set of chemicals that is a bacteria i.e. how to get the chemicals to self-assemble.

Tables, the one I have here, consists of wood and metal. Wood is found in nature, and so is metal, therefore, there is a natural explanation for a table. Is there? No, obviously not, the table I have here, was desigend. It's the pattern that this table exhibits that makes it not able to come about by natural laws, the material it is made of is irrelevant.

Roughly speaking I would say the probability of the steps in the toolchain. My napped stone example is a good one because it is hard to compare naturally napped flints and human napped flints. There are subtle differences and from this the probability of the shape being a goal of an agent verses the outcome of rocks bashing each other without intent (without agency).

A rough diamond verses a cut diamond would be another example. A cliff face verses Mount Rushmore is an extreme case as the human faces automatically imply design an obscure a more generic answer. Zoom in so that the faces cannot be seen and look at the rock face differences. Tools have been used in one place but not the other. What is the probability that the "tool" was naturally formed and so on. If the answer is that it is improbable then the object is incongruous to the environment and so it is fine to presume agency.

So you are saying that the pattern exhibited by Mount Rushmore is too improbable to have come about by chance?

Because they don't contain chemicals or sequences that are out of the ordinary for the environment they are in plus there are not just one but a number of different types of flagellum that have evolved.

The part of Mount Rushmore with faces is chemicaly identical to the part without faces.

Well you don't - you just have to care about the overwhelming majority percentage of scientists that say that Intelligent Design is not science. That the law agrees with this is just icing on the cake.

I don't care about that either. Majority opinion is irrelevant to any advance.

Not really because chance can come up with more patterns than a designer could ever hope to examine.

Chance can come up with as many patterns as the amount of probabilistic resources there are.

What the Intelligent Design supporters have not done is verify all the other possible patterns to see if there is a "better" design. They assume the current design is the best.

Where does it say that?

So how do you tell if Mount Rushmore is "design, chance, or natural law". What mathematics do you use if you are not going to care about how it was made ?

Is there a known natural law that accounts for Mount Rushmore? No.
Does the Mount Rushmore conforma to an independently given pattern? Yes it does: „Faces of United States Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln.“

Then we calculate how improbable it is to get a Mount Rushmore by chance, and if it number is lower than ½ then it's reasonable to infer design.

It makes the probability of a designer much more remote, so remote that it just appears that the designer is an unnecessary entity.

Not is the slightest. Because the flagellum is can not reasonably be explained by chance. Thereofre, if it did evolve, a designer set up evolution so it would bring about the flagellum.

Царь Славян wrote:

DogMendonça wrote:Царь Славян

Are you a creationist?
If so, why? Did it came after or before religious belief?

I'm not a creationist. I'm an ID proponent. Why? Becasue that's the best current explanation for certain features in nature.

Lazar wrote:fell free

DogMendonça wrote:

Царь Славян wrote:

DogMendonça wrote:Царь Славян

Are you a creationist?
If so, why? Did it came after or before religious belief?

I'm not a creationist. I'm an ID proponent. Why? Becasue that's the best current explanation for certain features in nature.

How come ID isn´t creationist? It looks creationism to me.
And how do you explain the paradox of saying "this is better explained by an inteligence". It's a paradox because something inteligent in the origin of something requires an explanation. And What is that explanation? Or is it explaining away things?
That's what it looks to me.

The most powerful rebuttals to the flagellum story, however, have not come from direct attempts to answer the critics of evolution. Rather, they have emerged from the steady progress of scientific work on the genes and proteins associated with the flagellum and other cellular structures. Such studies have now established that the entire premise by which this molecular machine has been advanced as an argument against evolution is wrong – the bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex. As we will see, the flagellum – the supreme example of the power of this new "science of design" – has failed its most basic scientific test. Remember the claim that "any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional?" As the evidence has shown, nature is filled with examples of "precursors" to the flagellum that are indeed "missing a part," and yet are fully-functional. Functional enough, in some cases, to pose a serious threat to human life.

As an icon of anti-evolution, the flagellum has fallen.

The very existence of the Type III Secretory System shows that the bacterial flagellum is not irreducibly complex. It also demonstrates, more generally, that the claim of "irreducible complexity" is scientifically meaningless, constructed as it is upon the flimsiest of foundations – the assertion that because science has not yet found selectable functions for the components of a certain structure, it never will. In the final analysis, as the claims of intelligent design fall by the wayside, its advocates are left with a single, remaining tool with which to battle against the rising tide of scientific evidence. That tool may be effective in some circles, of course, but the scientific community will be quick to recognize it for what it really is – the classic argument from ignorance, dressed up in the shiny cloth of biochemistry and information theory.

Царь Славян wrote:

The flagellum is not a machine, it's analogous to one.

Poster named GenesForLife would disagree with you. Take it up with him.

A description is not an analogy, they say they are molecular machines , they don't say they're just like a molecular machine.

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/post6 ... ne#p626563

!

MODNOTE Царь Славян I have previously cautioned you about quote mining and yet in the above post, you have clearly misrepresented the words of another member. In reading the entirety of GeneforLife's post, it is clear that he is vehemently disagreeing with you and is NOT saying that the bacterial flagellum is a machine. He was explaining the difference between a literal statement and an analogy. As such, you have now earned your 1st formal warning for quote mining and violating the Forum Users' Agreement, a document that I strongly suggest that you revisit and become familiar with, for further instances of quote mining or any other rule violations may see you earn further warnings and/or other sanctions. I ask all members not to derail the thread by discussing moderation here. If anyone has any queries, please contact me via PM, or contact one of the global moderators, or alternatively, you can discuss moderation issues in our feedback forum. Durro

Just like I predicted, you return to whine about the semantic difference between the casual summary "not good enough" and a pedantic dissection of a page of testimony where Behe's "they didn't answer the question the way I insist it be answered or I'll hold my breath and turn blue", funnily enough, turns out to be basically the same as the already mentioned "not good enough".

But everyone besides you already understood that. Do try to catch up, Tsar.

Why bother. Since you don't understand the point to begin with, your choice quotations aren't going to help you get a win out of the loser Behe.

He SHOOTS. He SCORES ! But, but, but, he shot into the wrong goal. He's scored an OWN GOAL !!

I've never seen a better example of total idiocy of the ID view on display. Yes, the articles present a POSSIBLE PATHWAY. What the fuck do we need other than a possible pathway to totally refute your crazy claim that natural selection (Darwinian mechanism) could not have "created" such a "complicated" structure. We've got it. We've got 50+ scientific peer-reviewed journal articles detailing the possible pathway. And you're left with nothing. Less than nothing, because you just scored a point against your own team. Good going, Tsar.

Naughty, naughty, trying to move the goal posts. Doesn't work after you just scored that own goal.

NO, that's where your invisible immaterial unspecified incomprehensible "designer" reached into the DNA with its ghostly fingers and twiddled the base pairs to get the "intended" result. Sure thing, Tsar. Keep trying to defend the indefensible.

That's a flat out lie. No pro-ID papers have been published in legitimate biology journals. The papers which Dembski claims are pro-ID, aren't; they're just neutral mathematical/computer modeling reviews which don't actually mention ID, much less support it in print. The papers which you claim, aren't in legitimate biology journals and are reviewed by liars-for-Jesus on the editorial board.
ID can't be legit, as Spearthrower already proved, because people like you insist on making it unfalsifiable. Good "design" ? Cool, the "designer" wanted it that way. Bad "design" ? No problem, the "designer" wanted it that way. That's not legitimate science, that's not any kind of science, that's idiocy in action.

That's a lie. That one's not your fault, though, so I forgive you - the asshole religious media is full of descriptions of the angry atheist - like Dawkins - when in reality he is the nicest, most polite, cheerful and helpful old man we could ever want to meet.

You can describe it AS an engineered mechanism - or you can describe it AS a very very special creation of a very very special god - or you can describe it AS a natural outcome of physics operating after some specific initial condistions -- the only thing that matters is what you've got a legitimate model and evidence for.

It's not a scientific working hypothesis, because it's compatible with all imaginable features of the universe. Good features ? Cool, the "engineer" wanted it that way. Bad features ? No problem, the "engineer" wanted it that way. It's unfalsifiable. It doesn't lead to a testable model, it doesn't make any testable predictions.

Wrong again. Would you like to have your wrongness here explained one more time ? How many more times do you guess it will take before you finally get it ? Do you think you need to go away and study for a month, or will just a few days suffice ?

Thank you so much for admitting that you were lying before when you said that you had already answered the question about Rushmore. It means a lot to see you 'fessing up.