Posted: Aug 11, 2010 11:38 pm
Oh look. More specious propagandising for mythology-based masturbation fantasies, fabrications and manifest nonsense to address. The in tray is full again ....
And this farcical fabrication is supposed to mean what, precisely?
Oh look, it's quantifier abuse, that familiar part of the creationist aetiology.
I didn't say al engineering design was based upon trial and error, what I actually said, if you bothered to read my posts properly, is that when humans move into new areas of knowledge, trial and error is an inevitable part of the learning process. Those failed early aircraft are back to haunt you. Indeed, I took care to distinguish between mature technologies, that have benefited from this taking place in the past, and which now rest upon a solid base of real world knowledge that can be applied to producing mature products, and new technologies, where the solid base required for mature design does not exist yet. Still entertaining fantasies about perfect foreknowledge are you?
And since I've already provided instances of software that manifestly demonstrate trial and error being a part of the process that led to the production thereof, your fatuous attempt at ad hominem attack fails miserably. Indeed, it fails to rise to the level of competence required to to be worthy of a point of view.
And how does this not constitute trial and error in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy parallel universe creationists think is the real world?
Oh please, your feeble ad hominems merely demonstrate how much you've lost this argument.
And once again, what part of "mature technologies benefiting from past mistakes have acquired the knowledge base making more reasoned solutions possible" do you not understand? Once again, those failed early aircraft are back to haunt you. The reason Boeing and Airbus Industries don't produce comical failures now is because they benefit from our having learned from those early mistakes. Just as dead ends don't contribute to future gene pools in biology, dead ends don't contribute to the meme pool of human technologies. The only place where dead ends persist is creationism, which is nothing more than 3,000 year old dead ends.
Which contradicts Genesis 1 in several areas. Next?
Well that's precisely what supernaturalists of your ilk asserted in the past. Which is why, once again, when Vesalius decided to pay attention to reality instead of worthless mythological bullshit, he found out that mythological bullshit was precisely that - bullshit. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?
You've obviously not bothered studying the relevant physics, have you?
It's projection time, folks!
Which is precisely what I've been saying all along. Game fucking over.
Which is only possible when you have the requisite knowledge in place. When you're venturing into a new field of endeavour, and you don't have that knowledge, this isn't possible, because part of the process you're engaging in is the acquisition of that new knowledge. This is something a reasonably astute five year old comprehends.
Once again, those early aircraft are back to haunt you. While a lot of mistakes were made, some of them extremely comical, humans learned from those mistakes and tried something different. Eventually, they hit upon a working solution. Once they did so, they started building upon the knowledge gained from that working solution. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?
Blatant cop out. Here's something that's equally as intricate as the finest man-made jewellery, that nature produces with nothing more than electrostatic forces between molecules:
Correction, we merely have no evidence that intelligent life forms existed on that planet yet. We may safely make decisions based upon the premise that no such life forms existed for the moment. This, of course, changes the moment hard evidence materialises supporting the opposite premise. But then the process of paying attention to reality is wholly alien to creationists, they prefer to pay attention to the retarded scribblings of Bronze Age nomads, who thought you could change livestock genetics with coloured sticks. indeed, arch-charlatan Henry Morris made "when reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right" a central tenet of American corporate creationism in one of his turgid little screeds.
Except that when higher resolution photographs of the same feature were taken, the "face" was no longer visible. At which point, it became regarded as an artefact of low-resolution imaging. Which should be telling you something important about jumping to unwarranted conclusions, including unwarranted conclusions arising from a fetishistic attachment to mythological presuppositions.
Bollocks. Once again, what part of "human design processes bear no relation to the asserted 'design' processes associated with fabricated magic entities" do you not understand?
Supernaturalists erect the specious pseudo-argument that human design processes, which manifestly involve instances of trial and error (do I have to resurrect that video of failed early aircraft again to hammer home this blatantly obvious point?), purportedly support magic "design" processes by fabricated magic entities involving perfect foreknowledge. And it is THAT sort of fantasy "design" process that is ABSENT from human endeavours, as well as being absent from the biosphere.
Navel gazing over mythological bullshit produced NOTHING worth wiping our arses on in 1,500 years of enforced conformity to doctrine, indeed, the Black Death constituted the testing to destruction of supernaturalist bullshit, an event that saw 25 million Europeans wiped off the face of the Earth by a disease that we later learned to control, because Europeans at that time wasted their energies kissing the arse of an imaginary magic man instead of working out what really caused diseases. indeed, one of the more amusing aspects of this contrast, between the glorious successes of reality-based science, and the abysmal failure of mythology-based navel gazing, is that your magic man, if he existed, was either powerless to stop 25 million horrible deaths or just didn't fucking care, whilst the hilariously named Thomas Crapper, by putting together a working flush toilet, did more to prevent needless deaths than supernaturalist bullshit has ever done.
Which means that it has a physical basis. What part of "ribosomes are physical entities" do you not understand?
Fatuous excrement. What part of "chemical molecules are material entities" do you not understand?
Oh, and since there exist a considerable number of papers establishing that the 'genetic code' is itself an evolvable entity, blind assertions about "codes" and purported coupling to "intelligence" fail, because once again, REALITY says that they fail. Just as REALITY says that you fail with every one of your attempts to propagandise for a worthless masturbation fantasy of a doctrine arising from theological pornography.
And this farcical fabrication is supposed to mean what, precisely?
Atheistoclast wrote:Oh, you mean you haven't bothered reading the posts in which I already told you this? You know, that business about trial and error as opposed to magical perfect foreknowledge? Which you tried to dismiss with the usual specious apologetic excrement, liberally sprinkled with a spicing of ad hominem attack?
Your attempt to claim that all engineering design is essentially based on trial & error is absolutely hilarious!
Oh look, it's quantifier abuse, that familiar part of the creationist aetiology.
I didn't say al engineering design was based upon trial and error, what I actually said, if you bothered to read my posts properly, is that when humans move into new areas of knowledge, trial and error is an inevitable part of the learning process. Those failed early aircraft are back to haunt you. Indeed, I took care to distinguish between mature technologies, that have benefited from this taking place in the past, and which now rest upon a solid base of real world knowledge that can be applied to producing mature products, and new technologies, where the solid base required for mature design does not exist yet. Still entertaining fantasies about perfect foreknowledge are you?
Atheistoclast wrote:Once again, I dare you to put this on your CV as your approach to software design and coding.
And since I've already provided instances of software that manifestly demonstrate trial and error being a part of the process that led to the production thereof, your fatuous attempt at ad hominem attack fails miserably. Indeed, it fails to rise to the level of competence required to to be worthy of a point of view.
Atheistoclast wrote:Those comical early attempts to build aircraft are back to haunt you. And please, don't try to erect the specious argument that a mature technology that has benefited from a century or more of past mistakes somehow supports the sort of magic "design" processes asserted to exist by supernaturalists when they want to wheel in a magic man, because I already dealt with that specious objection.
What part of the word "TEST" do you not understand? If a design fails a test, it has to be redesigned.
And how does this not constitute trial and error in the real world, as opposed to the fantasy parallel universe creationists think is the real world?
Atheistoclast wrote:They don't possess perfect foreknowledge either. Which is why prototypes are built, in order to find out if reality supports the ideas that those prototypes embody. When reality doesn't support those ideas, the prototype fails, and its back to the drawing board ... just as happened with all those comical early failures in the world of aircraft.
You really haven't worked in industry much, have you?
Oh please, your feeble ad hominems merely demonstrate how much you've lost this argument.
Atheistoclast wrote:Engineers have to ensure that prototypes are well-designed. They are expensive to produce, and cost time. They may choose a model if they are uncertain about some feature. You would be pretty terrible if you kept building prototypes until you reached a perfect solution.
And once again, what part of "mature technologies benefiting from past mistakes have acquired the knowledge base making more reasoned solutions possible" do you not understand? Once again, those failed early aircraft are back to haunt you. The reason Boeing and Airbus Industries don't produce comical failures now is because they benefit from our having learned from those early mistakes. Just as dead ends don't contribute to future gene pools in biology, dead ends don't contribute to the meme pool of human technologies. The only place where dead ends persist is creationism, which is nothing more than 3,000 year old dead ends.
Atheistoclast wrote:Oh really? Why do I have the strange feeling you're about to erect an apologetic fabrication that quite a few of your fellow supernaturalists would regard as a heresy?
Read Genesis 2.
Which contradicts Genesis 1 in several areas. Next?
Atheistoclast wrote:Which of course is complete tosh. It's an indication of the neurotoxic effects of supernaturalist blind assertions, that when Vesalius established by dissecting actual human corpses, that males and females have the same number of ribs, that he ran the risk of being subjected to the Inquisition for daring to put reality before doctrine. That piece of mythological fiction about ribs has been known to be fiction since 1543.
How does donating a rib to make another human being mean that men have one less than women?
Well that's precisely what supernaturalists of your ilk asserted in the past. Which is why, once again, when Vesalius decided to pay attention to reality instead of worthless mythological bullshit, he found out that mythological bullshit was precisely that - bullshit. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?
Atheistoclast wrote:Meanwhile, with respect to the matter of creation ex nihilo ass asserted to have taken place by supernaturalist, what extant materials did your magic man purportedly fashion the previously non-existent universe from? Only last time I checked the relevant supernaturalist assertions, those assertions do present this as creation ex nihilo.
Ex nihilo creation is something believed by cosmologists who belive the universe originated as something from nothing.
You've obviously not bothered studying the relevant physics, have you?
Atheistoclast wrote:Oh please, take this comedy line to the Improv. What part of "purposeful design and rigorous testing is simply impossible without the requisite body of knowledge in place" do you not understand? The only reason Boeing and Airbus Industries are able to engage in rigorous testing and purposeful design nowadays is because of those earlier mistakes. If humans hadn't bothered trying to build flying machines, and hadn't made those mistakes, there wouldn't BE a Boeing or an Airbus Industries extant today.
You don't get it one bit.
It's projection time, folks!
Atheistoclast wrote:Yes, we learn from our mistakes
Which is precisely what I've been saying all along. Game fucking over.
Atheistoclast wrote:but we also try and not make them in the first place.
Which is only possible when you have the requisite knowledge in place. When you're venturing into a new field of endeavour, and you don't have that knowledge, this isn't possible, because part of the process you're engaging in is the acquisition of that new knowledge. This is something a reasonably astute five year old comprehends.
Atheistoclast wrote:Trial & Errror is a hopeless way to achieve anything...other than for some numerical methods like finding the root of a curve (Newton -Raphson etc).
Once again, those early aircraft are back to haunt you. While a lot of mistakes were made, some of them extremely comical, humans learned from those mistakes and tried something different. Eventually, they hit upon a working solution. Once they did so, they started building upon the knowledge gained from that working solution. What part of this elementary concept do you not understand?
Atheistoclast wrote:Blatant evasion. The simple fact of the matter is, that one of those rocks in the photograph I presented originally, has been determined, by appropriately trained expert palaeoanthropologists, to have been shaped by human action. Now, if "design" is so purportedly "obvious", why can't you or any other supernaturalist tell me which of those rocks is the rock in question? Once again, when supernaturalists are required to put up or shut up with a concrete example, they're found wanting.
Because humans can imitate the designs of Nature. But Nature cannot imitate human design.
Blatant cop out. Here's something that's equally as intricate as the finest man-made jewellery, that nature produces with nothing more than electrostatic forces between molecules:
Atheistoclast wrote:That depends upon a lot of factors. Such as whether that purported alien visitor notices that there are a lot of humans around, and that those rock carvings happen to bear a very close resemblance to observable human faces. At this point, if said alien is going to be rigorous about this, said alien will look for evidence connecting the two. Such as noticing that humans seem to have devoted a lot of effort to producing likenesses of themselves in stone. At which point, the connection starts to enjoy some evidential support. What part of this elementary process do you not understand again?
OK...let's take the "Face on Mars"...there are no Martians around
Correction, we merely have no evidence that intelligent life forms existed on that planet yet. We may safely make decisions based upon the premise that no such life forms existed for the moment. This, of course, changes the moment hard evidence materialises supporting the opposite premise. But then the process of paying attention to reality is wholly alien to creationists, they prefer to pay attention to the retarded scribblings of Bronze Age nomads, who thought you could change livestock genetics with coloured sticks. indeed, arch-charlatan Henry Morris made "when reality and doctrine differ, reality is wrong and doctrine is right" a central tenet of American corporate creationism in one of his turgid little screeds.
Atheistoclast wrote:but that hasn't stopped people inferring design based on the limited evidence available from the photos of the red planet.
Except that when higher resolution photographs of the same feature were taken, the "face" was no longer visible. At which point, it became regarded as an artefact of low-resolution imaging. Which should be telling you something important about jumping to unwarranted conclusions, including unwarranted conclusions arising from a fetishistic attachment to mythological presuppositions.
Atheistoclast wrote:Yeah, right, that's why science has given us famine-free, disease-free lives surrounded by expensive electronic toys, put humans on the Moon, built computers capable of 1015 floating point calculations per second, eradicated smallpox and probed into the heart of matter itself. Meanwhile, mythology has achieved ... sweet fuck all.
I think you'll find that CREATION and DESIGN have given us all of these wonders...the very thing you are in complete denial about.
Bollocks. Once again, what part of "human design processes bear no relation to the asserted 'design' processes associated with fabricated magic entities" do you not understand?
Supernaturalists erect the specious pseudo-argument that human design processes, which manifestly involve instances of trial and error (do I have to resurrect that video of failed early aircraft again to hammer home this blatantly obvious point?), purportedly support magic "design" processes by fabricated magic entities involving perfect foreknowledge. And it is THAT sort of fantasy "design" process that is ABSENT from human endeavours, as well as being absent from the biosphere.
Navel gazing over mythological bullshit produced NOTHING worth wiping our arses on in 1,500 years of enforced conformity to doctrine, indeed, the Black Death constituted the testing to destruction of supernaturalist bullshit, an event that saw 25 million Europeans wiped off the face of the Earth by a disease that we later learned to control, because Europeans at that time wasted their energies kissing the arse of an imaginary magic man instead of working out what really caused diseases. indeed, one of the more amusing aspects of this contrast, between the glorious successes of reality-based science, and the abysmal failure of mythology-based navel gazing, is that your magic man, if he existed, was either powerless to stop 25 million horrible deaths or just didn't fucking care, whilst the hilariously named Thomas Crapper, by putting together a working flush toilet, did more to prevent needless deaths than supernaturalist bullshit has ever done.
Atheistoclast wrote:Oh dear, not this bullshit. What part of "DNA is a chemical molecule whose behaviour happens to be amenable to modelling as an information system" do you not understand? What part of "information isn't a magic entity" do you also not understand? Do I have to educate you with respect to the basics here?
The digital code itself is entirely abstract. It only exists as because ribosomes translate triplets of base pairs as the individual amino acids in protein molecules.
Which means that it has a physical basis. What part of "ribosomes are physical entities" do you not understand?
Atheistoclast wrote: It is therefore non-material in origin.
Fatuous excrement. What part of "chemical molecules are material entities" do you not understand?
Oh, and since there exist a considerable number of papers establishing that the 'genetic code' is itself an evolvable entity, blind assertions about "codes" and purported coupling to "intelligence" fail, because once again, REALITY says that they fail. Just as REALITY says that you fail with every one of your attempts to propagandise for a worthless masturbation fantasy of a doctrine arising from theological pornography.