Joshua was written in ancient Hebrew, as near as we can tell. The new testament was written in Greek, but who says the angel that named Jesus spoke Greek? Certainly names cross linguistic lines. (My own name appears in a dozen forms in several languages.) Why is your extra-biblical source material better than the internal evidence collected in the bible? If I had a trial transcript that collected all the eye-witness testimony of an event would you declare it to be unreliable because it was collected? I doubt you would do that, because to do so would be irrational.
Just say you don't like the bible because it calls you to a higher standard than you are willing to meet, and be honest that you prefer something that the bible condemns as sin.
What would be a little more honest intellectually would be to compare how the bits of science that are actually done stack up in support of ID or of Evolution. If a bit of evidence can equally well support either view, then it cannot be cited to support one or the other. I am pretty sure that our understanding of the meaning of some of the bible passages has changed over time, the most emphatic change that I can think of is the understanding that 'God stretching out the heavens' (Isaiah 40:22) is not poetry, but literal physics, courtesy of the BB cosmologies currently accepted in physics. Do I then believe Isaiah because science has exonerated his view of the heavens? not really, but it might make me re-read some of the other puzzlers in the bible to see if they also have some insight. I think it is also imperative to point out that science cannot answer the question of origins for either ID or evolution, since you are talking about a historical event, which cannot be replicated in any realistic way. Please, please provide an example of evolution predicting something. My only request is that you provide an example that could not just as easily be predicted by intelligent design.
Anecdotal evidence is all you have for many, many things. I did not claim he was 'scientific', or even not crazy, but I am pointing out the hypocrisy of your position. I would probably agree that such an event is highly improbable, but that is not the same thing as a delusion. I personally believe that modern medicine cures. I also believe it is God who made such cures available to us through science, and it would be a matter of unfaithfulness to refuse them on their origin in science, even if I am a person of faith. My point is that you offer no more latitude for things to be different than the pope. There will always be things that will not yield to the scientific method, because the confounding factors in the experiment overwhelm the methodology. That does not mean science does not have it's place, just that we need to recognize and respect the limits of science. We may never know why flight 447 lies at the bottom of the Atlantic, but we still need to investigate, to apply science to the evidence we have to rule out some ideas and to choose more certainly between what remains. Just the pictures of the engines have ruled out about 20 or so possibilities, since it is clear from their condition that they were generating thrust until something interfered with that from outside the engine. That leaves us able to put our resources into examining the remaining ideas. The goal is answer the prayers of those that pray for a safe flight in the future, even if we have a more mundane tool kit than miracles.
Jesus gave that instruction to a rich young ruler, and the indication is that the man's wealth stood between him and God. I note that you still have something to post with, so I can surmise that this instruction is one you wish for me, but will not do yourself. This has a name: Hypocrisy.
I read all of the talkorigins.org arguments., a dreary and boring task, given the generally poor level of writing that site presents. the refutation of irreducible complexity (re-purposing of existing structures) is very speculative at best, and I tried to verify the basic palentology presented unsuccessfully. There is no place that the data presented (jaw bone becoming ear bone) can be verified by independent observation. Plus, the idea that this proves evolution is dependent on the assumption that a design could not have produced the same range of results. Why not?
You disappoint me. A troll is someone who takes a dishonest position for the sake of generating flame. What I was hoping for was honest debate, not polemic.
Evolution is the only scientific theory that proposes that things move from a disordered state to a more ordered state without outside intervention. The 2nd law of thermodynamics does apply.
How do you know what science I understand? Disagreeing with you does not constitute a lack of understanding of science, it is the result of a measured examination of the assumptions present, the methodology used and the conclusions drawn.
Please provide a reference for the '4000 years ago we had no concept of the number 0'? What I understood was that that the oldest numeric system known had a zero.
Origin of the universe, then everything else, of course it is not a problem if Adam & Eve were about as capable as we are, and oh by they way, they lived ~900 years. you could do a lot of science in 900 years. At least credit the myth as it is stated. It is also unclear to me why you think God would hold out on Adam on the origin of the universe. It would not have done him any good, but no harm either.
There is a fundamental difference between MB/Genetics and evolutionary biology, and genetics did not originate in evolutionary biology, but in biochemistry. molecular biology is repeatable, verifiable reviewable science. Evolution is a waste of time filled with specious assumptions, incorrect methodology, and unsupported conclusions.
Do you have an example of the far-right decision that is counter to what science indicates (Please do not respond with evolution/creation, but with some tangible science result.) Most of the far-right policy seems to be based on the idea that government policy should be supportable for generations, not to benefit of a single generation.
What would be much more accurate is to say that the oldest copy of Mark does not contain the final passage dealing with the resurrection. This copy of Mark may have been intentionally altered, as it was in the hands of Gnostics in the original. All other copies of Mark have the familiar ending. The idea that this somehow proves Mark did not originally contain the passage shows a lack of regard for the idea of provenience of an artifact, that is accounting for it's history and possible impacts of that history on it's state. We might find a yet older fragment that contains the Mark passage, but it would still need to pass rather stringent tests before it would be held in regard. We have the resurrection supported in four other books, as well as supported in prophetic writing as well as the oldest recorded Christian sermons. To claim some question here is to ignore the facts in favor of your prejudice.
Using the term Bayesian is incorrect in this context. There is no strong evidence for evolution. There is strong evidence for a pattern of flawed assumptions, incorrect method, and unwarranted conclusions tolerated for over a century of evolutionary publishing. Given that evolution is the darling of funding, it is not hard to see why: Simple greed.
You would need to show that the result was not a part of the original design in order to prove your point, and that may be much more difficult than your experiment. Further, to support origins evolution you would need to demonstrated macroevolution, not microevolution, which no one is arguing about.
Of course, you could learn from the example Jesus provided, 'Do not put God to the test', in which case it comes down to the relative veracity of Jesus or the Pope. My money is on Jesus.
Jesus was liberal with his own resources, to our benefit.
Modern liberals give only other people's money away, and then only to their supporters.
I have to respond to this post because it is pure FUD. The question of irreducible complexity and violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments have not been refuted, and I check regularly. Do you have some reference for your debunki? I am always entertained by a good tautology.
So how do you know you are not delusional in not seeing miracles? You call the poster crazy without any examination of his evidence, based on the idea that if they disagree with you, they are therefore wrong. How are you different from the Pope?
So you are equating scientists to Islamists? The term 'infidel' was first used by Islamists to justify the massacre of Christians throughout the middle east and into Spain, just so you have the origin of terms correct.
Part of the problem today is that attempts to examine the science have generated scandal, in that it was not science that was reported, but manipulated data. I am thinking here of the climate data debacle. Those that fear AGW may well be correct, but if the only thing available to support the idea is corrupt, it calls the whole business into question. That is probably the fault of our funding mechanisms, where only 'sexy-scary' ideas make it through the cuts, and then NASA drops the satellite that might have answered the question into the ocean with a third-rate booster.
Perhaps these events point to a deeper understanding of physics than you have yet obtained. There was a time when the transistor was 'supernatural' in the sense that our understanding of nature did not allow the existence of a semiconductor, but that changed, and the supernatural became natural. Who is to say that will not happen for water->wine at some point? What if God is challenging you to figure out how that long day of Joshua happened? What advance in physics might that point out?
So since we know that the relativistic time-frame has an effect on radioactive decay, on what basis do you assume that radimetric decay does not change (the unspoken assumption in your example above)? Genesis describes a period in which God is 'stretching out the heavens' Why does that not fit into your example? Is it possible that your scepticism has blurred you understanding of what is written in Genesis?
My point here is that you assume you know what the bible story is (6k years), but you might not fully understand the idea.
Instead of God 'deliberately trying to fool you', maybe he is pointing to some idea deeper than your current understanding. Such a deeper idea is unavailable to you, so information such as the rate of expansion of the early universe, (which might be derivable from the eye-witness account in Genesis), is out of your reach.
ID predicts that we will find that life is rife with design, and that there was an original working order to life that can be discovered and possibly recovered. It is evolution that makes no prediction that can be tested, since if life is really random in origin than there is nothing to discover within it, nor is there any reason for you (a member of Life) to even ask questions, since it is all a random biochemical event anyway)
Thanks for the post. I like/. because of things like an off-hand mention of Sapir-Whorf - which I had never heard of by that name.
I would argue that the complexity problem must include all sources of complexity, which includes little things like testing, documentation, user instruction, correctness accounting. Rather than select a single axis of complexity, in this case the language, It makes more sense to consider all sources, and select a language/methodology that minimizes the overall complexity of the project.
If I can do a task in 3,000 lines of Forth, how do I compare that to the 30,000 or so lines of C++ that might be required to do the same thing? (Forth solutions typically are 1/10 the size of C++, according to Chuck Moore, an admittedly biased source.)
So with such a possibility, why am I stuck with a bazillion lines of C++? because there is more to software than coding, and more to the solution of a problem than SLOC.
I think the reason Forth is such a niche language is because it does not lend itself to generic solutions, rather the Forth dictionary paradigm tends to capture value by defining very specific language that may not reuse. (You say PotAAto, I say POOtato) this means that Forth tends to generate complex dictionaries of specific solutions that differ at an atomic level from the same use in a different context. This is a good news/bad news concept: Once you understand the dictionary, you understand the entire app, but to understand any of the app you typically have to understand the entire dictionary.
In the context of the article (teaching fundamentals to freshman) It would probably serve better to use a more generic vehicle than C++, where the fundamentals can be isolated and demonstrated with a minimum of syntax, and there are plentiful examples of well-structured code to learn from. My personal preference is for TCL, where the typical 'Hello World' program is:
puts "Hello World",
which is about as simple as it can get for syntax. This allows the student to concentrate on concepts rather than parenthesis.
Turing completeness is an abstraction that, while useful in the Itower is less useful out where users can type just about anything, at anytime, with any intent, and then produce just about any complaint in response to any response the software might make. This is not a problem if the software is trivial, but if the software is non-trivial than it becomes a much more difficult problem. Turing completeness is such a simple thing it cannot capture real-world complexity in software use.
Also...
I would rather rescue the drowning Libertarian, not play insensitive games as if her life were of no value.
I hate OO, but only because I inherited a huge broken OO app. Somewhere down in the dozens of layers of objects there is a broken method. This problem has confounded at least four previous fix campaigns. The economic downturn has made some excellent people available, so this attempt may bear fruit, but if we fix this code it will be in spite of OO, not because of it. This is not to say that a functional solution would a priori be any easier, but for us OO is an impediment, because we have to spend a lot of time thinking about the OO problems, and not the domain problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Just say you don't like the bible because it calls you to a higher standard than you are willing to meet, and be honest that you prefer something that the bible condemns as sin.
What would be a little more honest intellectually would be to compare how the bits of science that are actually done stack up in support of ID or of Evolution. If a bit of evidence can equally well support either view, then it cannot be cited to support one or the other. I am pretty sure that our understanding of the meaning of some of the bible passages has changed over time, the most emphatic change that I can think of is the understanding that 'God stretching out the heavens' (Isaiah 40:22) is not poetry, but literal physics, courtesy of the BB cosmologies currently accepted in physics. Do I then believe Isaiah because science has exonerated his view of the heavens? not really, but it might make me re-read some of the other puzzlers in the bible to see if they also have some insight. I think it is also imperative to point out that science cannot answer the question of origins for either ID or evolution, since you are talking about a historical event, which cannot be replicated in any realistic way. Please, please provide an example of evolution predicting something. My only request is that you provide an example that could not just as easily be predicted by intelligent design.
Anecdotal evidence is all you have for many, many things. I did not claim he was 'scientific', or even not crazy, but I am pointing out the hypocrisy of your position. I would probably agree that such an event is highly improbable, but that is not the same thing as a delusion. I personally believe that modern medicine cures. I also believe it is God who made such cures available to us through science, and it would be a matter of unfaithfulness to refuse them on their origin in science, even if I am a person of faith. My point is that you offer no more latitude for things to be different than the pope. There will always be things that will not yield to the scientific method, because the confounding factors in the experiment overwhelm the methodology. That does not mean science does not have it's place, just that we need to recognize and respect the limits of science. We may never know why flight 447 lies at the bottom of the Atlantic, but we still need to investigate, to apply science to the evidence we have to rule out some ideas and to choose more certainly between what remains. Just the pictures of the engines have ruled out about 20 or so possibilities, since it is clear from their condition that they were generating thrust until something interfered with that from outside the engine. That leaves us able to put our resources into examining the remaining ideas. The goal is answer the prayers of those that pray for a safe flight in the future, even if we have a more mundane tool kit than miracles.
I read all of the talkorigins.org arguments., a dreary and boring task, given the generally poor level of writing that site presents. the refutation of irreducible complexity (re-purposing of existing structures) is very speculative at best, and I tried to verify the basic palentology presented unsuccessfully. There is no place that the data presented (jaw bone becoming ear bone) can be verified by independent observation. Plus, the idea that this proves evolution is dependent on the assumption that a design could not have produced the same range of results. Why not?
You disappoint me. A troll is someone who takes a dishonest position for the sake of generating flame. What I was hoping for was honest debate, not polemic.
Evolution is the only scientific theory that proposes that things move from a disordered state to a more ordered state without outside intervention. The 2nd law of thermodynamics does apply.
How do you know what science I understand? Disagreeing with you does not constitute a lack of understanding of science, it is the result of a measured examination of the assumptions present, the methodology used and the conclusions drawn.
Please provide a reference for the '4000 years ago we had no concept of the number 0'? What I understood was that that the oldest numeric system known had a zero.
Origin of the universe, then everything else, of course it is not a problem if Adam & Eve were about as capable as we are, and oh by they way, they lived ~900 years. you could do a lot of science in 900 years. At least credit the myth as it is stated. It is also unclear to me why you think God would hold out on Adam on the origin of the universe. It would not have done him any good, but no harm either.
There is a fundamental difference between MB/Genetics and evolutionary biology, and genetics did not originate in evolutionary biology, but in biochemistry. molecular biology is repeatable, verifiable reviewable science. Evolution is a waste of time filled with specious assumptions, incorrect methodology, and unsupported conclusions.
Do you have an example of the far-right decision that is counter to what science indicates (Please do not respond with evolution/creation, but with some tangible science result.) Most of the far-right policy seems to be based on the idea that government policy should be supportable for generations, not to benefit of a single generation.
What would be much more accurate is to say that the oldest copy of Mark does not contain the final passage dealing with the resurrection. This copy of Mark may have been intentionally altered, as it was in the hands of Gnostics in the original. All other copies of Mark have the familiar ending. The idea that this somehow proves Mark did not originally contain the passage shows a lack of regard for the idea of provenience of an artifact, that is accounting for it's history and possible impacts of that history on it's state. We might find a yet older fragment that contains the Mark passage, but it would still need to pass rather stringent tests before it would be held in regard. We have the resurrection supported in four other books, as well as supported in prophetic writing as well as the oldest recorded Christian sermons. To claim some question here is to ignore the facts in favor of your prejudice.
Using the term Bayesian is incorrect in this context. There is no strong evidence for evolution. There is strong evidence for a pattern of flawed assumptions, incorrect method, and unwarranted conclusions tolerated for over a century of evolutionary publishing. Given that evolution is the darling of funding, it is not hard to see why: Simple greed.
You would need to show that the result was not a part of the original design in order to prove your point, and that may be much more difficult than your experiment. Further, to support origins evolution you would need to demonstrated macroevolution, not microevolution, which no one is arguing about.
Of course, you could learn from the example Jesus provided, 'Do not put God to the test', in which case it comes down to the relative veracity of Jesus or the Pope. My money is on Jesus.
Modern liberals give only other people's money away, and then only to their supporters.
I have to respond to this post because it is pure FUD. The question of irreducible complexity and violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments have not been refuted, and I check regularly. Do you have some reference for your debunki? I am always entertained by a good tautology.
So how do you know you are not delusional in not seeing miracles? You call the poster crazy without any examination of his evidence, based on the idea that if they disagree with you, they are therefore wrong. How are you different from the Pope?
So you are equating scientists to Islamists? The term 'infidel' was first used by Islamists to justify the massacre of Christians throughout the middle east and into Spain, just so you have the origin of terms correct.
Joshua and Jesus are the same in ancient Hebrew, which had no vowels, so the differences were added later. Check before you post.
Part of the problem today is that attempts to examine the science have generated scandal, in that it was not science that was reported, but manipulated data. I am thinking here of the climate data debacle. Those that fear AGW may well be correct, but if the only thing available to support the idea is corrupt, it calls the whole business into question. That is probably the fault of our funding mechanisms, where only 'sexy-scary' ideas make it through the cuts, and then NASA drops the satellite that might have answered the question into the ocean with a third-rate booster.
Perhaps these events point to a deeper understanding of physics than you have yet obtained. There was a time when the transistor was 'supernatural' in the sense that our understanding of nature did not allow the existence of a semiconductor, but that changed, and the supernatural became natural. Who is to say that will not happen for water->wine at some point? What if God is challenging you to figure out how that long day of Joshua happened? What advance in physics might that point out?
More to the point would be to prove that your 'reproduced' evolution was not either:
1.) Expressed information previously present in the gene-line
Or:
2.) Information removed from the gene-line.
In either case you have not produced a new species, just sick flies.
So since we know that the relativistic time-frame has an effect on radioactive decay, on what basis do you assume that radimetric decay does not change (the unspoken assumption in your example above)? Genesis describes a period in which God is 'stretching out the heavens' Why does that not fit into your example? Is it possible that your scepticism has blurred you understanding of what is written in Genesis?
My point here is that you assume you know what the bible story is (6k years), but you might not fully understand the idea.
Instead of God 'deliberately trying to fool you', maybe he is pointing to some idea deeper than your current understanding. Such a deeper idea is unavailable to you, so information such as the rate of expansion of the early universe, (which might be derivable from the eye-witness account in Genesis), is out of your reach.
ID predicts that we will find that life is rife with design, and that there was an original working order to life that can be discovered and possibly recovered. It is evolution that makes no prediction that can be tested, since if life is really random in origin than there is nothing to discover within it, nor is there any reason for you (a member of Life) to even ask questions, since it is all a random biochemical event anyway)
Well said.
Thanks for the post. I like /. because of things like an off-hand mention of Sapir-Whorf - which I had never heard of by that name.
I would argue that the complexity problem must include all sources of complexity, which includes little things like testing, documentation, user instruction, correctness accounting. Rather than select a single axis of complexity, in this case the language, It makes more sense to consider all sources, and select a language/methodology that minimizes the overall complexity of the project.
If I can do a task in 3,000 lines of Forth, how do I compare that to the 30,000 or so lines of C++ that might be required to do the same thing? (Forth solutions typically are 1/10 the size of C++, according to Chuck Moore, an admittedly biased source.)
So with such a possibility, why am I stuck with a bazillion lines of C++? because there is more to software than coding, and more to the solution of a problem than SLOC.
I think the reason Forth is such a niche language is because it does not lend itself to generic solutions, rather the Forth dictionary paradigm tends to capture value by defining very specific language that may not reuse. (You say PotAAto, I say POOtato) this means that Forth tends to generate complex dictionaries of specific solutions that differ at an atomic level from the same use in a different context. This is a good news/bad news concept: Once you understand the dictionary, you understand the entire app, but to understand any of the app you typically have to understand the entire dictionary.
In the context of the article (teaching fundamentals to freshman) It would probably serve better to use a more generic vehicle than C++, where the fundamentals can be isolated and demonstrated with a minimum of syntax, and there are plentiful examples of well-structured code to learn from. My personal preference is for TCL, where the typical 'Hello World' program is:
puts "Hello World",
which is about as simple as it can get for syntax. This allows the student to concentrate on concepts rather than parenthesis.
Thanks. I was expecting to be bitten by trolls for this.
Also...
I would rather rescue the drowning Libertarian, not play insensitive games as if her life were of no value.
I hate OO, but only because I inherited a huge broken OO app. Somewhere down in the dozens of layers of objects there is a broken method. This problem has confounded at least four previous fix campaigns. The economic downturn has made some excellent people available, so this attempt may bear fruit, but if we fix this code it will be in spite of OO, not because of it. This is not to say that a functional solution would a priori be any easier, but for us OO is an impediment, because we have to spend a lot of time thinking about the OO problems, and not the domain problems.