My apologies. I am not an employee of the Clay Institute, or associated with it. I have never been to their offices or any site they maintain. This posting was not based on policy of the Clay Institute or any activities that have occured there, but was the result of a conversation with annother person, also not associated with Clay Institute, after hearing how many calls they receive from people claiming to have solutions to these problems, but do not.
In short, I am retracting my comments about the Clay Institute.
If you think that you have a solution to any of the Millennium Problems, no matter how good you may think that solution
is, please do not contact the Clay Institute directly. You will be answered by two sardonic secretaries who are weary of such claims and will only use your communique in their pursuit of the Clay Institute Drinking Game:
If someone claims to have a solution to ALL 7 problems - Drink!
If someone claims that P vs NP is an Algebra problem or tries to factor P out of NP - Drink!
If someone claims that they need notarized assurances that the Clay Institute is prestigious enough for THEIR solution - Drink!
If someone claims that they need time on the Institute Supercomputer because solving one of the Millennium Problems is part of their Mission, A Mission From God - CHUG!
If you are at all serious about your solution to these problems, you will pursue them in a better manner then trying to
find back channel entry into academia. You can start by actually getting a degree in Mathematics and learning that the
Maths community already has ways and means to consider and judge any solution you think you have. Trust me on this one, I've seen the underside to their tables.
This was exclusively in a context of a discussion on biological evolution. The end of that sentence, "for biological evolution to exist" was implied. The point is that the mechanism itself is enough to explain the process observed. Adding an appeal to a divine power merely pushes back the questions by 1 level of abstraction. If and Intelligent Designer was necessary for anything as complex biological evolution to occur, what Intelligence designed the Intelligent Designer? Repeat ad infinitum. If you postulate the existence of the Intelligent Designer, as a God (or whatever), then there is no reason to then reduce the problem and postulate the existence of biological evolution. The process of evolution is dynamic enough to give rise to intelligence without the need for design from intelligence.
In any rational person's mind, there is much more to the question of the existence of God (e.g. the origin of ethics and morality, purposefulness in the universe, the nature of the soul) than supplying a mechanism for transforming biological mass from one form to the next.
Other than being a red herring (see above about this being is discussion of biological evolution and intelligent design), none of this makes much sense to me. There are sufficient (and better) mechanisms for the origin of ethics and morality then postulating that they were granted, inspired, or created by a God. Meaning in life (what I assume you mean by purposefulness in the universe, since that is the only thing I was able to get out of those words) is created by the person searching for meaning in their life. It can not be granted by an external force, as that would deny free will. The only thing an external force, be it God, a religion, or a crediting institute can do is arbitrate the acceptance of self created concepts of meaning in life to allow the being searching for meaning in life to not realize that it created meaning within life for itself. And every conceptualization of soul that I have heard of either reduces to a subset of the mind, or was so in-substantially abstracted as to be unnecessary for any understanding about the nature of people.
Random processes have trouble generating complex information
This is inaccurate. Random processes are very good at creating complex information. Any truly random process will produce information that can not be described or summarized as anything other then random, and will thus be infinitely complex. Any process that produces information that can be described or summarized, in whole, or in part, by a systematic means (other then copying the entire information stream, of course) will thus allow prediction of other parts of the information stream is not, by definition, random, and will have a finite component to its complexity.
It's also interesting that you seem to classify science as "that which is true" and religion as "that which
is made up".
The person you are quoting never said that. He did not say anything that can be taken to mean that. All statements, as
you say, are 'made up'. It is how they are 'made up' that is important. Statements that are 'made up' to allow the prediction of the behaviors of the observable world are, to varying degrees, considered scientific statements. The rest are subjective, have a different purpose and judged by different standards.
What is it that you think that Intelligent Design wants to teach?
That Faith can determine what is true in spite of reality. Or, stated another way, that humans can tell God what His beliefs are.
There are some truths that are eternal.
If they are truths, then they will make predictions that can be verified by experiment. If they do not make the type of statements that can be proven false, then they are subjective statements. While subjective statements can not be proven to be false (or, for that matter, true), they have other, highly important merits. They exist, and have the power of
meaning, independent of truth or fallacy.
If by science you mean "the philosophy of naturalism", then the two will always be mortal enemies.
This statement is just patently wrong. All that the Philosophy of Naturalism (excluding those definitions of Naturalism that are just irrelevant to this discussion) states is that Nature is complete, unto itself. It does not distinguish the natural from the supernatural. What is commonly call the supernatural is, fundamentally, a part of the natural world. Naturalism is the foundation upon which religion is built. To deny Naturalism is to reject Religion.
If God used an mechanism such as Evolution to create divergent species, then God is not necessary. Evolution, as a process, is complete and dynamic enough to create diverent species. Evolutionary Biology is powerful enough to allow us to make all of the predictions needed to understand the number and types of species on our planet. Adding God, or Intelligent Design, into the picture does not increase the predictive power of Evolution. It just makes for a needlessly more complicated hypothesis that now can not be tested or proven. This would drive Evolution into no longer being science, much to the chagrin of the scientists who study it. This is what drives Religion into Conflict with Science. A conflict that scientists Do Not Want, but finding themselves forced into.
My oldest working computer is a DECmate III. It is one of the slim-line late models, and includes the 1200 baud modem and Z-80 CP/M card upgrades. Wonderful machine. Even have the LP-50 printer to go with it. However, I do not use it often.
For that, you would need the TI-99 4/A. Parsec, Munch Man, and Tunnels of Doom! Oh, yes, baby!
I've also got a Sparc Station 20 that my company at the time purchased for me new. It is now configured as an X server for remote client software, but will become my web server when I get a new system.
Slashdot Mirror
My apologies. I am not an employee of the Clay Institute, or associated with it. I have never been to their offices or any site they maintain. This posting was not based on policy of the Clay Institute or any activities that have occured there, but was the result of a conversation with annother person, also not associated with Clay Institute, after hearing how many calls they receive from people claiming to have solutions to these problems, but do not.
In short, I am retracting my comments about the Clay Institute.
If someone claims to have a solution to ALL 7 problems - Drink!
If someone claims that P vs NP is an Algebra problem or tries to factor P out of NP - Drink!
If someone claims that they need notarized assurances that the Clay Institute is prestigious enough for THEIR solution - Drink!
If someone claims that they need time on the Institute Supercomputer because solving one of the Millennium Problems is part of their Mission, A Mission From God - CHUG!
If you are at all serious about your solution to these problems, you will pursue them in a better manner then trying to find back channel entry into academia. You can start by actually getting a degree in Mathematics and learning that the Maths community already has ways and means to consider and judge any solution you think you have. Trust me on this one, I've seen the underside to their tables.
Unruhe
If God used an mechanism such as Evolution to create divergent species, then God is not necessary. Evolution, as a process, is complete and dynamic enough to create diverent species. Evolutionary Biology is powerful enough to allow us to make all of the predictions needed to understand the number and types of species on our planet. Adding God, or Intelligent Design, into the picture does not increase the predictive power of Evolution. It just makes for a needlessly more complicated hypothesis that now can not be tested or proven. This would drive Evolution into no longer being science, much to the chagrin of the scientists who study it. This is what drives Religion into Conflict with Science. A conflict that scientists Do Not Want, but finding themselves forced into.
My oldest working computer is a DECmate III. It is one of the slim-line late models, and includes the 1200 baud modem and Z-80 CP/M card upgrades. Wonderful machine. Even have the LP-50 printer to go with it. However, I do not use it often. For that, you would need the TI-99 4/A. Parsec, Munch Man, and Tunnels of Doom! Oh, yes, baby! I've also got a Sparc Station 20 that my company at the time purchased for me new. It is now configured as an X server for remote client software, but will become my web server when I get a new system.