>>Your point about Planck tiem is no germane to your proof.
So says YOU, but who are YOU to judge what is and is not germane to MY proof?
Someone who works as a scientist for a living. You may not understand this, but that is how science works. If you make a scientific claim then you must be willing to defend it.
You asked for:
1) data to support ID
Which I offered in the form of the existance of something
How is this *data*? The "existance of something" is now considered *data*?
that according to the second law of thermodynamics, should not exist- the ordering of physical laws at Planck Time during the big bang.
The physical laws that you claim *shouldn't* exist include the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I've included the definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics for you to discuss in your next iteration of your *theory*:
"An engine operating in a cycle cannot transform heat into work without some other effect on its environment _or_ an engine operating in a cycle cannot transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot reservoir without some other effect on its environment"
For it not to support ID- it's now upon you to show how those physical laws could have come about without an input of information into the closed system of the universe at Planck time.
Item one: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics didn't exist in Plank time so that constraint didn't exist. Item two: Individuals who posit a claim are the ones who supply the proof. That's how science works.
2) a scientifically defensible definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
To which I offered the example of the physical laws at planck time,
That is not a definition. See the discussion above - that example was offered as your data. You can't interchange one for the other.
for which nobody has been able to offer a grand unified field theory yet that makes sense of why the physical constants of the universe are what they are.
No one has been able to unify gravity with electromagnetic theory - yet. That doesn't mean your theory about ID is supported.
You are attempting to make a positive claim based on the lack of evidence. Are you aware that this is the "God in the Gaps" argument?
It isn't original, you know.
And how does this fact support ID?
The *only* useful difference between ID and evolution is this question- given the same set of physical laws, could species evolve different than they did?
No, the difference between ID and evolution is that something "intelligent" is substituted for random processes. There is no similarity at all.
Evolution claims yes- randomness exists in the universe, and it's possible that a different set of mutations would allow a different species to come into being and become intelligent. ID claims no- that even if we don't fully understand them yet, every little quark anywhere must obey laws set down at Planck Time, and from those laws everything else can be extrapolated.
Your understanding of Planck time is different from everyone else, I'm afraid:
"The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate. This is the 'quantum of length', the smallest measurement of length with any meaning.
And roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m or about 10-20 times the size of a proton.
The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to across a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the 'quantum of time', the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to 10-43 seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. With in the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only that the universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43 seconds."
Now I don't know how you have construed the definition of Planck time into a theory that ev
Without something to order the universe at that point, there would be no physical laws.
Then the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics wouldn't exist either. BTW, how do you get from this:
"An engine operating in a cycle cannot transform heat into work without some other effect on its environment _or_ an engine operating in a cycle cannot transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot reservoir without some other effect on its environment"
During the same time, our predators were getting faster and stronger and we were getting....smarter???
Who said our predators were getting faster and stronger?
You have evidence to support that assertion?
Sure, if you live in the modern world with the internet and taxi cabs and books and shit, that'd be a big deal. But if you're some ancestor of ours out in the wild, you'd be pretty low on the totem pole, so to speak, in terms of survivability. So how is it we did it? Before intelligence we had every disadvantage.
So do rabbits. We could climb trees and survived for several million years in trees before the jungle changed to savannah.
Which would you take in a fight: an unarmed man or a bear? a gorilla? a crocodile? a shark? a dog? I wouldn't want to face any of these alone in the wild.
You discount the advantange that prey have: rapid gestation and ovulation cycles.
Did you factor this in when you created your argument?
We were fundamentally physically unequipped to survive in the wild 3.5M years ago.
We didn't look anything like we do now 3.5 million years ago.
Domestication is not evolution.
Domestication is an evolutionary mechanism.
We have domesticated cattle, not caused a genetic mutation that makes them different from previous generations.
You have evidence to support your conclusions?
Close and distant relatives of the domesticated cow continue to survive in the wild, human intervention or not.
Really? Where?
Here in the US there is only the Longhorn and it shares few traits with the domesticated varieties we raise for beef.
Buffalo roamed the plains of North America for millenia before humans with no problems.
Well, I'm not so sure it was his but more Lyell's geology.
In that light, are the various theories of intelligent design novel or valid? Well, definitely not novel. They could be seen as valid theories, but they are very poorly supported, since the only way to show that such things occur would be to have a lot of people witness an ex nihilio creation of a new form of life. Unlikely.
The scenario you posit is one of proving a negative, which is fundamentally 'unscientific'. As I mentioned in another post, what is necessary for ID to gain any credibility is at least two foundation elements:
1) a scientific definition of what constitutes 'irreducible complexity'
Irreducible complexity is the core of the ID argument. There is no way to construct a hypothesis that supports Intelligent Design without relying on the idea that there was intervention that circumvented radom processes to *create* the world as we see it. To date, the definition of irreducible complexity is about as workable as SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "...I know it when I see it..". There is no way to create an experiment with such a loosely constructed nomenclature. Until we know what we are looking for, everyone can claim to have found evidence supporting ID.
2) identifying intelligent design components
This second part is the testable part of ID. When there is a working definition of what constitutes irreducible complexity, then the job of separating those elements of nature that were intelligently designed, as opposed to those which grew from random processess, can begin in ernest. Whether it is the binding force of the atom 10E-22 seconds after the Big Bang, or genetic coding that jumpstarted the development of an organism, an intelligently designed natural phenomenon (which I contend is an oxymoron) can be cataloged and an actual experiment is constructed from a hypothesis.
Ten years after Behe's book, there neither of these founding elements can be found in any of the thousands of pages published by the concept's proponents.
But whether or not you agree with him religiously, he seemed to put a great amount of thought into his beliefs, and I think he should be respected for that.
The point of the GP was that Origin of The Species is an anti-religious tract.
I've never read anything that supports the "anti-relgious" charge outside of the anti-evolution crowd. Owing to the fact that they make this shit up out of whole cloth, and never respond to anyone who asks for evidence that Darwin was even marginally anti-religious, I tend to dismiss it out of hand.
They realized that it when they're fucking chickenhawks who never fought in a war, its probably a bad idea to call a honest to fucking god war hero a coward.
Did you hear the screams from both sides of the aisle when Jean Schmidt called Murtha a coward?
What a dumbass.
Stupid Bush administration. At least Clinton had the good sense to not get us into wars without the backing of allies in places where we weren't wanted. Also Clinton had a much better excuse for not being in the war, better to be a draft dodger than a deserter.
Well, I'm not sure there is much of a difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to intervention and justification for war. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is still a blot on the Democrats.
Everyone who read our exchange is laughing at this point. I punched holes in your first argument and now you claim I support you.
I say 100,00 years ago the first signs of human intellidence appear, you say over the course of 3.5 million years. How is it we survived? According to the theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest", we shouldn't be here. But we are. Why?
We survived because our intelligence, developed over the course of 3.5 million years, advanced faster than our predators in that same time frame.
Again, you should be getting this from an anthropology text.
Look at it another way: wouldn't certain animal species that use elaborate mechanisms (think peacock) to attract mates also be more attractive to predators and easier to catch and kill? I mean a peacock can't do shit. *I* can catch one and I'm fat lazy bastard. How come they survived? And how exactly and why did they develop the way they did?
Your statement assumes that peacocks of today existed as they did before humans began domesticating animals. If you are looking for an animal that can't protect itself from predators, look at cattle. They can barely give birth to a calf due to the fact that humans have protected them from predators for thousands of years.
Evolution in action.
And don't get me wrong. I don't think reading some 4,000 year old book did it. There is some other explanation for it, and I leave it up to the scientists to figure those things out. The theory of evolution is a start, but it IS flawed or in another sense incomplete.
I would suggest reading Origins of the Species first before claiming evolution doesn't exist. It can be found here.
Hey, if you don't believe that Planck time exists, then you'd better give up on science as well-
Your point about Planck tiem is no germane to your proof.
All I've asked for is:
1) data to support ID, and 2) a scientifically defensible definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
You seem to be stuck on what evolution *doesn't* prove rather than supply any *positive* evidence of intelligent design. If ID is to gain any traction as science it will only do so when its adherents produce a working definition of irreducible complexity and then define what constitutes an intelligent design element. Both of these tasks are necessary to create an experiment to test whether something is intelligently designed, or a randomly created natural pheomenon that the investigator has inadvertently called intelligently designed.
Despite dozens of books and online articles, no definition has surfaced since Behe published his book in 1996. Why does it take so long for the proponents of ID to create a simple definition that can be tested? Are they waiting for one to be designed for them? Or is it because they spend most of their intellectual capital trying to *disprove* evolution?
Without definitions and data, anyone can make a claim of intelligent design and there is no way to refute that claim.
since the physical laws being discovered by science were created during the Big Bang at Planck Time.
And how does this fact support ID?
Congradulations in your philosophical attempt to disprove ID, you've destroyed all of scientific thought as well.
Scientific thought requires data and managable nomenclature.
I'm not going to debate certain aspects of evolution because I think it would be ridiculous. Yes, we have a fossil records. Yes, dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Yes, there are enough similarities betweem certain species to support the idea that they descended from common ancestors. Yes, the earth is roughly four gazillion years old based on our understanding of carbon dating, etc.. That's all well and good.
But it doesn't PROVE evolution.
Then I guess nothing other than the evidence you have cited yourself will ever convince you that evolution is real.
They're not doing the hard science and answering the tough questions, like why, for instance, if intelligence in humans is SO important and crucial to our survival (we have no sharp teeth, claws, we can't run or climb or swim well compared to the rest of the animal kingdom), then why did it take so long for intelligence to develop in humans (say within the past 100,000 years)? How was it possible that WE survived all those years effectively at a huge disadvantage physically?
That intelligence did not develop in the last 100K years. It developed over the course of 3.5 million years.
That's a tough question that NO ONE has been able to answer definitively with facts.
Pick up a good anthropology text written in the last twenty years. You will see the evidence presented for gradual intellectual development in higher primates including humans.
Instead, what we get is "there was once this primordial soup in the oceans (what it was we couldn't tell ya but it was there! and we can't replicate it!) and then some shit went down and here we are."
That is abiogenesis, not evolution.
You have skipped about 4.5 billion years of development from the primordial soup and humans too.
Wow. I'm stunned by the brilliance of that.
Then you don't read much.
And you're right: gravity is based on theory, just like relativity, and most of the "hard" sciences.
What constitutes a "hard" science?
But there are smart people doing responsible tough science on those theories. And they don't just throw shit on the wall to see what sticks.
Neither do geologists, biologists, paleontologists, or anthropologists.
Have you ever taken one of these courses to see how the ideas that support them were develeoped?
Didn't you know? If you're not for us, you're against us. It's a universal scientific principle now.
The Vice-President has shown he can peddle in both directions when the victim of the attack is a decorated war veteran.
The VFW must have beat Bush-Cheney up pretty badly for them to start describing John Murtha (a Democrat AND a critic of the Iraq war) in such glowing terms as those used by the Veep on Sunday.
That lip contortion that you see on Cheney's face isn't a scowl - it is the lasting impression on his mouth from talking out of both sides for forty years.
>>There is nothing in Origin of the Species that discusses abiogenesis.
Except for of course the line that got all the YEC's hot to begin with, right? The bit about there being no neccessity of a God to explain life?
That means that there doesn't have to be a religious argument to support the beginning of life.
>>What evidence exists for ID?
The one that insists that "random chance" is subjective evidence, and therefore should be eliminated from the explaination.
That isn't positive evidence *for* ID, it is an attack on evolution.
Provide the POSITIVE evidence for ID.
>>And I am not talking about *negative* evidence (i.e., "it is just too complex to explain otherwise"). I am asking for a postive assertion of evidence that supports ID.
The most convincing to me is Planck Time- before which there were no physical laws, after which there were the exact physical laws that led eventually to life.
And? And what?
You are still not providing us with a positive assertion of *fact*.
Where is your data?
Those who are against the idea of Intelligent Design would have us believe that event, in all of history, is alone in being an uncaused event.
Argument *against* evolution - not a positive assertion *for* ID.
Where is your data FOR ID?
If you believe that event had a cause- then everything, evolution included, was a part of an intelligent plan from the begining.
More arguments against evolution.
Do you have one positive thing to assert in support of ID other than "The other guy is wrong!"?
Not human intelligence, not anthromophic myth, not possibly even anything that would have been though of as intelligent by the "humans are the only intelligent beings" bigots.
This is tiring.
Do you have anything positive to say about ID or not?
But a *cause*- because we know of nothing else in all of history that didn't have a cause.
I guess not.
Intelligent Design isn't opposed to Evolution-
Every point you have made is an argument against evolution, not positive evidence *for* ID.
Intelligent Design is opposed to the idea of a meaningless universe. Which is why neither side of the debate actually knows what they're talking about.
And neither do you, apparently. Otherwise you would have given me what I asked for:
1) the data that supports ID, and 2) a clear scientific definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
Without that, ID is nothing but warmed-over creationism.
As for 'irreducible complexity'- there can only be examples of nouns, not definitions.
Then ID is not science.
I can think of several examples, but not a single definition.
Many good scientific theories have begun as "this is too complicated to be explained thusly"
Think relativity.
There is a great deal of mathematical logic supporting relativity.
Gravity, as it is taught in most highschools is complete fiction. That said, the numbers work, more or less, at a certain level of resolution so we use them.
I don't know how you were taught, but we were taught that Einstien's view of gravity was supported by experiment.
When a grand unified theory of everything that is testable emerges, I'll bite my tongue. Lack of testability doesn't stop the design of new hypotheses in the mean time.
Hypotheses require data. What data exist to suppport ID?
"Evolution doesn't seem complete to me" is a perfectly valid statement.
No, a more correct statement would be: "The mechanics of how evolution has occurred doesn't seem complete." Not only does that make sense, it is true scientifically.
Just because evolution seems correct at a certain resolution doesn't mean its correct, just maybe the most correct we've got so far.
That's how science works.
Telling nay-sayers to shut up is just silly, since its usually done by those claiming to be critical thinkers.
I'm telling the nay-sayers to do what any good scientist would require:
1) provide me data that supports your assertion, and 2) define your nomenclature so that your assertion can be tested.
There's no denying that evolution is far from established fact and is fundamentally a theory with PLENTY of holes and unanswered questions.
As to the mechanism of evolution, yes there is debate in the scientific commmunity. As to whether evolution has occurred, there is no debate in the scientific community.
To me I see those zealots who accept evolution as fact in the same light as how *they* perceive Christians and Christianity: mindless minions of bad logic and reasoning.
So you reject the notion that there is any evidence for the *fact* that evolution has occurred?
Explain why there are so many shared genes between species. In fact, the human genome is one big code sharing exercise.
It just seems like evolutionists want to skip a whole bunch of steps and not do the actual science required to figure out if the evidence supports their theory or not.
What steps have they skipped?
That's the scientific method, folks. You never PROVE anything: you have evidence that either supports or doesn't support your theory.
And you haven't done anything to support your position other than flap your arms around wildly.
Show us the holes in evolution. Show us where steps have been missed. Show us how YOU would apply the scientific method any differently to, say, the theory of gravity.
even if I think the evidence behind Darwin (Spontaneous Genesis)
There is nothing in Origin of the Species that discusses abiogenesis.
and Coppe (Intelligent Design)
What evidence exists for ID?
And I am not talking about *negative* evidence (i.e., "it is just too complex to explain otherwise"). I am asking for a postive assertion of evidence that supports ID.
Also, I would appreciate a concise definition of 'irreducible complexity' in scientific terms.
My son plays video games - plenty of them too. He plays WoW, GTA, and about a half dozen games that involve various levels of mayhem. He laughs hysterically at the images of bodies dropping, sans heads, with the appropriate level of blood splatter to boot.
But he is a major-class wimp when it comes to seeing the real thing. My wife, my daughters and I can sit in the living room watching a Discovery television program on surgery techniques, where flesh and bone are exposed and articulated for the camera. No problems for us. My son, however, gets noticeably queasy and has to leave the room to avoid getting sick.
I took him in to the podiatrist to have him examined for surgery on his feet. The doctor described in detail the procedure they will be following to correct his bunions. That process involves cutting wedges out of his phalanges and shaving the metatarsals. I watched my son as the doctor went through his description and noted the loss of color in his face, his agitated state, and his breathing. I thought he was going to vomit in the examination room. And all the doctor was doing was talking.
When we got in the car to head back home I asked my son why he was unable to deal with the descriptions of cutting and shaving bone when he could watch people blown to bits playing video games.
His reply was: "I know the difference between fantasy and reality".
Re:From TFA (and other materials on the subject)
on
HAARP Amping It Up
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· Score: 1
On a related note, Nikola Tesla accidentally caused an earthquake in New York, experimenting with his Tesla Coil (it's why he had to shut that lab down and move it out of the city). Before I go too far with this, let me tie up the Tesla tangent by noting that anyone seriously thinking about what HAARP could be would find more detailed information about Tesla's work very, very interesting; there is more than a little that HAARP and the Tesla coil have in common. (Tesla himself seemed sure he would be able to manipulate all sorts of natural phenomena, but that's another story.)
Earthquakes are caused by the episodic release of energy from the crust of the Earth due to compression or extension, or by isostatic realignment of sediments in large depositional regimes.
Which of these mechanisms are affected by Tesla's electromagnetic experiment?
If an earthquake occurred at the same time as one of his experiments it is a "coincidence".
I remember getting Teamspeak to contact my family and friends. We would set up a server and contact each other via IM to set up a session. Now Teamspeak charges for their service. I'm sure that was their intention all along, but it was sad to see it go subscription only.
I wonder how long yakForFree will remain *free*? I suppose their free plan is a give away for getting people to sign up for the enhanced services. But I can envision a time in the near future when the free will giveway to *cheap*. I guess that if the price is right, that isn't a bad prospect either.
I guess I'd better use it while the free offer is still good!
Slashdot Mirror
>>Your point about Planck tiem is no germane to your proof.
So says YOU, but who are YOU to judge what is and is not germane to MY proof?
Someone who works as a scientist for a living. You may not understand this, but that is how science works. If you make a scientific claim then you must be willing to defend it.
You asked for:
1) data to support ID
Which I offered in the form of the existance of something
How is this *data*? The "existance of something" is now considered *data*?
that according to the second law of thermodynamics, should not exist- the ordering of physical laws at Planck Time during the big bang.
The physical laws that you claim *shouldn't* exist include the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I've included the definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics for you to discuss in your next iteration of your *theory*:
"An engine operating in a cycle cannot transform heat into work without
some other effect on its environment _or_ an engine operating in a cycle
cannot transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot reservoir without
some other effect on its environment"
For it not to support ID- it's now upon you to show how those physical laws could have come about without an input of information into the closed system of the universe at Planck time.
Item one: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics didn't exist in Plank time so that constraint didn't exist.
Item two: Individuals who posit a claim are the ones who supply the proof. That's how science works.
2) a scientifically defensible definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
To which I offered the example of the physical laws at planck time,
That is not a definition. See the discussion above - that example was offered as your data. You can't interchange one for the other.
for which nobody has been able to offer a grand unified field theory yet that makes sense of why the physical constants of the universe are what they are.
No one has been able to unify gravity with electromagnetic theory - yet. That doesn't mean your theory about ID is supported.
You are attempting to make a positive claim based on the lack of evidence. Are you aware that this is the "God in the Gaps" argument?
It isn't original, you know.
And how does this fact support ID?
The *only* useful difference between ID and evolution is this question- given the same set of physical laws, could species evolve different than they did?
No, the difference between ID and evolution is that something "intelligent" is substituted for random processes. There is no similarity at all.
Evolution claims yes- randomness exists in the universe, and it's possible that a different set of mutations would allow a different species to come into being and become intelligent. ID claims no- that even if we don't fully understand them yet, every little quark anywhere must obey laws set down at Planck Time, and from those laws everything else can be extrapolated.
Your understanding of Planck time is different from everyone else, I'm afraid:
"The Planck length is the scale at which classical ideas about gravity and space-time cease to be valid, and quantum effects dominate. This is the 'quantum of length', the smallest measurement of length with any meaning.
And roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m or about 10-20 times the size of a proton.
The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to across a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the 'quantum of time', the smallest measurement of time that has any meaning, and is equal to 10-43 seconds. No smaller division of time has any meaning. With in the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only that the universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43 seconds."
Now I don't know how you have construed the definition of Planck time into a theory that ev
Without something to order the universe at that point, there would be no physical laws.
Then the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics wouldn't exist either. BTW, how do you get from this:
"An engine operating in a cycle cannot transform heat into work without
some other effect on its environment _or_ an engine operating in a cycle
cannot transfer heat from a cold reservoir to a hot reservoir without
some other effect on its environment"
to your theory of Planck Time?
During the same time, our predators were getting faster and stronger and we were getting....smarter???
Who said our predators were getting faster and stronger?
You have evidence to support that assertion?
Sure, if you live in the modern world with the internet and taxi cabs and books and shit, that'd be a big deal. But if you're some ancestor of ours out in the wild, you'd be pretty low on the totem pole, so to speak, in terms of survivability. So how is it we did it? Before intelligence we had every disadvantage.
So do rabbits. We could climb trees and survived for several million years in trees before the jungle changed to savannah.
Which would you take in a fight: an unarmed man or a bear? a gorilla? a crocodile? a shark? a dog? I wouldn't want to face any of these alone in the wild.
You discount the advantange that prey have: rapid gestation and ovulation cycles.
Did you factor this in when you created your argument?
We were fundamentally physically unequipped to survive in the wild 3.5M years ago.
We didn't look anything like we do now 3.5 million years ago.
Domestication is not evolution.
Domestication is an evolutionary mechanism.
We have domesticated cattle, not caused a genetic mutation that makes them different from previous generations.
You have evidence to support your conclusions?
Close and distant relatives of the domesticated cow continue to survive in the wild, human intervention or not.
Really? Where?
Here in the US there is only the Longhorn and it shares few traits with the domesticated varieties we raise for beef.
Buffalo roamed the plains of North America for millenia before humans with no problems.
By sheer number.
How are they doing now?
Like I said, Darwin's geology was garbage,
Well, I'm not so sure it was his but more Lyell's geology.
In that light, are the various theories of intelligent design novel or valid? Well, definitely not novel. They could be seen as valid theories, but they are very poorly supported, since the only way to show that such things occur would be to have a lot of people witness an ex nihilio creation of a new form of life. Unlikely.
The scenario you posit is one of proving a negative, which is fundamentally 'unscientific'. As I mentioned in another post, what is necessary for ID to gain any credibility is at least two foundation elements:
1) a scientific definition of what constitutes 'irreducible complexity'
Irreducible complexity is the core of the ID argument. There is no way to construct a hypothesis that supports Intelligent Design without relying on the idea that there was intervention that circumvented radom processes to *create* the world as we see it. To date, the definition of irreducible complexity is about as workable as SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart's definition of pornography: "...I know it when I see it..". There is no way to create an experiment with such a loosely constructed nomenclature. Until we know what we are looking for, everyone can claim to have found evidence supporting ID.
2) identifying intelligent design components
This second part is the testable part of ID. When there is a working definition of what constitutes irreducible complexity, then the job of separating those elements of nature that were intelligently designed, as opposed to those which grew from random processess, can begin in ernest. Whether it is the binding force of the atom 10E-22 seconds after the Big Bang, or genetic coding that jumpstarted the development of an organism, an intelligently designed natural phenomenon (which I contend is an oxymoron) can be cataloged and an actual experiment is constructed from a hypothesis.
Ten years after Behe's book, there neither of these founding elements can be found in any of the thousands of pages published by the concept's proponents.
Nor do I believe they will they ever emerge.
But whether or not you agree with him religiously, he seemed to put a great amount of thought into his beliefs, and I think he should be respected for that.
The point of the GP was that Origin of The Species is an anti-religious tract.
I've never read anything that supports the "anti-relgious" charge outside of the anti-evolution crowd. Owing to the fact that they make this shit up out of whole cloth, and never respond to anyone who asks for evidence that Darwin was even marginally anti-religious, I tend to dismiss it out of hand.
They realized that it when they're fucking chickenhawks who never fought in a war, its probably a bad idea to call a honest to fucking god war hero a coward.
Did you hear the screams from both sides of the aisle when Jean Schmidt called Murtha a coward?
What a dumbass.
Stupid Bush administration. At least Clinton had the good sense to not get us into wars without the backing of allies in places where we weren't wanted. Also Clinton had a much better excuse for not being in the war, better to be a draft dodger than a deserter.
Well, I'm not sure there is much of a difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to intervention and justification for war. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is still a blot on the Democrats.
So you support my point.
Everyone who read our exchange is laughing at this point. I punched holes in your first argument and now you claim I support you.
I say 100,00 years ago the first signs of human intellidence appear, you say over the course of 3.5 million years. How is it we survived? According to the theory of evolution and "survival of the fittest", we shouldn't be here. But we are. Why?
We survived because our intelligence, developed over the course of 3.5 million years, advanced faster than our predators in that same time frame.
Again, you should be getting this from an anthropology text.
Look at it another way: wouldn't certain animal species that use elaborate mechanisms (think peacock) to attract mates also be more attractive to predators and easier to catch and kill? I mean a peacock can't do shit. *I* can catch one and I'm fat lazy bastard. How come they survived? And how exactly and why did they develop the way they did?
Your statement assumes that peacocks of today existed as they did before humans began domesticating animals. If you are looking for an animal that can't protect itself from predators, look at cattle. They can barely give birth to a calf due to the fact that humans have protected them from predators for thousands of years.
Evolution in action.
And don't get me wrong. I don't think reading some 4,000 year old book did it. There is some other explanation for it, and I leave it up to the scientists to figure those things out. The theory of evolution is a start, but it IS flawed or in another sense incomplete.
I would suggest reading Origins of the Species first before claiming evolution doesn't exist. It can be found here.
Hey, if you don't believe that Planck time exists, then you'd better give up on science as well-
Your point about Planck tiem is no germane to your proof.
All I've asked for is:
1) data to support ID, and
2) a scientifically defensible definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
You seem to be stuck on what evolution *doesn't* prove rather than supply any *positive* evidence of intelligent design. If ID is to gain any traction as science it will only do so when its adherents produce a working definition of irreducible complexity and then define what constitutes an intelligent design element. Both of these tasks are necessary to create an experiment to test whether something is intelligently designed, or a randomly created natural pheomenon that the investigator has inadvertently called intelligently designed.
Despite dozens of books and online articles, no definition has surfaced since Behe published his book in 1996. Why does it take so long for the proponents of ID to create a simple definition that can be tested? Are they waiting for one to be designed for them? Or is it because they spend most of their intellectual capital trying to *disprove* evolution?
Without definitions and data, anyone can make a claim of intelligent design and there is no way to refute that claim.
since the physical laws being discovered by science were created during the Big Bang at Planck Time.
And how does this fact support ID?
Congradulations in your philosophical attempt to disprove ID, you've destroyed all of scientific thought as well.
Scientific thought requires data and managable nomenclature.
Your defense of ID has provided neither.
ID is not science.
I'm not going to debate certain aspects of evolution because I think it would be ridiculous. Yes, we have a fossil records. Yes, dinosaurs once roamed the earth. Yes, there are enough similarities betweem certain species to support the idea that they descended from common ancestors. Yes, the earth is roughly four gazillion years old based on our understanding of carbon dating, etc.. That's all well and good.
But it doesn't PROVE evolution.
Then I guess nothing other than the evidence you have cited yourself will ever convince you that evolution is real.
They're not doing the hard science and answering the tough questions, like why, for instance, if intelligence in humans is SO important and crucial to our survival (we have no sharp teeth, claws, we can't run or climb or swim well compared to the rest of the animal kingdom), then why did it take so long for intelligence to develop in humans (say within the past 100,000 years)? How was it possible that WE survived all those years effectively at a huge disadvantage physically?
That intelligence did not develop in the last 100K years. It developed over the course of 3.5 million years.
That's a tough question that NO ONE has been able to answer definitively with facts.
Pick up a good anthropology text written in the last twenty years. You will see the evidence presented for gradual intellectual development in higher primates including humans.
Instead, what we get is "there was once this primordial soup in the oceans (what it was we couldn't tell ya but it was there! and we can't replicate it!) and then some shit went down and here we are."
That is abiogenesis, not evolution.
You have skipped about 4.5 billion years of development from the primordial soup and humans too.
Wow. I'm stunned by the brilliance of that.
Then you don't read much.
And you're right: gravity is based on theory, just like relativity, and most of the "hard" sciences.
What constitutes a "hard" science?
But there are smart people doing responsible tough science on those theories. And they don't just throw shit on the wall to see what sticks.
Neither do geologists, biologists, paleontologists, or anthropologists.
Have you ever taken one of these courses to see how the ideas that support them were develeoped?
Didn't you know? If you're not for us, you're against us. It's a universal scientific principle now.
The Vice-President has shown he can peddle in both directions when the victim of the attack is a decorated war veteran.
The VFW must have beat Bush-Cheney up pretty badly for them to start describing John Murtha (a Democrat AND a critic of the Iraq war) in such glowing terms as those used by the Veep on Sunday.
That lip contortion that you see on Cheney's face isn't a scowl - it is the lasting impression on his mouth from talking out of both sides for forty years.
>>There is nothing in Origin of the Species that discusses abiogenesis.
Except for of course the line that got all the YEC's hot to begin with, right? The bit about there being no neccessity of a God to explain life?
That means that there doesn't have to be a religious argument to support the beginning of life.
>>What evidence exists for ID?
The one that insists that "random chance" is subjective evidence, and therefore should be eliminated from the explaination.
That isn't positive evidence *for* ID, it is an attack on evolution.
Provide the POSITIVE evidence for ID.
>>And I am not talking about *negative* evidence (i.e., "it is just too complex to explain otherwise"). I am asking for a postive assertion of evidence that supports ID.
The most convincing to me is Planck Time- before which there were no physical laws, after which there were the exact physical laws that led eventually to life.
And? And what?
You are still not providing us with a positive assertion of *fact*.
Where is your data?
Those who are against the idea of Intelligent Design would have us believe that event, in all of history, is alone in being an uncaused event.
Argument *against* evolution - not a positive assertion *for* ID.
Where is your data FOR ID?
If you believe that event had a cause- then everything, evolution included, was a part of an intelligent plan from the begining.
More arguments against evolution.
Do you have one positive thing to assert in support of ID other than "The other guy is wrong!"?
Not human intelligence, not anthromophic myth, not possibly even anything that would have been though of as intelligent by the "humans are the only intelligent beings" bigots.
This is tiring.
Do you have anything positive to say about ID or not?
But a *cause*- because we know of nothing else in all of history that didn't have a cause.
I guess not.
Intelligent Design isn't opposed to Evolution-
Every point you have made is an argument against evolution, not positive evidence *for* ID.
Intelligent Design is opposed to the idea of a meaningless universe. Which is why neither side of the debate actually knows what they're talking about.
And neither do you, apparently. Otherwise you would have given me what I asked for:
1) the data that supports ID, and
2) a clear scientific definition of 'irreducible complexity'.
Without that, ID is nothing but warmed-over creationism.
As for 'irreducible complexity'- there can only be examples of nouns, not definitions.
Then ID is not science.
I can think of several examples, but not a single definition.
Then ID is not science.
Many good scientific theories have begun as "this is too complicated to be explained thusly"
Think relativity.
There is a great deal of mathematical logic supporting relativity.
Gravity, as it is taught in most highschools is complete fiction. That said, the numbers work, more or less, at a certain level of resolution so we use them.
I don't know how you were taught, but we were taught that Einstien's view of gravity was supported by experiment.
When a grand unified theory of everything that is testable emerges, I'll bite my tongue. Lack of testability doesn't stop the design of new hypotheses in the mean time.
Hypotheses require data. What data exist to suppport ID?
"Evolution doesn't seem complete to me" is a perfectly valid statement.
No, a more correct statement would be: "The mechanics of how evolution has occurred doesn't seem complete." Not only does that make sense, it is true scientifically.
Just because evolution seems correct at a certain resolution doesn't mean its correct, just maybe the most correct we've got so far.
That's how science works.
Telling nay-sayers to shut up is just silly, since its usually done by those claiming to be critical thinkers.
I'm telling the nay-sayers to do what any good scientist would require:
1) provide me data that supports your assertion, and
2) define your nomenclature so that your assertion can be tested.
The ID crowd has done neither in nearly 10 years.
There's no denying that evolution is far from established fact and is fundamentally a theory with PLENTY of holes and unanswered questions.
As to the mechanism of evolution, yes there is debate in the scientific commmunity. As to whether evolution has occurred, there is no debate in the scientific community.
To me I see those zealots who accept evolution as fact in the same light as how *they* perceive Christians and Christianity: mindless minions of bad logic and reasoning.
So you reject the notion that there is any evidence for the *fact* that evolution has occurred?
Explain why there are so many shared genes between species. In fact, the human genome is one big code sharing exercise.
It just seems like evolutionists want to skip a whole bunch of steps and not do the actual science required to figure out if the evidence supports their theory or not.
What steps have they skipped?
That's the scientific method, folks. You never PROVE anything: you have evidence that either supports or doesn't support your theory.
And you haven't done anything to support your position other than flap your arms around wildly.
Show us the holes in evolution. Show us where steps have been missed. Show us how YOU would apply the scientific method any differently to, say, the theory of gravity.
even if I think the evidence behind Darwin (Spontaneous Genesis)
There is nothing in Origin of the Species that discusses abiogenesis.
and Coppe (Intelligent Design)
What evidence exists for ID?
And I am not talking about *negative* evidence (i.e., "it is just too complex to explain otherwise"). I am asking for a postive assertion of evidence that supports ID.
Also, I would appreciate a concise definition of 'irreducible complexity' in scientific terms.
Uh, as long as the exhibit is accurate in that Darwin had an anti-religous agenda.
Care to back that up with some evidence (from sources other than the creationist research orgs)?
IMHO, the arts and sciences should be supported by private donations, not corporate sponsors.
There goes fusion research.
Doesn't stop companies from sponsoring computer exhibits.
Sad but not surprising.
My son plays video games - plenty of them too. He plays WoW, GTA, and about a half dozen games that involve various levels of mayhem. He laughs hysterically at the images of bodies dropping, sans heads, with the appropriate level of blood splatter to boot.
But he is a major-class wimp when it comes to seeing the real thing. My wife, my daughters and I can sit in the living room watching a Discovery television program on surgery techniques, where flesh and bone are exposed and articulated for the camera. No problems for us. My son, however, gets noticeably queasy and has to leave the room to avoid getting sick.
I took him in to the podiatrist to have him examined for surgery on his feet. The doctor described in detail the procedure they will be following to correct his bunions. That process involves cutting wedges out of his phalanges and shaving the metatarsals. I watched my son as the doctor went through his description and noted the loss of color in his face, his agitated state, and his breathing. I thought he was going to vomit in the examination room. And all the doctor was doing was talking.
When we got in the car to head back home I asked my son why he was unable to deal with the descriptions of cutting and shaving bone when he could watch people blown to bits playing video games.
His reply was: "I know the difference between fantasy and reality".
On a related note, Nikola Tesla accidentally caused an earthquake in New York, experimenting with his Tesla Coil (it's why he had to shut that lab down and move it out of the city). Before I go too far with this, let me tie up the Tesla tangent by noting that anyone seriously thinking about what HAARP could be would find more detailed information about Tesla's work very, very interesting; there is more than a little that HAARP and the Tesla coil have in common. (Tesla himself seemed sure he would be able to manipulate all sorts of natural phenomena, but that's another story.)
Earthquakes are caused by the episodic release of energy from the crust of the Earth due to compression or extension, or by isostatic realignment of sediments in large depositional regimes.
Which of these mechanisms are affected by Tesla's electromagnetic experiment?
If an earthquake occurred at the same time as one of his experiments it is a "coincidence".
The woman who raised you wasn't the only influence in your life.
No doubt. But there are several peer refereed journal articles that identify the parents as the most important influence on children's development.
TV (and other advertising that often degradates and commodifies women) and your peers probably had a great influence on your life too.
But the GPs point is that this is due entirely to our patriarchal society.
I call bullshit. That explanation is too simplistic.
Unless you are charging your friends and family to use your teamspeak server, it's still free (as in beer).
Good to know.
Thanks.
I guess you didn't read her blog.
This woman hates men because of her divorce.
If I got a divorce and had to deal with attorneys I think I would hate the other sex too. Not because I would hate women, just the divorce process.
No one I have known who has been through a divorce has walked away from the experience without severe bitterness.
I live in a world of violence. I live in a world of pain, of sadness. I live in a world of rape and coercion. I live in a mans world.
And yet, I was raised by a woman.
Ironic, isn't it?
I remember getting Teamspeak to contact my family and friends. We would set up a server and contact each other via IM to set up a session. Now Teamspeak charges for their service. I'm sure that was their intention all along, but it was sad to see it go subscription only.
I wonder how long yakForFree will remain *free*? I suppose their free plan is a give away for getting people to sign up for the enhanced services. But I can envision a time in the near future when the free will giveway to *cheap*. I guess that if the price is right, that isn't a bad prospect either.
I guess I'd better use it while the free offer is still good!
well, they aren't free? So what kind of user support comes bundled with the purchase?
The same level of support you get from Microsoft for free.
You didn't think that WinXP purchase came with support, did you?