Spill-over thread on Intelligent Design

[Matthew Carberry]

Again, watch that tarry brush.  Belief in a religious ethical system does not preclude understanding purely areligious models, whether accepted or not.

So many of the arguments I hear against "religious people' aren't based on "religious people" I actually know.  Just supercilious projections by those who have an axe of their own to grind.

I don't mean that super negatively, but it ranges from amusing to annoying to hear the assumptions made about believers by those who aren't.  I'm sure the reverse is true, but somehow nonbelievers seem to feel justified in being smug about it.

[Ron]

Now we get to the crux of it

Just the tip of the iceberg more like it.

Where exactly is something from nothing? Stars "burn" hydrogen to produce heavier elements. Atoms of chemical elements combine into molecules. Molecules form cells. Cells form colonies and multicellular organisms.  There is no rabbit from the hat.

If you bring modern cosmology into the debate where did the singularity come from?

First off, what do you mean by chaos? Do you mean "disorder"? From a modern scientific perspective, the two are rather different. Mathematical "chaos" is certainly not disorder. Also, disorder of elements does not mean disorder of natural laws. We have not observed changes in the natural laws. Substances are reorganized based on them.

Yes then, disorder. From the disorder of the big bang everything has been organizing itself in such a manner that now we have a planet with sentient life? Disorder plus time equals order?

That depends on what you mean by "animate", does it not?

Let me dumb it down for you, LIFE. The natural sciences would have us believe that life spontaneously(after a lot of that "magic" time) came from that which wasn't alive.

People can agree upon common ethics without it being rooted in the nature of the universe

I reject moral relativism. Cannibalistic cultures agreed that it was OK to eat their neighbor. Under your "common ethics" who are we to say it is wrong.

[CAnnoneer]

somehow nonbelievers seem to feel justified in being smug about it.

I do because I have seen so many times the real psychological motivations behind religious faith. Extremely rarely it is a case of pure idealism. Far more often, it is a mixture of fear, habit, loneliness, weakness, confusion, uncertainty, frustration, and thirst for hope, a natural high, or revenge. Those have been my observations and that's the basis of my opinion.

[Ron]

the basis of my opinion

You know what they say about opinions...Hehe

 , time for me to sleep, gonna go shootin tomorrow.

g'night

[CAnnoneer]

If you bring modern cosmology into the debate where did the singularity come from?

Yet again, a loaded question. You have already decided that somehow there was nothing, and an external divine force filled the nothing with something. (by the way, vacuum is not nothing, and certainly not "empty")

What if singularity was the beginning? Or alternatively, what if we live in an oscillatory universe, where a bang is followed by expansion is followed by contraction is followed by a bang?

From the disorder of the big bang everything has been organizing itself in such a manner that now we have a planet with sentient life? Disorder plus time equals order?

You quoted what you did not read. Where is the disorder in the big bang? Disorder of laws or disorder of matter? If you let a bunch of wooden and iron balls fall down a funnel into a bucket of water, by your understanding they were in disorder, but there is something special about them organizing themselves with all the iron ones at the bottom and all the wooden ones at the top. There is nothing special, magical, or divine about it. Matter rearranges itself in accordance with natural laws. There is no magic.

Let me dumb it down for you, LIFE. The natural sciences would have us believe that life spontaneously(after a lot of that "magic" time) came from that which wasn't alive.

Again a loaded terminology. What is sentience? Billions of neurons firing in self-organized external-stimuli-driven patterns? What is life? A cell functioning in accordance with physical laws and their chemical derivative laws? For all we know, a cell is a biomechanical machine driven by laws and probability. Nothing more. Please condense for me the Vis Vitalis, which is the tacit crux of your argument, so I can measure it and study it.

I reject moral relativism.

Objective reality cares not what you reject, unless you have the ability to modify your environment to match your ideas.

Cannibalistic cultures agreed that it was OK to eat there neighbor. Under your "common ethics" who are we to say it is wrong.

There is no fundamental ethical absolute. The little cannibals decide you are tasty. You do not want to be the pot roast. You fight. If you lose, you are pot roast. If you win, you get to live. It is that simple. And nature does not care either way. Capt Cook found that out for himself.

The only ethical limitations that have objective manifestations are those that humans choose to impose upon themselves, and one another.

[Antibubba]

I can refute ID in two words:


Paris Hilton



Next subject?

[wacki]

So you have performed an exercise and observed evolution in the laboratory?

Yes.  And what is amazing is that with some really really basic culturing skills, a few petri dishes and a UV lamp you can too.  More on that later when I'm sober.  If you are restless just pic up a freshman-college biology lab manual.

You have been able to repeat this exercise and get the same results?

Mutations are random so the odds you get the exact same results are extremely low.  But the ability to force evolution (via natural [or un-natural] selection) is reproducible.

So you have proven the Theory of Evolution with your experiments?

Me? No.  That goes to Charles Darwin (maybe) and a few thousand scientists after him.  They deserve the credit.  I am merely reproducing/altering some rather basic experiments.

What did your bacteria evolve in to?

Well I've evolved so many different varieties of bacteria, fungi, and virii it's hard to keep count.  Most of my experiments were with antibiotic, cancer, and aging.  It's amazingly easy to develop a strain of bacteria/fungi that have incredible abilities in these categories.

-late friday-night 'tipsy' posting

wacki
 

[Strings]

>Yes then, disorder. From the disorder of the big bang everything has been organizing itself in such a manner that now we have a planet with sentient life? Disorder plus time equals order?<

Ron: you're assuming that what we have is "order". Interesting concept, given how the world seems to work...

[wacki]

I've created viruses from scratch and bacteria from mostly scratch.

Can you elaborate on that?  Are you creating a completely new, novel virus or recreating an already existent strain from amino and nucleic acids?

Well one of the more novel experiments we performed (for 'fun'/education) was to create a virus that infected a tobacco plant in a non-lethal way.  The tobacco plants genome was altered in a way that it glowed in the dark.  No other virus on the planet exists that can do that (that we know of).  So I would think that is novel, but you never know.....   For monetary reasons we made the virus out of cannibalized particles of lightning bugs and other virii.  But we could have made the virus with basic chemicals.  Doing so would have transformed the process from a rather cheap experiment to a very expensive one but there is no doubt it could have been done.

The pigs?  Thats not evolution, that engineering akin two what we were doing in the 1990s with E. coli, some human genome data and a commercially available plasmid.

True, but it is a small and simple way to explain that scientists have a very very good idea as to what is going on with regard to DNA.

If a priest can understand science, why can't the new breed of devout Christians?

Because in my view understanding science involves the ability to examine long held beliefs about life and the world, then chuck them in the garbage should those beliefs prove to be false.  Note that this ability is also lacking in many of those who would call themselves scientists.

I agree in full that there are some rather crazy scientists out there.  But when it comes to evolution, DNA, etc it really doesn't take a whole lot of brains to realize what is going on.  It only requires a lot of patience, dedication, and an open mind.  There are some really smart people that are in denial.  That much is obvious, but those people are in the vast vast minority among those in the field.  If you either study the past ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils or go to a museum) or study the complex biochemistry of DNA then evolution should be obvious.  The smaller the animal (virii & bacteria) the faster the evolution.

I could write more but those who are in denial of evolution will be in for a very rude awakening in 30 years or so.  Also, if the firearm community wants to be taken seriously they should at least make sure the majority of their members have a solid grounding in freshman biology.  If you are not the kind of person to read books you should at least try running a few experiments with bacteria in your garage.

-<3'in the cabernet

.308 winchester totin' (only when sober of course) wacki

[Ron]

Yet again, a loaded question. You have already decided that somehow there was nothing, and an external divine force filled the nothing with something. (by the way, vacuum is not nothing, and certainly not "empty")

What if singularity was the beginning? Or alternatively, what if we live in an oscillatory universe, where a bang is followed by expansion is followed by contraction is followed by a bang?

So you believe matter and energy are eternal? They always were, no beginning?

You quoted what you did not read. Where is the disorder in the big bang? Disorder of laws or disorder of matter? If you let a bunch of wooden and iron balls fall down a funnel into a bucket of water, by your understanding they were in disorder, but there is something special about them organizing themselves with all the iron ones at the bottom and all the wooden ones at the top. There is nothing special, magical, or divine about it. Matter rearranges itself in accordance with natural laws. There is no magic.

The big bang may be acting according to natural laws but those very laws state that systems tend toward disorder.
I use chaos or disorder and you seem to deny those words mean what they mean.

Again a loaded terminology. What is sentience? Billions of neurons firing in self-organized external-stimuli-driven patterns? What is life? A cell functioning in accordance with physical laws and their chemical derivative laws? For all we know, a cell is a biomechanical machine driven by laws and probability. Nothing more. Please condense for me the Vis Vitalis, which is the tacit crux of your argument, so I can measure it and study it.

You make my point, letting folks who take your view of reality run things opens the doors to atrocities beyond imagination.
You may not like my using metaphysical arguments but the theories science puts forth have consequences beyond the lab. If all we are is bio mechanical machines there really is no basis for morality or ethics other than convenience.

Objective reality cares not what you reject, unless you have the ability to modify your environment to match your ideas.

I reject that you and your ilk have a better grasp of objective reality. As if you could put the whole of reality in a petri dish.

There is no fundamental ethical absolute. The little cannibals decide you are tasty. You do not want to be the pot roast. You fight. If you lose, you are pot roast. If you win, you get to live. It is that simple. And nature does not care either way. Capt Cook found that out for himself.

The only ethical limitations that have objective manifestations are those that humans choose to impose upon themselves, and one another.

You make my case for me.

 

[Ron]

Well one of the more novel experiments we performed (for 'fun'/education) was to create a virus

Ironically of all of the ways you could have explained this you chose to use the word create and then later in the post "make".

So an intelligence can take matter and energy, add what is missing in it's natural state (organization) and come up with something new.  In an earlier post the proof you offer of evolution is various strains of bacteria and fungi you "developed".

Ron: you're assuming that what we have is "order". Interesting concept, given how the world seems to work...

I've got one guy insinuating there is no such thing as disorder or chaos as I understand them and another guy questioning whether there is any "order"

 

[Manedwolf]

I have found, that on a fundamental level, arguing with religiousity ID proponents is futile.

Their mindset is, at its most basic level, "I cannot concieve of four dimensions, space/time, or the fact that the universe might not have to have a "beginning" as I percieve the passage of time, I have not studied string theory, quantum mechanics, or amino acid development, and therefore, I will comfort myself by saying GOD(s) must have done it all."

At its core, I'm sorry, but it's a very primitive mindset. It's exactly how ancient peoples didn't understand lightning, so they called it the acts of angry gods, same with volcanic eruptions. If you showed an ancient person your cellphone, with its color screen and ability to talk to someone who wasn't there, they would SWEAR it was an artifact of the gods...that nobody could have made something that miraculous and complex. You know better, that all of the millions of microcircuits that make it go were designed and assembled by human beings.

It's a philosophical security blanket for that which we do not know. Some people can stare into the abyss and keep staring, trying to resolve more of the view. Others roll up in a ball and claim it had to be a supreme being, it's too big for them.

[Iapetus]

And moths changing color but remaining moths, and wolves morphing into other canids, even a wide variety of apparant hominids explain macroevolution/transspeciation exactly how?

Looks like species will adapt over time to their environment, or not and will die out, but that doesn't explain how we got from paramecia to moths or amphibians or canids or hominids in any real way.  That's the weakness in evolutionary theory, you can't infer transspeciation from intra-genus or species environmental modification.  That breakfast don't prove that lunch.

But if the members of a species were separated into two groups that were unable to mix, and which inhabited different environments, both groups would undergo microevolution so as to adapt to their different habitats.

For some time, these would just be two varieties of the same species, and if mixed together, would be able to breed.

But if they were kept separate for a sufficient time, and their environments were sufficiently different, then microevolution could result in changes large enough to prevent them breeding if they were to com in to contact.  So now you have two species, where you once had only one.

[Ron]

It's a philosophical security blanket for that which we do not know. Some people can stare into the abyss and keep staring, trying to resolve more of the view. Others roll up in a ball and claim it had to be a supreme being, it's too big for them.

Ironically religious people would make a similar argument that it your fear that there might be a God who is going to hold you accountable that keeps you seeking an alternative answer, regardless of the improbability of that answer.

 

[Ron]

It's a philosophical security blanket for that which we do not know. Some people can stare into the abyss and keep staring, trying to resolve more of the view. Others roll up in a ball and claim it had to be a supreme being, it's too big for them.

If it makes you feel better to think I am some Luddite who fears looking into the abyss then that is OK with me 

It is a funny way to view someone who enjoys reading philosophy, metaphysics and Theology and who is a backyard astronomy hobbyist.

I think you just don't want to discuss what the ramifications are of your view of reality. Fair enough, I don't want to make you uncomfortable.

[Tallpine]

Well one of the more novel experiments we performed (for 'fun'/education) was to create a virus that infected a tobacco plant in a non-lethal way.  The tobacco plants genome was altered in a way that it glowed in the dark.  No other virus on the planet exists that can do that (that we know of).  So I would think that is novel, but you never know.....   For monetary reasons we made the virus out of cannibalized particles of lightning bugs and other virii.  But we could have made the virus with basic chemicals.  Doing so would have transformed the process from a rather cheap experiment to a very expensive one but there is no doubt it could have been done.

Sounds like "intelligent design" on your part to me

When you manage to get a bacteria to mutate into a multi-cell creature that reproduces sexually, let me know .... 

Hey!  What about engineering a pine/fir/spruce tree that glows in the dark, and sell them for xmas trees?   

[CAnnoneer]

So you believe matter and energy are eternal? They always were, no beginning?

All observations and experiments have upheld that scientific view. When you build Perpetuum Mobile or make gold out of thin air, please give me us a call and we will examine the counterevidence.

The big bang may be acting according to natural laws but those very laws state that systems tend toward disorder.
I use chaos or disorder and you seem to deny those words mean what they mean.

You keep dancing with terminology. For the third time, what is your definition of "disorder"? Lack of organization? Randomness? Lawlessness? And of what - matter or physical laws? If you do not define a word you use, we cannot know what you mean by it.

You make my point, letting folks who take your view of reality run things opens the doors to atrocities beyond imagination.

"Letting" us run things?? Hehe. I think you should compare how many people over the ages have died at the hands of religious zealots and "idealists" vs how many at the hands of scientists. The door to atrocities is certainly not closed by religion; more often, it is opened by it.

You may not like my using metaphysical arguments but the theories science puts forth have consequences beyond the lab. If all we are is bio mechanical machines there really is no basis for morality or ethics other than convenience.

There certainly is no physical or unversal basis for it. Instead, people choose for themselves what societies they want to live in and what rules to uphold. Successful societies involve a large measure of self-control and a strong sense of social contract. Positive collaborative intelligent behavior is generally more successful than negative nihilistic narrowly-selfish behavior, because better long-term results are produced by positive reinforcement rather than mutual cannibilization. That is why societies of the former culture and practice are far more successful than societies of the latter.

I reject that you and your ilk have a better grasp of objective reality. As if you could put the whole of reality in a petri dish.

You have the freedom to reject anything you wish. But, the very computer you typed your opinion on was produced by the educated efforts of people of my "ilk". By contrast, what is the last thing that priests willed into objective reality?

Reality in a petri dish? Modern science successfully explains a myriad phenomena ranging in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic. It also produces technological tools that allow us to control our environment like never before, from the subatomic to the macro-scale.

[CAnnoneer]

It is a funny way to view someone who enjoys reading philosophy, metaphysics and Theology and who is a backyard astronomy hobbyist.

Therein the problem. You prefer to dabble in philosophy, methaphysics, and theology, instead of studying hard science. All first three are put together by humans to make sense and be comfortable to humans; if they weren't they'd be rejected as obviously wrong. Hard science is put together to follow nature by methods that are specifically designed to minimize the subjectivity contribution of the observer. Nature is inhuman. And so, hard science is emotionally inconvenient.

I think you just don't want to discuss what the ramifications are of your view of reality.

I have been happy to discuss them above, I recognize them, and do not think they are a problem.

[CAnnoneer]

It's a philosophical security blanket for that which we do not know. Some people can stare into the abyss and keep staring, trying to resolve more of the view. Others roll up in a ball and claim it had to be a supreme being, it's too big for them.

That is most of it, but not all. Ethical and social fears, as well as self-perceptional issues are also involved.

[Sindawe]

For monetary reasons we made the virus out of cannibalized particles of lightning bugs and other virii.  But we could have made the virus with basic chemicals.  Doing so would have transformed the process from a rather cheap experiment to a very expensive one but there is no doubt it could have been done.

While interesting (was this published?), the experiment no more created a virus from 'scratch' than my taking parts from several VW Bugs and a 350 small block to assemble a 'new' automobile. 

The smaller the animal (virii & bacteria) the faster the evolution.

Evolution occurs "faster" for those organisms due to their comparatively shorter generation times, not due to their smaller size.

Also, if the firearm community wants to be taken seriously they should at least make sure the majority of their members have a solid grounding in freshman biology. 

Only if they wish to discuss matters of biology.

[CAnnoneer]

While interesting (was this published?), the experiment no more created a virus from 'scratch' than my taking parts from several VW Bugs and a 350 small block to assemble a 'new' automobile. 

True, but it is only the expense rather than fundamental limitations that prevents building it from scratch. Nowadays, companies synthesize nucleotides from scratch (e.g. Boehringer Mannheim), which are then used to make DNA and RNA synthetically (e.g. Operon). With just a thermocycler (e.g. by ABI Biosystems) and a basic wet-chemistry lab, virtually anyone can produce longer DNA by ligation, base extension, and PCR. The enzymes used are known in structure and in principle can be assembled aminoacid by aminoacid and there are companies that produce custom proteins (Qiagen, Genentech ?). Of course, it is much cheaper to get bacteria to grow proteins for you (which is a big chunk of Genentech's business), but the fundamental synthetic capability is present.

[Sindawe]

True, but it is only the expense rather than fundamental limitations that prevents building it from scratch.

Also true, but is not what wacki claimed to have done.

If there is any sort of intelligent design in our universe, I suspect it occured at a far deeper level than the organization of inanimate matter into the self replicating patterns we know as life.

[Matthew Carberry]

Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler were not followers of any monotheistic religion.  They wanted a humanistic, areligious, scientific organization of society.

Many other "religious" wars in history used religion simply as a moral justification for the standard (and real motivating) tribal and economic reasons.  Lacking religion they'd have killed each other just as happily.  See the Third World.

Their mindset is, at its most basic level, "I cannot concieve of four dimensions, space/time, or the fact that the universe might not have to have a "beginning" as I percieve the passage of time, I have not studied string theory, quantum mechanics, or amino acid development, and therefore, I will comfort myself by saying GOD(s) must have done it all."

At its core, I'm sorry, but it's a very primitive mindset. It's exactly how ancient peoples didn't understand lightning, so they called it the acts of angry gods, same with volcanic eruptions. If you showed an ancient person your cellphone, with its color screen and ability to talk to someone who wasn't there, they would SWEAR it was an artifact of the gods...that nobody could have made something that miraculous and complex. You know better, that all of the millions of microcircuits that make it go were designed and assembled by human beings.

It's a philosophical security blanket for that which we do not know. Some people can stare into the abyss and keep staring, trying to resolve more of the view. Others roll up in a ball and claim it had to be a supreme being, it's too big for them.

Again, more false, arrogant bullshit.  Who the hell are you to tell me what I believe and why?  What I can or cannot concieve.  Has your extensive study of the natural sciences gained you the power to read men's minds?  If not then kiss my ass and quit projecting what you think onto me.

Grabbing onto one theory and refusing to consider it may be wrong is just as much a security blanket as someone who wants to believe in a 6000 year old earth.  Interpreting evidence to fit the theory because of an unshakeable belief the theory itself must be true, rather than re-questioning the theory as new evidence presents itself is worship of the theory.

There are a lot of people who cling religiously to "scientific" ideas because they can't face uncertainty either.  They accept anything someone with a doctorate tells them as ardently as a 10th Century peasant trusted his priest.  Those people are no less primitive than 6000 year creationists.

[wacki]

Ironically of all of the ways you could have explained this you chose to use the word create and then later in the post "make".

So an intelligence can take matter and energy, add what is missing in it's natural state (organization) and come up with something new.  In an earlier post the proof you offer of evolution is various strains of bacteria and fungi you "developed".

There is a reason why I encourage people to test this stuff out in their garage.  A lot of these experiments are incredibly easy to perform.  And once you perform them it should be quite clear how it could occur naturally over a long period of time.

[richyoung]

Until we have observers capable of living millions and billions of years, evolution will remain as unprovable.

Not quite true, as evolution in response to environmental stimuli and changing conditions can and has been proven in the lab with short-lifespan fast-generation organisms, from bacteria to fruit flies.

...and yet, with all the research on fruit flies, we have created flightless fruit flies, blind fruit flies, all variety of fruit flies...BUT THEY ARE STILL FRUIT FLIES!  Not horse flies, house flies - NO NEW SPECIES HAS THUS BEEN CREATED!

There's also empirical evidence such as the moths that changed their camouflage colors during the Industrial Revolution to better blend in with soot-blackened environments. Those dark-colored moths were less likely to be seen and eaten, thus, survived longer to reproduce.

... you mean you DON'T KNOW that this "story" has been proven to be faked?  Dead moths were pinned to tree trunks, where they would NEVER rest, for the so-called study.  Not to mention, light or darl, they are still PEPPERED MOTHS - they aren't a new species.

No, it's more a fundamental failure on the part of its proponents to conceive of the vast spans of time involved in evolution of higher species. It's an intellectual inability to get one's mind around just how long a million years is, let alone billions.

Ah, yes, the old "only smart people such as myself can grasp this" argument.  The rules of the APS prevent further discourse of my opinion of this tactic....

And no, it doesn't "name" a creator, but it absolutely and completely implies that some intelligent being had to do it all, nudge nudge wink wink. Just TRY to suggest to an ID proponent that "Well, it could have been....alllliens...", and you'll be smacked down with their true colors of blatant religiousity.

Got some proof of that?  An example?  Didn't think so.  ID doesn't claim, know or care if its God, aliens or Elvis - but its easier for you to just make up what you THINK you know about it - do you do Global Warming research?

Darwin, you see, started with observations of creatures, took notes and drawings, and, over time, formulated a theory as to HOW such things could have resulted. ID is the complete opposite, starting with a blind belief and trying to find pseudoscientific reasons that could possibly fit it.

Not according to those who do it.