Intelligent Design case decided - Dover, Pennsylvania, School Board loses [Fox News Alert]

Fox News | 12/20/05

[snarks_when_bored]

Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.

[unlearner]

"Science, to the extent that it should be reported on in high school science textbooks, isn't a fever dream you once had, it's something tangible and affordable, with results that are objectively verifiable by technically available means."

Without regard to what should or should not be taught in high school, do you limit science to what is affordable? I never knew science was defined by cost. And what about falsification? You don't require that? I really was expecting something better coming from someone with your knowledge and education. Your definition is at once so wide as to allow almost anything you want and so narrow as to eliminate nearly anything you want.

[unlearner]

"I have no idea what you are giving me, but tautologies are not nonsense. They could be considered the opposite of nonsense."

By saying Santa is a man with a beard and red suit, and you can take a man and put a beard and red suit on him, and THEREFORE there is a Santa; you are talking in circles.

A tautology becomes nonsense when you try to use it the way you are, to prove something external. Your argument is that this thought experiment has some bearing on the existence of a mythical Santa. It does not. It is an exercise that PROVES nothing.

To say "all crows are black, or some are not black" may be true, but it proves nothing at all about crows. You are trying to use a tautology to prove something, and it is NONSENSE.

"I think I might be able to get you a job with the Polly-Anna universal chamber of commerce. But still, nobody will perform your experiment because neither side of the argument gets much out of it."

You need to read up on nanotechnology. While no one may assemble life in a lab to validate my arguments, they will try because it is useful in other ways. Nano machines will largely mimic existing structures in nature because they are very efficient. When it becomes feasible to assemble life, I expect there will be many to step up to the plate and try.

[unlearner]

"[Empty space] seems pretty nothing-like to me."

Do you think space exists outside of the universe? Do you think the universe is bounded?

"Well, I guess we're even, because I think you haven't bothered to find a basic tutorial on quantum physics, as I suggested, and are simply continuing a bluff."

Show me a basic tutorial (that is written by someone knowledgeable) or an advanced text, which supports your claim of "something from nothing."

[Condorman]

You claim I am assuming prelife intelligence, then arguing against that assumption - classic straw man.

Here is your orginal hypothesis, which you claim is both supportable and falsifiable: Life can only originate through intelligent intervention.

You can pretend with all your might that this doesn't have implications. You will be wrong.

Have you figured out a way to demonstrate that the exclusivity of your hypothesis is supportable yet?

I have answered this many times. Please stop repeating the same foolish question. Laws suggest universal conditions, and no one is advocating that laws be required to support their exclusive claims.

You have not answered this many times. You have simply repeated yourself. Are you now retracting the claim that your hypothesis is supportable? If so, then you must be aware that you cannot find a method of support. Since you have apparently realized your error and we now agree, I will drop this line of inquiry.

By the way, since I must have missed that part of our discussion, when did you reclassify your statement from "hypothesis" to "law?"

[Condorman]

See previous post. Exclusivity cannot be supported only falsified. That does not invalidate exclusive claims or make them unscientific. You are the one with a major difficulty.

Clever. However, there is a different between proving a negative and supporting a positive.

Try providing support for "every point mass attracts every other point mass by a force directed along the line connecting the two". Get back to me when you can support the every part of Newton's law using your criteria.

If I measure the force between 1 pair of massive bodies and discover that it follows Newton's law, I have a single instance of support. If I measure the force between 10 pairs of massive bodies, and the results conform to Newton's law, I have 10 more supporting data points. Every time I measure the force between a pair of bodies, I will EITHER increase the evidence in support of Newton, OR I will invalidate Newton's law. With each confirming result (assuming no instances of falsification), I increase the level of support. This is different from proof.

It should be noted, that Newton's law is a scientific law that, like Ampere's Law, describes an observed regularity. Like Ampere's Law, under certain conditions it will fail.

[unlearner]

"You can pretend with all your might that this doesn't have implications."

Answered already. Re read, rinse, repeat.

"By the way, since I must have missed that part of our discussion, when did you reclassify your statement from 'hypothesis' to 'law'?"

You cannot get out of this so easily. I never claimed my assertion to be a law. I demonstrated that accepted scientific theories also make exclusive statements which do not comply with your requirement of support.

Again, when you can explain how the universal and exclusive aspect of the law of gravity is supported as you demand, get back to me.

[donh]

Show me a basic tutorial (that is written by someone knowledgeable) or an advanced text, which supports your claim of "something from nothing."

They all do. If you want an experimental demonstration, look up the casimir effect. According to Hawkings, you can detect an event horizon because of the capacity of empty space to spontaneously produce particles and their anti-particles from nothing (which,incidently, is why energy is still conserved). Is that authoratative enough for you?

[donh]

Do you think space exists outside of the universe? Do you think the universe is bounded?

How many voids can fit in vacuum? Why is there stuff? The world is chock full of of wonderful questions. Nonetheless, a piece of space with nothing in it is still a reasonable approximation of nothing.

[unlearner]

"there is a different between proving a negative and supporting a positive."

I have already demonstrated that my assertion can be expressed either way: "Intelligence is THE mechanism by which life is assembled from lifeless matter". Happy?

"Every time I measure the force between a pair of bodies, I will EITHER increase the evidence in support of Newton, OR I will invalidate Newton's law. With each confirming result (assuming no instances of falsification), I increase the level of support. This is different from proof."

Well, duh. That is PRECISELY what I have been saying all along about my assertion. It is supportable the same way. Unlike the law of gravity we do not have any instances of life being assembled so as to either support my assertion or falsify it. Any such instances in the future, if and when they occur, will serve to either support my assertion or falsify it. Do you get it yet?

By the standard which you demand my assertion to be validated, you are unable to validate Newton's law. You would have to test every instance of gravity operating in order to do so. You are tacitly admitting this is not necessary for Newton. Why do you demand that it is necessary for my assertion?

[donh]

You need to read up on nanotechnology.

I'm reasonably familiar with the subject.

While no one may assemble life in a lab to validate my arguments, they will try because it is useful in other ways. Nano machines will largely mimic existing structures in nature because they are very efficient. When it becomes feasible to assemble life, I expect there will be many to step up to the plate and try.

You mean like a Sears santa is useful, just like a Montegomery Ward Santa, or a giant elf Santa with magical flying raindeer?

Nano machines will largely mimic existing structures in nature because they are very efficient.

That would be wrong. Compared to machine tool approaches organic structures leave a lot to be desired. We will undoubtedly see hybrids, though.

When it becomes feasible to assemble life, I expect there will be many to step up to the plate and try.

No. You are vastly unaware, apprently, of how much engineering it would take to duplicate a living cell "from scratch" as you have insisted. It won't be done because it proves no point worth proving, by either side of this debate. Do you think we should invent geologic plates "from scratch" to prove or disprove the notion that God created the earth on the 7th day, complete fossils embedded in tectonic plates? If you actually did it, or tried to do it and failed, would it change the confidence you might have in either the godditit theory or the coelescing dust theory?

Ans? No, because, just as in the case of the sears santa experiment--and as, amusingly enough, you have been at pains to point out--my ability to produce a sears santa doesn't have butkus to do with the existence or non-existence of either the Monkey-ward santa or the flying elf santa.

[donh]

By saying Santa is a man with a beard and red suit, and you can take a man and put a beard and red suit on him, and THEREFORE there is a Santa; you are talking in circles.

If I had said that, it would be a tautology, but it would not be nonsense. Clearly, for a phenomenon to be Santa-istic, it requires a beard and a red suit. Parenthetically, let me assure you that there exist men with red suits and beards for which no claim of santahood is being made, and non-supernatural santas sans red beard and suit. Your claim is spurious, and my experiment is genuine, to the same extent as yours. It is quite conceivable that I might very well fail at the attempt to build an artificial santa in the sears lobby, thereby, according to your rules, casting doubt on the existence of a non-supernatural santa over at monkey-wards. Maybe that really is a supernatural santa over at monkey wards--maybe life really is the product of supernatural intervention.

[donh]

Without regard to what should or should not be taught in high school, do you limit science to what is affordable?

No, just science that's worth taking seriously.

I never knew science was defined by cost. And what about falsification? You don't require that?

Where did I suggest that?

I really was expecting something better coming from someone with your knowledge and education. Your definition is at once so wide as to allow almost anything you want and so narrow as to eliminate nearly anything you want.

Lay off the insults if you actually want an answer.

[donh]

"Gradual abiogenesis, however, is a promising young science that springs from the observation of DNA clocks just like evolutionary theory operated on the observation of fossils."

Can your gradual abiogenesis be falsified?

Yes, much in the same way as "macro" evolutionary theory can be falsified.

Can you make any predictions which, upon failing, would prove gradual abiogenesis never occurred?

We just had this discussion on this thread, and you finally conceded that we can conduct science on historical data.

"Life could be a natural process which could have been created by a supernatural intelligence."

True (and I am assuming you mean the formation of life could be by a supernaturally designed natural process), but that would still fit my definition of self assembly

Gradual abiogensis does not involve "self assembly" in any manner that I can understand. No creature or phyla, or any other agglomeration of breeding organic entities are "self assembled". That would require a time machine.

and contradict my assertion. If intelligence is THE process (whether intelligence is NATURAL or not is irrelevant)

The balderdash factor begins to loom up here. If the intelligent design was natural, than we are merely pushing the question back to--"Where did the natural designers come from?", which is pretty much the question we started with. If you weren't hiding a supernatural source of design in your back pocket, the issue wouldn't arise. A non-supernatural design explanation wouldn't actually impact modern evolutionary theory all the much--it would just inflate it from an earth-sized problem to a galazy-sized problem.

by which life can assemble from lifeless matter, then the natural process you propose does not exist (other than the natural process of intelligence). Otherwise it would falsify my claim. (Unless you want to argue that these hypothetical processes are intelligent in and of themselves.)

If natural life was demonstrably assembled by non-supernatural means, than those means were natural, and you have still done nothing to demonstrate that the particular way life was produced in your lab, was the only possible way, or even the likely way, life was originally produced. As I have pointed out, producing something you claim is "just like" life, is a far cry from demonstrating anything of statistical significance about actual life, much less provide any insight as to whether actual life's source is supernatural.

[unlearner]

"According to Hawkings, you can detect an event horizon because of the capacity of empty space to spontaneously produce particles and their anti-particles from nothing (which,incidently, is why energy is still conserved). Is that authoratative enough for you?"

Hawkings is authoritative. Where did you find such a quote from him? In your example, you still do not have something from nothing. You have something from something else.

From the link you posted: "Even a perfect vacuum at absolute zero has fluctuating fields known as 'vacuum fluctuations', the mean energy of which corresponds to half the energy of a photon. In other words, even a perfect vacuum contains energy. Here is another quote from your article: "Every field - even the vacuum field - carries energy."

It is debatable whether space itself exists apart from matter. That is why I asked about your position on a bounded universe. If space is a function or extension of the gravitational influence of mass that occupies it, then fluctuations in that space may be caused by this mass.

Find Hawkings or some other reputable quantum physicist asserting they have support for "something from nothing" and I will make my second concession to you. I may not buy their view, but at least you will have demonstrated that your "something from nothing" assertion is not out of the mainstream.

The closest I can find to this is http://www.summum.us/philosophy/dilemma.shtml where it says "Rumor had it that Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, was working on a theory that would explain how the universe came from nothing."

Of course there are ideas which attempt to explain how the universe could have begun from nothing. But there is a dearth of support. You simply cannot test it experimentally. So, at best, we are back to your history as science argument. But in this case we have no support for this initial event. Most scientist will say we cannot describe what the universe was like before the Planck Era.

Nothing cannot be simply empty space. You must have the absence of space and time and mass and energy. If you believe that something can come from this nothing, then you are being more a proponent of the supernatural than I am.

[unlearner]

"Nonetheless, a piece of space with nothing in it is still a reasonable approximation of nothing."

No. It contains energy. Nothing means there is no space or time or energy or mass. Nothing.

[donh]

For clarification, self assembly refers to any unguided assembly. It includes, for the sake of definition, self assembly which discards some of the material needed for the assembly process.

I suppose you can make a word mean whatever you want it to mean, but self-assembly ought, in my opinion, require some actual self-assembly.

I do not require the process to be instantaneous. But there must be a distinction of life and non life.

Scholastic nonsense. If the process is gradual and effectively continuous, the borderline is arbitrary and the definition is fuzzy.

So even if you cannot pinpoint a precise moment at which life begins, it still must be distinguished from the lifeless matter from which it originates.

Is a citrus cycle an example of non-living matter? Because I can make a case that that is what you fundamentally are, stripped of the largely gratuitous fancy factory accessories.

[donh]

No. It contains energy.

It does not "contain" energy, if it did, you could give me the reading in ergs.

Nothing means there is no space or time

How do you know there's space or time inherent in chunks of total vacuum in outer space? What will you measure with your non-nothing detector to prove your case?

[donh]

Nothing cannot be simply empty space. You must have the absence of space and time and mass and energy. If you believe that something can come from this nothing, then you are being more a proponent of the supernatural than I am.

I am not an opponent of supernatural explanations. I am an opponent of supernatural science.

[Condorman]

I never claimed my assertion to be a law.

So why did you offer in post 3236, as a dodge to the request to support your hypothesis, this:

Laws suggest universal conditions, and no one is advocating that laws be required to support their exclusive claims. It is adequate to have the possibility of falsification.

If you are not positing a law then this is irrelevant. So as what, then, do you classify your statement, "Life can only originate through intelligent intervention?"

[Condorman]

Answered already.

How? By sticking fingers in your ears and chanting "La la la la?" You claim that intelligent intervention is the only thing that can create life. I'm trying to figure out how you arrived at that conclusion. You have nothing tangible to offer in the way of evidence, you have retreated from the position that your statement is supportable, and you have failed to produce any useful experiments on the subject. See this process through to completion, and withdraw the assertion that your claim is scientific. Then, finally, we will be in agreement.