Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
Very few evolutionists accepted Piltdown Man at all, as he did not fit within the framework of the theory (if he had turned out to be authentic, the creationists would have had a definite feather in their caps). Indeed, it was evolutionists who eventually exposed the fraud. Anomolous fossils are never ignored.
Probably just trying to keep it civil.
Why? Those who don't hold to a belief in a higher power have to live here too. Indeed, as humans are by nature social critters, and as social critters need ground rules governing their interactions with one-another (or else the social grouping falls apart and the members get eaten by bigger, meaner critters), it stands to reason that basic ground rules (morality) would come into being even without the intervention of the Divine.
I doubt that seriously. The concept that rights only exist if one can defend them has a long philosophical history. "Divinely-endowed" rights were originally used by monarchs to secure their holds upon power. The rest of the population was able to secure only those rights they were willing to defend against said monarchs.
My favorite example is the card deck. Shuffle a deck of 52 thoroughly and lay it out. Whatever it is you're seeing, it had one chance in 52 factorial (52 x 51 x 50 x 49 x 48 ... x 1) of being there. Wow! Not very likely!
Do it again, whatever you get will be similarly improbable. Every time, you're guaranteed to get one and only one from a large space of possibilities.
An orange is life.
Do it all day long. The cumulative results at the end of the day will really be improbable. But you did it without even working up a sweat. Amazing! Imagine the odds against the sequence you'll get if you do this for a whole month. The mind boggles. It's a miracle!
You have never refuted my prior point. I will concede that evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. Anyone who says that evolution is a hard core fact is wrong. But there is evidence which backs it up, which you are too stubborn to admit. But my prior point is that you cannot disprove a well known theory on free republic. You can make a good argument, but you cannot disprove it which you have many times stated. It's laughable to think that.
In fact, if you know in advance you're going to shuffle, lay out, and record the deck N times, you know in advance that your cumulative end result will be one in N x (52!). The retrospective astonishment factor ("What are the odds of anyone ending up where I just ended up?") are huge for any large N, yes.
Again, how do you make statements like that? Your use of the word "scientists" is generous to say the least.
On post 2851 you said: Unless you show me the state-space and the selection criteria, you have no notion wheather ANY starting conditions for the universe were likely or unlikely to any degree. It is a question--Chaiken and Kolmogorof notwithstanding--in my opinion, standing outside of space and time, which are what science, at minimum, need by way of evidence to think scientific thoughts about, including the construction of statistical calculations.
It appears that you dismiss my statement that ”algorithm from inception is intelligent design” by essentially asserting that a state prior to inception, null, is outside scientific inquiry, i.e. outside of space/time.
I vigorously disagree and assert that it is the subject of much scientific inquiry:
There are numerous scientific efforts to explain the ultra early universe, as summarized in this article by Sir Martin Rees. In his book, Just Six Numbers Sir Rees “argues that six numbers underlie the fundamental physical properties of the universe, and that each is the precise value needed to permit life to flourish. “ The fundamental constants are manifest on large scales: Stability and Size of Galaxies from Planck’s Constant (PDF).
Moreover, the sound waves in the early universe that we have been discussing were not even addressed in Sir Rees’ summary.
I see that the pattern of the sound, the six numbers, are pieces of that algorithm coming together. I believe others see it as well, and suggest that is the driving force behind the multi-universe theories – specifically to defer having to face up to the existence of null - i.e. multi-universe theories still require an inception.
For lurkers, I have also been asserting that algorithms are intelligent design per se. That is, algorithms are the designed intelligence from which results, including information content and new algorithms, emerge. Again, here is an example paraphrased from Roger Penrose’s Emporer’s New Mind, Chapter 2. An algorithm, briefly, is a step-by-step instruction. Penrose uses Euclid’s algorithm for finding the highest common factor between two numbers as an example:
The algorithm is language. We already know that sound lies at the root of the physical universe, so IMHO, the algorithm itself can be discovered:
The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could "decouple" from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.
At the moment of decoupling, the pressure waves left telltale traces of their existence in the form of slight temperature variations in the CMB, which in the intervening 10 billion years or so has cooled to a mere three degrees Kelvin...
The width and position of the first peak indicate that fluctuations on all scales were already in place at the earliest moments of the universe. A period of rapid expansion in the early moments of the universe could have set these perturbations in place by blowing up microscopic quantum fluctuations to astronomical scales -- seeding the galaxies and nets of galaxies we see today.
One more thing. From your post 2853 to Gore3000:
Putting me aside, however, it is only in the fevered brains of creationists that there is a pitched battle between evolutionary theory and christian belief.
The challenge to evolution theory is not solely grounded in religion. There is also a pitched battle between evolution theory and directed panspermia . The arguments and counter-arguments are pretty much the same. Intelligent Design spans both.
Physics is a lot cleaner, mathematically, than biology. Yet, randomness is a very large part of physical processes. Understand that randomness is biology comes with multiple contingencies.
The presence of algorithm from inception is proof of intelligent design.
Hardly. Natural selection is an algorithm.
Piltdown Man was debunked (outside of England, of course) because the parts didn't fit evolutionary theory. There are articles about the likelihood of fraud at least as far back as the early 1920s. (I think I remember seeing a 1916 article claiming fraud, too.)
Creationists did nothing to disprove Piltdown. The final nail in Piltdown's coffin was the carbon dating results.
they came from---and are going back to plasma/bubble/bangs
...they are accidents---freaks/mutants/morphs of plasma/morphing---
no design/God/creator...
So this is why you choose not to try and understand evolution? Because it would be inconvenient, difficult, and hard for your children? You make it seem so.
Best of luck in your endevour. Frankly, however, it doesn't take all that much effort to understand and dismiss the defective arguments and primitive tactics of the award-giver. If you hang around long enough, you'll certainly be a contender.
As a part-time lurker, part-time newbie I can attest that everything goes much smoother and much more civilized when gore3000 isn't around.
Natural selection is an algorithm.
My statement ("the presence of algorithm from inception is proof of intelligent design") delimits to "algorithm from inception".
Natural selection applies to material existence and thus follows inception, i.e. null, void, empty, the beginning, first cause. So although I agree that natural selection is an algorithm, it is not an algorithm from inception.
I don't understand your statement: Understand that randomness is biology comes with multiple contingencies.
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