Posted on 02/09/2005 7:55:00 PM PST by bondserv
Still, some critics claim that science by definition can't accept design, while others argue that science should keep looking for another explanation in case one is out there. But we can't settle questions about reality with definitions, nor does it seem useful to search relentlessly for a non-design explanation of Mount Rushmore. Besides, whatever special restrictions scientists adopt for themselves don't bind the public, which polls show, overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovery.org ...
Thanks for the ping!
Clearly your post was created by a Higher Intelligence.
The best evidence for ID so far is that alien species can interbreed with humans.
Vulcans, Clingons and Betazoids are all capable of successfully breeding with humans and producing viable offspring.
If atheism were actually based on the same sort of overarching claim of total knowledge that MacDorcha's post was, then you'd have a point, but since it isn't, you're just being your usual confused self. Run along and play, and stop wasting my time with your so-called "thoughts".
You observed this? You must be a lot older than I thought you were.
Can someone explain to me why so many of the anti-evolutioinsts subscribe to the moronic notion that the only way to determine what or how something happened is to personally observe it?
You guys don't even watch or understand "CSI" or any of the other forensics shows, do you? And I guess it must have been impossible to place O.J. Simpson at the crime scene, since all that evidence that he was there that night (DNA, etc.) doesn't count for squat if no one else "observed" him there right?
Haven't actually thought any of this through, have you?
When you get a clue how science actually works, feel free to come back and try again.
Grossly inaccurate cartoonish "summary" of the Big Bang scenario. Strike one.
You believe spontaneous generation.
Grossly inaccurate mischaracterization of abiogenesis. And since the evidence indicates that despite your personal incredulity (and without "magic wands"), that is indeed what actually happened, strike two.
You believe that infinites must be subsets of finites.
Now you're just babbling. Strike three.
And you're out.
Those magic wands are hard to hide.
What's actually "hard to hide" here is that you're trying to engage in a battle of wits while disarmed. Go learn something about science before you attempt to critique it, you're just making a fool of yourself.
LOL, spoken like a true punk.
Were you active in these threads when I was accusing people of "craterism"? Doesn't matter, you've inspired me to bring back an oldie-goldie ...
1. Meteor craters are not observed to be happening now.
2. Meteor craters have not been observed to happen in the past.
3. Thomas Jefferson said: "Gentlemen, I would rather believe that two Yankee professors would lie than believe that stones fall from heaven."
4. The odds against a rock falling from the sky in a random fashion and making a crater are astronomical.
5. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits meteor craters.
6. Meteor craters are not mentioned in the bible, and are thus blasphemy.
7. Meteor craters have never been reproduced in the lab, and are thus not scientific.
8. Belief that rocks can fall from the sky promotes hedonism and animalistic, amoral behavior.
9. Craterism is a product of materialism and a naturalistic worldview.
10. Craterism makes no predictions and is untestable; it is therefore not scientific.
11. Craterists point to evidence of micro-cratering, but have no evidence of macro-cratering.
12. Scientists are abandoning craterism because they know it is not supported by evidence.
Oldie-goldie placemarker.
>>It's absurd because it is NOT scientific.<<
Consciousness is not scientific. Noboby can quantify it or explain where it comes from.
It is not "scientific." Nor is it absurd.
This resembles the vortex theory of gravity which says that the planets form at preexisting concentrations of gravity--the gravity fields would be there even if the planets had not formed.
The editor at Creation Safaris had the opportunity to ask pertinent questions of Dr. Russell at an event at JPL. Those questions and the responses can be found below, along with the editor's usual commentary that you love so much. :)
This reporter could not suffer bluffing to go uncontested, so he went up afterwards to talk to the speaker in person. A series of questions nailed the bluffing to the wall:If a layman can nail a PhD chemist, it doesnt mean the layman is bright; it means the chemists story is weak and shatters easily. After I hammered away with these pointed questions, he asked me in mild exasperation, Well, youve got to start somewhere. What is your model? You wouldnt like it.... I replied, then thanked him for his time and bid him adieu. There wasnt an opportunity to elaborate, and my model was not the issue. Before you can get a horse to drink, you have to salt the oats; you have to create thirst, and get him to admit a need. The horse will come to the water when licking the salt lick over and over doesnt satisfy.
- Chirality: Like Benner, Russell admitted that 100% pure one-handedness is vital (see online book). He admitted during the talk that amino acids racemize immediately (i.e., they revert to mixed-handedness). His lecture had bluffed about heterochirality being acceptable at first, but he provided no means other than chance to achieve 100% homochirality later. He seemed to assume getting a six-unit peptide of one hand was plausible, and that was sufficient (see next point).
- Information: He confused chemical specificity with information when I charged him with pulling information out of a magic hat. The small peptides you propose are no more informative than a childs alphabet blocks bouncing around at random, I said. When he tried to declare that a six-link peptide chain has a lot of information, because it will only join with certain side chains and reject others, I reminded him that such an arrangement provides no functional information (it doesnt do anything usefulsee 06/12/2003 headline). Information is not the same as natural law. I reminded him that sodium chloride (table salt) links up naturally, too, but provides no real information. How much information is necessary to provide function? As a real world example, he admitted that the simplest ferrodoxins are more than 53 amino acid units in length. But that is an exceedingly high degree of information for just one protein molecule, especially when each unit has to be one-handed. Getting something that size by chance is astronomically improbable.
- Genetic Takeovers: I reminded him that Benner had warned against proposing too many genetic takeovers, because each one requires a radical overhaul of the conditions. Compounding ad hoc conditions raises charges of telling a just-so story. Yet his model invoked three takeovers: minerals, then peptides, then RNA. He responded that the first two were co-evolving. Reader, please ponder: does that really solve the problem? Is it not a personification fallacy?
- Gaps: He admitted that there is a huge gap between his proposal and the operation of the simplest living thing, especially considering the highly complex translation process between DNA and proteins involving transfer-RNA (see online book). Yet he did not mention this gap during the talk when the audience was present.
Think about his last point. To an evolutionist, proposing a just-so story is better than admitting ignorance. It doesnt matter whether it is highly implausible, or whether it contradicts (and essentially falsifies) other popular models, or whether it contains gaping canyons between the model and the real world (see 05/22/2002 commentary). What is your model? the question illustrates the assumption that something is better than nothing. Is that always true? Some people feel uncomfortable with silence and fill the air with verbiage. But talk is cheap and sometimes less than worthless. Telling a hungry hobo in a boxcar, If we had ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs, is less helpful than shutting up. Saying it with feeling is worse. Jeffrey Kargel (see next headline) suggested that the decreasing evidence for life beyond earth should generate an increased respect for life on our own planet. Calling life failed mineralogy and quipping What does life do? It makes waste is profoundly disrespectful. Evolutionists need more respect for life. They need to silently ponder the complexity of DNA, RNA, proteins and molecular machines. Only then we can reason intelligently about alternatives like intelligent design.
So the first two lectures in a JPL series called Life Detection Seminar, have already falsified each other.* In effect, they canceled each other out, leaving the audience behind square one, heading backwards. Both models required highly implausible conditions. Improbabilities do not add up to probabilities. They multiply into impossibilities.
*Here is the abstract of Russells presentation from the advertisement, with comments inserted and emphasis added to highlight the speculative elements and logical fallacies. Compare this model with Benners scenario last month (see 11/05/2004 headline). Notice the personification fallacy as he assumes these chemicals were striving upward to bigger and better organization:It is suggested [by whom? identify yourself] that life got started when hydrothermal hydrogen reacted with carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean waters in a hydrothermal mound (pH ~10, T =100° C) partly composed of metal sulfide [life is more than chemistry; it requires specified complexity arranged for function]. This mound was the hatchery of life [misleading analogy] and the vent fluids bore lifes waste products back to the ocean. Bacterial life is characterized by its wastes [reductionism], e.g., acetate, methane, oxygen and hydrogen sulfide. The first waste product of life was probably [lets see the calculation] acetate. So we may think [whos we?] of the hydrothermal mound as a natural hydrothermal flow reactor in which iron and nickel sulfides catalyzed the formation of minor concentrations of amino acids [youre gonna need a lot of 'em, baby] and their polymerization to short peptides [Whoa! peptides do not form in water easily] peptides that got caught in pore spaces while most of the acetate was eluted to the ocean [ad hoc; how convenient the good stuff lingers, while the bad stuff escapes]. These peptides wrapped themselves around inorganic metal sulfide and phosphate molecules [ad hoc], and also coated the inside of the pores [storys over; now its a death trap]. The efficiency of the acetate generator was optimized by the emergence [sic] of the first organic living cells [Whoa! He just jumped the canyon in a single bound!] through the intervention of nucleic acids [Whoa! Another canyon! Where did they emerge from? the same conditions are hostile to nucleotides] in the metabolizing system [systems are built by intelligent design].
The hydrothermal mound continued to support a community of cells through to the communitys evolution and differentiation to bacteria and archaea [evolution always assumed; does he have any idea how complex these critters are?]. The archaea added waste methane to the effluent. From the mound the only safe escape route was down [only intelligent agents care about safety], down into the ocean floor where nutrients and energy were still available. Any cells discharged to the ocean would have starved [only intelligent entities suffer hunger]. Thus the ocean floor sediments and crust were colonized and the deep biosphere was born. [Presto! Now clap for the magic show.]
"Amplify the ping machine!" - Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life, Part I: Birth"
Here's another:
What is particularly astonishing about this "dark matter" is that it apparently constitutes about 95% [sic] of all the matter in the universe!
He can't even get the ordinary/dark matter/dark energy distribution correct. He's off by roughly a factor of 4.
If Missler wrote that in a paper in Astrophysics class, he'd have gotten an "F."
delicious
Gilbert claimed this couldn't have been formed by a falling rock.
This crater: , which may have been observed being created, wasn't caused by a falling rock either.
Yes! Craterism is a theory in crisis! Scientists are running away from it. Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, all were non-Craterists!
LOL!Clearly your post was created by a Higher Intelligence.
SO high it took a professor to get it! :-)
Wow. That must be REALLY old - from before late 1998. I love it!
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