Radiometrics are accurate to +- 1% based on current half-lives, calibration against other knowns, and they correlate with a number of other measuring methods.
"Your comment is not clear.
My comment was poking fun at the IDist idea of 'specified complexity'.
The idea is that both nature and intelligence can 'design' complexity, however only intelligence can produce complexity that is 'specified'.
For example, if you were to shoot an arrow from a bow at a large wall, the path the arrow took would be complex. To verify this, try to calculate the trajectory it should take beforehand, considering the bow, wind, steadiness of hand and eye, smoothness of release and so on. Even with this complexity, there is no specificity to it, no intent, no target. However, if you paint a bullseye on the wall and then shoot with the intention of hitting the centre of the bullseye, that path, including the point of impact, now has a purpose. It is now considered specifically complex as the point of impact was specified prior to the shot. This specified complexity can supposedly be applied to information.
Does that clear up my post for you?
I am curious how you determine specificity without knowledge of the designer. Anybody have any ideas?
"I am curious how you determine specificity without knowledge of the designer. Anybody have any ideas?"
An excellent question. One might also ask what the motivation of the designer might have been.
The answer, some will tell you, can be found in Genesis. And that's the problem with ID as it is being presented. Its proponents are pretending to have a non-specific entity in mind for their "intelligent designer." In fact, they have a very specific entity in mind, and are engaging in a little misdirection, thinking that their opponents are too stupid to see through their subterfuge.
I can only hope that clear heads will prevail in this business. I suspect they will, and we'll all have a chuckle one of these days.
The religious folk behind creationism will go on believing Genesis, and science will be taught in the public schools. Everyone will go on believing whatever it is that they believe and we'll all go back to work.
+- 1%? I doubt that you could find a majority of evolutionists who would agree that they could approximate the age of the earth within 1%. I think that is simply a number pulled out of thin air.
My comment was poking fun at the IDist idea of 'specified complexity'. The idea is that both nature and intelligence can 'design' complexity, however only intelligence can produce complexity that is 'specified'.
I don't think that accurately reflects the ID position.
If you read creationist posts you would know that human beings have to be the specified goal of evolution.
I believe even bright people like Teilhard de Chardin have believed this.
Specificity is totally in the eye of the beholder. If the result looks interesting or ironic to someone, then the pattern is specified by definition. If "it looks like Greek to me", then it's merely complex but not specified. And nobody cares about the designer if there was one.
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