How STILL Not to Debate Intelligent Design (Liars for Evolution)

Access Research Network ^ | 01/09/02 | William A. Dembski

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

A pot of soup on the stove provides a more information rich structure than a bacteria, but it doesn't mean the soup is scientifically meaningful.

This is a "apples and oranges" argument.  I don't believe that comparing an environment (soup, which is not a structure) against an entity is a viable comparison at all.

If you look at life at the cellular level, biology actually tends to reduce the "information richness" of its environment, but it also decreases the entropy. So not only are the ID people wrong in this case (in using that term), but they are REALLY wrong (because even that term doesn't...

From a top-down viewpoint, you are correct in stating that a cell tends to reduce the information that it uses to that which it actually needs, thus significantly reducing entropy (note that the information richness is not affected - just the info that the cell uses).  But from a bottom-up perspective (actually putting the cell together from its disparate parts as well as interacting with other cells in the case of multi-celled creatures), the information needed is much more complex.  For example the information-richness inherent in an amoeba is much higher than that in a diamond.

An information-rich environment is needed to get the individual parts of the cell working together.  At some point, there is a thing called irreducible complexity.  This is the point that without an information-rich environment life simply could not exist.  You might liken this to a complex computer program which regulates how the various parts of the cell interact with each other and to outside stimulii.

So I believe that my question as to how such structures could have evolved is still valid.

[Eddeche]

* bump * for later reading.

Am enjoying your posts immensely.

[js1138]

I can understand this only from an end user frame of reference. Otherwise it's just plain incorrect.

Thanks for the backup.

When music CDs first came out, the vinyl crowd jumbed out and asserted the encoding to digital lost important aspects of the original "message". I thought this was pretty far fetched and still do. Most of the original CDs were made from analog masters that had been tweaked for vinyl and had gross amounts of frequency response distortion.

That said, there are analog processes that contain infinitely more "information" than any possible digital representation. The combined location and path of an electron might serve as a modest example.

The brain is not digitally pure. It does not process information so much as it behaves as a single entity. The electrical and chemical activity of the brain is far more fluid and complex than any anything modeled in silicon. I will listen to arguments opposing this view just as soon as I see a computer that can navigate as well as a housefly with as few active components. This is not a trivial software difference. It is a whole different kind of computing that we frankly don't understand at all.

[VadeRetro]

While we are here, let me ask you two questions that I pose to all naturalists:

So far, every time jennyp shows you up you just post "*Yawn*." Now we're supposed to evolve life all over again for you? I mean, even it we did it you could just say, "Where's the proof it happened that way the first time?" Or you could just say "*Yawn*" and otherwise ignore.

[VadeRetro]

Again, as I've heard it, you'd need to add water every 1000 miles or so, coal a bit more often than that.

I can't find that on the stanleysteamers.com page and find it startling, even allowing that some Stanley models had forty-gallon water reservoirs. I'd be generally interested in any sort of performance data you have on Stanleys. I was surprised to see that they held on into the '20s. The real heyday of steam cars was over by sometime much earlier, I think. The Model T was out by about 1905, right? Needs a crank, but dirt cheap and utilitarian.

[medved]

I'm no expert on Stanleys and most of what I think I know is just what I remember hearing and reading. As I recollect hearing it, the issue was decided in the 20's when they perfected electric starters. Much prior to the 20's, gas cars had their own share of problems. It took them a long time to come up with the idea of coils and spark plugs; the early engines had mechanical "clackers", like lighting a match inside the combustion chamber... Oil was provided to the engines via a hand pump at first and a lot of the things we took for granted by the 50's really hadn't been perfected for more than a generation or so. In the 1950's there were still a lot of people driving around who had made the transition from horses to cars in their forties and were never really safe to be with.

[jennyp]

So far, every time jennyp shows you up you just post "*Yawn*." Now we're supposed to evolve life all over again for you? I mean, even it we did it you could just say, "Where's the proof it happened that way the first time?" Or you could just say "*Yawn*" and otherwise ignore.

Simple. He's made his choice in the "fight or flight" decision.

[VadeRetro]

In the 1950's there were still a lot of people driving around who had made the transition from horses to cars in their forties and were never really safe to be with.

My grandfather always liked to fall asleep on a return trip, the horse being perfectly capable of managing the trip home unsupervised. In his later life, he wrecked at least two cars that way.

[jennyp]

I remember reading somewhere that there are actually 3 choices to "fight" or "flight". "*Yawn*" is sometimes chosen when the individual stays on the fence between the 2 choices for too long. It's a way of running away from the choice itself.

But I think Exnihilo & I got off to a bad start, since he responded to Junior's post which said basically the same thing as I did.

[VadeRetro]

I marvel at the deliberate rudeness of typing out "yawn," with or without asterisks. The same poster has tried to command me not to answer his/her posts, the better to go unchallenged.

[js1138]

Pearls before swine, reason before Medved. What a waste.

[lasereye]

The problem with all these anti-evolution posts is that everyone has seen evolution. It is a biological fact. One simple example--bacteria that evolve and become resistent to antibiotics.

See posts 140 and 155.

[jennyp]

Interesting post. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if we never did "get behind the Big Bang" - so there will always be room for those who want to believe in a personal authority figure out there outside of the natural universe to find One. However I think there is too much progress being made on abiogenesis to believe that some good, reasonably detailed plausible explanations won't ever come out.

Given that no present religion has the capacity to write a new testament, is it not perhaps time to start asking what God has been about, recently? We just finished a century about which God surely would have a new message, if he exists. 3000 years ago he was willing to provide guidance on good hygiene. Doesn't it occur to anyone to ask, why didn't God at least give us a policy on Cambodia?

Now there's some interesting food for thought!

[PatrickHenry]

Thoughtful post. Bump.

[longshadow]

I marvel at the deliberate rudeness of typing out "yawn," with or without asterisks.

Well, it's not so bad when you consider it to be a shorthand way of saying: "I'm unable to best my opponent on the Intellectual playing field, and thus will henceforth refuse to debate her, lest I further expose the shortcomings of my argument, and will use a denegrating remark as a subterfuge to camoflage my cowardice."

[PatrickHenry]

Well put.

[RadioAstronomer]

Bttt

[VadeRetro]

Now, what pantywaist cried foul on CrabTree's 171? And why did the moderator go along?

[PatrickHenry]

Now, what pantywaist cried foul on CrabTree's 171? And why did the moderator go along?

This is very difficult to understand, or to accept. Post 171 is one that I praised as being genuinely thoughtful. I have my suspicions as to who pushed the button. But why in the world would the moderator do such a thing? I can see the writing on the wall, and I guess I won't be around much longer at this rate. In case I'm suddenly gone, it's been fun.