Intelligent Design Grounded in Science

CBN ^ | November 2005 | By Gailon Totheroh

[moog]

The Holy Warrior Dummy Dance is grownups behaving very badly in public.

That's a daily occurrence for me:).

[balrog666]

The Holy Warrior Dummy Dance is grownups behaving very badly in public. That's a daily occurrence for me:).

You watchin' or dancin'?

From my viewpoint, you are semi-failing at being a troll.

[Old fashioned]

Wait a minute. "Prestigious science journals" publish only stuff they agree with? Yep, that's what Ichneumon essentially said. I haven't yet heard him explain his statement in any other way.

[moog]

From my viewpoint, you are semi-failing at being a troll.

Thanks....I think. :) Maybe I am more handsome than I think. Actually, the daily occurrence is in reference to what REALLY occurs in public for me, if you haven't figured that out already from the dumb one-liners:).

[editor-surveyor]

Mayer stated, "These are people with serious academic training. They are Ph.D.s from very, not just reputable -- but elite -- institutions. And they are people doing research on the key pressure points in biology and physics, and so their arguments are based on cutting-edge knowledge of developments in science."

And this is the reason for the shrill screams; these people are too credible, and authoritative to allow their assertions to stand. Evolutionists faith is on the line.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[nmh]

Ah, some will NEVER get it.

They are too full of themselves. The mere mention of ID, or God forbid - GOD - puts them in a panic. THEY want to be the ones to determine how all came about - they don't want to believe there is anyone superior or more capable then them. What a pathetic group of people, evolutionist worshipers are ... .

[Liberty Wins]

So, serious scientific journals carefully peer review articles to keep out the quacks . .

Claire Rind and Peter Simmons, "Orthopteran DCMD Neuron: A Reevaluation of Responses to Moving Objects, PUBLISHED IN Journal of Neurophysiology (electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars.")

Edward Cussler and Brian Gettelfinger of the University of Minnesota, "Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup?" PUBLISHED INAmerican Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, ((conducting a careful experiment to settle the longstanding scientific question: can people swim faster in syrup or in water?)

Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of International University Bremen, Germany and the University of Oulu, Finland; and Jozsef Gal of Loránd Eötvös University, Hungary, "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation." PUBLISHED IN: Polar Biology ((using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin).

Ramesh Balasubramaniam of the University of Ottawa, and Michael Turvey of the University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratory, "Coordination Modes in the Multisegmental Dynamics of Hula Hooping," PUBLISHED IN Biological Cybernetics ((exploring and explaining the dynamics of hula-hooping).

Ben Wilson of the University of British Columbia, Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University [Canada], Robert Batty of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Magnus Whalberg of the University of Aarhus [Denmark], and Hakan Westerberg of Sweden's National Board of Fisheries, REFERENCE: "Sounds Produced by Herring (Clupea harengus) Bubble Release," PUBLISHED IN Aquatic Living Resources, vol. 16, 2003, pp. 271-5. REFERENCE: "Pacific and Atlantic Herring Produce Burst Pulse Sounds ((showing that herrings apparently communicate by f*rting.)

And finally:

Stefano Ghirlanda, Liselotte Jansson, and Magnus Enquist of Stockholm University, for their report "Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans." PUBLISHED IN: Human Nature (no explanation necessary or possible).

[Dimensio]

Why should anyone listen to someone like you, when you're a known and well-documented liar?

[Liberty Wins]

And then there are these credible, well-respected scientists:

Arnd Leike of the University of Munich, "Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth," PUBLISHED IN, European Journal of Physics, (for demonstrating that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay).

Chris McManus of University College London, for his excruciatingly balanced report, "Scrotal Asymmetry in Man and in Ancient Sculpture." PUBLISHED IN: Nature

Chittaranjan Andrade and B.S. Srihari of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India,: "A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample," PUBLISHED IN Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (a probing medical discovery that nose picking is a common activity among adolescents.)

Peter Fong of Gettysburg College, "Induction and Potentiation of Parturition in Fingernail Clams (Sphaerium striatinum) by Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs)," PUBLISHED IN: Journal of Experimental Zoology (he contributed to the happiness of clams by giving them Prozac)

Robert Matthews of Aston University, England"Tumbling toast, Murphy's Law and the fundamental constants," PUBLISHED IN: European Journal of Physics , (demonstrating that toast often falls on the buttered side and is subject to Murphy’s Law.)

Be grateful. I spared you the publications from France, as well as the Annals of Sex Research.

[Lexinom]

One is measureable and observable - ergo, subject to scientific positivism. The other is not.

[dsc]

I see book covers, but I don't know what's inside, so I have no idea if they mention creationism or not.

"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

That you present that as damning evidence would seem to indicate that you are now conflating belief in the existence of God with young-Earth, seven-day creationism.

Unless your real objection is not to creationism per se, but to according credibility to belief in God.

[truthserum]

You wrote, "It's supposition. "Pre-theory" if you like. Not the stuff of science class. There is a cutoff."

I want to respond to the "pre-theory" moniker and its value, but first some science 101 hated, as always, by the armchair philosophers of evolution.

Scientific investigation begins by considering a problem, an observable phenomenon, or the like, a prodding occurrence that compels the investigator to wonder:
(a) "IS this so"
and (b) "WHY is this so."
Observation, accompaning by contemplation, leads the investigator to construct an investigative approach to understand the two questions, and to seek an answer to them. As a work in progress, the investigator develops a proposed explanation, a HYPOTHESIS.

Repeated and varied testing is conducted to test the metal of the HYPOTHESIS as a working explanation and answer to the two questions. Over the course of investigation, the investigator reaches conclusions as to the two questions and the HYPOTHESIS, sometimes scrapping the HYPOTHESIS, sometimes fine-tuning the HYPOTHESIS, sometimes concluding in his/her own mind that the HYPOTHESIS is such an unvaryingly correct explanation, even against negativizing testing that he must share his research with the larger scientific community.

The larger scientific community depends on the proponent for important preconditions to further testing and development. Take, for example, the cold fusion proponents that held a press conference out west a decade or so ago. In their case, what was wanted, what was needed, and what was, apparently, missing, was a carefully recorded course of investigation that could be examined by others and could be tested by others to fault and failure. The essence of error there was to propound a technological development without basic supporting scientific groundwork.

But, when the groundwork is presented along with the HYPOTHESIS, the scientific community can join the researcher in the search for the value of the explanatory HYPOTHESIS. Some join this search animated by professional jealousy: "my hypothesis, which stands in stark contrast to his, is the eminently more reasoned and sufficient explanation" or "that explanation discounts the value of scientific discoveries I, or my mentors, or my school of thought can be credited with propounding.." Others come from the basis of open curious investigatory interest. All come to challenge by testing and analysis.

When the HYPOTHESIS withstands the community's testing and analysis, in scientific didactic, it is called a THEORY. This connotes a reliability and consistency of the HYPOTHESIS as an answer to and explanation of the the answer to the two questions. THEORIES in science are not the end of the road for explanatory HYPOTHESES.

Over time such HYPOTHESES and THEORIES can be shown to be so universally operative, so durable in their application, that their explanatory value has the influence of a LAW (like the laws of gravity, thermodynamics, etc.).

Variations in the investigory model described above, seeking the early coronation of an idea that has not even been tested to hypothesis as a LAW of the universe reflect a short-cutting that is difficult to explain as an effort to improve the science. It has happened, as the cultural war developed over Darwin, over the questions related to geological timescales, and over astrophysical time spans, that some have sought to discount the critiquing of their ideas and hypotheses by premature elevation of those ideas and hypotheses to the level of highly reliable THEORY or generally governing LAW.

Now, to get to your specfic comment, which was "It's supposition. "Pre-theory" if you like. Not the stuff of science class. There is a cutoff."

One question would be "who says there's a cut-off?" Another would be, "why does that person get to decide that a cut-off must exist?"

Consider the following scenarios: a body riddled with bullets, found in a warehouse on the waterfront; tree rings indicative of stunted growth during a two or three year period of the life span of the tree; a turtle sitting on a wooded fence post. To dispose of questions that want to be asked in each of these instances as pre-theory is worse than bad science, it leads to scientific moronims ("Fred died of a sudden infusion of lead" or "Fred sprang some leaks"; "the turtle was hatched on the fencepost" or "the turtle climbed onto the fencepost").

Pre-theory, as you call it, is so much more than that. The calculation of trajectory, for example, in the forensic investigation of Fred's untimely demise is just so much make work as a pre-theory. It really doesn't help answer the question what Fred had done to upset the mob boss.

In the same way, as you have already surmised, pre-theoretical modeling that follows a trajectory back from an irreducibily complex system to the existence of designer offers a value that would only be rejected because of an unscientific bias.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" I recommend one part Tamiflu to six parts spiced rum. Every 20 minutes.

;^)"

Unfortunately that won't be necessary, as the fever broke this morning lol. Of course, it may come back... :)

[nmh]

"Why should anyone listen to someone like you, when you're a known and well-documented liar?"

LOL!

I have to admit, you take the prize at FR for being the most outrageous liar who is proud of it. It is YOU, who is the "documented liar". Intelligent people know better than to take you seriously.

I feel sorry for you ... . It's tempting to tease you about your meds or something like that ... but with you, there is this sense of evil. There is something very evil about you ... a persistent evil that knows no shame.

[Elsie]

when confronted by a repetition of that falsehood by one who has already been corrected at least once, why should one who knows better not identify the falsehood as a willful lie, and the issuer thereof a liar?

Dimensio has been tasked with this assignment.

[Elsie]

Even when they are? Scientists believe in calling an X an X.

And what would they call something that merely has a linear tendency to the upper left direction?

A part of an X?

A precursor X?

An X ancestor?

Or an ex-X?

[Elsie]

However, he had a mixture of conservative, liberal and (ycchh) moderate advisors, because he felt the back-and-forth discussion contributed to the best decisions in the end.

And, in the end, HE made the decision.

---

This is the same concept that IDer's want: put BOTH factions into play and let the best man win.

---

"We report: You decide."

[Elsie]

From my viewpoint, you are semi-failing at being a troll.

Then he'd be a trol?

[Elsie]

"Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans."

Well.....

...who DON'T??