Posted on 11/18/2005 7:58:33 AM PST by Uncledave
Edited on 11/18/2005 6:57:43 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
WASHINGTON -- Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous -- that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
They don't have to make such a claim, as that's not the point.
That *any* distributions are intelligently designed means that you can't rule out ID as a potential cause for their origin.
You can't honestly claim that ID is "unscientific."
You can't honestly claim that ID is "untestable."
You can't honestly claim that ID is "unfalsifiable."
...not when ID is shown to be responsible for *some* instances.
How is that "known"?
> That *any* distributions are intelligently designed means
> that you can't rule out ID as a potential cause for their
> origin.
Quick, you better tell the guys at SETI!
They've been ruling out a large number of very organized signals as naturally occurring rather than artificial signals of intelligence.
> You can't honestly claim that ID is "unscientific."
ID is worse than wrong. It's useless. Neither it (generically) nor ANY of its proponents have put forward a single testable, falsifiable hypothesis for a phenomenon that can't be adequately (even better) explained by the dominant paradigm.
Does this "prove" that they're wrong?
Not necessarily, but it does relegate them to the realm of speculation until such time as they do.
Let's take a fairly recent example: special relativity pissed off a lot of physicists. Einstein took a LOT of flack for his paper. But he said: Hey, if I'm right, when you put up clocks on a pair of satellites accelerating away from each other, when you look at the clocks again, they'll be different.
It was testable.
He was right.
When the IDers come up with something similar, do let us know.
Until then, throwing stones at evolution is NOT a sufficient argument for ID.
> What scientific argument is there for the proposition
> that intelligence is not required to produce organized
> matter performing specific functions?
An example of an instance where matter spontaneously organizes to perform a specific function. Dissipative Structures spring immediately to mind.
Organization is an incomplete superset of, not subset of, intelligence. Ergo, SETI is right to rule out organized signals that coincide with a star's rotational speed, for instance.
That you miss the above is unsurprising, however, given how badly you've played this debate so far.
When you find a theory with some measurable explanatory power, do let everyone know.
Until then, intelligent design is (at best) quaint speculation on the order of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
You aren't listening/reading/comprehending. You've even contracted your own breakthrough in post #252.
ID isn't wrong...ID has proved to be the explanation for genetically altered pigs. See post #255.
ID is testable...ID has tested positive as the explanation for genetically altered pigs. See post #255.
ID is falsifiable...where ever there is no bias in an Origin, there is no ID.
Thus, on *every* claim that you've made (even contradicting your own post #252), you've been conclusively shown to be in error.
Consequently you are beginning to bore me. It's time that you handed me off to one of your betters. Surely some Darwinist out there somewhere can put up a better debate than simply ignoring genetically altered pigs while simultaneously being bewildered by simple subsets versus supersets.
I've found it. In contrast, you should let me know when you finally (if ever), muster the courage to explain the question put to you in post #255.
Hint: you can't do it because you aren't intellectually honest enough to admit defeat.
Bovine fecal matter of the first order.
> ID is falsifiable...where ever there is no bias in an
> Origin, there is no ID.
And yet, ID is not necessary to explain bias, as you admit by dancing past Dissipative Structures, repeatedly.
Therefore, it is NOT falsifiable.
Further, I strongly suspect that you KNOW this, which is why you repeatedly engage in sophistry that would make a medieval monk blush.
Incorrect again.
Yawn. You really *are* boring me. First, ID doesn't have to explain all bias. This is because bias is a prerequisite (you need to look this word up, by the way) for ID, but ID is not a prerequisite for bias.
Second, ID *is* falsifiable. If there is no bias, then there can be no ID...this applies at every level. Test for bias. No bias found with a valid test? OK, then ID can't explain the Origin in question.
Furthermore, ID *is* responsible for modern genetic engineering. This means that anyone who claims that ID is "unfalsifiable" or "untestable" or "unscientific" is dissing an entire field of science (while simultaneously looking like an uneducated poster).
| http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/dissipative-structures.html And then there is the matter of his scientific peers --- not the systems theorists and similar riff-raff, but the experts in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics and pattern formation. One of them (P. Hohenberg, co-author of the latest Review of Modern Physics book on the state of the art on pattern formation) was willing to be quoted by Scientific American (May 1995, "From Complexity to Perplexity") to the effect that "I don't know of a single phenomenon his theory has explained." This is extreme, but it becomes more plausible the more one looks into the actual experimental literature. For instance, chemical oscillations and waves are supposed to be particularly good Dissipative Structures; Prigogine and his collaborators have devoted hundreds if not thousands of pages to their analysis, with a special devotion to the Belousov-Zhabotisnky reagent, which is the classic chemical oscillator. Unfortunately, as Arthur Winfree points out (When Time Breaks Down, Princeton UP, 1987, pp. 189--90), "the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reagent ... is perfectly stable in its uniform quiescence," but can be distrubed into oscillation and wave-formation. This is precisely what cannot be true, if the theory of Dissipative Structures is to apply, and Winfree accordingly judges that "the first step [in understanding these phenomena], which no theorist would have anticipated, is to set aside the mathematical literature" produced by a "ponderous industry of theoretical elaboration". --- Needless to say, Winfree is not opposed to theory or mathematics, and his superb The Geometry of Biological Time (Springer-Verlag, 1980) is full of both. Somewhat more diplomatic is Philip W. Anderson, one of the Old Turks of the Santa Fe Institute, and himself a Nobelist. I refer in particular to the very interesting paper he co-authored with Daniel L. Stein, "Broken Symmetry, Emergent Properties, Disspiative Structures, Life: Are They Related", in F. Eugene Yates (ed.), Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order (NY: Plenum Press, 1987), p. 445--457. The editor's abstract is as follows: The authors compare symmetry-breaking in thermodynamic equilibrium systems (leading to phase change) and in systems far from equilibrium (leading to dissipative structures). They conclude thgat the only similarity between the two is their ability to lead to the emergent property of spatial variation from a homogeneous background. There is a well-developed theory for the equilbirium case involving the order parameter concept, which leads to a strong correlation of the order parameter over macroscopic distances in the broken symmetry phase (as exists, for example, in a ferromagnetic domain). This correlation endows the structure with a self-scaled stability, rigidity, autonomy or permanence. In contrast, the authors assert that there is no developed thoery of dissipative structures (despite claims to the contrary) and that perhaps there are no stable dissipative structures at all! Symmetry-breaking effects such as vortices and convection cells in fluids --- effects that result from dynamic instability bifurcations --- are considered to be unstable and transitory, rather than stable dissipative structures.Some quotes from the paper itself: "Is there a theory of dissipative structures comparable to that of equilibrium structures, explaining the existence of new, stable properties and entities in such systems?" Anderson and Stein cite two of their own papers (P. W. Anderson, "Can broken symmetry occur in driven systems?" in G. Nicolis, G. Dewel and P. Turner (eds.), Order and Fluctuations in Equilbirium and Non-Equilibirum Statistical Mechanics, pp. 289-297; and D. L. Stein, "Dissipative structures, broken symmetry, and the theory of equilibrium phase transitions," J. Chem. Phys. 72:2869-2874) for the technical details of their critique; I haven't read 'em yet. Their joint paper is reproduced in Anderson's Basic Notions of Condensed Matter Physics, sans illustrations. Prigogine may be observed waxing philosophical in Order Out of Chaos, obscure in From Being to Becoming, and textbookish in Self-Organization in Non-Equilibrium Systems. |
Prigogine won the Nobel in 1977. It is now 30 years later. Where's the beef?
> If there is no bias, then there can be no ID...this
> applies at every level. Test for bias. No bias found with
> a valid test? OK, then ID can't explain the Origin in
> question.
And if there IS bias, hey, it doesn't necessarily mean ID.
Lovely.
NOT falsifiable.
NOT valid.
NOT science.
But lovely.
Keep dancing on the head of the pin.
And precisely how is science going to demonstrate "spontaneity" in unfalsifiable terms?
Sigh...
No, Dear Child. No.
If there is bias, then ID is possible. If there is no bias, then ID is not possible. Thus, ID is falsified.
The point is that the structures are observed to occur, simply by the fact that the system is far from equilibrium.
No intelligence necessary.
So? A salt crystal is cubic. It is at equilibrium. Big deal.
We're waking up threads from two years ago?
/Shrug,
Southack had a point to make.
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