Free Republic

Who says pornography effects no one? Again, thanks to our courts they allow the pornography that destroys people. It is as addictive as drugs -- but it is a moral condition.

I am sure that many activists in Nazi Germany did not want to get involved and be "radical". I am sure that many said that they could not help the Jews. I am sure they felt justified in their inaction.

When the Justice system does not provide justice, what are the options? Does not a father have a responsibility to protect his family? And what about us sitting on the side lines?

I am not advocating violence: please show me other options.

Good post. I too pray for Jeb Bush. This could bring on the political death of Gov. Bush. I and I think many others would find it hard to vote for him if he lets this one slide. More and more I see the political fight as one of the "Right" and the wrong. The secular culture is racing toward extreme evil. At what point will be any different than the NAZI's. It is hard to tell these days.

2) If we accept the assumption that the DNA works in a regular fashion, with definite, more-or-less specifiable behaviour given a specific set of conditions, then we can still learn to probe, then to control its behaviour, then to get rich or famous or both by controlling its behaviour. All this without worrying about how it got there or how its properties arose.

This all sounds nice and dandy but this is not what happens! The Naturalists preach their theology and call it science -- it (the world, life etc) can only originated by natural processes, thus any notion of God or Gods is soundly ridiculed as simplistic and irrational. The origin of life by natural processes may be true, but it may not. Problems exist such as the Cambrian explosion. The sheer complexity of life is staggering. Putting a straitjacket on science limits investigation and inquiry. Examining irreducibly complex components of biological systems; investigating supposed CSI biological systems; examining the coupled and complex systems of life are all legitimate scientific endeavors.

Perhaps you should read up on the subject before you are so quick to criticize it. How about reading Dembski's "No Free Lunch".

How does not addressing subject matter beyond the scope of scientific inquiry limit science?

So are you telling me that you cannot tell if a person died due to natural causes or by murder? Have you ever heard of forensic science?

And how about archeology? Can we determine if an artifact is due to natural processes or due to the craftsmanship of a early human?

How about SETI? Is it possible to distinguish a natural signal from an alien signal?

We can use natural science to determine a natural pattern from an intelligently designed pattern! ID is a useful science!

Would I be going too far by suggesting that science is based on naturalism because we can (in principle at least) reliably, repeatably test natural things to double check our ideas of what makes them work?

ID makes the claim that it is possible to detect intelligence by examining the information content of patterns. If the pattern is specified and complex, it is designed. ID uses only natural methods in the determination of design. The philosophical assumption behind ID is that there may exist processes designed by intelligence. Naturalists don't allow the possibility that there may exist non-natural processes -- which limits science.

Just hope that you really do know science! If God did create the world as stated in the Bible, then the act was supernatural! We would not know the constraints imposed on creation. Naturalistic assumptions would be lead to an invalid science! Should we not embrace a science that is open-minded about the creation process? Should we only allow naturalistic assumptions? Only allowing a philosophical framework based on naturalism limits science!

Alamo-Girl,
I did not respond a while back because you ignored my post. You are more interested in propagating information than engaging in real dialog.

Do you even know what a spontaneous process is? I doubt it! Do you know the relevance of spontaneous processes in the debate concerning thermodynamics?

There are a number of ways to define information and the method chosen depends on the purpose of the analysis. Dembski's method is perfectly legitimate and is useful in distinguishing design! It is intrinsically intertwined with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, though the elucidation of the connection remains yet to be completed.

Do you really believe in God? Hmmm. If you do, then what is the problem with God creating the Universe? Can we honestly say that only natural causes created the Earth and all life?

John Marburger has been under a lot of pressure. He certainly caved on this one. Obviously he does not understand ID or he would not view it as a threat and would embrace it as legitimate science! Shoot, maybe I should apply to be the President's science advisor. I could do a better job than this guy!

Obviously you know nothing of science. Name a scientist who *wouldn't* be thrilled to overturn current undersatnading and win the Nobel.

There is also the bandwagon mentality in science. The establishment wants to ban any ideas that runs counter to Neo-Darwinian evolution. What we must do is put forth the evidence and force them to examine it. If they will not examine it, we should force them out of the ivory towers. Viva la revolution!

It is time to shake up the narrow minded establishment!

You may have noticed the words "closed system" a couple of times above. Consider simply a black bucket of water initially at the same temperature as the air around it. If the bucket is placed in bright sunlight, it will absorb heat from the sun, as black things do. Now the water becomes warmer than the air around it, and the available energy has increased. Has entropy decreased? Has energy that was previously unavailable become available, in a closed system? No, this example is only an apparent violation of the second law. Because sunlight was admitted, the local system was not closed; the energy of sunlight was supplied from outside the local system. If we consider the larger system, including the sun, available energy has decreased and entropy has increased as required.

Your example here is somewhat unclear. It confuses some important distinctions. For example, your system is transient but moving toward equilibrium. Energy of the overall system is being dissipated. It does not capture the nonspontaneous processes related to the development of lifeforms. For example, if I had a gas that had energy flowing into the system from outside, I would not expect to see one volume of air at one temperature and the other volume of air at another temperature. The air would tend to mix together and the heat would flow through the colder wall. There would be a distribution of temperature within the fluid based on known laws. A finite element analysis of the fluid could be done to obtain the air temperature distribution if the boundary conditions are known over the given time. There is no apparent violation of the Second Law in your example, because the system is at nonequilibrium and the system is moving toward equilibrium as expected. The natural tendency (spontaneous process) is for the water to heat up due to the sunlight. A nonspontaneous process would be for ice to form on one side of the water due to the heat of the sun. Now if we had a solar collector connected to a Stirling heat engine that drives a Stirling cooler, we might see ice forming in the water. We have the thermodynamic mechanism that allows this nonspontaneous process: without the mechanism this will not happen.

The notion of the thermodynamic mechanism has relation to Dembski's conservation of information and applies to open systems.

Iin + I machine [due to constrained boundary conditions} >= Iout

An example is a computer. The computer utilizes energy to perform nonspontaneous processes. It acts as a thermodynamic mechanism. There is an informational content related to the boundary conditions of the computer. Also, the user may add an input of information by, for example, programming the computer. The sum of information into the computer plus the information associated with the thermodynamic mechanism is less than the information out. Information consequently has a relation to thermodynamic entropy.

Concerning the thermodynamic mechanism: in nature there are some simple thermodynamic mechanisms. One example is a waterfall. The water is heated due to the fact that the kinetic energy (due to the falling water) is converted to thermal energy. The water experiences a slight rise in temperature. Other natural mechanisms are self-organizing systems. These systems are very limited and are constrained due to the physics of the system. We do not expect these systems to produce stone mosaics!

The argument is that without Christianity, we will devolve into amoral chaos. But if Christians' minimal standard of behavior is to be no worse than the people they're inveighing against, that's not terribly persuasive, is it?

I know you may not like my engineering thermodynamics. You don't even have to accept Creationism. But it sounds like you would make one hel-of-a good Christian -- well excluding the h--! I pray that you would see the reality of Jesus Christ. He did rise again and new life can be found in him! Carpe Diem.

Now, you're going to say, "But, but, the robots were designed", and thereby miss the point. The group behavior (i.e. the characteristics of the overall system) were never designed. They just popped up. And that shows the power of self-organizing systems, which is only a small part of the engine of evolution.

This statement is a philosophical statement rather than a scientific one. Self-organizing systems are limited by the physics of the system and the boundary conditions. You are not going to see these systems writing out dictionaries! They are limited by the thermodynamic mechanism which constructs the "self-organizing" paterns.

'Thermodynamic mechanism' is akin to 'Clintonian honesty'. Until you get this point, guy, there is no point in arguing with you. Entropy is a state function. It depends on the final state, and the initial state, and nothing else on God's green earth.

And please tell how your refrigerator would cool with only energy and NOT the thermodynamic mechanism? Certainly, you need some boundary conditions? What are you classical types to do -- meditate on some end state? Hmmm Hmmm I can see it now! Is this meditation going to move your uncontrolled blob of working fluid away from equilibrium?

And who has Clintonian honesty?

No, you are misreading the statement. Refrigerators only cool their insides. The outside gets quite hot (that's the "other thing happening" which is necessary.) Similarly for heat pumps. What is forbidden is that a refrigerator only cool its surroundings and get 100% useful work out of the heat removed.

Yes, the net entropy increases. But you will NOT get the cooling without the mechanism! Pure undirected energy gets you nothing! How do you get the cooling without the refrigerator or other cooling device. This is pretty elementary! It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out!

"Given the precision required for the advancement, there is not enough time to explain the development."

Says who? Please show your calculations. Bwahaha.

I can show you that there are a lot of possible mutations. Given the interconnectedness of the body -- functional, structural etc. -- I can show you that the vast number of changes leading to advancement would require multiple precise mutations. This is what kills evolution. The same reason why the air in the room does not move to one side (it is highly improbable) is the same reason why NeoDarwinian evolution will not work.

But the burden of proof is on the NeoDarwinists to show that it will happen. This has not yet happened.

Actually, there's also that "I want to be trusted" factor. If I make a habit of lying, people won't trust me, and then they might doubt my word even if I'm telling the truth.

Yes, you optimize based on the long term! Again, the only basis is how you feel. And if another atheist chooses to lie, what is the big deal? It is just your opinion over his. There's that whole "trustworthy" issue. And then there's the issue of the consequences of not telling the truth; if lying would produce an even worse result then telling the truth, they might be inclined to tell the truth no matter how "good" it made them feel.

Again, you optimize how you think you will feel over the long haul! Still the result is the same.

And, of course, this all applies to theists also. You're just singling out atheists because you're a bigot.

The theist has a moral imperative to do what is right. Of course the person can fail, but he is not right in failing. Human rights really means something for a theist. There is no basis for it for an atheist -- other than the fact that the majority decide to do it that way.

I am not a bigot -- be an atheist if you like. I am just questioning the rational basis of atheism. Does it make sense? I don't think so. In fact, it is very futile. How is it not? It seems very selfish at the heart of it. From an atheists perspective -- What is wrong with being a bigot? It is just your preference over the bigots! How can you tell him he is wrong? Again, morality is a preference. Pretty D-mn futile to me!

I never said your body defies thermodynamics. Your body is the thermodynamic mechanism and it has to be an incredibly complex mechanism. If we examine how a baby develops from an embryo to a fully developed person, the process is very precise. There is no room for error. All the processes are controlled precisely, otherwise you would be left with a cancerous blob. There are also limits imposed on the thermodynamic mechanism. It is limited by its functionality. If you then try to explain the biological development of new systems on evolution, you are left with an incomplete mechanism. It goes back to the heart of thermodynamics -- the most probable states win out. Given the precision required for the advancement, there is not enough time to explain the development. This is especially noticeable in the Cambrian explosion where a multitude of different lifeforms rapidly appeared.

And given that I'm an atheist who does not behave as you suggest nor do I know any atheists who behave as you suggest, I say that you're flat-out wrong.

Let us take one point. Why should an atheist be honest? The only reason is because it makes you feel good. But what if an atheist doesn't feel good about being honest? What basis is there for him to be honest? There is none. So getting the most out of life may vary from one atheist to another. One may choose to live a "moral" life because it makes him feel good. Another may choose to rape kill and pillage because it makes him feel good. How can you -- the moral atheist -- judge the "immoral" one. And who is to decide what is moral and immoral?

Our conscience tells us that there is a right and wrong. This would seem to conflict with the atheists world view. Right and Wrong -- to an atheist -- is based on what makes you feel good.

I explain it at this link:

thermo link