One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

[Farsight001]

Agreed, peer review is now being questioned because of fraud and money.

Can peer review police fraud?

Oops! 5 Retracted Science Studies of 2012

Accusations of fraud spur a revolution in scientific publishing

Opinion: Scientific Peer Review in Crisis

		[The case of the Danish Cohort](http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34518/title/Opinion--Scientific-Peer-Review-in-Crisis/)

Ironically, half this fraud has been perpetrated by ID advocates, so this really speaks quite poorly of your side.

 

[XndrK]

If, by evolution, they mean differentiation of species, that species develop and pass on traits, then I would agree that would be wrong. One look at a dachshund would tell anyone that differentiation of species is true.

If, by evolution they mean that life on Earth came about and developed into human absent the hand of a Creator, they I too would disagree with ‘evolution’

+1

 

[Farsight001]

Post #848

Post 848 does not contain a justification. It contains the explanation that he used that number because it represents the number of elementary particles in the universe (which is, again, false anyway. There are much more than 10^80). The justification, however, requires him to explain WHY he went with the number of elementary particles in the universe as opposed to something else - ESPECIALLY when he didn’t actually go with the most fundamental and basic particles of the universe.

This represents the highest frequency of interactions (transitions) possible at the highest possible number of times per second. Planck time is the smallest theoretical unit of time so any transition CANNOT possibly occur faster.

As your explanations says, it is the highest rate at which matter can transition from one form to another, not the highest rate at which matter can INTERACT. Again, he needs a justification for using this number as opposed to another.

I do find that to be sufficient justification for his use of the number because there could be no alternative timeframe within which more events could occur.

We’re talking scientific justification. He needs to be writing an entire paper on this if he wants to be professional about it, explaining in detail why he picked this number over all the other options out there. A single paragraph explanation is not a justification.

And neither has he bothered to try to explain why he has not factored in gravity and other attractive forces that would naturally INCREASE the likelihood of interactions.

 

[Peter_Plato]

By reading his stuff - a courtesy you clearly do not afford to the evolutionary biologists.

And I did that by pointing out that he failed to address many extremely important questions and completely failed to explain or address dozens upon dozens of factors that he chose not to include in his calculations. I’d obviously have to sit down and go through the effort myself, but it seems like his “equation” for something so complete and universal should have hundreds of variables, not 3. But regardless, a properly researched and prepared issue like this would explain why he included what he did AND why he didn’t include what he didn’t. He failed utterly to explain this, or even to acknowledge this. That is a huge problem and hugely unprofessional.

Because my failure to remember what an acronym stands for is proof that I haven’t read his material? I can’t even remember what it normally stands for half the time. Does that mean I’ve never watched football on tv? What a joke.

My mama told me not to play these pointless games anymore.

She said I would be better off spending my time doing something more productive.

 

[Farsight001]

That’s interesting. I’m not convinced, partly based on new discoveries, different ways of viewing the data and the quasi-religious fervor expressed here. I just don’t think anyone can call this proven since new discoveries are being made, and the defense of this theory, with all due respect, is far out of proportion to its practical use, for which I see none on the macro, what happened allegedly years ago, level.

Everybody already knows you’re not convinced, Ed. Perhaps if you cared to understand evolution properly, instead of rally against it, you might understand. You’re still trying to use the artificial macro-micro distinction, I see, and still denying that macro happens even though I provided an example of it happening in real life. Looking straight at the proof by bouncing a laser off the mirror the astronauts left on the moon doesn’t convince moon landing deniers, either.

 

[Monkey1976]

If ID is the only explanation for the complexity observed in nature, how does it explain analogous situations not found in nature?

Dr. Adrian Thompson, for his doctoral thesis, set an array of 100 logic gates up in a FPGA (field-programmable gate array) chip. He then set a task for that chip: Differentiate between two audio tones. He gave the controlling computer a specific algorithm defining the task (For a 1kHz tone, produce a 5V output signal. For a 10kHz tone, produce no signal. Be capable of showing a change between these two signals) and 50 random starting configurations for the FPGA. The computer was then set to determine the most successful members of the population pool and randomly combine their features for the next pool. After about 5000 “generations”, the array was performing its task with absolute precision. The interesting part is that the final form would not work on any other chip, and incorporated a several gates unconnected to anything else, but - when the unconnected gates were disabled - the circuit failed to function. The algorithm had not only met the task required, but used specific characteristics unknown to the designers of the original FPGA chip and Dr. Thompson himself to do so.

Dr. Thomopson’s thesis
Explanation in lay terms

A similar case is the X-band antennas used by NASA on the Space Technology 5 mission. Given specific requirements of bandwidth, gain, impedance, etc. an algorithm was given a group of random configurations and evolved a final design which was both far smaller and totally unlike any other X-band antenna in use with identical specifications.

NASA paper describing the process
Explanation in lay terms

 

[Farsight001]

First, I can outline how we know ID is science. We know ID is science because it uses the scientific method to make its claims.

In no way does it use the scientific method. Where are their experiments? Oh yeah…nowhere. They go straight from hypothesis to conclusion.

ID begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI).

That’s not an observation. That’s a conclusion.

Scientists then perform experimental tests upon natural objects to determine if they contain complex and specified information.

No they don’t. That’s a lie. They do a lot of talking, sure. But formal experiments in a lab? Not at all.

One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be tested and discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures through genetic knockout experiments. The purpose is to determine if they require all of their parts to function.

And since the actual scientific community has repeatedly proven that they don’t need all their parts to function as SOMETHING, then their musings are patently false.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Post 848 does not contain a justification. It contains the explanation that he used that number because it represents the number of elementary particles in the universe (which is, again, false anyway. There are much more than 10^80). The justification, however, requires him to explain WHY he went with the number of elementary particles in the universe as opposed to something else - ESPECIALLY when he didn’t actually go with the most fundamental and basic particles of the universe.

As your explanations says, it is the highest rate at which matter can transition from one form to another, not the highest rate at which matter can INTERACT. Again, he needs a justification for using this number as opposed to another.

We’re talking scientific justification. He needs to be writing an entire paper :] on this if he wants to be professional about it, explaining in detail why he picked this number over all the other options out there. A single paragraph explanation ] is not a justification.

And neither has he bothered to try to explain why he has not factored in gravity and other attractive forces that would naturally INCREASE the likelihood of interactions.

Read!

leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/CHANCEGAPS.pdf

 

[Farsight001]

Or, let’s keep looking for natural explanations (even though we know we won’t find one) to keep the grants and funding going. We have an entire industry supporting thousands going here. Let’s not rock the boat. If we insist enough we can keep it going. (laugh all the way to the bank)

There’s tons more money in being a professional ID advocate than there is in being a proper scientist. Paleontologists often make about 25 a year. The ID advocates at the discovery institute and other such places make in excess of 100,000 a year. You want to suggest that people are motivated by money instead of integrity? Then look to your own guys who make a lot more. Grant money is actually scarce and the fight to get some is quite grueling. Meanwhile, ID advocates can head to church, tell people that the scientists are trying to get rid of God and they need money for the fight, and the checks start rolling in.

 

[Farsight001]

My mama told me not to play these pointless games anymore.

She said I would be better off spending my time doing something more productive.

Ah yes, read all the pro-ID stuff you want, but when someone asks you to study evolution, you don’t want to because it would be a waste of time. And you accuse US of being dogmatic?

 

[Farsight001]

Read!

leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/CHANCEGAPS.pdf

sigh

Entire papers on THAT SPECIFIC POINT, i.e. his reason for choosing that particular number over all the other numbers, going into detail about the other options and why he didn’t pick them. This paper does almost none of that. And then they need to be presented to other scientists, even ones who don’t like him, to be picked apart, and he needs to give presentations on it, and get feedback and revise, revise, revise. I would also suggest a professionally written paper, too. This is more like a really long essay.

 

[estesbob]

How did something come from nothing and why did it happen just once?

How did life spring from non-life and why did it happen just once?

 

[Crossbones]

Read!

leaderu.com/offices/dembski/docs/CHANCEGAPS.pdf

So, the Planck time comes from Halliday and Resnick, which is one of the popular introductory physics book.

Here’s what Halliday and Resnick say about the Planck time on p 544 of their 3rd edition.

“It is perhaps not surprising that the Planck time, which is built up from the fundamental concepts of three great theories, should have a fundamental physical significance. It turns out to be the time following the Big Bang before which we cannot have confidence that our present theories of physics are valid”

So, Dembski cites a source that says NOTHING about this being a limit on the smallest time interval, but rather, a limit on the time before which science cannot predict what is happening in the Big Bang. That is incredibly poor scholarship on Dembski’s part.

 

[Farsight001]

How did something come from nothing and why did it happen just once?

How did life spring from non-life and why did it happen just once?

Dunno. That’s abiogenesis, not evolution. Different subject with different college courses and different experts.

 

[XndrK]

Okay, let me point something out. (This might have already been done, but I’m not going to spend the next two hours checking every one of the near 1000 posts to see.)

The fossil record is like a pile of family photos with a few missing. You may not have every pic, but it’s pretty obvious that the people in the pics are getting older.

Similarly, the fossil record doesn’t have all the “pictures,” but the snapshots we do have give us a pretty good idea about what happened in the past.

 

[estesbob]

Dunno. That’s abiogenesis, not evolution. Different subject with different college courses and different experts.

In other words you don’t have an answer it. So we have endless arguments about how organisms evolve yet we can’t even answer the basic questions of where they came from in the first place.

 

[Farsight001]

In other words you don’t have an answer it. So we have endless arguments about how organisms evolve yet we can’t even answer the basic questions of where they came from in the first place.

No, in other words, its not relevant. I can answer it. I believe that it came from God. However, it is not relevant to whether or not evolution is real. Just like which mine the ore to make the bullet came from is irrelevant to how to fire that bullet from a gun. Evolution remains true (or false), regardless of where the first life form came from.

 

[edwest2]

Everybody already knows you’re not convinced, Ed. Perhaps if you cared to understand evolution properly, instead of rally against it, you might understand. You’re still trying to use the artificial macro-micro distinction, I see, and still denying that macro happens even though I provided an example of it happening in real life. Looking straight at the proof by bouncing a laser off the mirror the astronauts left on the moon doesn’t convince moon landing deniers, either.

Thanks to some posters here, in the present, and in the past, I have been given quite an education of the fine points of the theory. Just the facts and the guesses. I have read some peer-reviewed papers that make unusual leaps of logic, such as, 'since this happened, then this must be the cause." That is dogmatic. And it’s only a guess.

I’m not interested in what anyone thinks of me regarding this subject. I have decided that the fervor over it is not scientific. My analysis is that both now and in the past, on this board, the fervor usually degrades not into a collection of facts but emotional appeals or insinuations. If the facts are right, what does it matter that one-third of Americans reject evolution? I can give, and have given, examples of high-paying jobs where this theory has no application. Why the macro version should matter at all is very puzzling.

Peace,
Ed

 

[estesbob]

No, in other words, its not relevant. I can answer it. I believe that it came from God. However, it is not relevant to whether or not evolution is real. Just like which mine the ore to make the bullet came from is irrelevant to how to fire that bullet from a gun. Evolution remains true (or false), regardless of where the first life form came from.

So you beleive God created these organisms and then just walked away ?

 

[Farsight001]

Thanks to some posters here, in the present, and in the past, I have been given quite an education of the fine points of the theory. Just the facts and the guesses. I have read some peer-reviewed papers that make unusual leaps of logic, such as, 'since this happened, then this must be the cause." That is dogmatic. And it’s only a guess.

Really? You have quite an education? And you got this at what university or college?

If the facts are right, what does it matter that one-third of Americans reject evolution?

Because it holds back education and scientific advancement for the betterment of this country and of the whole world.