Overwhelming evidence for Design?

[prodigalson2011]

I don’t think anyone would class Demski as unintelligent. Well, they shouldn’t. He’s a smart man.

Bradski,

That post was directed at Jason’s remark that “Dembski is a theologian, not a mathematician.”

 

[buffalo]

You mean THIS Dembski ? Hahahahahahaha

The guy who believes in the “Bible Code” ? You guys are funny.

BTW, a Third Grader could refute this :
It took 5 seconds to see the error. (doing facepalm)

10^80, the number of elementary particles in the observable universe.
10^45, the maximum rate per second at which transitions in physical states can occur (i.e., the inverse of the Planck time).
10^25, a billion times longer than the typical estimated age of the universe in seconds.

He stupidly assumes each particle only interacts once. If he had a brain, he would have realized that term should be astronomically higher.

From Wiki :
“In November, 2007, a graduate student named S. A. Smith brought an apparent case of wholesale academic misuse of unlicenced content to public attention. She noticed that a video used by Dembski in his lecture was identical to The Inner Life of the Cell animation created by Harvard University and a company called XVIVO. The audio track giving a scientific explanation was stripped off and the video was used with an alternative narration. The matter was brought to the attention of Harvard and XVIVO. David Bolinsky, creator of the video, wrote that Dembski was warned about using the video without permission.”

In response to the allegations, Dembski has claimed that he downloaded the video from the Internet, and added a voiceover narration that he deemed appropriate for his audience. According to Dembski, the downloaded version omitted the opening credits but contained the closing credits, which were shown to the audience. However, Smith later documented several instances where images from the Harvard/XVIVO animation were apparently removed from his book The Design of Life but the related footnotes and references were not. indicating that Dembski was already aware that permission had been denied for him to use the animation when he delivered his presentation at the University of Oklahoma.

I see. Desperate are we ?

I would like to see your calculation for the UPB.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I see no one can refute anything.

Oh well.

So now all of a sudden credentials ARE important. Virtually EVERY credentialed biologist in the world believes in Evolution, and 85 % of the National Academy of Science, the people who understand it the most, think Evolution reflects reality, and ID is hogwash. THAT is “overwhelming” evidence alone for ID to be false.

1.) Credentials are important if you’re criticizing someone who has more of them in the realm of discussion than you do. i.e. a high school student criticizing a PhD. in his respective field of study is not likely to merit much consideration unless he is a genius savant.

2.) ID does not rule out evolution. ID permits a range of interpretations. The most common ID contention is directed against the sufficient explanatory efficacy of natural selection as the sole mechanism of evolution.

No wonder this board is so pathetic. No one knows a thing about what they are even talking about.

There’s no need to get nasty.

And thanks for the false accusation, you Christian you. Most Christian believers believe in Evolution, including Father Coyne, who, until the Right Wing took over your church, ran the Vatican Observatory. So is HE an atheist ?

Again, ID does not rule out evolution. For that matter, I don’t consider myself a hardline ID supporter but I don’t think Behe and Dembski’s work is entirely without merit. There are some rudimentary principles underlying their work that are worth considering, at least.

Why do I keep getting referred to other people and authors. Can’t anyone actually think for them self over here ?

Nope. We can’t independently invent the maths and sciences like you, who has attained all of his knowledge independent of any education or the research of anyone else.

There’s something screwy here, as Dembski is SO off, and so easily refuted. Maybe someone should check and see of all those degrees he says he has, are actually real.

They are. He obtained his masters’ (and PhD., if I’m not mistaken) from the University of Illinois and then did postdoc work at MIT.

scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/06/28/dishonest-dembskithe-universal-1/

I’m pretty sure they are missing something in their analysis. The U.P.B. is not a stand alone measure for inferring design. W.L. Craig offered the following defense of Dembski:

“If you’re able to formulate probabilities about the origin of any phenomenon and it’s sufficiently improbable and then it conforms to an independently given pattern, then that combination will tip you off that it’s not the result of chance but of design. So for example if Bob got a car for his birthday, and it had a license plate number that read CHT 728, out of all the possible license plate numbers, it’s enormously improbable that he would get that, but that wouldn’t occasion any surprise–that would seem by chance. But suppose Bob was born on August 8, 1978 and the license plate read BOB8878; well then he would be obtuse to say, “Well, there’s nothing unusual about that. Nothing to be explained here.” It’s highly improbable and it conforms to an independently given pattern and that tips you off that this isn’t just the result of chance. So it seems to me that Dembski’s criteria are manageable and quite good.”

He also assumes that a particle is only in one state. That proves he actually knows nothing about the fundamental laws of Physics, as that number is actually infinite.
So much for Dembski.

I have never heard him make that assertion, nor am I sure how it relates to the question.

Ya know, you people makes yourselves look REALLY bad, when you associate yourselves with such charlatans. It makes ya wonder what else is rotten.

Your attitude, for one thing.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You mean THIS Dembski ? Hahahahahahaha

The guy who believes in the “Bible Code” ? You guys are funny.

You mean the same Bible Code that has been peer reviewed and given credence numerous times, even by agnostics? Yeah, that Dembski.

BTW, a Third Grader could refute this :
It took 5 seconds to see the error. (doing facepalm)

10^80, the number of elementary particles in the observable universe.
10^45, the maximum rate per second at which transitions in physical states can occur (i.e., the inverse of the Planck time).
10^25, a billion times longer than the typical estimated age of the universe in seconds.

He stupidly assumes each particle only interacts once. If he had a brain, he would have realized that term should be astronomically higher.

For someone who talks about other people not knowing what they’re talking about, your complete logical incoherence here is astounding.

Nowhere in that equation is it assumed that each particle only interacts once. In fact, if that were the conclusion, the equation would be a waste of time. If we assumed that to be the case, we would know automatically that the number of single particle events was no more than half that of the number of particles, or (10^80/2).

If each particle interacts only once, and it must obviously interact with at least one other particle at a time, the number of interactions could not possibly be greater than the number of particles. So how do you move from one event for each of 10^80 particles to 10^150 total events?

 

[Farsight001]

1.) Credentials are important if you’re criticizing someone who has more of them in the realm of discussion than you do. i.e. a high school student criticizing a PhD. in his respective field of study is not likely to merit much consideration unless he is a genius savant.

And since almost no creationists or ID advocates have credentials in the respective field of study, credentials remain important.

2.) ID does not rule out evolution. ID permits a range of interpretations. The most common ID contention is directed against the sufficient explanatory efficacy of natural selection as the sole mechanism of evolution.

Yes, in fact, it does rule out evolution, by definition. The official ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, specifically denies evolution exists.

The idea you are espousing is closer to theistic evolution, which is firmly rejected by ID advocates.

There are some rudimentary principles underlying their work that are worth considering, at least.

The rudimentary principles underlying their “work” were posited and disproved by scientists before the two of them were out of their diapers.

They are. He obtained his masters’ (and PhD., if I’m not mistaken) from the University of Illinois and then did postdoc work at MIT.

In the field of biochemistry, which is, despite the appearance of the name, a field of chemistry, not biology. I have just as much an education in biology as he does, and I’m studying geology.

I’m pretty sure they are missing something in their analysis. The U.P.B. is not a stand alone measure for inferring design. W.L. Craig offered the following defense of Dembski:

“If you’re able to formulate probabilities about the origin of any phenomenon and it’s sufficiently improbable and then it conforms to an independently given pattern, then that combination will tip you off that it’s not the result of chance but of design. So for example if Bob got a car for his birthday, and it had a license plate number that read CHT 728, out of all the possible license plate numbers, it’s enormously improbable that he would get that, but that wouldn’t occasion any surprise–that would seem by chance. But suppose Bob was born on August 8, 1978 and the license plate read BOB8878; well then he would be obtuse to say, “Well, there’s nothing unusual about that. Nothing to be explained here.” It’s highly improbable and it conforms to an independently given pattern and that tips you off that this isn’t just the result of chance. So it seems to me that Dembski’s criteria are manageable and quite good.”

The defense offered is horribly faulty because by picking out one license plate, it narrows things down to one incident, when in reality, there have been trillions. The proper analogy would be if Bob go a trillion randomly generated license plates and several of them said BOB8878. Then no one would be surprised at all because such a combination would be expected after so many computations.

 

[Farsight001]

You mean the same Bible Code that has been peer reviewed and given credence numerous times, even by agnostics? Yeah, that Dembski.

You two must be talking about two different bible codes then, because Dembski’s has not been properly peer reviewed nor given credence numerous times.

For someone who talks about other people not knowing what they’re talking about, your complete logical incoherence here is astounding.

He didn’t say anything logically incoherent. He just went over your head by not explaining clearly enough. I explained the issue in my post above.

 

[prodigalson2011]

And since almost no creationists or ID advocates have credentials in the respective field of study, credentials remain important.

Jason was criticizing Dembski’s math. Dembski is a PhD. mathematician.

Yes, in fact, it does rule out evolution, by definition. The official ID textbook, Of Pandas and People, specifically denies evolution exists.

That book is not the final word of ID theory. For your consideration:

“Behe’s central assertion regarding Darwinian evolution is that it exists, but that it is better at disturbing existing metabolic pathways (referred to as ‘molecular machinery’) than making new ones, and therefore plays only a limited role in the development and diversification of life on Earth.”

And Dembski, in his own words:

“Because Giberson and Collins assert that natural selection is such a powerful mechanism for driving evolution–and one that admits no reasoned dissent–it’s worth recounting here briefly why the intelligent design community is so skeptical of it. It’s not, as theistic evolutionists often suggest, that we have a desperate need to shore up faith and morality and are using ID as our instrument of choice to accomplish that end. Rather, it’s that natural selection is, in essence, a trial and error tinkering mechanism for which all evidence suggests that its power is quite limited.”

Now, I’m sure we’d all agree that Behe and Dembski are probably the 2 leading voices of the ID movement today. The above clearly shows that their contention is not with the idea of evolution in as much as it entails the derivation of one life form from another, but rather with the mechanism of natural selection as a plausible vehicle for the range of diversity it is asserted to produce.

The idea you are espousing is closer to theistic evolution, which is firmly rejected by ID advocates.

The major difference between theistic evolutionists and ID’ers is the same issue I mentioned above: natural selection. Theistic evolutionists believe that natural selection sufficiently explains the evolutionary process whereas ID’ers believe that there are guiding principles of development behind the process.

The rudimentary principles underlying their “work” were posited and disproved by scientists before the two of them were out of their diapers.

That sounds like a pretty blind assertion.

In the field of biochemistry, which is, despite the appearance of the name, a field of chemistry, not biology. I have just as much an education in biology as he does, and I’m studying geology.

If you’re going to critique my posts, at least keep up with the conversation. I’m talking about Dembski, not Behe. Dembski is not a biochemist, he is a mathematician. The work in question is not about biology, it is about statistics and probability.

The defense offered is horribly faulty because by picking out one license plate, it narrows things down to one incident, when in reality, there have been trillions. The proper analogy would be if Bob go a trillion randomly generated license plates and several of them said BOB8878. Then no one would be surprised at all because such a combination would be expected after so many computations.

I should have offered the context for this defense. This particular example was meant as an analog for the fine-tuning argument. The big bang has not happened trillions of times; only once.

So, granted, this example doesn’t correspond particularly well to biology. My main point in offering it was to give a simple example of the necessity of other criteria in implementing Dembski’s U.P.B.

In the case of abiogenesis, which has been the focal point of my discussion as opposed to evolution, it would be the necessity of achieving numerous successful results successively (something vaguely like rolling a dice and getting “6” 100 times in a row; I don’t recall the relevant conditions and equations well enough to provide an exact analogy). This kind of criteria obviously greatly multiplies the magnitude of improbability.

 

[prodigalson2011]

You two must be talking about two different bible codes then, because Dembski’s has not been properly peer reviewed nor given credence numerous times.

Dembski does not have his own version of the Bible Code, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

While all of the iterations, developments and independent verions of “Bible Codes” have not been subject to the same amount of rigorous study:

*Rips and Witztum designed computer software for the ELS technique and subsequently found many examples. About 1985, they decided to carry out a formal test, and the “Great rabbis experiment” was born. This experiment tested the hypothesis that ELS’s of the names of famous rabbinic personalities and their respective birth and death dates form a more compact arrangement than could be explained by chance. Their definition of “compact” was complex but, roughly, two ELSs were compactly arranged if they can be displayed together in a small window. When Rips et al. carried out the experiment, the data was measured and found to be statistically significant, supporting their hypothesis.

The “great rabbis experiment” went through several iterations, and was eventually published in 1994, in the peer-reviewed journal Statistical Science. Prior to publication, the journal’s editor, Robert Kass, subjected the paper to three successive peer reviews by the journal’s referees, who according to Kass were “baffled”. Though still skeptical,[7] none of the reviewers had found any flaws. Understanding that the paper was certain to generate controversy, it was presented to readers in the context of a “challenging puzzle.”*

He didn’t say anything logically incoherent. He just went over your head by not explaining clearly enough. I explained the issue in my post above.

No. You didn’t address this issue anywhere in that post. Jason said that Dembski’s universal probability bound assumes that “every particle in the universe only interacts once.” It is mathematically impossible to arrive at Dembski’s 10^150 particle events from the 10^80 existing particles posited in the equation if they are each assumed to be responsible for only one particle event… If you care to explain otherwise, I’m all ears.

 

[Bradski]

ID’ers believe that there are guiding principles of development behind the process.

And there’s the problem in a nutshell. ID starts with the answer in the first instance. It then goes looking for evidence that solves the problem in a way which will result in that answer. Do I really need to explain how wrong that is? It’s like a judge deciding that a man is guilty before the case starts and then only accepting evidence that would prove that to be the case.

They thought it might have been a good idea calling it ID instead of Creationism, but the problem still stands. On one hand we have a scientific community saying: Lets’s go where the evidence takes us. Then we have Demski and Behe et al saying: Forget that, boys. We already know where we’re going. Let’s look for evidence to confirm it!

 

[Peter_Plato]

And there’s the problem in a nutshell. ID starts with the answer in the first instance. It then goes looking for evidence that solves the problem in a way which will result in that answer. Do I really need to explain how wrong that is? It’s like a judge deciding that a man is guilty before the case starts and then only accepting evidence that would prove that to be the case.

They thought it might have been a good idea calling it ID instead of Creationism, but the problem still stands. On one hand we have a scientific community saying: Lets’s go where the evidence takes us. Then we have Demski and Behe et al saying: Forget that, boys. We already know where we’re going. Let’s look for evidence to confirm it!

Considering that everyone else seems to be simply ignoring the possibility of design what harm could it do to the scientific establishment to see where the ID angle leads? Your position is like saying to a forensic pathologist, “Why are you presuming someone might have done the crime? You are just looking for evidence to confirm your presumption. Let’s just chalk it up to natural causes because we know it’s always natural causes.”

Meyer presents a good case for ID. He has shown that there is warrant in looking for evidence for design and does not back away from scientific scrutiny of the evidence. Why dismiss the idea even before it has the opportunity to explore the evidence?
Your position shows bias against the possibility rather than the open mindedness requisite for good science.

 

[Farsight001]

Jason was criticizing Dembski’s math. Dembski is a PhD. mathematician.

Exactly. PhD mathemetician. Not a biologist. His math was sound. His application of it to biological principles is what is faulty.

That book is not the final word of ID theory. For your consideration:

According to ID advocates, INCLUDING Behe, it pretty much is.

“Behe’s central assertion regarding Darwinian evolution is that it exists, but that it is better at disturbing existing metabolic pathways (referred to as ‘molecular machinery’) than making new ones, and therefore plays only a limited role in the development and diversification of life on Earth.”

Ok. Still not ID.

And Dembski, in his own words:

You have clearly misunderstood this quote because Dembski is specifically denying evolution.

Now, I’m sure we’d all agree that Behe and Dembski are probably the 2 leading voices of the ID movement today.

No, we would not agree.

The major difference between theistic evolutionists and ID’ers is the same issue I mentioned above: natural selection. Theistic evolutionists believe that natural selection sufficiently explains the evolutionary process whereas ID’ers believe that there are guiding principles of development behind the process.

Again, this is simply incorrect.

That sounds like a pretty blind assertion.

Which it would - to those who are unlearned on the issue.

If you’re going to critique my posts, at least keep up with the conversation. I’m talking about Dembski, not Behe. Dembski is not a biochemist, he is a mathematician. The work in question is not about biology, it is about statistics and probability.

Ok. He’s a mathematician, not a biologist. Still not an expert. And no, it is not simply about statistics and probability, which, while they use math,a re still a different subject from mathematics with different degrees associated with them.

I should have offered the context for this defense. This particular example was meant as an analog for the fine-tuning argument. The big bang has not happened trillions of times; only once.

Only as far as we know. Many believe, though there is of yet no proof, that it is a big bounce, not a big bang.

So, granted, this example doesn’t correspond particularly well to biology. My main point in offering it was to give a simple example of the necessity of other criteria in implementing Dembski’s U.P.B.

I know this, and as per my explanation above, it is a faulty analog.

In the case of abiogenesis, which has been the focal point of my discussion as opposed to evolution, it would be the necessity of achieving numerous successful results successively (something vaguely like rolling a dice and getting “6” 100 times in a row; I don’t recall the relevant conditions and equations well enough to provide an exact analogy). This kind of criteria obviously greatly multiplies the magnitude of improbability.

If you rolled the dice only once, that outcome would be extremely surprising. However, and once again, as I already explained, the dice is not rolled once. It is rolled trillions of times. After that many rolls, 6 100’s in a row is completely mundane

Dembski does not have his own version of the Bible Code, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.

While all of the iterations, developments and independent verions of “Bible Codes” have not been subject to the same amount of rigorous study:

*Rips and Witztum designed computer software for the ELS technique and subsequently found many examples. About 1985, they decided to carry out a formal test, and the “Great rabbis experiment” was born. This experiment tested the hypothesis that ELS’s of the names of famous rabbinic personalities and their respective birth and death dates form a more compact arrangement than could be explained by chance. Their definition of “compact” was complex but, roughly, two ELSs were compactly arranged if they can be displayed together in a small window. When Rips et al. carried out the experiment, the data was measured and found to be statistically significant, supporting their hypothesis.

The “great rabbis experiment” went through several iterations, and was eventually published in 1994, in the peer-reviewed journal Statistical Science. Prior to publication, the journal’s editor, Robert Kass, subjected the paper to three successive peer reviews by the journal’s referees, who according to Kass were “baffled”. Though still skeptical,[7] none of the reviewers had found any flaws. Understanding that the paper was certain to generate controversy, it was presented to readers in the context of a “challenging puzzle.”*You have failed to cite your source. Not only does that make it impossible for me to check for myself, but it’s also plagiarism.

No. You didn’t address this issue anywhere in that post. Jason said that Dembski’s universal probability bound assumes that “every particle in the universe only interacts once.” It is mathematically impossible to arrive at Dembski’s 10^150 particle events from the 10^80 existing particles posited in the equation if they are each assumed to be responsible for only one particle event… If you care to explain otherwise, I’m all ears.

I did address it by pointing out that there is not a single computation, but trillions. Dembski’s 10^150 number comes from the assumption of one computation. That is why it is faulty.

 

[Bradski]

Considering that everyone else seems to be simply ignoring the possibility of design what harm could it do to the scientific establishment to see where the ID angle leads?

Because science doesn’t work like that. Let’s take the Big Bang as an example. Someone didn’t wake up one morning and say: ‘Hey, maybe the Universe started with a big bang 15 billion years ago. Let’s see if we can find some evidence for that’.

What happens is that people make observations and note facts about the state of the system they are observing. They then look for a natural explanation for that and develop a theory that ties in the known facts with the proposed explanation. ID works from back to front. They state quite blatantly from the outset that the Universe was created by supernatural means and then go looking for evidence that might prove it.

And don’t get dragged into an argument that says ‘It’s an Intelligent Designer – it’s not necessarily God’. That’s high grade BS and there’s enough documentary evidence from the ID guys themselves which shows that.

Your position is like saying to a forensic pathologist, “Why are you presuming someone might have done the crime? You are just looking for evidence to confirm your presumption. Let’s just chalk it up to natural causes because we know it’s always natural causes.”

But a forensic pathologist doesn’t presume that someone has committed a crime. His opinion on whether it was natural death or criminal act is determined by the evidence and where it leads. He most definitely doesn’t start with an answer, then go looking for evidence to confirm it.

Imagine in a court of law the pathologist saying: ‘I assumed the deceased had been murdered and this is the evidence I found which would lead to that conclusion’. His evidence would be thrown out and him with it. But this is comparable to what ID does. They’ve already made their minds up before they get to the scene. They know who did it before they’ve even seen the body. They spend their time looking for clues which will bolster their preconceived ideas.

It’s not even bad science.

 

[tonyrey]

Because science doesn’t work like that. Let’s take the Big Bang as an example. Someone didn’t wake up one morning and say: ‘Hey, maybe the Universe started with a big bang 15 billion years ago. Let’s see if we can find some evidence for that’.

What happens is that people make observations and note facts about the state of the system they are observing. They then look for a natural explanation for that and develop a theory that ties in the known facts with the proposed explanation. ID works from back to front. They state quite blatantly from the outset that the Universe was created by supernatural means and then go looking for evidence that might prove it.

And don’t get dragged into an argument that says ‘It’s an Intelligent Designer – it’s not necessarily God’. That’s high grade BS and there’s enough documentary evidence from the ID guys themselves which shows that.

But a forensic pathologist doesn’t presume that someone has committed a crime. His opinion on whether it was natural death or criminal act is determined by the evidence and where it leads. He most definitely doesn’t start with an answer, then go looking for evidence to confirm it.

Imagine in a court of law the pathologist saying: ‘I assumed the deceased had been murdered and this is the evidence I found which would lead to that conclusion’. His evidence would be thrown out and him with it. But this is comparable to what ID does. They’ve already made their minds up before they get to the scene. They know who did it before they’ve even seen the body. They spend their time looking for clues which will bolster their preconceived ideas.

It’s not even bad science.

Materialism/naturalism is the classic example of looking for clues to bolster one’s preconceived ideas. It is the unverifiable and umsubstantiated assumption that everything without exception has a natural cause. If materialists were really consistent they would apply their dogma to their own mental activity and realise none of their conclusions are reliable because they supposedly have no control whatsoever over their mental activity. According to their scheme of things they are just impotent cogs in an immense machine! There is precisely nothing to distinguish a person from a thing…

 

[tonyrey]

Considering that everyone else seems to be simply ignoring the possibility of design what harm could it do to the scientific establishment to see where the ID angle leads? Your position is like saying to a forensic pathologist, “Why are you presuming someone might have done the crime? You are just looking for evidence to confirm your presumption. Let’s just chalk it up to natural causes because we know it’s always natural causes.”

Meyer presents a good case for ID. He has shown that there is warrant in looking for evidence for design and does not back away from scientific scrutiny of the evidence. Why dismiss the idea even before it has the opportunity to explore the evidence?
Your position shows bias against the possibility rather than the open mindedness requisite for good science.

Precisely! Materialists have a one track mind!

 

[prodigalson2011]

Exactly. PhD mathemetician. Not a biologist. His math was sound. His application of it to biological principles is what is faulty.

You say, “Exactly,” as if that’s what you meant all along. Now I would love to hear you explain exactly how his application of probability to biological principles is faulty.

According to ID advocates, INCLUDING Behe, it pretty much is.

No, it’s not.

Ok. Still not ID.

Behe is one of the senior fellows at the Discovery Institute, the leading ID organization, and his concept of “irreducible complexity,” is one of the cornerstones of ID theory. I think the people who have developed and put forth the theory get to determine what ID entails. I’ll take their word on what they believe over yours. Sorry.

You have clearly misunderstood this quote because Dembski is specifically denying evolution.

No, he is not. He is expressing extreme skepticism of natural selection. Natural selection is not the only proposed mechanism of evolution.

No, we would not agree.

Well, then you’re living in a fantasy world. Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” and Dembski’s “The Design Inference” are the two most well known works of the ID movement.

Again, this is simply incorrect.

Another assertion with no backing. I seriously doubt your familiarity with the work of ID theorists; it seems like all you know about it is what the scientific mainstream says.

But don’t take my word for it:

ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1153

Which it would - to those who are unlearned on the issue.

Your repeated insubstantial remarks absent of any further explanation make me question just how learned you are on the issue. If I’m mistaken, why not take a minute to “enlighten me,” instead of just telling me I’m ignorant. This kind of dialogue is both condescending and fruitless. And, honestly, to me, it makes it look like you’re pretending to know a lot of things you don’t.

Ok. He’s a mathematician, not a biologist. Still not an expert. And no, it is not simply about statistics and probability, which, while they use math,a re still a different subject from mathematics with different degrees associated with them.

Again, if you had kept up with the entire conversation you would know that he also holds a master’s in statistics.

Only as far as we know. Many believe, though there is of yet no proof, that it is a big bounce, not a big bang.

Everything we know is “only as far as we know.” That’s a very silly position to take.

As for the big bounce, oscillating models of the universe fail on the basis of the known laws of physics; it requires one to arbitrarily dismiss the law of entropy:

*Against the languor of the Independence Day weekend, a tiny bit of media attention has managed to focus itself on a new paper by Martin Bojowald. (The paper doesn’t seem to be on the arxiv yet, but is apparently closely related to this one.) It’s about the sexy topic of “What happened before the Big Bang?” Bojowald uses some ideas from loop quantum gravity to try to resolve the initial singularity and follow the quantum state of the universe past the Bang back into a pre-existing universe.

You already know what I think about such ideas, but let me just focus in on one big problem with all such approaches (which I’ve already alluded to in a comment at Bad Astronomy, although I kind of garbled it). If you try to invent a cosmology in which you straightforwardly replace the singular Big Bang by a smooth Big Bounce continuation into a previous spacetime, you have one of two choices: either the entropy continues to decrease as we travel backwards in time through the Bang, or it changes direction and begins to increase. Sadly, neither makes any sense.* (blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/02/against-bounces/)

I know this, and as per my explanation above, it is a faulty analog.

Until there is a good reason to believe in the “Big Bounce”, which there is not, nor do any appear to be forthcoming, it is a perfectly suitable analog. I can make up any hypothetical scenario to contradict a known fact, but if the evidence doesn’t weigh in favor of my hypothesis, there’s no point in giving it prime consideration. That’s just being arbitrary and obfuscatory.

If you rolled the dice only once, that outcome would be extremely surprising. However, and once again, as I already explained, the dice is not rolled once. It is rolled trillions of times. After that many rolls, 6 100’s in a row is completely mundane

As I pointed out, the 100 6’s was not meant to be a real analog. The probability is much lower than that. Even still, I’m not so sure 100 6’s in a row would be so mundane. Are you a statistician?

You have failed to cite your source. Not only does that make it impossible for me to check for myself, but it’s also plagiarism.

Oh, come off it. Plagiarism implies I was trying to pass it off as my own, which I was clearly not. What is it with the inflammatory language here?

But whatever. Go to Wikipedia and look up “Bible Code”. It’s all there.

 

[prodigalson2011]

I did address it by pointing out that there is not a single computation, but trillions. Dembski’s 10^150 number comes from the assumption of one computation. That is why it is faulty.

What do you mean, “computation?” I don’t think you really understand what Dembski’s U.P.B. is. You have illustrated no understanding of the concepts discussed here, so unless you can explain your objections, you can’t honestly expect me to take them seriously. Dembski’s U.P.B. is based on three things: the total number of particles in the universe, the maximum rate at which changes in physical structures can occur, and an extremely long amount of permitted time (a billion times longer than the age of the universe.)

So again, what do you mean that this number comes from “the assumption of one computation?” I’ve never even heard that come from any of his professional critics.

Again, I don’t blindly support all of Dembski’s ideas, and there may well be problems with his U.P.B. But all I’ve seen here is a lot of hand waving dismissal, and I don’t think that’s fair to Dembski or Behe.

 

[buffalo]

And there’s the problem in a nutshell. ID starts with the answer in the first instance. It then goes looking for evidence that solves the problem in a way which will result in that answer. Do I really need to explain how wrong that is? It’s like a judge deciding that a man is guilty before the case starts and then only accepting evidence that would prove that to be the case.

They thought it might have been a good idea calling it ID instead of Creationism, but the problem still stands. On one hand we have a scientific community saying: Lets’s go where the evidence takes us. Then we have Demski and Behe et al saying: Forget that, boys. We already know where we’re going. Let’s look for evidence to confirm it!

I know of a few ex-atheists who followed the scientific evidence where it led.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But a forensic pathologist doesn’t presume that someone has committed a crime. His opinion on whether it was natural death or criminal act is determined by the evidence and where it leads. He most definitely doesn’t start with an answer, then go looking for evidence to confirm it.

The forensic pathologist at least keeps an open mind as to what the evidence shows. The possibility that “someone did it” is kept open.

My point is that you are disqualifying the possibility of a designer by presumption.

Meyer does not assume a designer. He looks at the code found in DNA, demonstrates that the code does not have a biochemical origin because there is no molecular reason for how the nucleotide bases line up in the complex order they do along the spine of the DNA molecule, then moves to intelligent design as an explanation because the lack of a biochemical explanation points towards intelligence as a possibility. That is not assuming ID.
Read Signature in the Cell.

On the other hand, you merely dismiss the possibility of intelligence as the origin of the complex code found in cells as an a priori assumption. It is indeed as if you are telling the forensic pathologist that he should not look in the direction of someone committing the act because you assume it is a non-starter. By all means let’s follow the evidence where it leads, which means not disqualifying possible avenues before they are reasonably explored.

 

[Farsight001]

You say, “Exactly,” as if that’s what you meant all along. Now I would love to hear you explain exactly how his application of probability to biological principles is faulty.

I already explained this multiple times. I’m not going to do it again. If you can’t read what I typed, then you really shouldn’t be discussing the issue.

No, it’s not.

What an eloquent, well thought out response to the storerooms of evidence to the contrary.

Behe is one of the senior fellows at the Discovery Institute, the leading ID organization, and his concept of “irreducible complexity,” is one of the cornerstones of ID theory. I think the people who have developed and put forth the theory get to determine what ID entails. I’ll take their word on what they believe over yours. Sorry.

If you want to take their word on what they believe over mine, then take their word as found in private documents like the Wedge Strategy and other things that have been leaked in which they, including Behe, openly and freely admit to each other that ID literally is Creationism with a new name.

No, he is not. He is expressing extreme skepticism of natural selection. Natural selection is not the only proposed mechanism of evolution.

Natural selection is not the only proposed mechanism of evolution, but it is a crucial one without which evolution cannot happen, so denial of it is denial of evolution by default.

Well, then you’re living in a fantasy world. Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” and Dembski’s “The Design Inference” are the two most well known works of the ID movement.

And? Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home might be the most well known Catholic testimony, but it’s still the pope who leads. It boggles my mind how you think the popularity of their book is a determining factor in their authority.

Another assertion with no backing. I seriously doubt your familiarity with the work of ID theorists; it seems like all you know about it is what the scientific mainstream says.

But don’t take my word for it:

ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1153

When are you going to realize that the ID advocates are lying bleepedy bleeps? Every word out of their mouth is deception. They are literally about as trustworthy as Jack Chick, and you have clearly been duped, hook, line, and sinker. If you seriously doubt my familiarity with the work of ID theorists, that is your prerogative, but I would still be willing to bet a ridiculous amount of money that I have read more of their claims from their mouth than you have evolution claims from the mouths of biologists.

Your repeated insubstantial remarks absent of any further explanation make me question just how learned you are on the issue. If I’m mistaken, why not take a minute to “enlighten me,” instead of just telling me I’m ignorant. This kind of dialogue is both condescending and fruitless. And, honestly, to me, it makes it look like you’re pretending to know a lot of things you don’t.

I have no need to enlighten you. I have come across people like you a thousand times before. No matter what I say, no matter what documents I produce, no matter if I give you the words of the leading ID advocates themselves freely, happily admitting that ID IS creationism in disguise, you will not change your mind. I am not here for you. I am here for the edification of the lurkers that you might otherwise be misleading. If they want an explanation, I will give it to them, not to one who would refuse to listen no matter what I do.

Again, if you had kept up with the entire conversation you would know that he also holds a master’s in statistics.

K. Still doesn’t change his faulty premise, which is not a matter of statistics or mathematics.

As for the big bounce, oscillating models of the universe fail on the basis of the known laws of physics; it requires one to arbitrarily dismiss the law of entropy:

Well, considering that the laws of physics as we know them break down the closer we get to the singularity before the big bang, I kind of find the fact that it would conflict with the laws of physics rather irrelevant. But I think we’re getting off topic here.

As I pointed out, the 100 6’s was not meant to be a real analog. The probability is much lower than that. Even still, I’m not so sure 100 6’s in a row would be so mundane. Are you a statistician?

My use of trillion was not meant to be a real analog either. The amount of instances and the amount of locations on which this miniscule chance happening might “randomly” occur is astronomically larger than that. This is, again, Dembski’s problem - his beginning point (premise) is based on one point in space at one point in time, not every point in space in which there is useful matter at every point in time.

Oh, come off it. Plagiarism implies I was trying to pass it off as my own, which I was clearly not. What is it with the inflammatory language here?

Plagairism implies nothing of the sort. You quote from somewhere else and you fail to attribute your source, it’s plagiarism. though I will concede that it’s not if the source declares it ok to do, which wikipedia does, and I’m guessing now that’s where you got it. In which case, no thank you. I’ll stick with real scholarship.

 

[Farsight001]

The forensic pathologist at least keeps an open mind as to what the evidence shows. The possibility that “someone did it” is kept open.

My point is that you are disqualifying the possibility of a designer by presumption.

The forensic pathologist keeps an open mind to the possibility that someone did it only until the evidence suggests otherwise. Biologists kept an open mind to design for centuries. In fact, most of them believed in specific creation, until the evidence pointed elsewhere. And now that the evidence points to evolution, there is no reason to keep other, clearly false, ideas open.

Meyer does not assume a designer. He looks at the code found in DNA, demonstrates that the code does not have a biochemical origin because there is no molecular reason for how the nucleotide bases line up in the complex order they do along the spine of the DNA molecule, then moves to intelligent design as an explanation because the lack of a biochemical explanation points towards intelligence as a possibility. That is not assuming ID.

But it is a paulty amount of evidence on which to base a conclusion. It would be like a forensic pathologist studying a deceased person’s fingernail, and, finding no evidence of foul play only on it, concluding that it was a natural death.