Penn & Teller Bullshit! (Intelligent Design)

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Post by Diogenes »

mvscal wrote:The central idea behind the concept of ID is that life is too complex to have occured without the agency of an "Intelligent Design." Needless to say, an "Intelligent Design" presupposes an "Intelligent Designer."

The problem being that the existence of this Intelligent Designer is impossible due to the contraints against complexity imposed by this belief structure.
A) ID doesn't say that it is impossible, mearly unlikely.

B)There are no constraints, the nature of the designer isn't knowable (at this time) based on observable phenomena.

If you are just a gate in the IC 88 postulated earlier, the fact that neither the manufacturer of said chip or the software designer are known to you doesn't mean they don't exist.
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Post by Felix »

Diogenes wrote:
There are no constraints, the nature of the designer isn't knowable (at this time) based on observable phenomena.
so in other words, ID predicts that anything is possible.....

here's a clue bud, a "science" that predicts anything predicts nothing......
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Post by Diogenes »

Felix wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
There are no constraints, the nature of the designer isn't knowable (at this time) based on observable phenomena.
so in other words, ID predicts that anything is possible.....
No, it doesn't.
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Post by Mike the Lab Rat »

Let's do this the RIGHT way:

From the first link...
Whitesides outlined the considerable challenges to be overcome if questions about the origins of life are to be answered. While he said that he believes the field is on the verge of a major breakthrough, he said the pieces known today don't add up to a coherent picture. There are far too many variables, Whitesides said, to be able to apply research like Szostak's to the early Earth and to extend that to other planets, both in our own solar system and those being found orbiting other stars.

Still, he said, now is a good time for such an initiative to begin work. Analytic methods have been greatly sped up by modern technology, and knowledge has advanced in related subjects such as metabolism and understanding the conditions on the early Earth.

Despite the knowledge accumulating as chemists work from the molecule up and as biologists work from the organism down, the central question of how life first arose is not going to yield its secrets easily, Whitesides said.

The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order. Finding the answer will take input from a wide variety of fields.
Diogenes wrote:In other words: they haven't demonstrated shit yet, and the entire theory defies entropy.
Actually, the HAVE demonstrated that many of the hypotheses being tested by Stoszak ARE supported. His work seems to be chugging along quite nicely, according to this article from "Discover" magazine. No, he doesn't have life yet, but at least he's moving forward. Hell, Whitesides made the point (in the very quote above) of saying that although they don't have all the answers yet, that now is a good time to start looking, especially with how science in other supporting fields is advancing.

Trying to claim that he hasn't created life fast enough for your tastes does NOT disprove Szostak's hypotheses, nor does it support ID.

Hell, it took YEARS for Mendel screwing around with peas before he came up with his (imperfect) Laws, and even after his groundbreaking work, he still had no flipping idea WHAT "genes" really were. It took almost another century before we got the structure of DNA. It took yet another almost 50 years for the human genome to be mapped. It'll take more years to identify all the human genes' functions. But the work IS happening.

And take Darwin. He had no clue about what caused the variations within species. Mendel's work came after "Origins," and even then, most folks -including Darwin- didn't understand Mendel's work or its significance. But, by golly, it turned out that genetics was critical to explaining evolution, so as genetics research marched forward, the long-dead Darwin got a ton of support for his theories.

Next - Szostak's work does not "defy entropy" in the "it breaks the laws of physics" sense. I know you're trying to pull the usual creationist/ID horsecrap of trying to claim that abiogenesis and/or evolution violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, but all you're showing is your ignorance of physics. In a closed system, the total entropy must increase. In an open system, entropy sure as hell CAN decrease as long as energy is put in. The total universe is a closed system and the entropy is increasing. The planet Earth, OTOH, is very much an open system, with energy being input from the Sun.

Additionally, when creationists/ID folk try to pull the "improbable" argument with regards to molecular biology, they show their glaring ignorance of chemistry and biochemistry. When some molecules bond (especially if energy is put in from a source like a sun, electromagnetic storms, radiation, etc.), they can assume a conformational structure that makes further molecular bonding much more likely. This is called cooperativity, and it occurs all the frigging time. So, you could have, over billions of years, with the right chemicals and all the solar energy, a definite possibility of molecules beginning to aggregate and bond, leading to more likely bonding, and so on. Absolutely NO need to resort to some mysterious "intelligent designer" to explain it. Szostak's lab is testing out these ideas with really primitive (by future standards)equipment...and getting places.


Your other quoted text:
Application of the principles of in vitro selection and directed evolution to peptides and proteins is a powerful tool for investigating protein function and structure and for obtaining insight into the pathways by which enzymes evolve in nature.
Diogenes wrote:...directed evolution?

Not quite the gospel you have been preaching.
Really? Read the frigging quote, you moron.

They are talking about FUTURE APPLICATIONS...as in, HOW THIS PROCESS CAN BE USED IN THE FUTURE TO MAKE PRODUCTS. In your zeal to misquote and mischaracterize what the researchers said (hey, you must have learned that from Dembski...), you kind of missed the fact that they were discussing potential future uses for their findings. As cool as it would be for Harvard's labs to discover the origins of life, they probably would find it infinitely cooler to turn the discoveries they made along the way into cold, hard cash. And THAT is what they are also hoping for.
Diogenes wrote:Another swing and miss.
Pretty much sums up your whole spiel... time and time again.
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Post by Diogenes »

Mike the Lab Rat wrote:Let's do this the RIGHT way:

From the first link...
Whitesides outlined the considerable challenges to be overcome if questions about the origins of life are to be answered. While he said that he believes the field is on the verge of a major breakthrough, he said the pieces known today don't add up to a coherent picture. There are far too many variables, Whitesides said, to be able to apply research like Szostak's to the early Earth and to extend that to other planets, both in our own solar system and those being found orbiting other stars.

Still, he said, now is a good time for such an initiative to begin work. Analytic methods have been greatly sped up by modern technology, and knowledge has advanced in related subjects such as metabolism and understanding the conditions on the early Earth.

Despite the knowledge accumulating as chemists work from the molecule up and as biologists work from the organism down, the central question of how life first arose is not going to yield its secrets easily, Whitesides said.

The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order. Finding the answer will take input from a wide variety of fields.
Diogenes wrote:In other words: they haven't demonstrated shit yet, and the entire theory defies entropy.
Actually, the HAVE demonstrated that many of the hypotheses being tested by Stoszak ARE supported. His work seems to be chugging along quite nicely, according to this article from "Discover" magazine. No, he doesn't have life yet, but at least he's moving forward. Hell, Whitesides made the point (in the very quote above) of saying that although they don't have all the answers yet, that now is a good time to start looking, especially with how science in other supporting fields is advancing.

Trying to claim that he hasn't created life fast enough for your tastes does NOT disprove Szostak's hypotheses, nor does it support ID.
At this point it neither proves or disproves anything.

As far as your (typical and tedious) misrepresentations of the nature of entropy, you obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Just parroting talking points from your fundamentalist web sites.

The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order.
Funny he doesn't mention how entropy doesn't exist in open systems. Maybe he actually knows physics.
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Post by Diogenes »

They are talking about FUTURE APPLICATIONS...as in, HOW THIS PROCESS CAN BE USED IN THE FUTURE TO MAKE PRODUCTS. In your zeal to misquote and mischaracterize what the researchers said (hey, you must have learned that from Dembski...), you kind of missed the fact that they were discussing potential future uses for their findings. As cool as it would be for Harvard's labs to discover the origins of life, they probably would find it infinitely cooler to turn the discoveries they made along the way into cold, hard cash. And THAT is what they are also hoping for.
All your ad hominems and mischaracterizations (not like you have anything else to work with ) aside, this neither proves undirected random speciation, spontaneous biogenesis, or disproves ID.

But you obviously like to type...
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Diogenes wrote:
The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order.
Untrue. Assuming the universe started with a big bang singularity, the universe as a whole could be seen to be going from order to chaos (ie. a singularity to diversity). However, billions of places in the universe have also spent billions of years going from chaos to order as well (i.e. stars, galaxies, planets forming).

"The way of the universe going from order to chaose" is simply an oversimplification.
Last edited by Voice of Reason on Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Diogenes wrote:As far as your (typical and tedious) misrepresentations of the nature of entropy, you obviously don't know what the hell you are talking about. Just parroting talking points from your fundamentalist web sites.
Really? Disprove it.

And by the way, numbnut, I didn't "parrot" anything - I teach chemistry and biochemistry in my AP Biology course, and one of the concepts that students have to grasp is the difference between open and closed systems. Too bad your substandard education managed to leave out a key part of thermodynamics. The Earth is an open system because energy is constantly being added from an outside source. Simple junior high science. I guess we can figure out when you flunked out...
The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order.
Diogenes wrote:Funny he doesn't mention how entropy doesn't exist in open systems. Maybe he actually knows physics.
Actually, HE didn't provide a direct quote. If you look at the article, you can see that the statement is the author's interpretation/paraphrasing of what was said. I'm guessing that the author misquoted or misinterpreted what was actually said and that the researcher didn't find that specific paraphrasing (if he even saw it prior to printing) egregiously and glaringly off-base to demand a retraction or edit. Damned shame, since as written, it's wrong. The "universe" did not go from chaos to order when life appeared. The entropy in a specific area decreased, while the total order of the entire universe DID increase.

And by the way...I absolutely guarantee that I know and understand a hell of a lot more physics and chemistry than YOU do. The fact that you didn't know anything about open and closed systems is laughable. Nice job in keeping your lack of credibility intact.

[edit: left off a quote tag...]
Last edited by Mike the Lab Rat on Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Mike the Lab Rat »

Diogenes wrote:
They are talking about FUTURE APPLICATIONS...as in, HOW THIS PROCESS CAN BE USED IN THE FUTURE TO MAKE PRODUCTS. In your zeal to misquote and mischaracterize what the researchers said (hey, you must have learned that from Dembski...), you kind of missed the fact that they were discussing potential future uses for their findings. As cool as it would be for Harvard's labs to discover the origins of life, they probably would find it infinitely cooler to turn the discoveries they made along the way into cold, hard cash. And THAT is what they are also hoping for.
All your ad hominems and mischaracterizations (not like you have anything else to work with ) aside, this neither proves undirected random speciation, spontaneous biogenesis, or disproves ID.
Then why the heck did you feel like tossing the quote in?

Obviously because you were in a hurry, saw the phrase "directed evolution" (without reading the surrounding text to discover the context), got all giddy, and assumed that it would SOMEHOW prove your point.

Oops.

Turns out that the phrase was in reference to future applications. Didn't prove ANY point you were desperately trying to make.

I pointed out your glaring idiocy just to reinforce that you honestly have no idea of what your talking about, relying on c&p jobs from ID websites, scanning what other folks (myself included) put up and highlighting the wrong text that you've doubtlessly misinterpreted, misunderstood, or just want to outright misrepresent.

You screwed up in trying to look smart.

And I just wanted to go "Dinsdale©" on you
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88 wrote:
Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook wrote:
http://www.arn.org/docs/dewolf/guidebook.htm

Developments in the information sciences have recently made possible the articulation of criteria by which intelligently designed systems can be identified by the kinds of patterns they exhibit. In a recent book titled The Design Inference, published by Cambridge University Press, Baylor University probability theorist William Dembski shows how rational agents often infer or detect the prior activity of other designing minds by the character of the effects they leave behind. Archaeologists assume, for example, that rational agents produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. Insurance fraud investigators detect certain "cheating patterns" that suggest intentional manipulation of circumstances rather than "natural" disasters. Cryptographers distinguish between random signals and those that the carry encoded messages. Dembski's work shows that recognizing the activity of intelligent agents constitutes a common and fully rational mode of inference.

More importantly, Dembski's work explicates the criteria by which rational agents recognize the effects of other rational agents and distinguish them from the effects of natural causes. Dembski argues that systems that manifest the joint properties of "high complexity" (or low probability) and "specification" invariably result from intelligent causes rather than from chance or physical-chemical laws. These criteria are equivalent (or isomorphic) to what information theorists call specified information or information content. Dembski's work demonstrates that "high information content" reliably signals prior intelligent activity.

This theoretical insight agrees with common, as well as scientific, experience. For example, no one would attribute hieroglyphic inscriptions to natural forces such as wind or erosion; instead, one immediately recognizes the activity of intelligent agents. Dembski's work shows why: Our reasoning involves a comparative evaluation process that he represents with a device he calls the explanatory filter. The filter outlines the method that scientists (as well as ordinary people) use to decide among three types of causal explanations-chance, necessity, and design. His explanatory filter constitutes, in effect, a scientific method for detecting the effects of intelligence.

Design Theory: An Empirical Basis?
Along with their formal theory articulating the criteria by which intelligent causes can be detected in the "echo of their effects," design theorists point to specific empirical evidence of design, both in biology and physics. They argue that biological organisms in particular display distinctive features of intelligently designed systems. Indeed, a growing number of scientists are now willing to consider alternatives to strictly naturalistic origins theories. Many now see especially striking evidence of design in biology, even if much of it is still reported by scientists and journals that presuppose a neo-Darwinian perspective.

For example, in 1998 the premier biology journal Cell featured a special issue on "Macromolecular Machines." All cells use complex molecular machines to process information, build proteins, and move materials back and forth across their membranes. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, introduced this issue with an article titled "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines." In it he stated that

"We have always underestimated cells. . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts."

Alberts notes that molecular machines strongly resemble machines designed by human engineers. Nevertheless, as an orthodox neo-Darwinist, he denies any role for actual, as opposed to apparent, design in the origin of these systems.

In recent years, however, some scientists have presented a formidable challenge to the neo-Darwinian view. For example, in Darwin's Black Box Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe shows that neo-Darwinists have failed to explain the origin of complex molecular machines in living systems. Behe examines the acid powered rotary engines that turn the whip-like flagella of certain bacteria. He shows that the intricate machinery in this molecular motor-including a rotor, a stator, O-rings, bushings, and a drive shaft-requires the coordinated interaction of some forty complex protein parts. Yet the absence of any one of these proteins would result in the complete loss of motor function. To assert that such an irreducibly complex engine emerged gradually in a Darwinian fashion strains credulity. Natural selection selects functionally advantageous systems. Yet motor function only ensues after all necessary parts have independently self-assembled, an astronomically improbable event.

Thus, Behe insists that Darwinian mechanisms cannot account for the origin of molecular motors and other such irreducibly complex systems that require the coordinated interaction of multiple independent protein parts. To emphasize his point, Behe has conducted a literature search of relevant technical journals. He has found a complete absence of gradualistic Darwinian explanations for the origin of the systems and motors that he discusses. Behe concludes that neo-Darwinists have not explained or, in most cases, even attempted to explain, how the appearance of design in irreducibly complex systems arose naturalistically.

Instead, he notes that we know of only one cause sufficient to produce functionally integrated, irreducibly complex systems, namely, intelligent design. Whenever we encounter irreducibly complex systems and we know how they arose, invariably a designer played a causal role. Thus, Behe concludes on the basis of our knowledge of present cause-and-effect relationships (that is, in accord with the standard uniformitarian method employed in the historical sciences), that the molecular machines and complex systems we observe in cells must have also had an intelligent cause. In brief, molecular motors appear designed because they were designed.

Behe's book, published in 1996, has received international acclaim and critique in over eighty book reviews. Generally, critics have conceded the scientific accuracy of Behe's claims (including his literature search showing the complete absence of neo-Darwinian explanations for many of the irreducibly complex systems that he examines). Instead, they have objected to his argument on philosophical and methodological grounds. Behe's critics claim that to infer an intelligent cause for the origin of these complex systems, as Behe does, "goes beyond science." (We discuss this objection in section 3 below.)

Even so, Behe is not alone in his conclusions. Consider the case of Dean Kenyon, a biologist at San Francisco State University. For nearly twenty years Professor Kenyon was a leading evolutionary theorist who specialized in origin-of-life biology. While at UC Berkeley in 1969 he wrote a book, Biochemical Predestination, that defined evolutionary thinking on the origin-of-life for over a decade. Kenyon's theory attempted to show how complex biomolecules such as proteins and DNA might have "self-organized" via strictly chemical forces.

Yet as Kenyon reflected more on the recent discoveries in molecular biology about the complexity of living things, he began to wonder whether undirected chemistry could really produce the information-rich molecules found in even the simplest of cells. Studies of the genetic molecule DNA revealed that it functions in much the same way as computer software or alphabetic text in a book. As Richard Dawkins notes, "The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like." Or, as software innovator Bill Gates notes, "DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created."

Indeed, studies in molecular biology and the information sciences have shown that the assembly instructions inscribed along the spine of DNA display the characteristic hallmarks of intelligently encoded information-indeed, both the complexity and specificity of function that, according to Dembski's theory, indicates intelligent design. As a result of this evidence, Kenyon and many other scientists (notably Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, and Roger Olsen) have concluded that the specified complexity or high information content of DNA-like the information in a computer program, an ancient scroll, or in this very book-had an intelligent source.

In recent years the fossil record has also provided new support for design. Fossil studies reveal a "biological big bang" near the beginning of the Cambrian period 530 million years ago. At that time roughly fifty separate major groups of organisms or "phyla" (including most all the basic body plans of modern animals) emerged suddenly without evident precursors. Although neo-Darwinian theory requires vast periods of time for the step-by-step development of new biological organs and body plans, fossil finds have repeatedly confirmed a pattern of explosive appearance followed by prolonged stability of living forms. Moreover, the fossil record shows a "top-down" hierarchical pattern of appearance in which major structural themes or body plans emerge before minor variations on those themes. Not only does this pattern directly contradict the "bottom-up" pattern predicted by neo-Darwinism, but as University of San Francisco marine paleobiologist Paul Chien and several colleagues have argued, it also strongly resembles the pattern evident in the history of human technological design, again suggesting actual (i.e., intelligent) design as the best explanation for the data.

Other scientists now see evidence of design in the information processing systems of the cell, the signal transduction circuitry of the cell, the complexity and specificity of proteins, the end-directed embryological processes of organismal development, the complexity of the human brain, and even the phenomenon known as homology (evidence previously thought to provide unequivocal support for a neo-Darwinian perspective). Design theorists have begun to marshal an impressive array of empirical evidence in support of their perspective, thus challenging standard evolutionary theories for the origin and development of life across a variety of subdisciplines within biology.
In other words, Intelligent Design theory means that until the hard sciences advance to the point where there are irrefutable scientific explanations that prove the natural origin of every living thing, it is wholly proper to teach public school children that some people who call themselves scientists ....
So anyone who disagrees with the accepted dogma isn't a real scientist? Is there any surprise that the majority of 'scientists' disparage ID? Leaving out, of course, the fact that if they don't parrot the accepted orthodoxy, they will likely get fired, lose tenure or the like, in addition to being ostracized and smeared.

And of course, your 'other words' are completely off base. The fact is, that students shouldn't be brainwashed with unprovable, untestable theories (in the name of 'science') to begin with. But if you are going to do that, you ought to at least give them the arguments against said dogma.

Just one more proof of the need for school choice.
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Diogenes wrote: The fact is, that students shouldn't be brainwashed with unprovable, untestable theories to begin with.
speaking of KYOA......nice job melty
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Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos, he said, but on the occasion when life was created, that was reversed and the universe went from chaos to order.
Untrue. Assuming the universe started with a big bang singularity, the universe as a whole could be seen to be going from order to chaos (ie. a singularity to diversity). However, billions of places in the universe have also spent billions of years going from chaos to order as well (i.e. stars, galaxies, planets forming).

"The way of the universe going from order to chaose" is simply an oversimplification.
Actually that's a misstatement. what he actually said was...

'The way of the universe is to go from order to chaos'

We have no way of knowing if the universe went from order to chaos directly after the Big Bang. Just that it does now.

A few evolutionists have actually recognized (and acnowledged) the problem of entropy...

Evolutionary theory ignores this fundamental law of physics. The mechanism offered by evolution totally contradicts the second law. The theory of evolution says that disordered, dispersed, and lifeless atoms and molecules spontaneously came together over time, in a particular order, to form extremely complex molecules such as proteins, DNA, and RNA, whereupon millions of different living species with even more complex structures gradually emerged. According to the theory of evolution, this supposed process-which yields a more planned, more ordered, more complex and more organized structure at each stage-was formed all by itself under natural conditions. The law of entropy makes it clear that this so-called natural process utterly contradicts the laws of physics.

Evolutionist scientists are also aware of this fact. J. H. Rush states:
In the complex course of its evolution, life exhibits a remarkable contrast to the tendency expressed in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Where the Second Law expresses an irreversible progression toward increased entropy and disorder, life evolves continually higher levels of order.365
The evolutionist author Roger Lewin expresses the thermodynamic impasse of evolution in an article in Science:
One problem biologists have faced is the apparent contradiction by evolution of the second law of thermodynamics. Systems should decay through time, giving less, not more, order.366
Another defender of the theory of evolution, George Stravropoulos, states the thermodynamic impossibility of the spontaneous formation of life and the impossibility of explaining the existence of complex living mechanisms by natural laws in the well-known evolutionist journal American Scientist:
Yet, under ordinary conditions, no complex organic molecule can ever form spontaneously, but will rather disintegrate, in agreement with the second law. Indeed, the more complex it is, the more unstable it will be, and the more assured, sooner or later, its disintegration. Photosynthesis and all life processes, and even life itself, cannot yet be understood in terms of thermodynamics or any other exact science, despite the use of confused or deliberately confusing language.367
As we have seen, the evolution claim is completely at odds with the laws of physics. The second law of thermodynamics constitutes an insurmountable obstacle for the scenario of evolution, in terms of both science and logic. Unable to offer any scientific and consistent explanation to overcome this obstacle, evolutionists can only do so in their imagination. For instance, Jeremy Rifkin notes his belief that evolution overwhelms this law of physics with a "magical power":

The Entropy Law says that evolution dissipates the overall available energy for life on this planet. Our concept of evolution is the exact opposite. We believe that evolution somehow magically creates greater overall value and order on earth.368

These words well indicate that evolution is a dogmatic belief rather than a scientific thesis.



364 Jeremy Rifkin, Antropy: A New World View, Viking Press, New York, 1980, p. 6.
365 J. H. Rush, The Dawn of Life, New York, Signet, 1962, p. 35.
366 Roger Lewin, "A Downward Slope to Greater Diversity," Science, vol. 217, 24 September, 1982, p. 1239.
367 George P. Stravropoulos, "The Frontiers and Limits of Science," American Scientist, vol. 65, November-December 1977, p. 674.
368 Jeremy Rifkin, Antropy: A New World View, Viking Press, New York, 1980, p. 55.


http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/thermodynamics.html
Of course, most of those quotes are prior to the current Darwinist jihad against any heresy.

Feel free to attack the sources. Ad hominems are so fresh around here.
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Post by Diogenes »

Feel free to attack the sources. Ad hominems are so fresh around here.
Cue the one-trick-pony...
mvscal wrote:
The Entropy Law says that evolution dissipates the overall available energy for life on this planet.
True enough. Odd how they overlook the absolutely gargantuan quantity of energy that the sun provides to the earth each and every day.

Your sources are either intellectually dishonest charlatans or complete idiots. Take your pick.
Color me shocked.

Not really.
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mvscal wrote:Odd how they overlook the absolutely gargantuan quantity of energy that the sun provides to the earth each and every day.

Didn't read the "theory."

But I'll ask for the skinny from mv...


Is someone really stating that if there's too much evolution, there's not enough solar energy to go around?


Maybe if the gullible dipshits like Dio were to start evolving a little bit, we could solve global warming.


Holy fuck. As far as man's scale of operations, the sun is about as close as you get to "unlimited energy." And if by some completely impossible odd twist of fate you happen to use it all up.... then come back tomorrow morning.
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Post by Voice of Reason »

Diogenes wrote:
So anyone who disagrees with the accepted dogma isn't a real scientist?
I know its a hard concept for someone of your limited scope of thinking to understand, but there is no dogma in science.

Anyone who disagrees with the scientific method, however, is not a real scientist...obviously. There is nothing to prevent them from exploring their own theories and beliefs all they want, as long as its understood that its not under the umbrella of science.
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Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
So anyone who disagrees with the accepted dogma isn't a real scientist?
I know its a hard concept for someone of your limited scope of thinking to understand, but there is no dogma in science
Tell that to the developmental biologist in Massachusets who was fired for mentioning in a casual conversation that he didn't accept all the tenets of Darwinism. Or the astrophysicist in Wisconsin who was denyed tenure for writing a book that supported ID.

Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
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Post by Voice of Reason »

Diogenes wrote:
Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
So anyone who disagrees with the accepted dogma isn't a real scientist?
I know its a hard concept for someone of your limited scope of thinking to understand, but there is no dogma in science
Tell that to the developmental biologist in Massachusets who was fired for mentioning in a casual conversation that he didn't accept all the tenets of Darwinism. Or the astrophysicist in Wisconsin who was denyed tenure for writing a book that supported ID.

Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
A book on Intelligent Design would not be written by somebody who agrees with, or understands, the Scientific method. He should have been fired, not just denied tenure.
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Diogenes wrote:Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
Look hoss, I know you're struggling here so let me just put out all of your arguments and rather than having to refer back to your favorite "ID website" you can just put in a number for whatever ridiculous argument you want to use....


Greater and greater numbers of scientists are joining the ID movement, which is why we keep referring to the same three year after year. [1]


ID is not creationism, and can be perfectly compatible with evolution. This is why we're asking schools to teach the "evidence against evolution".[2]


We're not creationists, except for those of us who are, but the rest of us won't confirm that we're not. But if you call us creationists, we'll complain to no end. [3]


The correct stance on issues like an ancient Earth, the common ancestry of organisms, and natural selection can be worked out later, after we've convinced the public that they should be rejecting at least one of these. [4]


ID is a widely accepted theory in the scientific community. Just last year, over 100 scientists signed a statement which does not support ID, but does say that they are "skeptical" of Darwinism. The opinions of tens of thousands of other scientists don't count, because they're all biased. [5]


ID is a program for research into the science of design, nothing more. Part of our research plans are to produce coloring books for preschoolers, and to make ourselves more likeable at parties. [6]


ID is a scientific theory for detecting purpose and teleology in nature. But don't ask us what that purpose is, because that's a religious question that's separate from ID.


The Designer could be anything from God to a space alien. But the Raelians, who believe it was a space alien, are being illogical.

On Darwinism...

Darwinism can't explain the evolution of life in every single detail, therefore it's wrong. But don't ask IDists to explain these things, because that's not the kind of theory ID is. [7]


Mainstream scientists dare not disagree with the monolithic block that is Darwinian orthodoxy. However, here are a number of mainstream scientists who disagree with each other on some issues, which means that they can't agree on anything. [8]


Darwinists are driven by religious and ideological motivations. But since we've removed the picture of God and the phrase "Cultural Renewal" from our website, everyone knows this isn't true of us. [9]


Absolutely everything wrong in society is caused by dogmatic Darwinian atheistic materialists. Including stereotyping, demonizing, and scapegoating. [10]


Darwinists are responsible for both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Both racism and liberalism. Both feminism and sexism. Both animal research and the animal rights movement. And Commie-Nazism. [11]

On philosophy...

Philosophers cannot agree on exactly where the line between science and non-science lies. Therefore, anything can be considered science if we say so.


If a living system looks well designed, it's evidence for ID. If it looks poorly designed, that's just because we have no way of knowing what constitutes good and bad design.


Afterall, we can't tell that it's bad design because we have no way of knowing what the Designer really intends. But we do know that ID will revolutionize culture, society, and law, according to what the Designer intends. [14]


Methodological naturalism is an unfair rule that keeps us from considering supernatural explanations. But this would mean that detectives couldn't consider an intelligent agent in a person's death, because as we all know, murderers are supernatural. [15]


A good scientific theory like ID should be vague and ambiguous, and refuse to propose any specific details about mechanism or history. Some unspecified being "designed" something, somewhere, at some point in time, somehow, is a perfectly good explanation.


The argument from design is not a theological argument, because we aren't necessarily talking about God. But any rebuttal of the design argument is theological, because it requires us to say "God wouldn't do it this way", and this is not legitimate. [16]

On the Evidence...
Since the peppered moth case has been proven problematic, natural selection is disproven. The other 1,582 studies of natural selection in the wild, as well as the numerous laboratory studies, don't count. [17]


And peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks. The actual datasets of moths found in natural positions in the wild, off but also on trunks, are irrelevant because researchers have captured thousands of moths over the years in their moth traps, and not once has a moth in a trap been found on a tree trunk. [18]


Since moths don't rest on tree trunks but instead higher up in the branches, this means that birds can't get to them, because there is a magic barrier preventing birds from visiting tree branches.


As demonstrated above, moths don't rest on tree trunks, which means that the photographs showing the contrasting conspicuousness of moths on tree trunks found in textbooks are FRAUDS, FRAUDS, FRAUDS. All the other staged animal photos in textbooks are however unobjectionable.


The fact that more inclusive groupings, such as phyla, appeared before more specific groupings, such as genera, is evidence against evolution. Likewise, the fact that Europeans first appeared before Tony Blair is evidence against shared human ancestry. [19]


Evolution can't produce novel information, because any change to an enzyme that increases substrate specificity reduces the reactivity of the enzyme with other compounds, which is a loss of information. Similarly, any change which increases the enzyme's generality is a loss of information because the enzyme has lost some specificity. [20]


Life could not come about by natural means because it has Specified Complexity. Specified Complexity means something that cannot come about by natural means, therefore life must exhibit Specified Complexity. [21]


It was very nice of our loving Designer to design an immune system to protect us from the deadly diseases He designed.


The fundamental unity of living things means that there is only one Designer. The extraordinary variation among living things, including their tendency to kill each other, just means that our singular Designer is very creative and whimsical. [22]


Lateral gene transfer, which is a powerful mechanism of evolution, is evidence against evolution.


The fact that the laws of the universe are perfect for life is evidence for a Designer. The fact that the laws of the universe can't produce life is evidence for a Designer. [23]


Irreducibly Complex structures require multiple parts. Therefore they can't evolve. If someone demonstrates how a structure that requires multiple parts could have evolved, that just means that it wasn't Irreducibly Complex. [24]


IC structures must be molecular systems. Except mousetraps. [25]


"Indirect" pathways are wildly unlikely and as hard to find as leprechauns, and are therefore only a "bare" possibility but not a realistic one and can be safely disregarded, despite the detailed attention paid to them by every major biologist from Darwin to Dawkins. [26]


The ID hypothesis, on the other hand, bears no resemblance to leprechauns. [27]

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0-27. Very impressive.

I will grant that you, mvscum and dimsdale would seem to indicate unintelligent design.

But that is an insufficient cross-section to draw any valid conclusions.
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Post by Diogenes »

Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Voice of Reason wrote: I know its a hard concept for someone of your limited scope of thinking to understand, but there is no dogma in science
Tell that to the developmental biologist in Massachusets who was fired for mentioning in a casual conversation that he didn't accept all the tenets of Darwinism. Or the astrophysicist in Wisconsin who was denyed tenure for writing a book that supported ID.

Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
A book on Intelligent Design would not be written by somebody who agrees with, or understands, the Scientific method. He should have been fired, not just denied tenure.
Very 'scientific' of you. Of course it wasn't a book on ID, it just tended to support the view. Guilt by association-not dogmatic at all.
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Diogenes wrote:
Very 'scientific' of you. Of course it wasn't a book on ID, it just tended to support the view. Guilt by association-not dogmatic at all.
Once again, support of Intellegent Design clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scientific method (much like you've been repeatedly doing for a very long time here, now). It's not guilt by association. Its guilty of being a dumb shit.

If I hired you to be my accountant and later found out you didn't understand basic math, I'd fire you too.
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Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Very 'scientific' of you. Of course it wasn't a book on ID, it just tended to support the view. Guilt by association-not dogmatic at all.
Once again, support of Intellegent Design clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scientific method (much like you've been repeatedly doing for a very long time here, now). It's not guilt by association. Its guilty of being a dumb shit.

If I hired you to be my accountant and later found out you didn't understand basic math, I'd fire you too.
A better analogy is if you hired me as an accountant and found me studying fractals in my spare time. I'd definetly be fired. If you can't understand it, it must not be real mathematics.
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Diogenes wrote: [A better analogy is if you hired me as an accountant and found me studying fractals in my spare time. I'd definetly be fired. If you can't understand it, it must not be real mathematics.
why is it that you keep insisting that no one here except you has an understanding of the premise of ID.....it's not like ID is equal to splitting the atom.....very simple concept really...God....er....an Intelligent Designer made it.....
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Post by Voice of Reason »

Diogenes wrote:
Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Very 'scientific' of you. Of course it wasn't a book on ID, it just tended to support the view. Guilt by association-not dogmatic at all.
Once again, support of Intellegent Design clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scientific method (much like you've been repeatedly doing for a very long time here, now). It's not guilt by association. Its guilty of being a dumb shit.

If I hired you to be my accountant and later found out you didn't understand basic math, I'd fire you too.
A better analogy is if you hired me as an accountant and found me studying fractals in my spare time. I'd definetly be fired. If you can't understand it, it must not be real mathematics.
No, my analogy is fine. Fractals can be explained with math. ID is contradictory to science.

The fact that you keep perpetuating it, only shows that you lack an understanding of science. While its been clear to everyone reading this thread that 99% of what's been said has gone right over your head, you keep coming back for more. Using the loose definition of evidence that you want to have for ID, we can probably just consider your mental capabilities evidence that we still have primitive homo sapiens among us.

You are no more the same species that I am, as a chimp.
Last edited by Voice of Reason on Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Diogenes »

Felix wrote:
Diogenes wrote: A better analogy is if you hired me as an accountant and found me studying fractals in my spare time. I'd definetly be fired. If you can't understand it, it must not be real mathematics.
why is it that you keep insisting that no one here except you has an understanding of the premise of ID
Not at all. I have no doubt that some here are mearly lying about what it is.
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Voice of Reason wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Voice of Reason wrote: Once again, support of Intellegent Design clearly demonstrates a lack of understanding of the scientific method (much like you've been repeatedly doing for a very long time here, now). It's not guilt by association. Its guilty of being a dumb shit.

If I hired you to be my accountant and later found out you didn't understand basic math, I'd fire you too.
A better analogy is if you hired me as an accountant and found me studying fractals in my spare time. I'd definetly be fired. If you can't understand it, it must not be real mathematics.
No, my analogy is fine. Fractals can be explained with math. ID can not be explained with science.
See response above.

Of course, in your case I don't know if you are being disingenuous, ignorant, or mearly stupid. Not that it matters.
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Thanks for the link from the Discovery Institute....no bias there......

A little info your article omitted (I know, it's hard to believe that a standup organization like the Discovery Institute would try and purposely deceive)

Go figure.
Tenure is not a right. Tenure is not a minimum set of hurdles to clear. Indeed, a faculty member who treats it that way should be the last person to be awarded tenure. A department has the right to determine who their colleagues will be, and undoubtedly they wish to choose people who show a tendency toward self-sufficiency, something that Gonzalez clearly lacks since he says he's been submitting two grants a year. They want people who will continue to produce, not slowly peter out as they get farther and farther away from their mentored postdoc years. The department also has the right to determine who they associate with, as Gonzalez will represent the department to the rest of the world. If they choose not to associate with someone who tries to pass off a 200 year-old debunked, repackaged theological concept as science, I would have to support them in that decision. Hell, if Gonzalez were the racist, sexist asshole James Watson, I'd still support not renewing his contract too, no matter how good his track record (that's part of what a professorship is too, is the renewal of a contract. Not getting tenure is not the equivalent of termination of a permanent position. People seem to miss that point a little too often). Academic freedom means that the rest of the department must have the freedom to discuss the ramifications of granting tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, indeed to say things that may sound extremely harsh, without being dragged to court over it.
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Diogenes wrote:Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
You DO realize, don't you, that it was RELIGIOUS authorities, not scientists, who persecuted Galileo for promoting Copernicus's theories don't you?

Either your grasp of history is as bad as your grasp of science, or you are pulling the usual ID/creationst trick of playing fast and loose with facts.

By the way, if you want "the other side" on the Gonzalez issue, read here:

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Mike the Lab Rat wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
You DO realize, don't you, that it was RELIGIOUS authorities, not scientists, who persecuted Galileo for promoting Copernicus's theories don't you?
Of course, Grand Inquisitor.
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Diogenes wrote:
Mike the Lab Rat wrote:
Diogenes wrote:Hell, tell it to Galileo and Copernicus.
You DO realize, don't you, that it was RELIGIOUS authorities, not scientists, who persecuted Galileo for promoting Copernicus's theories don't you?
Of course, Grand Inquisitor.
I'd say "nice rebuttal"...except it wasn't.

You failed to address the fact that your earlier statement was historically/factually inaccurate. You attempted to lay the blame for the persecution of Galileo on scientists, when the indisputable fact is that it was religious authorities (the Roman Catholic hierarchy to be exact) that persecuted him.

You tried painting scientists as dogmatists and then cited the persecution of Galileo by Papal authorities as the example that proves your alleged point?

[golf claps]

Way to go, Dio!

Between this gaffe and your ignorance of the long-established knowledge of the difference between open and closed systems, you're proving yourself to be quite the funny little piñata.

Please, go running to Dembski's website and see if you can c&p anything off his his catalog of howlers that might dig your hole even deeper.
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Mike the Lab Rat wrote:
Diogenes wrote:
Mike the Lab Rat wrote: You DO realize, don't you, that it was RELIGIOUS authorities, not scientists, who persecuted Galileo for promoting Copernicus's theories don't you?
Of course, Grand Inquisitor.
I'd say "nice rebuttal"...except it wasn't.

You failed to address the fact that your earlier statement was historically/factually inaccurate. You attempted to lay the blame for the persecution of Galileo on scientists, when the indisputable fact is that it was religious authorities (the Roman Catholic hierarchy to be exact) that persecuted him.
You mean it went over your head again?

The fact is that modern Darwinism is more of a religion than science. And it has all of the worst features of the inquisition (except literal burning at the stake-but if you clowns could get away with it no doubt you would).

As far as the differance between open and closed systems- that red herring is irrelevant. The fact that a reversal of entropy is possible in an open system doesn't make it at all likely to the scale it would need to allow spontaneous abiogenesis, simultanious development of RNA and DNA, and random undirected speciation.
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Diogenes wrote:The fact is that modern Darwinism is more of a religion than science.
Links? Historical and factual evidence to support your claim?

Please elucidate how "modern Darwinism" attempts to fulfill the requirements of a religion. As someone who has been part of the science gig for a couple of decades now (as a student, published researcher, and now science educator), I'd LOVE to hear from a "knowledgeable source" such as you how precisely "modern Darwinism" meets religious criteria - attempting to explain the nature of good and evil, moral choices, the afterlife...
Diogenes wrote:And it has all of the worst features of the inquisition (except literal burning at the stake-but if you clowns could get away with it no doubt you would).
Really? Have scientists really been physically tortured? Have they had their families held hostage? Aside from the occasional creationist idiot being legally denied tenure or not being given a grant (which is a case of a set of folks just choosing not to give said idiot the money in their trust), how have doubters of natural selection truly been "punished?"

To compare tenure denial or lack of grant funding to the torture and execution perpetrated by religious hierarchies cheapens the atrocities of the inquisition and proved you be either historically ignorant or, once again, willing to twist the truth for your ends.
Diogenes wrote:As far as the differance between open and closed systems- that red herring is irrelevant.
You only consider it a "red herring" because you are completely wrong on the subject. That's your m.o. You make a statement to support your case, it blows up in your face when your statement is proven wrong, and then you either choose to completely ignore the rebuttal or declare it unimportant.
Diogenes wrote:The fact that a reversal of entropy is possible in an open system doesn't make it at all likely to the scale it would need to allow spontaneous abiogenesis, simultanious development of RNA and DNA, and random undirected speciation.[/b]
Based on WHAT? Your own research? The detailed, peer-reviewed research of ID folk...oh wait...they haven't GOT any.

Entropy is reversed locally in every freaking living organism. It's how we stay alive, you dimwit.

Entropy is reversed all the freaking time in small areas. Crystals form. Reactions occur spontaneously and at times with increasing ease (e.g., with the principal of cooperativity, as I mentioned before), especially with the constant input of energy from the sun.

The fact that abiogenesis is rare and requires special conditions to succeed is borne out by the fact that we seem to be the only planet with life on it. It worked on our planet but not on any other (that we are aware of). "Unlikely" does not equal "impossible." The fact that we are here is an argument that it CAN happen. And Szostak's lab in Harvard is trying, with the information we currently have and with the primitive equipment currently available, to determine the most likely way it occurred here.

The bottom line is that you've displayed, in bold-face type, your complete and utter ignorance of basic chemistry, physics, and biology. You haven't got a frigging CLUE about what you're discussing and never have. You've made statements that show that you don't really understand what science is, how it works, or anything about scientists as professionals or as people.

You'd seriously benefit from some science classes at a community college. I'm not saying that to be smarmy. I honestly believe that you are sincere and would get something positive from finding out about basic bio, chem, and physics from actual professor. You could still disagree with me, but would be far better armed in a debate...
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