The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Twelve years on. Still going. Answer soon.

Delirium

J C wrote: »

... as chainsaws aren't used for dealing with people ... it is likely to be required for fencing and general woodland maintenance in the Noah's Ark Zoo.:cool:

Anyway, here is a video which goes to the heart of the issue with ID ... I give you Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford., John Lennox:-

No evidence is offered by the ID supporter in the video. Just more "life is too complex not to be a product of ID". All while suggesting that an uncreated creator is behind it all.

Doctor Jimbob

SW wrote: »

No evidence is offered by the ID supporter in the video. Just more "life is too complex not to be a product of ID". All while suggesting that an uncreated creator is behind it all.

Also continuing the proud trend of ID proponents not being biologists.

PopePalpatine

Don't you know biologists are agents of . . . TEH SATANZ?! :):):):D

J C

Vivisectus wrote: »

While we are on the subject, here is a another really good example:



Design? We could think of nothing else, and since we seem to be psychologically geared towards attributing agency when we look for answers, it was assumed by some to be designed by an intelligent agent.

It is design allright ... but it doesn't have the hallmarks of Intelligent Design ... which are functionality and specificity.

Vivisectus wrote: »

Incidentally, these rectangular blocks meet Dembski's criteria for "specified complexity".

... they don't because they lack specificity.
Complexity and design, on their own, are found in many systems that are deterministic (and therefore don't require an intelligent input) ... snowflakes are an obvious example.

J C

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Don't you know biologists are agents of . . . TEH SATANZ?! :):):):D

Many biologists are Christians and indeed Creationists ... so your generalisation is certainly false.:)

J C

Vivisectus wrote: »

I will repeat myself once more. You are modelling something like a single roll of 120 20 sided dice.

Its a multi-quadrillion roll of 120 of a 20 sided dice.

Vivisectus wrote: »

But what you are claiming to model with that is not like that at all.

There is no random soup of amino acids combining and recombining, while we hope for something complex to appear as if out of nowhere.

That is a strawman that you keep merrily attacking. No-one else is proposing this.

There was and is no randon amino acid soup involved allright ... it was originally created by an intelligence ... and it now reproduces after its Kind (as it was designed to do by it's Creator).

J C

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Also continuing the proud trend of ID proponents not being biologists.

Michael Denton is an ID proponent and a Medical Doctor and Biochemist, Micheal Behe is a Biochemist, Jonathan Wells is a Molecular Biologist.
The ID movement within science, has the required breadth and depth of scientific ability to do the required research allright.:)

J C

Doctor Jimbob wrote: »

Go reproduce ID in a lab then get back to us.

I won't hold my breath.

Practically all laboratory research, whatever the scientific discipline, are examples of Human Intelligent Design in action.:):cool:

J C

Squeedily Spooch wrote: »

Faith in the impossible. You're forever harping on about Dembski's nonsense and UPB, basically something that's uncomputable. Dembski just gives it a figure he came up with...somehow. It's been refuted loads and you just won't accept the examples or address them.

The UPB has been accepted as an upper limit allright ... no refutation has been made on this thread.
If I have missed something please post a link.

Delirium

J C wrote: »

Practically all laboratory research, whatever the scientific discipline, are examples of Human Intelligent Design in action.:):cool:

Humans created humans?

PopePalpatine

6 J C posts in a row? If you didn't skip through his posts you'd feel like Andy Dufresne while he was escaping Shawshank.

Brian Shanahan

PopePalpatine wrote: »

6 J C posts in a row? If you didn't skip through his posts you'd feel like Andy Dufresne while he was escaping Shawshank.

When you have him on ignore (JC, please note I only reply to the most egregiously wrongheaded of your posts, and then only because I see them quoted by others) his posts just fly by. Blink and you miss them, and you often do even when you don't blink.

Harika

J C wrote: »

Many biologists are Christians and indeed Creationists ... so your generalisation is certainly false.:)

can you give a source for that because cruising through the net there seems to be an overwhelming number of biologists not believing in creationism but supporting evolution.

PopePalpatine

I'm guessing J C's also including graduates of moronic fundie universities.

J C

SW wrote: »

Humans created humans?

Intelligent Design isn't confined to living systems ... we find Intelligent Design in all of its complex functional specificity in many things that are the product of Human intelligence as well.

J C

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

When you have him on ignore (JC, please note I only reply to the most egregiously wrongheaded of your posts, and then only because I see them quoted by others) his posts just fly by. Blink and you miss them, and you often do even when you don't blink.

That is OK Brian ... its a free country and you can choose to ignore anybody and any thing ... it doesn't mean that what they say isn't true, though.:)

J C

PopePalpatine wrote: »

I'm guessing J C's also including graduates of moronic fundie universities.

Ah yes, 'the battle of the lists' ... I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!!!:eek:

Delirium

J C wrote: »

Intelligent Design isn't confined to living systems ... we find Intelligent Design in all of its complex functional specificity in many things that are the product of Human intelligence as well.

Well at least you've conceded that ID can arise from non-supernatural creators. So it's quite possible that humanity arose from entirely natural means.

Delirium

J C wrote: »

That is OK Brian ... its a free country and you can choose to ignore anybody and any thing ... it doesn't mean that what they say isn't true, though.:)

Bit ironic coming from a self professed creationist.

J C

SW wrote: »

Bit ironic coming from a self professed creationist.

Why?

J C

SW wrote: »

Well at least you've conceded that ID can arise from non-supernatural creators. So it's quite possible that humanity arose from entirely natural means.

Never said otherwise ... ID doesn't scientifically specify who or what the intelligence was that designed life.
Some people have speculated that it was Aliens.

Doctor Jimbob

J C wrote: »

Never said otherwise ... ID doesn't scientifically specify who or what the intelligence was that designed life.
Some people have speculated that it was Aliens.

ID doesn't scientifically specify anything.

Squeedily Spooch

J C wrote: »

Ah yes, 'the battle of the lists' ... I'll show you mine, if you show me yours!!!:eek:

Show your what? Scientific credentials? oh wait...

Delirium

J C wrote: »

Never said otherwise ... ID doesn't scientifically specify who or what the intelligence was that designed life.
Some people have speculated that it was Aliens.

Actually you have, frequently. If God is the creator, which is what creationism claims, then it's entirely super-natural means that you're supporting as the origin of humans and reality.

Vivisectus

J C wrote: »

Its a multi-quadrillion roll of 120 of a 20 sided dice.

I am glad you agree that you are modelling a dice-roll. This is the reason the probability math does not apply.

There was and is no randon amino acid soup involved allright ... it was originally created by an intelligence ... and it now reproduces after its Kind (as it was designed to do by it's Creator).

That is indeed what you continue to claim based fallacious reasons, as I have shown in detail.

Vivisectus

J C wrote: »

It is design allright ... but it doesn't have the hallmarks of Intelligent Design ... which are functionality and specificity.

Nonsense! It's function is to form a part of a bridge. It is also specifically rectangular, a form that (according to Dembski anyway) is not created naturally.

But of course "specificity" is one of those special vague ID terms that handily apply to whatever the user wants to be isolated from the rest - see below.

... they don't because they lack specificity.
Complexity and design, on their own, are found in many systems that are deterministic (and therefore don't require an intelligent input) ... snowflakes are an obvious example.

Dembski disagrees: nature does not create rectangular solids (he claims), so if you find a rectangular solid (his words!) then you see both complexity and specificity and thus you can assume it is created by an intelligence.

But of course "Specificity" is just part of the circular logic of ID: it already implies that there is an intent behind the way something is made up.

Vivisectus

Meanwhile, the problems that remain unadressed are:

- The probability math with which you try to support you claims does not apply
- The process of elimination by which you come to the conclusion that intelligent design was involved is not a reliable way of forming theories. Please see the example of the disappearing socks.

gaynorvader

Using Dembski's logic I broke the UPB when I was born. The chances of me having such complex functions such as eyes and ears are astronomically small. The chance of me being human and born on Earth, a planet that could support me and to my parents, just two of seven billion are so tiny it's laughable. Clearly I was constructed in a lab by aliens and my parents had their memories altered.

(Really though it was all biology, chemistry and physics, but shh.)

Vivisectus

Just to demonstrate the problem of specificity:

I will now hit some random characters on my keyboard:

ahhgt sjhdt lkkskjs ejsgjle wyujsgt whsyh

According to Demsbki, this string is complex (it has a lot of parts), but not specific. It is a random string of characters, such as could be put together by chance.

However, if I devise a code that translates the above string into a sentence, all of a sudden the string has specificity... and can only have been put together by an intelligent designer!

And it is still just a random string of numbers that I got by hitting the keyboard randomly. So how come this string lacks this magical quality now, but will possess it when I devise the code?

Quite simple: a "thing with specificity" is just "something to which I attribute purpose". But this "specificity" is proposed as a way for detecting that same purpose! And round and round the circular logic goes from then on...

Absolam

Vivisectus wrote: »

I will now hit some random characters on my keyboard:
ahhgt sjhdt lkkskjs ejsgjle wyujsgt whsyh
According to Demsbki, this string is complex (it has a lot of parts), but not specific. It is a random string of characters, such as could be put together by chance.
However, if I devise a code that translates the above string into a sentence, all of a sudden the string has specificity... and can only have been put together by an intelligent designer!
And it is still just a random string of numbers that I got by hitting the keyboard randomly. So how come this string lacks this magical quality now, but will possess it when I devise the code?

Hang on, how is it possible to devise a code that 'translates' a random string into a sentence? Surely there must be a meaning present for it to be translated, otherwise it's not a translation, it's a substitution? Which is to say, in that case it would be the code that contains the meaning, not the original string.

For the string to be both complex and specific it would have to have it's own inherent meaning without any translation/substitution, would it not? I don't see how there's a particular issue with a complex and specific string occurring spontaneously as a result of random chance (a la the infinite monkey theorum), so what am I missing?