The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

equivariant

Wicknight wrote: »

Science barely existed when Newton was working. By modern standards he was a terrible scientist. Newton's excuse is ignorance of future advances in the philosophy of science. Creationists don't have that excuse.

I think its ridiculous to say that science barely existed in Newton's time - many scientific insights predate Newton.

Also, by modern standards, or indeed by any reasonable standard, Newton is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived - alchemy or not.

If you seek a more contemporary example, consider the case of Eliyahu Rips. He is a brilliant and world reknowned mathematician, who spends a large part of his time seeking coded messages in the bible. I consider the latter to be an exercise in futility and stupidity (my opinion only). However, there is no doubt that Rips is one of the top mathematicians in the world for his work in abstract algebra. Examples like these show that it is possible for people to be excellent scientists while at the same time holding completely irrational religious beliefs.

doctoremma

Wicknight wrote: »

What he will say is that all those things are defects due to degredation of the "perfect" genetic code from Eden caused by mutation that can only degrade information

I was aware of this potential response and I fear you may be correct. In getting worked up with excitement about the several conditions I have listed which are usually the outcomes of "negative mutations", he will fail to see that his statement about irreducible complexity has been proven false. And that 50 % of an eye is better than no eye.

doctoremma

Sam Vimes wrote: »

I'm afraid not, IKEA doesn't sell made up nonsense. It's the standard circular response: http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=64157247&postcount=20251

Did you make this diagram? I alt-print screened it a while ago

Sam Vimes

doctoremma wrote: »

Did you make this diagram? I alt-print screened it a while ago

I did

I made it after we had the following circular exchange:

J C wrote: »

...yes Sarah is an amazing and formidable woman ... and her science comments are 100%!!!!

..she could have added that the non-functional combinatorial space is effectively infinite ... while the functional combinatorial space is very often a singularity AT EACH POINT on each biochemical cascade!!!
...the reciprocal of these two figures is zero ... i.e. it is a mathematical impossibility to spontaneously produce functional CSI, on the massive scale required to 'evolve' Pondkind into Mankind'.

...and that would have left Prof Dawkins with no comeback!!!!:D

...GO Sarah ... GO!!!:D

...what an amazing Christian woman ... who (among other things) put the sex back in specks!!!!:D

... and gave the 'pseudo-liberals' a run for their money!!!

Sam Vimes wrote: »

In order to show irreducible complexity you must show that none of the components parts of any particular mechanism can perform any function whatsoever independently of each other. Pointing out that they cannot perform the specific function that is performed by all of the components working together is meaningless. It's not even in dispute. The ideas of irreducible complexity, complex specified information and creationism as a whole rely on the mistaken idea that not being able to perform one specific function is the same as not being able to perform any function at all

J C wrote: »

...but living systems require that SPECIFIC functions be perfeormed in SPECIFIC sequences in a SPECIFIC time and place ... and therefore irreducible complexity is a PROVEN phenomenon!!!!

...if you need to catch mice .... having a great big 'ball-breaking' paperlip in your pocket is USELESS!!!!!:D:eek:

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Creationism also relies on ignoring the fact that even if an organism has come to rely on a particular biological mechanism today, that does not mean that all of its ancestors throughout its history also relied on the same mechanism.

A leopard needs to hunt its prey, without that ability it will die and a rabbit uses its long ears to hear predators, without that ability it will die. But both evolved from a common ancestor that was similar to a shrew. The shrew had neither the hunting ability of the leopard nor the hearing ability of the rabbit but it survived anyway because this particular ancestor did not require either of these adaptations for survival

J C wrote: »

...it is 'getting there' that is the problem ... and using non-intelligently directed systems it is IMPOSSIBLE ... because there are an effective infinity of non-functional permutions ... and often only one functional permutation!!!

Sam Vimes wrote: »

That's just a rephrasing of the first post I responded to, you just changed:

J C wrote:

the non-functional combinatorial space is effectively infinite ... while the functional combinatorial space is very often a singularity AT EACH POINT on the cascade

to

J C wrote:

there is an effective infinity of non-functional permutions ... and often only one functional permutation

So I'm just going to repost my original response:

In order to show irreducible complexity you must show that none of the components parts of any particular mechanism can perform any function whatsoever independently of each other. Pointing out that they cannot perform the specific function that is performed by all of the components working together is meaningless. It's not even in dispute. The ideas of irreducible complexity, complex specified information and creationism as a whole rely on the mistaken idea that not being able to perform one specific function is the same as not being able to perform any function at all

Turtwig

A Sam Vimes' original and, if I may so, a classic.:D

Zombrex

equivariant wrote: »

I think its ridiculous to say that science barely existed in Newton's time - many scientific insights predate Newton.

Such as?

equivariant wrote: »

Also, by modern standards, or indeed by any reasonable standard, Newton is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived - alchemy or not.

No, Newton is one of the greatest natural philosophers that ever lived. That does not make one a scientist. A scientist is one who follows the scientific method, a concept that barely existed in Newton's day

As John Maynard Keynes said, "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians."

equivariant wrote: »

If you seek a more contemporary example, consider the case of Eliyahu Rips. He is a brilliant and world reknowned mathematician ... Examples like these show that it is possible for people to be excellent scientists while at the same time holding completely irrational religious beliefs.

Rips wasn't a scientist. He was a mathematician.

Turtwig

Wicknight wrote: »

Rips wasn't a scientist. He was a mathematician.

In fairness to equivariant there are a few excellent scientists with dodgy personal beliefs. Fred Hoyle was a creationist who happened to be an exceptional physicist.

Sam Vimes

Malty_T wrote: »

In fairness to equivariant there are a few excellent scientists with dodgy personal beliefs. Fred Hoyle was a creationist who happened to be an exceptional physicist.

Now I see where creationists get some of their mantras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_chemical_evolution

"Hoyle calculated that the chance of obtaining the required set of enzymes for even the simplest living cell was one in 10^40,000. Since the number of atoms in the known universe is infinitesimally tiny by comparison (10^80), he argued that even a whole universe full of primordial soup would grant little chance to evolutionary processes"

"Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

Depressing

doctoremma

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

Depressing

We can all argue about how plausible "evolution" is all day but natural selection is a scientific fact. We can directly observe it in the world around us and we can test it in a petri dish. It's on a par with "gravity" as a natural force/mechanism except nobody's even arguing about how natural selection works.

So how is it forgotten so easily? How do people continually fail to account for it in these random metaphors?

Sam Vimes

doctoremma wrote: »

So how is it forgotten so easily? How do people continually fail to account for it in these random metaphors?

Because their faith relies on not accounting for it

Galvasean

doctoremma wrote: »

50 % of an eye is better than no eye.

True that. You probably wont be able to read fine print, but it should stop you from falling down holes and walking into walls.

Sam Vimes

Galvasean wrote: »

True that. You probably wont be able to read fine print, but it should stop you from falling down holes and walking into walls.

Even this is better than nothing

Zombrex

Malty_T wrote: »

In fairness to equivariant there are a few excellent scientists with dodgy personal beliefs. Fred Hoyle was a creationist who happened to be an exceptional physicist.

Depends on what you mean by excellent scientist.

Hoyle seemed to have little issue bringing his own philosophical pondering of how the universe should be into his scientific work, even before he embraced the ideal of alien intelligent design.

His steady state theory is a good example of this, a theory he held on to long after the evidence contradicted it. According to Wikipedia he was still trying to explain it as late as the mid-1990s.

equivariant

Wicknight wrote: »

Such as?

How about people like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler? They all predated Newton. Also you have Da Vinci who studied optics and hydrodynamics. These are only the ones that occurred to me in the first 5 minutes of thinking about this. Of course these people were not specialists like modern scientists but does not diminish the significance of their scientific work.

As for the idea that the scientific method was not around in Newton's time - I don't think so. Descartes published his Discourse on Method before Newton was born and I'm pretty sure that Bacon had written about this before then also. The scientific method is not something that just popped into existence fully formed. It is something that has been refined and developed since long before Newton's time.

Turtwig

I give the the credit to Galileo for empirical science.:) I'm pretty sure that before then it believed that you reason out anything logically in your head.

Zombrex

equivariant wrote: »

How about people like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler? They all predated Newton.

They are people, not scientific insights.

If we are just listing very clever people why not go all the way back to Pythagoras or Plato?

equivariant wrote: »

Of course these people were not specialists like modern scientists but does not diminish the significance of their scientific work.

It does not diminish the significance of their work, but their work was not particularly scientific, not by modern standards. That isn't a bad thing, as I said science barely existed at this stage. It was all natural philosophy.

You seem to be confusing science with natural philosophy.

equivariant wrote: »

As for the idea that the scientific method was not around in Newton's time - I don't think so. Descartes published his Discourse on Method before Newton was born and I'm pretty sure that Bacon had written about this before then also. The scientific method is not something that just popped into existence fully formed.

That was my point. I didn't say the scientific method was not around in Newton's time, I said that the scientific method barely existed in his time.

The scientific method did not pop into existence when Descartes published Discourse. It developed gradually over decades and centuries to the modern understand of science we have today.

equivariant wrote: »

It is something that has been refined and developed since long before Newton's time.

No, it is something has has been refined and developed since Newton's time. Science as we understand it today was in its bare infancy in Newton's time.

equivariant

Wicknight wrote: »

They are people, not scientific insights.

If we are just listing very clever people why not go all the way back to Pythagoras or Plato?

That is just childish. You know perfectly well that I was referring to the scientific achievements of those people. Copernicus for the heliocentric view of the solar system, Kepler for his model of planetary motion, etc.

It does not diminish the significance of their work, but their work was not particularly scientific, not by modern standards. That isn't a bad thing, as I said science barely existed at this stage. It was all natural philosophy.

I completely disagree. How can you say that Kepler's work on planetary motion was not scientific? It is model of the scientific method in actio. He created a mathematically sophisticated and highly accurate model of planetary motion based on careful study of observations made by Brahe

You seem to be confusing science with natural philosophy.

No

That was my point. I didn't say the scientific method was not around in Newton's time, I said that the scientific method barely existed in his time.

The scientific method did not pop into existence when Descartes published Discourse. It developed gradually over decades and centuries to the modern understand of science we have today.

But you did say that Newton was not really a scientist in your view.

No, it is something has has been refined and developed since Newton's time.

Do you have any backing for this opinion from any standard histories of science?

J C

Sam Vimes wrote: »

"Materialist" science put a man on the moon. Religious based "science" drilled holes in people's heads to let evil spirits out

...the chief Rocket Scientist who put the men on the Moon was a Creationist!!!

http://www.theologue.org/NecessityOfDesign.html
http://www.acgr.org/resources/Braun.pdf

Sam Vimes

J C wrote: »

...the chief Rocket Scientist who put the men on the Moon was a Creationist!!!

http://www.theologue.org/NecessityOfDesign.html
http://www.acgr.org/resources/Braun.pdf

Even if that's true, he used materialist science to do it. As we keep saying, someone being a creationist is no problem as long as they keep it out of the lab, as he did.


Also I see you're ignoring the annihilation of irreducible complexity that's just taken place. Looks like me and Wicknight were both wrong, you neither repeated the same argument that had just been debunked nor subtley avoided the question, you took option C), ignore it

Soul Winner

Wicknight wrote: »

If you were interviewing this religion teacher for the position and you asked her opinion on religion and she said she thought that religion was the root cause of all evil the world and that she believed teaching religion was children was morally wrong, would you go "Umm, yup lets put her on the call back list"
I doubt it.

Why on earth would she want to teach religion if she taught that teaching religion was morally wrong? But even if she harbored such feelings, unless it affected the job that she was being paid to do then what's the problem? Her personal feelings should not come into it. If I told the interviewer what I really thought about having to work in my job interview I wouldn't have got the job. I hate the fact that I have to work but I do it and those feelings do not affect my performance whatsoever.

Wicknight wrote: »

I imagine you would say she is unfit for the job of teaching religion to school children, and wonder why given her views she is even applying for the job in the first place (probably not to further advance the religious education of children).

If you knew for certain that a creationist was out do likewise to science then yes he should not be given the position but are there examples of such cases?

Wicknight wrote: »

Creationism is a rejection of scientific and scientific standards. To apply for a job in science while at the same time rejecting science makes it doubtful that you will end up on the call back list.

Would it not be better to bring the creationist in and show him where his ideas are flawed instead of locking him out and keeping him ignorant?

Wicknight wrote: »

This is the same of any position.

Applying for a job as a director of a film festival while saying you think movies are the work of the devil and should be banded out right and you aren't going to get the job, no matter how "qualified" your C.V appears to be.

It shouldn't matter as long as he does a good job at directing the film festival, no? Once he has a good track record of doing just that when you read his CV and doesn't start mouthing his ideas at the crowd, then what's the problem? If he keeps his opinions to himself and out of his job then they shouldn't have any baring on matters. But if you knew for certain that he was going to start ranting and raging at the crowd about movies being evil, then yes it would be correct not to employ such a person for such a position.

monosharp

Soul Winner wrote: »

It was a religion class. And even if the story was proven to be a myth then that still does not give the teacher the right to teach that in that particular class.

I remember my religion class, we learned about all the worlds religions.

I remember one particular day we learned about the moonies and scientology, we were told what they believe in, what they do and why I should stay the f&%$ away from them.

Religion class is a class to teach you about the different faiths in the world, what people believe. Theres nothing wrong with the teacher telling the students things like what you are talking about.

Unless of course you mean a 'christian/other' religion class, i.e > Learn your bible or whatever. Where the function of the class is to indoctrinate children into the religion, then it was clearly the wrong thing to say.

So yes you can scientifically prove that it was not 6000 years ago but how can you possibly scientifically prove that a man named Adam did not exist thousands of years ago when it is impossible to arrive at any kind of date for he was supposed have existed?

I didn't say anything about a man called Adam existing, I said a couple of homo sapiens giving birth to the entire human race could not have happened.

It is not a scientific fact that Adam did not exist

It is a scientific fact that the human race are not the result of teenage coitus between a couple of homo sapiens.

Zombrex

Soul Winner wrote: »

Why on earth would she want to teach religion if she taught that teaching religion was morally wrong?

Exactly!

Now you are starting to see the issue people have with Creationists, and why proper scientists are so suspicious of them, because it is most definitely not about science and scientific discovery for a Creationist.

It is, in most cases, about pushing a religious agenda at the expense of the standards and principles of science.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Her personal feelings should not come into it.

They should if she is actively telling people about these personal feelings of hers.

A job interview is all about assessing the potential ability of someone to do the job they will be hired to do. You do not ignore everything in the interview and just assume that they will do the job well unless demonstrated later after you have hired them, that they won't.

If a person turned up for the job of PA to Tom Cruise and in the job interview they said they hated Tom Cruise and couldn't stand to look at them, so you think the person doing the hiring would say "Lets see how it goes"? No, they wouldn't.

If a Creationist demonstrates a personal disdain for science and scientific method (as most of them do) they are not going to be hired in a position that requires that they follow the scientific method.

For example I once did a job interview for a programming job where I was asked how I would work well with a younger person that I would be pairing with. I tried to give a good answer that I wouldn't mind but it was obviously clear that I wasn't that convincing. I didn't get the job and one of the reasons they gave was that I suggested from the answer that I would not be particularly comfortable working with a younger person who I would have to train.

Now, to use your phrase above, that was my personal feelings on the matter. But of course my personal feelings on the job I would be asked to do will of course effect my ability to do the job.

No employer in the world is going to say "He clearly doesn't want to do this but we can't assume from that that he won't be good at it, lets hire him"

People hire people who are enthusiastic and passionate about the job you put before them. They don't hire people who don't even want to do it.

Soul Winner wrote: »

If I told the interviewer what I really thought about having to work in my job interview I wouldn't have got the job. I hate the fact that I have to work but I do it and those feelings do not affect my performance whatsoever.

I find that very difficult to believe, though I don't know what work you do. I find it very hard to believe that you hating your job doesn't decrease your ability to do that job well compared to someone who loved the job.

If you have the choice between someone who loves the work they do and someone who hates the work they do you are going to hire the person who loves the work they do. And as you say yourself if you every told an interviewer that you hated the work you were going for you wouldn't get hired.

It works double for Creationists, who not only have a disdain for the principles of science (since they don't give the answer they want), but are also trying to push an agenda of Biblical truth as scientific fact.

So you not only have someone who hates their job, but who hates their job and is vocal about that it should be done a different way.

Soul Winner wrote: »

If you knew for certain that a creationist was out do likewise to science then yes he should not be given the position but are there examples of such cases?

I've never heard of a Creationist who wasn't. Creationism by its very nature is a disdain for science. That is the point.

And expecting that you can publicly declare a disdain for science while still expecting that people treat you on par with every other scientist for positions and jobs is frankly ridiculous.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Would it not be better to bring the creationist in and show him where his ideas are flawed instead of locking him out and keeping him ignorant?

Better for whom?

You don't give people research or teaching jobs to educate them in how they have gone wrong. There is nothing keeping Creationists ignorant except their own repressive religious view points. They don't need a teaching job, just pick up a book on modern science.

Soul Winner wrote: »

It shouldn't matter as long as he does a good job at directing the film festival, no?

But that is the point. You have to assess if they will do a good job before you give them the job. And you make the judgement based on the information you have.

It is the same as a qualification. No one would say You don't have Java, will that shouldn't matter so long as he does a good job at his Java programming position.

The point is that without knowledge of Java he probably won't. He may, he may be a genius who picks up Java perfectly on his first day. But he probably won't.

And a person who has demonstrated disdain for the position they are going for probably won't do a good job at it. You don't give them the benefit of the doubt, you hire the best person on the day.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Once he has a good track record of doing just that when you read his CV and doesn't start mouthing his ideas at the crowd, then what's the problem?

But how do you know he isn't going to start mouthing his ideas at the crowd. He already mouthed his ideas out to you in the interview didn't he, and that is what you are going on when deciding to hire him or not.

If he was prepared to do that with you why would anyone think he would have any trouble doing that with others?

Time and time again Creationists who have been put in positions of academical responsibility have tried to get their Creationist views put before their students.

And when they have got in trouble for this they cry discrimination.

Is it any wonder that colleges are highly skeptical of putting out spoken Creationists in positions of academic responsibility.


If he keeps his opinions to himself and out of his job then they shouldn't have any baring on matters. But if you knew for certain that he was going to start ranting and raging at the crowd about movies being evil, then yes it would be correct not to employ such a person for such a position.[/QUOTE]

Zombrex

J C wrote: »

...the chief Rocket Scientist who put the men on the Moon was a Creationist!!!

http://www.theologue.org/NecessityOfDesign.html
http://www.acgr.org/resources/Braun.pdf

Who never touched Creation "science"

In fact nothing has ever ever been done using Creationist theories. Not a single thing.

Galvasean

Wicknight wrote: »

In fact nothing has ever ever been done using Creationist theories. Not a single thing.

I have to correct you there. Plenty has been done, just none of it in any way constructive.

The Mad Hatter

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Also I see you're ignoring the annihilation of irreducible complexity that's just taken place. Looks like me and Wicknight were both wrong, you neither repeated the same argument that had just been debunked nor subtley avoided the question, you took option C), ignore it

His usual response to this is something along the lines of "I can't be expected to respond to every single post!!!"

monosharp

Darwinian Selection at work in Robotics.

http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/48222-altruistic-robots-produced-through-evolution

Very interesting. And the peer-reviewed journal link here. http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000292

JC, any chance you would have a single link showing us an application of creation science in action ? You know, actually doing some science or been used in experiments.

CIE

J C wrote: »

In fact, Jesus Christ died so that YOU TOO could spend eternity with Him in Heaven

Not a single passage in the Bible says that people are going to heaven. (Revelation 21 says that God is ultimately going to come to Earth.)

Sam Vimes wrote: »

J C wrote: »

the chief Rocket Scientist who put the men on the Moon was a Creationist

Even if that's true, he used materialist science to do it

What in blazes is "materialist science"?? Please, no pseudonomenclature. Science is science, independent of people's beliefs about this and that. It is not the province of either "materialists", "creationists" or any other such category in between or outside.

monosharp wrote: »

Darwinian Selection at work in Robotics

Oxymoronic claim. Robots were/are created and did not evolve. Read the article again; the scientists input existing characteristics, and adjusted the robots according to the data they gathered. And further note that robotics and biology (the latter science being the most political; there was one notable massive war fought over political biology) are not reconcileable with each other, unless one is going to claim that robots are somehow biological.

Sam Vimes

CIE wrote: »

What in blazes is "materialist science"?? Please, no pseudonomenclature. Science is science, independent of people's beliefs about this and that. It is not the province of either "materialists", "creationists" or any other such category in between or outside.

I really wish that were true. There is science which I have called here materialist science to distinguish it from creation "science" which is a load of nonsense that does not follow scientific principles and amounts to little more than pathetic attempts to disprove evolution in the hopes that "god did it" will win by default

Sam Vimes

CIE wrote: »

Robots were/are created and did not evolve. Read the article again; the scientists input existing characteristics, and adjusted the robots according to the data they gathered. And further note that robotics and biology (the latter science being the most political; there was one notable massive war fought over political biology) are not reconcileable with each other, unless one is going to claim that robots are somehow biological.

Natural selection is a process by which random changes take place which are then tested and the ones that turn out to be beneficial go on and the ones that are not beneficial don't. It's basically a big process of trial and error that means complexity can arise without a designer. And it doesn't just apply to biology

monosharp

CIE wrote: »

Oxymoronic claim. Robots were/are created and did not evolve.

.... Really ?

Read the article again; the scientists input existing characteristics, and adjusted the robots according to the data they gathered.

Oh is that what it says ? And I thought it was about robots giving birth to robots and the genetic differences between generations of robots (of course assuming robots have DNA).

And further note that robotics and biology (the latter science being the most political; there was one notable massive war fought over political biology) are not reconcileable with each other, unless one is going to claim that robots are somehow biological.

I'd like to ask where you got 'I think robots started 'evolving' and they are biological' from my very short statement; "Darwinian Selection at work in robotics".

Might it have occurred to you that perhaps I didn't mean I thought robots were now biological and 'evolving' by themselves ?

Perhaps I actually had read the articles and were posting them here for the interest of others and that perhaps I had actually understood them ?