From: teap...@bbtel.SPAMLESS.com (Bonz)
Subject: Re: Designer as a Scientific Theory
Date: 1998/09/06
Message-ID: <35f2bc67.24585521@news.blue.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 388444527
Approved: robo...@ediacara.org
References: <35F0A1DF.E605A533@erols.com> <35f0b152.1093165667@news3.enter.net> <199809050838.BAA01061@cx33978-a.dt1.sdca.home.com> <6sr1rg$naq$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> <35f160ed.23155891@news.blue.net> <6stgei$sv0$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
Organization: SGS
Reply-To: teap...@bbtel.SPAMLESS.com
Newsgroups: talk.origins

On 6 Sep 1998 04:11:31 -0400, mayc...@andrews.edu wrote:

>In article <35f160ed.23155...@news.blue.net>,
>  teap...@bbtel.SPAMLESS.com wrote:
>> On 5 Sep 1998 05:50:19 -0400, mayc...@andrews.edu wrote:
>>
>> >In article <199809050838.BAA01...@cx33978-a.dt1.sdca.home.com>,
>> >  "Wesley R. Elsberry" <w...@cx33978-a.dt1.sdca.home.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >snip
>> >
>> >> Yep.  We can recognize design as humans do it because we have
>> >> prior experience of both what and how humans do things.  The
>> >> SETI project will only find aliens if those aliens happen to
>> >> do things in the ways that our experience with radio
>> >> communication makes us recognize properties we know from our
>> >> own communications.
>> >
>> >What if the aliens were broadcasting to us in some kind of code, and we broke
>> >it? What would be impossible about that?
>>
>> You mean, what if aliens really bradcast in English or French to one
>> another, just scrambled somehow? Are you serious?
>>
>> What is the difference between a language you don't know, and a
>> language you don't know in code? None.
>
>Right; in both cases, it's possible to figure out what's being said. So we
>could figure out what the aliens were saying without knowing anything about
>them.

Uh.. no. In neither case can you read the message. It is impossible.

Why to you think you can figure out what is being said? Ask someone
to write a paragraph in Chinese (assuming you do not know Chinese).
It can say anything at all.

Now sit yourself down with a pencil and paper and figure out what it
says. No other aids just the paragraph and your brain. No
dictionaries or other assistance.

How do you know which symbols are nouns, and which are verbs? Or is
it just a list of nouns, a shopping list?

 ¤¤ Bonz

To reply by Email, please remove THE OBVIOUS