"The science question in intelligent design"
TomS
is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
but because "it does not have substantive content".
I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
Synthese
DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
reviews in blogs:
<http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/why_intelligent_design_fails.php>
Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
also
<http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
Evolving Thoughts blog
"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
attributed to Josh Billings
Dick
Here's one I'll bet you didn't know: Evolution is NOT theory - it is
FACT!
Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the
middleof a hierarchy of certainty—
above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the
terms that way, however.
According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific
theory is “a well-substantiated
explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate
facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.”
No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a
descriptive generalization about nature.
So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution—or the atomic
theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter—
they are not expressing reservations about its truth.
In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent
with modification, one may also speak
of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as “an observation
that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all
practical purposes is accepted as ‘true.’”
The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms
have evolved through time.
Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence
is clear, unambiguous
and compelling.
All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot
see subatomic particles directly, for instance,
so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that
the particles leave in cloud chambers.
The absence of direct observation does not make physicists’
conclusions less certain.
Per: Ranger John Fiedor
John Day Fossil Beds National Monument
Visitor Services & Interpretation,
32651 Hwy 19, Kimberly OR 97848
541-987-2333, fax 541-987-2336
www.nps.gov/joda
Robert Carnegie
coats", but then I'm not totally sure that Einstein had one. Or
Hawking.
Of course all of us are in /their/ laboratory...
T Pagano
>Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
>is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
>criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
>"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
>intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
>but because "it does not have substantive content".
>
>I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
>t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
>
>"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
>Synthese
>DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
>
>For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
>reviews in blogs:
>
><http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/why_intelligent_design_fails.php>
>
>Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
>"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
>
>also
>
><http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
>
>Evolving Thoughts blog
>"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
NOTE: Below I've quoted from Wilkins's blog with my comments
interspersed.
[BEGIN QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
>Intelligent design (ID) is perhaps the most widely-discussed non-idea of all time.
>There seem to be three reasons why real scholars discuss it:
>1. It is historically an idea that had influence on intellectual history, up to, say, 1860
>2. It is an idea that needs to be discussed because the religious put it forward in opposition
> to science and
The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
From almost the beginning (1998, Dembski's peer reviewed "The Design
Inference") the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed. And in
the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
Sarkar's new article in the same category?
First we need to get some of the facts straight:
1. The secular community hasn't shown where Dembski's ID theory is
flawed or internally inconsistent. They don't show where Dembski's
use of Information theory or Probability theory has gone astray.
2. The bias of ID proponents has never been denied by them while
other than Dawkins and Provine in the outside world and snex at
talk.origins the rest of the secular rable (Forrest, Okimoto,
Elsberry, Harshman, Wilkins et. al.) have refused to expose their
biases. Their failure to expose their unscientific predelictions
towards practical Atheism, Naturalism and uniformitarianism, for
example, is intellectually dishonest.
3. The claim that Dembski's ID theory is in opposition to the
enterprise of Science is offered by athesits like Wilkins as an axiom.
Nowhere does he (or any of his atheist brethren) offer a whiff of an
argument to support it. How on earth could Dembski's ID theory be
in "opposition" to Science when it employs the sciences of Information
Theory and Probability Theory? Perhaps atheists don't consider
mathematics to be an integral component of the practice of Science?
4. Dembski's ID theory is not in conflict with Biology, Physics,
Chemistry or any other ancillary offshoots of which I am aware
including evolutionary biology. It is only in conflict with
provisional theories which propose that naturalistic processes possess
the causal power and probablistic resources to proceed along purely
naturalistic pathways to "specified complexity." Now unless
neoDarwinian theory has been raised to a law how could ID's conflicts
with a provisional theory be considered anti-science? Neither Wilkins
nor Sarkar nor the rest of the rable ever say.
5. "Science" and "neoDarwinian theory" are not synonyms. The
enterprise of Science is a non monolithic collection of methods,
practices and tools for making observations and analyzing
observations. "Science" has no tools WHATSOEVER for telling us
whether neoDarwinian theory (or any other theory) is true or even
probably true. Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
argument has never been overturned. The practice of Science is
therefore UTTER SILENT about what should be "believed." So if ID
theory tells us something might be mistaken about a narrow aspect of
neoDarwinian theory how can that fact be construed to indicate
anti-science leanings. The atheist rable never says.
6. The atheist smear tactic smacks of protectionism of a conjectural
theory (neoDarwinian Theory) which has been effectively raised by
modernists to dogma. Their zealously held faith rivals that of any
fundamentalist christian.
more to follow if time permits.
Regards,
T Pagano
>3. It allows one to discuss interesting ideas by acting as a kind of Gedankensexperiment.
>It is the latter that Sahotra Sarkar’s forthcoming paper in Synthese addresses.
>As Sarkar notes, may people have asked whether ID qualifies as science. The standard
>answer is that the designer is opaque to scientific investigation, in which case the hypothesis
> is not science (because it is uninvestigable), or it is not, in which case it is failed science.
>But Sarkar uses it to riff off the issue of the demarcation criterion which I have discussed
>here before. He takes the lack of precision in ID to not be, ipso facto, reason to deny ID
>is science, because, as is well known these days, many theories (he uses Elton and
> Macarthur’s hypothesis of the relationship between diversity and stability of ecosystems
>as an example) fail to have precise terms. I even think that a certain degree of imprecision
>is usually necessary for a hypothesis in its early days.
>The problem is that demarcation criteria assume a context independence which is historically
>and sociologically false. What counts as a theory in science is relativised to the state of the
>science at a time and place. The use of demarcation criteria in this context is usually political,
>says Sarkar. But for a theory to be subjected even to contextual criteria, there needs to be a
>theory there in the first place, and this requires that there be some terms that have shared
>meanings, and shared methods, that are employed in the theory under test. Terms like mass
>need to be relevant, which is to say, they need to be interpretable in empirical ways. ID fails
>in this sense en masse.
>He writes, “In the voluminous corpus of its [ID's] proponents, there seems to be no attempt
>to define “intelligence” in any way whatsoever. Except in analogy to intelligent human agents,
> we are not told what it means.” They do not give accounts in tractable cases like animal
>intelligence. They do not explicate what it means to be “specified” or “complex”. Sarkar
>makes a number of criticisms of the analogies used by ID: why is the fragility of “irreducible
>complexity” a sign of competence, rather than incompetence? We use redundancy to guard
>against failure, why wouldn’t the Designer? [A side issue, Wesley Elsberry and I introduced
>the notion of a rarefied design in contrast to the ordinary design to which it is analogous,
>and pointed out that the analogy fails - where design is like human ordinary design, the
>inferences used by ID fails, and where it is not, it tells you nothing.]
>He dissects Dembski’s actual precisification of ID: it is impossible to evaluate the probability
>of a pattern without knowing ahead of time how likely it is, and Dembski introduces a bit
>of special pleading in his criterion of complex specified information. Sarkar writes:
>Where are we left? We have no positive specification
>of “intelligence” whatsoever. We only have, at best,
>an incoherent attempt at a positive specification of “design.”
>In other words, we have no theory of ID at all. It follows,
>that we are in no position to judge whether the theory
>meets some demarcation criterion should we want to play
>that game.
>That is, we can’t even apply a demarcation criterion if we have one. There’s no “there” there.
>Late note: Brian Switek at Laelaps also has a discussion.
[END QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
Bruce Stephens
[...]
> From almost the beginning (1998, Dembski's peer reviewed "The Design
> Inference")
Dembski and the Discovery Institute have described the book as peer
reviewed, but I don't think that's a broadly held view, is it?
It's a book published (controversially) by CUP in a particular
monograph series. So it had to get some kind of "review", but a
different kind than an academic paper would need. (AFAIU, anyway.)
[...]
B Richardson
>
>
>
> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
>
It would have to have content for it to be seriously addressed.
Does Dembski's ID theory have content? What is it?
Frank J
There's really no point in reading anything past that sentence. But it
does have a certain train wreck appeal to watch a classic creationist
(are you still an OEC?) pander to the "don't ask, don't tell" ID
scammers.
(snip)
TomS
<f8658d83-eb26-4253...@t11g2000vbc.googlegroups.com>, Frank J
stated..."
>
>On Jun 9, 5:37=A0pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>> On 8 Jun 2009 15:49:06 -0700, TomS <TomS_mem...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> >Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
>> >is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
>> >criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
>> >"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
>> >intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
>> >but because "it does not have substantive content".
>>
>> >I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
>> >t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
>>
>> >"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
>> >Synthese
>> >DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
>>
>> >For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
>> >reviews in blogs:
>>
>p>
>>
>> >Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
>> >"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
>>
>> >also
>>
>> ><http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
>>
>> >Evolving Thoughts blog
>> >"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
>>
>> interspersed.
>>
>> [BEGIN QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
>>
> all time.
>> >There seem to be three reasons why real scholars discuss it:
>, up to, say, 1860
> forward in opposition
>> > to science and
>>
>> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
>> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
>
>There's really no point in reading anything past that sentence. But it
>does have a certain train wreck appeal to watch a classic creationist
>(are you still an OEC?) pander to the "don't ask, don't tell" ID
>scammers.
>
>(snip)
>
First of all, I'd like to thank T Pagano for directing attention
to this very interesting paper of Sarkar's.
And then, I think that Frank J would be interested in this from
the paper:
"Finally, attempting to cash out these intuitions about what is
wrong with ID in terms of demarcation criteria or on the basis
of naturalism is both unnecessary and, it seems to me, a tactical
mistake: it allows ID proponents to exploit philosophical
controversies to camouflage the basic incoherence of their claims."
--
---Tom S.
"...ID is not science ... because we simply do not know what it is saying."
Sahotra Sarkar, "The science question in intelligent design", Synthese,
DOI:10,1007/s11229-009-9540-x
John Harshman
(read: scientific); and to the extent he has any theory at all (which is
a very small extent) it's been addressed. Only a person whose habitual
pose is standing with his fingers in his ears, singing "La la la, I
can't hear you" would think otherwise. In other words: Tony.
> From almost the beginning (1998, Dembski's peer reviewed "The Design
> Inference") the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
> proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
> theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed. And in
> the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
> the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
> Sarkar's new article in the same category?
And does Richard Dawkins still beat the second Romana?
> First we need to get some of the facts straight:
> 1. The secular community hasn't shown where Dembski's ID theory is
> flawed or internally inconsistent. They don't show where Dembski's
> use of Information theory or Probability theory has gone astray.
Sure they do. Frequently.
> 2. The bias of ID proponents has never been denied by them while
> other than Dawkins and Provine in the outside world and snex at
> talk.origins the rest of the secular rable (Forrest, Okimoto,
> Elsberry, Harshman, Wilkins et. al.) have refused to expose their
> biases. Their failure to expose their unscientific predelictions
> towards practical Atheism, Naturalism and uniformitarianism, for
> example, is intellectually dishonest.
I don't know of anyone who has admitted a bias, there being none. A
great many make no secret of their opinions on religion, but that's
quite another thing. The big difference here is that your ideas on
science proceed directly from your religion, while those of the folks
you mention do not proceed from their lack thereof. And of course good
evidence of this is provided by the fact that most scientists who are
theists have the same scientific views as those mentioned.
[snip]
> more to follow if time permits.
Don't bother. It's boring already.
TomS
<CqudnX2W8av...@giganews.com>, John Harshman stated..."
The irony being that this very paper of Sarkar's which is the basis
of this thread argues that there is no substance to ID, and that is
the fundamental reason why ID is not science. Not some troublesome
thing about the "demarcation problem", "falsifiability", "testability",
..
Just as no one has seriously addressed the biography of the second
President of the Confederate States of America.
--
---Tom S.
"...ID is not science ... because we simply do not know what it is saying."
Sahotra Sarkar, "The science question in intelligent design", Synthese,
DOI:10,1007/s11229-009-9540-x
T Pagano
>Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
>is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
>criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
>"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
>intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
>but because "it does not have substantive content".
>
>I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
>t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
>
>"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
>Synthese
>DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
>
>For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
>reviews in blogs:
>
><http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/why_intelligent_design_fails.php>
>
>Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
>"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
>
>also
>
><http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
>
>Evolving Thoughts blog
>"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
NOTE: Below I've quoted from Wilkins's blog with my comments
interspersed.
[BEGIN QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
>Intelligent design (ID) is perhaps the most widely-discussed non-idea of all time.
>There seem to be three reasons why real scholars discuss it:
>1. It is historically an idea that had influence on intellectual history, up to, say, 1860
>2. It is an idea that needs to be discussed because the religious put it forward in opposition
> to science and
>3. It allows one to discuss interesting ideas by acting as a kind of Gedankensexperiment.
>It is the latter that Sahotra Sarkar’s forthcoming paper in Synthese addresses.
>As Sarkar notes, may people have asked whether ID qualifies as science. The standard
>answer is that the designer is opaque to scientific investigation, in which case the hypothesis
> is not science (because it is uninvestigable), or it is not, in which case it is failed science.
This standard, politically correct, modernist answer has always been a
red herring.
Dembski's hypothesis was never formulated to identify the who, what ,
when, where, how and why of the intelligent agent. Accusing ID theory
of its failure in this regard is like accusing Darwinian theory of
failing to provide the who, what, when, where and how of the first
replicating molecule.
As theorists often do Dembski suggested an indirect means of
discovering when an intelligent has acted---through an empirical
consequence of that action. His theory argued that an intelligent
agent executing a design plan with matter would sometimes leave behind
an observable signature in those materials. And if that signature was
recognized and law-chance eliminated as a possibility, it would then
implicate an intelligent agent. This is exactly the position taken
by SETI and the forensic sciences. For example, if a putative signal
from space did implicate intelligent causation, SETI's methods are
impotent to determine the "who" question. This does not make SETI
"failed science."
The inability of the tools of Science to probe the related question of
"who," in ID theory is INDEPENDENT of the efficacy or truthlikeness of
ID theory. (Note: I leave showing that as an exercise for our
credentialed philospher-comedian.) Likewise Darwin and his
neoDarwinian synthesizers have never been accused of failed science
because abiogenesis is beyond the scope of their theory or because
probing the purported origin and causal history of some First Common
Ancestor has proved highly resistant to scientific inquiry.
The red-herring answer fails to recognize that the methods and tools
of Science has limitations. The atheists and faithful followers of
scientism (like Okimoto) are blinded to them. The principle strength
of the practice of Science lies with investigating directly
observable, recurring, or otherwise experimentally reproducible
events. Therefore the red herring answer taken to its absurd
conclusion makes every theory for which Science does not have a direct
view "failed science." Poppy cock.
Throughout history Scientists have repeatedly bumped up against
aspects of their theories which were outside the limitations and tools
of science. They didn't quit or throw their theories into the
shitter; they simply turned those aspects of their theories into
"black boxes" and guessed at the empirical consequences that might be
directly viewable with our scientific tools and methods.
more to follow if time permits.
Regards,
T Pagano
[END QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
John Smith
"T Pagano" <not....@address.net> wrote in message
news:apagano-9nbt259l5g156...@4ax.com...
***The fact of the matter is that you are just presenting more of your
deranged and delusional bull shit.
That Demski's theory was not addresses runs a close second to the fact that
"clicking your heels together" will wisk you home.
A large number (perhaps a majority) of scientists are also religous
believers.
Your "atheism" accuzation is nothing more than a lie from ignorance.
From almost the beginning (1998, Dembski's peer reviewed "The Design
Inference")
****Peer reviewed?
****Peer reviewed usually means a paper submitted to a valid, and
responsible, scientific journal.
****I've never seen a "peer reviewed" book on ANY subject.
the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
*******If the truth shows ID in a bad (mentally, socially, and morally
corrupt) - are we supposed to change the truth because asshole morons, like
you, can't accept it?
*****There you go with that atheist" crap again.
proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed.
***It is, and has been shown - NOT only over and over again, but in a court
of LAW to be religous in nature.
It is no more a "theory" than the existance of Tinkerbells Fairy Dust.
The mentally corrupt ones are the fantical I.D.ers, themselves.
They cannot convince ANY honest scientist that this crap is science, not
religon .... so they do an "end run", and try to get stacked school boards,
propaganda (lies) aimed to influence public opinion, and, without the trials
and tribulations every other scientific theory has to go through ..... a
"pass" to jump up to being equal to all other EVIDENCE SUPPORTED scientific
theory.
And in
the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
Sarkar's new article in the same category?
***Yo!
***Dipshit!
***IT is the I.D.ers who work using the "politics of belief" - because they
HAVE no real scientific evidence.
First we need to get some of the facts straight:
***Something you will NEVER see in a Pagano post!
1. The secular community hasn't shown where Dembski's ID theory is
flawed or internally inconsistent. They don't show where Dembski's
use of Information theory or Probability theory has gone astray.
*** It is up to Demski to supply valid evidence to support his assertions.
Has has done no such thing.
*** In reading just a short section about this book - he wants to "change
the laws and criteria" to make a "god did it" type statement.
*** If every other (current) explanation doesn't work (after he's changed
the rules - and in total ignorance that explanations that don't currently
exist could exist in **-*the future) ..... then "god did it MUST be the
default answer!
****Pure Bull Shit!
2. The bias of ID proponents has never been denied by them
****More Bull Shit!
****They are religously biased, and fanatical extremist christians. That's
why the same arguments (and even the same wording) that existed in the
"evolution vs ****creationism" crap pushed for years and years now appears
in I.D. arguments, claims and assertions.
*** Yet, when they appear in the general news, and in the courts, their
BASIC action is to deny ANY connection with ANY religion.
while
other than Dawkins and Provine in the outside world and snex at
talk.origins the rest of the secular rable (Forrest, Okimoto,
Elsberry, Harshman, Wilkins et. al.) have refused to expose their
biases. Their failure to expose their unscientific predelictions
towards practical Atheism, Naturalism and uniformitarianism, for
example, is intellectually dishonest.
**** The most intellectually (and mentally) dishonest person I have EVER
seen - in ANY of the news groups I've been in .... is you .... Pagano!
3. The claim that Dembski's ID theory is in opposition to the
enterprise of Science is offered by athesits like Wilkins as an axiom.
Nowhere does he (or any of his atheist brethren) offer a whiff of an
argument to support it.
**** Neither you or Demski have offered anything to support his assertinos
and claims.
How on earth could Dembski's ID theory be
in "opposition" to Science when it employs the sciences of Information
Theory and Probability Theory? Perhaps atheists don't consider
mathematics to be an integral component of the practice of Science?
*****Bwahahaaaaaaa ..... "Mathematics" contains the term 2 + 2 = 4
***** Mathematics ALSO contains the term 2 + 2 = 37.
*****Just beacuse Demski's work contains some basic science - does NOT mean
that the science used is used properly or correct.
4. Dembski's ID theory is not in conflict with Biology, Physics,
Chemistry or any other ancillary offshoots of which I am aware
including evolutionary biology.
****Neither is Brer Rabbit; but that says nothing about its TRUTH.
It is only in conflict with
****Science and reality!
provisional theories which propose that naturalistic processes possess
the causal power and probablistic resources to proceed along purely
naturalistic pathways to "specified complexity." Now unless
neoDarwinian theory has been raised to a law how could ID's conflicts
with a provisional theory be considered anti-science? Neither Wilkins
nor Sarkar nor the rest of the rable ever say.
5. "Science" and "neoDarwinian theory" are not synonyms. The
enterprise of Science is a non monolithic collection of methods,
practices and tools for making observations and analyzing
observations. "Science" has no tools WHATSOEVER for telling us
whether neoDarwinian theory (or any other theory) is true or even
probably true. Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
argument has never been overturned. The practice of Science is
therefore UTTER SILENT about what should be "believed." So if ID
theory tells us something might be mistaken about a narrow aspect of
neoDarwinian theory how can that fact be construed to indicate
anti-science leanings. The atheist rable never says.
6. The atheist smear tactic smacks of protectionism of a conjectural
theory (neoDarwinian Theory) which has been effectively raised by
modernists to dogma. Their zealously held faith rivals that of any
fundamentalist christian.
more to follow if time permits.
******IOW Gotta go to the barn and wait for more bull shit.
*****What I had, I used up already.
John Smith
"Bruce Stephens" <bruce+...@cenderis.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:87ski92...@cenderis.demon.co.uk...
Knowing the constant lies and deception used by creationists/IDers - I think
their idea of "peer review"
is shown in:
http://www.designinference.com/desinf.htm
Endorsements of The Design Inference
(IOW nothing more than anti-science religious zealots telling another
anti-science religious zealot how good he and his latest book are.)
Michael Behe
a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
Behe is best known for his argument for irreducible complexity, a concept
that asserts that some structures are too complex at the biochemical level
to be adequately explained as a result of evolutionary mechanisms and thus
are the result of intelligent design.
(Also know as the "I don't understand it - so it must have been god's work)
******************
Robert Kaita
"The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar: Redeeming the Soul, Redeeming the
Mind - William Lane Craig (Editor), Paul M. Gould (Editor), Habib C. Malik
(Foreword), Charles Malik, Peter Kreeft, Walter L. Bradley, , John North
Evangelizing the academy is a unique and important task. This book revives a
challenge regarding just how to do it."
********************************
John Lennox
and has lectured extensively in both Eastern and Western Europe, Russia and
North America on mathematics, apologetics and the exposition of Scripture.
**********************
Chuck Colson
One of Nixon's Watergate thugs - -and now a "born again" christian fanatic.
****************************************
Phillip E. Johnson
A lawyer (not educated in either science or religion.
Was the inventor of the concept of intelligent design.
>>
" What I am not doing is bringing the Bible into the university and
saying, "We should believe this." Bringing the Bible into question works
very well when you are talking to a Bible-believing audience. But it is a
disastrous thing to do when you are talking, as I am constantly, to a world
of people for whom the fact that something is in the Bible is a reason for
not believing it... You see, if they thought they had good evidence for
something, and then they saw it in the Bible, they would begin to doubt.
That is what has to be kept out of the argument if you are going to do what
I to do, which is to focus on the defects in [the evolutionists'] case-the
bad logic, the bad science, the bad reasoning, and the bad evidence.[32]
Criticisms
The most serious specific allegation leveled by a number of critics is that
Johnson is often intellectually dishonest in his arguments advancing
intelligent design and attacking the scientific community.[33][34] For
example, he has been accused of numerous equivocations, particularly
involving the term naturalism which can refer either to methodological
naturalism or to philosophical naturalism.[35][36]
In fact-checking Johnson's books Darwin on Trial and Defeating Darwinism,
one reviewer argued that almost every scientific source Johnson cited had
been misused or distorted, from simple misinterpretations and innuendos to
outright fabrications. The reviewer, Brian Spitzer, a professor of Biology,
described Darwin on Trial as the most deceptive book he had ever read.[34]
*****************************************************
John S. Wilkins
> Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
> argument has never been overturned.
I have to thank you for quoting our mutual friend, who I normally have
killfield, because otherwise I would never have seen this
contrary-to-fact piece of bulshit. Hume, an atheist? Ha!
--
John S. Wilkins, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvinthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
wf3h
> On 8 Jun 2009 15:49:06 -0700, TomS <TomS_mem...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
> >is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
> >criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
> >"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not>
> red herring.
>
> Dembski's hypothesis was never formulated to identify the who, what ,
> when, where, how and why of the intelligent agent. Accusing ID theory
> of its failure in this regard is like accusing Darwinian theory of
> failing to provide the who, what, when, where and how of the first
> replicating molecule.
pagano conflates apples and fish.
dembski's goal is to provide a constitutionally valid view of religion
that can be taught in public schools. that's demonstrable since ID did
not take off until after the US supreme court's striking down the
teaching of creationism in public schools.
evolution is a theory of the CHANGE in species, NOT the origin of
life. pagano is not scientifically literate enough to diffentiate
these
>
> As theorists often do Dembski suggested an indirect means of
> discovering when an intelligent has acted---through an empirical
> consequence of that action.
so indirect it says nothing at all about anything.
His theory argued that an intelligent
> agent executing a design plan with matter would sometimes leave behind
> an observable signature in those materials. And if that signature was
> recognized and law-chance eliminated as a possibility, it would then
> implicate an intelligent agent. This is exactly the position taken
> by SETI and the forensic sciences.
well....no it's not.
i'm a ham radio operator...and a physical chemist. i know the
difference between a radio signal and the biochemistry of DNA
it's become a cliche among creationists to compare SETI to
creationism. there is no comparison at all. SETI excludes natural
processes that can produce radio signals since we know ALOT about
radio signals
pagano's too dumb to realize we have no idea how DNA formed. we have
no idea about natural processes that can produce it. there is no
comparison at all between SETI and DNA.
For example, if a putative signal
> from space did implicate intelligent causation, SETI's methods are
> impotent to determine the "who" question. This does not make SETI
> "failed science."
we know who the 'who' is in SETI. we assume they are much like
us...they live on a planet. they have radio transmitters.
is pagano prepared to say the same about god?
>
> Throughout history Scientists have repeatedly bumped up against
> aspects of their theories which were outside the limitations and tools
> of science. They didn't quit or throw their theories into the
> shitter; they simply turned those aspects of their theories into
> "black boxes" and guessed at the empirical consequences that might be
> directly viewable with our scientific tools and methods.
>
> more to follow if time permits.
>
pagano ignores the fact every idea has its failures. religoin is no
different. creationism is a failure. for 2000 years it led nowhere.
that's why his own church does not accept it...which, in turn, leads
to pagano calling his own church leaders 'heretics'
thus the fruit of creationism. failure. paranoia. lies...
T Pagano
>Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
>is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
>criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
>"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
>intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
>but because "it does not have substantive content".
>
>I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
>t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
>
>"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
>Synthese
>DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
>
>For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
>reviews in blogs:
>
><http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/why_intelligent_design_fails.php>
>
>Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
>"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
>
>also
>
><http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
>
>Evolving Thoughts blog
>"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
NOTE: Below I've quoted from Wilkins's blog with my comments
interspersed.
[BEGIN QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
>Intelligent design (ID) is perhaps the most widely-discussed non-idea of all time.
>There seem to be three reasons why real scholars discuss it:
>1. It is historically an idea that had influence on intellectual history, up to, say, 1860
>2. It is an idea that needs to be discussed because the religious put it forward in opposition
> to science and
>3. It allows one to discuss interesting ideas by acting as a kind of Gedankensexperiment.
>It is the latter that Sahotra Sarkar’s forthcoming paper in Synthese addresses.
>As Sarkar notes, may people have asked whether ID qualifies as science. The standard
>answer is that the designer is opaque to scientific investigation, in which case the hypothesis
> is not science (because it is uninvestigable), or it is not, in which case it is failed science.
>But Sarkar uses it to riff off the issue of the demarcation criterion which I have discussed
>here before. He takes the lack of precision in ID to not be, ipso facto, reason to deny ID
>is science, because, as is well known these days, many theories (he uses Elton and
> Macarthur’s hypothesis of the relationship between diversity and stability of ecosystems
>as an example) fail to have precise terms. I even think that a certain degree of imprecision
>is usually necessary for a hypothesis in its early days.
If lack of precision in the use of words were reason enough to condemn
a theory then only axiomic mathematical theories would be admitted.
NeoDarwinian theory is littered with words like "fitness" and
"species" that have defied "precision" yet we can nonetheless proceed.
>The problem is that demarcation criteria assume a context independence which is historically
>and sociologically false. What counts as a theory in science is relativised to the state of the
>science at a time and place. The use of demarcation criteria in this context is usually political,
>says Sarkar. But for a theory to be subjected even to contextual criteria, there needs to be a
>theory there in the first place, and this requires that there be some terms that have shared
>meanings, and shared methods, that are employed in the theory under test. Terms like mass
>need to be relevant, which is to say, they need to be interpretable in empirical ways. ID fails
>in this sense en masse.
One sometimes wonders what passes for scholarship these days. This is
sociological psycho-babble.
Here Sarkar argues, more or less, that Dembski's theory has exceeded
the limits of imprecision in its use of words into an area of complete
incommensurability. Unfortunately the fact the Dembski's 1998 "The
Design Inference" passed Cambridge University peer review and was
published in its series of studies in Probability, Induction and
Decision Theory makes this claim absurd on its face. Wonder who peer
reviewed Sarkar's article?
Furthermore Science is not a monolithic enterprise with singular
methods, tools or procedures that every investigator or theorist uses
in exactly the same way. Nor do its practioners always use terms in
exactly the same way---"fitness" and "species" come to mind. So long
as the reader can determine in context how they are used we can map
from one scientist to another.
Lastly the demarcation between a "scientific" and a "non scientific"
theory is far removed from Sarkar's psycho babble. The demarcation
criteria is simply that some theory about observable aspects of the
real world be falsifiable in principle. That is, the theory must
prohibit at least one event from occuring. Dembski's ID theory does
this; and his theory has yet to be falsified.
If Sarkar produced any quotes from Dembski's works or examples
supporting his psycho babble Wilkins couldn't be bothered to offer
them.
more to follow if time permits.
Regards,
T Pagano
>He writes, “In the voluminous corpus of its [ID's] proponents, there seems to be no attempt
>to define “intelligence” in any way whatsoever. Except in analogy to intelligent human agents,
> we are not told what it means.” They do not give accounts in tractable cases like animal
>intelligence. They do not explicate what it means to be “specified” or “complex”. Sarkar
>makes a number of criticisms of the analogies used by ID: why is the fragility of “irreducible
>complexity” a sign of competence, rather than incompetence? We use redundancy to guard
>against failure, why wouldn’t the Designer? [A side issue, Wesley Elsberry and I introduced
>the notion of a rarefied design in contrast to the ordinary design to which it is analogous,
>and pointed out that the analogy fails - where design is like human ordinary design, the
>inferences used by ID fails, and where it is not, it tells you nothing.]
>He dissects Dembski’s actual precisification of ID: it is impossible to evaluate the probability
>of a pattern without knowing ahead of time how likely it is, and Dembski introduces a bit
>of special pleading in his criterion of complex specified information. Sarkar writes:
>Where are we left? We have no positive specification
>of “intelligence” whatsoever. We only have, at best,
>an incoherent attempt at a positive specification of “design.”
>In other words, we have no theory of ID at all. It follows,
>that we are in no position to judge whether the theory
>meets some demarcation criterion should we want to play
>that game.
>That is, we can’t even apply a demarcation criterion if we have one. There’s no “there” there.
>Late note: Brian Switek at Laelaps also has a discussion.
[END QUOTE FROM WILKINS'S BLOG]
T Pagano
<jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
You've backed down so often that I don't even consider you a
challenge.
Though if time permits and you think you've posted something that
contradicts my position perhaps I'll reply or concede.
Regards,
T Pagano
John Harshman
I do not in fact recall ever having backed down in discussion with you.
I believe you are using your personal definition of "backed down", just
as you do with so many terms.
Here, you try one of your favorite techniques: insisting that it's my
job to prove I haven't backed down, which would seem to require an
analysis of our every encounter. You, on the other hand, could easily
present some specific examples, which I invite you to do.
[M]adman
> John Smith <bobsyo...@yahoo.com> quoted Paggers:
>
>> Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
>> argument has never been overturned.
>
> I have to thank you for quoting our mutual friend, who I normally have
> killfield, because otherwise I would never have seen this
> contrary-to-fact piece of bulshit. Hume, an atheist? Ha!
You pukes killfile everyone that you cannot refute.
Run Forrest!! Run!!!
'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank
Hey Tony, you still owe me an apology:
On Dec 31, 11:17 am, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
> And never heard
> Flank deny he was an atheist.
Jul 26 2003, 5:58 pm
Newsgroups: talk.origins
From: lfl...@ij.net (Lenny Flank)
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:55:07 +0000 (UTC)
Local: Sat, Jul 26 2003 5:55 pm
Subject: Re: Authority in the domain of religion -- a response to
Lenny Flank
>I am not an atheist. <shrug>
I expect an apology from you, Tony.
Well, actually, I *don't* expect any apology from you, since you are
precisely the sort of self-righteous holier-than-everyone prick who
would rather die than admit he's wrong.
So I'll just hound you unceasingly until you either apologize to me
or
run away. Again.
You fucking little coward.
================================================
Lenny Flank
"There are no loose threads in the web of life"
Editor, Red and Black Publishers
http://www.RedandBlackPublishers.com
Ray Martinez
wrote:
> T Pagano wrote:
Which proves they are Atheists and not Theists.
John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
Ray
Chris
It doesn't need to be addressed by the atheist community. The theistic
evolutionist community has already demolished it.
Chris
snip
Frank J
> Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
> is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
> criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
> "if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
> intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
> but because "it does not have substantive content".
>
> I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
> t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
I wasn't able to access it, but I have read what I think are similar
takedowns. Not sure if it's covered in detail, but as you know, to me
the simple "what happened when"? question posed long ago by Genie
Scott says it all. Technical refutations are just icing on the cake.
Ironically it was *after* Scott's challenge that that Dembski admitted
that ID had no intention of "connecting the dots." Years later he's
still thumbing his nose to mainstream science because, like it or not,
his "dietary supplement" sells. And his audience does not care about
double blind tests, placebo effect or quality control. The sales pitch
feels good and that's all that matters.
wf3h
>
>
> >
> >Intelligent design (ID) is perhaps the most widely-discussed non-idea of all time.
> >There seem to be three reasons why real scholars discuss it:
> >1. It is historically an idea that had influence on intellectual history, up to, say, 1860
> >2. It is an idea that needs to be discussed because the religious put it forward in opposition
> > to science and
>
> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
since when is 'secular' atheist? this meaningless conflation of 2
completely separate ideas is a favorite of fundamentalists across the
world.
the idea of a secular nation seems to horrify fundamentalists. in
spite of the fact that
1. no religious nation has ever been free (cf saudi arabia today)
2. the only free states are secular states (the US, germany, japan,
etc)
the fundamentalists, like pagano, still can't understand the failure
of their own ideas.
> From almost the beginning (1998, Dembski's peer reviewed "The Design
> Inference") the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
> proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
> theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed. And in
> the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
> the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
> Sarkar's new article in the same category?
uh...why ISNT ID anti-science? it's religion (cf the 'kitzmiller'
decision). ID is not a theory. there is nothing to test. it has no
mechanism. it is not defineable nor measureable in any way. ID
proponents merely ASSERT that their idea is non-religious. in fact, we
can trace the rise of ID almost exactly to 1987 when the supreme court
in its 'aguillard' decision, prohibited the teaching of creationism.
only after that did ID start its rise.
it's a poor scientific theory that is advanced by court cases, and not
science.
so pagano has failed to demonstrate WHY ID is science and, in fact,
it's easy to prove it's not.
>
> First we need to get some of the facts straight:
> 1. The secular community hasn't shown where Dembski's ID theory is
> flawed or internally inconsistent. They don't show where Dembski's
> use of Information theory or Probability theory has gone astray.
since dembksi makes no testable claims about the world, there's
nothing to test. the essence of science is to test a theory. dembski's
ideas, shrouded in numerology, without a firm basis in science, are
meaningless
>
> 2. The bias of ID proponents has never been denied by them while
> other than Dawkins and Provine in the outside world and snex at
> talk.origins the rest of the secular rable (Forrest, Okimoto,
> Elsberry, Harshman, Wilkins et. al.) have refused to expose their
> biases. Their failure to expose their unscientific predelictions
> towards practical Atheism, Naturalism and uniformitarianism, for
> example, is intellectually dishonest.
no one cares what dawkins or forrest or harshman thinks. their ideas
do not establish evolution as a science
what establishes evolution as science is the 150 years of demonstrated
observations, lab work, testability, defined ideas, etc. that make it
a theory.
ID has none of this. pagano asserts that science is personality based.
perhaps that's true in the creationist community where the argument
from authority holds sway. it's NOT true in science
> 3. The claim that Dembski's ID theory is in opposition to the
> enterprise of Science is offered by athesits like Wilkins as an axiom.
> Nowhere does he (or any of his atheist brethren) offer a whiff of an
> argument to support it. How on earth could Dembski's ID theory be
> in "opposition" to Science when it employs the sciences of Information
> Theory and Probability Theory? Perhaps atheists don't consider
> mathematics to be an integral component of the practice of Science?
?? a basic rule of computer science is: GIGO. this was taught to me
when i took my first computer science course at carnegie mellon:
garbage in, garbage out. dembski starts with unsubstantiated
definitions that are easily refuted. then he proceeds to make
erroneous conclusions.
so when did creationists start thinking obvious lies were science?
>
> 4. Dembski's ID theory is not in conflict with Biology, Physics,
> Chemistry or any other ancillary offshoots of which I am aware
> including evolutionary biology.
those of us who are chemists would disagree. i see nothing in his
ideas which are testable. if it's not testable, it's not science
It is only in conflict with
> provisional theories which propose that naturalistic processes possess
> the causal power and probablistic resources to proceed along purely
> naturalistic pathways to "specified complexity." Now unless
> neoDarwinian theory has been raised to a law how could ID's conflicts
> with a provisional theory be considered anti-science? Neither Wilkins
> nor Sarkar nor the rest of the rable ever say.
now lets see pagano claims:
1. nothing dembski says conflicts with science
2. people opposed to ID have a materialistic bias
pagano would win the game and utterly destroy his opponents if he
could show in ANY science a NON materialist view of nature. that's all
he'd have to do: show one since example from ANY science which does
not involve ONLY matter and energy
the fact that creationists, after 2000 years of whistling in the dark,
have been unable to do so, merely demonstrates the failure of their
ideas.
>
> 5. "Science" and "neoDarwinian theory" are not synonyms. The
> enterprise of Science is a non monolithic collection of methods,
> practices and tools for making observations and analyzing
> observations. "Science" has no tools WHATSOEVER for telling us
> whether neoDarwinian theory (or any other theory) is true or even
> probably true. Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
> argument has never been overturned.
this post modernist critique of science is too vague to be meaningful.
if no science is 'true' and evolution is science then evolution can
not be 'true'. so what? evolution as a property of nature is an
observed fact. creationism? it's never been observed anywhere. even
creationists admit that evolution can explain SOME features of nature.
they've been unable to point to a SINGLE example of creation in all of
history.
>
> 6. The atheist smear tactic smacks of protectionism of a conjectural
> theory (neoDarwinian Theory) which has been effectively raised by
> modernists to dogma. Their zealously held faith rivals that of any
> fundamentalist christian.
>
what's ironic is that pagano considers himself a roman catholic. when
informed that a recent catholic bishops' conference condemned
bibilical literalism, he stated the entire bishops' conference was
composed of atheists.
his own church recently held a conference on evolution....hosted by
the pope. only evolutionary biologists were invited. ID proponents
were specifically NOT invited.
creationism refutes itself.
Boikat
>
> >> Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
> >> argument has never been overturned.
>
> > I have to thank you for quoting our mutual friend, who I normally have
> > killfield, because otherwise I would never have seen this
> > contrary-to-fact piece of bulshit. Hume, an atheist? Ha!
>
> You pukes killfile everyone that you cannot refute.
Or, maybe you're just an odious little punk, and hes not going to be
bothered wasting his time on you?
Nah. That couldn't be it.
>
> Run Forrest!! Run!!!
Like the way you run from:
Claiming wars have been fought because science dispelled some
religious belief. (and when you originally made that cliam, you
implied the "science side" was the aggressor in some vague way.)
Supporting your claim that kent hovind was a "brilliant scientist"
that made many geat discoveries. (Up until the post you rplied to with
that claim, you'd never heard of Hovind, had you?)
Or how Hitler's understanding of the ToE was manifest in WWI. (How WWI
had anything to do with an erand boy's understanding of the ToE has
never been explained by you, and probably never will, since you lied.)
"Run adman, run!"
By fnord, you're a hypocrite!
Boikat
[M]adman
<cut to a side point>
>
> One sometimes wonders what passes for scholarship these days. This is
> sociological psycho-babble.
The educational system seems to be in utter shambles judging by the plethora
dishonest responses from (what are suppose to be educated people) that I
read daily on the Internet. Some even claim to be the teachers and shapers
of minds.
I seriously doubt anything can be done to reverse the trend because such
displays of intellectually dishonesty can be seen everywhere; from news
reporting to books to the Internet, --political correctness and dishonesty
has run amok everywhere.
So, it seems Bible prophesy comes true yet again.
"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their
mocking, following after their own lusts," (2 Peter 3:3)
"_But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men
will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers,
disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable,
malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power_;
Avoid such men as these." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
things do seem to be linning up for those last days.
adman
[M]adman
What the hell is a "Theist Evolutionist Community"?
Dana Tweedy
>>
>> I don't know of anyone who has admitted a bias, there being none. A
>> great many make no secret of their opinions on religion, but that's
>> quite another thing. The big difference here is that your ideas on
>> science proceed directly from your religion, while those of the folks
>> you mention do not proceed from their lack thereof. And of course
>> good evidence of this is provided by the fact that most scientists
>> who are theists have the same scientific views as those mentioned.
>>
>
> Which proves they are Atheists and not Theists.
How does accepting scientific facts "prove" one is an atheist?
>
> John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
Ray's jealousy strikes again.
DJT
roki...@cox.net
> On 8 Jun 2009 15:49:06 -0700, TomS <TomS_mem...@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> >Sahotra Sarkar has an article in "Synthese" which argues that ID
> >is not science, not because it doesn't meet "some demarcation
> >criterion between science and non-science", but rather because
> >"if [it] is taken to be non-theological doctrine, it is not
> >intelligible." Not because "it violates methodological naturalism",
> >but because "it does not have substantive content".
>
> >I think that this will be read with pleasure by a couple of the
> >t.o denizens (hi, Frank J).
>
> >"The science question in intelligent design" by Sahotra Sarkar
> >Synthese
> >DOI:10.1007/s11229-009-9540-x
>
> >For those who cannot access this article, there are a couple of
> >reviews in blogs:
>
> ><http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/2009/06/why_intelligent_design_fails.php>
>
> >Laelaps blog at scienceblogs.com
> >"Why intelligent design fails" by Brian Switek
>
> >also
>
> ><http://evolvingthoughts.net/2009/06/08/another-id-knockdown-by-sarkar/>
>
> >Evolving Thoughts blog
> >"Another ID knockdown, by Sarkar" by John Wilkins
>
SNIP:
Hey Pags, if the bogus ID perps demolished their opponents back in
2002, why did they run a dishonest bait and switch scam on the Ohio
State Board of education in 2003 and on every single moronic
creationist that bought into the teach ID scam since? Why hasn't a
single creationist rube that got conned by the ID scam ever gotten any
ID science to teach?
Only the ignorant, incompetent and or dishonest still support the
intelligent design scam. We know you are incompetent and dishonest,
so you fit in perfectly.
Ron Okimoto
fnord fnording Pagano
T Pagano
wrote:
>T Pagano wrote:
>
><cut to a side point>
>>
>> One sometimes wonders what passes for scholarship these days. This is
>> sociological psycho-babble.
>
>
>The educational system seems to be in utter shambles judging by the plethora
>dishonest responses from (what are suppose to be educated people) that I
>read daily on the Internet. Some even claim to be the teachers and shapers
>of minds.
I couldn't agree more.
Have you seen Ben Stein's "Expelled?" Graduate students know that if
they buck the orthodoxy, the orthodoxy destroys them. After the
degree is conferred regardless of their experience and record if they
think for themselves and buck the orthodoxy the orthodoxy crushes
them.
Very little original thinking goes on in the academy. Sarkar's
article wouldn't have passed muster in an undergraduate philosophy
course.
>
>I seriously doubt anything can be done to reverse the trend because such
>displays of intellectually dishonesty can be seen everywhere; from news
>reporting to books to the Internet, --political correctness and dishonesty
>has run amok everywhere.
Your posts about professional dishonesty ("cooking the books") among
the scientific ranks in the US appears to be a bigger problem than I
suspected.
>
>So, it seems Bible prophesy comes true yet again.
>
>"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their
>mocking, following after their own lusts," (2 Peter 3:3)
>
>"_But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men
>will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers,
>disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable,
>malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
>treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
>God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power_;
>Avoid such men as these." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
>
>things do seem to be linning up for those last days.
Again I agree. Thanks for bringing up those verses. It gave me cause
to read both chapters.
Regards,
T Pagano
>
>adman
B Richardson
Whoizzit that periodically posts their killfile?
T Pagano
As usual Ray you hit the nail on the head with one line.
Regards,
T Pagano
T Pagano
wrote:
>John S. Wilkins wrote:
....you crack me up!!!
Regards,
T Pagano
Garamond Lethe
fnord
<snip>
In putting together a talk on Dembski's book _No Free Lunch_ that I
presented to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department's Masel
Lab at UArizona, I coined the term "The Second Slide Problem" to
explain the following observation:
"Arguments from obfuscation do not survive summarization (but only if
you know what the words mean!)."
I ran across this problem when I tried to prepare a talk on Sean's
work. The first slide contained what I considered to be fair summary
of his position: evolution fails in the absence of differential
reproduction.
Since I would be presenting this talk to an audience of graduate
evolutionary biology students and postdocs, I had a problem. There
was nothing to put on slide 2. If you understand what "evolution" and
"differential reproduction" mean, Sean's argument is shown to be
absurd simply by stating it.
Dembski's only innovation is in using less familiar words. So I ended
up taking 90 minutes to walk through evolutionary algorithms (real
ones like Fogel's work in chess, not Dawkins's "weasel") and Wolpert's
original NFL paper. Actual math was displayed and explained.
At the end, I summarized Dembski. Given the previous background,
summarization was sufficient for refutation. If you understand what
the words mean that he's using (and that means being able to walk
through the proof of Wolpert's first theorm), Dembski's position is
simply goofy.
None of this needs rehashing here. Dembski's ideas are a dead letter
with people who have bothered to try to understand them. What I find
interesting about your post is that you are using Dembski's rhetorical
techniques (to even lesser effect, I'm afraid, but keep practicing!):
> Here Sarkar argues, more or less, that Dembski's theory has exceeded
> the limits of imprecision in its use of words into an area of complete
> incommensurability. Unfortunately the fact the Dembski's 1998 "The
> Design Inference" passed Cambridge University peer review and was
> published in its series of studies in Probability, Induction and
> Decision Theory makes this claim absurd on its face.
Anyone who has ever had their work subjected to peer review (I have)
and anyone who has reviewed papers (I have, and will be doing so again
later this evening) finds the above to be.... well, goofy.
Cambridge University does not do peer review.
One does not "pass" peer review.
Dembski's Intelligent Design work has not been peer reviewed.
On if you don't know what peer review means would the above even begin
to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
instead of finding out.
You guessed wrong. Sorry.
Based on my review of his work and the work he cites, I've concluded
that Demski is trivially wrong; his particular talent lies in never
being *obviously* wrong. He walks this line so well that I've
concluded he's not a crank: he knows (I believe) exactly what he's
doing and understands exactly how much he can say.
I will grant him effectiveness: if you want to understand why he is
trivially wrong, you have a lot of reading to do. At the end of that
reading, he is utterly, trivially wrong.
You don't have his talent. You are both trivially and obviously
wrong.
Practice does make perfect, though, and there's certainly openings for
creationists with advanced degrees that are able to obfuscate in
technical language. You may be one graduate degree away from a
modestly lucrative book contract and speaking fees.
But you do have a way to do, and you're not going to get there by
hanging out here changing subject lines.
If you'd like any assistance applying to graduate programs in biology,
I'm sure there would be several people here who would be willing to
contribute their expertise.
<snip>
richardal...@googlemail.com
> Inference") the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
> proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
> theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed. And in
> the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
> the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
> Sarkar's new article in the same category?
>
> 1. The secular community hasn't shown where Dembski's ID theory is
> flawed or internally inconsistent. They don't show where Dembski's
> use of Information theory or Probability theory has gone astray.
>
> other than Dawkins and Provine in the outside world and snex at
> talk.origins the rest of the secular rable (Forrest, Okimoto,
> Elsberry, Harshman, Wilkins et. al.) have refused to expose their
> biases.
But Tony! I've always been very clear about my biases: I detest
dishonesty, especially when it comes from those claiming the moral
high ground.
Evidently this marks me as an atheist according to you and other
creationists.
What do you think it tells us about creationism that they assume that
someone who detests hypocrisy must be an atheist?
By the way, another matter on which I have made my motives very clear
is my reason for posting on boards such as this: it's to expose the
ignorance, arrogance and dishonesty of creationists. Your help in this
respect is greatly appreciated. Few creationists have lied as
consistently and blatantly as you do.
RF
<dishonest garbage snipped>
T Pagano
<cartogr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Jun 9, 6:26 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
>fnord
>
><snip>
>
>In putting together a talk on Dembski's book _No Free Lunch_ that I
>presented to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department's Masel
>Lab at UArizona, I coined the term "The Second Slide Problem" to
>explain the following observation:
>
>"Arguments from obfuscation do not survive summarization (but only if
>you know what the words mean!)."
Presumably you produced quotes and examples from Dembski's works in
your slides. They are noticably absent here; which is to say that
this, at present, is hot air.
>
>I ran across this problem when I tried to prepare a talk on Sean's
>work. The first slide contained what I considered to be fair summary
>of his position: evolution fails in the absence of differential
>reproduction.
>
>Since I would be presenting this talk to an audience of graduate
>evolutionary biology students and postdocs, I had a problem. There
>was nothing to put on slide 2. If you understand what "evolution" and
>"differential reproduction" mean, Sean's argument is shown to be
>absurd simply by stating it.
To Dr Pitman's credit he thinks for himself and does not follow the
crowd...any crowd. However, to the extent that you render a
position of his absurd (which is hardly shown here) it applies to no
one else or no other group. You will have successfully crashed an
idea held by a class of one---Pitman. Bravo, Sir.
>
>Dembski's only innovation is in using less familiar words.
I can safely categorize this as verbalism not science. I can just see
the listeners as wide eyed and on the edge of their seats over this
bit of academic excellence.
>So I ended
>up taking 90 minutes to walk through evolutionary algorithms (real
>ones like Fogel's work in chess, not Dawkins's "weasel") and Wolpert's
>original NFL paper. Actual math was displayed and explained.
>
>At the end, I summarized Dembski. Given the previous background,
>summarization was sufficient for refutation. If you understand what
>the words mean that he's using (and that means being able to walk
>through the proof of Wolpert's first theorm), Dembski's position is
>simply goofy.
Here's where I call your bluff.
I have both of Wolpert's papers (Theorems for Search and Theorems for
Optimization). Since you've already done the work presumably with
quotes from Dembsk's "No Free Lunch" and Wolpert's papers let's see
the argument demonstrating that Dembski's interpretation of Wolpert is
goofy. This should be a simple cut & paste from your Power point
presentation into your news reader.
Next Lethe seems to be under the delusion that Dembski's theory
depends upon the NFL Theorems. If so, then I suspect Lethe didn't
actual read Dembski's "No Free Lunch." Dembski discusses
evolutionary algorithms in one chapter of his book and his application
of the NFL theorems only comprises a small part of that. His theory
is independent of the NFL Theorems. Ouch...Lethe didn't know that
did he?
Even if we were to excise everything concerning the NFL theorems from
Dembski's Chapter 4 of his "No Free Lunch" the problem of
neoDarwinian process proceeding towards and discovering fitness peaks
in the finite time available and explaining biological diversity
hardly looks any rosier. And sadly for poor Lethe excising the NFL
pages would have ZERO effect on Dembski's ID theory or that book as
whole.
>
>None of this needs rehashing here. Dembski's ideas are a dead letter
>with people who have bothered to try to understand them. What I find
>interesting about your post is that you are using Dembski's rhetorical
>techniques (to even lesser effect, I'm afraid, but keep practicing!):
So far nothing but hot air.
>
>
>> Here Sarkar argues, more or less, that Dembski's theory has exceeded
>> the limits of imprecision in its use of words into an area of complete
>> incommensurability. Unfortunately the fact the Dembski's 1998 "The
>> Design Inference" passed Cambridge University peer review and was
>> published in its series of studies in Probability, Induction and
>> Decision Theory makes this claim absurd on its face.
>
>Anyone who has ever had their work subjected to peer review (I have)
>and anyone who has reviewed papers (I have, and will be doing so again
>later this evening) finds the above to be.... well, goofy.
The usual elitist hot air.
>
>Cambridge University does not do peer review.
Really, so Dembski is a liar and Cambridge University Press routinely
publishes works which turns the world wide orthodoxy about causation
on its ear without having peers in those disciplines (Information
Theory and Probability Theory) review his arguments? Not likely.
>
>One does not "pass" peer review.
More elitism.
>
>Dembski's Intelligent Design work has not been peer reviewed.
Dembski says otherwise and reported having to revise his work more
than once after receiving comments from the publisher's reviewers who
were unlikely to be creationists or fans of his theory. Looks like
peer review, sounds like peer review,...
>
>On if you don't know what peer review means would the above even begin
>to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
>statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
>instead of finding out.
>
>You guessed wrong. Sorry.
First does anyone really believe that the Cambridge University Press
would publish Dembski's 1998 "The Design Inference" without subjecting
it to peer review and openning up its reputation to ridicule if it was
drivel? Whether its peer review process met some elitist standards
of Lethe's or not is really irrelevent concerning my criticism of
Sarkar.
Sarkar argued in his peer reviewed psycho babble that Dembski's work
(Dembski's theory was explicated in his 1998 "The Design Inference")
used language in such a non standard way as to be incommensurable with
standard usages in those fields. Yet Cambride University Press
disagreed and disagreed over 10 years ago. They published Dembski's
work, including it in a series of works in the same fields. This
makes no sense if his discussion of probability theory and information
theory was little more than an exercise in obscurantism as Sarkar (and
Lethe) suggest.
>
>Based on my review of his work and the work he cites, I've concluded
>that Demski is trivially wrong; his particular talent lies in never
>being *obviously* wrong. He walks this line so well that I've
>concluded he's not a crank: he knows (I believe) exactly what he's
>doing and understands exactly how much he can say.
More hot air.
I'm not convinced that Lethe actually read Dembski's popular work,
2002, "No Free Lunch" much less his 1998, "The Design Inference"
which explained the nuts and bolts of his theory.
>
>I will grant him effectiveness: if you want to understand why he is
>trivially wrong, you have a lot of reading to do. At the end of that
>reading, he is utterly, trivially wrong.
>
>You don't have his talent. You are both trivially and obviously
>wrong.
>
>Practice does make perfect, though, and there's certainly openings for
>creationists with advanced degrees that are able to obfuscate in
>technical language. You may be one graduate degree away from a
>modestly lucrative book contract and speaking fees.
>
>But you do have a way to do, and you're not going to get there by
>hanging out here changing subject lines.
>
>If you'd like any assistance applying to graduate programs in biology,
>I'm sure there would be several people here who would be willing to
>contribute their expertise.
>
><snip>
Nothing but hot air.
Regards,
T Pagano
The quality of Lethe's work here is no better than Sarkar's
psycho-babble.
[M]adman is correct. The state of the academy is sad and getting
sadder.
John Harshman
creationists can be theists, and all atheists are evolutionists. Was
Hume an evolutionist?
John Smith
"T Pagano" <not....@address.net> wrote in message
news:apagano-n4jv2597vegva...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:22:26 -0500, "[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et>
> wrote:
>
>>T Pagano wrote:
>>
>><cut to a side point>
>>>
>>> One sometimes wonders what passes for scholarship these days. This is
>>> sociological psycho-babble.
>>
>>
>>The educational system seems to be in utter shambles judging by the
>>plethora
>>dishonest responses from (what are suppose to be educated people) that I
>>read daily on the Internet. Some even claim to be the teachers and shapers
>>of minds.
>
> I couldn't agree more.
>
> Have you seen Ben Stein's "Expelled?" Graduate students know that if
> they buck the orthodoxy, the orthodoxy destroys them. After the
> degree is conferred regardless of their experience and record if they
> think for themselves and buck the orthodoxy the orthodoxy crushes
> them.
Pagano is so mentally, and scientifically, deranged that he actually
"THINKS" "Expelled" is a real, and honest, documentary!
John Harshman
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 21:45:16 -0700 (PDT), Garamond Lethe
> <cartogr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dembski's Intelligent Design work has not been peer reviewed.
>
> Dembski says otherwise and reported having to revise his work more
> than once after receiving comments from the publisher's reviewers who
> were unlikely to be creationists or fans of his theory. Looks like
> peer review, sounds like peer review,...
Dembski's take on the subject has often been shown to be unreliable. He
may have received comments from the book's editor, which is standard
practice. Outside reviewers selected by the publisher are uncommon in my
experience (In books, not journals.) It may be that Dembski encountered
the unusual, but it would be good to have evidence. Your childlike
belief in everything he says doesn't count as evidence.
>> On if you don't know what peer review means would the above even begin
>> to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
>> statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
>> instead of finding out.
>>
>> You guessed wrong. Sorry.
>
> First does anyone really believe that the Cambridge University Press
> would publish Dembski's 1998 "The Design Inference" without subjecting
> it to peer review and openning up its reputation to ridicule if it was
> drivel?
I do. It's the standard practice among scientific publishers, in my
experience. The only person to review an invited book chapter is
generally the editor. Now your experience may be different. How many
invited book chapters have you written, and in what fields? How many
people reviewed them?
> Whether its peer review process met some elitist standards
> of Lethe's or not is really irrelevent concerning my criticism of
> Sarkar.
Tony likes to play the "elitist" card. Makes him feel special.
[snip]
Boikat
If you want to look stupid, why not simply argue something like 5/0=5?
Boikat
[M]adman
How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on this NG. ?
In the case of evolutionary science, the "facts" (as you put it), go totally
against the grain of what theists are taught regarding the origins of man.
How can one believe in two opposite explainations for the origins man at the
same time?
<from wiki>
The term atheism originated from the Greek ????? (atheos), which was
derogatively applied to anyone thought to believe in false gods, no gods, or
_doctrines that stood in conflict with established religions_.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
So if someone believes man's origins came from the sea, or from an ape, that
is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
So THAT is how accepting scientific "facts" proves one is an atheist.
>>
>> John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
>
> Ray's jealousy strikes again.
Ray's correctness strikes again
[M]adman
:)
[M]adman
The killfile list is a /JOKE/
The problem is many evolutionist just have _no_ sense of humor. They can
dish it, but they just can't take it
[M]adman
> On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:22:26 -0500, "[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et>
> wrote:
>
>> T Pagano wrote:
>>
>> <cut to a side point>
>>>
>>> One sometimes wonders what passes for scholarship these days. This
>>> is sociological psycho-babble.
>>
>>
>> The educational system seems to be in utter shambles judging by the
>> plethora dishonest responses from (what are suppose to be educated
>> people) that I read daily on the Internet. Some even claim to be the
>> teachers and shapers of minds.
>
> I couldn't agree more.
>
> Have you seen Ben Stein's "Expelled?" Graduate students know that if
> they buck the orthodoxy, the orthodoxy destroys them. After the
> degree is conferred regardless of their experience and record if they
> think for themselves and buck the orthodoxy the orthodoxy crushes
> them.
>
> Very little original thinking goes on in the academy. Sarkar's
> article wouldn't have passed muster in an undergraduate philosophy
> course.
Yes, I saw it. I agreed with much of it.
IMHO there will be a consequence to pay for the manipulation of education
toward one belief system. Essentially that is not freedom, it is subtle
brainwashing.
I consider it to be social engineering that is being done in our schools and
universities these days. And bad engineering at that.
>
>>
>> I seriously doubt anything can be done to reverse the trend because
>> such displays of intellectually dishonesty can be seen everywhere;
>> from news reporting to books to the Internet, --political
>> correctness and dishonesty has run amok everywhere.
>
>
> Your posts about professional dishonesty ("cooking the books") among
> the scientific ranks in the US appears to be a bigger problem than I
> suspected.
Do not forget a totally out of control mass media.
>
>>
>> So, it seems Bible prophesy comes true yet again.
>>
>> "Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come
>> with their mocking, following after their own lusts," (2 Peter 3:3)
>>
>> "_But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
>> For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant,
>> revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving,
>> irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal,
>> haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure
>> rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although
>> they have denied its power_; Avoid such men as these." (2 Timothy
>> 3:1-5)
>>
>> things do seem to be linning up for those last days.
>
> Again I agree. Thanks for bringing up those verses. It gave me cause
> to read both chapters.
>
> Regards,
> T Pagano
>>
>> adman
All my respect to you.
adman.
John Harshman
bonehead. I'm crushed.
Mark Isaak
> T Pagano wrote:
>>
>> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
>> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
>
> (read: scientific); and to the extent he has any theory at all (which
> is a very small extent) it's been addressed. Only a person whose
> habitual pose is standing with his fingers in his ears, singing "La la
> la, I can't hear you" would think otherwise. In other words: Tony.
Aw, you just misunderstand what Tony means by "seriously addressed." He
means that nobody in the non-ID community has kissed Dembski's feet and
called him a divine prophet. And he's right; we haven't.
What he misses is that there is good reason why we haven't kissed
Dembski's feet and called him a divine prophet, even notwithstanding the
absolute scientific failure of his ideas. And that is that Dembski's
ideas, and ID in general, are horrible religion. ID says that God does
not exist except in the gaps, and not in any practical sense, and that
hubris is the proper way to resolve theological issues. Tony doesn't
recognize it, but he dislikes the atheist community because of envy; he
can see that they are more spiritually advanced than he is.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"It is certain, from experience, that the smallest grain of natural
honesty and benevolence has more effect on men's conduct, than the most
pompous views suggested by theological theories and systems." - D. Hume
Ye Old One
enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>Dana Tweedy wrote:
>> Ray Martinez wrote:
>>> On Jun 9, 4:25 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
>>> snip
>>
>>>> I don't know of anyone who has admitted a bias, there being none. A
>>>> great many make no secret of their opinions on religion, but that's
>>>> quite another thing. The big difference here is that your ideas on
>>>> science proceed directly from your religion, while those of the
>>>> folks you mention do not proceed from their lack thereof. And of
>>>> course good evidence of this is provided by the fact that most
>>>> scientists who are theists have the same scientific views as those
>>>> mentioned.
>>>>
>>> Which proves they are Atheists and not Theists.
>>
>> How does accepting scientific facts "prove" one is an atheist?
>
>How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on this NG. ?
Well, I would hope the answer would be never.
>
>In the case of evolutionary science, the "facts" (as you put it), go totally
>against the grain of what theists are taught regarding the origins of man.
Good. Nice to know the lies of religion are being countered.
>How can one believe in two opposite explainations for the origins man at the
>same time?
One can't.
>
><from wiki>
>The term atheism originated from the Greek ????? (atheos), which was
>derogatively applied to anyone thought to believe in false gods, no gods, or
>_doctrines that stood in conflict with established religions_.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
>
>So if someone believes man's origins came from the sea, or from an ape, that
>is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
Nope. It is in direct conflict with the bible.
>
>So THAT is how accepting scientific "facts" proves one is an atheist.
Nope, Wrong again.
>
>>>
>>> John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
>>
>> Ray's jealousy strikes again.
>
>Ray's correctness strikes again
Nah! Never going to happen. Like you, he is far too dishonest.
Madman (aka Mudbrain) is on record as claiming:-
That 3.5% actually means 25%...
That the actor Paul Newman was a creationist...
That "Dr." Kent Hovind has made lots of *scientific* discoveries...
That wars have been fought because some scientific finding discredited
some facet of some religion...
To have a "higher education" than most posters to this news group...
To understand how geologists determine the age of any given sample of
rock...
That trilobites were Cambrian mammals... [that one still makes me
laugh]
And that he has "created genes" and not evolved ape genes...
That linguists have traced all the world's languages to the Middle
East region and back to around the same time as the bible claims Noah
and his sons rebuilt mankind.
Claimed that talk.origin's moderator was a troll.
Now, I ask you, is this the sort of guy you would give an credence to?
Certainly I don't.
--
Bob.
Ye Old One
enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>B Richardson wrote:
>> On 2009-06-10, [M]adman <ad...@hotmaill.et> wrote:
>>> John S. Wilkins wrote:
>>>> John Smith <bobsyo...@yahoo.com> quoted Paggers:
>>>>
>>>>> Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
>>>>> argument has never been overturned.
>>>>
>>>> I have to thank you for quoting our mutual friend, who I normally
>>>> have killfield, because otherwise I would never have seen this
>>>> contrary-to-fact piece of bulshit. Hume, an atheist? Ha!
>>>
>>> You pukes killfile everyone that you cannot refute.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Whoizzit that periodically posts their killfile?
>
>The killfile list is a /JOKE/
No, YOU are the joke.
>
>The problem is many evolutionist just have _no_ sense of humor. They can
>dish it, but they just can't take it
Your stupidity is showing - again.
--
Bob.
TomS
<pan.2009.06.10....@earthlink.net>, Mark Isaak stated..."
>
>On Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:25:26 -0700, John Harshman wrote:
>
>> T Pagano wrote:
>>> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
>>> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
>> (read: scientific); and to the extent he has any theory at all (which
>> is a very small extent) it's been addressed. Only a person whose
>> habitual pose is standing with his fingers in his ears, singing "La la
>> la, I can't hear you" would think otherwise. In other words: Tony.
>
>Aw, you just misunderstand what Tony means by "seriously addressed." He
>means that nobody in the non-ID community has kissed Dembski's feet and
>called him a divine prophet. And he's right; we haven't.
>
>What he misses is that there is good reason why we haven't kissed
>Dembski's feet and called him a divine prophet, even notwithstanding the
>absolute scientific failure of his ideas. And that is that Dembski's
>ideas, and ID in general, are horrible religion. ID says that God does
>not exist except in the gaps, and not in any practical sense, and that
>hubris is the proper way to resolve theological issues. Tony doesn't
>recognize it, but he dislikes the atheist community because of envy; he
>can see that they are more spiritually advanced than he is.
I don't understand why the non-ID theist community hasn't pointed
out more loudly so many of the theological problems of ID. Such as:
Deism, in the modern sense of a denial of providence, as is seen in
the metaphor of the watchmaker who makes a watch and does nothing
in the present.
The designer rather than Creator. A god which is indistinguishable
from "space aliens". Designers who have to design their way out of
problems handed to them.
The designer who shows no interest in a personal, one-on-one
relationship with each of us, but only in vertebrate eyes,
bacterial flagella, and "kinds". Who can't even show enough interest
to make us different from monkeys.
--
---Tom S.
"...ID is not science ... because we simply do not know what it is saying."
Sahotra Sarkar, "The science question in intelligent design", Synthese,
DOI:10,1007/s11229-009-9540-x
wf3h
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 21:45:16 -0700 (PDT), Garamond Lethe
> >
> >evolutionary biology students and postdocs, I had a problem. There
> >was nothing to put on slide 2. If you understand what "evolution" and
> >"differential reproduction" mean, Sean's argument is shown to be
> >absurd simply by stating it.
>
> To Dr Pitman's credit he thinks for himself and does not follow the
> crowd...any crowd. However, to the extent that you render a
> position of his absurd (which is hardly shown here) it applies to no
> one else or no other group. You will have successfully crashed an
> idea held by a class of one---Pitman. Bravo, Sir.
au contraire mes ami...he's a creationist. he follows the crowd using
the oldest wrong idea in western civilization. he's a sheep
not unlike you.
>
> >Dembski's only innovation is in using less familiar words.
>
> I can safely categorize this as verbalism not science. I can just see
> the listeners as wide eyed and on the edge of their seats over this
> bit of academic excellence.
academic excellence? he went to a non-ranked medical school that
teaches creationism. what is 'academic' about that?
sean argues by analogy and authority, not science. he's a typical
creationist.
[M]adman
/I/ did not call you a "bonehead" --despite out sharp differences.
My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an evolutionist at
the same time. Doing so is believing in two opposite definations of a
subject at the same time. That also makes them Atheist because it is in
"direct conflict with established religions".
jobeth66
> So, it seems Bible prophesy comes true yet again.
>
> "Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their
> mocking, following after their own lusts," (2 Peter 3:3)
>
> "_But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men
> will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers,
> disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable,
> malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
> treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of
> God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power_;
> Avoid such men as these." (2 Timothy 3:1-5)
>
> things do seem to be linning up for those last days.
>
Can you point me to an era when the above did NOT happen, or was not
true?
There are religious people from 2000 years ago that said the world was
in its last days. Every generation has someone who INSISTS the world
is in its last days. Why is YOUR declaration that we're in the 'last
days' any more valid than theirs? When does it become clear that it's
NOT the "last days" and you apologize and recant your false prophecy?
Or, is it that '1000 years is as a day' to God, so saying we're in our
"last days" could mean anytime in the next, oh, 10-15,000 years before
the great tribulation?
Dooms(d)ayers have been around as long as religion, I think. The
contortions one must go through to make prophecy fit events have to be
painful. It's lucky that most prophecy is so incredibly vague as to
be applicable to every generation.
Desertphile
> Subject: Is Wilkins ever interested in the facts about ID Theory? Not
Judge Jones would have loved to hear it; the Discovery Institute
Coven would also *LOVE* to hear about a intelligent design theory.
If you have one, why the bloody hell are you keeping it to
yourself?
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
Desertphile
<not....@address.net> wrote:
> Have you seen Ben Stein's "Expelled?"
It is available on YouTube. It struck me as being excellent
Satalist-like propaganda.
> Graduate students know that if
> they buck the orthodoxy, the orthodoxy destroys them.
By "buck the orthodoxy" you mean "get the answers wrong." If any
student comes up with revisions of the theory of evolution, "the
orthodoxy" will handsomely reward her.
Dana Tweedy
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
>> Ray Martinez wrote:
>>> On Jun 9, 4:25 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
>>> snip
>>
>>>> I don't know of anyone who has admitted a bias, there being none. A
>>>> great many make no secret of their opinions on religion, but that's
>>>> quite another thing. The big difference here is that your ideas on
>>>> science proceed directly from your religion, while those of the
>>>> folks you mention do not proceed from their lack thereof. And of
>>>> course good evidence of this is provided by the fact that most
>>>> scientists who are theists have the same scientific views as those
>>>> mentioned.
>>>>
>>> Which proves they are Atheists and not Theists.
>>
>> How does accepting scientific facts "prove" one is an atheist?
>
> How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on this
> NG. ?
None, as far as I know. Science doesn't deal in proof. Facts are what it
does deal in.
>
> In the case of evolutionary science, the "facts" (as you put it), go
> totally against the grain of what theists are taught regarding the
> origins of man. How can one believe in two opposite explainations for
> the origins man at the same time?
By understanding that one of those explanations is pre-scientific.
>
> <from wiki>
> The term atheism originated from the Greek ????? (atheos), which was
> derogatively applied to anyone thought to believe in false gods, no
> gods, or _doctrines that stood in conflict with established
> religions_. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
Irrelevent, as accepting facts doesn't require rejection of belief in God.
>
> So if someone believes man's origins came from the sea, ore from an
> ape, that is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
Since the established religion doesn't say how God created, and most
religious persons don't have a problem with God creating by evolution, there
isn't much conflict.
>
> So THAT is how accepting scientific "facts" proves one is an atheist.
You seem to think that someone can't accept fact, and also have faith in a
supernatural being. Most theists don't accept your opinion.
>
>>>
>>> John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
>>
>> Ray's jealousy strikes again.
>
> Ray's correctness strikes again
How could it, when Ray is wrong yet again?
DJT
Dana Tweedy
> John Harshman wrote:
snip
>> Hmmm...apparently it is now agreed by all the TO creationists that
>> I'm a bonehead. I'm crushed.
>
> /I/ did not call you a "bonehead" --despite out sharp differences.
>
> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an
> evolutionist at the same time.
Which is utterly wrong. Accepting evolution does not require one to
embrace atheism.
> Doing so is believing in two opposite
> definations of a subject at the same time.
Except that religious definitions and scientific ones aren't on the same
level. Therefore there's no real conflict.
> That also makes them
> Atheist because it is in "direct conflict with established religions".
Only if you think established religions are anti-science. That's not the
case.
DJT
Glenn
> Hey Tony, you still owe me an apology:
>
> On Dec 31, 11:17 am, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> > And never heard
> > Flank deny he was an atheist.
>
> Jul 26 2003, 5:58 pm
>
> Newsgroups: talk.origins
> From: lfl...@ij.net (Lenny Flank)
> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:55:07 +0000 (UTC)
> Local: Sat, Jul 26 2003 5:55 pm
> Subject: Re: Authority in the domain of religion -- a response to
> Lenny Flank
>
> >I am not an atheist. <shrug>
>
> I expect an apology from you, Tony.
>
> Well, actually, I *don't* expect any apology from you, since you are
> precisely the sort of self-righteous holier-than-everyone prick who
> would rather die than admit he's wrong.
>
> So I'll just hound you unceasingly until you either apologize to me
> or
> run away. Again.
>
> You fucking little coward.
>
Lenny, Tony needs not apologize for claiming not to have seen you deny
being an atheist, nor is he in the thread you reference above. Were it
shown that he was aware you had denied being an atheist and then
claimed not to have seen that denial, it may be reasonable for you to
expect an apology. You have reproduced this same accusation ad
nauseum. To my knowledge you have not shown Tony's awareness of your
denial at the time he wrote the above.
But if Tony refuses to believe your claim and holds you to be an
atheist, he is not "wrong" just because you claim not to be an
atheist, nor should he or I or anyone who regards you as an atheist
wrong, a holier than thou prick, coward, or little. Nor does the
absense of a response or continual responses to you signify running
away.
Curious indeed is your claim to "not care" concerning what you are
called, yet make such a fuss about it.
[M]adman
Oh puleeze...
Go read some books.
Burkhard
> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
> Inference") the atheist tactic has been to politically smear the ID
> proponents as anti science and mischaracterize the theory as disquised
> theology so that it "doesn't" have to be seriously discussed. And in
> the rare instances when they have gotten beyond the politics of belief
> the atheists engage in story-telling not empirical science. Is
> Sarkar's new article in the same category?
>
Well, first I'd say there have been some quite reasonable discussions.
E.g.
Branden Fitelson, Christopher Stephens and Elliott Sober: "How Not
to Detect Design--- A Review of William Dembski's The Design
Inference. Philosophy of Science, 1999, 66: 472-488.
I can't see how they are "driven by atheist politics", arguing that
"we will show that Dembski’s account of design inference is deeply
flawed. Sometimes he
is too hard on hypotheses of intelligent design; at other times he is
too lenient. Neither
creationists nor evolutionists nor people who are trying to detect
design in nontheological
contexts should adopt Dembski’s framework"
Then there is the analysis piece by Elliott Sober, Intelligent design
and probability reasoning, International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 2002 which is as critical of Dawkin's abuse of statistics as
it is of Dembski's.
or Peter Godfrey-Smith: Information and the Argument from Design. R.
Pennock (ed.),
Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics: Philosophical,
Theological and Scientific Perspectives (MIT Press, 2001, pp. 575-596)
who comes to the conclusion that " Partly because of the formal
apparatus, Dembski's version of the argument is far too sweeping; it
omits qualifications that other opponents of Darwinism sensibly
include." With other words, Dembski is bad even measured against
other criticism of Darwin.
Then there are the articles by Jeffrey O. Shallit, a computer
scientists with no professional stake in the evolution discussion.
e.g. his Review of "No Free Lunch": Why Specified Complexity Cannot
be Purchased Without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
2002. BioSystems 66 (2002), 93-99.
More recent, there is Olle Häggström's "Intelligent design and the
NFL theorems" Biology and Philosophy 2007. He too is a mathematician
without professional stake in the evolution debate.
The list of course continues, Norman Johnson's "Design flaws" in the
American Scientist, Ken Miller's book etc etc.
So your contention that there was no critical engagement with the work
seems thin on the ground.
But then you'd probably say that they are all driven by a "big
atheist conspiracy" despite the fact that some of them come from
outside biology and look purely at the mathematical aspects, and that
some of them are Christians.
So I'll try another tack: Dembski claims that his method has
applications outside biology, for instance in anthropology, history
and forensic sciences.
Forensic science n particular carries none of the ideological baggage
of the evolution discussion. The "designer" here is not the
supernatural mass murderer of the bible, but very natural intelligent
agents. So no problematic ontological implications, no ideological
commitment to atheism or religion here. Researchers in that field are
not biologists but mainly mathematicians, and if they come from other
substantive fields, only a few of them (the DNA folks) have any links
to biology, the rest are (forensic) material scientists, (forensic)
computer scientists, (forensic) linguists etc.
So it is there that we should expect an enthusiastic embrace of his
methods, IF they are sound and work. But hey, if you look at the
standard books on forensic statistics, e,g, Colin Aitken's book of the
same title, or David Lucy's Introduction to statistics for forensic
scientists, or the Wiley Encyclopedia of Forensic Science, there is no
discussion of Dembski, or indeed of any form of inference that even
remotely resembles his design inference ((with one notable exception
of which later)
Nor do you find a discussion of his work (or indeed papers by him) in
the relevant journals in the field, e.g. Law Probability and Risk,
Science and Justice; The international journal of Evidence and Proof;
International commentary on Evidence; Jurimetrics, Forensic Science
International; International Statistical Review etc etc.
Nor do you find his method used in any of the courses on forensic
statistics or forensic investigation, university or police academy
based, that I know (and i know many)
Again, there is nothing contentious here, they would have nothing to
loose to use his method - but they seem to agree with the Fitelson
verdict that there is just nothing of value in there, not even
something that is wrong in an interesting way and might be improved by
discussion.
Now if you look further at e.g. the standard books on forensic
statistics, there is as I said above one exception to the general
disinterest in a design inference - and tat is where mistakes are
discussed. in particular, the expert witness in the Sally Clark case,
and the expert witness in the Dutch case against Lucia de B. (see
e.g Ronald Meester, Marieke Collins, Richard Gill, and Michiel van
Lambalgen On the (ab)use of statistics in the legal case against the
nurse Lucia de B. Law Probablity and Risk 2006 5: 233-250; )
What both cases have i common is that they are examples of a Dembski
style design inference (even though the experts did not use his
method). In both cases, the experts argued that it was just to
unlikely that a series of death happened by chance or by regularity,
and the _therefore_ it must have been an intentional act of murder
In both cases, they were probably wrong (we know for sure in the Sally
Clark case, Lucia de B is still on appeal) Now that in itself is not
that significant, science is fallible after all, shot happens.
However, Roy meadow, the expert in the Sally Clark case, was later put
before his professional body and stripped of is license to practice,
because the reasoning he used was so far off the normal standards to
be expected from a scientists tat it amounted to gross incompetence.
If you then look at his mistakes in more detail, you find that they
are exactly the mistakes for which Dembski has been taken apart on the
above reviews.
- The main inference is unsound, the "therefore" is neither
empirically nor conceptually sound. That is, _even if_ he had been
able to show that the defence theory of sudden infant death was
flawed, he could not reasonably infer that therefore it must have been
an intentional (designed) act. It could have been another natural
cause. it could have been murder in one case, SDI in another. it could
have been two murderers acting independently of each other. It could
have been SDI, but our present knowledge of SDI is insufficient (which
was what it turned out to be)
Several of the above reviews of Dembski make the same point, Fitelson
et al in particular when they say that there are no reasons for the
sequence of tests proposed by Dembski, and how he moves from rejection
of one theory to the acceptance of the other.
- he never provided a probabilistic assessment of the alternative
theory. True, SDI is rare, but so are child murders, in particular in
the sort of family under suspicion. That is a basic mistake. Relevant
for the evaluation of evidence is only the _ratio_ of the conditional
probabilities for the two alternative theories. (See e.g. Lucy,
Introduction to forensic Statistics, chap 8 and 9) The same problem
is noted in the reviews of Dembski who never gave the conditional
probabilities for the designer hypothesis - and he freely admits it,
he just refuses top draw the obvious conclusions, but instead waffles
on no end.
- he ignored large parts of the evidence, and in particular the
absence of evidence that any murderer would have left (e.g. trace
evidence of fibres in case of smothering) With other words, he talked
mainly about the prior and posterior probabilities, which are in
themselves irrelevant. The important thing are the conditional
probabilities, the probabilities of the evidence discovered given if
theories that purport to explain them. Or with other words, math only
gets you so far, if you want to learn about the world, you need to
observe the world. His calculations for instance did not account for
the fact (observation) that the parents were not alone with the
children in the relevant time that there was a history of SDI in the
wider family, that there were no signs of physical violence etc etc.
Transferred back to evolution, to argue about designers it is not that
relevant how probable the mechanism is, but how likely we are to find
the evidence that we found, from fossil record to the nested
hierarchies, IF the postulated mechanism is assumed (P(E/H)) Dembski
knows this of course and on one level acknowledges that what he
proposes is an argument scheme rather than an argument - and then acts
against this insight by drawing conclusions form the argument scheme
(or an only partly filled-in scheme) itself.
John S. Wilkins
> More recent, there is Olle H�ggstr�m's "Intelligent design and the
I should also note the following paper, which had its start in this very
newsgroup"
Wilkins, John S., and Wesley R. Elsberry. 2001. The advantages of theft
over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance. Biology and
Philosophy 16 (November):711-724.
Intelligent design theorist William Dembski has proposed an "explanatory
filter" for distinguishing between events due to chance, lawful
regularity or design. We show that if Dembski's filter were adopted as a
scientific heuristic, some classical developments in science would not
be rational, and that Dembski's assertion that the filter reliably
identifies rarefied design requires ignoring the state of background
knowledge. If background information changes even slightly, the filter's
conclusion will vary wildly. Dembski fails to overcome Hume's objections
to arguments from design.
--
John S. Wilkins, Philosophy, University of Sydney
http://evolvingthoughts.net
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
Ilas
@enews5.newsguy.com:
> On 2009-06-10, [M]adman <ad...@hotmaill.et> wrote:
>> You pukes killfile everyone that you cannot refute.
>>
>>
>
> Whoizzit that periodically posts their killfile?
The depressing little troll doesn't killfile anyone. How could he? He'd not
get the attention, which is all he's here for. Little kids don't scweam and
scweam unless there's somebody there to react.
John S. Wilkins
Garamond Lethe
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 21:45:16 -0700 (PDT), Garamond Lethe
>
> >On Jun 9, 6:26 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> >fnord
Well, fnord me. Having the fnord be quoted might not be enough.
Let's see if this reply gets through.
Garamond Lethe
> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 21:45:16 -0700 (PDT), Garamond Lethe
>
> <cartographi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 9, 6:26 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> >fnord
>
>
> >In putting together a talk on Dembski's book _No Free Lunch_ that I
> >presented to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department's Masel
> >Lab at UArizona, I coined the term "The Second Slide Problem" to
> >explain the following observation:
>
> >"Arguments from obfuscation do not survive summarization (but only if
> >you know what the words mean!)."
>
> Presumably you produced quotes and examples from Dembski's works in
> your slides.
Dembski rated one slide. The refutation fit on the same slide. Thus,
"the second slide problem".
> They are noticably absent here; which is to say that
> this, at present, is hot air.
My slides are a couple thousand miles away at the moment, but I think
I can create a pretty fair reproduction. (I'll add a few more
comments that would have been obvious had you seen the earlier
slides.)
1. Dembski states the NFL theorems show evolution cannot created
complex specified information at a rate better than chance.
2. Dembski declined to mention that this theorem only holds, on
average, across all possible fitness spaces. We don't live in all
possible fitness spaces. Evolution does much better than chance in
some fitness spaces and much worse in other. The NFL algorithms
address only the average performance.
3. Dembski only demonstrated this for a toy model ("Methinks blah
blah") that had complex specified information. Both biological and
computational evolution need not have this (e.g. Fogel's chess program
evolved with no goal having been specified).
4. The NFL algorithms do not hold for co-evolutionary algorithms
(like Fogel's chess program and, I would argue, biology).
Dembski knows this. Biologists and mathematicians know this.
Dembski's argument is trivially false on multiple grounds, and that
rates it as "goofy".
However, biologists and mathematicians were not his intended
audience. He was trying to reach gullible people like you who don't
have the mathematical sophistication to understand Wolpert's work, nor
the background in evolutionary algorithms necessary to understand why
Wolpert's work is important.
For you, all he needed to do was present the appearance of an
argument. This he did quite competently.
But as you observed later in the post, Dembski never quite goes all
the way out on that limb. Despite naming the title of his book _No
Free Lunch_, despite making evolutionary algorithms the centerpiece of
his book, he's still reluctant to look clueless. After carefully
laying out the appearance of an argument, he essentially steps back
and says "nevermind".
The actual problem (which finishes the chapter) is allegedly where to
hide the complex specified information. This is equally goofy if
you're familiar with the evolutionary algorithm literature. If I can
compress 45 minutes of careful argument to a mathematically
sophisticated audience into a few very small words: complex specified
information need not exist for evolution to occur; there is no trace
of specificity in nature, and Dembski could have avoided multiple
boneheaded errors had he looked at anything less trivial than
Dawkins's weasel example.
>
>
>
> >I ran across this problem when I tried to prepare a talk on Sean's
> >work. The first slide contained what I considered to be fair summary
> >of his position: evolution fails in the absence of differential
> >reproduction.
>
> >Since I would be presenting this talk to an audience of graduate
> >evolutionary biology students and postdocs, I had a problem. There
> >was nothing to put on slide 2. If you understand what "evolution" and
> >"differential reproduction" mean, Sean's argument is shown to be
> >absurd simply by stating it.
>
> To Dr Pitman's credit he thinks for himself and does not follow the
> crowd...any crowd.
I should hope he does. There are several practices and protocols
involved in the work of pathology and I would assume he follows those
just as every other competent pathologist does. Problem, hypothesis,
experiment; repeat until the pathogen is identified.
Sean doesn't feel that the tools of his trade are appropriate for
matters of faith, and in this I agree with him. We disagree about
dressing his faith up in a lab coat and calling it science.
> However, to the extent that you render a
> position of his absurd (which is hardly shown here) it applies to no
> one else or no other group. You will have successfully crashed an
> idea held by a class of one---Pitman. Bravo, Sir.
Bad ideas tend not to be held by lots of people. One might even use
evolution to explain why that is.
>
>
>
> >Dembski's only innovation is in using less familiar words.
>
> I can safely categorize this as verbalism not science.
"Verbalism" is all Dembski has, and no, "science" is not what I used
to show that. All I needed to do what define a few terms
unambiguously (using the same citations Dembski used). After that,
Dembski's words collapse under their own weight.
> I can just see
> the listeners as wide eyed and on the edge of their seats over this
> bit of academic excellence.
>
It went over well. One of the professors had played chess at a very
high level as a child and so we did get a little bogged down in the
minutia of chess engines. But no, it wasn't a terribly exciting
talk. Dembski has been old news for quite a while; as I mentioned
above, I spent most of my time discussion how computer scientists view
evolution (which is very, very different from how biologists view it).
> >So I ended
> >up taking 90 minutes to walk through evolutionary algorithms (real
> >ones like Fogel's work in chess, not Dawkins's "weasel") and Wolpert's
> >original NFL paper. Actual math was displayed and explained.
>
> >At the end, I summarized Dembski. Given the previous background,
> >summarization was sufficient for refutation. If you understand what
> >the words mean that he's using (and that means being able to walk
> >through the proof of Wolpert's first theorm), Dembski's position is
> >simply goofy.
>
> Here's where I call your bluff.
>
> I have both of Wolpert's papers (Theorems for Search and Theorems for
> Optimization).
What an interesting choice of verb.
You "have" the papers.
Yes, I expect you do.
You may have even let your eyes wander across the pages.
Does that count as reading? Perhaps.
Does it count as understanding? No.
Have a look at the proof of theorem 1 in the appendix of the published
paper (not the technical report).
See the Kronecker delta function?
What's that doing there?
It's a really neat trick: that's the lever that allows them to
provide a proof for all possible algorithms averaged over all possible
search s
spaces.
Just so I can pitch future responses to an appropriate mathematical
level, would you mind describing how they pull off this trick?
(If you'd rather not answer, that's fine. But if you don't, I'm going
to assume you don't have a particularly deep understanding of the
topic and will treat you accordingly.)
>Since you've already done the work presumably with
> quotes from Dembsk's "No Free Lunch" and Wolpert's papers let's see
> the argument demonstrating that Dembski's interpretation of Wolpert is
> goofy.
As above.
>This should be a simple cut & paste from your Power point
> presentation into your news reader.
Why would it be? Neither figures, nor illustrations, nor mathematical
notation translates well into plain ascii.
If you're familiar with LaTeX notation, we could discuss the formulas
used. For example, the formula I asked you about might look like:
$$\sum_fP(d^y_1\vbarf,m=1,a)=\sum\delta(d^y_1,f(d^x_1))$$
>
> Next Lethe seems to be under the delusion that Dembski's theory
> depends upon the NFL Theorems.
Dembski's ideas depend not at all on the NFL algorithms. Dembski had
his ideas before those papers were published, and if they were shown
to be wrong tomorrow that wouldn't change Dembski's opinion in the
slightest.
The NFL algorithms were used as stage dressing for the mathematically
unsophisticated. That's all.
<snip>
>
> Even if we were to excise everything concerning the NFL theorems from
> Dembski's Chapter 4 of his "No Free Lunch" the problem of
> neoDarwinian process proceeding towards and discovering fitness peaks
> in the finite time available and explaining biological diversity
> hardly looks any rosier.
Has biological evolution ever discovered a fitness peak?
How do you know?
> And sadly for poor Lethe excising the NFL
> pages would have ZERO effect on Dembski's ID theory or that book as
> whole.
>
Very true. ;-)
>
>
> >None of this needs rehashing here. Dembski's ideas are a dead letter
> >with people who have bothered to try to understand them. What I find
> >interesting about your post is that you are using Dembski's rhetorical
> >techniques (to even lesser effect, I'm afraid, but keep practicing!):
>
> So far nothing but hot air.
>
I must say you've done a better job eviscerating Dembski than I could
have. You immediately cut to the chase: NFL algorithms have nothing
to do with intelligent design. I had to go the roundabout way an
derive this from the primary sources; you simply intuited it.
If you're feeling a little less gullible today, you might wonder why
Dembski titled a book after a collection of theorem that don't have
anything to do with the point he's trying to make.
>
>
> >> Here Sarkar argues, more or less, that Dembski's theory has exceeded
> >> the limits of imprecision in its use of words into an area of complete
> >> incommensurability. Unfortunately the fact the Dembski's 1998 "The
> >> Design Inference" passed Cambridge University peer review and was
> >> published in its series of studies in Probability, Induction and
> >> Decision Theory makes this claim absurd on its face.
>
> >Anyone who has ever had their work subjected to peer review (I have)
> >and anyone who has reviewed papers (I have, and will be doing so again
> >later this evening) finds the above to be.... well, goofy.
>
> The usual elitist hot air.
>
Well I am certainly an elitist, at least when I'm reviewing conference
and journal submissions. Elite work gets accepted. Promising work
gets lots of hopefully helpful suggestions before getting rejected.
Bad work get a handful of necessary suggestions and then is ignored.
>
>
> >Cambridge University does not do peer review.
>
> Really, so Dembski is a liar
Did he say the book was peer-reviewed? If so, yes, he lied. (Dembski
knows what peer review is and he knows why he needs to avoid it.
Because books aren't peer-reviewed, he knows he doesn't have to
contend with that quality filter.)
<snip>
>
>
>
> >One does not "pass" peer review.
>
> More elitism.
>
I prefer "merit", but I don't see any need to argue the point.
>
>
> >Dembski's Intelligent Design work has not been peer reviewed.
>
> Dembski says otherwise and reported having to revise his work more
> than once after receiving comments from the publisher's reviewers who
> were unlikely to be creationists or fans of his theory. Looks like
> peer review, sounds like peer review,...
Cite, please.
>
>
>
> >On if you don't know what peer review means would the above even begin
> >to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
> >statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
> >instead of finding out.
>
> >You guessed wrong. Sorry.
>
> First does anyone really believe that the Cambridge University Press
> would publish Dembski's 1998 "The Design Inference" without subjecting
> it to peer review
I'm not aware of any book publisher that uses peer review.
Why would CambridgeUP be any different?
(Citations to the contrary are welcome.)
It's difficult enough getting competent, anonymous peers to review a
ten-page paper. If you're an author and you've carefully made many
friends who owe you many favors, you can ask them to look over your
manuscript for obvious errors. These people are loving mentioned in
the acknowledgements.
However, because they're not anonymous and because these buddies don't
have the power to reject your book, that's not considered peer review.
> and openning up its reputation to ridicule if it was
> drivel?
Most educated people appreciate that publishers need to have the
freedom to print unpopular (and even wrong) material. I prefer to
speak to the message, not the messenger.
> Whether its peer review process met some elitist standards
> of Lethe's or not is really irrelevent concerning my criticism of
> Sarkar.
>
> Sarkar argued in his peer reviewed psycho babble that Dembski's work
> (Dembski's theory was explicated in his 1998 "The Design Inference")
> used language in such a non standard way as to be incommensurable with
> standard usages in those fields.
That's correct, yes.
> Yet Cambride University Press
> disagreed and disagreed over 10 years ago.
Cite?
Publishing the book does not imply agreement with the contents. There
are a few fundamentalist Christians and Islamists who don't appreciate
this idea and think it's ok to target publishers when things they
don't like get published.
That being said, would you be interested in a list of evolutionary
titles published by CambridgeUP? Would you consider those to be
equally endorsed?
> They published Dembski's
> work, including it in a series of works in the same fields. This
> makes no sense if his discussion of probability theory and information
> theory was little more than an exercise in obscurantism as Sarkar (and
> Lethe) suggest.
>
Publishers don't work that way. Sorry.
>
>
> >Based on my review of his work and the work he cites, I've concluded
> >that Demski is trivially wrong; his particular talent lies in never
> >being *obviously* wrong. He walks this line so well that I've
> >concluded he's not a crank: he knows (I believe) exactly what he's
> >doing and understands exactly how much he can say.
>
> More hot air.
>
You can certainly call it that if it makes you feel better. Engaging
with what I said might be more effective, but then I don't think you
lose to much sleep over effectiveness.
> I'm not convinced that Lethe actually read Dembski's popular work,
> 2002, "No Free Lunch" much less his 1998, "The Design Inference"
> which explained the nuts and bolts of his theory.
>
Oh.
>
>
>
>
> >I will grant him effectiveness: if you want to understand why he is
> >trivially wrong, you have a lot of reading to do. At the end of that
> >reading, he is utterly, trivially wrong.
>
> >You don't have his talent. You are both trivially and obviously
> >wrong.
>
> >Practice does make perfect, though, and there's certainly openings for
> >creationists with advanced degrees that are able to obfuscate in
> >technical language. You may be one graduate degree away from a
> >modestly lucrative book contract and speaking fees.
>
> >But you do have a way to do, and you're not going to get there by
> >hanging out here changing subject lines.
>
> >If you'd like any assistance applying to graduate programs in biology,
> >I'm sure there would be several people here who would be willing to
> >contribute their expertise.
>
> ><snip>
>
> Nothing but hot air.
>
And yet.... nothing you've said has caused me to revisit my
conclusions. Dembski's arguments still fail as soon as one
understands what the words mean.
And that's what I call a goofy argument.
> Regards,
> T Pagano
>
> The quality of Lethe's work here is no better than Sarkar's
> psycho-babble.
Oh, I don't know. I just gave a routine talk and Sarker's work was
accepted after undergoing peer review. I'd suggest you believe him
before you believe me.
>
> [M]adman is correct. The state of the academy is sad and getting
> sadder.
You are free to remove yourself from its benefits, but the first thing
to go would be your internet connection.
You're welcome.
Robert Carnegie
>
> >> Wilkins is well aware that rabid atheist Hume's
> >> argument has never been overturned.
>
> > I have to thank you for quoting our mutual friend, who I normally have
> > killfield, because otherwise I would never have seen this
> > contrary-to-fact piece of bulshit. Hume, an atheist? Ha!
>
What would be the point of that? "Kill file" is for people that you
don't want to talk to. It doesn't affect other people reading the
same articles.
Some people, O my sweet-voiced angel, write such nonsense that the
honest educated person's duty to rebut it doesn't apply. Nonsense
that no person with any sense at all would take seriously. They tell
you that everyone who disagrees with them is an atheist or that the
world's about to end.
And then, some folks don't agree with me that there even is such a
duty.
[M]adman
That is not exactly true. I have killfiled one person in 10 years.
You will make two.
Good bye.
[M]adman
> [M]adman wrote:
>> John Harshman wrote:
> snip
>
>>> Hmmm...apparently it is now agreed by all the TO creationists that
>>> I'm a bonehead. I'm crushed.
>>
>>
>> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an
>> evolutionist at the same time.
>
> Which is utterly wrong. Accepting evolution does not require one to
> embrace atheism.
>
>> Doing so is believing in two opposite
>> definations of a subject at the same time.
>
> Except that religious definitions and scientific ones aren't on the
> same level. Therefore there's no real conflict.
>
>> That also makes them
>> Atheist because it is in "direct conflict with established
>> religions".
>
> Only if you think established religions are anti-science. That's
> not the case.
>
> DJT
You do not seem to be an unintelligent person Dana. So why do you think
someone can accept two different definitions on the same topic at the same
time? The bible says "God Created Man" while Evolution says "Man Evolved"
Those are two completely different definitions. You cannot accept both as
true. Because the original Christian, Jesus, taught that you cannot serve
two masters. He used money as an example. In this case you cannot serve the
theory of evolution as your belief and then claim to be a theist which
believes God created man. It matters not what "established religions" have
to say on the matter. Jesus says you cannot serve two masters. And He is a
higher authority on the matter.
Whoever began the notion that someone can be a Theist and a Christian that
adheres to the teachings of the original Christian, Jesus; and, at the same
time adhere to the teachings of evolution which has basically taken God out
of the picture regarding man's origins ---is an idiot. And you tell them
Adman said so. I will meet them on this NG and explain to them exactly why
they are an idiot. They are misleading the people. The bible addresses those
that mislead the people.
It is beyond the pale of /intelligent/ human understanding how you can
think that a person can believe "God is man's origins" and "Evolution is
man's origins" at the same time. At no point in the bible does God say he
created with macro-evolution nor is there a process described in the bible
that can be understood as macro-evolution. Believing in both makes you
double minded and the bible addresses double minded people as well :
James 1:8
International Standard Version (�2008)
He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he undertakes.
New American Standard Bible (�1995)
being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
King James Bible
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Burkhard
> On Jun 9, 6:26 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> fnord
>
> <snip>
>
> In putting together a talk on Dembski's book _No Free Lunch_ that I
> presented to the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department's Masel
> Lab at UArizona, I coined the term "The Second Slide Problem" to
> explain the following observation:
>
> "Arguments from obfuscation do not survive summarization (but only if
> you know what the words mean!)."
>
> work. The first slide contained what I considered to be fair summary
> of his position: evolution fails in the absence of differential
> reproduction.
>
> Since I would be presenting this talk to an audience of graduate
> evolutionary biology students and postdocs, I had a problem. There
> was nothing to put on slide 2. If you understand what "evolution" and
> "differential reproduction" mean, Sean's argument is shown to be
> absurd simply by stating it.
>
> up taking 90 minutes to walk through evolutionary algorithms (real
> ones like Fogel's work in chess, not Dawkins's "weasel") and Wolpert's
> original NFL paper. Actual math was displayed and explained.
>
> At the end, I summarized Dembski. Given the previous background,
> summarization was sufficient for refutation. If you understand what
> the words mean that he's using (and that means being able to walk
> through the proof of Wolpert's first theorm), Dembski's position is
> simply goofy.
>
> with people who have bothered to try to understand them. What I find
> interesting about your post is that you are using Dembski's rhetorical
> techniques (to even lesser effect, I'm afraid, but keep practicing!):
>
> > the limits of imprecision in its use of words into an area of complete
> > incommensurability. Unfortunately the fact the Dembski's 1998 "The
> > Design Inference" passed Cambridge University peer review and was
> > published in its series of studies in Probability, Induction and
> > Decision Theory makes this claim absurd on its face.
>
> Anyone who has ever had their work subjected to peer review (I have)
> and anyone who has reviewed papers (I have, and will be doing so again
> later this evening) finds the above to be.... well, goofy.
>
>
>
>
> to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
> statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
> instead of finding out.
Yes and no. Academic publishers have a peer review element for the
books they publish (I'm just having one of theirs on the table), but
it tends to be far less rigorous than that for articles and conference
contributions, and also have a strong focus on issue other tan
academic quality or correctness (will it sell? Is there a market for
this? What sort of student would you give it to read? Where should we
send the check (unlike journals, they tend to pay)
The author is often invited to nominate peer reviewers, though I don't
know if Cambridge has that approach.
One of my researcher's brought Dembski's book to our meetings, having
fallen for the "forensic science" aspect. None of us knew about the
evolution side to it at the time, and we were utter baffled after the
first two chapters, and wondering what on earth had possessed
Cambridge to publish it. (matter of fact, that was what brought me
eventually to this NG, in Europe ID/creationism isn't really a topic,
and I was _amazed_ that there was even a discussion going on.
My guess is that it was seen as a contribution to a philosophical
tradition rather than a contribution to science, and their
requirements are quite different as a result.
Michael Siemon
In article
<7ae06f7e-0e86-44f0...@l12g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>,
Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
> More recent, there is Olle H�ggstr�m's "Intelligent design and the
T Pagano
wrote:
Excellent point Glenn.
It was SNEX who first uncovered Flank's explicit denial of the
existence of God and Flank's cowardly denial of it later. And as far
as I know snex is the only t.o denizen who has had the courage of his
convictions to explicitely admit his atheism. I merely searched for
the t.o link after snex produced the quotes so everyone could see
Flank's denial of God for themselves..
Flank's own words convict him as an atheist, not I. And his bald
denials prove that not only is he a liar but a coward. But he can
overcome all of this quite easily if he really was not an atheist.
All he has to do is
1. explicitly admit that he did, in fact, deny the existence of God.
2. explicitly admit that he was wrong about his denial of God, and
3. explicitly make an affirmative, genuine admission of belief in any
christian denomination's creed of his choice and publish that creed.
4. all of this should be done in a new thread begun by him in a very
public way.
All this can be accomplished in one post, in under 100 lines, and in
less than 15 minutes. Yet if you do a google search since Flank was
exposed by snex all you'll find is bald denials not affirmative
professions of faith.
Nonetheless in christian charity I shall no longer refer to Flank as a
coward and liar lest I be accused of piling on.
Regards,
T Pagano
Mark Isaak
>>> How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on
>>> this NG. ? In the case of evolutionary science, the "facts" (as you
>>> put it), go totally against the grain of what theists are taught
>>> regarding the origins of man. How can one believe in two opposite
>>> explainations for the origins man at the same time?
>>>
>>> <snip wiki>
>>>
>>> So if someone believes man's origins came from the sea, or from an
>>> ape, that is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
Belief in the direct creation of man by God is also in direct conflict
with established religions. You seem to forget that there are more than
two or three established religions.
> [...]
> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an
> evolutionist at the same time.
Despite the easily observed fact that one can be a theist and an
evolutionist at the same time. But that's just reality; it has nothing
to do with M/adman's argument.
> Doing so is believing in two opposite
> definations of a subject at the same time. That also makes them Atheist
> because it is in "direct conflict with established religions".
No, you have it backwards. Creationism, in its anti-evolution sense,
relies ultimately on a god-of-the-gaps argument, which relegates god to
being an effective nonentity, present in name but for all practical
purposes nonexistent; or it relies on the primacy of personal, subjective
interpretation, which places the interpreter above god and thus makes
god, though still existent, without any quality worthy of the name of
god; or it relies on both. But whatever its justification, creationism
is effectively a rejection of God. A creationist cannot be a true
theist.
T Pagano
[M]adman
Careful Tony. They can attack you and they can even be wrong while doing it,
but the moderator will tag /YOUR/ posts for killfile.
[M]adman
Dana, a true 'theist' cannot believe in evolution and the bible at the same
time.
[M]adman
Also, please not:
HE can abuse YOU and it will be YOUR posts that get tagged for killfiles.
adman
wf3h
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
>
> > How does accepting scientific facts "prove" one is an atheist?
>
> How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on this NG. ?
>
> against the grain of what theists are taught regarding the origins of man.
> How can one believe in two opposite explainations for the origins man at the
> same time?
>
>
> is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
not according to the world's single largest religious body, the roman
catholic church. it has no problem with evolution
so you're lying.
>
Dana Tweedy
"[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et> wrote in message
news:madman-_7cYl.9761$Xl4....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
snip
>>>>>
>>>>> John "Bonehead" Harshman strikes again.
>>>>
>>>> Ray's jealousy strikes again.
>>>
>>> Ray's correctness strikes again
>>
>> How could it, when Ray is wrong yet again?
>>
>> DJT
>
> Dana, a true 'theist' cannot believe in evolution and the bible at the
> same time.
That's your opinion, and I feel you are badly mistaken. Why should I, or
anyone else take seriously the opinion of someone who cannot support his own
claims?
DJT
>
>
Dana Tweedy
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
>> [M]adman wrote:
>>> John Harshman wrote:
>> snip
>>
>>>> Hmmm...apparently it is now agreed by all the TO creationists that
>>>> I'm a bonehead. I'm crushed.
>>>
>>> /I/ did not call you a "bonehead" --despite our sharp differences.
>>>
>>> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an
>>> evolutionist at the same time.
>>
>> Which is utterly wrong. Accepting evolution does not require one to
>> embrace atheism.
>>
>>> Doing so is believing in two opposite
>>> definations of a subject at the same time.
>>
>> Except that religious definitions and scientific ones aren't on the
>> same level. Therefore there's no real conflict.
>>
>>> That also makes them
>>> Atheist because it is in "direct conflict with established
>>> religions".
>>
>> Only if you think established religions are anti-science. That's
>> not the case.
>>
>> DJT
>
> You do not seem to be an unintelligent person Dana.
Sorry I can't return the sentiment......
> So why do you think someone can accept two different definitions on the
> same topic at the same time?
Because the "different definitions" are on different levels. Science and
religion operate on different levels, and are different ways of thought.
> The bible says "God Created Man" while Evolution says "Man Evolved" Those
> are two completely different definitions.
Unless God used evolution as his means of creation.
>You cannot accept both as true.
I disagree. God is capable of creating by using evolution.
> Because the original Christian, Jesus, taught that you cannot serve two
> masters. He used money as an example.
Actually, he was talking about money, and using the "two masters" as the
example.
> In this case you cannot serve the theory of evolution as your belief and
> then claim to be a theist which believes God created man. It matters not
> what "established religions" have to say on the matter. Jesus says you
> cannot serve two masters. And He is a higher authority on the matter.
Accepting the truth about nature is not the same as "serving" a master.
Science is a tool, not a master of anyone. Jesus' statement doesn't apply
to dealing with science and religion.
>
> Whoever began the notion that someone can be a Theist and a Christian that
> adheres to the teachings of the original Christian, Jesus; and, at the
> same time adhere to the teachings of evolution which has basically taken
> God out of the picture regarding man's origins ---is an idiot.
Again, I disagree. Evoluton does not take God out of the picture, but
rightly recognizes that God works in more subtle ways. You seem to think
that if God doesn't act like a cheap magician, he doesn't exist.
>And you tell them Adman said so.
No one that I respect is going to take your word for anything. Your own
personal beliefs are hardly convincing argument to support your position.
> I will meet them on this NG and explain to them exactly why they are an
> idiot. They are misleading the people. The bible addresses those that
> mislead the people.
Those who mislead people are the creationists, and, unfortunatlely, you are
one of the misled. Every time you've tried to explain your beliefs, you
are the one who's come up looking like an idiot.
>
> It is beyond the pale of /intelligent/ human understanding how you can
> think that a person can believe "God is man's origins" and "Evolution is
> man's origins" at the same time.
That's because you appear to lack perception. Why can't God use evolution
as his means of creation?
> At no point in the bible does God say he created with macro-evolution nor
> is there a process described in the bible that can be understood as
> macro-evolution.
At no point in the Bible does it say God did not create by "micro
evolution".
> Believing in both makes you double minded and the bible addresses double
> minded people as well :
>
> James 1:8
>
> International Standard Version (©2008)
> He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he undertakes.
Which is why I don't find your excuses and rationalizations to be very
convincing.
>
> New American Standard Bible (©1995)
> being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
>
> King James Bible
> A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Which only goes to show why creationism causes instablity. Trying to
ignore the evidence of evolution left by God's creation leads you to
dishonesty.
DJT
>
TomS
<XsKdnSxyxsLx66zX...@bresnan.com>, Dana Tweedy stated..."
>
>
>"[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et> wrote in message=20
>news:madman-n29Yl.9360$Xw4...@bignews7.bellsouth.net...
>> Dana Tweedy wrote:
>>> [M]adman wrote:
>>>> John Harshman wrote:
>>> snip
>>>
>>>>> Hmmm...apparently it is now agreed by all the TO creationists that
>>>>> I'm a bonehead. I'm crushed.
>>>>
>>>> /I/ did not call you a "bonehead" --despite our sharp differences.
>>>>
>>>> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an
>>>> evolutionist at the same time.
>>>
>>> Which is utterly wrong. Accepting evolution does not require one to
>>> embrace atheism.
>>>
>>>> Doing so is believing in two opposite
>>>> definations of a subject at the same time.
>>>
>>> Except that religious definitions and scientific ones aren't on the
>>> same level. Therefore there's no real conflict.
>>>
>>>> That also makes them
>>>> Atheist because it is in "direct conflict with established
>>>> religions".
>>>
>>> Only if you think established religions are anti-science. That's
>>> not the case.
>>>
>>> DJT
>>
>> You do not seem to be an unintelligent person Dana.
>
>Sorry I can't return the sentiment......
>
>=20
>> same topic at the same time?
>
>nd=20
>religion operate on different levels, and are different ways of thought.
>
>ose=20
>> are two completely different definitions.
>
>Unless God used evolution as his means of creation.
>
>>You cannot accept both as true.
>
>I disagree. God is capable of creating by using evolution.
And Biology also says that "man" is the product of reproduction.
Who says that reproduction is in conflict with creation?
(Actually, there were people in the 18th century that did say
something like that. The preformationists. And they used some of
the same arguments against reproduction and development that are
being used today against evolution. Including something very much
like irreducible complexity, "chance", and Biblical quotation.)
--
---Tom S.
"...ID is not science ... because we simply do not know what it is saying."
Sahotra Sarkar, "The science question in intelligent design", Synthese,
DOI:10,1007/s11229-009-9540-x
wf3h
fnord
> Dana Tweedy wrote:
>
> > Only if you think established religions are anti-science. That's
> > not the case.
>
> > DJT
>
> You do not seem to be an unintelligent person Dana. So why do you think
> someone can accept two different definitions on the same topic at the same
> time? The bible says "God Created Man" while Evolution says "Man Evolved"
> Those are two completely different definitions.
who says? god created by evolution. this is a position permitted by
the roman catholic church, inter alia
what logic do you use to state you are the arbiter of christian
belief?
in addition, belief in the bible is not a central concept in
christianity. the most ancient statement we have on christian belief
doesn't mention the bible at all, let alone require belief in it.
it seems you have your own view of christianity that is accepted by
virtually no christians.
You cannot accept both as
> true. Because the original Christian, Jesus, taught that you cannot serve
> two masters. He used money as an example. In this case you cannot serve the
> theory of evolution as your belief and then claim to be a theist which
> believes God created man. It matters not what "established religions" have
> to say on the matter. Jesus says you cannot serve two masters. And He is a
> higher authority on the matter.
evolution is not a religion, nor a belief. i realize in creationism,
you arbitrarily define science as a 'belief system'. that's your view.
it's a view you haven't supported by either argument or logic.
no one 'serves' evolution any more than one 'serves' the arrhenius
equation or the 1st law of thermodynamics. such a statement is a
linguistic nightmare characteristic of creationists who see everything
through the drunken fog of creationist fundamentalism.
>
> It is beyond the pale of /intelligent/ human understanding how you can
> think that a person can believe "God is man's origins" and "Evolution is
> man's origins" at the same time. At no point in the bible does God say he
> created with macro-evolution nor is there a process described in the bible
> that can be understood as macro-evolution. Believing in both makes you
> double minded and the bible addresses double minded people as well :
the bible does not address how god created light. yet we know how
light is created. through natural processes
it does not say how he created lightening. yet we know how lightening
is created through natural processes
your argument seems to be that, if god created it, then science can't
be involved. and that is a position at odds with 300 years of
christian history, since science first was developed. it's a
ridiculous notion and one that virtually no christians believe.
creationism is fatally flawed. admans' argument merely says that
adman's view of the bible is right, and that everyone should believe
him
even though the bible and christian tradition disagree....let alone
science.
fnord
Burkhard
>
> I should also note the following paper, which had its start in this very
> newsgroup"
>
> Wilkins, John S., and Wesley R. Elsberry. 2001. The advantages of theft
> over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance. Biology and
> Philosophy 16 (November):711-724.
>
> Intelligent design theorist William Dembski has proposed an "explanatory
> filter" for distinguishing between events due to chance, lawful
> regularity or design. We show that if Dembski's filter were adopted as a
> scientific heuristic, some classical developments in science would not
> be rational, and that Dembski's assertion that the filter reliably
> identifies rarefied design requires ignoring the state of background
> knowledge. If background information changes even slightly, the filter's
> conclusion will vary wildly. Dembski fails to overcome Hume's objections
> to arguments from design.
> --
> John S. Wilkins, Philosophy, University of Sydneyhttp://evolvingthoughts.net
> But al be that he was a philosophre,
> Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
And a very good paper it is ;o) I just restricted myself as much as
possible to those where the usual Pagano-Ray ad hominem "these atheist-
evolutionists would say that " are even more obviously wrong than
usual
Free Lunch
wrote in talk.origins:
>Nominated for PotM:
Second.
Desertphile
<not....@address.net> wrote:
> Subject: Flank can easily overcome his explicit denial of god and his profession of atheism
Why the bloody fuck do you care if people deny the gods?
--
http://desertphile.org
Desertphile's Desert Soliloquy. WARNING: view with plenty of water
"Why aren't resurrections from the dead noteworthy?" -- Jim Rutz
John Stockwell
> Pagano:
> The fact of the matter is that Dembski's ID theory has yet to be
> seriously addressed by any of the secular (read: atheist) community.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing in ID "theory" that is
worthy of being seriously addressed.
-John
[M]adman
I have supported this claim over and over. Don't blame /me/ for your denial.
[M]adman
> On Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:22:36 -0400, T Pagano
> <not....@address.net> wrote:
>
>> Subject: Flank can easily overcome his explicit denial of god and
>> his profession of atheism
>
> Why the bloody fuck do you care if people deny the gods?
Because he lied and said he was not an atheist.
SortingItOut
> NOTE: This is a reposted from another current thread.
>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> >On Jun 9, 3:00 pm, "'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank" <lfl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> Hey Tony, you still owe me an apology:
>
> >> On Dec 31, 11:17 am, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>
> >> > And never heard
> >> > Flank deny he was an atheist.
>
> >> Jul 26 2003, 5:58 pm
>
> >> Newsgroups: talk.origins
> >> From: lfl...@ij.net (Lenny Flank)
> >> Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 22:55:07 +0000 (UTC)
> >> Local: Sat, Jul 26 2003 5:55 pm
> >> Subject: Re: Authority in the domain of religion -- a response to
> >> Lenny Flank
Flank:
> >> >I am not an atheist. <shrug>
Pagano:
> Flank's own words convict him as an atheist, not I.
I think his words say he's NOT an atheist.
> And his bald
> denials prove that not only is he a liar but a coward. But he can
> overcome all of this quite easily if he really was not an atheist.
>
> All he has to do is
> 1. explicitly admit that he did, in fact, deny the existence of God.
Even if he did, this does not make him an atheist. Denying the
existence of *all* gods would make him an atheist.
>
> 2. explicitly admit that he was wrong about his denial of God, and
>
> 3. explicitly make an affirmative, genuine admission of belief in any
> christian denomination's creed of his choice and publish that creed.
Why Christian? There are many other options.
>
> 4. all of this should be done in a new thread begun by him in a very
> public way.
>
> All this can be accomplished in one post, in under 100 lines, and in
> less than 15 minutes. Yet if you do a google search since Flank was
> exposed by snex all you'll find is bald denials not affirmative
> professions of faith.
Who cares what he said in an earlier post when he just got through
telling you he's not an atheist?
bms@swva.net School
>
> Based on my review of his work and the work he cites, I've concluded
> that Demski is trivially wrong; his particular talent lies in never
> being *obviously* wrong. He walks this line so well that I've
> concluded he's not a crank: he knows (I believe) exactly what he's
> doing and understands exactly how much he can say.
>
> trivially wrong, you have a lot of reading to do. At the end of that
> reading, he is utterly, trivially wrong.
>
> You don't have his talent. You are both trivially and obviously
> wrong.
>
> Practice does make perfect, though, and there's certainly openings for
> creationists with advanced degrees that are able to obfuscate in
> technical language. You may be one graduate degree away from a
> modestly lucrative book contract and speaking fees.
>
> But you do have a way to do, and you're not going to get there by
> hanging out here changing subject lines.
>
> If you'd like any assistance applying to graduate programs in biology,
> I'm sure there would be several people here who would be willing to
> contribute their expertise.
>
> <snip>
He might also be more successful if he learns to manage this obsession
with atheists and atheism. If he puts that in any applications,
they'll know he's a crank.
Eric Root
Mark Isaak
> Dana, a true 'theist' cannot believe in evolution and the bible at the
> same time.
M/adman, a true theist cannot believe in creationism and the bible at the
same time.
--
Ernest Major
"[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et> writes
"doctrines that (stand) in conflict with established religions", which
you told us comprises atheism.
--
alias Ernest Major
Ernest Major
Pagano <not....@address.net> writes
You ought to read more of talk.oriigins. There are several open atheists
here, even if few are as vociferous as snex. It's possible that he's the
only strong atheist here (though I doubt it), but if you're going to
restrict the definition of atheism to strong atheism then you're going
to have to stop claiming that John Wilkins and Lenny Flank are atheists.
Apart from that, you would be more convincing if you provided a quote or
message id. As I recall Lenny was quoted as saying that he's not a
theist - that doesn't translate to him being an atheist - Lenny
self-identifies as an agnostic (he doesn't know) and an apatheist (he
doesn't think that it's an important issue), to distinguish himself from
strong atheists.
You could argue (I think I would agree) that Lenny is a weak atheist,
but there's enough slop in the definition of atheism that Lenny can
sincerely claim not to be an atheist.
>
>Flank's own words convict him as an atheist, not I. And his bald
>denials prove that not only is he a liar but a coward. But he can
>overcome all of this quite easily if he really was not an atheist.
No, it shows that he has a different conception of what it means to be
an atheist
>
>All he has to do is
>1. explicitly admit that he did, in fact, deny the existence of God.
It would be nice that if you had provided evidence that he did. But note
that, as already pointed out, even denying the existence of Tony
Pagano's God is insufficient to make one an atheist.
>
>2. explicitly admit that he was wrong about his denial of God, and
You wouldn't accept a declaration of his sincere devotion to Odin
instead?
>
>3. explicitly make an affirmative, genuine admission of belief in any
>christian denomination's creed of his choice and publish that creed.
<whistle's in amazement> You may consider Jews and Muslim and Hindus and
Buddhists to be atheists, but the rest of us don't.
>
>4. all of this should be done in a new thread begun by him in a very
>public way.
>
>All this can be accomplished in one post, in under 100 lines, and in
>less than 15 minutes. Yet if you do a google search since Flank was
>exposed by snex all you'll find is bald denials not affirmative
>professions of faith.
>
>Nonetheless in christian charity I shall no longer refer to Flank as a
>coward and liar lest I be accused of piling on.
Charity, not to mention honesty, would have precluded writing those
demands in the first place.
>
>Regards,
>T Pagano
>
--
alias Ernest Major
Ilas
qph2355cpm38cq21n...@4ax.com:
> And as far
> as I know snex is the only t.o denizen who has had the courage of his
> convictions to explicitely admit his atheism.
I'm an atheist. Anyone else like to "explicitely admit" atheism?
Garamond Lethe
> On 10 June, 05:45, Garamond Lethe <cartographi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jun 9, 6:26 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
<snip>
Well, let's try sending this again.
> > Dembski's Intelligent Design work has not been peer reviewed.
>
> > On if you don't know what peer review means would the above even begin
> > to be persuasive. You could have made a much stronger rhetorical
> > statement if *you* knew what peer review was, but you decided to guess
> > instead of finding out.
>
> Yes and no. Academic publishers have a peer review element for the
> books they publish (I'm just having one of theirs on the table), but
> it tends to be far less rigorous than that for articles and conference
> contributions, and also have a strong focus on issue other tan
> academic quality or correctness (will it sell? Is there a market for
> this? What sort of student would you give it to read? Where should we
> send the check (unlike journals, they tend to pay)
Oh, I certainly agree there's a *element* of peer review in the
publishing of academic books, and the level of technical review can be
much higher than regular run-of-the-mill peer review (Knuth pays cash
bounties for any errors found in his books --- it's quite the honor to
find one, and his books are the most rigorously reviewed of any I
know). But the motive is different. For books, it's assumed that the
underlying ideas are sound and the review is only intended to catch
inadvertent errors.
Peer review proper answers the question of whether or not the
underlying ideas are (likely to be) sound.
The actual reason is more colourful if less rational. I'm going to be
graduating with a better-than-decent publication record. I work with
two experienced co-authors who are damn good editors, my work is
novel, practical, and will go a little way towards saving the planet.
And even with all that, my average is two rejections per accepted
article, not counting the ones that got dropped after three
rejections.
Them's the rules and I don't mind playing by them (really!). When
Dembski has to spend eighteen months rewriting the same damn paper to
overcome the objections of an anonymous and not terribly bright
reviewer, then I'll buy him a beer and we can swap war stories. Until
then (or until he puts himself at that risk), I'll decline to affix
the label "peer-reviewed" to his oeuvre.
fnord
bms@swva.net School
> John Harshman wrote:
> > [M]adman wrote:
> >> Dana Tweedy wrote:
> >>> Ray Martinez wrote:
> >>>> On Jun 9, 4:25 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> >>>> snip
> >>>>> I don't know of anyone who has admitted a bias, there being none.
> >>>>> A great many make no secret of their opinions on religion, but
> >>>>> that's quite another thing. The big difference here is that your
> >>>>> ideas on science proceed directly from your religion, while those
> >>>>> of the folks you mention do not proceed from their lack thereof.
> >>>>> And of course good evidence of this is provided by the fact that
> >>>>> most scientists who are theists have the same scientific views as
> >>>>> those mentioned.
>
> >>>> Which proves they are Atheists and not Theists.
>
> >> How many times have I read "Science does not deal in _facts_" on
> >> this NG. ? In the case of evolutionary science, the "facts" (as you put
> >> it), go
> >> totally against the grain of what theists are taught regarding the
> >> origins of man. How can one believe in two opposite explainations
> >> for the origins man at the same time?
>
> >> The term atheism originated from the Greek ????? (atheos), which was
> >> derogatively applied to anyone thought to believe in false gods, no
> >> gods, or _doctrines that stood in conflict with established
> >> religions_.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism
>
> >> ape, that is in _direct conflict with established religions_.
>
>
> >>> Ray's jealousy strikes again.
>
> >> Ray's correctness strikes again
>
> > I'm a bonehead. I'm crushed.
>
>
> My post was to point out that one cannot be a theist and an evolutionist at
> subject at the same time. That also makes them Atheist because it is in
> "direct conflict with established religions".
Being in "direct conflict with established religions" is not the
definition of atheist. If you believe in gods or God, how could you
be an atheist?
Eric Root
Boikat
> Ilas wrote:
> > B Richardson <br...@nym.hush.com> wrote in news:h0ojh50725
> > @enews5.newsguy.com:
fnord
>
> >>> You pukes killfile everyone that you cannot refute.
>
> >> Whoizzit that periodically posts their killfile?
>
> > The depressing little troll doesn't killfile anyone. How could he?
> > He'd not get the attention, which is all he's here for. Little kids
> > don't scweam and scweam unless there's somebody there to react.
>
> That is not exactly true. I have killfiled one person in 10 years.
>
> You will make two.
Wassa matter? Did he post a messege that debunked one of your asinine
claims, and you couldn't refute it?
>
> Good bye.
Please make it "three", You spineless waste of matter.
After all, you're too much of a coward to support your claims, like:
Wars being fought because science dispelled some aspect of some
religion,
kent hovind was a brilliant scientist that made many great scientific
discoveries.
How Hitlers understanding of the ToE was manifest in WWI,
That you have created genes, not evolved ape genes,
Since you are a coward and a liar, you might as well killfile me,
because I'm going to keep on asking you to support those, or any other
claims you make. And every time I ask, and you do not support those
claims, you show that you are a liar. At least if you put me in your
killfile, you can claim you didn't see the posts, obviously. Of
course,, it would also demonstrate hqw dishoneat you are, even more.
But then again, you've claimed to have put myself ,and others, in your
killfile, several, in fact, which means your "killfiled one person in
ten years", a lie, also. Yet at the same time, within a day you
respond to messages drom those you claimed to have killfiled. So, you
lied. Imagine that.
Which all goes to show how screwed up your little fucktard brain is.
Boikat
RUR
"Ilas" <nob...@this.address.com> wrote in message
news:Xns9C2866E5...@195.188.240.200...
Me. Definitely.
Pagano is demented.
R.
[M]adman
>> HE can abuse YOU and it will be YOUR posts that get tagged for
>> killfiles. adman
>>
> Shouldn't you be challenging Tony to confess his atheism? He holds
> "doctrines that (stand) in conflict with established religions", which
> you told us comprises atheism.
If he, or I for that matter, held a doctrine that was in conflict then I
would.
The conflict that you think you see is all in your mind.
Ernest Major
seems to be in conflict with the Catholic doctrine of monogenesis.
Tony claims that Catholicism requires one to be a creationist. This is
also in conflict with Catholic doctrine.
--
alias Ernest Major
[M]adman
My theory is just that, a theory. The church allows people to have creative
thought
>
> Tony claims that Catholicism requires one to be a creationist. This is
> also in conflict with Catholic doctrine.
The Catholic church believes God created. They also believe micro evolution
happens.
T Pagano
<{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <madman-mguYl.54725$19....@bignews2.bellsouth.net>,
>"[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et> writes
>>Ernest Major wrote:
>>> In message <madman-l0dYl.9529$he4...@bignews3.bellsouth.net>,
>>> "[M]adman" <ad...@hotmaill.et> writes
>>>> T Pagano wrote:
>>>>> NOTE: This is a reposted from another current thread.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 9 Jun 2009 22:38:23 -0700 (PDT), Glenn
>>>>> <GlennS...@msn.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Jun 9, 3:00 pm, "'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank" <lfl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> Hey Tony, you still owe me an apology:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Dec 31, 11:17 am, T Pagano <not.va...@address.net> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> And never heard
>>>>>>>> Flank deny he was an atheist.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Jul 26 2003, 5:58 pm
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
snip
>>>> Also, please note:
>>>> HE can abuse YOU and it will be YOUR posts that get tagged for
>>>> killfiles. adman
>>>>
>>> Shouldn't you be challenging Tony to confess his atheism? He holds
>>> "doctrines that (stand) in conflict with established religions", which
>>> you told us comprises atheism.
But of course Ernest Major neither produces my quotes nor even a link
to my quotes. Wonder why that is?
On the other hand let's look at one of Flank's affirmative
professions of atheism:
[BEGIN QUOTE]
Yes if only the whole world were more like you, huh.
You have become the very thing you are fighting. Just another
missionary. (shrug)
By the way, in case you didn't notice, I do not assert, nor do I
accept, the existence of any god, gods, goddesses or any other
supernatural entity of any sort whatsoever in any way shape or form.
We, uh, should be on the same side.
But alas, I suppose I'm just not anti-theist enough for your taste.
My apologies.
[END QUOTE]
Does Ernst Major really argue that this is not a profession of
atheism? If so then the atheists in the forum have no credibility at
all.
>>
>>If he, or I for that matter, held a doctrine that was in conflict then I
>>would.
>>
>>The conflict that you think you see is all in your mind.
>>
>Your concept of people with created genes and people with evolved genes
>seems to be in conflict with the Catholic doctrine of monogenesis.
There is hardly enough information here to determine if any conflict
exists. Monogenesis refers only to the ORIGIN of man in the form of
Adam and Eve not their subsequent descendents.
>
>Tony claims that Catholicism requires one to be a creationist. This is
>also in conflict with Catholic doctrine.
And again Major couldn't produce quotes of me making this claim if his
life depended on it. Which is why they are absent. The Catholic
Church offers no such doctrine, but it does offer sufficient guidance
to be wary of evolutionist claims. But this is all a diversion....
Major is attempting a little bit of misdirection in hopes that the
best defense of Flank is good offense. Sadly Flank's words professing
his atheism are explicit and unambiguous. Flank's only hope is to
make an explicit repudiation of his Jan 29, 2008 post AND an
affirmative profession of faith in God.
Anyone think that will happen?
Regards,
T Pagano