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Post 60

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 12:21pmSanction this postReply
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Ethan,

Even with a mirror you would not be able to find your nose.

Grammarian has expended a lot of effort trying to make a difficult subject clear.  Why I don't know, but I for one am grateful. 

You, Jason, Dean, and Adam, to name a few, not one of you is moved, impressed, or edified. You (plural) are either jealous of real scholarship and intelligence or your heads have ossified.

Get thee to Piekoff and learn to make perky tits.


Post 61

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 12:58pmSanction this postReply
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You (plural) are either jealous of real scholarship and intelligence or your heads have ossified.
Gee thanks. I hadn't realized how awful I was. Your choices above are all incorrect, but since you've already failed to judge my intent properly and met it with an insult while completely overlooking grammarians ridiculous point that I ridiculed above I can only assume that you have no interest in listening to what I say. No Robert, I don't accept that this:

I never said anything about the universe being the product of intelligence (though some physicists today DO believe that).  The thread is strictly about biological organisms.  The latter, on the biochemical level, display nanotechnology.  Little molecular machines.  No, not things that are like machines; thing that ARE machines.  The bacterial flagellum is not like a miniature outboard motor (with a rotor and a stator) it IS an outboard motor (just look at photographs of one taken with scanning electron microscopes), and it functions exactly like a macroscopic man-made one.  What we know about machines, of whatever size, is that they don't invent themselves; they don't come about by chance.
is a sign of scholarship and intelligence. No way.

Ethan


Post 62

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 1:00pmSanction this postReply
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Please don't feed the trolls.

Post 63

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 1:07pmSanction this postReply
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Gram-

Who/what designed this designer you are speaking of?...and that designer?...and that designer?...ad infinitum.


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Post 64

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 1:18pmSanction this postReply
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Davison -- I just chopped the trunk out from under Grammarian's whole arguement in my last post.  So of course I am not impressed with it, or jealous of it.   I look forward to his response but I'm confident that I just pinned him in a corner, as I have obviously done to you as well since all you can do now is sit in the corner firing off ad hominems at everyone in the room who understands basic elements of logic and concept formation and thus can easily eliminate the whole idea of ID as absurd without any scholarly effort.   Why do you insist on doing exactly what I predicted you would do?  Why not try to answer my arguements.   I just posted another one that I think gets to the very heart of your hero Grammarian's assertions.   If you have something to say please say it.

 - Jason


Post 65

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 2:06pmSanction this postReply
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Jason,
I just chopped the trunk out from under Grammarian's whole arguement in my last post.
I found your response to Grammarian interesting.  As I had mentioned to you elsewhere, I believe that either a random or deterministic mechanism for evolution is more plausible than an intelligent one.  However, I recognize the limits of my knowledge and understand that the evidence does not presently exist to support one hypothesis over the other.

Therefore, I must admit ignorance as to what the truth is and consider all reasonable arguments.  ID is reasonable.  It does not require a god, but it does propose a known mechanism (from other non-evolutionary contexts) in place of chance or necessity for which we have no proven instance of how they would work to produce separate species let alone life from inanimate materials.

If you think you "chopped the trunk" of Grammarian's argument down, that's only because of your unshakeable a priori belief that such a designer cannot exist.  I suspect this is because you are conflating the inference of a designer with a belief in God.  (Correct me if I'm wrong.)  If so, how is that different from the theist rejecting Darwinism because of his a priori beliefs?

Finally, I think you undercut the good points you made with your last paragraph where you psychologized the proponents of ID education.  You are assuming knowledge of the minds and motives of people that you do not have.  Exhibit A is myself.

Andy


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Post 66

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 2:44pmSanction this postReply
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It would appear there is an element of a belief in a chaos primacy here, that, somehow and somewhere there was not orderliness in the universe.  Intelligence is the ability to conceive that there is orderliness to the universe, to recognise that the universe is by its nature orderly - not the other way around, where conceiving that there is orderliness means there was an intelligence behind it.  What passes as chaos is the - at the then present time - inability to conceive the order within the complexity being examined, with the claim, therefore, that the orderliness of the universe is too simple to explain the complexity.

Post 67

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 3:13pmSanction this postReply
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I advise all the pro-ID crowd here continue their debate at the Catholic Newspaper, The Tablet.
I think you will find like-minded others there willing to debate this issue with you.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-01063

Rift evolves between top ranking Catholics
13 August 2005
Magazine issue 2512
 
A rift has opened up within the Catholic church over the compatibility of the theory of evolution with Christian faith.
 
A RIFT has opened up within the Catholic church over the compatibility of the theory of evolution with Christian faith.
The Vatican's chief astronomer, the American Jesuit priest George Coyne, has rebuffed controversial comments made by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn in The New York Times on 7 July that Darwinism is incompatible with a belief in God (New Scientist, 23 July, p 5). "Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science," Schönborn wrote. He also dismissed as "rather vague and unimportant" a 1996 statement by Pope John Paul II that seemed to indicate the church's acceptance of evolution.
 
Coyne has slammed these comments in an article in The Tablet, a Catholic newspaper. He writes that the "nagging fear" that the big bang and Darwinian evolution "escape God's dominion" is "groundless".  "We should not close off the dialogue ...

 


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Post 68

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 3:45pmSanction this postReply
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"Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science,"

wrote Catholic Cardinal Schönborn aka Robert Davison aka Grammarian aka Andy Postema aka...


Post 69

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 3:48pmSanction this postReply
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Jason,

You are a legend in your own mind.  You don't discuss or exchange ideas, you lecture.

(Edited by Robert Davison on 8/16, 4:08pm)


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Post 70

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 3:51pmSanction this postReply
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Robert,
     You are a rebel without a clue.


Post 71

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 3:55pmSanction this postReply
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Marcus,

Don't know Marcus, perhaps a thousand monkeys could type out Hamlet given enough time. How much time would it take?


Post 72

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 4:17pmSanction this postReply
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Don't know Marcus, perhaps a thousand monkeys could type out Hamlet given enough time. How much time would it take?

Robert,

Is this really your point? Get yourself a copy of the Blind Watchmaker by Dawkins.

Your example above is a fallacy often associated with Evolution, propagated by Creationists.

The monkey types randomly Z. The monkey dies. The monkey types A. Monkey lives.The monkey types P. The letter does not appear. The monkey types C. The monkey feels good. After a while you've got Act 1, Scene1.

After millions of years you've got the entire play.

The evolving of dirt to human beings is not the result of a cumulative probability - but only dependent upon the probability of the next step. If it is useful it will stay. If not it will be discarded. It builds and builds and develops to be more and more successful in adapting to it's environment.

A hurricane does not assemble a 747 from junk. It meticulously tests every possible combination of screws and fittings. If it does not fit, it is discarded until it gets it right.

The quality control is not God, but survival and fitness.

The free market forces of nature. Profit or loss. Win or lose. A bull or a bear ;-)

(Edited by Marcus Bachler on 8/16, 4:23pm)


Post 73

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 5:08pmSanction this postReply
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Marcus,
The free market forces of nature.
Interesting choice of words, because the free market only operates through the trader principle.  By human design of a system of ethics would be another way of looking at.  Libertarians may think capitalism is a free-for-all, but Objectivists know better.  It requires the rule of law.

Maybe there are other systems that appear natural but actually have the operation of intelligence behind them.  If that's true of evolution, I don't know.  I don't what makes it work.  Nobody does.  I have my preference for the Darwinistic guesses on the subject, but I don't take Darwinism on faith.

But I see that you have identified me as an ID proponent.  I have said at least a few times that I'm not.  But what the heck, why should evidence get in the way?  I guess that's what separates the Objectivists from the Darwinists around here.

Andy


Post 74

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 5:13pmSanction this postReply
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Marcus,

I like you a lot, but I have to conclude you did not read all of what Grammarian posted.  There is no doubt about your ability to understand it.

I know it was long, but I wish you would have stayed with it. 


Post 75

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 5:22pmSanction this postReply
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Robert,
Intelligence is the ability to conceive that there is orderliness to the universe, to recognise that the universe is by its nature orderly ...
Agreed.  Order is inherent in the universe.  It began with near-zero entropy.  Although that original orderliness continues to diminish pursuant to the second law of thermodynamics, it is still preserved in the progressively complex systems that have evolved over time.  That's why I believe random or deterministic mechanisms are a more plausible explanation for evolution than intelligent design.  But I acknowledge the lack of scientific evidence supporting my preference for Darwinism.

Andy


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Post 76

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 5:39pmSanction this postReply
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Since the universe never began, there never was entropy in the whole of it - and since the universe, by its nature, is dynamic, there never can be emtropy except in sections, as part and parcial of its continual dynamicism [meaning, it is not a uniformity of kind or shape, as a ball, but rather a rolling continuum of diversed developmentalness, like perhaps a surf wave which covers the whole of it after an unmeasurable duration, and recycles]

In other words, a universal evolvement - evolution on cosmic scale, as evolution is on micro scale.

(Edited by robert malcom on 8/16, 5:41pm)


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Post 77

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 6:06pmSanction this postReply
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Robert D,

I was responding to what you wrote. Which post of Grammarian are you referring to?

Libertarians may think capitalism is a free-for-all, but Objectivists know better.  It requires the rule of law.

Why do you always assume that nature = order = ID or nature = chaos = evolution.

There are physical laws of nature.

That means:

There are things that are possible and things that are impossible under certain conditions. I cannot walk up the side of a building unaided. Nature is in fact limited. Evolution is NOT a random chance of infinite possibilities.



Post 78

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 7:41pmSanction this postReply
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Robert-

you said:
Don't know Marcus, perhaps a thousand monkeys could type out Hamlet given enough time. How much time would it take?
 
Look at most of twentieth century literature and you'll see that those monkeys have been hammering away unsuccessfully at that challenge.(sorry, couldn't resist getting in a dig at the shit that's masquerading as literature.  I think the euphemism among these modern monkeys is "literary" fiction.)

Jason-
Great job with your arguments against this newly contrived, disguised and worded god-of-the-gaps crap.  You've EARNED my sanctions for taking the time to address this.


Post 79

Tuesday, August 16, 2005 - 7:50pmSanction this postReply
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Robert M.-

 Since the universe never began, there never was entropy in the whole of it - and since the universe, by its nature, is dynamic, there never can be emtropy except in sections, as part and parcial of its continual dynamicism [meaning, it is not a uniformity of kind or shape, as a ball, but rather a rolling continuum of diversed developmentalness, like perhaps a surf wave which covers the whole of it after an unmeasurable duration, and recycles]


Have you gone Hoyle on us with an advocation of a steady-state universe?!  Entropy is alive and well in the universe.  In a CLOSED system....yada, yada...you know the rest.  The part that the creationists(I refuse to use the ID euphemisms) don't understand about the second law of thermodynamics is the closed system part.  The earth is not a closed system.

(Edited by Jody Allen Gomez on 8/16, 7:51pm)


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