There was a time when people believed the moon craters were the product of intelligent design because they were so perfectly round “they must have been made by intelligent creatures living on the moon”. That idea was falsified. If hypothetically someone had said back then, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) made the moon craters”, the claim would have been falsifiable, but it really doesn’t make a positive case for the FSM, doesn’t make the FSM directly testable, doesn’t make the FSM science. Substitute the word “ID” instead for “FSM”, and one will see why I think even though ID is falsifiable, I don’t think ID has a positive case, and I don’t think ID is directly testable, and I don’t think ID is science at least for things like biology.
I accept stonehenge was intelligently designed because I’ve seen humans make similar artifacts. The case of design in life is a different matter because we have not seen a designer of such qualifications directly. If we saw God or some UFO sending flames down from the sky with a great voice and turning a rock into a living human, then I would consider ID a positive case at that point. For now there is no positive case, but a case based on some level of belief. One might redefine science to allow ID to be defined as science, but I prefer not to promote ID as science. I’m OK with calling ID science for man-made things, but not for God-made things, unless God shows up and gives us a visual demonstration.
NOTES:
Johannes Kepler
The invention of the telescope led scientists to ponder alien civilization. In the early 1600s, astronomer Johannes Kepler believed that because the moon’s craters were perfectly round, they must have been made by intelligent creatures.
Is Anybody Out There?
For ID to be a positive case, I think it has to be true in the ultimate sense and the designer actually has to exist. I don’t think that is formally demonstrable short of God showing up and giving a visual demonstration.
So the “not positive case” claim in the OP stands as well as “not directly testable”.
You’re still missing it, Sal. How is the spliceosome like the group II self-splicing intron? What’s doing the splicing reaction in both? Prp8 is not the only thing linking them.
Before I respond to David, this thread has precipitated some questions about my status as an ID proponent over at Uncommon Descent, a weblog that I faithfully served as volunteer and author at, but one I have been ex-communicated from.
Barry Arrington makes the following false characterization:
I made public what I viewed to be unwelcome and harassing e-mails from Barry that I did not view as privileged communication, but rather communications with the express intent of communicating untruth and hostility, even after I went the extra ten miles to part amicably from UD, all this after faithfully serving his interests for 10 years as a volunteer.
Rather than Barry saying things publicly, the e-mails channels were used to conceal nefarious behavior against me, rather than really communicate confidential information. The only thing confidential was Barry’s obviously bad behavior. If Barry wants to call me a Quisling Nazi Collaborator and the usual name-calling he dishes out to those with differing views, he’s welcome to say it publicly, not try to whisper in my ear (so to speak) where no one can call him into account.
It was in those e-mails, that Barry articulated his supposed grounds for my dismissal from UD.
1. I attempted to pass on news that YEC Mark Armitage was filing a lawsuit
2. That I’m some sort of Nazi Quisling Collaborator for participating at TSZ and occasionally agreeing with the regulars at TSZ regarding what I view as weaknesses in the ID arguments.
I view myself and self-identify as an ID proponent even though I don’t believe ID with regards to God-made things (living things) qualifies as science since we don’t see God to independently and observationally verify God-made ID. I view ID as science for man-made things.
Let me say it again so there is no mistake:
The venerable IDist Mike Gene also thinks ID is not science (for biological things).
It is true, I have indeed disagreed vehmently with claims various ID proponents have made:
1. 2nd law of thermodyanmics should not be used to defend ID (harsh criticism of fellow author Granville Sewell, Niwrad, Kairos Focus).
I mean does it matter to BornAgain77 and others that I have graduate level statistical mechanics and have studied Shannon’s theorems in my Electrical Engineering discipline at one of the USAs premier schools? I was appalled at how people bloviate about the 2nd law when they can’t even do freshman chemistry calculation for the entropy of an Ice Cube or a Copper coin (as I have done at TSZ), much less understand some of the finer points. I see all the stuff asserted about information theory, but I studied information theory — the formal classes are called “Communication and Information Theory” and “Digital Communications” and “Digital Signal Processing”. I posted more on Shannon’s theorems than anyone at UD, but I still get contested there by fellow IDists about it.
2. Self-evident truths and morality (what the heck is this doing on an ID blog, not to mention it’s not Biblical)
3. ID should not be promoted as science
4. Agreeing with Mathgrrl (Patrick of TSZ) that no one on the ID side seems capable of calculating CSI bits in CSI V2. I was the first to suggest alternate methods such as the law of large numbers. The ID community should be embarrassed about the state of affairs, but I end up being the fall guy for saying something. What do I tell my ID college students? Don’t use information arguments.
5. I was partly responsible for hanging out to dry one of the reviewers of Bio-Complexity, Branko Kouzulic as Larry Moran pointed out. Oops, I’ll never publish in Bio-Complexity.
Dr. Torley was more gracious, and I tried to warn him not to say certain things, but he got hung out to dry too by me because I had to agree with Nick Matzke. I still feel really bad about that.
6. I had a sharp disagreement with Winston Ewert on this example. We were polite, but the disagreement remains and Mark Frank sided with me:
It highlights issues with the CSI concept that remain problematic.
7. I don’t think highly of the works of Thomas Acquinas as far as ID. It’s obsolete.
StephenB, VJTorley, Kairos Focus, Barry Arrington, Timaeus, likely Denyse O’leary consider Acquinas a Catholic saint. I’m a protestant, and I think Thomas Acquinas is totally irrelevant today’s question of ID. I expect I’ll see Thomas Acquinas in heaven, but I don’t think his ideas are relevant.
8. I commended RDFish many times when he was right especially when he called out StephenB for some really flimsy arguments to support the existence of ID and God and issues about morality.
9. I embarrassed Barry when he posted this on Thermodynamics, and then Gordon Davisson finished him off:
10. I shortly thereafter saluted Gordon Davisson’s work and praised his two Nobel Prize winning relatives Clinton J. Davisson (grandfather) and Owen W. Richardson (grand uncle).
Not good to praise the guy who just humiliated the Barry. But dangit Gordon Davisson knows physics and entropy and information theory, Barry on the other hand, no?
11. I also put in high words of praise Joe Felsenstein who is widely regarded as a master mind of evolutionary theory:
Joe has kindly helped me learn from his book. Both his book and lessons have been free of charge. I’ve had the honor of learning from the Jedi Master himself.
12. I suggested ID should consider AI as form of intelligence in the design inference. Niwrad went ballistic on that because it opened the possibility of atheist ID!
13. I said YEC could be relevant. Barry removed my posting privileges after I wrote that Armitage filed a lawsuit.
14. I said it is ill advised to use the Darwin-Genocide argument because creationists have practiced genocide in the Old Testament and they were involved as well in the Eugenics movement with the Darwinists.
15. I think “A=A” is an axiom, it is stupid to suggest it is a proposition as demonstrated by Bertrand Russell (one of the top mathematical logicians in history) vicious circle. For Barry Arrington to elevate the proposition “A=A is infallible” to creedal status is evidence of his lack of understanding the nuances of axioms vs. propositions. “A=A” is an axiom, “A=A is infallible” is a proposition. That Barry doesn’t no the difference is evidence against his grasp of mathematical logic. But don’t tell that to Barry lest you be labeled also sorts of names such as a Quisling Nazi Collaborator.
16. I accidentally embarrassed ID proponent and creationist Jean-Claude Perez by highlight his work, which then drew Gordon Davisson’s and Joe Felsenstein and Larry Moran’s response. I had to withdraw my endorsement of Perez work, and I really really really felt bad about that because Perez is the nicest guy on the planet.
I’m sure I’ve done some other things, but that’s off the top of my head. 10 years is a long time to remember what I’ve said.
What I am guilty of is what Larry Moran pointed out:
I broke the unstated rule.
Barry said this at his blog:
Gee, and I thought I was the real deal, not just a pretender.
Actually, I haven’t withdrawn from ID.
As evidence of this, I continue to pay my annual dues to the Creation Research Society which has a peer-reviewed publication whose mission is to promote Intelligent Design:
https://creationresearch.org/index.php/extensions/crs-quarterly
I even get a 5.00 dollar membership discount for being a YEC IDist, not just any IDist, but a YEC Idist. No kidding, to be a full member you have to be a YEC, but you get $5.00 off for being a full member.
So I’m more than the real deal, I’m a YEC IDist, not just a watered down creationist IDist, but a maximum strength 200 proof YEC Intelligent Design Creationist (IDC).
Barry coyly didn’t mention that you didn’t “withdraw” from UD. He banned you. The commenters on Barry’s piece wondered aloud why you had “withdrawn”. The implication was that you had walked away from UD,
Finally the wonderful Bob O’Hara linked to the evidence of your banning.
Joe Felsenstein,
So what?
phoodoo,
He’s probably morally close to you.
stcordova,
Sal, do you mind telling us why you left UD? It seems you need a reason to write about this, so I just wanted to help you by giving you the opportunity to discuss it in greater detail.
Also, will you be publishing a book on this topic soon-its utterly fascinating. I am sure others would be very interested to read it.
Perhaps we can have a subsection just for Sal here, to write about how badly he was treated and to also follow the extensive therapy he has had to go through as a result of this trauma. How about it Lizzie? I think Sal still has so much to contribute on this. Maybe we can get Sarah Koenig to look into it?
David,
Thank you for your forbearance, thanks also for reading and responding.
Ah, yes!
and
I think that’s the answer you were looking for, if so, you’ve helped me understand new things. Thanks!
Thanks Joe.
It’s not like I can post over there at UD and settle the question.
It’s not like I can go over there and respond with a simple post to settle the matter by saying,
Btw, I really regret you and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of these debates. It’s been a real honor and privilege interacting with you.
Barry, no doubt trying to poke Sal says on UD:
“Sal says ID is not science. He says ID has no positive case. He says we cannot make any inference to a design in living things except to a supernatural deity. He has rejected all of the main tenants of ID that separate it from YEC creationism. As far as I can see, there is no daylight between him and Ken Ham.”
YECism makes far more testable claims than ID, so is far more scientific. Now those claims are all easily falsified, but at least it ventures into the empirical domain.
At the UD thread, none of the UD regulars pointed out that Sal had been banned. It was Bob O’Hara who informed readers that this has happened. Barry has posted a couple of comments in his thread and did not refute Bob’s assertion of a ban. But he never acknowledged that he had banned Sal. This speaks volumes about the nature of the moderation there.
It has taken most of the UD regulars there most of the UD thread to “get it” that Sal is not commenting there because he is banned. And even then they don’t seem to think that this is much of a problem.
I have been puzzled why they are so obtuse on that point. Finally it got through to me that it was the Unstated Rule, which has been mentioned above, that one must not disagree in public with other pro-ID commenters. It took several mentions of that rule here for the point to get through to me. That Rule was why there was so little unhappiness there at Sal’s bannination. Despite a couple of expressions of mild sadness at Sal’s banning, most of the commenters there seem to be happy with the Rule and with Sal’s banning for violating it.
Indeed. It makes Murray’s determination that TSZ-ers should condemn petrushka’s opinion on quote mining (to earn their ‘intellectual honesty’ badge) somewhat ironic. I have never seen one word of dissent amongst the pro-ID commenters here or there, despite the contradictory positions they espouse.
I’m perfectly willing to voice my disagreement at UD if I consider something factually wrong. I’ve seen people disagree with each other and correct mistakes. I had a philosophical disagreement with one contributor there but it was quite an agreeable, friendly disagreement.
“I am the way,
the truthand the life.”Regardless of the name of any of the posts on TSZ, I think they should all in fact be about Sal whining that Barry does love him enough, and Joe wondering why.
Try to post even a mildly critical post on Jerry Coynes blog and see what happens btw. He is completely terrified of even the slightest challenges to his ideas and will block all of them. I haven’t seen a lot of outrage here over that.
Likewise, Percy at EvC is almost as bad as Coyne. He just deletes posts by pretending they are all off topic. Then he makes all kinds of excuses just like Patrick.
phoodoo,
Please discuss moderation issues in the Moderation Issues thread. I’ve replied to you there.
Joe Felsenstein,
Patrick would like to remind you to discuss moderation at UD in the moderation thread.
Thank you Joe.
To the rest at TSZ, some thoughts:
Despite the fact many here at TSZ are deeply opposed to my viewpoints, TSZ has conducted itself with far more integrity and honesty than Barry Arrington — a person who preaches to the world and suggests his moral superiority over others.
It’s appalling the number of falsehoods that are stated, almost start to finish in Arrington’s piece about me!
1. “Sal Cordova Withdraws from the ID Movement.” False, I have not withdrawn from the ID movement, I was banned from UD. And UD is not ID. Arrington is trying to push a false narrative.
2. “After spending the last few years pretending to be an ID proponent,”. False, about the ONLY person who says I’m pretending is Barry and a few of his minions. I was there in the ID movement in 2005 when my dear friend Caroline Crocker had trouble at George Mason because of her pro-ID views. This led to both of us being featured on the April 28, 2005 edition of Nature, both of us being on National TV. It would be hard to establish, just on that fact alone that I had nefarious intenetions toward ID at that time and there after. Barry would have to explain why I served his blog as a volunteer for 10 years faithfully. Barry would have to explain why I then had a change of heart, etc.
One merely could have to look at what I wrote at UD for the last 10 years and decide if I was just pretending to be an ID proponent. What would it gain me to pretend?
It’s a stupid claim by Arrington. It is false claim, it’s a narrative he’s trying to push. And Arrington could have come out and said, “You know I banned Sal when I figured out he was just pretending to be an ID proponent.” Did he say that? No.
3. “all the while bashing every other ID proponent and disparaging most ID ideas.” Maybe that’s a half-truth, I’ve disparaged what I view to be bad ideas promoted by the some quarters in the ID movement like “the 2nd law of thermodynamics shows ID is true…” I’ve disparaged Kairos Focus’s posts and condescending tone and just terrible writing. I think CSI and information theory approaches to promoting ID are going down the wrong path.
I think it’s stupid for Arrington to say, “A=A is infallible” when he can’t seem to distinguish “A=A” is an axiom and “A=A is infallible” is a proposition. It’s as if in Arrington’s view my background in graduate level statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, my background in studying Shannon’s theorems in communication and information theory, my back ground in mathematical logic — count for anything. I disagree with him publicly, that’s what really matters to Arrington. Doesn’t matter that I faithfully promoted his blog for 10 years as VOLUNTEER.
But I’ve actually supported most of the ID propositions at the core. So at best that statement is a half-truth by Arrington, and I”m being generous.
4. “Salvador Cordova has finally come clean and formally withdrawn from the ID movement. Here.” No where there did it say in the link “I, Salvador Cordova, have withdrawn from the ID movement.” In fact, Arrington wasn’t too sharp, because he linked to this very thread where I have the opportunity to clarify, “I have not withdrawn from the ID movement.”
What he falsely calls an announcement at TSZ of me withdrawing from ID is very much the same stuff I said at UD! See this discussion:
A. ID not positive case:
B. ID not science, not directly testable:
So why didn’t Barry say back then, “Sal has withdrawn from the ID movement, he just made the announcement here at UD.” Why? Because it’s false.
5. “He did it over at The Skeptical Zone, of course, where he has found a home with more like-minded folks.” I doubt many of the regulars at TSZ would view me as like-minded with them. I’m like minded to the extent I love the skeptical mindset and feel kinship with it. I’m more like-minded in their obvious higher ethical values in conduct of discourse on the internet, like not making false accusations about what I actually believe and then not giving me a chance to set the record straight about what I believe. Over all that’s a false statement.
Barry is essentially pushing the narrative “When Sal says he’s and ID proponent, he is only pretending.
So I count: 5 statements, and a conservative estimate is 4.5 are false. That’s Mr. Self-Evident Morality Arrington for you.
The issue is why might Arrington have had it in for me? I actually don’t know. I can only speculate.
I embarrassed him occasionally when I disagreed with him. Some of the ID community complained of my criticism of their arguments (see the laundry list above:
But what probably broke the camels back was when UD regulars complained of my occasional airing of YEC views, and I decided to organize a hew website http://www.CreationEvolutionUniversity.com where YEC and ID could be talked about, and then invited UD regulars to visit, hence draining UD of some visitors, even though the website eventually went quite.
However, while CreationEvolutionUniversity was still alive, I then used UD to advertise my weblog maybe on 4 occasions. That seem to tick him off — “go stick to your own websites” he said to me later.
I then went to underground forums and then churches and universities and CreationEvolutionUniversity went quiet.
Barry probably didn’t like getting dissed and being competed with. I don’t know. I doubt anyone will ever get a straight answer from Barry as to why he’s saying and doing what he is.
stcordova,
Patrick would like to remind you to discuss moderation issues in the moderation thread. Sometimes he forgets to remind some people however.
Sal:
You wrote in your OP:
Has anyone seen a single mutation lead to a new species? How about three or four mutations? Is there any documented path of mutations leading directly from one species to another? Or, are they all hypothesized?
And, if they’re hypothesized only, then isn’t Darwinism “a case based on some level of belief”?
Regarding the 2ndLT: common sense tells us that “order” does not come out of “order” unless some power is at work. In the case of crystals and such, natural forces are at play. But to think that amino acids simply ordered themselves in a certain way, and that while that was happening, another chain of amino acids assembled themselves, and, in such a way as the two might interact, well, as they say, this is literally “incredible”: that is, “not to be believed.”
While you’ve taken classes on the 2nd Law, how do you know that you were properly instructed? How do you know that your teacher was taught something that was wrong, and by a teacher how him/herself was taught improperly? And, so forth.
I read an article a couple of years ago on the 2nd Law. It was by an expert in the field who was flummoxed by a problem, and searched the literature to find out how to understand this problem. He found out that there is a basic misunderstanding of what the 2nd Law says, and that this misunderstanding simply gets being handed down.
I remember very little of the paper; but, what I do remember is the bottom-line: any time you want to compare two systems regarding their entropy, you must use the SAME quantity. So, in the case of those who say, “Oh, everyone knows that the earth is an open system and the energy of the sun is plenty enough to fuel the increased entropy of cellular life,” well, they’re simply wrong. You can’t come to that conclusion. You can only say that there’s enough energy available for something like that to happen; but is says absolutely nothing about how amino acids could align in the proper order—they’re not quantums of energy, but atomic systems.
Now, does the improbability of life invalidate Darwinism? Does it prove that life is intelligently designed? No, it doesn’t prove that; but intelligent people, using common sense, will say that that is the most likely scenario.
As to MathGrl, and CSI, I was quite clear with that person parading as a woman: you have to know how the specification is coming about, and what is generating the odds in order to do that calculation.
The rebuttal seemed to be: well, just do it. Really. And, if I can’t, does that disprove ID theory? I think not. The example I would use today is this: we know that atoms of gas have mass and velocity. And it is therefore possible, at leats theoretically, to calculate the path—with all the individual scatterings–that an atom of gas makes inside some container over the time period of one second. Now, has ANY scientist EVER made such a calculation? And, if you asked a scientist if he/she would ever do such a calculation, would they say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?
The answer to both questions is ‘no.’ No one would take the time and trouble to do something so complicated. Plus, in order to include the trajectory of the ‘one’ particle AND its interations (scatterings), you would have to basically keep track of ALL the particles—which is basically impossible.
Does that invalidate physics? Does this invalidate statistical mechanics? No, again, to both questions. So neither does my refusal to do the calculation in any way invalidate Dembski’s thought. And, as I pointed out numerous times, in none of those examples did enough information arise to constitute CSI (subsequently, the ev program “appears” to produce sufficient CSI; but Dembski has already evaluated that program. And, as I mentioned before (IIRC), on the ev program, if you shut off the part of the program that eliminates the sequences with the lowest scores (which, somehow, is supposed to be how NS works, yet, the degree of elimination is severe, and not anything we normally see in nature), then you get “NOTHING”.
As to Dembski, I can remember when some Bayesians came looking to take Dembski down. The attack had to do with his equiprobable distribution used in NFL. And, of course, Shannon information is the hallmark when it comes to information, right? But, of course, Boltzman’s constant is at the heart of Shannon Information, and how do we get to Boltzman’s constant? Yes, you have it, by “assuming” equipartition; IOW, Boltzman is basically assuming an equiprobable distribution of the ensemble.
I could go on.
Do I think that ID is a “science”? Well, what do we mean by a science? There are, as we all know, different kinds of sciences. Icthyology doesn’t ‘predict’, for example, what sharks will look like today; but it’s a science. That we know that, just like individual snowflakes, no two fingerprints are the same, is a principle that allows fingerprinting to be part of what we call ‘forensic science.’
What about Darwinian predictions? What about the fossil record? What about junk-DNA? What about the transition time from one species to another?
It either cannot make the prediction, or it fails in the predictions it makes. So, why is it considered a science? It’s not a science; it’s a hypothesis.
Now, I consider ID to be a “principle.” Computers and computer codes have led the way to the kind of analysis that ID does. And experience simply tells us that “codes” must have intelligence as its origin; and this includes the genetic code.
So, ID is simply a principle that helps us to understand the origins of genetic information, and thus is a help to understanding how it functions, and, and this is important, where to begin to look for understanding.
Meanwhile, ID has predicted “front-loading” (just today Cornelius Hunter has a post about the recent discovery of histone function in the Archea, which pushes the origin of histones back to 2 billion years ago), and evidence for this concept keeps turning up; ID predicted that “junk-DNA” would have function, and each day more and more function is being found within it.
So, head-to-head, Darwinism cannot stand up to ID as a science.
It should be abandoned. You cross a horse and an ass and you end up with a mule. Did religious believers ever think that God created the mule? Yet you would think this based on Darwin’s argumentation. Darwin said his book was one long argument. Well, it was a bad one. Just read Fleeming Jenkin’s review of the Origins. He deals it one devastating blow after another, and, in an even-handed way.
So, is Darwinisn a “science” simply because we can make believe that mutations can bring about everything we see? No.
So, is ID a “science”? Yes, and no. It is informative–such as in the case of “front-loading” and “junk-DNA”–and so has scientific merit; likewise, as a means of understanding the fossil record and the complexity of the cell, it is a better inductive conclusion than Darwinism and its reliance on random events–which, in the end, is just as invisible as the hand of an Intelligent Designer. Yet, since the mechanisms ID relies on—the interventions of an intelligent agent–is unpredictable, in and of itself it does not constitute a “body of knowledge.” In that sense, you cannot claim its equivalence to other “bodies of knowledge.”
Will it ever rise to such a level? My in-depth musings tell me that in the end, we will have a “before-and-after” view of things, and nothing more. That with time, the “resolution level” of this “before-and-after” view will increase; but, nonetheless, it will always remain a “before-and-after” view, and it will all come down to how each individual want to look at the same set of facts. That is: a stalemate.
But, if ID is not a ‘science’ but a ‘principle,’ neither is Darwinism a ‘science’ per se, but simply an ‘hypothesis.’ It should NEVER be taught as “fact.” If ID succeds in simply getting people to pull back from the “ideology” of naturalism, and this “fact” of “evoltuion,” then it will have served a great purpose.
P.S. Although Darwinism=hypothesis=ID=principle, i.e., the two are in a stand-off, here’s the difference: with ID, the few predictions it is able to make, have proven to be correct, while Darwinism has proven to be wrong. So, in this “stand-off,” ID should prevail, or, as Steven Meyer would say, ID makes better sense of the facts (my twisted paraphrase).
Hard to imagine a single mutation leading to a new species when every individual includes dozens of unique mutations.
So, speciation is hidden from view, right? And this means that Darwinism likewise cannot be “seen.” It’s like the “hidden hand” Adam Smith talks about, right? (And, of course, Darwin was affected by Smith’s reasoning. He likened his scheme to this “hidden hand.” But, you have to admit, “hidden” is “hidden.”)
There are visible selectors in biology and in the economy..
Do you have a point?
Has anyone seen one language evolve into another one?
Has anyone seen kimberlite erupting onto the landscape?
Has anyone seen a 10 km asteroid strike the earth?
Has anyone seen hydrothermal circulation in the earth producing copper deposits?
There are a lot of things not seen directly that are properly inferred from their effects.
Glen Davidson
We do have some written records of languages evolving. I don’t see much evidence that the changes were designed.
petrushka,
The term “selectors” presumes NS, which needs to be demonstrated.
Certainly not a record of the entire course of evolution of one language into one that would be considered to be quite another (such as two people not being able to truly converse). Snapshots, yes, but we have those in the fossil record as well (good species interemediates are rare in the fossil record, not absent).
More to the point, though, PaV is demanding the actual witnessing of species evolving, not asking for good evidence that they have.
Glen Davidson
Isn’t this the whole point of ID?
petrushka,
Most language “evolves”. And it’s the work of intelligent agents. Right?
Yeah, right.
Take life, full of evidence of evolution operating without foresight or rationality, and claim that it’s design.
That’s nothing like inference from the evidence, just an attempt to impose a presupposition upon the evidence.
Glen Davidson
And someone saw it all happening, in compliance with your outrageous demand regarding the evolution of species (let alone higher taxa)?
Glen Davidson
The change is neither planned nor designed. Languages have been designed, but they have been successful. Economies have been planned, but they haven’t been competitive with wild economies. Teacup poodles vs wolves.
Heavens. Are you kidding? Don’t you have things backwards?
IOW, I could more properly write: “Take life, full of evidence of design, operating in a purposeful and rational manner, and claim it all came about through random changes.”
And, “evidence”? You’re trying to tell me that boatloads of proteins that are highly constrained, and that work together in a purposeful way, aren’t “evidence” of intelligence? Why not?
Show me one “protein” that randomly assembled in the laboratory from a bowlful of amino acids.
Citation please. Please cite a biology text or paper that says proteins self assemble.
PaV,
Nice to see you. As you can see, I’m way out numbered here at TSZ being one of the few ID proponents here….
I believe ID is true, I believe in my heart we can recognize God-made designs if we are willing to see.
Epicycle theory can be called “science”, but that doesn’t make it true. The claim “George Washington was the 1st US President” is true, but it doesn’t make the claim science.
Hence I view the claim “ID is science” unnecessary and a distraction. The more important debate is “is ID true” or to lesser extent “is Dawkins Blind Watchmaker real.”
I believe I have recognized design in God-made things, I just don’t label my belief as science, I label it as my belief. I believe it is true, and that’s what matters to me, not whether people call it science or not.
Does God care that we call Him or his intelligent designs science? I doubt it. We should care, however, if God exists and whether God is the Designer. If He exists, does it really matter that much if we call ID science or not?
PaV,
Nice to see you. As you can see, I’m way out numbered here at TSZ being one of the few ID proponents here….
Thank you for your polite request. Given that there is nothing in the published rules of this site against discussing moderation issues wherever I like on this site, I will take your request under advisement. That said, I must say that I feel no obligation to conform to rules that do not exist.
If you don’t mind, could you explain why you are adopting this false narrative about this rule that is not a rule? Will you next advocate censoring posts and/or posters who fail to adhere to this rule that does not exist?
There are at least two ways to answer this question.
Salvador might claim that he had no choice in the matter, he left because he was banned. Barry might argue that Salvador did have a choice, but did not choose wisely, and that he was banned because of his choices.
This of course assumes that Salvador was banned, and even if Barry admits that Salvador was banned, well, no one here thinks Barry can be trusted. Meanwhile, they will say that Salvador, though deluded, is honest.
Clear as mud?
How would they know that Salvador had been banned?
Seriously Joe, I didn’t know that Salvador had been banned and I repeatedly asked Salvador why he was no longer posting at UD. Why don’t you just go on and pretend otherwise now.
Good question. From what I can recall of the sequence of events Salvador had to come here to TSZ to discover how wrong he was about the second law. I’m guessing he refused to listen to any of his critics over at UD.
According to the OP, Salvador claims that even though there is no positive case for ID, and ID is not directly testable, ID is still falsifiable. I’m flabbergasted.
And there’s nothing in the OP to resolve the dilemma. It’s classic Sal C.
OK, assume for the sake of argument I was taught wrong. I posed the following question to the advocates of the 2nd law in favor of ID:
“What has more entropy — a lifeless ice cube or a living human.”
I performed the calculation according to the way a college chem student would be expected. Why did no one contest the figures? I said a human has more entropy.
Here is the calculation:
If people say I’m wrong about the 2nd law, they’ve been invited repeatedly to contest the figures. They are more than welcome to correct what I said publicly. No takers, especially not my most vocal critics. Now why is that?
Much as I defend ID, I won’t defend an ID claim I deem to be indefensible and especially one that will damage up and coming science students.
The 2nd Law ID argument rests on equating entropy with disorder. This is now viewed as a wrong view of entropy by many scientists and edcuators and even a few creationists like Gange:
http://entropysite.oxy.edu/
Proteins don’t self assemble. Organisms build proteins to suit their needs.
Let’s assume you were taught correctly and that you either misunderstood what you were taught or misrepresented what you were taught because you are a Young Earth Creationist.
Further, let’s grant for the sake of argument that you learned differently here at TSZ and that this led you to abandon your 2LOT arguments and adopt your coin-tossing arguments.
Are we getting warm?
Apart from the question of whether or not it is in fact the case that “The 2nd Law ID argument rests on equating entropy with disorder,” it’s nice to see Sal admit that I was right and he was wrong. A banner day.
Actually Mung I think there are a lot more people here who believe in ID than you, or even they realize. Every time one of the materialists talks about there being teleology in nature, they actually are IDists.
The problem is a lot of people here just don’t understand their own position.