Irish Voters Do the Right Thing….

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…Church Was On the Wrong Side, As Usual

http://www.theguardian.com/global/live/2015/may/23/counting-underway-for-irelands-referendum-on-marriage-equality

Ireland becomes first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote

Irish voters have decisively voted in favour of marriage equality, making Ireland the first country to do so through the ballot box. Only one of the 43 constituencies voted against the proposal – Roscommon-South Leitrim – while the yes vote exceeded 70% in many parts of Dublin. The no campaigners have paid tribute to their opponents, and the archbishop of Dublin has said the result should be a wake-up call for the Catholic church in Ireland.

[title shortened by Lizzie]

ID in E-prime

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I’d like to start a thread about the proposition that features of the universe indicate that a designer designed and created it for a purpose.

We have had many such discussions on this blog previously, but I propose that in this thread we abide by a new rule: we will conduct the discussion solely in the form of English called E-prime:

E-Prime (short for English-Prime, sometimes denoted É or E′), a prescriptive version of the English language, excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does not allow the conjugations of to be—be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being—the archaic forms of to be (e.g. art, wast, wert), or the contractions of to be—’m, ‘s, ‘re (e.g. I’m, he’s, she’s, they’re).

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What unforeseen secret will we discover in the near future?

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A little fun, where you can unleash you inner crank / woomeister. Do you think there is anything we’ll discover in the future that will radically change things? Examples include but not limited to:

Life on Mars, Signals from ET, FTL travel,  PSI phenomena, Limitless energy, Immortality, Message from God, Real AI, Crashed UFO, Atlantis, Decent country music,  etc.

Have some fun with this. No-one is judging*

 

*Probably not true.

This is (perhaps) relevant

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to recent discussions here at TSZ:

 

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you’re tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They’ll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren’t alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren’t alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

Albert Goldbarth, ”The Sciences Sing a Lullabye”

 

about “belief”, and “expectation” …

 

ID should not be promoted as science

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I’m ambivalent to the question whether ID is or is not science. I don’t care how it is classified. The more important question is whether it is true. Even though in some people’s definition of science, ID might count as science, in other people’s definition of science it won’t count as science. Therefore, just to be safe and avoid pointless arguments, ID should not be promoted as science even by IDists.
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On Logic and the Empirical Method

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A thread at UD that was just beginning to get interesting was unfortunately cut short when Elizabeth departed.

As is oh so typical over at UD, those silly IDiots were appealing to obvious truths and the primacy of logical reasoning. Elizabeth, in contrast, was championing her empirical methodology.

During the exchange, Elizabeth made the following statements:

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Design as the Inverse of Cognition

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     Several regulars have requested that I put together a short OP and I’ve agreed to do so out of deference to them. Let me be clear from the outset that this is not my preferred course of action. I would rather discuss in a more interactive way so that I can learn from criticism and modify my thoughts as I go along. OPs are a little too final for my tastes.
      I want to emphasize that everything I say here is tentative and is subject to modification or withdraw as feedback is received,
      It’s important to understand that I speak for no one but myself it is likely that my understanding of particular terms and concepts will differ from others with interest in ID. I also want to apologize for the general poor quality of this piece I am terrible at detail and I did not put the effort in I should have due mainly to laziness and lack of desire.
  With that out of the way:

The Rules of the TSZ Game

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As we have some newcomers, and some new-oldcomers (including me!) I thought I’d just draw everyone’s attention to the Rules of the Game at TSZ.  They are written here and updated from time to time, but I have also pasted them below.  We do try not to be heavy-handed with them, and to be as equitable as is humanly possible, but we will make judgements that you disagree with, possibly with good reason.  The good news is that you can discuss these in Moderation Issues, and that, with the exception of a very narrow and specific range of material, posts will only be moved, not deleted.  Moving a post because it contravenes a rule does NOT imply ANY kind of moral judgment on the post.  A post can be morally justified yet contravene the rules, and can be morally indefensible yet remain within it.  The rules are entirely orthogonal to morality, and when we ask you to “assume all other posters are posting in good faith” we do not require that you believe it, any more than the assumption of innocence until proven guilty requires belief in a person’s innocence.That is why I call them “Game rules”.  They are simply the rules of the discussion game as played here at TSZ.  We also have the Sandbox for off-topic scrapping that is getting in the way of discussion, or even off-topic chat about fun stuff.

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A rather topical Jesus and Mo today

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Although I have to say, the adage that “you can’t reason a man out of beliefs he hasn’t reasoned himself into” always struck me as a load of cobblers.  Growing up is, to me, a process of discovering that what you always believed was true ain’t necessarily so.  But I’m sure it gets harder as you get older.

The Bowels of Christ

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Barry Arrington writes:

For years I have been bemused by the website called The Skeptical Zone.  Every few months I go over there and peruse the posts.  And I think to myself, if they are so skeptical, why does practically everything they say line up with the received dogmas and conventional wisdom of the early 21st century Western intelligentsia?

Do they not know what the word “skeptical” means?  Are they going for ironical?

But in a flash of insight today, I finally figured it out.  The key is in the quote from Cromwell at the top of their homepage that serves as the motto for the site:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.

All of this time I mistakenly thought that they were using the aphorism the way Cromwell intended as in “We should bear in mind that each of us is fallible; it follows that each of us should always allow for the possibility that even his most intensely-held beliefs might possibly be mistaken.”

Yes, Barry, that is precisely what I intended it to mean.

No, that is not it.  It all becomes clear when you realize that they mean their motto quite literally and when they think of it they think of it this way:

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that YOU may be mistaken.

 

The YOU refers to all those who read the words,  including the owner of the blog.

There you have it.  They are skeptical all right.  They are skeptical of everyone’s views but their own, which they hold with a breathtakingly dogmatic tenacity.  It all makes sense to me now

Well, we all tend to think that people who seem unable to see our point of view are holding that view “with a breathtaking dogmatic tenacity”.  After all, if we thought we were wrong, we’d change our minds, wouldn’t we?  It’s intrinsic to the nature of disagreement that we think the other guy is wrong, and greater the clarity with which we think we are seeing the truth, the more dogmatically tenacious the other guy seems to be for not seeing it.  Which simply goes to show that one [wo]man’s obvious is another [wo]man’s nonsense.

So: Just to remind everyone: No, the motto is neither ironical,  nor addressed to a subset of the world.  It is addressed to everyone, unironically, including me.  And of course Barry, should he come over, which I hope he will. Please regard it as the Primary Rule of this site.

Thanks 🙂

Edited to, I hope, avoid copyright violation.

Barry’s immaterial mind muddle

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Barry ‘Banny’ Arrington has a new, rather confused post at UD:

On Invoking Non-Physical Mental States to “Solve the Problem” of Consciousness

Many of us are banned at UD, and those who aren’t banned are in danger of having their comments purged at any moment. Let’s avoid that cesspit and respond here at TSZ, where open discussion is encouraged and Arringtonian censorship is anathema.

A question for Winston Ewert

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Added June 17, 2015: Jump in with whatever comments you like, folks. Dr. Ewert has responded nebulously at Uncommon Descent. I’d have worked with him to get his meaning straight. I’m not going to spend my time on deconstruction. However, I will take quick shots at some easy targets, mainly to show appreciation to Lizzie for featuring this post as long as she has. Here, again, is what I put to Dr. Ewert:

Your “search” process decides when to stop and produce an outcome in the “search space.” A model may do this, but biological evolution does not. How do you measure active information on the biological process itself? Do you not reify a model?

Dr. Ewert seemingly forgets that to measure active information on a biological process is to produce a specific quantity, e.g., 109 bits.

One approach is to take the search space not to be the individual organisms, but rather the entire population of organisms currently alive on earth. Or one could go further, and take it to be the history of organisms during the whole of biological evolution. One could also take it to be possible spacetime histories. The target can then be taken to be spacetimes, histories, or populations that contain an individual organism type such as birds.

These “search spaces” roll off the tongue. But no one knows, or ever will know, what they actually contain. Even if we did know, no one would know the probabilities required for calculation of the active information for a given target. And even if we did know the probability of a given “target” for a given “search,” we would not be able to justify designating a particular probability distribution on the search space as the “natural” baseline. By the way, Dr. Ewert should not be alluding to infinite sets, as his current model of search applies only to finite sets.

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Moderation at TSZ

Quote

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Elizabeth Liddle:

Yes. Can I remind thread-starters not to moderate their own threads, even though you technically have that capacity.

I have not yet found a way of setting permissions so people can post OPs and not have editing rights, so it is an honour system.

In any case, we do not edit posts, except to delete malware and porn links, or identifying info. No Loudspeaker in the Ceiling.

 

After reading this comment by Elizabeth I went and checked the moderation rules. It had been quite a while since I had had reason to read them and I discovered that they had been amended:

If you have author permissions, and post an OP, you may find you have the technical ability to edit comments to your post, and move them.  Please do not do so.  Rule violating posts will be moved by moderators, and it is a principle of this site that comments are not edited, deleted, or hidden.

I apologize to Reciprocating Bill for adding a comment to the end of one of his posts in violation of the principles of this site.

And for those who have been claiming or implying that I was refusing to own up to what I had done you’re just ignorant.

1. I put my name to the comment when I added it.

2. I admitted to having done it when Reciprocating Bill asked.

I see OMagain accused me of deleting his posts in an attempt to have my thread authoring ability revoked. Is there any reason to believe that’s true? I don’t see any option to delete a post.