Executive Summary:

Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID. KF talks about math and design detection but never does it. ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument. It is the North Korea of the internet

Barry Arrington doesn’t understand ID.
in now epic thread Barry told us what would convince him ID was wrong:

The science bomb that will destroy my belief in ID: A single example of natural forces observed to have create Orgel’s CSI.

Now as IDists can’t actually measure CSI (they don’t appear to understand it at UD) this was troublesome, but a close examination of Dembski’s CSI contains the term P(T|H), which is described by him as

Moreover, H, here, is the relevant chance hypothesis that takes into account Darwinian and other material mechanisms.

So Barry wanted a demonstration of CSI being made by natural forces, whilst Dembski defines CSI as only to be ‘counted’ in the absence of them. Barry doesn’t understand CSI. I asked him if he thought that “CSI=FSC=FSCO/I”. He never responded.

KF talks about math and design detection but never does it

KF’s behavior is perhaps the most odious of the moderators there. Rather than have an actual discussion, he creates multiple one-off posts with closed comments, which means that associated critique is never attached to the post itself. This effectively allows him to perpetually reboot once destroyed arguments as if they are new and unassailable. This just shows us the strong connection between creationism and ID – creationists are still rolling out “2LoT” and “If we came from Monkeys” today.

All of KF’s posts are basically reformations of Hoyle’s tornado in a junkyard arguments: Complex things cannot spontaneously generate. Of course this has *nothing* to do with life and does not consider P(T|H). KF has yet to do any credible math pertaining to an evolutionary narrative. Sadly telling.

ID exists as an amorphous miasmic anti-evolutionary argument

The general trend at UD is for the IDists to tell us what they think evolution can’t do rather than what ID can do. It is gapism in its purest form. The target moves from PCD to abiogenesis to the first cell and they want a complete history of the evolution of life with pictures and an index of all the mutations as they happened. Given the ‘Jesus this’ and ‘God that’ that happens at UD, I wonder if they have the same high bar for other ‘historical’ events.

It is the North Korea of the internet

They silently ban, delete accounts, place in moderation, mark up others posts and post themselves with comments disabled. This degree of message control is a symptom of their arguments being completely noncompetitive when there is a free and fair exchange of ideas.

Natural selection is a simple theory because it can be understood by anybody; to misunderstand it requires special training.

Graham Bell, The Masterpiece of Nature

Interest has been expressed in a thread on selection and drift, so I thought I’d start one, and offer my own 2-cent summary of the concepts.

Continue reading →

I think that popular consensus is that it *is* designed. Let’s look at the design detection tools on offer (both ID and conventional) and see which were used in this particular design inference.

Open for comments for a while before I add my two penneth.

We have folks on both sides of this question, so it should make for an interesting discussion.

(I’m a ‘yes’, by the way.)

The assertion has been put forth that I said I would never post here at TSZ again.

Alan Fox:

Welcome back, mung. Didn’t you say that you would never darken our door again? By your moral compass, don’t you have to call yourself a liar, now?

I’ve been searching for the post in which I made a statement that I would never post here again. I do recall being excessively miffed about something that petrushka wrote about me that I thought was egregiously false. Something about animals being meat puppets. But I haven’t yet been able to locate my response to that post.

What post is Alan is referring to?

Rupert Sheldrake obviously thinks so.  (I have no idea myself, but would be interested in comments on his piece by those who do.)

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A New Science of Life

The hypothesis of morphic resonance proposes that memory is inherent in nature. The laws of nature are more like habits. Each species has a collective memory on which all individuals draw and to which they contribute.

Continue reading →

Alan Fox:

Both Feser and Torley are both staunch Catholics, a religion that I find pretty objectionable (above all for it’s interference in private life and thought, the readiness of its leaders to tell others how to behave, oppression of women and minorities…).

Q1: Are these objections not all moral?

Q2: Are there other unlisted objections, and are they not also moral objections?

Q3: Is there any religion Alan Fox does not find objectionable?

Q4: Is there an objective basis for Alan’s objections?