Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
Except I do not push “immaterialism”- I don’t even know what that is.
As I said the design is material and the pojnt is necessity and chance cannot explain it.
Yes information is immaterial.
I don’t believe I claimed that, and please try to focus. You’ve said that information can exist without matter and energy, but not supported that claim. So please give us examples. Thanks.
Rich,
This is what I said:
But yes, IDists say that information is neither matter nor energy. However it is obvious that the design is material, ie physical.
And guess what? A blank disk weighs the same as a programmed disk and a blank disk has the same amount of energy as a programmed disk.
Oh dear. You seem to think that weight is THE measure of ‘mass and energy’. Are the configurations of the two disks the same?
I’m sure that Rich is referring to this claim of yours:
“But yes, information can exist without energy and matter.”
And you damn well know it, so why don’t you quit playing your immature games, stop being a dishonest jerk, and support your claim.
I was, and he’s painted himself into a corner again. And so the dancing begins.
Except the EVIDENCE says otherwise:
This is where it started
Look if you guys can’t follow along and need to be dishonest jerks about it, then go ahead. But the evidence is there for all to see.
Oh dear, Rich needs to make stuff up because he doesn’t have a clue.
No, I do not think that weight is THE measure of ‘mass and energy’.
So the information is the configuration of the matter? But can matter exist without information?
Then why bring it up like its some clever refutation?
I know where it started. It started with you making that claim. So support it.
I was asking YOU how you are going to support your claim.
It started with YOU avoiding a question, AGAIN:
Can energy and matter exist without information?
No you weren’t. You were banging on about the weight of floppy disks. It’s there for all to see. And you’ve still to support your assertion that information can exist without matter or energy.
This is patently untrue. It started with me asking “Can it exist without matter or energy?” and I’d like you to support your answer, as I asked first.
Can energy and matter exist without information?
And if information were matter than adding information would be adding matter, which means we should be able to detect the addition of information by seeing if there was some addition of matter. If information were energy then adding information would be adding energy.
If energy and matter cannot exist without information then your question is moot.
You asserted it could, but gave no examples. we’re waiting for examples.
First we have to know if matter and energy can exist without information.
No we don’t. First we want your examples. You said they exist. Let’s see them.
If information were matter than adding information would be adding matter, which means we should be able to detect the addition of information by seeing if there was some addition of matter. If information were energy then adding information would be adding energy.
That’s not an example of information in absence of matter or energy! D- Try again.
I never said anything about examples. However this:
If information were matter than adding information would be adding matter, which means we should be able to detect the addition of information by seeing if there was some addition of matter. If information were energy then adding information would be adding energy.
makes my case just fine, thanks.
That fact that you seem to think that this proves something, is delicious. I vote for a new thread on this monumental dog-turd of comment!
Yes Richie, I would say if we add matter to something we should be able to detect that and if we add energy to something we should be able to detect that also. However when we add information to a compuetr disk we do not add matter and we do not add energy.
But then again you do seem to have issues with physics…
And if my coment was a dog-turd you would be eating it.
Look who’s talking.
Then what’s your point?
It may be to a human or other organism that is capable of being informed by the configuration of the matter. But what if there’s no human or other capable organism around to observe or be informed by the configuration of the matter?
Is information in matter or is it in the mind of a capable observer?
For instance, to which of the following would there be information in a rock?
A newborn human baby
A frog
A petrologist
A waterfall
Another rock
Yes Richie, I would say if we add matter to something we should be able to detect that and if we add energy to something we should be able to detect that also. However when we add information to a compuetr disk we do not add matter and we do not add energy.
But then again you do seem to have issues with physics…
And if my coment was a dog-turd you would be eating it.
Beats the heck out of me, joeg, because “necessity and chance” isn’t a well-defined hypothesis. Rather, “necessity and chance” is, interpreting that phrase as charitably as I can, an overly-concise shorthand reference to two overly-general categories of possible explanations. You might as well ask, “what would a hypothesis based on chemistry and physics look like?”.
The way Dembski defined chance and regularity stacked the deck in several fairly clumsy ways.
FIRST, Dembsk made his preferred “explanation” (goddidit) the default. So if it’s nothing else Dembski chose to consider, then this must be it.
NEXT, Dembski defined “regularity” pretty much as oscillation. Just because something happens over and over doesn’t make it “regular”, only simple phenomena qualify.
NEXT, Dembski chose “chance” as meaning, drawn from an equiprobable distribution. Otherwise known as the “tornado in a junkyard” distribution. A world where argon and chlorine are equally likely to bond with hydrogen by “chance”.
NEXT, Dembski very carefully elected not to consider the sort of complex adaptive feedback systems that drive evolution (and weather, and stuff like that). Simple systems only need apply.
NEXT, Dembski very carefully gave no operational definitions or examples, nor did he attempt to apply his EF to any complex or biological systems.
And finally, when challenged on all of these points, Dembsk wrote a response which very carefully skirted every substantive argument against him, and then went silent. He ended up providing JUST little enough so that his sycophants can say “nope, that’s not what he meant” no matter what operational definitioin of his terms anyone might choose to use.
So, in tried-and-true creationist fashion, Dembski started with his conclusion, set up a couple rather transparent straw men as “opponents”, knocked them down, and concluded what he assumed to begin with. And here we have JoeG, unsurprisingly insisting that everyone use Dembski’s stacked deck. When they bring their own decks, of course that’s rejected as “not being evidence.”
Well then, how does one test materialism?
Flint-
The design inference is exactly the opposite of what you just said.
1- The default is always “we don’t know”
2- Regularity is something that has to happen- let go of a heavier-than-air object and it will fall to the ground.
3- Chance means something that can happen given the right circumstances
BTW the EF is the process to use when following Newton’s four rules of scientific investigation. It gives your position the first opportunity to solve the problem.
And I don’t care what deck you use Flint- you can’t support your position and it shows. The design inference carves a path straight through yours and it bothers you…
Elizabeth,
Asexual reproduction is irreducibly complex. Which means if you want to use asexually reproducing organisms as your “self-replicators” you have quite a bit of explaining to do just to get there.
False prima facie. The EF says, in so many words, that IF it’s not regularity or chance, THEN by default it must be design. If “we don’t know” were the default, then it would have to be selected over the other two straw men in every case.
That’s why I emphasized “simple” regularity. Take any self-replicating phenomenon, add inheritance, and the result will ALWAYS be evoution. Every time. It HAS to happen. Which is probably why Dembski carefully avoided addressing the very topic he was trying to critique.
Evolution happens, given the right circumstances. Your heavy object falls to the ground given the right circumstances. To properly address chance, you must first define the probability distribution. Dembski assumes it’s always uniform, and this is clearly false in most cases.
But an adaptive feedback process, which combines elements of BOTH chance and necessity working as a team, does solve the problem. Which is why Dembski carefully separated them so that he didn’t need to address feedback systems. Your problem is, you don’t like the solution.
And I don’t care what deck you use Flint- you can’t support your position and it shows. The design inference carves a path straight through yours and it bothers you…I know you hold this as an article of faith, and reject all else. Nonetheless, by observation and experimentation people who wish to learn rather than recite memorized errors have found good, repeatable, predictive answers. The best you can do is say “that’s not the answer” – over and over and over. If you could support your assertion with anything but Will To Believe, others might listen rather than simply laugh.
I have my doubts that the EF’s elements, chance, necessity and design are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
In the interest of staying on UB’s topic, would you like to tell us how you know this in the Sandbox?
No, the EF says no such thing. Not only do necessity and chance have to be eliminated- per Newton’s rules of scientific reasoning BTW- there also has to be a positive element, such as Behe’s criteria.
Also you do not understand the word “default”.
More equivocation. ID is not anti-evolution.
Also to be clear- with the EF once you get to the “chance” node (Intermediate Probability), necessity is also present. For example a toss of the dice includes gravity, ie necessity.
Richie pom-poms- I have my doubts that you are able to conduct an investigation.
It’s called csience:
Peering into Darwin’s Black Box: The cell divsion processes required for bacterial life
Joe G,
.
I spy a derail, but no, it isn’t.
[ETA: snipped actual argument, as it simply extends the derail!]
Allan,
I WAS an evolutionist until I started looking more closely at the evidence. And evolutionism doesn’t have any.
Imagination is NOT evidence.
That is why I ask the people who still adhere to this failed position for the best evidence they have to support it.
I am well aware of Yaris, Lincoln/ Joyce, Sutherland- interesting yes. Support for materialism, no.
Joe can always start a new post.
I have one in the cue already…
-taps the mic-
Is this thing still on?
Wow, I hope it’s up to your usual high standards given the rapid turn-around.
A, a pool player. I knew it!
It will definitely expose your pom-poms.
BTW the OP in-waiting pertains to “science” in general.
Yes, I swim 3 miles a week.
Joe G,
Joe
Well, I think there’s plenty, so one of us is wrong.
All hypotheses start with imagination. Then they look for feasible means of testing that hypothesis. You would seek to stifle ALL speculation (other than the lame, incurious tosh spouted by the ID crowd) with that repetitious YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE crap. Tens of thousands of very smart people reckon there is a great deal of evidence – but in many cases, you need some grasp of the science they are using. It’s not always something you can just give to a layman – particularly one so determined to find something wrong with it, however spurious. You accept anything Casey and Cornelius claim undermines Darwinism without demur, but anything that contradicts them … well, there’ll be something wrong with it, somewhere.
Your principal stumbling block appears to be your standard regarding what evidence would be acceptable. Unless someone looks at a pond for a few million years and observes the individual steps in minute detail – nothing less will do. Then they call you over – “Hey, Joe – we got some evidence!”. And all you see is the end result, so you can still deny it. So let’s pull up our chairs by a pond, and wait a few million years, shall we, you and I? We need to watch it together, step by tedious step …
Joe believes planets can spiral into their sun. What is his standard of evidence?
Has he seen it happen?
Or does he allow astrophysicists and astronomers to extrapolate from observable processes and assume the regularity of the processes.
Well then present that alleged positive evidence for evolutionism.
And all hypothesis start with observations- imaginations are not evidence.
I don’t care about Casey nor Cornelius- what do YOU have? As Dr Behe put it- How can we test the claim that any bacterial flagellum evolved via Darwinain/ neo-darwinian processes?