[_ Old Earth _] Questions about ID

[DavidLee]

After running the genetic algorithm scenarios, the computer selects the best performer from a group of trials, much like natural selection in biological evolution, and combine characteristics from that engine with those of other high performers.

Not exactly like evolution. A lot like rapid trial and error. Calling an algorithm genetic does not make it so.

The engines with these "genes" are simulated using the same CFD and visualization process as in past studies. Senecal then rates the engines on their fuel efficiency and the amount of soot and nitrate wastes they generate.

Sounds a lot like CAD doesn't it. Let's exchange the word "genes" with the word "parameters" and see if it fits... Yes, it does fit. Quite well in fact.

Convergent Thinking's findings have helped optimize engine design for increased efficiency and lower emissions - two things of great importance to engine manufacturers and environmentalists.

By far the greatest decrease in emissions came from the removal of sulphur from on-highway fuel.
Diesel engine are already very efficient. Particulate matter makes them look bad.

"We can now indicate to designers the variables that are most important or ones that might have been overlooked had the computer not identified them," says Senecal. The computational studies, for example, have highlighted the importance of injecting fuel in short bursts instead of a single stream, increasing the surface area of the fuel and leading to a cleaner and more efficient burning.

That's not new. The reason for electronic injectors is so that the patterns and volumes of fuel can be varied quickly and efficiently.

So natural selection works better than design for complex problems.

You have not shown any sort of natural selection. To ignore the evidence you posted, and even to say it proves your statement is at best wishful thinking.

Solutions in genetic algorithms aren't designed at all. Often the researcher doesn't even know why they work.

I believe the researcher or article publisher may not know, but the developer of the algorithm can usually explain it. After all, someone wrote the algorithm. You might even say someone intelligent designed it. Well, you wouldn't, but others might.

That's why they are more efficient; they are free to vary in any way at all, using natural selection to identify the best solutions.

When you say "natural selection" the phrase you should use is "trial and error". CAD is not evolution or natural selection.

Darn, I presented evidence, again. They hate that.

No. What you have done is present random facts and called them evidence of your conclusion.

 

[Guest]

1. you wouldn't know it by the way darwinists resort to gross dark-ages style censorship to try and shut it down.

Oh BLAM, that's scathingly ironic... Might I enquire whether you know which organisation was behind the actual European Dark Ages in the 5th to 11th Century? If science is suppressing anything, it's because we've got a 500 year knowledge debt to pay off thanks to suppression of science by the Church for the past 2000 years. Ask Gallileo who's been suppressing who.
And yes I would know it, I could write a computer program that demonstrates it, it's that easy to prove. If you've gone out of your way to ignore 150 years of evidence, that's your loss, not mine.

Science suppresses nothing but what is proven to be false. We admit when we've made mistakes, because that is how knowledge is furthered. Intelligent design has not been "Expelled" from the academic community- it flunked out.

2. Interesting that to devotees to atheis darwinism a topic stated as "questions about ID" where the generally enlightened concept of "Academic freedom" is brought up - the darwinist religionist's anxiety is quickly expressed in the form of asking if "atheist darwinism is being threatened" and then trying to reasssure himself with "no I think we still have a stranglehold on some key academic institutions"


certainly a good foxhole darwinist religionist approach to the concepts - but as Patterson observes about "stories easy enough to make up about how one thing came from another" -- "NOT science"!

Bob

The reason I bring this fight to this thread is because you've started rambling about following the data where it leads again, without actually checking where the data leads in the first place. As such, I feel a strong need to fill you in on your errors.
I don't need to ask if Evolution is threatened simply because it isn't. Scientific theories are threatened by experimental data and factual information, and that kind of threat is not a bad thing- you could even call it natural selection of knowledge. We do have a stranglehold on every key academic organisation. The biological departments of every one of the world's top 100 universities all teach evolution.
My challenge to you is to break the stranglehold by disproving evolution. If you can 1) You'll be filthy rich overnight 2) You'll replace Darwin as the greatest biologist to ever have lived, and people like me will fight to defend your views against the uneducated masses who don't understand them.

Also, read my other replies. You've taken that Patterson quotation about "stories" waaay out of context, something I've completely debunked in another thread. Do read. Become educated. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&start=255#p390190

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
After running the genetic algorithm scenarios, the computer selects the best performer from a group of trials, much like natural selection in biological evolution, and combine characteristics from that engine with those of other high performers.

Not exactly like evolution. A lot like rapid trial and error.

You're catching on. That's how it works. Random mutation and natural selection.

Calling an algorithm genetic does not make it so.

Tell it to the engineers. They came up with the name. It's just a simulation of what goes on every day in living things.

The engines with these "genes" are simulated using the same CFD and visualization process as in past studies. Senecal then rates the engines on their fuel efficiency and the amount of soot and nitrate wastes they generate.

Sounds a lot like CAD doesn't it.

Never saw a CAD program work that way.

Let's exchange the word "genes" with the word "parameters" and see if it fits... Yes, it does fit. Quite well in fact.

Your CAD program can use random variation and natural selection to optimize diesel engines? I'm afraid I'm going to have to see some evidence for that.

Convergent Thinking's findings have helped optimize engine design for increased efficiency and lower emissions - two things of great importance to engine manufacturers and environmentalists.

By far the greatest decrease in emissions came from the removal of sulphur from on-highway fuel.

That's nice. But it can't make them run more efficiently. Genetic algorithms do that.

We can now indicate to designers the variables that are most important or ones that might have been overlooked had the computer not identified them," says Senecal. The computational studies, for example, have highlighted the importance of injecting fuel in short bursts instead of a single stream, increasing the surface area of the fuel and leading to a cleaner and more efficient burning.

That's not new.

Not any more. Genetic algorithms and other simulations of natural selection have been around for about a decade. But not a lot of people know about them, outside of engineering.

Barbarian observes:
So natural selection works better than design for complex problems.

You have not shown any sort of natural selection.

If you really believe that, you have no idea what natural selection is.

To ignore the evidence you posted, and even to say it proves your statement is at best wishful thinking.

But you did it, um?

Barbarian observes:
Solutions in genetic algorithms aren't designed at all. Often the researcher doesn't even know why they work.

I believe the researcher or article publisher may not know, but the developer of the algorithm can usually explain it.

Nope. Here's an example from earlier research:

It is unremarkable that a microprocessor can perform such a
task--except in this case. Even though the circuit consists of only a
small number of basic components, the researcher, Adrian Thompson,
does not know how it works. He can't ask the designer because there
wasn't one. Instead, the circuit evolved from a "primordial soup" of
silicon components guided by the principles of genetic variation and
survival of the fittest...So how did evolution do it--and without a clock? When he looked at the
final circuit, Thompson found the input signal routed through a
complex assortment of feedback loops. He believes that these probably
create modified and time-delayed versions of the signal that interfere
with the original signal in a way that enables the circuit to
discriminate between the two tones. "But really, I don't have the
faintest idea how it works," he says...It appears that evolution made use of some physical property of these
cells--possibly a capacitive effect or electromagnetic inductance--to
influence a signal passing nearby. Somehow, it seized on this subtle
effect and incorporated it into the solution.

After all, someone wrote the algorithm.

No. Have you never programmed in LISP? No one writes the algorithms that actually run in LISP; it reprograms itself.

You might even say someone intelligent designed it. Well, you wouldn't,

The guy who set it up, says he didn't. In fact, he doesn't even understand the principle by which the circuit works. Who's dumb enough to call him the designer?

Barbarian observes:
That's why they are more efficient; they are free to vary in any way at all, using natural selection to identify the best solutions.

When you say "natural selection" the phrase you should use is "trial and error".

Natural selection is a little different than trial and error. Trial and error depends on guesses as to which changes might be useful. Natural selection works on random variation. Turns out that works better than trial and error. A lot better. Which is why evolutionary processes are being adopted by engineers for complex problems.

CAD is not evolution or natural selection.

No kidding. If it was, it would work like genetic algorithms. But it doesn't.

Barbarian observes:
Darn, I presented evidence, again. They hate that.

No.

Yep. You guys hate it. The evidence for genetic algorithms, for example. It's exactly what creationists declare can't exist. But there it is, working and finding efficient solutions that are better than anyone can design. God knew what He was doing, um?

What you have done is present random facts

C'mon, face it. The evidence is overwhelming. It's not only happening, it's producing useful results. Hard to accept, maybe, but even truth that you don't like, it's still truth.

 

[BobRyan]

1. you wouldn't know it by the way darwinists resort to gross dark-ages style censorship to try and shut it down.

Oh BLAM, that's scathingly ironic... Might I enquire whether you know which organisation was behind the actual European Dark Ages in the 5th to 11th Century?

Let me guess... the same guys that were exterminating Protestants!

What's your point "it's the atheists turn to do that now"???

You might want to re-think that position.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Science suppresses nothing but what is proven to be false. We admit when we've made mistakes, because that is how knowledge is furthered. Intelligent design has not been "Expelled" from the academic community

Is this the part where you admit you censored your own mind in not ALLOWING yourself to SEE the first hand testimony given by the scientists on both sides of the issue in the movie Expelled???

Why fear the truth? Open your mind - be inquisitive -- stop being afraid to follow the data where it leads.

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

A 1981 lecture presented at New York City's American Museum of Natural History

Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

Patterson - again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'" Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge [/u], apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

Ok -- well maybe THAT is a reason for fearing the idea of following the data where it leads.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

2. Interesting that to devotees to atheis darwinism a topic stated as "questions about ID" where the generally enlightened concept of "Academic freedom" is brought up - the darwinist religionist's anxiety is quickly expressed in the form of asking if "atheist darwinism is being threatened" and then trying to reasssure himself with "no I think we still have a stranglehold on some key academic institutions"

certainly a good foxhole darwinist religionist approach to the concepts - but as Patterson observes about "stories easy enough to make up about how one thing came from another" -- "NOT science"!

The reason I bring this fight to this thread is because you've started rambling about following the data where it leads again, without actually checking where the data leads in the first place.

Is this the part where we compare the ID in EM wave forms -- that does NOT include a wave form "encoding itself, transmitting itself, error-correcting itself, decoing itself, translating itself and then using the data embedded to product a useful product" and CONTRAST that with DNA tRNA Protein synthesis??

Or is this the part where you continue to avoid following the data "where it leads"??

As such, I feel a strong need to fill you in on your errors.
I don't need to ask if Evolution is threatened simply because it isn't. Scientific theories are threatened by experimental data and factual information, and that kind of threat is not a bad thing- you could even call it natural selection of knowledge.

Don't you mean "anti-knowledge"?? (Patterson's words not mine)

My challenge to you is to break the stranglehold by disproving evolution.

How do you "disprove religion"???

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

A 1981 lecture presented at New York City's American Museum of Natural History

Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

Patterson - again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'" Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge [/u], apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

[/quote]

Bob

 

[Barbarian]

Is this the part where you admit you censored your own mind in not ALLOWING yourself to SEE the first hand testimony given by the scientists on both sides of the issue in the movie Expelled???

Actually, Stein made very sure that both sides were not represented. He censored any mention of scientists who accept both God and evolution. I guess that's what he meant by "no intelligence allowed."

Why fear the truth?

He was afraid that if he allowed all points of view, no one would believe his story. His film depends on censoring any mention of people who accept both God and science.

(Bob tries the Patterson quote-mining scam once again)

:smt015

 

[BobRyan]

Also, read my other replies. You've taken that Patterson quotation about "stories" waaay out of context, something I've completely debunked in another thread. Do read. Become educated. viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&start=255#p390190

Excellent - thank you for the link.

Now -- read and learn -- it will help to relieve you of the problem of what Patterson called "anti-knowledge" in atheist darwinism.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&p=390297#p390293

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&p=390297#p390297

Bob

 

[Guest]

Science suppresses nothing but what is proven to be false. We admit when we've made mistakes, because that is how knowledge is furthered. Intelligent design has not been "Expelled" from the academic community

Is this the part where you admit you censored your own mind in not ALLOWING yourself to SEE the first hand testimony given by the scientists on both sides of the issue in the movie Expelled???

Why fear the truth? Open your mind - be inquisitive -- stop being afraid to follow the data where it leads.

This is the part where I didn't want to watch a film that would actively make me stupider.
There is testimony given on both sides in that film, only one side is deliberately asked leading questions, misquoted, cropped and generally absolved of all journalistic integrity in order to further Stein's point. I'd back myself up on this with facts, but facts don't seem to be of much interest to you. If you change your mind, do ask and I'll provide.

Dude, if the data were to lead me away from evolution, as a <stereotypes>materialistic, atheistic, disloyal, backstabbing and evil</stereotypes> proponent of evolution, I would shoot my dear theory of evolution full of holes in a trice. Don't know about you but I'd very much like to make a discovery as shattering as disproving ToE, almost as much as I'd like to spend the rest of my life cruising the Pacific on my own private super yacht.

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

Let's keep Mr Patterson to the other thread shall we? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself, seeing as my arguments generally take me a bit more mental efforts than going out of my way to ignore things and copy-pasting quotations from someone else.

Again your statements of "Anti-knowledge" are ripe with irony, seeing as how Intelligent design answers all questions with a deadeningly final "God did it and I don't care how". Now if thought processes like that are anything but destructive to the inquisitive nature of science then I'm obviously missing something rather important.

He was afraid that if he allowed all points of view, no one would believe his story. His film depends on censoring any mention of people who accept both God and science.

I think I'll finish this post with a shout-out to The Barbarian. It's really good to see the intelligent side of religion from people like you. I do believe that science and religion can coexist peacefully and it restores my faith in that belief to see you defending the causes of logic and reason as you do.
Rock on!

 

[Barbarian]

I don't see that happening anywhere. Evolutionists have a strong position in academia and politics. Even the majority of the population accepts evolution on it's face, largely without question (and for the reasons I already stated). Schools should not be afraid of children pointing out flaws in the accepted theories of anything.

Chemistry and physics are also strong in academia. For the same reasons. Science is always pointing out flaws in theories; it's the way science progresses. The problem, as you've seen here, is that ID/creationists rarely have any idea of what the flaws actually are.

If a proponent can only say "we already covered that" in the face of a question, then how is that science or education?

You actually think that's how science education works in America? Amazing. If it actually was like that, it would be difficult to explain how we were ahead of most of the world in science achievement by our students.

If the science leads to a designer, it leads to a designer. It would be a degradation of science as a whole to ignore any evidence.

There are many sorts of science that go directly to testing for a designer. I happen to be trained in one of them, fire investigation. The problem for IDers, is that the processes used to identify designers show that nature is not designed.

If you seriously think society has not gotten better over the past few decades, I would be pleased to show you some of the evidence. Would you like to see it?

 

[DavidLee]

Tell it to the engineers. They came up with the name. It's just a simulation of what goes on every day in living things.

No. It goes on for millions of cycles in a computer.

Sounds a lot like CAD doesn't it.

Never saw a CAD program work that way.

Really?

Let's exchange the word "genes" with the word "parameters" and see if it fits... Yes, it does fit. Quite well in fact.

Your CAD program can use random variation and natural selection to optimize diesel engines? I'm afraid I'm going to have to see some evidence for that.

I hope you're not thinking I'm referring to AutoCAD. I'm talking about Computer Aided Design.
Computer programs can use variable parameters and multiple iterations of a mathematical formulae, the result of which can be evaluated via further variable parameters. It's what computers do: Fast math.

It is unremarkable that a microprocessor can perform such a
task--except in this case. Even though the circuit consists of only a
small number of basic components, the researcher, Adrian Thompson,
does not know how it works. He can't ask the designer because there
wasn't one. Instead, the circuit evolved from a "primordial soup" of
silicon components guided by the principles of genetic variation and
survival of the fittest...So how did evolution do it--and without a clock? When he looked at the
final circuit, Thompson found the input signal routed through a
complex assortment of feedback loops. He believes that these probably
create modified and time-delayed versions of the signal that interfere
with the original signal in a way that enables the circuit to
discriminate between the two tones. "But really, I don't have the
faintest idea how it works," he says...It appears that evolution made use of some physical property of these
cells--possibly a capacitive effect or electromagnetic inductance--to
influence a signal passing nearby. Somehow, it seized on this subtle
effect and incorporated it into the solution.

Wow. So a bowl of parts on this radio repair guy's bench assembled itself into a circuit and called out to him? He actually had nothing to do with it? Wow. How much technology has this guy thrown away unknowingly?

Even though I'm not an electrical engineer, let me hazard a guess as to how the circuit works: Path of least resistance. I could be wrong. Who knows what inanimate evolution is capable of?

Years ago PCs did not have on-board clocks. Timing loops via instruction ran at varying speeds according to processor speed. Not having a clock does not mean I can't tell that time is passing.

If we can all see it, it makes no difference what you call it. We'll try and correct your usage of the language, but you have to be willing. To redefine a common word so it fits a particular explanation or supports an argument when the word would not otherwise, is sophistry, no matter who does it.

After all, someone wrote the algorithm.

No. Have you never programmed in LISP? No one writes the algorithms that actually run in LISP; it reprograms itself.

Only a very little many years ago. LISP is a programming language. Someone designed it. Someone intelligent. Have you ever written anything in LISP? Do you understand how it works? It's not magic. I think it's free now. You should try it and see if it creates a new... anything, for you.
Then come back and tell us how amazing evolution is. You can prove it with your new whateveritis.

I no longer expect you to answer any of my questions. I expect you to separate some of my statements and say I proved your point.

 

[Barbarian]

Barbarian on the term "genetic algorithm":
Tell it to the engineers. They came up with the name. It's just a simulation of what goes on every day in living things.

No. It goes on for millions of cycles in a computer.

In biology, the same thing, only it's called "generations." Works the same way.

Sounds a lot like CAD doesn't it.

Never saw a CAD program work that way.


Really?

Let's exchange the word "genes" with the word "parameters" and see if it fits... Yes, it does fit. Quite well in fact.

Barbarian asks:
Your CAD program can use random variation and natural selection to optimize diesel engines? I'm afraid I'm going to have to see some evidence for that.

I hope you're not thinking I'm referring to AutoCAD. I'm talking about Computer Aided Design.

CAD is still used for the simpler stuff. But genetic algorithms are now being used for the stuff that CAD can't do. Evolutionary processes work better than design.

It is unremarkable that a microprocessor can perform such a
task--except in this case. Even though the circuit consists of only a
small number of basic components, the researcher, Adrian Thompson,
does not know how it works. He can't ask the designer because there
wasn't one. Instead, the circuit evolved from a "primordial soup" of
silicon components guided by the principles of genetic variation and
survival of the fittest...So how did evolution do it--and without a clock? When he looked at the
final circuit, Thompson found the input signal routed through a
complex assortment of feedback loops. He believes that these probably
create modified and time-delayed versions of the signal that interfere
with the original signal in a way that enables the circuit to
discriminate between the two tones. "But really, I don't have the
faintest idea how it works," he says...It appears that evolution made use of some physical property of these
cells--possibly a capacitive effect or electromagnetic inductance--to
influence a signal passing nearby. Somehow, it seized on this subtle
effect and incorporated it into the solution.

Wow. So a bowl of parts on this radio repair guy's bench assembled itself into a circuit and called out to him?

Yep. He isn't a "radio repair guy" , of course. He basically invented genetic algorithms.

He actually had nothing to do with it?

He still doesn't know how it works. In fact, he doesn't even know what physical principles are involved for some critical functions. But you still want to call him the "designer", right?

Even though I'm not an electrical engineer, let me hazard a guess as to how the circuit works: Path of least resistance.

All circuits work like that. But there's something going on that engineers haven't quite figured out. Some unexplained effect was incorporated into the solution that evolved. Evolution does things like that; it's called "exaption", the recruitment of existing things to novel purposes.

I could be wrong. Who knows what inanimate evolution is capable of?

Quite a bit, apparently. Much of it useful.

Years ago PCs did not have on-board clocks. Timing loops via instruction ran at varying speeds according to processor speed. Not having a clock does not mean I can't tell that time is passing.

That is how many computer clocks work now. It's the digital version of a pendulum. But this circuit somehow evolved something a bit more sophisticated.

If we can all see it, it makes no difference what you call it. We'll try and correct your usage of the language, but you have to be willing. To redefine a common word so it fits a particular explanation or supports an argument when the word would not otherwise, is sophistry, no matter who does it.

Again, you'll have to take that up with engineers, not biologists. But I think they have a better handle on the language than you do.

After all, someone wrote the algorithm.

Barbarian chuckles:
No. Have you never programmed in LISP? No one writes the algorithms that actually run in LISP; it reprograms itself.

Only a very little many years ago. LISP is a programming language. Someone designed it.

You're confusing the language with the program. Yeah, it does some amazing new things. Here's where you can learn about it...

http://www.karlsims.com/papers/siggraph91.html

Then come back and tell us how amazing evolution is.

Not only does it explain the diversity of life on Earth, it also produces better diesel engines than can be designed. God knew what He was doing, that's for sure.

I no longer expect you to answer any of my questions.

Well, you didn't expect that evolution had any applications in engineering, either. So it's not surprising.

I expect you to separate some of my statements and say I proved your point.

I think you were very helpful to me,in clearing up some misconceptions about evolution, if that counts.

 

[BobRyan]

Science suppresses nothing but what is proven to be false. We admit when we've made mistakes, because that is how knowledge is furthered. Intelligent design has not been "Expelled" from the academic community

Is this the part where you admit you censored your own mind in not ALLOWING yourself to SEE the first hand testimony given by the scientists on both sides of the issue in the movie Expelled???

Why fear the truth? Open your mind - be inquisitive -- stop being afraid to follow the data where it leads.

This is the part where I didn't want to watch a film

Well then -- you have only yourself to blame.

As they say "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think".

XolotlOfMictlan"

There is testimony given on both sides in that film, only one side is deliberately asked leading questions, misquoted, cropped and generally absolved of all journalistic integrity in order to further Stein's point. I'd back myself up on this with facts, but facts don't seem to be of much interest to you

Good imagination - poor facts.

Imagining that you HAD facts to present on a "movie you didn't allow yourself to see" that contained video INTERVIEWS that you did not allow yourself to see -- is problably your best defense when fleeing objective practices as you do.

But the transparency in such "arguments from the void of what you did not see" and therefore what you obviously "do not know" - makes it easy enough for the objective unbiased reader to debunk your wild claims.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

As such, I feel a strong need to fill you in on your errors.
I don't need to ask if Evolution is threatened simply because it isn't. Scientific theories are threatened by experimental data and factual information, and that kind of threat is not a bad thing- you could even call it natural selection of knowledge.

Don't you mean "anti-knowledge"?? (Patterson's words not mine)

My challenge to you is to break the stranglehold by disproving evolution.

How do you "disprove religion"???

Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum and author of the Museum’s general text on evolution)

A 1981 lecture presented at New York City's American Museum of Natural History

Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

Patterson - again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'" Patterson countered, "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here...

"...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge [/u], apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

[/quote]

Let's keep Mr Patterson to the other thread shall we? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself, seeing as my arguments generally take me a bit more mental efforts than going out of my way to ignore things and copy-pasting quotations from someone else.

1. NONE of your arguments address the 1981 speech given by Patterson above.

2. You brought up the suggestion that possibly the junk-science religion we know today as atheist darwinism -- just might BE SCIENCe and asked how we would disprove it. I simply ask how RELIGION of that kind is "disproven" then I SHOW the argument in terms of "religious orthodoxy" that Patterson SHOWs us in the dark underbelly of athiest darwinism.

That you should be interested in pursuing your argument while ignoring the inconvenient facts being highlighted by Patterson "speaks for itself" as you choose to "pursue a good story without letting inconvenient facts get in the way".

As much as that method "serves the darwinist agenda" -- surely ou can see that it would not be wise for me to be duped into following along with such an idea.

For example -- notice that IN PATTERSON's argument for darwinian "antiknowledge" you seek to make it "my term" not his.

Again your statements of "Anti-knowledge" are ripe with irony, seeing as how Intelligent design answers all questions with a deadeningly final "God did it and I don't care how".

Once again -- you "made that up out of thin air".

ID does not speculate WHO the designer is -- it merely ADMITS to SEEING design -- like the electronic circuit capable of a SCAN that does not mindless "highlight every bit of background noise in the AM band" .

Get it... yet?

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Wow. So a bowl of parts on this radio repair guy's bench assembled itself into a circuit and called out to him? He actually had nothing to do with it? Wow. How much technology has this guy thrown away unknowingly?

Even though I'm not an electrical engineer, let me hazard a guess as to how the circuit works: Path of least resistance. I could be wrong. Who knows what inanimate evolution is capable of?

Years ago PCs did not have on-board clocks. Timing loops via instruction ran at varying speeds according to processor speed. Not having a clock does not mean I can't tell that time is passing.

If we can all see it, it makes no difference what you call it. We'll try and correct your usage of the language, but you have to be willing. To redefine a common word so it fits a particular explanation or supports an argument when the word would not otherwise, is sophistry, no matter who does it.
.

That is good -- but take a look at this

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=31996&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=240#p389737

(Some more inconvenient facts Barbarian is "desperate to avoid")

The key feature is a field prgrammable gate array (FPGA) device that allow the basic gating logic to change based on a configuration program which can be changed during execution.

Suffice it to say -- the is a highly complex highly designed system "giving birth to a diode" --

Bob

 

[Barbarian]

Bob's argument depends on conflating the organism with the envirionment. The envirionment in which the circuit evolved is not the circuit.

It would be like suggesting that deserts designed camels. How Bob figures the equipment knows anything, much less knows how to "design" is beyond me.

Even the guy who set up the experiment admits that there is no designer.

 

[Guest]

Well then -- you have only yourself to blame.

As they say "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think".

XolotlOfMictlan"

There is testimony given on both sides in that film, only one side is deliberately asked leading questions, misquoted, cropped and generally absolved of all journalistic integrity in order to further Stein's point. I'd back myself up on this with facts, but facts don't seem to be of much interest to you

Good imagination - poor facts.

Imagining that you HAD facts to present on a "movie you didn't allow yourself to see" that contained video INTERVIEWS that you did not allow yourself to see -- is problably your best defense when fleeing objective practices as you do.

But the transparency in such "arguments from the void of what you did not see" and therefore what you obviously "do not know" - makes it easy enough for the objective unbiased reader to debunk your wild claims.

I have seen more than enough about Stein's movie. I've seen youtube videos displaying segments of it, I've seen interviews with Stein and quite frankly, he's a retard. If I didn't already know you weren't going to read it, I would link you the website http://www.expelledexposed.com/
I have a lot more information on the film kicking about here, but that'll do for now. It won't further my case at all with you due to your uncanny ability to ignore reality.

That film is like a dead carcass and it's already been thoroughly picked over by more than enough scientists and I really don't think I'm going to find anything more in it than they did.

 

[Guest]

How do you "disprove religion"???

You don't, you disprove a scientific theory. If ID is a scientific theory, how would you disprove that?

Let's keep Mr Patterson to the other thread shall we? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself, seeing as my arguments generally take me a bit more mental efforts than going out of my way to ignore things and copy-pasting quotations from someone else.

1. NONE of your arguments address the 1981 speech given by Patterson above.

Uhm, yes I did, I mentioned that that speech was relative only to systematics and that it's recording and abuse by creationists were both illegal and against what Patterson wanted to convey. It's hard to trust those who would break the law to obtain a quotation to report the quotation accurately.

2. You brought up the suggestion that possibly the junk-science religion we know today as atheist darwinism -- just might BE SCIENCe and asked how we would disprove it. I simply ask how RELIGION of that kind is "disproven" then I SHOW the argument in terms of "religious orthodoxy" that Patterson SHOWs us in the dark underbelly of athiest darwinism.

I brought up the suggestion? I brought up the fact accepted in every major university in the world! How would you disprove it? By providing just one example of anything that doesn't fit with the Theory of Evolution. One example, that's all it takes. Unlike creationism, genuine science is very accepting of errors and is incredibly quick to admit mistakes and correct them.

That you should be interested in pursuing your argument while ignoring the inconvenient facts being highlighted by Patterson "speaks for itself" as you choose to "pursue a good story without letting inconvenient facts get in the way".

As much as that method "serves the darwinist agenda" -- surely ou can see that it would not be wise for me to be duped into following along with such an idea.

Is this the same Patterson who says the creationist's interpretations of his arguments were wrong? The same Patterson who would jump to the defense of Gradualism? Oh, ok, just checking to make sure we're on the same wavelength here. It's rather hypocritical of you to accuse me of ignoring inconvenient facts.
Interestingly enough, even if it were given that your false interpretation of his words was entirely true, Patterson has not even highlighted any fact, which taking your apparent allergy to them into account, really isn't surprising. Everything he says is just his opinion, so much as to why there is even any debate as to what he meant in the first place. Whilst, given, he has an educated opinion on the subject, opinions don't sink scientific ships, facts do.

For example -- notice that IN PATTERSON's argument for darwinian "antiknowledge" you seek to make it "my term" not his.

I am merely pointing out the almost humorous irony in you using a phrase like that as a creationist. You lash yourself to a loser of an argument like that and you go down with it.

ID does not speculate WHO the designer is -- it merely ADMITS to SEEING design -- like the electronic circuit capable of a SCAN that does not mindless "highlight every bit of background noise in the AM band" .

Get it... yet?

Ahahahaha, oh that's brilliant. Intelligent design does not speculate who the designer is?! Well if there's a designer, how many options do you have for who it is? God by definition would have to be that designer. How convenient.
What is this circuit business? Unlike a creationist, I like to have a good understanding of the topic being debated before I launch into an attack. I think I've queried you on this before and I know you didn't give me a straight answer, so no I don't get it yet.
I think you owe me a slight explanation of your arguments given my repeated attempts to clarify mine.

In a pre-emptive response to what I think you're going to say, no, just because we don't understand how something works does not mean there is not scientific explanation for. Because (assuming) we don't know how your circuit works, does not mean there is no answer. That is why science always trumps ID, because you say "Aha! Found something that proves design, no need to do any further tests, we're right *slaps hands over ears* lalala I can't hear you!"

Science says "Wow, that's odd, I wonder what makes that work, let's do our best to find out. If we fail, too bad, maybe someone else will succeed, but for the moment, we can't say how it works." This approach is constructive. It leaves the door open for future investigation rather than simply slapping a "DESIGNER" or "GOD" sticker on the front of the case file and declaring it solved.

 

[BobRyan]

How do you "disprove religion"???

You don't, you disprove a scientific theory.

Great -- I am simply "noting" The RELIGIONIST arguments made for Darwinism according to Patterson.

I also note the junk-science history used to prop up the religion system of darwinism "historically".

If ID is a scientific theory, how would you disprove that?

ID is the principle of discriminating in FAVOR of ID over background noise that "rocks can generate given enough mass time and energy" - so if you want to PROVE that AM/FM radio does not "exist" --- have at it.

A more "realistic effort" would be to frame your question in a way that makes sense. for Example you might say it this way --- "IF ID science claims the data leads to design in a given area -- HOW can I prove it is NOT designed" (A very different question than trying to prove "NOTHING appears to be intelligently designed" as you appear to wildly propose).

THE TESt would be to SHOW (for the same phenomina being claimed as an example of ID) that rocks CAN DO IT by themselves given enough time mass and access to energy .

Whether that is AM/FM CDMA or even DNA-RNA protein synthesis. Pick one of the claims then show a rock doing it.

Step 1. Pick your example of ID being CLAIMED - that you would like to SHOW a ROCK doing!

Step 2. And then "do the math" -- do the experiment SHOW your claim has substance.

But Imagining "well I could do it... if I really wanted to" means nothing.

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

XolotlOfMictlan wrote:

Let's keep Mr Patterson to the other thread shall we? I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself, seeing as my arguments generally take me a bit more mental efforts than going out of my way to ignore things and copy-pasting quotations from someone else.

[quote:3bd7b]
BobRyan wrote:
1. NONE of your arguments address the 1981 speech given by Patterson above.

Uhm, yes I did, I mentioned that that speech was relative only to systematics and that it's recording and abuse by creationists were both illegal and against what Patterson wanted to convey. It's hard to trust those who would break the law to obtain a quotation to report the quotation accurately.[/quote:3bd7b]

As I pointed out with Patterson's letters -- your constant resort to "making stuff up" does not help your argument as much as you might think.

1. Recording presentations given to the public is never "illegal" in America. Making stuff up in that regard simply proves that you do not have a case otherwise.

2. GIVEN that we DO have a recording -- the wild claims that these are NOT quotes of PAtterson in that speech -- are also nonsense meant to confuse the shallow reader.

3. THE POINT in HIS speech has to do with the RELIGIOUS fevor of darwinists who content themselves with "affirming the fact while claiming ignorance as to the means" while clinging to darwinism as more a matter of "faith" than science.

In otherwords -- it is the part of Patterson's speach that lead Niles Eldredge to respond "my god why is he doing this to us".


I.e. -- I am trying to get you to deal with the obvious.

Here it is in more detail.

Dr. Frair quotes Colin Patterson: NY American Museum of Natural History – talk - 1981.

Colin PATTERSON:

"...I'm speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it's true to say that I know nothing whatever about either...One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view,well, let's call it non-evolutionary , was last year I had a sudden realization.

"For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. "That was quite a shock that one could be misled for so long...

"...I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people: 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing you think is true?'

"I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence.

I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said: 'Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.' "..

It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and perhaps that's all we know about it...

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

(Patterson took the words of Neal C. Gillespie alleging that the "pre-Darwinian creationist paradigm" was "'...not a research-governing theory, since its power to explain is only verbal, but an anti-theory, a void that has the function of knowledge, but conveys none'" and suggested ")...It must seem to you that I'm either misguided or malicious to suggest that such words can be applied to evolutionary theory.

"...Most of us think that we are working in evolutionary research. But is its explanatory power any more than verbal?...I feel that the effect of hypotheses of common ancestry in systematics has not been merely void, not just a lack of knowledge-I think it has been positively anti-knowledge. "...

What about evolution? It certainly has the function of knowledge but has it conveyed any?...It is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven't yet heard it.

"Well, here we all are with all our shelves full of books on evolution. We've all read tons of them, and most of us have written one or two. And how could it be that we've done all that, we've read these books and learned nothing from them? And how could I have worked on evolution for twenty years, and learned nothing from it?

"...There is some sort of a revolution going on in evolutionary theory at the moment...It concerns the possible mechanisms that are responsible for the transformation...natural selection is under fire, and we hear a rash of new and alternative theories..."

(Again quoting Gillespie accusing that those "'...holding creationist ideas could plead ignorance of the means and affirm only the fact,'"

Patterson countered with this- ) "That seems to summarize the feeling I get in talking to evolutionists today. They plead ignorance of the means of transformation, but affirm only the fact: (saying) 'Yes it has...we know it has taken place.'"

"...Now I think that many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, IF you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me, and I think it's true of a good many of you in here... "...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge, apparent knowledge which is actually harmful to systematics..."

Question for the reader: -- is Pattersons "antiknowledge" and "faith" statement about "evolution" in general or just limited to “ systematics being damaged by evolutionism's dogma�

before you answer -

Notice that Patterson admits that evolutionism has mislead even him.

about eighteen months ago...I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way."

[/quote]








Dr. Frair provides his own testimony as a front-row attendee of this talk by Patterson

Dr Frair:
I was sitting in the front row next to an AMNH curator of mammals, Karl Koopman, who, obviously very agitated kept slamming his pencil down in front of him.

Niles Eldredge in the Department of Invertebrates at AMNH was standing by the left wall (as one looks toward the speaker). Beside Eldredge stood a high school biology teacher, Roy Slingo, from the prestigious Scarsdale NY district.

Slingo later informed me that at one stage of the talk Niles Eldredge (well known for his anti-creationist perspective) grabbed his forehead and slid down the wall proclaiming, "My God, how can he be doing this to us."

Oh if only we had actual Christian devotees to atheist darwinism that were as honest and objective as the committed atheist darwinist Colin Patterson!


Bob