Intelligent Design in Universities

Funny, I don't recall anything like this happening to Catholic evolutionary biologist Ken Miller, for instance. Are you asserting evolutionary biologists are required to be atheists ?ID is attacked because it's bad science. Period.

Your example is an evolutionary biolgist not an origin of life chemist. Do you have a better one?

To put some of what I was saying in another way, I found this excerpt,

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Both ID and universal common descent are causal history explanations. Furthermore, they are both use abduction - an inference to the best explanation. They both look at biological features that we see today and attempt to give the best explanation for what we see. Meyer argues that because of this, they are methodologically equivalent theories. What this means is that while specific descent or design theories may be better or worse than the other, in general, design and descent are scientific equals. That is, if you hold one to be science, then the other one must also be science (whether either of them are good or bad science cannot be known until the specific theories are looked at, however).

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prosthesis

I'm sorry but that quote is abject nonsense and simply reflects the ignorance of the writer. It starts with a fallacy and moves on into the realm of fantasy.There is much evidence of common descent and it comes from just about every single field of study. There is no evidence of design and the proponents of ID cannot even tell us what would be evidence of design.The quote you posted is a clear example of why ID is, and should be, received only with laughter, perhaps polite laughter, but laughter none the less.When ID can finally determine what signifies something designed, and can support such an assertion, then perhaps it can be considered as an alternative, but until such time it is simply a WAG.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No, but I am not sure I follow your objection. I did not think we were discussing abiogenesis theories, rather evolution and descent via modification of genomes. In any case my response was intended as rebuttal to the poster's implication that ID is opposed for primarily religious reasons, as opposed to scientific reasons.

The original comment was about an "origin" scientist. I was reading that "orgin of life" but who knows what it means.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 05-08-2005 08:14 PM

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Yup. All JDB has done is assert this, and his only citations have been IDists. Nothing from IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, for instance.

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I quoted not one IDist I am aware of. I can't help it if you think Boltzmann and Feynman were creationists. You appear to live in your own little dream world, I'm afraid.edited by AdminJar to fix quotesThis message has been edited by AdminJar, 05-08-2005 07:28 PM

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Design Dynamics

Sure there are. And plenty of them. Give me some specifics on where you think current evolutionary theory cannot or does not apply ? Perhaps some things are 'too complex' to be demonstrated mathematically. Of course. Otherwise I wouldn't spend some of my precious spare time on this board.
It doesn't mean I feel the need to 'buy in' to some sort of omnipotent designer.I challenge you, in the name of ID science, to take up the gauntlet cast here to creation scientists.This message has been edited by EZscience, 05-08-2005 09:31 PM

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Sure there are. And plenty of them. Give me some specifics on where you think current evolutionary theory cannot or does not apply?

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Just explain mathematically and scientifically how a protista became an elephant. That would work, wouldn't it?

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Perhaps some things are 'too complex' to be demonstrated mathematically.

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Interesting. My side has no problems in this area, why do you reckon yours does?

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Of course. Otherwise I wouldn'd spend some of my precious spare time on this board.

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It doesn't mean I feel the need to 'buy in' to some sort of omninopotent designer.

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Granted it doesn't. But please don't question why design is useful. We all are curious as to our origins. I know yours. Sorry. I'm not a creation scientist and wouldn't know the first thing about it.Well, this thread seems to coming to equilibrium. I shall post a synopsis of my views in here and then begin a new thread entitled: Evidence for Design and Design Detection.This seems to be what everybody is questioning. DON'T TOUCH THAT MOUSE!

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Design Dynamics

This can be accomplished verbally in a satisfactory manner, but not mathematically.
Sometimes mathematical explanations are extant, sometimes they are not.
But verbal explanations can be just as satisfying. Evolutionary theory has no problem accepting verbal, non-mathematical explanations.
You are the one that demanded a mathematical explanation.
I simply took a cheap shot at you using your own ID terminology.

practically one has to think it can be done mathematically FIRST
(i thought quickly out to
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/...ib/nf/b/jmshbrwn.htm#10263Center for the Study of Complex Systems | U-M LSA)
and then the rigor of geometry might fall where Kant would design the designer even if physics abstains. There would have to be things in themselves in this appearence. Gould rather denies this exists.Anyway the thread is closing so I dont mean this to whip up too many comments

1) ID has been directly tied into science. One example of this is the work of English physician William Harvey, considered by many to have laid the foundation for modern medicine. Harvey was the first to demonstrate the function of the heart and the circulation of the blood based on his conception it was designed and 'here is how I would have designed it, had I been the designer'. Scientists Robert Boyle and Newton used teleological technique similarly.2) There is no such thing as an ID biology, ID chemistry or an ID physics. We study science just as anyone else does using the methodological naturalism inherent in the scientific method. It does not make anymore sense to ask to see scientific papers on ID than it does to demand to see scientific papers on dualism. There is no such thing as ID research because we research biology just as other biologists do.3) I pointed out that most of the science we use today in the lab was brought to that lab by teleologists, many of them Christian creationists. These creationists consist of such notable scientists as Lord Kelvin, Faraday, Harvey, Boyle, Pasteur and Newton.4) I have noted that ID has not a thing to do with "gods" and have shown this concept to go back at least 300 years before Christ to the great debates of ancient Greece. Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and Diogenes, were just a few philosophers to see design in certain systems.Socrates (who held no beliefs of a personal god as none of them did) once commented:"Is not that providence, Aristodemus, in a most eminent manner conspicuous, which because the eye of man is delicate in its contexture, hath therefore prepared eyelids like doors, whereby to screen it, which extend themselves whenever it is needful, and again close when sleep approaches?And cans't thou still doubt Aristodemus, whether a disposition of parts like this should be the work of chance, or of wisdom and contrivance?"5) I introduced the work of Ludvig Boltzmann who formulated the formula S = K log W, where S is the entropy of a given system, K is Boltzmann’s constant, 1.38 x 10^-23, and W is the total number of possible microstates in a given system.Although S here can certainly be used to quantify the states of energy, it can also be used to quantify the states of matter. In fact, this was what Boltzmann designed the formula to do. He was an atomist (rare in his day) and developed the formula to show the entropy of the arrangement of atoms (matter) in a gas. It would be Max Planck who would later tie this formula into energy.6) A genome works at its "best" when it is new and right after initial design just as in the design of an automobile--this is when geneA translates ProteinA perfectly--consisting of the right amino acids in the right sequence where it will fold with the right conformational entropy to be a cause of the effects that govern the organism at its maximum efficiency.Deleterious mutations encode for different proteins than the original gene and the genome deteriorates when this happens because the new translated protein may not be able to do what the old translated protein did. Since harmful mutations destroy useful information in the genome, mutational meltdown is sometimes the result of this. Thus, we can view this phenomenon as maximum information degrading to the point where information = 0.7) I pointed out that Darwin's notion of macroevolution is in direct violation of the second law of thermodynamics in that: Mathematically, S represents entropy and 2LOT states as a tendency that spontaneous events yield S2 > S1. But Darwin was a science flunk-out and he was so silly as to assert that with spontaneous speciations the tendency is bass ackwards: S2 < S1.8) I then detailed WHY Darwin was wrong and introduced a testable hypothesis unique to ID:As loose information is diffused, information entropy will tend to increase unless energy, guided by intelligence, is added into the system to stabilize it.In other words, since genes are loose information (information that is not "fixed" in a manner it cannot change as it diffuses, like a library book or video tape) we do not expect to see macroevolution via increasing information content due to random mutations in a population of organisms over time as Darwin asserted.In fact, we would expect to see just the opposite: a devolving genome by the increase of harmful mutations and that species headed toward extinction as we have observed 98% of the species doing in the fossil record.9) I then introduced a paper from Nature by evolutionary biologists Eyre-Walker and Keightley showing a study where the human genome has done exactly this over a period of about 6 million years. The genome has deteriorated at the rate of 1.6 accumulating deleterious mutation each generation.10) I then introduced the mathematics to show this deterioration of the human genome in order to quantify it: I began by throwing out a formula from The University of New South Wales, physics department: This states that W will equal a factorial relationship of the differences of what we are considering (accumulating deleteriously mutated genes as opposed to the rest of the genome) or W = (41469.4 + 1.6)! / (41469.4)!(1.6)! ~ (So let's just calculate our weight and then we can go to Boltzmann's math to calculate entropy.W = (41469.4 + 1.6)! / (41469.4)!(1.6)! --- 3.66 x 10^173494 / 2.14 x 10^173487W = 1.71 x 10^7Now we can do Boltzmann's math:S = K log W, S = (1.38 x 10^-23) log(1.71 x 10^7)S = 9.98 x 10^-23There is more than one way to skin a cat, of course. I can stick joules and degrees Kelvin in Boltzmann's formula for the math purest, but most no longer do this.This math shows the macroevolution inherent in Darwinism standing refuted both scientifically (the study) and mathematically because our final calculation shows increasing entropy in the human genome and therefore disorganization in that genome for the last 6 million years. There is no evidence it has been any different in the annals of human history.11) Finally, I discussed CSI (complex specified information and showed how to calculate it and introduced another tenet unique to ID:Specified information is inversely proportional to the probability of an event occurring. Once the specificity reaches 1 chance in 10^150, or 500 bits if expressed in information content, it is simply impossible that nature could have caused the event. We can discuss this in the next thread.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 05-08-2005 10:34 PM

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Design Dynamics

Is that a synopsis of key points that have been discredited, or is it a synopsis of key points to which you've ignored ripostes?I recall dealing with points 1-4 in a post which never received a reply.Mick

Well, my "own little world" includes the mainstream physics and information theory community.Your entire argument rests on your unsupported assertion that Boltzmann and Shannon entropy are interchangeable, and the 2LOT applies to both.No matter how much you want this to be the case, it is not the case.The 2LOT applies to thermodynamic quantities. It does not apply to information. It does not apply to Shannon entropy.There is no analogue to the 2LOT for infomation entropy, just as there is no analogue to heat, Gibbs feee energy, or enthalpy for information.The only evidence to the contrary from you I will accept at this point is a citation from a top-tier journal of information theory from an application area unrelated to ID, from the last five years.IEEE Transactions would be ideal. No ID literature. No misconstruations of 19th century scientists.If you insist this is mainstream science, prove it.

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Well, my "own little world" includes the mainstream physics and information theory community.

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No it doesn't. With all due respect you do not even understand infodynamics and the leaps and bounds it has made. By your own words you would just throw out all of the infodynamics that doesn't involve heat. This includes psychology, economics, information theory, traffic control, population entropy in biology and the list is just endless. You don't understand that all of these sciences use basically the same formulas that you do to interpret researched data where heat is involved.Not only do you NOT understand this, you are so blinded by something or the other that you refuse to research any area or to even consider a reference offered to you. You have dismissed every reference I have sent you to with nothing more than an "is not." What kind of logic or debate is that?

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Your entire argument rests on your unsupported assertion that Boltzmann and Shannon entropy are interchangeable, and the 2LOT applies to both.

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This is patently false and you know this as we've discussed it before. I used Boltzmann's entropy, period. Shannon Entropy is different and uses this formula: Now, when did you ever see me sum over anything? You did not, you're just inventing this. Of course, you are wrong here again in your assertion that 2LOT doesn't apply to Shannon entropy, but since I never used it to begin with, no need to beat that dead horse.

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There is no analogue to the 2LOT for infomation entropy, just as there is no analogue to heat, Gibbs feee energy, or enthalpy for information.

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Absolute claptrap. I would send you to some references, but you would insist they were all creationists like you view Boltzmann and Feynman because your science conflicts with the greats of science so they must be creationists.

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The only evidence to the contrary from you I will accept at this point is a citation from a top-tier journal of information theory from an application area unrelated to ID, from the last five years.

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I'm not going to research this for you, you would just come back with your standard line, "Yeah, but they're all just a bunch of creationists." Why bother? One simply cannot educate you on the subject because you think you know it all. Also this knowledge would upset your belief system if you were to seriously consider it. It's a shame this is how you do your science. But it manifests everything wrong with modern academia.

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Design Dynamics