Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

@layman,

layman wrote:

What possibly COULD falsify the proposition that there is invisible matter out there?

Evidence for a hypothesis that better fits observation and eliminates the possiblity of dark energy/matter.

Quote:

I think you are missing my point. Al had his theory worked out, BUT, he thought, it would lead to a universe that would collapse. This has nothing to do with Hubble at all. So how does he "correct" this deficiency in his predictions? He pulls, out of thin air, a "cosmological constant" with NO explanation of why it was there (how it followed from his theory), how it worked as a mechanism to stop collapse, or anything else. Kinda the way theology works, eh?

You're blinkering yourself there, I think. Everybody thought the universe was static. He got an equation that didn't match. He invented a constant to make it fit what had been observed so far. Planck did the same thing. There is nothing religious about it. Theologians don't test their beliefs against observation and reject them when they don't fit. Scientists do.

Quote:

Let me ask you, FBM, do you have any belief whatsoever (pro or con) in the matter of whether life exist anywhere else in the universe? If so, which one of these choices would you be most likely to select to represent your views?:

1. impossible
2. possible, but unlikely
3.neither likely nor unlikely (might as well flip a coin to "decide")
4. probable
5. virtually certain.

I wouldn't say that I have a belief about it, no. I would say that I've heard and read arguments pro and con made by both scientists and wingnuts and lots of reasonable people who fall somewhere in between. Most scientists I've read say that it's quite probable that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe and openly provide their reasoning, which is based on observations of terrestrial life, numerous exoplantary systems, biochemistry, etc. I can't find any good reason to reject their logic.

On the other hand, that's quite a different argument from someone claiming to know for a certainty that not only is there life out there, but it's intelligent and created the universe (Herald's claim).

Do I have a belief about it? The only claim I make is that the latter alien-claim is the weaker of the two. I'm not sure that my assessment is actually a belief, though, since it's based on standard logic. More like an observation or analysis. It's also tentative, as I've made it abundantly clear that if Herald presents a better argument, I'll go with it. So far, he hasn't and neither have you.

1 Reply

@FBM,

Quote:

Most scientists I've read say that it's quite probable that life has evolved elsewhere in the universe and openly provide their reasoning, which is based on observations of terrestrial life, numerous exoplantary systems, biochemistry, etc. I can't find any good reason to reject their logic.

OK, fair enough, but I really haven't seen all those "explanations." I don't know of any scientist who has come out and said, for example: "There is a planet we call "X" and we believe, based on the situation of that planet that there is life there."

What I have primarily seen cited as a rationale is the sheer vastness of the universe, and the unlikelihood, that, given those huge numbers, that life would NOT have developed elsewhere.

The ID reasoning is usually along those same lines, the improbability of certain structures and event occurring wholly "at random."

Many of their criticisms have been leveled at the orthodox, neo-darwinian "modern synthetic theory" of evolution, which is fading rapidly in status, from what I know (not a whole lot, actually). But for decades it was the "only game in town" and became rigid dogma amongst evolutionists.

Defeating Neo-Darwinism would in no way "prove" ID, of course. But, that said, the ID contingent directed many "statistical" criticisms that were relatively powerful against neo-darwinism, helping to promote a climate where alternatives to existing dogma could flourish.

My point is that statistics alone could can provide highly persuasive "evidence." DNA tests, relied upon to put people to death, are never presented as proving the identity of the culprit. But the likelihood that another person would leave the same DNA signs at the scene of the crime is so low that one could call DNA evidence sufficient (all else being equal) to be deemed "beyond reasonable doubt."

However statistical "evidence" is not something you can "measure" with a yardstick or thermometer. It doesn't fall into that class of things.

A few thoughts from Stephen Hawkings:

Quote:

In this talk, I would like to speculate a little, on the development of life in the universe, and in particular, the development of intelligent life...The chances against a DNA molecule arising by random fluctuations are very small....We are more than just our genes. We may be no stronger, or inherently more intelligent, than our cave man ancestors...Why hasn't the Earth been visited, and even colonized?....I prefer a fourth possibility: there are other forms of intelligent life out there, but that we have been overlooked

http://www.hawking.org.uk/life-in-the-universe.html

This article is rather lengthy, and I have just taken a few sentences out of it. To get the full flavor of the article, you need to read it.

2 Replies

@layman,

Yep. When I'm arguing with people who do take a faith-based attitude about science, I point out Hume's problem of induction (Popper didn't really resolve anything about it) and that scientific knowledges is inherently inferential, and therefore can only provide probabilistic, tentative conclusions. If you try to derive an absolute truth from inferential premises, you have a deeply flawed argument.

Let me ask you a question, layman. Herald and I have been arguing about essentially two hypotheses. One is the Standard Model and the other is his hypothesis about aliens/god/ILFs creating the universe telepathically.

Would you give both of these hypotheses equal credibility? Equal weight in the world of ideas? If so, why? If not, why not?

(I'm making this a false dichotomy, and I'm aware of that, but these are the two hypotheses that Harold and I have been discussing.)

1 Reply

@FBM,

1. I edited my last post to include some thoughts from Stephen Hawkings, if you're interested.

2. Are you talking about the "standard model" of particle physics, the standard cosmological model , or some other "standard model?"

1 Reply

@layman,

layman wrote:

1. I edited my last post to include some thoughts from Stephen Hawkings, if you're interested.

2. Are you talking about the "standard model" of particle physics, the standard cosmological model , or some other "standard model?"

1. Thanks. I'll have a look shortly.
2. Actually, I haven't been specifying, since Herald doesn't seem to know the difference, anyway. He jumps freely from one context to the other, denying everything he can lay eyes on. But take your pick. He seems to be denying them both.

1 Reply

@FBM,

Quote:

But take your pick

Yeah, I'd probably say about the same thing either way, but I'll take the standard model for cosmology.

I don't believe any of it (and that includes Herald's claims).

I'll be the first to admit that I am in no way qualified to make an independent judgment. I don't "follow" any of it, and I certainly have no in-depth, technical understanding of any of it.

I read a little about what other (qualified) people say, but not much. My "feeling," and that's basically all it is (an intuition), is that the whole of physics got off track, long ago. Physicists have turned their calling over to mathematicians (which is to say they become skilled mathematicians), which does not, in itself, have a damn thing to do with physics.

Any degree of wild-ass speculation, imagination, and tale-telling seems to go. Why not? Math can handle it all, no matter how absurd. Whether it's 11 dimension string theory, thousands of multiple universes, or whatever, it's all treated seriously. But it ain't "physics." It metaphysics, at best, unmitigated solipsistic mysticism at worst.

Any "evidence" they have for one view probably contradicts another view which is also "widely held." Dark matter, dark energy, dark fluid, unknown, unspecified particles, "strings," all of it reeks of a lack of objective standards, discipline, and coherency, best I can tell (which I can't, really).

Again, I don't even claim to understand it, nor would I care to try to understand it. I just write it off as a topic that is off no real interest to me. I can't take it anymore seriously than I would some comic book.

Could well be my failing. I don't even care. I'm very prejudiced against the pretense of it all.

1 Reply

@layman,

I'm comfortable suspending judgement about whether any of them are ultimately true, but that doesn't mean that it's impossible to distinguish a stronger argument from a weaker one. For example, if one is free of logical fallacies and the other is fundamentally dependent upon one or more of them, the latter gets the thumbs down. If one has partial evidence and the other has none, the latter gets the thumbs down. Herald's is in both of the latter camps.

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@FBM,

I doubt very much Herald realizes he's all over the map and in contradiction of his own position.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

I think it's obvious that he's chosen the grabbastic approach.

0 Replies

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

... that doesn't mean that it's impossible to distinguish a stronger argument from a weaker one.

What 'strong arguments' are you talking about? I doubt whether you have ever had any arguments at all. All that you can do is to quote stochastically various quotes (some of them relevant, some of them irrelevant, some of them too casual and some of them even against your arguments), and to misinterpret the words of the others. Before talking about any 'strong arguments' perhaps you should have to prove that this method of yours (of pouring in bulk various things taken at random from here and there), could be viewed as argumentation at all.

FBM wrote:

... For example, if one is free of logical fallacies

... and who is 'that one' if it is not some secret. In order to be able to design a straw-man like your '45%-God-of-the-Gaps' one should be a top designer, equipped with all kinds of logical fallacies. Such top design simply could not happen without 'mastering to infinity' of various logical fallacies.

FBM wrote:

If one has partial evidence ...

... of entirely different process and sequence of processes, and attach that to some fake (invalid as math logic) inference by analogy, made casually on the inverted processes, and reinforced subsequently by 'partial evidence' of dark matter and dark energy and infinite temperature and infinite gravity without any force carrier - how exactly is that called?

1 Reply

@Herald,

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb192/DinahFyre/rofl2.gif

Dude, stochastically speaking, you are stochastic trip. You know exactly which 'strong argument' I'm talking about. Don't act like you just dropped in from another planet. Wink

If you'd stop making the alien/ILF/god-of-the-gaps fallacy, I would stop using the scare quotes. It's not a strawman. I posted your exact words from which I derived the expression. There is no distortion in it.

Quote:

how exactly is that called?

It's called the god-of-the-gaps fallacy. And it ain't logical support for your "personal 45% alien/ILF/god-of-the-gaps." When you present some actual evidence, we'll change the score. Until then, based on your own statements, the score stands still at:

4:0

0 Replies

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

FBM wrote:
How about you provide some evidence to support your "personal 45% god/ILF/alien-of-the-gaps" for a change?
If you are curious to know you cannot exclude the ILF 100% ... for a change. You cannot claim for sure that among all the data collected from the radio-telescope you don't have any encoded communications 'of the aliens'. There exist at least one crypto-system (the proposed by Bell Labs. in 1911) - called one-time pad - for which you cannot distinguish random-text from ciphertext. Hence, in case you have some ciphertexts in the data, collected from the radio telescope, there is no way to find them and to recognize them as such in case you don't know anything about the crypto-system and the random generator, and the encryption algorithm for encoding the messages and the communications of the aliens - this was the bad news ... and the ugly news is that you don't even know anything about the 'criptographic key of the aliens', nor anything about their way of thinking. If they have a math logic that is tautology (like the math logic of the Big Bang system) - you will never be able to get knowing for sure anything about them.
In other words you may have the 'TV shows of the aliens' on your data storage, and may not be able to get knowing that you have anything of the kind for life ... and you cannot even find verification & validation tests to exclude that option 100%, for it is mathematically proven that this case scenario is cryptoanalytically unbreakable. Have you understood that ... as for a change.

Just present some evidence and the world will beat a path to your door to deliver a Nobel Prize. Until then...

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb192/DinahFyre/conspiracy_theorist.jpg

0 Replies

@FBM,

Herald wrote:

... my personal are 45% God or some meta-intelligence (string theory or s.th.); 30% another ILF, sending the designs on the Earth even through some form of teleportation or another form of encoded communication (it might have extinct already by the time the information has came here), and perhaps 25% of the Big Bang and the theory that we are made out of star dust (whatever this might mean) and fused with the time by the Dark Energy and Dark Matter.
...

Shortened to "personal alien/ILF/god-of-the-gaps," because I'm not typing all that illogical, jumbled, self-contradictory, tinfoil-hat crap every time I want to refer to your claim.

You know, I probably would have let you off the hook a long time ago, but then you went and said what you said about medical science. That makes me think you'd subject your or someone else's kid to woo-therapy instead of real medicine. Or maybe you're a woo-therapy charlatan yourself. Whatever. I'm not letting you off the hook. Your type is a danger to society.

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

I'm not letting you off the hook. Your type is a danger to society.

      Seriously. ... and how exactly when I say: we may never get knowing whatsoever, I become 'danger to society'. Where do you see the danger in 'I don't know'? Why don't you prove that this 'danger to society' is pulled out of the other side of your big mouth. Why don't you tell us what is your 'type', what is your 'standard model' claiming ... about the present day Universe for example (not about its 'creation')?
     80% of the Universe is Dark Matter (really); 16% Dark Energy, and 4% is the known and visible Universe.
    Do you know what does that mean: it means that your personal living room, in the capacity of being absolutely legitimate part of the Universe, is 80% Dark Matter; 16% Dark Energy, and 4% known time, space & energy - and this has nothing to do with any God or God-of-the-Gaps.
     BTW, how many percent is your personal belief in the Big Bang 'theory'? Your personal believe for it to has ever really happened & to be true - not what part of the things it is trying to explain.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Your science illiteracy is showing again. It doesn't mean that 80/16/4% of every minute region of space-time is of that composition. Anisotrophy. Look it up.

I don't have any belief in the Big Bang Theory at all. 0% We've been over this. Please try harder to remember this time. What I have a belief in is that you have yet to produce any evidence for yor "personal 45% alien/ILF/god-of-the-gaps" that teleports encoded information.

http://i206.photobucket.com/albums/bb192/DinahFyre/hehe.gif

I suspect you of being a charlatan of some sort. You're mighty interested in preaching your woo-based faith to be just a random internet wingnut.

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

Anisotrophy. Look it up.

How is that - the Big Bang is operating everywhere and is the master-mind of everything?
How much, expressed as a number in %, is your personal belief in the Big Bang 'theory'? If it really is 0% in the Big Bang and 0% in God - what is that, into which you are believing 100%? Can you formulate it. Infinite aggression, infinite arrogance or what? In what you believe 100% - just don't lie for this space cannot stay empty there? The gap is always filled up by something. What is it that makes you feel so superior above the others?

1 Reply

@Herald,

I don't believe anything. I that a difficult concept for you? Why do you believe in bizarre alien-based hypotheses without evidence?

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

I don't believe anything. I that a difficult concept for you?

   Yes, it is very difficult to accept that you are not lying. This place exactly the believe in some natural or supernatural aspects of our existence here on the Earth, of their causality in explaining the world, the truth about us and the world cannot stay empty, just so, in vacuum and zero-gravity. There is always something there, and if it is such that you cannot announce it to the public I don't even care to get knowing what it might be.
   BTW how did you come to know that with your 0% belief (if true) in the Big Bang 'theory' and atheism, and 0% belief (if true) in any official religion are not a real 'danger to the society'? If your understanding of the world is such that you cannot even announce it to the public, there is no way for it to be any 'jewel of first beauty'.
   You are criticizing me about accepting some probability different from absolute zero for the existence of aliens, but as it comes out on the grounds of your own double-zero beliefs you might be the aliens themselves - as the 'partial evidence' is obviously showing.

1 Reply

@Herald,

I don't care whether you believe me or not, but I've been working on a form of ancient Greek skepticism called Pyrrhonism. Belief is therein said to be unnecessary to lead a productive life, and opens one up to avoidable error and unnecessary strife, and I'm testing out that claim. My engagement with you is an exercise in Pyrrhonism.

I'm not a danger to society because I don't do anything to hurt anyone. With your medical science denialism, there's a strong possibility that you aren't. Every time someone goes to a crystal healer or alien channeller or faith healer instead of going to a real doctor, they've been victimized by some woo-peddler. The scariest thing is when parents foist such bullshit on their children, sometimes to the point of the child's death. It's an extension of the woo-based denialism you're spreading about science and invisible, magical, teleporting aliens and whatnot.

If you want to believe in a self-contradictory mish-mash of aliens, god, ILFs, maybe 25% this, that or the other, that's your business. But if you're foolish enough to bring that **** into a public forum populated by science-literate skeptics and start proselytizing, don't be surprised when your **** gets duly dissected and its fallacies and factual errors exposed to the light of reason.

I'm criticizing you for making the claim that your evidence-free speculation is as plausible as the culmination of all the evidence-based work of all the relevant scientists over the past few centuries. I'm criticizing you for denying a multitude of logical and factual errors when they're placed openly in front of you in simple layman's terms. I'm criticizing you for intellectual dishonesty and stochastic pretentiousness stochastic. But most of all, I'm criticizing you for willful ignorance. You're ignorant and stubbornly determined to stay that way.

That's why you've so far been unable to score a single point:

4:0

But you hypothetically still could. All you need is some evidence to support your mish-mash of self-contradictory claims. I'll wait.

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

I don't care whether you believe me or not, but I've been working on a form of ancient Greek skepticism called Pyrrhonism.

     This is just some theory. You are living in a real world. You don't believe in God, as you claim, O.K. You accept 0% of what the religion is saying, incl. morality, hence you reject the morality at 100%, right? Let's see what happened.
     If you don't believe in 'Honour thy father and thy mother' you should believe in the opposite - Do not honour thy father and thy mother, or what?
     If you don't believe in 'Thou shall not murder' you must believe in the murder as a means of solving the problems in society - this is a brand new attitude to the world.
     If you don't believe in 'Thou shall not steal' you must believe in stealing as a way of living.
     You see, when you say I don't believe 100% in something, you reject it 100%, but before rejecting it, perhaps you will have to take a look at what you are actually doing. When you reject the Big Bang 100% you are rejecting actually the discovery of the particles as well.
     This absolute model 0% - 100% is not that easy.

1 Reply

Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

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