Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

@layman,

layman wrote:

...
All of which, FBM, forms part of the reason that I said, earlier, that I thought physics went off track a long time ago. As Louis Essen said in the 1970's (and as many others have noted, both before and since):

Quote:
Since the time of Einstein there has been a great increase in anti-rational thought and mysticism [in physics]

I'm all for holding things at arm's length, but I would not characterize the last few decades in physics as being predominantly or even significantly either anti-rational or mystical. To deserve either of those labels, I think, would require a mainstream break in logic, a dissociation from the necessary inference that is the scaffold of the scientific growth process.

If there are a handful of speculative and contradictory hypotheses punted around, that's all for the better. The more imaginative, the better. They point others in new directions to explore and consider. There are lots of counter-intuitive facts in the mundane world; I don't see why it should be any different in the extreme frontiers of knowledge and experimentation. I fully expect a great deal of hit-and-miss. It's been that way from practically the beginning of the endeavor. As more experimental and observational data comes in, the misses will go the way of the luminiferous aether, as they should. Ultimately, if you don't have the experimental/observational data, you don't got nothing but a guess.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

PS-Your arguments are really good. I apologize for attributing your posts to Creationist thinking. I only rejoined the discussion after several weeks away. I hadn't caught any of your original posts .

Thanks for the compliment, Farmer. Apology fully accepted.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

BUT, ITS NEVER A RANDOM EVENT, that was my position throughout this discussion with herald.

In what sense do you mean that? Absolute randomness of variation was (and is) an indispensable tenet of Neo-Darwinism, as I understand it, at least.

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@FBM,

Quote:

If there are a handful of speculative and contradictory hypotheses punted around, that's all for the better. The more imaginative, the better. They point others in new directions to explore and consider.

Sure, I agree with that completely, FBM. But that wasn't my point.

My point was that much of this "speculation" is inherently unverifiable, and hence in no way "scientific." How, for example, would we test the claim that there are thousands of alternate universes "out there?"

Such suggestions are made in attempt to meet MATHEMATICAL desires, not because of any empirical evidence. Theoretical "physics" has largely become math, as I see it. Math can "prove" anything, if you're naïve enough to think that math is physics and that math can "prove" things.

Math often "proves" too much. I'm told that string theory, employing 11 dimensions, in fact leads to an almost infinite number of different solutions to the same "problem." How could you ever pick, on the basis of math alone, which one best fits "reality?"

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@layman,

Randomness of mutations--given
Randomness of natural selection-nope

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Randomness of mutations--given

OK, I see and agree (re Neo-Darwinism). Just wasn't sure what you were referring to.

This proposition, as "enforced" by the weissman barrier and Crick's "central dogma," was designed to forever abolish any suggestion that Lamarckism (which Darwin himself incorporated into his theory) was in any way viable. It (Lamarckism) was thereafter subjected to extreme ridicule by the Neo-Darwinists--to the point that a "laugh" (to show all that you were "knowledgable") became virtually obligatory if the name Lamarck was even mentioned.

Things are not nearly so "cut and dried" about the way variation is created, maintained, and transmitted via inheritance any more. Yet many people, having been thoroughly conditioned, will still "laugh" at the thought.

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@farmerman,

Quote:

Whether or not we retain it as part of the Title of the theory, ?

Well, see, once again I think you are just trivializing a very substantive and important difference when you suggest it's only a matter of arbitrary "nomination," Farmer. That's why I cited at some length from the encyclopedia. The "theory," qua theory, maintained that natural selection ( which was for Darwinn, basically the "survival of the fittest" (or most adaptive), was the creative, driving force behind evolutionary change on a "macro" scale (the creation of new species).

The relegation of "natural selection" to one of many "natural" mechanisms is an entirely different thing and is, I would argue, clearly a "different theory."

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@layman,

"Survival of the fittest" is anything, including many "natural" mechanisms, that allow a species to survive. The only argument you have is one of semantics when you try to claim a different theory.

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@parados,

Quote:

The only argument you have is one of semantics...

Whatever you say, Parados. Either you didn't read the arguments (drawn from extensive quotes from the encyclopedia) or you didn't understand them.

You can disagree with any argument I make, and/or any conclusion I might draw from them, all you want. That's fine. But to claim it is "merely" a matter of semantics just shows you don't even understand the argument.

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@parados,

Quote:

Survival of the fittest" is anything, including many "natural" mechanisms, that allow a species to survive.

The point at issue here is not "survival." It is the role of natural selection in speciation.

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@Herald,

The theory of evolution via natural selection is the worst explanation for how we got here. Except for all the others:

Herald wrote:

You are talking with great ease about the pathological deviations of the Church - why don't you mention something about the pathological deviations of the teachings of the Big Bang and the Evolution? Why don't you tell us something about the people that might have lost their scruples and start killing and torturing whoever they find appropriate as a victim, because in the theory of Evolution only the predators survive ... actually the Evolution says nothing about traps and tapping of the communication lines ... and about misuse of information.

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@layman,

Human activity also has impact on our environment and evolution.

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Human activity also has impact on our environment and evolution.

Indeed, Cicer. It's not like humans are just like billiard balls on pool table, being passively pushed around by environmental forces totally beyond their control. It's a mutually interactive kinda thing.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

saying what I need to explain to you

It is not exactly to me, but sooner to the public. When you shoot off stochastic claims in the public space about whatsoever, perhaps you will have to explain them a little bit. How exactly do you acquire (out of nothing) all that implicit encoding that makes the brand new species? Here is an even more easy question: how much brand new code will you need to make a brand new species ... out of whatever?

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I've stochastically decided to stochastically start inserting this stochastic word in all its stochastic inflections in every stochastic sentence I stochastically write. It should be some stochastic fun. Very Happy

And, of course, stochastic people will stochastically think I'm so stochastically intelligent! What stochastically could possibly go stochastically wrong? Laughing

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

You don't have the power to tell me what I believe and don't believe.

I am not telling you what to believe and the belief revision does not work in that way. Actually I don't care in what you are believing. I just ask you how do you distinguish between the two absolute zeros that you claim to accept, how do you get knowing which one of them is the 'better' one, and what does better mean in that case?

FBM wrote:

You immediately reverted once again to the ILF/alien/god-of-the-gaps and argumentum ad ignorantium fallacies. That's all you have?

It is nothing of the kind. If you haven't read it slowly and carefully - read it again.
BTW you have been asked a 1000 questions and you haven't answered to anyone of them. All of your answers are based on some 'broken record' straw-man. Why don't you try to answer to at least one of the questions: How can something exist without the Time component? - for example. Pay attention that there is no God here, and that the non-existence of Time cannot be explained in any way by the existence of God, for the existence of God supposes Time as well. Where is the answer?

1 Reply

@FBM,

FBM wrote:

I've stochastically decided ...

This is not entirely bad decision, for most of your actions and inactions are some random events without any causality.

FBM wrote:

... to stochastically start inserting ...

You are doing it all the time with your irrelevant quotes at random ... nothing new under the Sun. (the real question is what is there 'above it')

FBM wrote:

... in every stochastic sentence I stochastically write.

Yes, but this exactly here is not true. Your 'broken record' straw-man of the 'God-of-the-Gaps' can be predicted
with a probability of five nines. There is nothing stochastic here.

FBM wrote:

...It should be some stochastic fun.

So and so your absolute inability to explain the preference of the one zero (absolute disbelief) to the other zero (absolute dispbelief) is already a great fun - why don't you enjoy it yourself.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

I am not telling you what to believe and the belief revision does not work in that way. Actually I don't care in what you are believing. I just ask you how do you distinguish between the two absolute zeros that you claim to accept, how do you get knowing which one of them is the 'better' one, and what does better mean in that case?

Nice attempt at a strawman. I have zero belief in the current cosmological model, but I acknowledge that it's the logically stronger argument compared to your fallacious, self-contradictory and evidence-free "personal 45% alien/ILF/god-of-the-gaps" mish-mash. You do understand this; you're just squirming with intellectual dishonesty.

Quote:

It is nothing of the kind. If you haven't read it slowly and carefully - read it again.
BTW you have been asked a 1000 questions and you haven't answered to anyone of them. All of your answers are based on some 'broken record' straw-man. Why don't you try to answer to at least one of the questions: How can something exist without the Time component? - for example. Pay attention that there is no God here, and that the non-existence of Time cannot be explained in any way by the existence of God, for the existence of God supposes Time as well. Where is the answer?

I've read it plenty and answered you appropriately. You're asking red herring (and mostly nonsensical) questions in order to attempt to weaken the scientific model, fallaciously believing that it will somehow magically make your ex recto "personal 45% blah blah" sound more plausible and to provide gaps to slip your superstition into. That's the nature of fallacies upon which your claims are firmly established. Meanwhile, you stubbornly refuse to admit that the scientists have evidence, admittedly incomplete, while you have absolutely none, complete or otherwise. That's why:

4:0

1 Reply

@layman,

layman wrote:

Quote:
Survival of the fittest" is anything, including many "natural" mechanisms, that allow a species to survive.

The point at issue here is not "survival." It is the role of natural selection in speciation.

How can a species, whether old or new, pass on it's genetic material if it doesn't survive? Survival is very much at issue with it comes to natural selection.

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@parados,

Quote:

How can a species, whether old or new, pass on it's genetic material if it doesn't survive? Survival is very much at issue with it comes to natural selection.

Yeah, so?

I said: "The point at issue here is not "survival."

We are talking about a context, i.e., natural selection as being the creative and driving force behind one species becoming (or "turning into," or "creating") another. That's what "here" means.

1 Reply

Intelligent Design vs. Casino Universe

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