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Posted by Yang Yang on March 15, 2005 10:08 PM
With any tavern, one can expect that certain things that get said are out-of-place. But there is one place where almost any saying or scribble can find a home: the bathroom wall. This is where random thoughts and oddments that don’t follow the other entries at the Panda’s Thumb wind up. As with most bathroom walls, expect to sort through a lot of oyster guts before you locate any pearls of wisdom.
The previous wall got a little cluttered, so we’ve splashed a coat of paint on it.
Trackback URL: http://www.pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/876
Comment #20378
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 15, 2005 05:59 PM (e) (s)
Michael Finley:
The probability after the fact of any observed phenomenon is one. There is nothing wrong with that. It is simply another way of stating the fact that this universe is.
Now, if you want to argue that the value of the gravitational constant might have been different, I ask you how you know that. {In other words, how do you know that the coin in your example had another face? Or even 10,576 other faces? How do you know it wasn’t one of those coins with two heads?) It’s as simple as that.
Please note the difference between speculating on the possibility that other values were possible and stating that, since other values were possible, this universe appears designed.
The difference is huge: it’s the difference between a legitimate scientific curiosity and a logical error.
Now, consider the simple question “Could the universe appear anything but designed, whether it [b]was[/] designed or not?”
The answer is “no”, for the reason I gave you. Any universe able to generate and sustain sentient life would, ipso facto, appear designed.
Therefore, the much-vaunted “appearance of design” tells us precisely nothing about the “reality of design”.
Comment #20379
Posted by David Heddle on March 15, 2005 06:10 PM (e) (s)
NOTE TO ALL: I am pledging polite conversation regardless of insults, and will avoid theology unless it is relevant. If you want to discuss theology with me, come over to my site.
Emanuele,
Could the universe appear anything but designed
I would say yes. If the universe were such that any old value of the expansion rate would lead to galaxies, and any old nuclear chemistry would result in supernovae, and any old value of planck’s constant would result in the necessary amount of quantum tunneling, etc,—then that universe would not have an appearance of design.
By the way, the inifinite number of universes that was discussed earlier—I think it was moved, is not possible—at least not in the expand-collapse scenario, because of thermodynamics. (Not to mention that the expansion of the present universe is accelerating instead of decelerating.)
Comment #20380
Posted by Michael Finley on March 15, 2005 06:39 PM (e) (s)
Emanuele,
The way you are using “probability” makes the notion of an unrealized possibility meaningless.
One determines a physical possibility, not by the observation of different outcomes, but by whether or not the considered event contradicts a law of nature.
Since we are here discussing possibilities of natural laws, the measure cannot be natural laws. It must be logical contradiction. And as a different value for gravity does not involve a logical contradiction, it is “possible.”
Comment #20381
Posted by Flint on March 15, 2005 06:49 PM (e) (s)
If the universe were such that any old value of the expansion rate would lead to galaxies, and any old nuclear chemistry would result in supernovae, and any old value of planck’s constant would result in the necessary amount of quantum tunneling, etc,—then that universe would not have an appearance of design.
As a mental exercise, try to imagine a universe where any of these postulates would actually work. I mean, a single, definable universe. I doubt even The Great Designer Himself could produce such a thing. Objects are defined by parameters. If any parameter whatsoever is as good as any other, you don’t have an object at all. You don’t have anything.
Comment #20382
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 15, 2005 06:58 PM (e) (s)
Michael,
Please distinguish before the fact and after the fact. If I haven’t tossed a coin, the probability of each face coming up is 1/2. If I have tossed that coin, there is no more uncertainty: it either came up heads or it came up tails. No more 50-50; 0-100 or 100-0.
Now, if we are to discuss how “likely” or “unlikely” this universe is, we must admit up front that we have only this universe to observe, so any declaration of “likelihood” or “unlikelihood” is meaningless.
This universe is, and that’s all we know. We don’t know whether it is one in a gazillion universes, each with imperceptibly different physical constants, or it came out this way simply because there was no other possible way, or it came out this way because, well, it had to come out one way or another and this happened to be the way the chips fell.
Since we don’t know this, we don’t know how likely or unlikely it really is.
Is this difficult to admit?
We don’t even know whether the theoretical universe mentioned by Mr. Heddle, i.e. one that would not appear designed, is possible. Sure, finding one such universe would be powerful evidence for our own being designed… otherwise, it remains a quaint mind experiment with no evidential value whatsoever.
Comment #20383
Posted by David Heddle on March 15, 2005 07:07 PM (e) (s)
Emanuelle,
While it is true we cannot say anything about the probability of this universe, would you agree or disagree that the appearance of fine-tuning motivates some scientists to look for cosmologies to replace the current big-bang model?
Flint:
Try not to just jump on imprecise language. What I meant was, much looser constraints on those things than presently exists.
Comment #20405
Posted by PJF on March 15, 2005 09:19 PM (e) (s)
And on the “appearance of fine-tuning” (or design, or whatever…).
On faced with such an “appearance” (or even the “feeling of an appearance”), it’s perfectly rational to look not for the thing “in the world” that caused the appearance (the “Designer” or the “fine-tuner”), but to look instead for the things internal to ourselves that give rise to the feeling in the first place.
When we see the face on Mars, it’s one strategy to go looking for the folks that built it. It’s another to start wondering why we tend to see faces in rock formations, clouds, and whatnot. That latter strategy is far superior, given the ontological implications of the former: it’s too indulgent, postulating monument-building martians, or eternal designers, as it does. Given the success of the less “fanciful” theory (ie; that we’re just prone to see faces in things, due to some — usually handy — neural wiring, or here; that we tend to see the universe as “fine-tuned”, when we’re really more like the puddle of water marvelling how the depression in the ground fits it so snugly), the former shouldn’t earn much respect.
(And yes, I’m using a lot of scare quotes; but these are some instances of pretty unseemly mental hygiene — I’d rather keep my gloves on, so to speak.)
Comment #20419
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 15, 2005 11:07 PM (e) (s)
Mr. Heddle:
While it is true we cannot say anything about the probability of this universe, would you agree or disagree that the appearance of fine-tuning motivates some scientists to look for cosmologies to replace the current big-bang model?
I can’t read minds, and frankly, as long as scientists do science, I couldn’t care less about their motivations.
If the big-bang model can accurately account for the data we have available, there is no particular need to replace it; if it doesn’t, every cosmologist worth his/her PhD should feel the need for a better model.
Here is where we part ways: you say “appearance of fine-tuning” and I say “appearance of fine-tuning”, but we don’t seem to be saying the same thing.
You seem to mean (correct me if I’m wrong) that our universe appears “fine-tuned” and therefore there must have been some kind of entity or agent that did an actual “tuning” of some sort; I see this “appearance” as the inevitable by-product of our anthropocentric point of view; we cannot but perceive an appearance of design.
If the universe were any other way and still supported some kind of sentient life, there would probably be a super-intelligent shade of the color purple named “Davidheddle” who would argue with a fellow shade “Emanueleoriano” using trivial variations of your arguments.
If the universe were any other way and, alas, could not support any form of sentient life, there would be no discussion.
The appearance of design cannot be avoided, except in your entirely hypothetical “flexible” universe. I already said that, if we found out that such a universe existed, that would be very strong evidence that our own was indeed “fine-tuned”.
Barring such evidence, however, I provisionally accept this universe as the only one we know for sure exists… and the appearance of “fine-tuning” as little different from the appearance of being at the centre of the universe.
Comment #20420
Posted by Henry J on March 15, 2005 11:08 PM (e) (s)
Wayne,
Re “Filtering is great…”
What’ve you got there, a program that takes a downloaded html file and removes selected parts of it?
I have a program that takes the html and makes a text file out of it, to make it easy to keep posts I want (and discard what I don’t want). Since that leaves me reading the stuff in a text editor, it’s fairly easy to delete posts I don’t want to bother with, so I haven’t bothered to automatically delete based on user id (though it’d be easy enough to do).
Scott Davidson,
Re “[his] logic is a little flawed here. Just a tiny bit”
He had logic? And I missed it?
(Did I say that?)
Re “The genetics of the individual don’t change during it’s life time,”
Excluding some parts of the immune system, as I understand it. ;)
Michael Finley,
Re “As an aside, one can believe that natural processes might account for all (or nearly all, depending on the extension of “all”) we see, and still believe that the universe has a purpose.”
Yep. That agrees with my current viewpoint.
Re “I’ve read (though I forget the reference) that the design inference in cosmogony is a fairly strong one.”
I’d call it a speculation rather than an inference.
Re “you will immediately face an infinite temporal regress which is a physical impossibility.”
Why would an infinity be impossible? It’d be impossible for us (or any finite being) to measure it, or even be sure it’s there, but that by itself wouldn’t make it impossible.
luminous,
Re “I can tolerate the idea of intelligent design, if the intelligent designer is not too bright and has no clue what it’s doing.”
Which sort of describes what a gene pool does when it’s experimenting produces a new species.
Henry
Comment #20421
Posted by jeff-perado on March 15, 2005 11:16 PM (e) (s)
Well I would like to start off this wall with a bit o’ science. On the previous wall, I had a message, #20343.
In response David Heddle wrote: (#20351)
jeff parado wrote, “They have a probability of being a wave or a probility of being a particle.”
This is not correct. A photon does not have a wavefunction that is a*(wave) + b*(particle) with a and b as probability amplitudes. The correct statement (complimentarity principle) is that on any given experiment you measure either wavelike or particle like properties.
DaveScot ignored my post and replied in message #20360:
Wrong. Light exhibits properties of both waves and particles.
Please read
While I’ll let them duke it out as to which of them is right and which is wrong. Here are the facts. Photons, while travelling (before detection/observation) exhibit a duality nature of particles and waves. Once they interract/observed, their probability function collapses into either one or the other, but before it is a 50/50 probability.
So in response to Heddle, I would say that a coin once flipped and in midair has a probability of being heads and a probability of being tails. Once it lands it is either heads or tails.
To DaveScot, I would say this, read that wikipedia article, it states just what I said, and clarified here. Then reread what I wrote. So, to summarize: in transit that photon has a “dual” nature of being both a particle and wave at the same time. Once it interracts/is observed, it exhibits only one or the other. Thus my original argument stands.
Comment #20423
Posted by steve on March 15, 2005 11:37 PM (e) (s)
uh, no Jeff, let this one go. The probability amplitudes don’t give wave vs particle likelihood.
Comment #20428
Posted by DonkeyKong on March 16, 2005 12:20 AM (e) (s)
A couple of simple concepts for the evolutionists.
An uneducated person from 1000AD hearing your voice behind a locked door would swear in court that you were there inside that room. An educated person today would allow the possibility that it could have been a phone attached to a loud speaker or you on TV etc.
Likewise the evolutionist who tells you that there is no possibility for someone to control evolution because it appears random and there is no evidence of outside intervention may be wrong. And just as the person unaware of phones and TVs would be reasonable in discounting that possibility so to the evolutionist is reasonable for discounting that notion.
But that has no bearing on wether they are right.
So if you ever hear an evolutionist telling you that evolution in any form proves there is no God, smile and back away for you are talking to reasonable yet very ignorant or very stupid person.
Comment #20434
Posted by Ed Darrell on March 16, 2005 12:44 AM (e) (s)
Amazing! You even refuse to acknowledge that military chaplains are religious clerics paid for by U.S. taxpayers to explicitely provide religious services to military members, in time or war or peace, at home or abroad.
Chaplains provide a service to citizens, allowing the free exercise of religion while citizens are away from their homes. Now, how that is failing to acknowledge that they exist, I don’t know. Read what I wrote — pay attention to what the laws are.
You know what else Ed, the taxpayers build CHAPELS on military bases.
Absolutely. And swimming pools, and housing, and grocery stores. And theatres and bowling alleys. Yes, when we require military people to be away from home, we provide them and their families with benefits that other citizens have by dint of their being home.
Come on down here sometime and I’ll get you a tour of the Army-Air Force Exchange Service world headquarters. And over lunch I can get you started on a First Amendment reading program.
Your theory of that impenetrable wall of separation between church and state is blown all to hell by the egregious breach of said wall made in the military.
I did not propose any “impenetrable” wall. I merely noted what the government has the right to do (which does not include religion in any guise) and what rights are reserved to citizens. The government making arrangements to protect citizens’ free exercise rights is not a violation of the establishment clause; the government instructing in a religious view that is not backed by science and has no valid, secular purpose, is an illegal establishment.
There are two parts to the religious clauses of the First Amendment. And just to confuse you further, Dave, those religious rights for citizens existed prior to the First Amendment, too. All the First did is enumerate them.
Nothing allows the government to espouse anti-science views that are based wholly in religion.
In actuality, gov’t isn’t prohibited from promoting religion. It’s prohibited from promoting a state religion. This is evidenced in the military by the chaplain’s requirement to fulfill the religious needs of any servicemember regardless of what particular religion he practices. Gov’t is neutral with regard to religion, not hands off with regard to religion. Any greater separation is, as I said and as I proved, a tortured latter 20th interpretation of the establishment clause by an activist, liberal federal judiciary.
You’ve “proven” nothing with your torturing of history. The 20th century interpretation fo the establishment clause is based on an 1802 presidential declaration, which was based on a solid understanding of the intention of the author of the First Amendment and the Congress and states who ratified it, which was based on a solid understanding of the views of the people who asked for the Bill of Rights and the authors of the Constitution. No state, no governmental entity, has any religious right, duty or privilege, nor have they had any at any time under the Constitution (nor for some time prior to the Constitution).
The government makes broad tolerances for religious expression, which is not the same thing as promoting religion generally. Your statement is exactly the opposite of the view of the law; Justice Robert Jackson noted in 1943:
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
(Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the Court, in WEST VIRGINIA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION et al. v. BARNETTE et al. (319 U.S. 624) 1943)
Neutrality requires “hands off” when it comes to science curricula. Military chaplains don’t change that.
Comment #20437
Posted by Wayne Francis on March 16, 2005 01:02 AM (e) (s)
Comment #20420
Posted by Henry J on March 15, 2005 11:08 PM
Wayne,
Re “Filtering is great…”
What’ve you got there, a program that takes a downloaded html file and removes selected parts of it?…
I’ve just wrote a quick program to help me keep track of the PT posts. I found, since I live in Australia, most posts where happening when I was asleep. So I wrote a program to track Posts and the comments. It does a few things for me.
It breaks up all the comments and stores them in a local database, now 127meg large.
It lets me scan articles for new comments, by default I scan any article that has any activity in the last 7 days, saving the new comments to the database.
It shows me how many new comments and total comments articles have.
It allows me to search comments based on author, date range, words in the comments.
It uses Microsoft’s text to speech engine to read the post & comments back to me.
Best of all I’m building in a filtering mechanism to allow the reader to skip comments from individuals
I get both a HTML view and a textual view of posts and comments. It also has a few other features like a simple double click in my article explorer lets me get a formatted Quote like I’ve used above. Honestly there would be no way I could keep up with this site with out this tool. Took me about 5 hours to write and another 1-2 hours putting in small features like the filtering. Well worth the time and I’m glad. I’ve been swamped at work over the past month. Just at a quick glance there are about a 100 new comments on the site that I need to listen to. Granted if the numbers hold out ~20 of those will be from JAD, DS or DK which I will be automatically skipped.
When I get the time I want to rewrite it in .NET and do some Java work for Cartwright to make the site a bit friendlier to visitors. Like allowing them to quickly find the new comments since their last visit to an article. Its just that the day only has 24 hours and there is work and my social life is very important to me.
I don’t know what my neighbours think of me. My morning ritual is wake up and do a scan then have it read comments back to me while I’m in the shower and eating. Multitasking (human that is) is great. I have to admit that the final straw on putting in the filter was DK’s posts. It is painful to listen to. The fact that JAD and DS posts are now skipped is just an added bonus. I do like some of the comments back to them. They make me laugh as its like listening to someone on the phone. You only get one side of the conversation but with these 3 its easy to guess theirs. I also like being able to go back through older articles. I strongly recommend using text to speech. Either alone or working while you read. I find absorption of the material is so much better.
Comment #20442
Posted by Marek14 on March 16, 2005 01:34 AM (e) (s)
Another simple question for you: Do you or do you not believe that evolutionists largely use the argument that “evolution in any form proves there is no God”?
Comment #20445
Posted by bcpmoon on March 16, 2005 04:17 AM (e) (s)
An uneducated person from 1000AD hearing your voice behind a locked door would swear in court that you were there inside that room. An educated person today would allow the possibility that it could have been a phone attached to a loud speaker or you on TV etc.
Question: You hear voices behind a closed door. Is somebody inside that room?
Answer from ID: Yes, I hear voices, there must be somebody. Case closed.
Answer from Scientist: Let’s take a look…
Comment #20449
Posted by John A. Davison on March 16, 2005 05:45 AM (e) (s)
I wouldn’t want anyone “guessing” what my convictions are concerning the great mystery of organic evolution so here is a capsule summary.
1. It is a phenomenon of the past and is no longer operating beyond the formation of subspecies and varieties.
2. The role of obligatory sexual reproduction is anti-evolutionary and serves only to stabilize the species.
3. Allelic substitution never played a role in either the emergence of new life forms or their susbsequent evolutionary history.
4. All evolutionary (genetic) changes originated in individual organisms and, as far as can be experimentally and observationally ascertained, involved no input from the environment.
5. The most reasonable conclusion is that life was created many many times, the exact number being of course unknown.
6. The vast majority of all contemporary creatures are the terminal immutable products of what were orthogenetic, goal-directed sequences in which chance played no role whatsoever.
7. Evolution was an irreversible, predetermined, preprogrammed sequence which is now finished.
8. The primary role for allelic substitution was to ensure ultimate extinction without which progressive evolution could never have occurred.
9. None of the following have ever played any significant role in creative evolution.
a. Allelic mutation.
b. Natural or artificial selection.
c. Genetic drift.
d. Population genetics.
e. Competition
f. Isolation
In other words, the entire Darwinian fairy tale is exactly that, without a scintilla of validity, nothing more than the compulsive invention of a genetically predisposed atheist mentality.
How do you like them apples?
John A. Davison
Comment #20450
Posted by Kristjan Wager on March 16, 2005 06:10 AM (e) (s)
Wayne, is that a program you feel like sharing? Out of curioisity, what did you write it in?
Comment #20451
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 06:15 AM (e) (s)
Ironically, the only people I ever heard claiming that “evolution proves that there is no god” were anti-evolutionists like FL, venting their own fantasies about what the theory of evolution does and does not imply.
Comment #20455
Posted by bad joke on March 16, 2005 06:55 AM (e) (s)
8. The primary role for allelic substitution was to ensure ultimate extinction without which progressive evolution could never have occurred.
Poor Johnny, the fantasy world you have gone lost in is truly horrific.
Comment #20457
Posted by "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on March 16, 2005 07:07 AM (e) (s)
If you want to discuss theology with me
WHY would anyone want to discuss theology with you, David? After all, your religious opinions are just that, your opinions. They are no more holy or divine or infallible or authoritative than anyone else’s religious opinions. No one is obligated in any way, shape, or form to follow your religious opinions, to accept them, or even to pay any attention at all to them. <shrug>
Comment #20458
Posted by "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on March 16, 2005 07:10 AM (e) (s)
Could the universe appear anything but designed
I would say yes. If the universe were such that any old value of the expansion rate would lead to galaxies, and any old nuclear chemistry would result in supernovae, and any old value of planck’s constant would result in the necessary amount of quantum tunneling, etc,—then that universe would not have an appearance of design.
Uh, in such a universe, who exactly would be here to observe it’s lack of design… . ?
Comment #20459
Posted by "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on March 16, 2005 07:14 AM (e) (s)
NOTE TO ALL: I am pledging polite conversation regardless of insults, and will avoid theology unless it is relevant.
Glad to hear it.
I have just one scientific question for you:
*ahem*
All I want to know is this: what is the scientific theory of creation (or intelligent design) and how can we test it using the scientific method?
I do *NOT* want you to respond with a long laundry list of (mostly
inaccurate) criticisms of evolutionary biology. They are completely
irrelevant to a scientific theory of creation or intelligent design.
I want to see the scientific alternative that you are proposing——
the one you want taught in public school science classes, the one
that creationists and intelligent design “theorists” testified under
oath in Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas and elsewhere is SCIENCE and is
NOT based on religious doctrine. Let’s assume for the purposes of
this discussion that evolutionary biology is indeed absolutely
completely totally irretrievable unalterably irrevocably 100% dead
wrong. Fine. Show me your scientific alternative. Show me how your
scientific theory explains things better than evolutionary biology
does. Let’s see this superior “science” of yours.
Any testible scientific theory of creation should be able to provide
answers to several questions: (1) how did life begin, (3) how did the
current diversity of life appear, and (3) what mechanisms were used
in these processes and where can we see these mechanisms today.
Any testible scientific theory of intelligent design should be able
to give testible answers to other questions: (1) what exactly did
the Intelligent Designer(s) do, (2) what mechanisms did the
Designer(s) use to do whatever it is you think it did, (3) where can
we see these mechanisms in action today, and (4) what objective
criteria can we use to determine what entities are “intelligently
designed” and what entities aren’t (please illustrate this by
pointing to something that you think IS designed by the designer, something you think is NOT designed by the designer, and explain how to tell the difference).
If your, uh, “scientific theory” isn’t able to answer any of these
questions yet, then please feel free to tell me how you propose to
scientifically answer them. What experiments or tests can we
perform, in principle, to answer these questions.
Also, since one of the criteria of “science” is falsifiability, I’d
like you to tell me how your scientific theory, whatever it is, can
be falsified. What experimental results or observations would
conclusively prove that creation/intelligent design did not happen.
Another part of the scientific method is direct testing. One does
not establish “B” simply by demonstrating that “A” did not happen. I
want you to demonstrate “B” directly. So don’t give me any “there
are only two choices, evolution or creation, and evolution is worng
so creation must be right” baloney. I will repeat that I do NOT want
a big long laundry list of “why evolution is wrong”. I don’t care
why evolution is wrong. I want to know what your alternative is, and
how it explains data better than evolution does.
I’d also like to know two specific things about this “alternative
scientific theory”: How old does “intelligent design/creationism theory” determine the universe to be. Is it millions of years old, or
thousands of years old. And does ‘intelligent design/creationism theory’ determine that humans have descended from apelike primates, or
does it determine that they have not.
I look forward to seeing your “scientific theories”.
Unless, of course, you don’t HAVE any … … .
Comment #20461
Posted by "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on March 16, 2005 07:18 AM (e) (s)
While it is true we cannot say anything about the probability of this universe, would you agree or disagree that the appearance of fine-tuning motivates some scientists to look for cosmologies to replace the current big-bang model?
Would you mind pointing to some of these “cosmologies to replace the current Big Bang model”? Show me how they work?
Or is “POOF!!! God —er, I mean, The Unknown Intelligent Designer — dunnit !!!!!!” the, uh, scientific alternative tat you have in mind … .?
Comment #20462
Posted by "Rev Dr" Lenny Flank on March 16, 2005 07:20 AM (e) (s)
[quote]You seem to mean (correct me if I’m wrong) that our universe appears “fine-tuned” and therefore there must have been some kind of entity or agent that did an actual “tuning” of some sort; I see this “appearance” as the inevitable by-product of our anthropocentric point of view; we cannot but perceive an appearance of design.[.quote]
Right. If I see the face of Jesus on a tortilla, does that mean it was intelligently designed to be there? How can we tell, other than “because I think so”?
That’s the problem ID has.
Comment #20465
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 07:42 AM (e) (s)
Rev,
Would you mind pointing to some of these “cosmologies to replace the current Big Bang model”? Show me how they work?
Or is “POOF!!! God —er, I mean, The Unknown Intelligent Designer — dunnit !!!!!!” the, uh, scientific alternative tat you have in mind … .?
A puzzling comment given that the current big-bang model, with its apparent fine tuning, is the friend of ID. Personally I would not like to see it overthrown. The alternatives, which would in effect falsify ID, include a number of multiverse cosmologies and unbounded geometries.
Comment #20467
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 08:02 AM (e) (s)
Sorry Paredo,
You can probabilize all day long but at the end of the day light creating an interference pattern is a wave and light causing a photoelectric effect is a particle.
If you don’t understand something just say so.
Comment #20469
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 08:06 AM (e) (s)
Granted if the numbers hold out ~20 of those will be from JAD, DS or DK which I will be automatically skipped.
Cool! An artificially closed mind. Good job!
Comment #20470
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 08:11 AM (e) (s)
Mr. Heddle:
…the current big-bang model, with its apparent fine tuning, is the friend of ID.
This is your considerate opinion, and nothing more. The current big-bang model is not “the friend of ID” any more that it is “the friend of atheism”. It is a model of reality. If one grafts unwarranted theological assumptions onto a scientific model, one can make any model appear to support any conclusion.
But the current big-bang model, in reality, does not include a *poof* event that a fundamentalist theist might disguise and try to pass off as “Creation”. Hawking, for instance, seems to conceive this model as boundary-free. Stenger talks of an Inflationary Big-Bang model where
our Universe occurs as just a quantum fluctuation, a bubble of what’s called false vacuum in this true vacuum, and that expands into our Universe, and these bubbles are going off all over the place making other universes. The inflationary part is the early part of our Universe, where it expands very rapidly — all these processes that I’ve talked about, that generate the first particles (and forces get developed) — all during those very early stages of the Big Bang. That theory is, of course, still tentative, and could eventually be shown to be incorrect, but it’s been around now for close to twenty years. And as I’ve said, it’s made some successful predictions, and provides, really, the only explanation for an awful lot of observations that we make about the Universe.
It is, I think, a very naïve vision of the big-bang model that sees it as somehow supporting ID.
Comment #20472
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 08:17 AM (e) (s)
Jeff Perado wrote:
Here are the facts. Photons, while travelling (before detection/observation) exhibit a duality nature of particles and waves. Once they interract/observed, their probability function collapses into either one or the other, but before it is a 50/50 probability.
No. You see the wavefunction collapse corresponds to the fact that a eigenstate is selected via a measurement. For example, if you send a beam of unpolarized electrons through a magnetic field, half will deflect up and have down, because (essentially) the wf was root2*up + root2*down.
So the same experiment will result in up and down electrons.
Duality is different. There is no single experiment that sometimes measures a particle-like photon and sometimes a wave-like photon. Any single experiment will always detect a particle-like photon or a wavelike photon. Particle-like and wave-like do not form a basis in which the photons wavefunction can be expanded.
Comment #20474
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 08:27 AM (e) (s)
Darrell
Using taxpayer money to hire priests and build churches on military installations, which is done during times of war or times of peace, at home and abroad, is an egregious violation of the so-called impenetrable wall of separation between church and state.
You continue to ignore it when I point out this done during times of war and times of peace, at home and abroad. No other gov’t employees get churches built for them and priests hired for them when they accept a gov’t job that requires travel away from home.
There is no prohibition against gov’t supporting religion as long as it’s not supporting a state religion. The religious clerics hired and chapels built for military personnel are strictly non-denominational and serve the religious needs of any service member no matter what his particular religion may be. I know these things, Ed, as do all military veterans. It comes as no surprise to me that in a bunch of pathetic liberal atheist academic wimps there’s not a man-jack here that ever served his country. All you do is bitch and moan from the safe haven that men like me provide for you. Don’t bother thanking me.
Comment #20475
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 08:29 AM (e) (s)
Emanuelle
Hawking is talking about a replacement for the big bang model, at least in part to avoid the fine-tuning, which he acknowledges is present in the current big-bang cosmology. His famous quote about “unless a God designed..” is not and endorsement of ID but a criticism of the current model for, in effect, providing ammunition for ID.
Stenger is talking about two things
(1) The universe appearing as a quantum fluctuation
(2) Then the evolution of the universe via the standard big bang model (including inflation.)
As for (1), if ever verified, it would falsify ID, because if there are an infinite number of universes, then there must be an infinite number of fine-tuned universes. ID relies on the fact that there is but one fine-tuned universe.
Comment #20477
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 08:42 AM (e) (s)
Mr. Heddle:
You are not refuting my point. The “current big-bang model” is not at all incompatible with either Hawking’s or Stenger’s positions.
That IDists can and did try to hijack a scientific model to sneak in their theism in no way means that the model in itself implies that.
Also, even from my amateurish level of familiarity with IDist tactics I can conceive ways of distorting a steady-state model, or a pulsating model, to make it “support” ID.
The moment you come across (or devise yourself) a scientific theory of Intelligent Design, please let us all know. It may be tangential to the subject of evolution, but it would sure bridge the current gap between ID in any form and science.
Comment #20478
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 08:45 AM (e) (s)
Oriano
How on earth can the big bang be used in support of atheism?
Creation ex nihilo is a core concept of Judeo-Christian religion. The big bang was more or less described in Genesis fercrisakes, thousands of years before science described it.
Denial is more than just a river in Egypt.
Comment #20479
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 08:52 AM (e) (s)
Emanuele, It is compatible with Stenger. Inflation is “mainstream” as it were.
OTOH I have never said that ID is science.
Comment #20480
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 09:01 AM (e) (s)
Mr. Heddle:
Is it just me, or have you switched to a different approach? First you said
…it is true we cannot say anything about the probability of this universe…
and now
I have never said that ID is science.
Two points of agreement in as many days!
I think I’ll keep reading your posts, unlike the garbage spouted by the unholy trio of JAD, DaveScot and FL.
Comment #20483
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:08 AM (e) (s)
JAD
Someone asked you to explain how new forms continue to reproduce in the semi-meiotic hypothesis when it takes two to tango i.e. it takes a male and female of the new species to continue it. Semi-meiosis only produces one unique individual of a new species, correct?
If you answered it I missed your answer. Could you answer it again?
Thanks in advance.
Comment #20485
Posted by Nanovirus on March 16, 2005 09:11 AM (e) (s)
Don’t forget that this Sunday is
Carnival of the Godless #8.
Get your heathen submissions in by Friday!
Comment #20486
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:24 AM (e) (s)
Oriano
Quantum fluctuations which result in the so-called “boiling vacuum” are only probable at the Planck scale. Fluctuations resulting in the creation of matter at larger scales become increasingly improbable as the scale increases. To posit that the entire universe is a quantum fluctuation is a stretch of the imagination possibly only exceeded in imaginary extent by the supposition that accidental chemical reactions could create a huge suite of unique proteins capable of self-replication and self-modification.
Hugely improbable events don’t seem to bother members of the Church of Darwin but it bothers objective people like me who actually pratice scientific agnosticism and view hugely improbable events as, well, hugely improbable.
Comment #20487
Posted by GCT on March 16, 2005 09:29 AM (e) (s)
If the universe were such that any old value of the expansion rate would lead to galaxies, and any old nuclear chemistry would result in supernovae, and any old value of planck’s constant would result in the necessary amount of quantum tunneling, etc,—then that universe would not have an appearance of design.
Hmmm, in my opinion, this sort of universe would require design. If “any old value” would do for any number of phenomena, then we wouldn’t have rules and laws to predict the occurence of said phenomena. This would lend credence to the idea that something was causing it or designing it. Again, just my opinion.
At any rate, David Heddle, you’ve once again maintained that ID is not science (as I know you’ve done in the past.) So, why do you continue to try and pass it off as science? Why do you continue to argue for falsifiability? Why do you even bother posting about it, because the argument is moot if you don’t even think ID is science.
As to the photon wave/partical duality argument, I’ve heard a couple different things from David Heddle and DaveScot.
You can probabilize all day long but at the end of the day light creating an interference pattern is a wave and light causing a photoelectric effect is a particle.
There is no single experiment that sometimes measures a particle-like photon and sometimes a wave-like photon. Any single experiment will always detect a particle-like photon or a wavelike photon. Particle-like and wave-like do not form a basis in which the photons wavefunction can be expanded.
You are both partially correct. Once you observe the photon in either its wave form or particle form, you can say that it is a wave or a particle. The key concept is that it must be observed and the method of observation is key in determining how it will be observed. The photon has no fore-knowledge that we are conducting an interference pattern test, and so it doesn’t know that it is supposed to exhibit its wave nature. It’s only after it has been acted upon, by the process of our observing it that its wave nature is apparent to us.
Comment #20489
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:35 AM (e) (s)
Lenny,
How may I test the supposition that mutation/selection can create
1) novel body types
2) novel tissue types
3) novel organs
Comment #20491
Posted by steve on March 16, 2005 09:39 AM (e) (s)
GCT, you and Jeff need to drop the quantum mechanics. You’re not talking about probability and duality correctly at all. Your comments on the topics are as fundamentally wrong as, for instance, someone who says that the observed value of Planck’s Constant is ‘unlikely’. At least David has an excuse, he’s committed to believing religion.
Comment #20492
Posted by Ed Darrell on March 16, 2005 09:41 AM (e) (s)
Using taxpayer money to hire priests and build churches on military installations, which is done during times of war or times of peace, at home and abroad, is an egregious violation of the so-called impenetrable wall of separation between church and state.
You continue to ignore it when I point out this done during times of war and times of peace, at home and abroad. No other gov’t employees get churches built for them and priests hired for them when they accept a gov’t job that requires travel away from home.
Please explain how it is a violation of the separation of church and state to allow citizens in military service to worship. I’m missing your point completely.
By the way, Foreign Service members get similar or the same benefits. So did members of the Civilian Conservation Corps. So do kids enrolled in Job Corps programs. So do Members of Congress and their staffs. So did civilian contractors on the Alaskan Highway.
Madison was nervous about hiring chaplains. Frankly, having worked with both military and Congressional folk away from home, I can’t think of populations who need access to the counseling chaplains provide any more.
Who else is away from home for extended periods who does not get such benefits? What is your source of information that they don’t get benefits, if that is your claim?
There is no prohibition against gov’t supporting religion as long as it’s not supporting a state religion.
Well, if we ignore the Constitution and every case ever decided on this point, you could be right. As I noted in my earlier post, however, the case law is the opposite of what you state.
The religious clerics hired and chapels built for military personnel are strictly non-denominational and serve the religious needs of any service member no matter what his particular religion may be. I know these things, Ed, as do all military veterans. It comes as no surprise to me that in a bunch of pathetic liberal atheist academic wimps there’s not a man-jack here that ever served his country. All you do is bitch and moan from the safe haven that men like me provide for you. Don’t bother thanking me.
The depths to which creationists sink to find insult when they run out of argument and fact never ceases to amaze me. Typically, you make claims which are generally 100% at odds with the facts. I’ve sworn that oath more often than you, in more different situations.
But when have facts ever affected your claims in any way?
Comment #20493
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:42 AM (e) (s)
GCT
I was 100% correct. You may say that my statement was not a complete description of wave/particle duality but you cannot say it was incorrect as far as it went. So that makes YOU incorrect.
Thanks for playing.
Comment #20494
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 09:45 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot:
“Creation ex nihilo” is a key concept of all ancient cosmogonic myths, but trying to equate any “beginning” with “Creation” is the logical fallacy known as “begging the question” (have you looked it up yet?). Cough up a creator and then talk about creation as if this was a given.
Models requiring nothing more than natural forces imply no “Fiat!”; an atheist might argue that the big-bang model makes divine intervention unnecessary.
On the other hand, a steady-state universe could be said to support ID because, after the Intelligent Designer Previously Known as God created the universe, there was no need for any fundamental change.
So:
1) literally any model can be distorted to make it support whatever flavour of religious belief or lack thereof one might prefer;
2) that’s a very good reason for leaving religion out of any discussion on scientific cosmological models.
Comment #20495
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 09:46 AM (e) (s)
GCT:
Science is not the same as falsifiability, it just includes it. Lots of things that are not science are falsifiable. The statment “my name is George” is falsifiable.
ID, for me, is a philosophy with a large scientific component. It is falsifiable. Just prove to me that we live in a multiverse and I’ll recant ID.
As for the photons:
Once you observe the photon in either its wave form or particle form, you can say that it is a wave or a particle
That is very imprecise and you would never read something like that in a QM book. What do you mean you can “say” it is a wave or a particle. Is that once for all? No, what you say is that a photon will behave like a wave or a particle depending on the experiment. Jeff’s problem is that he views a photon as a mixed state of wave and particle, and that is not correct.
My statement is not “partially” but “totally” correct in this regard, at least by the common interpretation of QM.
Comment #20496
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:47 AM (e) (s)
Darrel
“Please explain how it is a violation of the separation of church and state to allow citizens in military service to worship. I’m missing your point completely.”
They’re not just being allowed to worship. The cost of the trappings of their worship (chaplains and chapels) are underwritten by taxpayers.
Which part of that don’t you understand?
Comment #20497
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 09:57 AM (e) (s)
Darrel
<sigh>
Man you’re thick.
I was stationed at MCAS El Toro for 3 years during peacetime. That base is in the heart of densely populated southern California. There was absolutely no shortage of privately funded churches there for any service member to use just like any other citizen of the United States. Yet the taxpayers payed for the construction of a chapel inside the base, payed for its maintenance, and payed for religious clerics to staff it.
What part of that don’t you understand? Tax dollars directly used to provide and promote religion to military members. I bet Madison was uncomfortable with the concept. If you weren’t a hypocritical nitwit you’d be uncomfortable with it too.
Comment #20498
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 10:03 AM (e) (s)
Oriano
“trying to equate any “beginning” with “Creation” is the logical fallacy known as “begging the question””
No it isn’t. It’s a simple correlation. The Big Bang theory is creation ex nihilo and so is the account of creation in Genesis.
Get a clue.
Comment #20499
Posted by GCT on March 16, 2005 10:08 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot, point out to me where I said you were wrong.
David Heddle, it is pointless for you to argue for ID on a science blog if you don’t think it is science. You said that you don’t care to talk about theology, but that’s exactly what you are doing.
As for my comment, I should have said that you can say that it exhibits wave or particle characteristics after those characteristics have been observed. Good catch there. I re-read your post and I see that I thought you were trying to imply that photons have some sort of a priori knowledge to act like waves when we are doing wave experiments. I simply wanted to emphasize that only through observation of the photon do we see its wave or particle characteristics.
Comment #20500
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 10:08 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot:
“coming spontaneously into existence” and “being created by something/someone else” now are one and the same thing for you?
Man, I wonder what is the weather like on your planet.
Comment #20502
Posted by Ginger Yellow on March 16, 2005 10:12 AM (e) (s)
Quantum fluctuations which result in the so-called “boiling vacuum” are only probable at the Planck scale. Fluctuations resulting in the creation of matter at larger scales become increasingly improbable as the scale increases. To posit that the entire universe is a quantum fluctuation is a stretch of the imagination possibly only exceeded in imaginary extent by the supposition that accidental chemical reactions could create a huge suite of unique proteins capable of self-replication and self-modification.
I’m not physicist, but…
The whole point of inflationary cosmology is that it only takes a quantum fluctuation in a miniscule amount of space with a miniscule mass to create the conditions for an inflationary field that explains the entire universe we see today. Of course, it all depends on the theoretical phsyics of inflationary cosmology, such as Higgs fields, being correct. With the Large Hadron Collider we’ll go some way toward finding out.
Comment #20504
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 10:20 AM (e) (s)
Oriano
The Big Bang theory neither suggests nor discounts “someone or something” causing the initial event. It describes, among other things, the universe coming into existence from nothing - creation ex nihilo. The biblical account of Genesis also describes the universe coming into existence from nothing - creation ex nihilo. Where they differ is the biblical account describes a first cause (God) for the creation event whereas the Big Bang theory does not attempt to describe a first cause. I hope that clears up your confusion because you’re becoming really tedious.
Comment #20505
Posted by GCT on March 16, 2005 10:21 AM (e) (s)
GCT, you and Jeff need to drop the quantum mechanics. You’re not talking about probability and duality correctly at all. Your comments on the topics are as fundamentally wrong as, for instance, someone who says that the observed value of Planck’s Constant is ‘unlikely’. At least David has an excuse, he’s committed to believing religion.
I haven’t said anything about probability or duality at all. All I’ve said is that the photon exhibits wave or particle characteristics only after it has been observed. Previous to that, we don’t know what state it is in.
Comment #20507
Posted by John A. Davison on March 16, 2005 10:25 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot
The answer to your question is no. Frogs which are produced semi-meiotically are all genetically different de to the fact that the first meiotic division has already occurred and the sister strands have separated randomly. A further source of variation results from crossing-over which has preceeded the first meiotic division.
Frogs, like mammals have an XX female, XY male, sex-determining system. Nevertheless frogs produced gynogenetically are of both sexes And the males are perfectly fertile and normal even though they are of course XX like their mother. Proof that all gynogens form a given female are genetically different is given by the fact that no two of them can accept skin transplants from one another or from their mother because none of them have more than a random half of their mother’s genes. The mother can accept a skin transplant from any of her gynogenetic offspring because none of them have any genes that are not hers. Isn’t that elegant?
Semi-meiosis has not even been attempted with mammals but it is interesting to note that if mammals prove to be like frogs, Christ would be no mystery.
There is no question that all the necessary information to produce both sexes is contained in the female vertebrate genome. For a more complete discussion of this I refer you to my Manifesto and the papers cited there.
John A. Davison
Comment #20508
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 10:28 AM (e) (s)
GCT,
Previous to that, we don’t know what state it is in.
This is the same mistake as Jeff. “wave” and “particle” are not states that a photon can be in. If so, you could devise an experiment that would pick off those in the “wave” state from those in the “particle” state.
Comment #20509
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 10:29 AM (e) (s)
ginger
“The whole point of inflationary cosmology is that it only takes a quantum fluctuation in a miniscule amount of space with a miniscule mass to create the conditions for an inflationary field that explains the entire universe we see today.”
The primordial plasma came into existence everywhere at the same time. All the matter/energy (matter and energy are equivalent) in the universe today winked into existence at once. It was not an explosion with a miniscule center where an underpressure surrounding it caused it to expand. That’s a common misconception taken from the name “Big Bang” which suggests an explosion of some sort.
Read this SciAm Article Misconceptions About the Big Bang
Comment #20510
Posted by GCT on March 16, 2005 10:32 AM (e) (s)
David Heddle, saying that we can’t determine the state of the photon does not equate to saying that it is in a wave or particle state. It is indeterminant, and I said that.
Comment #20511
Posted by Ginger Yellow on March 16, 2005 10:44 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot: Not according to inflationary theory. I’m not talking about an explosion. The matter/energy in the universe today (or for that matter 10^-30 seconds after the “bang”, comes from an inflaton field settling to zero energy after expanding space (note, not in space) by a factor of two every 10^57 seconds. The primordial plasma coming into existence and the bang are separate events.
Comment #20512
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 10:46 AM (e) (s)
GCT,
But “state” has a definite meaning in QM, and “wave” or “particle” does not fit. Compare the spin up/down electron example.
If we have an ensemble of unpolarized electrons, then each is in a state described as a linear combination of up and down. An experiment will “pick” one for a given electron, then that electron will be in that state until disturbed (e.g. by measuring a non commuting property.) That is, a measurement will collapse the wavefuction. Other similarly prepared electrons, in the same experiment, will collapse to the other value.
States are defined in terms of eigenstates of the Hamiltonian. Neither “wave” nor “particle” is an eigenstate nor can it expressed as a linear combination thereof. Another way to put it, waveness and particleness are not are not quantum numbers for some operator.
Comment #20513
Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on March 16, 2005 10:47 AM (e) (s)
ID, for me, is a philosophy with a large scientific component. It is falsifiable. Just prove to me that we live in a multiverse and I’ll recant ID.
Is it simply too onerous a burden to ask ID advocates to understand what they choose to blither about? “Falsification” is not a labile term that can be used with just any old connotation now. It has a specific meaning given to it by Sir Karl Popper.
Popper’s “falsifiability” is something that ID advocates often invoke, but almost as often demonstrably do not understand. One does not falsify a conjecture by demonstrating that a competing conjecture is corroborated. Falsification is about deriving risky predictions of what must be true if one’s conjecture is true, and then looking to see if that is actually true. And then accepting that if the observation is false instead then the originating conjecture is false. As Popper points out, this is just modus tollens in action. The worthless notion that Heddle peddles above, that falsification of one conjecture occurs on corroboration of a competing conjecture, is unfortunately widespread amongst not just the glassy-eyed cheerleaders of ID, but also among the highest ranked promoters of ID, who should know better.
Here are a couple of resources.
“Dances with Popper”. William Dembski’s attempts to invoke the authority of Popper without dealing with Popper’s actual conceptual framework are examined.
Video of my presentation at the CTNS/AAAS conference in 2001. There’s a lot of other stuff in here, but I point out how both Michael Behe and William Dembski were all wet on “falsifiability”. Their error is the same demonstrated by Heddle above.
And, of course, actually reading Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery for comprehension would be useful.
Comment #20514
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 10:47 AM (e) (s)
JAD
I can’t seem to find the answer to my question in your response, or maybe I didn’t pose the question well enough. Let’s specify mammals since that’s what I had in mind.
Where do one pair of mammals that are a new species, male and female, able to interbreed, come from in the semi-meiotic hypothesis?
In the Darwinian hypothesis the changes from one generation to the next are so small that ability to interbreed is maintained in each new generation. If I’m reading it correctly in your hypothesis a new species comes about in one generation in one individual. How does the new individual of the new species then become a mating pair able to continue the new species? Does the mother have to produce one each of the new species, male and female, or what?
Comment #20516
Posted by GCT on March 16, 2005 10:52 AM (e) (s)
David Heddle, I was very careful to talk about the wave and particle characteristics, not states. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Comment #20517
Posted by John A. Davison on March 16, 2005 11:00 AM (e) (s)
The bipotential of the vertebrate gonad is also illustrated with birds which have only one ovary, the left one. If this is removed or destroyed by disease, the hen may transform into a crowing rooster, a phenomenon known since antiquity. This is due to the fact that the ovary, when present, prevents the latent gonad on the right side from developing. When that inhibition is relieved, (derepressed), that gonad may develop into a testis complete with the testosterone producing interstitial cells which of course determine all the secondary sex characters of the bird. Such birds produce sperm but I am uncertain if they have proved to be fertile or not. Incidentally, all birds have the opposite kind of sex-determination as mammals with a ZZ male and a ZW female. That is why all gynogenetically produced turkeys are males because the WW dyad is lethal and the ZZ dyad determines the male thus proving that they were produced semi-meiotically.
A sex reversed chicken ZW (male) crossed with a normal ZW female should give 1 ZZ (male) : 2 ZW female : 1 WW lethal. I don’t believe this cross has been made but I might be wrong. It should be done.
The many different forms of sex-determination that have evolved are one of several reasons I am convinced that sexual reproduction is anti-evolutionary as I tried to emphasize in an earlier post. It seems to have brought evolution to a screeching halt, much to the chagrin of the Darwinians if they would only acknowledge it. Of course that is out of the question as they would have to abandon the whole Darwinian fable.
The important take home lesson is that as far as we know, all the necessary information to produce both sexes is contained in the female genome. I know of no concrete proof to the contrary for any higher organism. On the other hand, I think Harvard is still offering 1 million dollars to the first man to have a baby.
John A. Davison
Comment #20518
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 11:02 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot:
Your logic is full of holes, as usual.
If we were to apply your kind of ‘logic’ we might end up thinking, for instance, that since the big-bang model includes a cosmogonic singularity, it gives way more support to the Dogon myth of creation:
According to tradition, the Creator fashions an egg. It is the egg of the world “aduno tal.” The world egg is infinitesimal and consists of air, fire and water and a metal called sagala. The world egg is, then, infinitely small and infinitely heavy (480 donkey-loads or 85,000 pounds = weight of all seeds and iron on earth.)In the egg are two pairs of twins — one male, one female. The twins mature in the egg. At maturation they become androgynous (perfect creatures). One breaks out of the egg before maturation because he wants to dominate the creation. He carries part of the egg with him and from it creates an imperfect world. The Creator later destroys the other twin to establish the balance. Thus the perfection of the world, as originally intended, is lost.
It’s not “Creation ex nihilo”, it’s “Creation ab ovo”!
As I said repeatedly, grafting “first causes” onto scientific models is neither here not there.
And calling the universe “created” is begging the question. No amount of wishful thinking on your part will ever change this simple fact.
Comment #20519
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 11:02 AM (e) (s)
Wesley,
Popper’s preoccupation with falsification came about from his personal dalliances with Marxism and subsequent disillusionment with it when he concluded it was a bunch of psuedo-scientific pap.
I find the following infinitely amusing and an object lesson in what unfalsifiable psuedo-science is to Popper.
Now do a simple search and replace for “Marx” with “Darwin” in the paragraph above. Try not to laugh at the result…
[qoute]The Darwinist account of history too, Popper held, is not scientific, although it differs in certain crucial respects from psychoanalysis. For Darwinism, Popper believed, had been initially scientific, in that Darwin had postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive. However, when these predictions were not in fact borne out, the theory was saved from falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses which made it compatible with the facts. By this means, Popper asserted, a theory which was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudo-scientific dogma.[/quote]
ROFLMAO - neo-Darwinism is Darwin’s theory with ad hoc hypotheses such as punctuated equilibrium and random mutation tacked onto it when the facts didn’t agree with the theory. Darwin, you see, believed that the primary mechanism of change was not random mutation but the heritability of acquired characters. Darwin also thought that subsequent exploration of the fossil record would clear up the seeming instantaneous emergence of most of the modern phyla in Cambrian explosion.
Popper is rolling over in his grave today with people invoking his name to discount a hypothesis that competes with one he would have shit-canned right along with Marxism for exactly the same reasons. Shame on you.
Comment #20520
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 11:08 AM (e) (s)
Oriano
Big Bang theory is agreeable with any account of creation that is something from nothing. It’s not rocket science. You’ve gone beyond tedious and I shan’t discuss this anymore with you as it’s a complete waste of my time. Arguing with idiots is never worthwhile. They drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience. Adios, dopey.
Comment #20522
Posted by Ginger Yellow on March 16, 2005 11:12 AM (e) (s)
I should point out that the figures in my previous post were from memory, and may be mistaken. The following are taken from Greene’s Fabric of the Cosmos. Assuming an expansion factor during the inflationary stage at the very conservative end of the range estimated by theorists of 10^30, then the entire mass/energy observed in the universe today (including dark matter/energy) could come from an initial uniform inflaton field in a “nugget” 10^-26 cm across with a mass of “20 pounds”. The key thing with inflaton fields is that energy density remains constant during inflation so the total mass/energy embodied in the field increases in proportion to the volume. A 10^30 increase in size means a 10^90 increase in mass/energy.
Comment #20524
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 11:17 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot:
Luckily, in this case, you didn’t manage to drag me down to your level, and that’s why you couldn’t beat me with experience.
“Agnostic”, my rear end.
Comment #20527
Posted by Wesley R. Elsberry on March 16, 2005 11:28 AM (e) (s)
DaveScot passes over in silence the astounding failure of his colleague David Heddle to come anywhere close to the mark when deploying the term, “falsifiability”. That isn’t a matter of interpretation or personal preference.
I see that DaveScot has learned to quote from Popper, but not to bother to learn his complete stance on natural selection. That’s a common failing of antievolutionist “scholarship”, such as it is. We don’t have to speculate on what Popper felt the scientific status of natural selection was; we have Popper’s own statements to examine on the topic.
Popper is misused by antievolutionists in a variety of ways. Hyping of Popper’s original erroneous (and retracted) stance of terming natural selection a tautology is a relatively common tactic among people who don’t know what they are talking about. DaveScot would have to be slightly less ignorant than he is to even come up to that poor level of scholarship.
Jim Lippard’s response to the canard that Popper thought natural selection was unscientific.
So, should I be ashamed because I know more about Popper’s writings than DaveScot does? I don’t think so.
Comment #20529
Posted by David Heddle on March 16, 2005 11:32 AM (e) (s)
Wesley wrote,
One does not falsify a conjecture by demonstrating that a competing conjecture is corroborated.
It happens all the time. The Steady State model of the universe was falsified because a competing, mutually exclusive theory was confirmed. Or, if you like, its prediction that the universe was not expanding was refuted. It is the same thing with ID. It makes prediction that parallel universes do not exist. If they are shown to exist, then ID has been rendered demonstrably false. ID says that our universe is privileged, if it can be shown that it is not, then ID dies.
ID is falsifiable in exactly the same way that the steady state model was falsifiable.
Perhaps, Wesley, you spend too much time in the politics of science and should spend a bit more time actually doing science.
What’s really going on here, is that falsifiability is recognized as a necessity for a scientific theory, so the last thing you’ll do is admit that ID is falsifiable. You would rather hide in a philosophical cocoon (you PT types are such quote miners) than admit a practical method of falsifiability that has been employed throughout the ages: if conjecture A and B are mutually exclusive, and you confirm B, you have negated A.
If there were no competing conjectures about fine-tuning, then you’d have a point. There would be no way to falsify ID (in my opinion—others e.g., Ross, Gonzalez, Richards disagree) But we are not in that situation.
You just can’t get around the fact that if you do an experiment that confirms parallel universes, then ID is dead. Just like when we did experiments that demonstrated the universe was expanding, steady state was dead.
Ginger Wrote:
The key thing with inflaton fields is that energy density remains constant during inflation so the total mass/energy embodied in the field increases in proportion to the volume.
Which is at the heart of the cosmological constant fine tuning problem.
Comment #20536
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 11:43 AM (e) (s)
ginger
Brian Greene’s speculations are hardly the definitive word in Big Bang theory.
You are confusing a singularity with a point source in the standard model. Time and distance are undefined in the singularity, temperatures and pressures are infinite. It was a gravitational singularity.
And we really only have evidence of expansion once the universe became transparent to radiation. It has expanded about 1000 fold since that time.
Until there’s a theory of quantum gravity the physics of the singularity will remain a mystery.
Comment #20541
Posted by Emanuele Oriano on March 16, 2005 11:50 AM (e) (s)
Mr. Heddle:
mutually exclusive is a very important qualification.
Now, is this important qualification really applicable to ID?
You say:
It is the same thing with ID. It makes prediction that parallel universes do not exist. If they are shown to exist, then ID has been rendered demonstrably false. ID says that our universe is privileged, if it can be shown that it is not, then ID dies.
How so?
a) infinite universes exist, and they all have the same fundamental constants. The multiverse is, therefore, privileged, and obviously designed.
b) infinite universes exist, and they have different sets of cosmological constants. The subset of the multiverse which includes our own universe is therefore privileged, and obviously designed.
c) only one universe exists, but it couldn’t have been any other way. It is, therefore, privileged, and obviously designed.
d) only one universe exists, but it could have been just about any other way. The fact that it is as it is, therefore, is so unlikely that it shows it is privileged, and therefore obviously designed.
I think the point is clear. If one wants to see ID, there is always a way to spin things in order to avoid falsification.
Comment #20543
Posted by DaveScot on March 16, 2005 11:57 AM (e) (s)
Heddle
I have a couple of problems with what you wrote.
First, neo-Darwinism doesn’t attempt to explain the origin of matter.
ID and ND cannot be mutually exclusive if they don’t
Comment #20375
Posted by Michael Finley on March 15, 2005 05:34 PM (e) (s)
By your (incorrect) use of “probability,” if a coin is tossed a single time and comes up heads, the probability of the result was one. Take the value of gravity (whatever it is). Even if the present universe is the only universe to have existed, it is possible that the value of gravity could have been different than it is.
Thus, meaningful talk of possible universes does not depend on the existence of previous universes.
Agreed (though I was specifically interested in the chain of temporal causes; temporal causes are within the realm of science, while logical causes are the pervue of metaphysics). And the only way to avoid the logical regress is to posit a first cause that justifies itself. Aquinas does just that be defining God as a being whose essence is existence. Without such a being, you’re left with an unexplained first principle.
I can’t resist a digression: don’t you find the notion of 11-dimensional space incoherent. Whatever string theorists are talking about, it isn’t space. When they try to interpret the math, they end up using everyday spatial metaphors that break down when pushed. At first glance, it seems like a textbook case of language run amok at the frontiers of science (akin to “unconscious thought”).