Why is ID not a scientific hypothesis?

[lrkun]

Guys, what do you think about the information in this website?

http://www.detectingdesign.com/kennethmiller.html



Nice video.

Do you agree or disagree with the video and contents of the website?

(I got bored with czar's non-responsiveness to the issues raised.)

 

[Squawk]

A chimera, in the sense portrayed by the photos, is an organism composed of a mixture of body parts of organisms that have evolved down different evolutionary trajectories.

Arguing that such a hybrid could exist (a human head on a horses body, say) is a falsifcation point of evolutionary theory since it would invalidate the concept of speciation leading to a nested hierarchy. There are minor exceptions in the world of bacteria in the form of HGT, and there are exceptions when we look at "higher" organisms and the role played by virii in evolution, but those cannot be equated with a human head on a horses body. You'd need to find a mechanism in nature by which huge chunks of the human genome could be mixed with huge chunks of the horse genome and still be viable for producing life.

Could a horses head evolve, over a period of millions of years, to look like the head of human? Possibly, but it wouldn't be a human head, the genetics involved would be derived from the genes of the horse and evolutionary relatinships would be clear to see by phylogenetic analysis. A real human head on a horses body would falsify evolutionary theory as we know it since it would remove any concept of heredity being important. Reproduction must occur with high fidelity in order for evolution to function as we know it.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Guys, what do you think about the information in this website?

http://www.detectingdesign.com/kennethmiller.html



Nice video.

Do you agree or disagree with the video and contents of the website?

(I got bored with czar's non-responsiveness to the issues raised.)

You know he's ignoring you now, right?

 

[Duvelthehobbit666]

Guys, what do you think about the information in this website?

http://www.detectingdesign.com/kennethmiller.html



Nice video.

Do you agree or disagree with the video and contents of the website?

(I got bored with czar's non-responsiveness to the issues raised.)

Here is lrkun's post seeing that you are ignoring him. Take my advise and go to that website.

 

[lrkun]

I like that website. Kenneth Miller, though a man of faith, is advocating with all his strength that ID is wrong. Why I value his contribution to this thread's topic is that he's one of the witnesses presented in a legal case against ID.

 

[Pulsar]

The simple fact is that evolution would not predict a half-horse half-human hybrid, no matter how "fine" it looks. Same goes for all of the pictures.

WHY! EXPLAIN WHY!

Are you serious? Heredity, diversification, phylogenetics, the tree of life. Do these terms mean anything to you?

If you don't know the basics of evolution, then please start learning. May I suggest you take a look at AronRa's videos (start at the 6th Foundational Falsehood and continue from there).

Btw, how exactly does ID falsify the existence of half-horse half-human hybrids? Did your Designer have a lack of imagination? And where are the Cambrian bunnies?

 

[borrofburi]

It's the same problem that all theistic analogies have: they point to things we know to exist, can observe, can test, and often know a lot a bout, and say "this unobservable untestable object whose existence is in question is exactly like that observed, tested, and known to exist thing in that it also exists". It's a false statement; it's simply false to say that something that has never been observed to exist is (ceteris paribus) precisely as valid an explanation as things we know to exist and have repeatedly observed to exist, and even have large amounts of knowledge about how they operate.

But I'm not invoking something that we don't know about. I'm invoking a known cause. And that's intelligence.

Intelligence is an abstract quality. You can no more "invoke intelligence" as an explanation for something than I can "invoke greed" as an explanation for the quartz pebble I just found outside. When you "invoke intelligence" you are necessarily invoking the existence of a sentient being, one that we have no evidence that it can exist, or that it does exist other than the very thing you're trying to invoke it to "explain". This is no different than (at least 500 years ago) invoking "an intelligence" to "explain" lightning.

That you continue to think that invoking a sentient being who we know nothing about and whose very existence in question is precisely as valid as invoking humans that we know actually exist/existed (and whose patterns we can recognize due to a huge amount of information on them), is simply asinine.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

But you won't get that specific pattern because its to improbable.

But you will because as I have said, YOU HAVE JUST RECORDED IT! How could you not get the specific thing which you have just got? You are so brain washed that you even deny the results obtain in taught experiments! GAH!!!! What am I doing wasting my time?

You can draw a specific noise pattern on a coputer in Photoshop and then try and get that pattern on TV, you won't get it by chance.
("¦)
But if of those balls you have 90 white ones, and 10 red ones, the chances are you will pick out white ones by chance more than the red ones. And that applies to biology also because there are less biologically relevant configurations of matter than all other configurations.

First of all it didn't had to be on a TV, but it can still do. Secondly YES YOU COULD, it is just very very unlikely! This is the point I am trying to explain and I can't even get around to that because you can't even grasp the most basic of the basic concepts. If this was a hurdle race your performance is identical to stumbling down on the paint, and you think you can be a grand champion. If you did want to have a serious discussion you would have by now at least recognized your mistake.

I didn't ask you "if it was improbable", what I asked you was "if it was improbable enough so it couldn't happen if it hadn't been rigged". After all the subset of landing all heads in 10 throws is very very small. So if that did happen, was it rigged?

It depends on the probabilistic resources.

No it damn doesn't! It is 1 balanced coin throw 10 times in a row and have it always land heads. It is a fully defined problem with a yes or no answer. If you can answer that then I can hardly think how you have gone past first grade.
But you and I both know why you won't answer that.

Do you want to know how did it work? Get a fucking education!

In other words, you have no clue.

The point that I wanted to made, was made, everything else is just bonus. And actually I do know, but I didn't have to, I am not a biologist. But what you are asking me is to teach you biology. And I am not your mother, nor am I being paid for this, and I will not going to be an enabler for you. Go to a fucking library!

How did you get to that number? Do you have any justification other than you have pulled it out of your own ass? What about if it is only 399bits?
But let's ignore that. Is it your final word that you would stand for, that the threshold for the sufficient requirement to qualify something as specifically complex is that it cannot be described in less than 400bits?
Is this your final word?
And that if I can find something that needs more than 400bits to describe, and yet show that it was not designed. Would you concede that ID is full of shit?

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141

Well that would certainly rule out anything in the Universe from being designed.
You can't even read right. What that is, is the estimated capacity of the universe, and it doesn't say anything of the sort:

A thing has to be more complex than all the possible probabilistic resources that could bring it about by chance. If we are trying to falsify design on the scale of the whole universe, then that would be 10^120. Meaning 400 bits.

The number that you actually misquoted"¦ or better what the link you just posted actually says is. That the universe could do 10^120 operations per second on 10^90 bits (that is a 1 followed by 90 zeros). A typical CD can take about 6 BILLION bits of information (without counting the extra due to codification), and I bet your computer RAM has about 16 BILLION bits and your hard drive about 2 TRILLION! And this numbers are way way lower (by at least 80 orders of magnitude) than the capacity of the entire Universe in 1/10^120 of a second.
The magnitude of you error is completely beyond human comprehension. I think I would require the entire Universe to represent that error. This is by far the most Epic Fail of all Epic Fails ever!

Then its not a case of a prediction. You have to predict soemthing before it is observed. Its not a prediction if you already know how its going to happen.

Yes we do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_hypothesis_testing
("¦)
Please stop making things up. QM does not predict that. QM predicts that electrons will keep orbitng the nuclous, and depending on the material, they will leave teh nucleous and not come back.

All I have to do to debunk that is this:

But I bet you will never understand why.

Why not?

Because the paper doesn't say any of those things. You have just pulled the out of your own ass.

No, because you missed my point. I never said that there is no such a thing as an algorithm that can find a point in space bettern than random chance. I just said that averaged over all fitness functions, to find such a point, no algorithm performs bettern than any other, including random chance. And also, to find such an algorithm, that will perform better than random chance, you have to design it.

I have put my money where my mouth is, now what you are doing is back peddling.
You are a fucking coward! That is what you are!

It means that depending on what we want to measure, we should use it.

You can use it as a measurement, but it isn't measuring information.

But I have never in my life claimed that there is no natural process that produces information. You simply keep misrepresenting what I have to say. I said that that CSI can't be produced by natural laws or chance, but SI can be produced by chance. Please try to understand my points before you build strawmen.

No it was not a strawmen. Your only criteria to peddle CSI was probability and if no natural process would do it. So your objection is mute.

Why not? And how do you know that you can't know where it is?

Because I don't know where it is! How am I supposed to look for something I don't know where it could be?

Like every other scientist finds things that they don't know of or don't know where it is yet. INVESTIGATE!

After this post, I cannot get myself convinced that you don't know that what you are saying is one of the most stupid things on the face of the earth. Anyone as stupid as you portray yourself to be would require the usage of dippers and be interned in a mental hospice.
And I refuse to waste more time with people who just want to waste my time.

 

[borrofburi]

Sorry, but that image doesn't demonstrate anything other than that given a random objective function (with a random (not climbable) fitness landscape), all *functions* have equal probability. So what?

Was I supposed to draw an actual algorithm with a fitness function, and draw a search space with trillion squares on a 500x300 pixel image? Obviously not, so I chose the simplest possible example.

Well, normally we describe algorithms and functions in pseudo code. Yes, you can describe a function purely as a table of values, but when you do that you'll necessary limit yourself to relatively small functions (and we tend to reserve this for purely arbitrary deterministic functions that lack any sort of rules or patterns resulting in them being indescribable in pseudo code (which are usually formed by a simple function "pick at random an assignment, add it to our table", leading to a deterministic and arbitrary function)). Also I think (but don't remember for sure) that you ignored serial trials, and any and all search algorithms require serial trials.

I will never agree to your atrocious bastardized phrasing. If you want to be specific, then use the proper language. In general, "in general" does not mean "averaged over all fitness functions"; generally, "in general" is not considered a well specified term, and as such is considered to have a very sloppy meaning that, in mathematics and computer science, should be avoided if possible.

I have never in my entire life seen someone who has so little knowledge about something yet likes to sho off like he is a Nobel prize winner. Generalization is one of the most used definition in math and science. General Theory of relativity is a gneralization of Special theory of relativity to non-inertial reference frames. I can't believe you keep responding to me, when its clear that everything you say shows that you have a lack of understanding of basic science.

I can't help but note the irony in accusing me of being ignorant and arrogant while spelling "show" so poorly.

But you're right, I should be more clear: when we generalize in mathematics we are very careful about defining what we mean by "in general". I believe you are going to (whether accidentally or intentionally) equivocate "in general" meaning "for all possible objective functions as a whole" with "in general" meaning "for a given objective function", which are two very different meanings of "in general". As such I will not allow "in general" as part of this discussion. If you'd like, for brevities sake, we could use the acronym "FAPOFAAW" to mean the former "in general". The point, of course, is to avoid equivocation fallacies creeping into our conversation.




But let's compress real quick; let's clarify what you're arguing. If I understand correctly, your argument is that if a process does better than completely random chance, that proves it was designed. You back this up by saying that the NFL shows... what precisely? If I understand you correctly, you think that the NFL proves that given an objective function, we should expect no "algorithm" to do better than chance. Am I correct? Thus your argument is that if anything works better than chance, an "intelligence" had to have done it?

How does that deal with, for example, the reality that when I let go of my pencil (providing no force on it), it will (with 99.999999999999999% probability) go towards the earth instead of away from it. Random chance says it should stay in the same place 33% of the time, go away from the earth 33% of the time, and fall towards the earth with 33% of the time. My pencil always goes towards the earth (never a miscommunication) and performs 77% better than chance. This 77% better than chance performance proves that an intelligence pulls the pencil towards the earth, and thus I have proven intelligent falling.


I fully agree with you when you say I don't understand, because I really think I must be missing something. Please, in clear language, with no more than a few sentences and a couple of paragraphs, tell me precisely how your argument comes together in a linear "A implies B because of C all of which results in D" fashion.

 

[Squawk]

Mod note

I've ummed and arred about this one. MGK, the image of the guy with the burning head, captioned "The Stupid, it burns" is unacceptable.

I've come to the conclusion, based on the quote to which it pertains, that the image could arguably refer to the argument being made rather than to the person posting it, and as such this is not a ban. However, I consider it to be right on the borderline and will thus stress that any further instances along those lines will result in a ban. This is, then, a final warning.

I considered what the likely response would be if Царь Славян had posted the same image, and I figure he would be labelled a troll for it.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Mod note

I've ummed and arred about this one. MGK, the image of the guy with the burning head, captioned "The Stupid, it burns" is unacceptable.

I've come to the conclusion, based on the quote to which it pertains, that the image could arguably refer to the argument being made rather than to the person posting it, and as such this is not a ban. However, I consider it to be right on the borderline and will thus stress that any further instances along those lines will result in a ban. This is, then, a final warning.

I considered what the likely response would be if Царь Славян had posted the same image, and I figure he would be labelled a troll for it.

I haven't violated any rules, and they are right here if you want to read them.
If you are going to give me a warning for that, You can just go ahead and ban me. You don't like it you can express your opinions about it and I will take it into consideration IF I SO WANT TO, if you can't stand it take it somewhere else. I will not tollerate beying bullyed by a moderator.

 

[Squawk]

Rule 2:
DO NOT bully other users or make physical threats.

Guideline 6
You can swear all you like, but targeting abuse at an individual will be treated as bullying.

You are free to leave at any time.

 

[lrkun]

A christian's objection to intelligent design.

This page contains some of my objections to the theory of intelligent design (ID for short). My objections are primarily theological, since I am not a biologist. Nor am I a professional theologian. I am a Christian practitioner, meaning that I put my Christian beliefs into daily practice. These are questions that have come to me while reading about intelligent design and pondering its implications for Christianity. Some of the implications of Intelligent Design are not compatible with the Biblical view of God.

What say you? ^^,

 

[WarK]

A christian's objection to intelligent design.

This page contains some of my objections to the theory of intelligent design (ID for short). My objections are primarily theological, since I am not a biologist. Nor am I a professional theologian. I am a Christian practitioner, meaning that I put my Christian beliefs into daily practice. These are questions that have come to me while reading about intelligent design and pondering its implications for Christianity. Some of the implications of Intelligent Design are not compatible with the Biblical view of God.

What say you? ^^,

but that chap is not a true christian™, unlike Царь

... what was the topic again?

 

[lrkun]

but that chap is not a true christian™, unlike Царь

... what was the topic again?

Why ID is not a scientific hypothesis.

Anyway, I chose to post that webpage because of its content. I just want to add another point of view which supports the position that ID is not a scientific hypothesis.

With respect to Царь, I don't know if he is a christian. :/

Introduction
1. No one has found a complex system in nature that could not have evolved.
2. Weak Scriptural support.
3. Intelligent design hides its religious nature.
4. The designer is not always perfect.
5. The designer is not always benevolent.
6. The designer is misleading.
7. Why all the extinctions?
8. Intelligent design has little predictive or explanatory value.
9. Intelligent design is a "God of the Gaps" theology.
10. Intelligent design is looking for God in the wrong place.

---



A very nice video.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

What is the right definition?

I will let hackenslash answer this question (since he already answered it, but you would not know that because you ignored him):

hackenslash[/url]"]Information?

Show More Hide

{TEXT}

If that's true, then why don't all scientists find their fossils like that?

First off, not all scientists are looking for fossils; paleontologists look for fossils. Second, it really depends on what the paleontologists are looking for. If they are trying to test a prediction than they would use pretty much the same method they used to discover Tiktaalik. However, if they are in an area that is fossiliferous and eroding out, they might excavate in order to save the fossils found inside. They might also excavate a new area in order to see what is there. Like you said, earth is a rather large place and the only way to know what exists under our feet is to start digging. Once they gather information about a new area, that information can be used to make predictions about the fossilized creatures they would discover there.

No, that would mean that they used the fact that fossils existed there already, not the theory of evolution. Because evolution does not predict where you will find any fossil.

WRONG!

Fossils exist in almost any sedimentary layer. However, if they were looking in the wrong sedimentary layer they would not have found anything like Tiktaalik. For example, if all that was needed to find a fossil like Tiktaalik was to poke around in a fossiliferous area than the paleontologist could have just went to The Morrison Formation. The Morrison Formation is one of the best producers of fossils in the world (easily the best in North America) and very easy to get to with rather nice conditions to dig in. Now why would it have been a waste of their time poking around in the Morrison Formation? Because it only contains fossils that date to the late Jurassic period, and their prediction called for an animal that lived in the Devonian period. You see how that works? This is not as hard as division now is it?

That's random.

Well maybe according to your bastardize definition of the word random. However, back in reality, citations and good math help an argument out immensely.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

Yes he does. Do not be upset with someone because they know more than you, it is not their fault.

And he is wrong again. All those models are possible with evolution.

Once again, you expose your ignorance for all to see. First off, none of those would be called a model and second, according to the modern evolutionary synthesis, none of those would be possible. In fact, creatures like that would disprove evolution.

I know Rumraket's response was a bit tongue and cheek, but the real reason those could not be predicted using our understanding of evolutionary theory is because those would be hybrids of modern organisms that are separated by thousands, if not millions of years of evolutionary divergence. As I said before, once evolution starts down one path, it closes the door to all the other paths. This is basic biology here.

But evolution does not exclude anything! All possibilities are equally likely. All transitions are possible.

Correct, evolution (change in allelic frequencies in a population over time) does not exclude anything, however evolutionary theory does. Moreover, as I just pointed out all possibilities are likely until you start down one path. Once a creature starts down a certain path, it closes the door to many other paths. Therefore, you are wrong, not all transitions are possible according to the modern evolutionary synthesis.

No, they are supposed to predict what is going to evolve. Not what has already evolved.

Why should they need to predict what is going to evolve? Can you predict where the next lightening strike is going to occur? You already claimed that lightening fits into your definition of natural law, thus you can predict where (and I guess when) the next lightening strike will occur. When you do that, I will see what I can do about biologists predicting what will evolve next.

But evolution does not tell you what will be. And all models of animals are equally likey.

Again, not all models are likely once evolution starts down a path. How many times will this have to be explained to you before it sinks into your head? This is not division after all.

No, that would just mean that other individuals simply died, not that species died out.

I am not sure if it is because of your poor grammar or your poor understanding of the fossil record, but this comment does not make any sense to me. Of course a fossil represents one individual, but it seems like you are claiming that the individual fossil also represents an extant species. Am I wrong? However, many fossils (i.e. this, this, this, this, etc"¦) would represent extinct creatures because they are not alive today. In addition, most of the species we dig up (unless they are from the Holocene or Pliocene) are of species that no longer exist (thus, they are extinct).

That is not true! A dog could evolve wings, or it could evolve gills and go live under water according to you. There is no featrue that a dog could not evolve.

:lol:

I am sorry; I just had to laugh at this comment. My sides still hurt.

Anyways, true, dogs could evolve wings, (they would be nothing like a bats or birds wing) since wings are just modified forearms (at least in tetrapods). However, dogs would not be able to evolve gills, for reasons already pointed out above. They might evolve some sort of apparatus for breathing under water, but they would not be gills. However, looking at other marine mammals suggests that dogs would probably never evolve an apparatus for breathing underwater since aquatic mammals seem to get along fine without one. So yeah, dogs could not evolve gills because of Dollo's Law.

No, its because its not just about biology.

Than what is it about? I asked later and you did not answer.

The fact that you don't use it doesn't mean anything.

You were claiming that it was used in archaeology, when I pointed out that it is not used you stopped claiming that and are now claiming it is used in forensics. Again, it is not used in forensics either. It is strange how you had to change your claim to yet another field that does not use ID.

You asked me for a prediction, and I gave you one. And no, evolution can not explain design. Please don't even go into that.

You gave me a prediction that has been falsified when dealing with biology. In addition, evolution does explain design in things like the eye and, heck, even the bacterial flagellum.

But I don't post them automatically after I write them. I SAVE them in .txt format, which removes such symbols. And as far as I'm concerned I couldn't care less if you belive me or not. And I'm not going to waste my time anymore on this. If you so much as mention this crap again, you are going on my ignore list.

Again, you do not make an internally consistent argument, if you did not care, than why would you need to ignore me? However, if you feel the need to physically ignore me, go right ahead. You have already mentally ignored me along with everyone else that has posted a response to your tripe. Moreover, do not think I did not notice how my ,¼ and ,½ were change to 1, which was a nice touch. Nevertheless, I am going to let Spillerix have the last word on this:

Spillerix[/url]"]I just wrote a text in MSWord2003, which automatically transformed 1/2 into ,½. When I saved it in txt format, the symbol didn't get lost under the default settings. Under some settings the symbol got lost and only the symbol '?' stayed.

 

[Царь Славян]

I already explained why. Reading comprehension fail. Go back and fucking read it. They are made up of parts from wildly different animalst that simply don't fit together. There is more to an animal than the fucking shape of it's outer layers of tissue. A human heart could not fucking sustain the torso of a horse. There are different requirements in terms of blood oxygen content, hormones, enzymes etc. etc.

Once again, you can make up an infinite amount of rationalizations to "make it work" for all I care, none of which are predictions of evolutionary theory.

THEY ARE DIFFERENT ANIMALS NOW! They are different relative to what you assume have evolved NOW! But there is no reason that instead of these animals we have, that those animals you posted evolved instead. Which would mean, that if you actually posted a fullblown human, we would find it strange, because we would not be used to see, what we today consider human, to have human upper and lower part.

You want a prediction of evolutionary theory? Alright, I predict that if you take a colony of bacteria that normally grows at 37 degrees C like a species of E. coli from the human intestine, and incrementally over 10.000 generations grow them at 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and finally 43 degrees C, that the living descendants in the 43 degree C colony, will have acquired a vastly increased fitness for growth in 43 C compared with the original population. I also predict that this change in fitness can be directly traced to changes in their genomes.

That is a prediction of variation under natural selection. Evolution as you think of it means much more. Its about the idea that species that were never known to be able to reproduce, could reproduce. Which means they would not change on the level that would range from a single celled organism to a dinosaur. What you just predicted is simply based on genetics that accounts only form simple variations.

 

[Царь Славян]

Intelligence is an abstract quality.

Wrong. Numbers are abstract. Numbers can't influence material concrete objects. Intelligence can, thus intelligence is not abstract.

You can no more "invoke intelligence" as an explanation for something than I can "invoke greed" as an explanation for the quartz pebble I just found outside. When you "invoke intelligence" you are necessarily invoking the existence of a sentient being, one that we have no evidence that it can exist, or that it does exist other than the very thing you're trying to invoke it to "explain". This is no different than (at least 500 years ago) invoking "an intelligence" to "explain" lightning.

Yes I can invoke an intelligence. Saying that the Rosetta stone was designed is invoking an intelligence. But in a more specific way, because it is claimed that a person designed the Rosetta stone. But people are a subset of intelligent agents. So yes, invoking a person means invoking an intelligence. And invoking just an intelligence is simply invoking it in a more general way, without being specific.

That you continue to think that invoking a sentient being who we know nothing about and whose very existence in question is precisely as valid as invoking humans that we know actually exist/existed (and whose patterns we can recognize due to a huge amount of information on them), is simply asinine.

We know nothing about the person who designed the Rosetta stone, so?

Well, normally we describe algorithms and functions in pseudo code. Yes, you can describe a function purely as a table of values, but when you do that you'll necessary limit yourself to relatively small functions (and we tend to reserve this for purely arbitrary deterministic functions that lack any sort of rules or patterns resulting in them being indescribable in pseudo code (which are usually formed by a simple function "pick at random an assignment, add it to our table", leading to a deterministic and arbitrary function)). Also I think (but don't remember for sure) that you ignored serial trials, and any and all search algorithms require serial trials.

But I didn't want to use a pseudo code, I wanted a picture. And please do tell me, how I ignored serial trials.

But let's compress real quick; let's clarify what you're arguing. If I understand correctly, your argument is that if a process does better than completely random chance, that proves it was designed. You back this up by saying that the NFL shows... what precisely?

It shows two things. That averaged over all fitenss functions no algorithm otperforms random chance. And that a search for a search that does perform better than random chance on a specific fitness function, requires a search also. And if the original search can't be made by pure chance, then the search for a better search can't either. What this means for ID is this. If we do find CSI exhibited by some pattern. Then that would mean that chance did not produce it, nor did an algorithm, but that it was designed.

If I understand you correctly, you think that the NFL proves that given an objective function, we should expect no "algorithm" to do better than chance. Am I correct? Thus your argument is that if anything works better than chance, an "intelligence" had to have done it?

If we picked an algorithm at random, then yes, that's true.

How does that deal with, for example, the reality that when I let go of my pencil (providing no force on it), it will (with 99.999999999999999% probability) go towards the earth instead of away from it. Random chance says it should stay in the same place 33% of the time, go away from the earth 33% of the time, and fall towards the earth with 33% of the time. My pencil always goes towards the earth (never a miscommunication) and performs 77% better than chance. This 77% better than chance performance proves that an intelligence pulls the pencil towards the earth, and thus I have proven intelligent falling.

Its called regularity or a natural law, or gravity. Its not a random search on a uniform probability distribution. Some outcomes are more probable because of gravity.

I fully agree with you when you say I don't understand, because I really think I must be missing something. Please, in clear language, with no more than a few sentences and a couple of paragraphs, tell me precisely how your argument comes together in a linear "A implies B because of C all of which results in D" fashion.

Thank you for actually asking me nicely to explain my argument, so I will comply.

Its very simple so let's take it from the top.

Let's say we have a search space.
We have a target in that search space we have to find.
We already know that a random search won't work, so we must use an algorithm.
But the question is, how do we get that algorithm?
We obviously have to search for it.
What the NFL theorem shows is that not only does no algorithm perform better than random chance averaged over all fitness functions, but that a search for an algorithm that does perform better than random chance on a specific fitness function is no easier than searching the original search.
Which means that if you can't find that original target by chance, you can find an algorithm by chance that will search for that original target. You have to design that algorithm, you can't find it by chance.

If this were not true, then we would simply keep making algorithms that would search for other algorithms that would search for other algortihms etc. And then we would find an algorithm that could find anything. That would be equivalent to a perpetual motion machine. We could call it a perpetual information machine. It does not work.

 

[Царь Славян]

But you will because as I have said, YOU HAVE JUST RECORDED IT! How could you not get the specific thing which you have just got? You are so brain washed that you even deny the results obtain in taught experiments! GAH!!!! What am I doing wasting my time?

But that is not a specific pattern. That then is any pattern. And getting any pattern has a probability of 1:1.

First of all it didn't had to be on a TV, but it can still do. Secondly YES YOU COULD, it is just very very unlikely! This is the point I am trying to explain and I can't even get around to that because you can't even grasp the most basic of the basic concepts. If this was a hurdle race your performance is identical to stumbling down on the paint, and you think you can be a grand champion. If you did want to have a serious discussion you would have by now at least recognized your mistake.

But then you are going over into philosophy, not science. In science we deal only with reasonable explanations. It is not reasonable that a building will spontaneously combust from molecules of air converging on it by chance and causing it to burn down from friction. Its possible, but to improbable to consider it reasonable explanation for a burned down building.

No it damn doesn't! It is 1 balanced coin throw 10 times in a row and have it always land heads. It is a fully defined problem with a yes or no answer. If you can answer that then I can hardly think how you have gone past first grade.
But you and I both know why you won't answer that.

Well now you specified teh probabilistic resources, so now I can answer. You said 10 throws. I can calculate that.
Probabilistic resources, 10
Target, 10 heads in a row
Target complexity, 2 (Only 10 heads in a row, and 10 tails in a row have this complexity)
Probability of any event, 1/2^10

The equation is: ProbRes * TargComp * ProbAnyE < 1/2

10 * 2 * 1/2^10 = 0.0195313 < 1/2

The probability is less than half, so it is improbable.

Well that would certainly rule out anything in the Universe from being designed.
You can't even read right. What that is, is the estimated capacity of the universe, and it doesn't say anything of the sort:

I knwo it doesn't. Dembski says that. But you didn't ask me for what Dembski says, you asked me for the number, and I presented you with the number that Dembski based his calculation.

The number that you actually misquoted"¦ or better what the link you just posted actually says is. That the universe could do 10^120 operations per second on 10^90 bits (that is a 1 followed by 90 zeros). A typical CD can take about 6 BILLION bits of information (without counting the extra due to codification), and I bet your computer RAM has about 16 BILLION bits and your hard drive about 2 TRILLION! And this numbers are way way lower (by at least 80 orders of magnitude) than the capacity of the entire Universe in 1/10^120 of a second.
The magnitude of you error is completely beyond human comprehension. I think I would require the entire Universe to represent that error. This is by far the most Epic Fail of all Epic Fails ever!

There is no error, you misunderstood the article. The article is talking about operations that could have been performed. A CD is not performing any operations, its standing still.

But I bet you will never understand why.

I don't take youtube videos as arguments. But let me show you something. Let me show you what actually a prediction is.

The earth's magnetic field is decaying at the rate of about 3% per century. In 1971 creationist Thomas G. Barnes noted that the field's main part had lost 15% of its strength in 150 years of measurements. At that rate the magnetic field had to be less than 10,000 years old. Geologist G. Brent Dalrymple published a paper in 1983 giving the reason this was happening and why the field was not declining rapidly. The explanation was somewhat unlikely, but reasonable. The field was reversing and the missing energy was actually in what are called non-dipoles which simply means that these were fields that are not part of the main field and the "lost" energy was creating those non-dipoles. By 2000 the main field and non-dipoles had been fully measured. Dalrymple loses. Though some of the energy is going to non-dipoles, not much of it is doing so. The rest is simply loss of strength. The half life of the earth's magnetic field is 1465 +/- 166 years. This very high half life proves the field is young and will be gone not all that far in the future.
Humphreys' theory (see Day 4) on formation of magnetic fields has great support and the idea of the magnetic field being billions of years old is falsified. Let's compare Humphreys' predictions and NASA's predictions of magnetic fields. It's one thing to think something happened 8 billion light years away, another to make predictions we can test with direct measurements. Here is Humphreys oringinal 1984 paper describing his theory, and including some predictions that were found to be accurate when later tested!
Sun - NASA and Humphreys both fit the facts.
Mercury - NASA said Mercury would not have a magnetic field at the present. Humphreys predicted it does. Humphreys was right. In addition, he predicted how much it should have declined from the first time we measured the field in 1975 and the second time this past Spring. Humphreys nailed it. NASA didn't try.
Venus, Jupiter & Saturn - NASA and Humphreys both fit the facts.
Our Moon - NASA predicted there was never a field. Humphreys predicted that moon rocks would demonstrate the moon had a magnetic field in the past. Humphreys was correct.
Mars - NASA made no predictions. They simply had no idea. Humphreys predicted it had a strong field in the past. The Mars Global Surveyor measured no field at the present, but strong residual magnetism in the crust. Humphreys nails it again.
Uranus & Neptune - NASA and Humphreys both made a prediction of the magnetic fields of these two planets. Because nobody knows the exact composition of the planets, both predictions were a range that could still be off a bit. Humphreys missed by 3%. NASA was 100,000 times too low.

In 1984, when no space craft had yet reached Uranus and Neptune, I published a theory predicting the strength of the magnetic fields of those two planets in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, a peer-reviewed creationist scientific journal.2 I made the predictions on the basis of my hypotheses that (A) the raw material of creation was water (based on II Peter 3:5, "the earth was formed out of water and by water"), and (B) at the instant God created the water molecules, the spins of the hydrogen nuclei were all pointing in a particular direction.

Two years later, on January 20, 1986, Voyager II passed by Uranus. It showed that Uranus has a magnetic moment of 3.0 x 1024 A m2, well within the bounds of my prediction. In contrast, many evolutionists had predicted that Uranus would have a much smaller field, or none at all.7

On August 25, 1989, Voyager II passed by Neptune and found that it has a magnetic moment of 1.5 x 1024 A m2, again about in the middle of my prediction. Neptune has a significant heat outflow, so dynamo theorists expected it to have a field as strong as the one I predicted. Thus for Neptune, the creationist and evolutionist theories did equally well, as far as predicting the strength of the field is concerned. However, in other aspects of the magnetic field, Neptune gave the dynamo theorists a rude surprise.

http://www.cryingrocks.org/science_answers/Cosmos/whiteholecosmos.html

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&page=329

Now this is a prediction made by a creation scientist Russel Humphreys. I pretty much do not care what he predicted, or if he is correct or not, that's not my point. My point is rather to show you what a prediction is. He actually wrote a paper in 1984 and predicted magnetic fields of few planets in the Solar system. He predicted that before we knew their magnetic fields. NASA has also made some predictions based on their models. In 1986 they actually sent some probes to one of the planets in question. And Huphrey's predictions were shown to be right, NASA was shown wrong. In 1989, there was second probe sent. Again, Humphreys was right, NASA was almost wrong on all predictions.

The point of this example is to show you that you have to make predictions before the event happens. And after it happens, you see how well you predicted it. If it was withinn the error bars, then you predicted well, if not your prediction and the hypothesis fails. That's how you test predictions.

Because the paper doesn't say any of those things. You have just pulled the out of your own ass.

Then what does the paper say?

I have put my money where my mouth is, now what you are doing is back peddling.
You are a fucking coward! That is what you are!

No, this was my argument from the start.

You can use it as a measurement, but it isn't measuring information.

Then what does it measure?

No it was not a strawmen. Your only criteria to peddle CSI was probability and if no natural process would do it. So your objection is mute.

It also needs an independently given pattern.

Like every other scientist finds things that they don't know of or don't know where it is yet. INVESTIGATE!

Not interested. If you are, plese take the job.

 

[Царь Славян]

I will let hackenslash answer this question (since he already answered it, but you would not know that because you ignored him):

I don't care what he has to say.

First off, not all scientists are looking for fossils; paleontologists look for fossils. Second, it really depends on what the paleontologists are looking for. If they are trying to test a prediction than they would use pretty much the same method they used to discover Tiktaalik. However, if they are in an area that is fossiliferous and eroding out, they might excavate in order to save the fossils found inside. They might also excavate a new area in order to see what is there. Like you said, earth is a rather large place and the only way to know what exists under our feet is to start digging. Once they gather information about a new area, that information can be used to make predictions about the fossilized creatures they would discover there.

But if evolution could predict the location of fossils, then all paleontologists would simply predict where some fossils are and find them. But they don't do it. Why?

WRONG!

Fossils exist in almost any sedimentary layer. However, if they were looking in the wrong sedimentary layer they would not have found anything like Tiktaalik. For example, if all that was needed to find a fossil like Tiktaalik was to poke around in a fossiliferous area than the paleontologist could have just went to The Morrison Formation. The Morrison Formation is one of the best producers of fossils in the world (easily the best in North America) and very easy to get to with rather nice conditions to dig in. Now why would it have been a waste of their time poking around in the Morrison Formation? Because it only contains fossils that date to the late Jurassic period, and their prediction called for an animal that lived in the Devonian period. You see how that works? This is not as hard as division now is it?

But an animal could have evolved according to you in that period also to go from water to land. There is no obstacle for that.

Well maybe according to your bastardize definition of the word random. However, back in reality, citations and good math help an argument out immensely.

Your article said they had 4 years.

Yes he does. Do not be upset with someone because they know more than you, it is not their fault.

There is nothing he know more than I do.

Once again, you expose your ignorance for all to see. First off, none of those would be called a model and second, according to the modern evolutionary synthesis, none of those would be possible. In fact, creatures like that would disprove evolution.

EXPLAIN WHY!

I know Rumraket's response was a bit tongue and cheek, but the real reason those could not be predicted using our understanding of evolutionary theory is because those would be hybrids of modern organisms that are separated by thousands, if not millions of years of evolutionary divergence. As I said before, once evolution starts down one path, it closes the door to all the other paths. This is basic biology here.

NOT IF THEY EVOLVED THAT WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only reason you consider them hybrids is because we have animals around that we do! If we had those animals around,a nd not these that we do, than those in the picture would NOT be considered hybrids. They would be considered normal!!!!

Correct, evolution (change in allelic frequencies in a population over time) does not exclude anything, however evolutionary theory does. Moreover, as I just pointed out all possibilities are likely until you start down one path. Once a creature starts down a certain path, it closes the door to many other paths. Therefore, you are wrong, not all transitions are possible according to the modern evolutionary synthesis.

How does it close a door!? EXPLAIN HOW!

Why should they need to predict what is going to evolve? Can you predict where the next lightening strike is going to occur? You already claimed that lightening fits into your definition of natural law, thus you can predict where (and I guess when) the next lightening strike will occur. When you do that, I will see what I can do about biologists predicting what will evolve next.

Because that's called a prediction. I can't predict teh next lightning strike because weatehr is not a natural law. Electricity is, but a lightning has more that just electricity to it, so it can't be predicted. But objects falling can be predicted. If you see a drop of rain falling from the sky using the equation for velocity and knowing the gravitational constant you can predict when its going to fall.

Again, not all models are likely once evolution starts down a path. How many times will this have to be explained to you before it sinks into your head? This is not division after all.

Simply saying it does not explain why its so.

I am not sure if it is because of your poor grammar or your poor understanding of the fossil record, but this comment does not make any sense to me. Of course a fossil represents one individual, but it seems like you are claiming that the individual fossil also represents an extant species. Am I wrong? However, many fossils (i.e. this, this, this, this, etc"¦) would represent extinct creatures because they are not alive today. In addition, most of the species we dig up (unless they are from the Holocene or Pliocene) are of species that no longer exist (thus, they are extinct).

So you ASSUME. Maybe they jsut changed without being extinct. There is a high amount of genetic diversity that makes for large phenotypic differences between species possible. What we see today might just be almost all species that ever lived just with different gene expressions.

I am sorry; I just had to laugh at this comment. My sides still hurt.

Anyways, true, dogs could evolve wings, (they would be nothing like a bats or birds wing) since wings are just modified forearms (at least in tetrapods). However, dogs would not be able to evolve gills, for reasons already pointed out above. They might evolve some sort of apparatus for breathing under water, but they would not be gills. However, looking at other marine mammals suggests that dogs would probably never evolve an apparatus for breathing underwater since aquatic mammals seem to get along fine without one. So yeah, dogs could not evolve gills because of Dollo's Law.

Dollo's Law is nothing but a pure assumption. Based on nothing but an improbability that an animals will evolve back to what it was. That is all. It doesn't say that it can't happen.

Than what is it about? I asked later and you did not answer.

About design detection.

You were claiming that it was used in archaeology, when I pointed out that it is not used you stopped claiming that and are now claiming it is used in forensics. Again, it is not used in forensics either. It is strange how you had to change your claim to yet another field that does not use ID.

LOL, no. I claimed that design inference was used in general in biology. Not CSI.

You gave me a prediction that has been falsified when dealing with biology. In addition, evolution does explain design in things like the eye and, heck, even the bacterial flagellum.

Those are possible evolutionary pathways. That does not mean that evolution actually could take that pathway. But not only that, even if it did, it had no probabilistic resources to produce those features. Which means that if evolution took place it was designed to produce them. Evolution by itself ahs no designing capacity.

Again, you do not make an internally consistent argument, if you did not care, than why would you need to ignore me? However, if you feel the need to physically ignore me, go right ahead. You have already mentally ignored me along with everyone else that has posted a response to your tripe. Moreover, do not think I did not notice how my 1 and 1 were change to 1, which was a nice touch. Nevertheless, I am going to let Spillerix have the last word on this:

Yes, under my settings the symbols do get lost and the number 1 stays. So now keep quiet about it.