Maybe the creator is 'hands off'


bang, bang... hands off.



?

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

But then how would you tell the difference between an intelligently designed part and a non-intelligently desgined part? If we cannot discern His will, then how could we ever figure out what is the result of His will and what isn't? There can be no evidence for intelligent design, because we would have no way of telling what features would indicate design in the first place. So the whole ID argument breaks down. The only way we can really test it is to see whether it looks like something a human would design, since that is the only sort of intelligent design we are familiar with. And I can tell you, if any human designed something as poorly as the human body is designed, not only would he or she be fired he or she would never work in engineering again for for the rest of his or her life. The designer would also probably be facing massive lawsuits as well.

I have heard a number of ID folks make that claim. Our local newspaper ran an editorial by a scientist against ID soon after the Bush travesty. A lot of folks responded positively, but a lot responded negatively as well, and that claim was one of the more common ones (since his paper was showing the stupidity of the design of the human body).

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

How many bits and pieces have been claimed as "Design" items so far? I know about the flagellum. What else?

Your body, maybe! Mine runs pretty reliably, thanks.

I've often wondered about completely re-designing the body... if you were going to build cyborgs, for instance, what would you leave out? What would you keep? How do you provide power? How do you regulate each of the zillion processes? It's not a simple problem at all.

That being said, it's not something that a couple billion years of experimentation couldn't solve pretty well.

The human eye (I already covered that one pretty well I think)
The human clotting system (this one is pretty silly, you just duplicate a gene over and over again, there is nothing special about that)
The genome in general
Some random, modern eukaryote proteins having a low probability of forming by chance (as if scientists are claiming an entire modern eukaryote cell appeared out of thin air when random atoms came together for no reason)

Those are the main ones I hear about a lot. Incidentally, they also seem to be among the ones that are easiest to counter. I don't quite that, but I guess they do what works.

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Yeah, we'll see if you still think that in a few decades

__________________
I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

*pulls out "Creation or Evolution" magazine that coincidentally happens to be handy*

- giraffe's neck (not enough transitional species, and apparently they're at a disadvantage)
- human baby (babies rely on adults for a long time)
- sexual reproduction (because it's apparently a disadvantage)
- horse's single toe (too many potential transitional forms)- eye (this section is just plain ridiculous)
- cell wall
- blood clotting molecules (platelets, etc)
- bombardier beetle spray weapon
- (supposedly) inherited memories pertaining to bird migrations
- a salmon's memory of spawning location
- orchid pollination mechanisms (how they get pollen onto bees)
- decoy-fish's fin
- anglerfish's bait (the coolest looking animals ever!)

ones not in that magazine, but that I've heard
- elephant's trunk
- bones, shells
- the entire fossil record (Earth was created around 4000 BC, remember)

Then there's that whole group of intelligently designed organisms and their relatives, called diseases, most of which don't care about the age of their host.

Kids with cancer, now there's there's intelligent design at work!

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

My car was 25 years old when it died, and it's only a few thousand parts! Imagine if someone made a car that would last, on average, 80 years, despite being smashed into other cars several times a week in an attempt to get a ball or frozen rubber disk over a line. That would be quite an accomplishment!

They Do ...

It's Called a TANK!!!!

Just Try, Getting your Hands on One, though ...

__________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

The catch there is your "car" would have to have almost all its parts replaced with brand new ones every few years, with the primary exception of the computer and its connective wiring. Plus sometimes one of those attempts "to get a ball or frozen rubber disk over a line" will result in a non-repairable condition and the "car" is scrapped.

__________________
A person's name, or a mark representing it, as signed personally or by deputy, as in subscribing a letter or other document.

The redefinition of science is probably one of the more disturbing parts. I only have two thoughts about that (so far):

1) It's a not-so-subtle door opening for other ludicrous "theories" to be proposed for equal time in the classroom.

2) One of the big points the ID proponents pushed was that ID was science. Either this redefinition is a bullet to their own foot, or it's just icing on their cake.

This is truly sad, sad news...

It depends on which designer you refer to, and that assumes there was not more than one, which is not a given.

Whoever designed me left me with poor eyesight, arthritis, soft teeth, tonsils that swell up, an appendix just waiting to want out, wisdom teeth that had to be yanked, and a bad attitude.

Lay your palm flat on a table, fingers spread. You can lift any of the five fingers off the table while the rest remain flat. Now curl the middle finger under all the way. Now try lifting your ring finger. You can't. Who designed that?

I disagree.
--I don't live in Kansas right now, but who knows, I could someday. I wouldn't want to raise my kids in a place that teaches ID.
--The kids who do grow up in Kansas with that education are going to take jobs and raise kids in all states of the union. They won't be confined to Kansas.
--The state I'm in now might not be my state this time next year. So maybe I shouldn't write a letter to the school board here, because I won't be raising any kids here, right? Wrong. I have friends who will raise kids here. My niece and future nieces/nephews will go to school here. So I'll write a letter to the school board here.
--I grew up in Michigan. I have a lot of family raising kids there. I should write a letter to their board too.

I'm not being sarcastic here. We should all consider this--start by writing Kansas since they have already made the decision. Then write your own state and any state you might have an interest in the educational system.

If hoards of out-of-staters write letters, maybe they will start to see the light. Not guaranteed, but like I said, all it costs you is some time and a stamp!

And that is exactly why ID cannot be considered science. Science says "Why is that appendix there? What does it do? If it doesn't do anything, how did it get there in the first place? " ID would simply say, "Oh, well, we can't know that because the designer put it there and we have no way of knowing why." ID does not further the search for knowledge. It stops it dead in it's tracks whenever any question comes up that doesn't fit into the idea an all-powerful, all-knowing designer. If science were like ID, we'd still be casting out demons instead of removing diseased appendix.

I like the FSM idea. I hope it works.

__________________
"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

When I visited the Big Island of Hawaii, I noticed at various places in Volcano National Park, or along roadsides, little offerings to Pele - usually small pyramids of volcanic stones with flowers or shells on them. These were not historical features, the flowers were fresh. So apparently there are people in Hawaii who still believe this will have an effect on volcanic activity.

I suppose that the Hawaiian Board of Education should start requiring that Pele-ism should be taught along with the theory of plate tectonics in geology classes.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

In my opinion, making lists of 'badly designed' organs is not a good way to reply to ID. There's too much room for subjective evaluation of what is a useful and a useless or disadvantageous trait. Even from a biological point of view, having a certain trait can be an advantage in some environments and conditions, and a disadvantage in other environments and conditions. This is a can of worms.

Arguing that ID is not a theory, just a hypothesis, or that it's not a scientific theory, is also a poor strategy, because those semantic distincions fly over most people's heads. Insisting on them just makes ID critics seem like petty nitpickers who want to reject ID on technicalities.

My advice: focus on the evidence, or lack thereof.

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Then again, they won't look at the evidence. But in my opinion, those that voted for ID to be taught really do know what evolution is and how factual it is; but probably they are just too incompetent to get political gain with facts, and decide to promote the idea of ignoring reality as good. Their job is made much easier when there is the idea around that being right is bad and being wrong is good.

To make things go faster, they should just outlaw teaching evolution as crimethink on the base that it is against The Party and so is doubleplusungood. We all know after all that 2+2=5. (This is not a joke, some people in the past thought that 2+2 was 4, really!)

The latest Skeptical Inquirer makes a point about ID claims that I haven't seen elsewhere. Forgive me if this has been mentioned earlier in this thread, as I haven't read every post. Also, I don't have my copy of SI here so I can't attribute the idea.

The central idea of "Intelligent Design" is that living things include mechanisms that could not have evolved, so must have been designed. These are described as "irreducibly complex" mechanisms -- that is, if you remove or alter any of their component parts, they would no longer function and therefore could not have evolved from anything simpler. The canonical example is the flagellum; remove any of its components and the bacterium is unable to move.

But this claim, it turns out, is its own counterargument. Any engineer will tell you that an irreducibly complex design (by that definition) is less than ideal. It reduces the design's robustness and reliability. If you have a critical function in your design, you want to make sure it's not compromised by the failure of a single component.

In other words, irreducible complexity is evidence against the existence of an intelligent designer! The ID argument fails by its own internal "logic".

Not that this is likely to sway anyone on the Kansas school board...

__________________
Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

FSM?

__________________
If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

That is brilliant. So, we've proven that the Apollo spacecraft were designed, not evolved.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

rAmen. :P

__________________
The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Right. An overoptimized design contains components that can be described as (in the words of a favorite Firefly episode):

"It's a nothing part until you ain't got one; then it appears to be everything."

Maybe Serenity's engine was designed by a computer running an evolutionary algorithm!

__________________
Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Exactly - ID's basic premis is that ignorance is bliss. "We cannot know the answer, so why bother looking?"

Back to the subject of polls - most of the media polls are unscientific to begin with - you go to the pollster and answer. Ergo, the only people who vote are those with a significant bias. Scientific polls use a random statistical selection of the entire population. (Nielson does this, for example). They call YOU...
Further, without knowing A) the actual questions asked, B) the demographics of the voting body, and C) seeing the raw data, polls are meaningless. Samuel Clemmens was right:: there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.

On another idea, I've not seen anybody compare ID-ologists (should that not be ID-iots??) to the Ohio legislature (I think it was Ohio) of about 100 years ago - decided that PI was legally exactly equal to 3.

I *am* writing letters, but not yet to the state school board - I'm starting with the legislature and the governor. I'm asking them to take the opposite stance - rather than 'not teach' ID-iotism, I'm asking that they make it illegal to teach it. I agree 100% with those that point out that it's a religious belief and as such has absolutely no place in our school curriculum.

Now, if I can just manage it without getting to angry I froth at the mouth

---------------

ID is in itself the biggist argument against ID. What kind of superbeing would design people so stupid?

I wouldn't recommend it, personally. It's a rather insulting and Ad Hominem term, no matter what you think about those that are for Intelligent Design. This is not an "us vs. them" scenario. The point is to attack the arguments put forth in Intelligent Design. I personally would not stand to be called an "Evil-utionist", and I would hope that someone would be called on that insult towards me.

However, according to the idea of Fair Play, the moderators should not be expected to accept one insult, and not another, purely on the basis of "sides". That's detrimental to argument, and does turn it into "Us vs. Them" - which is contrary to the ideas of this board

Edited for clarity.

__________________
There are few left who
Stare at the skies with wonder
Wishing to know more;
The clouds still drift by above
But the eyes below are blind.
--Laura Lundberg

Check out my writing, maybe.

I disagree. I think their point is more along the lines of:

1) "The theory of evolution is full of holes, therefore it's just as good as creationism."

2) "We have proof that something as complex as nature couldn't have occurred without a designer."

__________________
"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

It was the state of Indiana that almost legislated the value of pi to 3.2. The Bible gives the value of pi as 3, but I have yet to hear of anyone demanding that that be taught as an "alternative theory" of mathematics!

__________________
Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

Are you serious? That's really odd. Why would they do that? Surely not to make calculations easier....to me, using 22/7 could accomplish that much easier...

L8R

Pete

__________________
PJE

There's so much I don't know about astrophysics. I wish I had read that book by that wheelchair guy.