IAP Political Forum

(http://www.paulmcelligott.com/images/young-frankenstein.jpg)


A little more difficult then "putting the plus to minus and the minus to plus" but sooooooo much neater.

Let the religon vs. science debate BEGIN!

I think I know how this might play out:

Science: This creation may one day cure cancer or AIDS

Religion: Only God can create life.

Or something along these lines.

It's worth keeping an eye on, but one of the hallmarks of psuedoscience is that the person making the claim uses the media to present the study, or work (a la, Behe and Dembski, and other I.D'ists).

If this guy really had something, you'd expect it to go through an exhausting peer-review process, because he would be interested in the truth, not the shock value.

I will apologize for my lack of faith if it turns out he really has created a new life form.

Oh, that's wonderful. He's taken all the fun out of making a kid.  ;)

Haha. You raise a good point.

We need to learn how to do that in the hood. We need as many soldiers as possible to fight the powers at be, son. (no homo)

I would hate to be a buzz kill but regardless of religion aren't we missing the point that many sci-fi movies have been making?

What if such a life-form

A) mutates into life threatening virus that could inflict damage upon anything within our ecological sphere

or

B) mutates into gargantuan mega-life form that like evolves every half hour and ends up becoming an asexual super being that creates millions of other little half-hour evolving super life forms that puts every human being back into the ironic chains of slavery?  Or worse...we become their food supply...

He is making 1 chromosome, 381 genes, 0.58 Mbp. Human genome has 23 chromosomes,
20 000 genes, 3000 Mbp. Easy to see which that the old technique is more enjoyable (and cheaper).

If he is successful in his ultimate goal, he will have proved that it is possible for an intelligent agent to design and construct life.  And here is the punch line, he will be no closer to explaining how life could have formed and developed by natural processes.

I think what it shows is that an intelligent group of scienctists can mimic and manipulate pre-existing material.  I'm not really sure what Book you are reading that suggests anything more.

We don't need help from this gentleman to show that intelligent designers have no trouble mimicking material cause.  It takes almost no thought to come up with multitudes of examples.  I wonder when someone is going to come forward with an observable and causally complete example of material cause(s) that mimics the design process when the object contains both a high degree of specification and complexity?   For example items like a computer or DNA that contain high entropy information superimposed on a low entropy carrier (encoded deterministic information).

:roll:
ID: Some things appear to be designed and can't be found in Nature.

When found in nature, they are declared to have been Designed.


See the circularity?

When shown an example of "complexity", or your other buzz words, in nature  you declare they can't possibly be found in nature without having been designed.


It appears designed, therefore it is designed, since it appears designed....

RF, I would have thought the last few months of scientific discoveries had made you realize the fatal flaws of ID.  Especially in light of bacterial dna merging with other dna to add massive leaps in the amount of information - something you declared couldn't happen, and yet was discovered.

But, religion is a hard thing to kick, I guess.

In your purposely ill-framed description of course I see the circularity. 

Some things appear designed and contain characteristics that are found in things that are designed.  No items found in nature that have a causally complete history contain these characteristics.  Material mechanisms seem to be incapable of generating things with these characteristics.  Design is easily able to generate these characteristics, therefore it is reasonable to infer design  when we find these characteristics.  Notice here there is no circular argument.


No, the natural world is full of items that contain these markers for design.  What I would like is for someone to describe how material mechanisms could construct something with these markers.  Can anyone come up with even one example of a material process generating new specification and complexity?


Why do you insist on reconstructing your opponents argument?  Why do you hide from the true descriptions?


Is this another one of your false claims?  Since when does copying and recombining DNA generate unique information?   Let's step through this claim of yours and I will be happy to show you where you err.

RF, philosophically, ID is a circular argument.

Premise: Things designed can't be found in nature.
1. We see something that seems complex in nature, so we determine what it has in common with designed things.
2. Once we find the commonalities we can declare it is designed.
Conclusion: Since we can't find designed things in nature, it must have been designed... as we stated in the premise.


Humans are wonderful pattern recognition machines. We can find patterns where there are none. Studies have shown this.  ID is just a continuation of this process.

RF, if your god wanted him to know he did something, he'd let you know in a more classy method, not waiting for 2,000 years of the church killing scientists until they finally can work without fear of religious persecution and then find a little signature in the dna.
This isn't Blade Runner. ;)

Then why must you reframe it in order to make your claim? Let’s deconstruct your reframing once again.


This can’t be the proper premise because ID infers that life is designed.  Therefore ID specifically allows for design in nature.


No,  this is more accurate:

2. When markers for design are found in nature we investigate these markers to see if any material mechanisms can account for them. 
3. We also investigate design processes to better understand the key characteristics of these markers.
4. Through a process of observation and testing we confirm that design processes generate these markers while materialistic mechanisms do not.
5. We investigate the theoretical basis of these markers to better understand why design is capable of generating them and confirm that material mechanisms are not.
6. From this we can infer design whenever these markers are detected.

Conclusion: Since we can't find designed things in nature, it must have been designed... as we stated in the premise.[/quote]

Likewise your conclusion is in error.  Try this one.

Conclusion: We can infer design exists in nature since many things found in nature contain characteristics and configurations that are often present in designed systems and never present in systems known to have materialistic causes.  Furthermore Information theory and probability analysis provides the theoretical basis to tell us why material mechanisms seem incapable of generating such systems.


DNA is a high entropy encoded deterministic instruction set on a low entropy chemical carrier.  Please show us how this is a false pattern.

u have simply rephrased my characterization. same thing.
ID is circular.

I have taken exception to and directly contradicted your proposed premise.  This cannot be described as reframing.

Rf, you started your premise with your conclusion:

"when markers for design are found in nature..."

You have simply determined a "short list" of what designed things have and things that have evolved have in common. YOu have already defined it as designed because you say you recognize it as design.


A leaf on the beach is not a watch, but you find the patterns that make them similar and declare them designed.

I know you can't see that I am right because you have too much invested in Creationism/ID, but trust me, I'm right.


btw, "We can infer design exists in nature since many things found in nature contain characteristics and configurations that are often present in designed systems and never present in systems known to have materialistic causes.  "

but we DO find complex things in nature that aren't designed but do have materialistic causes.

And your conclusion is restating your premise! "we see design in nature, so we can infer design in nature..."

face it, rf, ID is a mess. It's Creationism in a lab coat.

A "marker for design" can just as easily also be a marker for some other characteristic.  It is a description of a particular characteristic not a conclusion.  I am sorry I am imprecise with my language.



Nonsense.  If this were true, you would have no trouble providing a material mechanism that adequately accounts for the characteristics I have previously described.  The reality is that my conclusion is supported by observation of the characteristic, tests and confirmation that design produces these characteristics, tests that demonstrate material processes do not produce these, repeated observations and experiments the confirm the results, and theorems from probability and Information Theory that provide the theoretical basis to demonstrate wh this is the case.


Complexity is not sufficient.  Complexity alone is the not marker I am speaking about.  You know this barney.  You are a fraud.


No the premise is that we see characteristics in nature that can only be explained by design.


Then it would be easy for you to provide an example that falsifies the claim.  I am waiting for that example.

rf, your argument from ignorance is becoming sad. it was once funny.

wouldn't the intellectually honest position from your camp be "some things in nature can only be explained by design... until we actually find out how they were really made."?
since u don't know, u are using the gap inknowledge (one way or another) to insert an answer.
material methods have explained many creationist claims and what is more important, we know material exists, whereas u have to postulate a creator in order to claim things are created.

are u sure u don't understand this?

It is an embarrassment to your materialistic faith that you are unable to produce even one simple example of materialistic mechanisms producing any of these markers.  How about an example of greater than 25 bits of new and original encoded information?  How about you provide even one example of where evolution has produced just one new protein binding site? Humans have thousands that are unique.  Imagine thousands of new ones in a population set presumed to be less than 10 Billion ancestors and now since evolution has been investigated in detail with over a billion, billion, billion, billion organisms studied, evolution has not produced even one and on the basis of the information I presented in the last post, I predict never will.  It is interesting though what we've learned evolution can do.  Evolutionary processes are very proficient at breaking functionality.

barney, is it intellectually more honest to say that until we discover how gravity was formed and how it manifests itself we should refrain from assigning any causes to gravitational pull? 

We do know how new protein binding sites can be designed by genetic engineering.  We know how a high entropy instruction set can be inserted into a low entropy carrier to encode construction and operational procedures.  We know this because we do it routinely.  These things are not gaps.  We know how these things are done.

Game over barney.

YOu are only pointing out complexity, you have not shown one example of where the design is done, and yet many of the examples you Creationists have brought forward have been revealed as by MM's (the eye, the flagellum, lightning, epilepsy, religious experiences, etc.).  Evolution has been proven to happen - even you had to admit it. You are simply falling further and further into one of your self-created gaps. ID is simply defining terms in which it works despite the evidence of things seen.

pretty soon we'll realize what a mistake it was to leave the island.

Neither the vertebrate eye nor does flagellum have a material explanation.  There is no material mechanism known (observed) that could even possibly be capable of generating either of these examples.  Evolutionary processes are completely inadequate.  Evolutionists who say otherwise rely on a series of presupposition and speculative processes that don't seem to occur. Likewise materialists who claim religious experience is a material process lack a process too. 

Evolution has been proven to happen and everytime it does, it breaks functionality in the process of overcoming natural selection forces.  Provide even one example where evolution created new functional protein interactions.

Your problem barney is that there are no examples of things seen when it comes to new designs from material processes.  Evolution is completely incapable creating even one protein-protein interaction and flagellum contains more that sixty.  the vertebrate eye, several hundred.  Show me where I am wrong.

if you claim the mechanisms aren't known, how do you claim it is design?

We know of no materialistic mechanisms but we do know of design mechanisms capable of generating these things.  I return to what I previously said two posts ago:

We do know how new protein binding sites can be designed by genetic engineering.  We know how a high entropy instruction set can be inserted into a low entropy carrier to encode construction and operational procedures.  We know this because we do it routinely.  These things are not gaps.  We know how these things are done.

I wasn't aware that you knew ALL the mechanical mechanisms that occur.  Since we know MM's exist, but your Great Designer doesn't, you are adding an unnecessary explanation into the gap.

You will retreat to say "we know design exists" but you are smuggling in a concept by saying it.

We know material beings design, and why, but we know of no method that intelligence can exist without a material body (brain).  (You agree with me, right, that we know material exists but not your designer?)

You are smuggling in the concept that intelligence can exist outseide of material mechanisms.

If you aren't (and retreat further), and claim that you MIGHT be talking about an alien intelligence that created us, you simply pushing everything back one step (since how did the aliens get so intelligent without evolution - or a god).

Either way, your whole concept - all of ID - is based on a logical fallacy that it can't recover from. You don't know, we don't know how everything happened, but we do know that material mechanisms can account for all the diversity in life and the formation of the universe.