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Originally posted by lemon limeThis is just you comforting yourself. If you genuinely have a case, you could present it and it would stand. Pretending that anyone who disagrees is just picking holes for whatever reasons does not detract from the fact that your case has holes. For this reason, even if RJ mounts a good argument for his claims, I will listen. Whereas you seem to keep coming back to this attack on my personality rather than actually addressing what I have asked.
I wouldn't worry about humy and twhitehead if I were you.
There are about 5 recent outstanding questions I asked you which you have not answered yet you have time to rant about my motives.
Its like RJ and his excuse that he couldn't present any actual arguments because he is not a good typist (despite being one of the most prolific posters).
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Originally posted by lemon limeYou have said nothing to counter argue my two assertions. Instead, you just dish out insults.
You have an opportunity to do more than blow smoke and then declare yourself the winner. As I indicated to twhitehead, I won't nag or pester you if you choose to ignore the real (not the imagined) intelligent design theory. If you choose to continue bullying your way through these arguments then so be it. How you choose to approach this is entirely up to you.
the real (not the imagined) intelligent design theory.
I didn't say “intelligent design”, I said “creationism”. There is a subtle difference between the two albeit a pretty academic one because “intelligent design” is something that pretends to be part of science but usually albeit not necessarily always has a primary creationist agenda behind it for it is normally just the promotion of religion in disguise.
So, just TELL us then, what IS the “real” intelligent design theory and how does it differ from the way I think it does? (which, by the way, I didn't describe, because, as I said, I said “creationism” and NOT “intelligent design” in that post and you cannot read my mind so you cannot know from that post what I think ID is) .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design
“...the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection …
….Scientific acceptance of Intelligent Design would require redefining science to allow supernatural explanations of observed phenomena, ….”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intelligent+design
“....
Intelligent design
noun
the theory that the universe and living things were designed and created by the purposeful action of an intelligent agent. Abbreviation: ID Compare scientific creationism.
...”
Well, the above two definitions fits with what I thought “intelligent design” was. Are the two above definitions just “imagined” intelligent design theory? If yes, then please TELL us the correct definition and tell us how it defers from the above definitions. If no, then, contrary to what you say, I didn't merely “imagined” a intelligent design theory.
Actually, although that argument I gave in that post was not exactly to be applied to ID, the last part of it can be adapted against ID for Occam's razor works against it.
Originally posted by lemon limeI am going through the article.
http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm
[qute]Does, for instance, a computer program, call it A, by outputting some data, call the data B, generate new information? Computer programs are fully deterministic, and so B is fully determined by A. It follows that P(B|A) = 1, and thus I(B|A) = 0 (the logarithm of 1 is always 0). From Formula (*) it therefore follows that I(A&B) = I(A), and therefore that the amount of information in A and B jointly is no more than the amount of information in A by itself.[/quote]
I think he is making an error here. His conclusion is that information cannot be generated by a deterministic process like a computer program. This is in fact false. The error he makes is that he defines information as the probability that something could happen, so when a computer program is deterministic, only one result is possible for a given input. Therefore the probability of a given output is the same as the probability of a given input. His error is in not recognising that the output of the computer program is in a new sample space. Given a different program, the output would be different. So the output is determined by both the input and the program and the possible outputs are the number of possibly programs times the number of possible inputs.
To give an example, suppose I have a program that giving the input '1' outputs a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare, and given the input '0' outputs The Lord of the Rings. Clearly the program is fully deterministic and there probability of each output is the same as the probability of each input, but the claim is that 0 and 1 contain the same amount of information as the complete works of Shakespere and The Lord of the Rings put together. Clearly it is a false claim.
If you are able to address this concern, I will continue to read.
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Originally posted by KazetNagorraIn that case, there is no way for a non-metaphysical designer (yourself for example) to do anything but concoct some arbitrary and nonsensical story to explain how you were able to design something. Try taking credit for an apparent design you can't actually prove was designed using your own reasoning, and see just how far you are able get with that.
It's not hard to come up with an arbitrary formula. It's a rather feeble attempt to lend scientific credence to intelligent design. To empirically test such a formula, we would have to look at what intelligent designer are designing - an impossibility since the designer is metaphysical (unless we a priori assume that life on Earth was designed, in which case the argument becomes circular).
Nice try, but passing this off to a metaphysical designer who can't be proven to exist through natural science in order to support your argument really doesn't work. Anytime you guys run into trouble with an idea that contradicts your paradigm you inevitably try pawning it off into the metaphysical realm.
Originally posted by twhiteheadSpecified information (SI) is what you would expect to find in the formation of tornados and crystals. Complex specified information (CSI) is what you find when mulitiple units of SI formed systems will themselves form larger and more complex systems, and all working in tantum with one another. But even that explanation is a bit of an oversimplification, when you consider those same complex systems working in tantum with other complex systems to form an even larger (and more complex) system. Human organs are an example of complex information systems working in tantum with other CSI systems (other organs) to form another higher and more complex functioning system.
I will wait to see if you can find it. The quotes you have given so far have no specific formula, only vagueness.
I still want you to answer my question as to whether the formula will enable me to determine whether the origin of a foot print is intelligent design.
You are an example of those multiple compilations of increasingly built complex systems, all built from other complex systems and on down until you reach what can be defined simply as being specified information systems... the SI level is where you will find the self organizing part of it, but you won't find these same simple self organizational properties in the higher systems of your own construction.
SI systems by themselves don't show certain re-occurring patterns or results, such as the possibility of a tornado creating a dam in a small creek. I can imagine this happening as the result of a tornado passing through, but I can't imagine a tornado consistently building dams every time a tornado forms. You can't say the same of living organisms, because the level of function and complexity is so high and regularly seen there is no way it could consistently occur by chance. The same is true of lower life forms... the complexity of one single cell cannot be adequately explained in terms of specified information alone, either now or when the first cell was purportedly formed by purely random chance actions.
Whether you like it or not, it can't hurt for you to understand what Dembski is saying and what his theory actually is. If you want to argue effectively against any theory, you should at least understand what that theory is and what it says.
Originally posted by twhiteheadTwo copies of the same play by Shakespeare contain the same information, not a copy of something by Shakespeare and a copy of Lord of the Rings. I didn't look at that part in any great detail, but even I know it wasn't talking about different stories containing the same information.
I am going through the article.
[qute]Does, for instance, a computer program, call it A, by outputting some data, call the data B, generate new information? Computer programs are fully deterministic, and so B is fully determined by A. It follows that P(B|A) = 1, and thus I(B|A) = 0 (the logarithm of 1 is always 0). From Formula (*) it therefore follows ...[text shortened]... ly it is a false claim.
If you are able to address this concern, I will continue to read.
I doubt it would benefit you to continue reading more of that paper, given your propensity for re-writing and changing what the author says. You've done this with me as well. I don't intend for you to keep me busy correcting your reading errors, so either stop with the games and get it right or you can forget about me responding to you. Then you can dance around the fire and yet again claim victory... for chasing another opponent away with your nonsense and lies. This is the reason why Kelly gave up talking to you, and it's why I will too if it continues.
Originally posted by lemon limeI thought that was a reasonable point by twhitehead, you should attempt to deal with it properly. You've got a point though, physicists have this notion of conservation of information, for fairly difficult to explain reasons I don't believe. The reason for my skepticism is that all other conservation laws are due to symmetries (Noether's theorem) but I really don't see what symmetry (in quantum theory) conserves information.
Two copies of the same play by Shakespeare contain the same information, not a copy of something by Shakespeare and a copy of Lord of the Rings. I didn't look at that part in any great detail, but even I know it wasn't talking about different stories containing the same information.
I doubt it would benefit you to continue reading more of that p ...[text shortened]... is is the reason why Kelly gave up talking to you, and it's why I will too if it continues.
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Originally posted by DeepThoughtYou're right... I should have just said Bool Sheet and left it at that. I learned shortly after I first starting posting here that this debate has been going on for about 10 years. That alone tells me a lot about how things work (or don't work) here. If twhitehead wants to focus exclusively on supporting reasoning that lead up to Dembskis main points he's free to do so... and all I need to do is to wait until he never gets to the meat of the matter.
...you should attempt to deal with it properly.
Like I said before, Dembski is one of those guys who leaves no stone unturned, but I think he may be trying to answer more questions than he needs to. It seems he is trying to overcome objections before objections are raised, so as to not waste time explaining it again later on. This works for people genuinely interested in what he has to say, but it also works for numbnuts who go in looking for potential problems to exploit. In other words, the more you give 'em the more they can find wrong with it. Based on my own conversations with twhitehead, I have a pretty good idea what to expect from his analysis of Dembski.
Originally posted by humyYour dependence on wikipedia is pathetic. If you wanted to know what ID is you would have gone to a real source, and not try to use wikipedia as your authoritative source.
You have said nothing to counter argue my two assertions. Instead, you just dish out insults.the real (not the imagined) intelligent design theory.
I didn't say “intelligent design”, I said “creationism”. There is a subtle difference between the two albeit a pretty academic one because “intelligent design” is something that pretends to ...[text shortened]... ed to ID, the last part of it can be adapted against ID for Occam's razor works against it.
Before the internet I had to go looking for books and articles, and then visit various libraries if I couldn't find what I was looking for. I can get more research done online in 20 minutes than I could in 20 days back in them good 'ol days. Maybe you are lazy doing research because you've never had to invest lots of time (not to mention thought) in what you were doing.... just click on wikipedia and let wiki do your thinking for you. So when are you guys going to get off the baby food and start sinking your teeth into some real food?
Dembski:
" ...pure chance, entirely unsupplemented and left to its own devices, is incapable of generating CSI. Chance can generate complex unspecified information, and chance can generate non-complex specified information. What chance cannot generate is information that is jointly complex and specified. "
" Biologists by and large do not dispute this claim. Most agree that pure chance-what Hume called the Epicurean hypothesis-does not adequately explain CSI. Jacques Monod (1972) is one of the few exceptions, arguing that the origin of life, though vastly improbable, can nonetheless be attributed to chance because of a selection effect. Just as the winner of a lottery is shocked at winning, so we are shocked to have evolved. But the lottery was bound to have a winner, and so too something was bound to have evolved. Something vastly improbable was bound to happen, and so, the fact that it happened to us (i.e., that we were selected-hence the name selection effect) does not preclude chance. This is Monod's argument and it is fallacious. It fails utterly to come to grips with specification. Moreover, it confuses a necessary condition for life's existence with its explanation. Monod's argument has been refuted by the philosophers John Leslie (1989), John Earman (1987), and Richard Swinburne (1979). It has also been refuted by the biologists Francis Crick (1981, ch. 7), Bernd-Olaf Küppers (1990, ch. 6), and Hubert Yockey (1992, ch. 9). Selection effects do nothing to render chance an adequate explanation of CSI. "
" Most biologists therefore reject pure chance as an adequate explanation of CSI. The problem here is not simply one of faulty statistical reasoning. Pure chance is also scientifically unsatisfying as an explanation of CSI. To explain CSI in terms of pure chance is no more instructive than pleading ignorance or proclaiming CSI a mystery. It is one thing to explain the occurrence of heads on a single coin toss by appealing to chance. It is quite another, as Küppers (1990, p. 59) points out, to follow Monod and take the view that "the specific sequence of the nucleotides in the DNA molecule of the first organism came about by a purely random process in the early history of the earth." CSI cries out for explanation, and pure chance won't do. As Richard Dawkins (1987, p. 139) correctly notes, "We can accept a certain amount of luck in our [scientific] explanations, but not too much. "
Originally posted by lemon limeSo basically you won't answer my question? Why not?
Whether you like it or not, it can't hurt for you to understand what Dembski is saying and what his theory actually is. If you want to argue effectively against any theory, you should at least understand what that theory is and what it says.
Originally posted by lemon limeSo, tell us, what is ID according to you hand how does it differ from the way I described it?
Your dependence on wikipedia is pathetic. If you wanted to know what ID is you would have gone to a real source, and not try to use wikipedia as your authoritative source.
Before the internet I had to go looking for books and articles, and then visit various libraries if I couldn't find what I was looking for. I can get more research done online ...[text shortened]... guys going to get off the baby food and start sinking your teeth into some real food?
Originally posted by lemon limeGo back and re-read my post. I think you just skimmed over it and answered a question that wasn't there.
Two copies of the same play by Shakespeare contain the same information, not a copy of something by Shakespeare and a copy of Lord of the Rings. I didn't look at that part in any great detail, but even I know it wasn't talking about different stories containing the same information.
I doubt it would benefit you to continue reading more of that paper, given your propensity for re-writing and changing what the author says.
You didn't read what I asked. I quoted the article directly without modification, letter for letter then challenged the claim.
You've done this with me as well. I don't intend for you to keep me busy correcting your reading errors, so either stop with the games and get it right or you can forget about me responding to you. Then you can dance around the fire and yet again claim victory... for chasing another opponent away with your nonsense and lies. This is the reason why Kelly gave up talking to you, and it's why I will too if it continues.
I suspect you simply can't answer my question because you know the author is wrong.
Where did I misquote the author? Where did I misrepresent him in any way?
Reread the article and my post and you will find that it is you that is in error.