← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Valley Forge
Thread ID: 13637 | Posts: 19 | Started: 2004-05-10
2004-05-10 01:47 | User Profile
Christian skeptics have long realized that the raving, incoherent, borderline psychosis one sees in certain segments of the scientific community when cherished dogmas like the theory of evolution are questioned was indicative of serious problems within the profession. The Darwinist Richard Dawkins, for instance, once characterized "evolution" skeptics as "stupid," "ignorant," "insane," or "wicked." And as anyone who has ever debated the "Holocaust" can attest, this kind of vile rhetoric is not generally used by people who are motivated by the disinterested pursuit of truth. Now a major secular scientist has come forward and confirmed what many of us Christians have suspected for quite some time now: That the scientific establishment's "peer review process," as it is used in evaluating radical or controversial ideas, is not being used to ensure quality and weed out crack pot ideas, but rather to enfore orthodoxy. Luckily for Tipler, he's a secular figure, so he should be fairly well innoculated against the fallacious accusation that he's pushing a religious agenda in the same way that writers like Chomsky and Shahak by virtue of being Jewish are innoculated against charges of anti-Semitism.
[COLOR=Blue][SIZE=5]Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?[/SIZE][/COLOR]
Frank J. Tipler Professor of Mathematical Physics Tulane University New Orleans, LA 70118 USA [email]tipler@tulane.edu[/email]
Introduction
I first became aware of the importance that many non-elite scientists place on ââ¬Åpeerreviewedââ¬Â or ââ¬Årefereedââ¬Â journals when Howard Van Till, a theistic evolutionist, said my book The Physics of Immortality was not worth taking seriously because the ideas it presented had never appeared in refereed journals. Actually, the ideas in that book had already appeared in refereed journals. The papers and the refereed journals wherein they appeared were listed at the beginning of my book.
My key predictions of the top quark mass (confirmed) and the Higgs boson mass (still unknown) even appeared in the pages of Nature, the most prestigious refereed science journal in the world. But suppose Van Till had been correct and that my ideas had never been published in referred journals.
Would he have been correct in saying that, in this case, the ideas need not be taken seriously?
To answer this question, we first need to understand what the ââ¬Åpeer reviewââ¬Â process is.
That is, we need to understand how the process operates in theory, how it operates in practice, what it is intended to accomplish, and what it actually does accomplish in practice. Also of importance is its history. The notion that a scientific idea cannot be considered intellectually respectable until it has first appeared in a ââ¬Åpeerââ¬Â reviewed journal did not become widespread until after World War II.
Copernicusââ¬â¢s heliocentric system, Galileoââ¬â¢s mechanics, Newtonââ¬â¢s grand synthesisââ¬âthese ideas never appeared first in journal articles. They appeared first in books, reviewed prior to publication only by the authors or by the authorsââ¬â¢ friends. Even Darwin never submitted his idea of evolution driven by natural selection to a journal to be judged by ââ¬Åimpartialââ¬Â referees. Darwinism indeed first appeared in a journal, but one under the control of Darwinââ¬â¢s friends. And Darwinââ¬â¢s article was completely ignored. Instead, Darwin made his ideas known to his peers and to the world at large through a popular book: On the Origin of Species.
I shall argue that prior to the Second World War the refereeing process, even where it existed, had very little effect on the publication of novel ideas, at least in the field of physics. But in the last several decades, many outstanding scientists have complained that their best ideasââ¬â the very ideas that brought them fameââ¬âwere rejected by the refereed journals. Thus, prior to the Second World War, the refereeing process worked primarily to eliminate crackpot papers.
[COLOR=Red][B][SIZE=4]Today, the refereeing process works primarily to enforce orthodoxy. I shall offer evidence that ââ¬Åpeerââ¬Â review is not peer review: the referee is quite often not as intellectually able as the author whose work he judges. We have pygmies standing in judgment on giants. I shall offer suggestions on ways to correct this problem, which, if continued, may seriously impede, if not stop, the advance of science.[/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]
Source:
[url]http://www.iscid.org/papers/Tipler_PeerReview_070103.pdf[/url]
2004-05-10 01:52 | User Profile
In light of Tipler's claims, it's highly ironic that ID proponents and Creationists are often accused of wanting to bring science to a stand still. It's a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black.
2004-05-10 02:22 | User Profile
Admittedly, Tipler does have some strange ideas. Apparently, Tipler believes that we'll all eventually be resurrected in the mind of a super-intelligent computer. Not that I understand any of it, but here is an outline of his proof:
Astrophysical black holes almost certainly exist, but Hawking has shown that if black holes are allowed to exist for unlimited proper time, then they will completely evaporate, and unitarity will be violated.
Thus unitarity requires that the universe must cease to exist after finite proper time, which implies that the universe has the spatial topology of a three-sphere.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics says the amount of entropy in the universe cannot decrease, but it can be shown that the amount of entropy already in the CBR will eventually contradict the Bekenstein Bound near the final singularity unless there are no event horizons, since in the presence of horizons the Bekenstein Bound implies the universal entropy S is less that a constant times the radius of the universe squared, and general relativity requires the radius to go to zero at the final singularity.
The absence of event horizons by definition means that the universe's future c-boundary is a single point, call it the Omega Point.
MacCallum has shown that a three-sphere closed universe with a single point future c-boundary is of measure zero in initial data space.
Barrow has shown that the evolution of a three-sphere closed universe into its final singularity is chaotic.
Yorke has shown that a chaotic physical system is likely to evolve into a measure zero state if and only if its control parameters are intelligently manipulated. Thus life (which near the final state, is really collectively intelligent computers) almost certainly must be present arbitrarily close to the final singularity in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent at all times.
Misner has shown in effect that event horizon elimination requires an infinite number of distinct manipulations, so an infinite amount of information must be processed between now and the final singularity.
The amount of information stored at any given time diverges to infinity as the Omega Point is approached, since the entropy diverges to infinity there, implying divergence of the complexity of the system that must be understood to be controlled.
Life transferring its information to a medium that can withstand the arbitrarily high temperatures near the final singularity has several implications:
first, (Omega-naught - 1) is between a millionth and a thousandth, where Omega-naught is the density parameter,
and second, the Standard Model Higgs boson mass must be 220 plus or minus 20 GeV
[url]http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/[/url]
2004-05-10 05:27 | User Profile
In this sense, the peer review is like a reflection of the biological "natural selection" process in the way that it actually works - not creating anything truly new, but only working on the material it already possesses, plus weeding out novel innovations, being an essentially CONSERVATIVE system.
Give us more material on this theme, Valley! :thumbsup:
Petr
2004-05-10 07:01 | User Profile
Today, science is ruled by corporate funding, and the humanities (along with any part of science touching on race or gender) are ruled by neo-Marxists and their ideological allies. It is a 'conservative' system in the same way that Stalin's was.
Of course, there is a lot of money to be made from truth. The market will correct the journals that become too self-serving. As for the humanities -- political action is needed, or its threat. We cannot continue with the current levels of funding for neo-Marxists and soul-less scientism, in light of the levels of funding going to right-wing thinkers.
The academicians will see the writing on the wall, given that most care very little about politics, and more about being politically correct. The hardcore left on campus will lose out to administrators wanting to make sure that the more conservative and/or 'patriotic' voters/politicians out there don't strip their funding to the bone.
2004-05-10 15:32 | User Profile
Does anyone know of a good scientific study on the health benefits of water-only fasting? Because no corporation can make money off of fasting, probably not.
Even though the government uses billions of tax dollars every year for medical research, a researcher wanting to research something that is not Politically Correct is going to find his grant money vanishing and his access to government labs denied. There needs to be some criteria to prevent the frivolous use of taxpayer money, but this creates a convenient tool to keep researchers in line, even if there still is a lot of frivolous research going on.
For a good example of peer review censorship, read Robert Gentry's book Creation's Tiny Mystery. He documents that he had a research paper rejected in peer-review and a reviewer says the paper is technically competent, but explicitly explained that part of the scientific method is to context scientific findings in the established scientific paradigm (Politically Correct). Once he removed his interpretation, his paper was published (thus proving the quality of the work as not in question).
[I]Scientific American[/I], a (non-peer review) magazine infamous for censorship, especially in regards to hiring Forrest Mims, has ironically published several articles on censorship in the scientific establishment.
All this should be understood. Someone who defines questioning orthodoxy as anti-science would censor, especially if they have a religious attachment to that orthodoxy.
2004-05-10 18:13 | User Profile
There are actually many secular scientists who are upset with the scientific publishing establishment. The review process generally works fairly well, but there's more than a grain of truth that sometimes genuinely good research gets rejected. When that happens, however, there's usually another journal that will publish the paper and disseminate it.
I have contributed to a number of published papers myself, but I was never the "head researcher" who actually submitted the paper, so I'm not entirely familiar with the process. But what I do know is that rejection by a publication on scientific grounds, in order to be fair, needs to be accompanied by a explanation about what was wrong with the paper. Simply saying "Too many scientists would disagree with this" is itself bad science. Nothing is ever considered to be totally proven in the world of science; there are only progressive degrees of certainty (the exceptions are in mathematics and in logic, where absolute proofs are routine).
In my opinion, a bigger problem with the scientific publishing establishment is the sheer expense of subscriptions to major scientific journals. It's gotten to the point where only universities and government-funded research labs can afford to buy access to several journals, and that keeps independent researchers in the dark about a lot of what's going on in science. Fortunately, there is a small but growing movement to counteract this that makes use of the Internet. An increasing number of major journals beginning to offer their archives (all but the most recent editions) free of charge, and some journals are being founded that are entirely free. For example, take a look at this:
[url]http://www.library.unr.edu/ejournals/free.html[/url]
2004-05-11 02:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Now a major secular scientist has come forward and confirmed what many of us Christians have suspected for quite some time now.That the scientific establishment's "peer review process," as it is used in evaluating radical or controversial ideas, is not being used to ensure quality and weed out crack pot ideas, but rather to enfore orthodoxy. [/QUOTE]
Yeah, like only Christians have argued this. It would have helped your attempt to piggyback this essay into something it isn't had the word "God" appeared anywhere in it.
The major dilemna for modern science is less peer-review that a tug of war between decadent academia and an ever more aggressively dehumanized capitalism for who gets to determine the course of research & development. Whoever wins, humanity loses. [I]Race doesn't exist[/I], or [I]enriched edible foam to feed the poor[/I]. I'm sure there are many credible researchers and scientists who know full well that one is nonsense and the other's just evil, but who choose discretion over valor every time (given that those who opt for valor are often ignored or death or simply discredited).
2004-05-11 02:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]It would have helped your attempt to piggyback this essay into something it isn't had the word "God" appeared anywhere in it.
And it would have helped your attempt to accuse me of implicit dishonesty had you actually bothered to read the article.
It is customary, you know, to read the article before commenting.
Good grief, IR, what is it with you atheists? Whenever a Christian makes an argument, your radar goes up, and you become super skeptical -- skeptical of both the writer's reasoning and motives.
Where's that same skepticism when people start talking about chimps and humans having "common ancestors"?
Are atheists really so desperate to believe that Christians are the fools you take them for that you look for reasons to be skeptical even when none exist?
This is what the author has to say about God and censorship within the scientific establisment later in the article:
The most radical ideas are those that are perceived to support religion, specifically Judaism and Christianity. When I was a student at MIT in the late 1960s, I audited a course in cosmology from the physics Nobelist Steven Weinberg. He told his class that of the theories of cosmology, he preferred the Steady State Theory because ââ¬Åit least resembled the account in Genesisââ¬Â (my emphasis). In his book The First Three Minutes (chapter 6), Weinberg explains his earlier rejection of the Big Bang Theory: ââ¬Å[O]ur mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. Even worse, there often seems to be a general agreement that certain phenomena are just not fit subjects for respectable theoretical and experimental effort.ââ¬Â I have now known Weinberg for over thirty years, and I know that he has always taken the equations of physics very seriously indeed. He and I are both convinced that the equations of 8 physics are the best guide to reality, especially when the predictions of these equations are contrary to common sense. But as he himself points out in his book, the Big Bang Theory was an automatic consequence of standard thermodynamics, standard gravity theory, and standard nuclear physics. All of the basic physics one needs for the Big Bang Theory was well established in the 1930s, some two decades before the theory was worked out. Weinberg rejected this standard physics not because he didnââ¬â¢t take the equations of physics seriously, but because he did not like the religious implications of the laws of physics. [B][COLOR=Red]A recent poll of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, published in Scientific American, indicated that more than ninety percent are atheists. These men and women have built their entire worldview on atheism. They would be exceedingly reluctant to admit that any result of science could be valid if it even suggested that God could exist. [/COLOR][/B]
I discovered this the hard way when I published my book The Physics of Immortality. The entire book is devoted to describing what the known laws of physics predict the far future of the universe will be like. Not once in the entire book do I use anything but the known physical laws, the laws of physics that are in all the textbooks, and which agree with all experiments conducted to date. [B][COLOR=Red]Unfortunately, in the book I gave reasons for believing that the final state of the universeââ¬âa state outside of space and time, and not materialââ¬âshould be identified with the Judeo-Christian God. (It would take a book to explain why!) My scientific colleagues, atheists to a man, were outraged. Even though the theory of the final state of the universe involved only known physics, my fellow physicists refused even to discuss the theory. If the known laws of physics imply that God exists, then in their opinion, this can only mean that the laws of physics have to be wrong.[/COLOR][/B] This past September, at a conference held at Windsor Castle, I asked the wellknown cosmologist Paul Davies what he thought of my theory. He replied that he could find nothing wrong with it mathematically, but he asked what justified my assumption that the known laws of physics were correct. At the same conference, the famous physicist Freeman Dyson refused to discuss my theoryââ¬âperiod.
2004-05-11 02:49 | User Profile
Professor Frank Tipler:
This past September, at a conference held at Windsor Castle, I asked the well known cosmologist Paul Davies what he thought of my theory. He replied that he could find nothing wrong with it mathematically, but he asked what justified my assumption that the known laws of physics were correct. At the same conference, the famous physicist Freeman Dyson refused to discuss my theoryââ¬âperiod
Truly pathetic responses.
And just think -- Davies and Dyson are major figures at the top of their fields.
It would probably be easier to get Ernst Zundel a regular column in Newsweek than to get the scientific community to give ID a fair hearing.
Sooner or later, however, as the case against Darwinism becomes more mainstream, the rats are bound to abandon the sinking ship.
2004-05-12 11:08 | User Profile
Now, now, simmer down, VF! I did read the article. I realize my comment didn't address it directly, but unfortunately I got swept up in this Triskelion nonsense for the past few days and momentarily forgot about this thread.
The corrupt peer-review process actually , though, does have a commonality with Creationism (or at least my objections to it) in that first a conclusion is arrived at and then one works backwards from there, seeking only data to support the conclusion while 'interpreting' contrary data into unimportance.
If 'enforcing orthodoxy' at the expense of credible contrary evidence is a sin, then it is a universal sin - applicable to not just this or that orthodoxy (that offends or enrages you) but to [I]all [/I] of them - including the ones you endorse.
2004-05-12 20:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]Once again, I fail to see how "a higher intelligence exists" (an unproven but nonetheless intellectually defensible claim) proves the Genesis Creation myth true any more than it proves the creation myth of the Navajo Indians to be true. Precisely.
I personally am undecided about the existence of a Creator who transcends our universe. Something has to be self-existent; that much is certain. So either our universe (with all its physical laws) is self-existent, or something else that is self-existent created it. If strong evidence is ever shown for the latter, then that will be undeniably fascinating, but it will not prove any particular religious belief.
...not many people consider, "We don't understand how this works or how it came about, so let's just say someone waved a magic wand and it was all here and be done with it" to be valid scientific research.[/QUOTE]That's right. Science is DEFINED -- at least implicitly, if not explicitly -- as the search for natural explanations of observed phenomena. Anything involving the supernatural is not science. The easiest possible way to explain an observed phenomenon is to say: "God (or the Devil) did it -- end of story." When you do that, you're giving up.
Back in the Middle Ages, epileptics and people afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome were seen in a very different light as compared with modern times. The Church authorities of the Middle Ages already knew what was causing the bizarre behavior, tics, and convulsions of these and related illnesses: demonic possession. They didn't think the problem was demons; they KNEW it was demons. After all, demons are portrayed in the Bible as causing the very same sort of symptoms that epileptics and Tourette's sufferers are known for. That was all the proof the Church needed. Exorcisms were attempted, and they inevitably failed. The "cure" at that point was often to burn the victims at the stake as witches.
Fortunately for people afflicted with illnesses of every variety, some people weren't satisfied with the "God (or Satan) did it" catch-all line. Some people wanted to find out if there was a natural explanation. It took time, but they found it. Now there are drugs that can help most illnesses, and new ones continue to be developed by "evil atheists" for the benefit of humanity.
This is why science NEVER allows supernatural explanations to suffice as an explanation of any phenomena. If scientists can't find a natural explanation for certain observations, then they simply keep trying until they do. If they never find it, then they never find it, but they don't give up and say "God did it," regardless of the possibility that God did, in fact, do it. Anything that seeks a supernatural explanation is not science. It's religion.
2004-05-13 01:39 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]If Cosmologists want to equate a nomothetic (law-driven) Universe and its transcendent laws with an abstract God that is one thing. To me it makes much more sense to equate the laws of the universe with Platonic Ideas or the Kantian "Thing in Itself" (as Roger Penrose and other cosmologists do)
I don't know that Tipler is merely "equating" transcendent laws with God. Tipler's claim is that the known laws of physics point to the existence of an omniscient self-aware entity. This makes Tipler's theory very different from Plato's Theory of the Forms. Plato's transcedent forms comprise Ultimate Reality, but they don't have anthropomorphic qualities like consciousness or self-awareness.. Tipler's "God" in contrast is self aware, has omniscient knowledge, and uses that omniscient knowledge.
It is one thing to admit that there is some transcendental organization to the universe, it is a huge leap from that to "proving" any particular creation myth to be true.
Of course. And, so far as I can tell, no one here is making that leap. Most Christians that bother with these issues, from St Thomas Aquinas forward, understand the obvious and elementary logical difference between proving that God exists and proving that the Christian God exists.
To equate them with a "Judeo-Christian" God is something else entirely. It would mean justifying the creation myth of the Israelites, i.e. an earth and universe less than 6000 years old created in 7 days. Considering that there are trees that are older than that, they have their work cut out for them. Once again, I fail to see how "a higher intelligence exists" (an unproven but nonetheless intellectually defensible claim) proves the Genesis Creation myth true any more than it proves the creation myth of the Navajo Indians to be true.
There's actually a name for the theory you're describing. It's called Young Earth Creationism. It's called that so that it can be distinguished from Old Earth Creationism. Contrary to your statement, not all Christians interpret the Bible as literally as you suggest. Old Earth Creationists, for example, believe that the Christian God created the universe in six days, but that those six days represent discrete periods of an unspecified duration. S your statement is incorrect, because evidence that suggests a higher intelligence exists is perfectly compatible with what you dismiss as the Genesis myth as long as one discards a literal reading of the Bible.
Also, let me say in passing that while I am not a YECer at this time, I am also not arrogant enough to entirely rule out the possiblity that the universe may actually be less than 10,000 years old. There are physicists out there right now, and I can link in their work if necessary, that have begun to theorize that the speed of light may be variable ââ¬â that is, not a constant. And if the speed of light is variable, all bets are off: the standard cosmological models that call for an immensely old universe would be overturned immediately.
So before we laugh off the YECers, let's wait and see what the evidence ultimatlely tells us. And if it turns out that speed of light is not variable, them skeptics like yourself and Angler will still have to deal with the OEC fallback position.
Probably this is due to the fact that not many people consider, "We don't understand how this works or how it came about, so let's just say someone waved a magic wand and it was all here and be done with it" to be valid scientific research.
Obviously, this is a ridiculous caricature of Behe's position. Behe's actual claim is that the classic Darwinian mechanism of Random Mutation/Natural Selection cannot in principle explain the emergence of Irreducibly Complex structures like the bacterial flagellum. It just can't do it. Or, at least there is no evidence in the scientific literature that shows it can do it. Yet people continue to believe without a SHRED of evidence in the MYTH that the flagellum evolved.
Once you really begin to think about it, it becomes clear very quickly just how absurd this whole concept of RM & NS really is.
Putting aside the abiogenesis problem that Darwinists have been unable to solve so far, how many mutations does it would take to go from a single celled organism to say -- a Blue Whale? Billions? Trillions?
Is that even possible? According to the Darwin party, yes, of course it's possible! It happens all the time thanks to random mutations and natural selection.
So if you want to reduce IC to a soundbite, it would be better to say: ââ¬ÅIC structures exist. The Darwinian mechanism of RM & NS cannot explain the emergence of IC structures. So Darwinism must be false.ââ¬Â
And before you tell me to give ID a fair hearing, I have. I've read Behe and this is exactly what his arguments boil down to (as I pointed out in another thread, it's the same argument that creationists used about the camera eye and mammalian ear and have largely abandoned now that we understand eye/ear development and have a coherent line of likely precursors).[/QUOTE]
Is this a concession that there is zero in the scientific literature showing how the flagellum could have evolved? ;-)
2004-05-13 01:54 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]Precisely.
I personally am undecided about the existence of a Creator who transcends our universe. Something has to be self-existent; that much is certain. So either our universe (with all its physical laws) is self-existent, or something else that is self-existent created it. If strong evidence is ever shown for the latter, then that will be undeniably fascinating, but it will not prove any particular religious belief.
That's right. Science is DEFINED -- at least implicitly, if not explicitly -- as the search for natural explanations of observed phenomena. Anything involving the supernatural is not science. The easiest possible way to explain an observed phenomenon is to say: "God (or the Devil) did it -- end of story." When you do that, you're giving up.
Back in the Middle Ages, epileptics and people afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome were seen in a very different light as compared with modern times. The Church authorities of the Middle Ages already knew what was causing the bizarre behavior, tics, and convulsions of these and related illnesses: demonic possession. They didn't think the problem was demons; they KNEW it was demons. After all, demons are portrayed in the Bible as causing the very same sort of symptoms that epileptics and Tourette's sufferers are known for. That was all the proof the Church needed. Exorcisms were attempted, and they inevitably failed. The "cure" at that point was often to burn the victims at the stake as witches.
Fortunately for people afflicted with illnesses of every variety, some people weren't satisfied with the "God (or Satan) did it" catch-all line. Some people wanted to find out if there was a natural explanation. It took time, but they found it. Now there are drugs that can help most illnesses, and new ones continue to be developed by "evil atheists" for the benefit of humanity.
This is why science NEVER allows supernatural explanations to suffice as an explanation of any phenomena. If scientists can't find a natural explanation for certain observations, then they simply keep trying until they do. If they never find it, then they never find it, but they don't give up and say "God did it," regardless of the possibility that God did, in fact, do it. Anything that seeks a supernatural explanation is not science. It's religion.[/QUOTE]
OK, let me see if I have this straight when it comes to belief in supernatural myths.
Christian A believes in God
There is no evidence God exists.
Therefore, Christian A is being unscientific.
Darwinist A believes the bacterial flagellum evolved.
There is no evidence the flagellum evolved.
Therefore, unlike the Christian, Dawinist A is being scientific.
Is that how it works? ;-)
2004-05-13 14:07 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Valley Forge]Also, let me say in passing that while I am not a YECer at this time, I am also not arrogant enough to entirely rule out the possiblity that the universe may actually be less than 10,000 years old. There are physicists out there right now, and I can link in their work if necessary, that have begun to theorize that the speed of light may be variable ââ¬â that is, not a constant. And if the speed of light is variable, all bets are off: the standard cosmological models that call for an immensely old universe would be overturned immediately.
If the universe is finite, then it is probable that the universe is roughly only 10,000 years old. Gravity is widely believed to cause time dilation. If the universe is finite then there is a center of gravity to the universe. The degree of time dilation would be proportional to the distance from that center. Thus, light could travel millions of light years in only thousands or hundreds of years, relative to the Earth. All that is left to do is look for evidence, such as red-shifted light from distant objects. Someone might object and say the redshifting is caused by expanstion of the universe. But, that's anti-scientific, a violation of the first law of thermodynamics. Expansion of the universe would require a continueous ex nihilo creation of energy to push apart the gravitational bonds between celestial objects.
Just food for thought. :D
Once you really begin to think about it, it becomes clear very quickly just how absurd this whole concept of RM & NS really is.
And, as I have pointed out a couple of times in this forum, we have observed random mutation and natural selection over thousands of generations of rapidly reproducing organisms, without a trace of evolutionary progress (evolution: the accumulation of constructive mutations). If 10,000 fruit fly generations, under increased rates of mutation and selection, doesn't produce evolution, why would another 10,000 fruit fly generations produce evolution?
The biggest problem for Evolutionists is that we have directly observed that species don't evolve, leaving the Evolutionist pleading the case for Evolution using circumstantial evidence. Although, most Evolutionist rhetoric has nothing to do with evidence, but are merely philosophical attempts to define Evolution as true.
Putting aside the abiogenesis problem that Darwinists have been unable to solve so far, how many mutations does it would take to go from a single celled organism to say -- a Blue Whale? Billions? Trillions?
You have to have real evolution first, without that, time doesn't matter. Speaking of abiogenesis, again we observe that life doesn't spontaneously form (thus the Law of Biogenesis). But, let no Evolutionist be accused of believing scientific observations. :D
2004-05-13 16:08 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'm hoping that some day a Navajo Indian will come along and use the "bacterial flagellum" argument to "prove" that the creation myth of the Navajos must be true. You still haven't answered my question why the creation myth of ancient Jews should have some priveleged status as a "null hypothesis" (i.e. if evolution is false, Genesis must be true). Would you concede that the Navajo Indian or a Shinto animist, or a neo-Hellene who continues to believe in Zeus is every bit as "scientific" as the Biblical Literalist? Somehow I doubt it.[/QUOTE]
Zeus and Indian creation myths aren't even in the running. Point me to just one proponent website. Not only can't you, but even if you did, it's irrelevant because we believe in God, not Zeus. For any of the world's big monotheistic religions, the creationist model is the only alternative to evolution, just like the evolution model is the only alternative to creation for an Atheist.
2004-05-13 17:32 | User Profile
[COLOR=Red] - "Would you concede that the Navajo Indian or a Shinto animist, or a neo-Hellene who continues to believe in Zeus is every bit as "scientific" as the Biblical Literalist?" [/COLOR]
I never cause to wonder why this dull argument is so popular among you skeptics. I find it quite stupid.
We can chop off these other competitors with other argumentation methods later, after we have dealt with evolutionists. Play them off one by one, you know.
We do not object at all if they would want to engage in some creationism of their own. Sometimes Christians can have common goals with heathen.
Here's a link to the website of a famous Turkish Muslim creationist Harun Yahya:
[url]http://www.harunyahya.com/[/url]
I think this whole "all mythologies have equal standing" is a blatant strawman that you evolutionists have built up to support your faith.
The number of different creation accounts is not any kind of proof against the Design argument.
Petr
2004-05-13 22:15 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'm hoping that some day a Navajo Indian will come along and use the "bacterial flagellum" argument to "prove" that the creation myth of the Navajos must be true.
I concede that the absence of evidence that the flagellum evolved is not conclusive proof that the Christian God exists.
Now then, are you willing to concede that the absence of evidence that the flagellum evolved disproves evolution?
If not, why not?
If you say the flagellum evolved, then I say show me the evidence. (The best evidence that the Darwin Party's own Talkorigins propaganda site can muster is a 60 page essay by a geography graduate student. )
And if you say the flagellum evolved but that we just don't understand how yet, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on how that answer differs in principle from a Theist asserting that God created life on Earth, we just don't know how.
(And if you say the flagellum did not evolve, then I agree with you) :thumbsup:
You still haven't answered my question why the creation myth of ancient Jews should have some priveleged status as a "null hypothesis" (i.e. if evolution is false, Genesis must be true). [/QUOTE]
I thought I conceded you have a point here:
AY: It is one thing to admit that there is some transcendental organization to the universe, it is a huge leap from that to "proving" any particular creation myth to be true.
VF: Of course. And, so far as I can tell, no one here is making that leap. Most Christians that bother with these issues, from St Thomas Aquinas forward, understand the obvious and elementary logical difference between proving that God exists and proving that the Christian God exists.
Would you concede that the Navajo Indian or a Shinto animist, or a neo-Hellene who continues to believe in Zeus is every bit as "scientific" as the Biblical Literalist? Somehow I doubt it.
No, obviously not, because in addition to the scientific evidence that points to God (ID, anthropic principle, etc.), there is also historical evidence proving Christ's divinity.
In contrast, there is no evidence of any type, either scientific or historical, that Navajo gods have ever walked the Earth.
2004-05-13 22:28 | User Profile
Dembski's response to the geography grad student that claims to "prove" that the flagellum evolved is quite actually quite funny. Here's part of it.
Bill Dembski:
My print-out of Matzke's essay weighs in at 58 pages single-spaced. Of these, 13 pages are devoted to references. Another 14 pages are devoted to figures. That leaves 32 pages for his actual argument. Of these, 3 pages are devoted to concluding remarks reviewing and plugging his model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum. In addition, the first 10 pages of the essay are stage-setting, describing past research that attempts to get a handle on the flagellum and its origin. Thus only 20 pages of the article are in fact devoted to Matzke's actual model for the origin of the bacterial flagellum.
Why are these page numbers significant? They are significant as a reality check. The bacterial flagellum is a marvel of nano-engineering. As Matzke himself admits, thousands of research articles have been written about it, many of them trying simply to discover the role and function of its various components. Howard Berg describes the bacterial flagellum as "the most efficient machine in the universe." If a biotech engineering firm were required to draw up blueprints and design specifications for the construction of the bacterial flagellum, it would require thousands of pages (especially if the individual proteins that go into the construction of the flagellum had to be fully specified in terms of their structures, functions, and properties). And yet, somehow, with the Darwinian mechanism in hand, all that design work can be passed over. A "detailed, testable, step-by-step" engineering approach to the construction of the bacterial flagellum would require thousands of pages, and yet a "detailed, testable, step-by-step" Darwinian approach to the construction of the bacterial flagellum requires only 20 pages. On its face, there's something funny going on here.
[url]http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_biologusubjunctive.htm[/url]