Happy Wonderer

As I thought, this was a failed attempt at an ontological argument. Purpose doesn't have the attributes of existance, nor does it imply design, nor does the purpose of an individual get somehow magically attributed to the purpose of some mythical entity called nature.

We can certainly compare the relative efficiency of a specific attribute of wings without conceding that either was 'designed.' One wing may be adequate for a diving bird, while another may be better for a long-distance flyer. Which wing is designed better? It is a nonsensical question.

Objection, misstates the record. I think that for the most part people answered you with great patience. You did a poor job of constructing a straw man, and even then had trouble shooting it down. You had a great deal of trouble deciding between defending your straw man or attacking it, which was a bit frustrating for people.

Assertion, but capital letters are not supporting evidence.

I can't believe that you would make this hoary old claim after the number of intelligent and patient posts explaining what natural selection really is. If natural selection doesn't exist because it is a tautology, does artificial selection exist? What do brocolli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and turnips have in common?

I'm tempted to say that the Well, Duh!!!! argument is the best that you have made so far, but that would be impolite....

Nonsense. Evidence against common ancestry would invalidate evolution. Scientists worked long and hard to classify the animal kingdom based upon special separate creation, but they failed. Only with the TOE did the evidence make sense; and the independent discovery of DNA further confirmed the theory. The definition of adaptation is wrong as well, but I'll leave that to the experts.

Your monkey illustration still makes no sense and only serves to make you look silly. How many different refutations do you need? Here is another: One monkey typing alone forever is sufficient to reproduce the manhattan phone book. You can't argue that subdividing the problem somehow interferes with it. Here is a hint: random string CONCAT random string EQUALS random string

Wait a minute, I thought you said that the theory of evolution was a "definitional tautology." Yup, you did. You can't have it both ways; it can't be evidence of a miracle if it doesn't exist. (This is what makes discussing with you a bit frustrating; at least for arguments sake please keep a consistant position.)

Sigh, I suppose you didn't even read my salt argument. Oh wait, you do mention crystals above. So how is crystal formation observing "decreasing order and decreasing complexity?" (Actually one can argue that complexity is the inverse of order; a random string has more information in it than the string "10101010".)

"Few if any" isn't strong enough for your argument. How long have we been looking? How long has the process been going on? Few beneficial mutations would be all that it takes. For your argument to work, you have to prove that there are no beneficial mutations.
This sort of thing gets old, when you have been pointed at many instances of beneficial mutations. You may not agree that being resistant to malaria is a good thing, but at least be a bit more respectful of the people who actually devote their lives to learning about and studying this stuff. You can argue that they are mistaken, but the thousands of hours researchers spend in the labs sequencing genomes and the long hours spent collection field data represent something more than "blind faith."

Blind faith is something that theists waste their time on.

Talk about mistating the record... How many time do you have to see Darwin's Terrier's fossil example? Come on, put this assertion in a new thread. I double-dare you, or do you not have the guts to back up your assertions?

Talk about unsupported opinion. Crystals arise by a predictable process that is a consequence of the properties of elements, particularly carbon. Read a little bit about organic chemistry and crystal formation won't seem to be such a mystery. Ask questions about it; there are people on this board who will answer them far more patiently than they would in the classroom. It is time for you to be told -- there is no crystal fairy.

Uh, you are not going to get far with C.S. Lewis on this board. He was a good science fiction writer but a very mediocre philosopher. If you want to have C.S. Lewis arguments (we love them here!) create a new thread. I dare you.

If this is the best argument you can come up with for God, I'll be seeing you on our side when you reach maturity. Hope you have learned how to argue by then...

Namaste

HW

Happy Wonderer

I'm pretty disappointed in Keith. Nice lure at the beginning (maybe something different for a change) but ends up being the same old drivel. For some reason I thought he would do better than that. Silly me. At first it was enjoyable...

HW

And to think that I actually felt bad about underestimating him -- I meant it when I said "good job coming back swinging..."

Oolon Colluphid

Where?
And the “obvious planning and purpose” in the human appendix is...?
Limitations of language, and the need to not havve to go impossibly round the houses when talking about stuff.
What god? Which god? Where’s your evidence?
Au contraire, mon amie. If he has created the universe, he has done it in such a way that no sensible person can deny evolution.

Ever considered that that’s the mechanism he chose to use? Surely to a being of vast knowledge, the universe could be a very boring place. Boredom is alleviated by novelty, by the unexpected. How about such a being using mechanisms that are inherently unpredictable in their outcomes? Mechanisms that would be bound to produce novelty? Personally, I find that far more plausible than the parochial small-mindedness of the creationists’ god. But suit yourself.
Really? Name one.
Unbelievable ignorance of something, while claiming to understand it and while opposing it, tends to bring that out in people, for some strange reason... see below.
Which you appear to have ignored.
1) Error in understanding. Where is the ever-increasing complexity? Bacteria have been around rather longer than even multicellular organisms. And are still the dominant group on the planet, in numbers or sheer biomass.

2) Error in fact. It is true that the combination of random heritable variation and non-random filtering of it can produce complex things. For instance, would you say that the formation of a new gene for a new, useful bit of kit would be an increase in complexity? Then we have examples, such as the ‘anti-freeze’ glycoprotein in arctic fish. Refs available on request.
Well duh is right. Any to lines of algebra contain a tautology. If I say that a train travelling at 40mph will arrive at its destination in half the time of one travelling at 20mph, how does the fact that this is a tautology affect the usability of the information? Tautologies are for philosophical autoproctologists who if a brick fell on their heads would complain that ‘gravity makes things fall’ is not philosphically sound.
Please cite references.
Who gives a fuck? See above!
Ah, I see you went to the Bell End School of Epistemiology.

Here’s some thing that is ruled out by evolution: mammalian bones in Precambrian strata.

Here’s another: bats having precisely the tidal respiration that birds have.

Here’s another: a mammal that does not use DNA for its heritable material.

Here’s another: DNA comparison clearly showing that humans are most closely related to arthropods.

Here’s another: there being no fossils that seem to bridge between existing groups.

Any of these could be the case. You are confusing ‘irrefutable’ with ‘has not been refuted’. Given that you apparently recognise the problem with irrefutability, your ‘we don’t know the designer’s intentions’ is even more ironic.
Natural selection is the antithesis of randomness. Since this has been mentioned in passing before, you are either deaf or incorrigibly stupid.
You are looking in the wrong direction. Since you’re doing so, may I suggest a torch and a mirror, to make it easier.
Factual error.
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html
http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/...favorable.html

Try looking into pesticide resistance. Try looking up nylon-digesting bacteria. Try human lactose digestion. Hell, try learning some biology before you criticise it.
Yet by blind faith, god poofing things into existence is just accepted anyway. The irony is thicker than the earth’s mantle.
Ludicrous and unsubstantiated assertion, and utterly wrong. There are people -- evolution ‘believers’ every one -- whom it is difficult to shut up about fossils. They’re called ‘palaeontologists’.

And I’m sorry to disappoint you, but many here are more than happy to discuss fossils. Where would you like to start?
Uhhh... so you’re saying that when a Na+ ion encounters a Cl- ion in an exaporating solution, it is god that brings them together, not their relevant charges? Forget biology. Start with some pretty frigging basic chemistry and physics.
A more meaningless, self-absorbed quote I don’t think I’ve ever heard.

Confucius he say: “Man who lives in glass house has to answer door”.

Douglas Adams said, “Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
How is it not possible? Ever considered that it could be because it is we who bring ‘meaning’ to it, because we’re self-aware?
<pats Keith gently on the head> Yes, Keith, of course you have. <smiles sweetly, backs away>

The only place you have done so is in your own mind. Well, fair enough, if you’re happy with that.
Look, bozo, atheism has ABSOLUTELY FUCK ALL to do with evolution.
Like, er, evaporation?
So point to some pal, point to some.
I agree that you have become very trying.
A blessing from the creator of trypanosomes is one I devoutly hope to avoid.

TTFN, DT

Oolon Colluphid

Meanwhile, going back a few pages to his last reply to me... can't let the rest of you have all the fun!
Evidently.
Evidently. But what you do claim is to be able to spot good design, since you say there is some. This requires that you have some sort of criteria against which to judge it. It has nothing to do, initially, with whether it’s as good as it could be. What you’re not seeing is rather simpler.

Common sense shows many things to be ‘well designed’. But that same common sense shows many others to be poorly, stupidly or convolutedly designed. You say we don’t know the intentions of the ‘designer’. Therefore you are rejecting the common sense that you are judging the designs by -- both good and bad.
Forget ‘optimal’. It is irrelevant, and it is unclear how we might ever know if something is it.

Or alternatively, please grasp that if ‘optimal’ is used, it does not mean perfection. Merely ‘as good as a human engineer might conceive of’. If nobody can think of a better way of doing it, it may or may not be optimal. But we can provisionally say it is ‘good’.

It therefore follows that if us mere humans can think of a better way of doing something, then the actual system is ‘less-good’.

And once again, an intelligent designer would not be predicted to produce less-good designs. Therefore finding them suggests that there was no such designer... unless one can plausibly suggest why less-good (or downright stupid) designs might be used.

<sigh> You are postulating a designer. By referring to it as ‘intelligent’, you are attributing to the hypothesised designer the intention of doing things well -- unless ‘intelligent’ means something different to you than to everyone else.

Since it is you who offers this explanation, it is up to you to account for any discrepencies.

Saying that the reason for the discrepencies is unknown and unknowable -- we can’t know the designer’s intentions -- renders your entire explanation useless. What you have there is an irrefutable hypothesis. Nothing could [/I]possibly[/I] disprove it. And therefore we can never know if it is correct.

Unsupported assertion.

If so, it is equally obvious that certain things we observe in nature are purposefully designed by a capricious being, one that is inconsistent in its application of intelligence (designing the intricacies of a fish, but giving it eyes that do not work when it does not need them at all); one that is sadistic (hookworms, Plasmodium, Lyssavirus, ichneumon wasps); and one that mimics just what we would expect to find if evolution alone were responsible.

Now. Bloody well tell me why those cave-dwellers have functionless eyes.

Tell me why the human coccyx is made of separate bones that fuse, and looks exactly like a reduced tail should.

Tell me why the recurrent laryngeal goes so far out of its way to ennervate the larynx.

Tell me why bats have tidal respiration.

Tell me why cephalopod gills are not counterflow.

Tell me why human fetuses have tails.

Tell me why whales have bits of pelvis.

Tell me why echidnas have a useless ‘poison’ spur on their hind legs.

Tell me why blue-footed boobies collect nesting materials when they don’t build nests.

In short, tell me why these are not stupid designs from an ‘intelligent designer’.

TTFN, DT

ageofreason2000

Only in the mind of a paroniod-delusional could his performance on this board be seen as anything other than highlighting - he knoweth not what he speaks

Others, more knowlegable have answered your post with greater eloquence (and respect) than I could muster.

I gather from the closing victory roll speech, that keith has now left the building.

Sum total of new converts to his storybook = 0
Sum total of souls saved for his made up after-life reward scheme = 0

Keith have a nice life, because you just might be dissapointed with what comes after.

Age

nogods4me

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Keith
It turns out that TOE is just a house of cards. I've ripped the stuffing out of a psuedo-scientific theory. It's been a blast! I hope that some of you will see the futility of atheism. Only God gives meaning and purpose to everything. The evidence pointing to God is everywhere. You can't avoid it even if you try.

God bless all of you,

Keith
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Congrats Keith, I suspect we shall all see you collecting your Nobel Prize in Sweden next year.

Actually Keith, you have my sympathy. It must be tough for you to be so willfully ignorant of the facts presented to you, when many good people have taken the time and trouble to try to explain the flaws in your arguement. Yet you simply sit there like a petulant child with your fingers stuffed into your ears going "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA"
Just a small bit of research on an actual science site would have given you all this info and more, yet you steadfastly refuse to engage your brain.
You have outwitted 150 plus years of research by tens of thousands of scientists, just because your book says so. Bravo. May I suggest that you next take on the silly notion that the earth orbits the sun. That way you could collect the Physics prize at the same time you are in Sweden collecting the one for Biology.

Batman

Keith has had his own arguments ripped to shreds and then posts that he has proven that TOE is "psuedo-science". ALL of the evidence in paleontology and biology support evolution and there is NOTHING in science that challenges it. Keith simply refuses to accept the evidence and instead posits that goddit based ONLY on his own faith. It's evident that he sees the theory of evolution as a threat to his religious beliefs and therefore tries to discredit it. Failing to do that he simply announces victory and leaves. This is simply the case of someone who refuses to accept the facts and is afraid to question his own beliefs.

Starboy

Keith, do you hear voices in your head? Is god talking to you?

Starboy

Ab_Normal

Because this lurker loves you for it?

Mad props to everybody who put in time on this thread. Thank you very much!

Jobar

Such ignorance (ignore-ance) saddens me, even though I had him pegged as close minded pretty much from page 1.

There were 409 posts on this thread, and 5,730 views of it. There were hundreds of people who watched Keith's performance, and ours; we can but hope that all our time and trouble enlightened and entertained some them. Keith, I fear, is a lost cause, and was when he came in.

Since we've nothing left to do besides jeering and flinging stones at Keith's retreating backside, I add my own cast-



Jobar sweeps up the mess

Turns out the lights

And locks the doors.