Intelligent Design is not creationism

[jem]

Quote from kjkent1:

State a single experiment that confirms the existence of an intelligent deisigner, or one that statistically weighs in favor of an intelligent designer, as constrained by some stated limits.

While you are the one who makes the sweeping generalities about nothing supporting the possiblity of design, I think you should counter this.

Direct observational evidence in support of the Anthropic Principle includes the Cosmic microwave background radiation, whose anthropic relevance has only been partially "explained-away".[6][7][8]


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and this

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The most thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the controversial book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist. This book contains an extensive review of the relevant history of ideas, because its authors believe that the anthropic principle has important antecedents in the notions of intelligent design, the philosophies of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Whitehead, and the omega point cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin. Barrow and Tipler carefully distinguish teleological reasoning from eutaxiological reasoning; the former asserts that order must have a consequent purpose; the latter asserts more modestly that order must have a planned cause. They attribute this important but nearly always overlooked distinction to Hicks (1883).[15]

Barrow and Tipler set out in great detail the seemingly incredible coincidences that characterize our universe and that permit human beings to evolve in it. They then maintain that only the anthropic principle can make sense of this raft of coincidences. Everything from the energy states of the electron to the exact strength of the weak nuclear force seems tailored for us to exist. That our universe contains carbon-based life is contingent upon the values of several independent parameters, and were the value of any of those parameters to vary slightly, carbon-based life could not exist. While Barrow and Tipler (1986) is primarily a work of theoretical physics, it also discusses a variety of related topics in chemistry and earth science.

In 1983, Brandon Carter, qualifying his 1974 paper, stated that the anthropic principle, in its original form, was meant only to caution astrophysicists and cosmologists about possible errors in the interpretation of astronomical and cosmological data if they failed to take into account constraints arising from the biological nature of the observer. Carter also warned that the inverse was true for evolutionary biologists; in interpreting the evolutionary record, one must take into account cosmological and astrophysical considerations. With this in mind, Carter concluded that, given the best estimates of the age of the universe (then about 15 billion years, now 13.7 billion years), the evolutionary chain probably can allow only one or two low probability links. A. Feoli and S. Rampone[16] argue for a higher number of low probability links, given the size of our universe and the likely number of planets. The higher number of low probability links is less consistent with the claim that the emergence of life and its subsequent evolution requires intelligent design.

Recent work in observational cosmology and the theory of quantum gravity has led to renewed interest in the anthropic principle. Quantum gravity attempts to unify gravity with the other forces. While there have been a number of promising developments, all such theories suffer from the problem that the fundamental physical constants are unconstrained. The observational motivation comes from more precise estimates of quantities such as the matter density of the universe. Recent estimates of this density are about 0.3, while cosmological theory generally predicts a value indistinguishable from one.

There are alternatives to the anthropic principle, the most optimistic being that a Theory of everything will ultimately be discovered, uniting all forces in the universe and deriving from scratch all properties of all particles. Candidate "theories of everything" include M-Theory and various theories of quantum gravity, although all theories of this nature are currently deemed speculative. Another possibility is Lee Smolin's model of cosmological natural selection, also known as fecund universes, which proposes that universes have "offspring" which are more plentiful if they happen to have features common to our universe. Also see Gardner (2005) and his "selfish biocosm hypothesis."[17]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

 

[jem]

Quote from vhehn:

so in your opinion they will not be willing to go into 20th century reality. they will continue to stick their head in the sand and continue to be totally irrelevant?
as far as eating jesus and drinking his blood its just grape juice jem. aren't you a little old to still believe in superstition?

you acted like the church was just studying evolution.


I showed you the Chruchs is position

you were completely wrong -- grow up.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from jem:

you acted like the church was just studying evolution.


I showed you the Chruchs is position

you were completely wrong -- grow up.

you tell me to grow up and you are a grown man who goes to a church and drinks grape juice and pretends like it is jesus blood.

 

[2cents]

Quote from jem:

... Concerning cosmological evolution, the Church has infallibly defined that the universe was specially created out of nothing.
....
Concerning human evolution, the Church has a more definite teaching. It allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. Pope Pius XII declared that "the teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—[but] the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God" (Pius XII, Humani Generis 36). So whether the human body was specially created or developed, we are required to hold as a matter of Catholic faith that the human soul is specially created; it did not evolve, and it is not inherited from our parents, as our bodies are.

"unfallibly" hey... pheewww, if that doesn't sound scientific!... whats the church's position on Emergence of man & his soul, faith etc plse? http://www.necsi.org/community/wiki/index.php/Emergence

 

[FanOfFridays]

Quote from kjkent1:

On your first point, and according to your own statements of required principles of falsification, as logically defined by Karl Popper, God is scientifically untestable, because there is no test that can possibly be constructed that cannot be overcome by the will of an almighty creator -- otherwise he is not almighty.

So, it is your statement which is illogical, not mine.

kj, I admire you and a few others here for the time you are willing to put in to dismantle all of these pseudo-arguments. I just wonder how long you will be able to keep it up before you realize that you are dealing with people whose beliefs are informed by an unshakeable faith, one that you will never induce them to question. As a man of reason, you view the world as a puzzle, and you view those who are constantly striving to solve the puzzle as honourable men. For these mystics, there is no puzzle. They view anyone who is trying to solve the puzzle as a threat. All questions are answerable in terms of their God.

I'm not saying that all Christians are like this. The ones we're dealing with here certainly are. You could point out the fallacies in these posts until the sacred cows come home and you would not get one inch with these faith-mongers.

Thank God (Himself) that human progress isn't in their hands.

 

[I am...]

Quote from kjkent1:

God is scientifically untestable, because there is no test that can possibly be constructed that cannot be overcome by the will of an almighty creator -- otherwise he is not almighty.

If the creator is almighty, might he create himself so small that he hardly recognizes himself anymore? Could the "all" mighty make himself as nothing? How much power would it take to become as powerless? Now look in the mirror and see yourself differently.

In reality, all dimensions of creation reside in a space far smaller than the tip of a pin. In reality, all dimensions of creation are so vast that you could never measure them. In reality, there is no gap between where you are and I am. This is why I can be no further from you then the width of a thought.

But oh, my beloved chit chatters, the power of a thought is the power to create universes, and within universes to create yet more universes, and within those universes to create world upon world upon world upon world upon world.

Your lived experience is that momentarily your attention seems to be focused on your unique world, which shares some things in common with many other beings. You have what is called in your world a consensus reality - I would say a consensus experience - born out of a universal reality. You are the creator of the world you experience.

I come to walk as an equal beside you. I am your brother and your friend. I come not to speak of things that you do not know. I come not to use words that do not already abide in you. I come not with the wisdom that you do not already contain. I do not come with a love greater than yours.

I come because I am your friend. Of all the things that I could possibly choose to do with the unlimited power of consciousness given equally unto me of my Father as it was given unto you, of all the places and dimensions and worlds in which I could reside in this moment, I come to abide with you to bridge the gap that seems to separate you from me.

The result of many many minds choosing to value the right to judge is the effect you call the world, in which everything seems to be expressing conflict, struggle, "butting of heads" and the Armageddon of opposite ideas running into each other. And just beneath it all, all events remain completely neutral.


If the very physical planet you call Earth died, dissolved from view, Life would continue. Life would merely create new worlds. It does it all the time. You do it all the time.

The events then that you experience are always neutral. What you see occurring in the world around you remains neutral until you make the decision what it will be -- for you. You will name it and, therefore, define it. When you define it, you call all of the associations with that to yourself.

This is why I once taught it is very wise to forgive seventy times seven times. It was for a very selfish reason. If one wrongs you and you spend your energy convincing them that they have wronged you, that you have a right to be angry and to be attacking in any way, you call to yourself - even into the cells of your body - the energy of conflict, judgment, war, death, disease, unhappiness and separation instantly.

But if you forgive seventy time seven, then each of those moments of forgiveness you call into your field of energy that which reminds you of unconditional Love, perfect peace, a power that transcends anything that arises in the world. And all of it hinges on nothing more than the pebbles that you drop into your mind.

In short, it is time to give up the pretense. It is time to begin viewing yourself from the perspective of an absolute ceaseless creator. For a creator who understands their infinite power to create and who understands that it is going on ceaselessly gladly gives up the energy of denial. It is time to become honest with the effects of the ripples of the rocks or the pebbles you have dropped into the field of your awareness as a great form of play.

Here is the doorway to wisdom. Do not create unconsciously and walk away. But learn ceaselessly from your creation. For in this way you begin the process of dissolving the creation of an un-enlightened being and you being to build the creation of a Christ - here and now, in this moment.

Peace,

Jesus

 

[2cents]

Quote from jem:

... counter this.

Direct observational evidence in support of the Anthropic Principle includes the Cosmic microwave background radiation, whose anthropic relevance has only been partially "explained-away".[6][7][8]
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and this

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The most thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the controversial book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

same url:
Criticisms
Some forms of the anthropic principle have been criticized as an argument by lack of imagination for assuming that the only possible chemistry of life is one based on carbon compounds and liquid water (sometimes called "carbon chauvinism", see also alternative biochemistry). The range of fundamental physical constants allowing evolution of carbon-based life may also be much less restrictive than proposed.[18]

The WAP has been criticized, by its supporters as well as its critics, for being a tautology, stating something not readily obvious yet trivially true. The weak anthropic principle implies that our ability to ponder cosmology at all is contingent on all fundamental physical parameters having numerical values falling within quite a narrow range. Critics reply that this is simply tautological reasoning, an elaborate way of saying "if things were different, they would be different". If this is granted, the WAP becomes a truism saying nothing and explaining nothing, because in order for us to be here to ponder the universe, that universe has to be structured so that we can exist. Peter Schaefer denies that labelling the WAP a truism invalidates it, on the grounds that one cannot refute a statement merely by saying that it is true.

Critics of the SAP claim that it is neither testable nor falsifiable, and thus is not science. The FAP is discussed in more detail under final anthropic principle; Barrow and Tipler (1986) state that while the FAP is a valid physical statement, it is also "closely connected with moral values".

The anthropic principle at first glance seems to discourage research into a theory of everything, however it only suggests that progress made regarding a theory of everything must allow the observer of such progress to exist.

Another possibility suggested is that our universe is more likely than others, like in Lee Smolin's model of cosmological natural selection, also known as fecund universes, which proposes that universes have "offspring" which are more plentiful if they happen to have features common to our universe. Also see Gardner (2005) and his "selfish biocosm hypothesis."[17]

Hawking (2004) suggests that our universe is much less 'special' than the proponents of the anthropic principle claim it is. According to Hawking, there is a 98% chance that a Big Bang will result in a universe of the same type as ours. However, some question whether the equations Hawking employs to reach this conclusion are scientifically meaningful, and what sort of universe can be said to be of the "same type as ours".

Hawking's wave function of the universe, he and others have claimed, shows how our universe could have come into existence without any relation to anything existing prior to it, i.e., could have come out of "nothing." As of 2004, however, this work remains debatable. Moreover, as Hawking wrote in 1988, "What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?...Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?" (Hawking 1988). That "there is something instead of nothing" is the fundamental problem of metaphysics.


[edit] Anthropic bias and anthropic reasoning
In 2002, Nick Bostrom asked "Is it possible to sum up the essence of observation selection effects in a simple statement?" He concluded that it might be, but that:

Many 'anthropic principles' are simply confused. Some, especially those drawing inspiration from Brandon Carter's seminal papers, are sound, but... they are too weak to do any real scientific work. In particular, I argue that existing methodology does not permit any observational consequences to be derived from contemporary cosmological theories, though these theories quite plainly can be and are being tested empirically by astronomers. What is needed to bridge this methodological gap is a more adequate formulation of how observation selection effects are to be taken into account.
His Self-Sampling Assumption is "that you should think of yourself as if you were a random observer from a suitable reference class." This he expands into a model of anthropic bias and anthropic reasoning under the uncertainty introduced by not knowing your place in our universe - or even who "we" are. This may also be a way to overcome various cognitive bias limits inherent in the humans doing the observation and sharing models of our universe using mathematics, as suggested in the cognitive science of mathematics.

 

[2cents]

Quote from I am...:

If the creator is almighty, puff puff

hey jeez! where did u get those magic mushrooms again??

 

[kjkent1]

RESPONSE IN CAPS BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR BETTER FORMATTING.

Quote from jem:

While you are the one who makes the sweeping generalities about nothing supporting the possiblity of design, I think you should counter this.

DONE.

Direct observational evidence in support of the Anthropic Principle includes the Cosmic microwave background radiation, whose anthropic relevance has only been partially "explained-away".[6][7][8]

UNLESS YOU ACTUALLY FOLLOWED ALL THREE OF THE CITED LINKS AND READ THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPERS (LIKE I JUST DID FOR THE PAST 30 MINUTES), YOU WOULDN"T KNOW THAT YOUR CITED STATEMENT IS A CONCLUSION WHICH IS SUMMARILY REFUTED BY EACH OF THE CITED REFERENCES. THE REFERENCES WERE PROVIDED IN ORDER TO "EXPLAIN AWAY" THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE.

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO.

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and this

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The most thorough extant study of the anthropic principle is the controversial book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow, a cosmologist, and Frank J. Tipler, a mathematical physicist. This book contains an extensive review of the relevant history of ideas, because its authors believe that the anthropic principle has important antecedents in the notions of intelligent design, the philosophies of Fichte, Hegel, Bergson, and Whitehead, and the omega point cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin. Barrow and Tipler carefully distinguish teleological reasoning from eutaxiological reasoning; the former asserts that order must have a consequent purpose; the latter asserts more modestly that order must have a planned cause. They attribute this important but nearly always overlooked distinction to Hicks (1883).[15]

BARROW AND TIPLER'S WORK, WHICH YOU CITE ABOVE WAS WRITTEN TO DEMONSTRATE THAT THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE IS AN ILLUSION. THIS CITE DOES NOT SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT. READ THE BOOK.

You are beating a dead horse. There is no scientific evidence in support of an intelligent designer, because there cannot be any such evidence -- it is impossible to nail down God by any scientific methodology.

ID advocates are attempting to jump half way to an unreachable wall. With each successive jump you come within half the distance to your goal. But, in the end, your goal is just as far away as it was at the beginning, and you are always at least one half the distance between your present location and the wall of the supernatural.

 

[I am...]

Quote from traderNik:



Thank God (Himself) that human progress isn't in their hands.

You are never a victim of anyone's creation, especially your own. You are infinitely free.

Jesus