| Quote (Erasmus, FCD @ Sep. 10 2007,14:17) |
HAR HAR THIS IS YOU VIOLATING TEH SLOT |
... damn you. I need a new keyboard now. One without coffee on it.
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| Date: 2007/08/16 08:33:57, Link 212.85.19.24 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
I just wanted to unlurk and offer you all my congrats, as OUDDT approaches its 600th (page) birthday. I've been lurking since around 400, it's one of my guilty pleasures. ;) I actually started reading UD in the days when it first seemed respectable. No, really. Please don't kill me. :) Somehow Dembski has this ability to project a shield of authenticity that none of the other ID chaps have, although two years of him machine gunning his feet off have weakened it quite a lot. Again, thanks for all your hard work, and may this thread live long after UD has peri... no, wait, that won't work. |
| Date: 2007/08/25 16:07:43, Link 90.195.252.240 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
How do people this slimy avoid slipping over and injuring themselves all the time? |
| Date: 2007/08/26 15:37:27, Link 90.195.252.35 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
I can actually feel the grease clogging up my veins. |
| Date: 2007/09/08 08:00:38, Link 90.194.167.250 | ||||||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||||||
These people make me feel so ill inside. That they have the gall to accuse the honest side of what they are doing appalls me. And you'd think I'd be accustomed to it after two years.
This is especially greasy. And I can do this too: In groups of six, have pupils design mousetraps. Emphasize that this particular example does not involve the creation of any new species and note that this is not proper evidence for Dembski's hypothesis of intelligent design.
SAY WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY, YOU SHITS. You want kids to think that maybe scientists are wrong about everything? Say it, cowards! The church seriously needs to crack down on these wankers, or Jesus won't have any credibility left. |
| Date: 2007/09/08 12:57:35, Link 90.194.167.250 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I want to ask Sal something, but the only answer I can see getting is 'on top of a huge pile of money with many beautiful ladies'. |
| Date: 2007/09/08 13:38:32, Link 90.195.252.23 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
It was on ERV's blog, the post after she was banned from UC. When he discovered that one of the people he was arguing with was a teacher at his new university. |
| Date: 2007/09/10 14:37:13, Link 90.194.167.115 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
... damn you. I need a new keyboard now. One without coffee on it. |
| Date: 2007/10/01 10:46:57, Link 90.195.252.110 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Great God, the weaselness burns on that site.
How fucking arrogant is that? To first impose a non-existent worldview on their critic, and then claim that he's betraying that worldview? And you really believe this clownery is a good argument? My gosh, they also claim that the word 'unforgivable' is a Christian word and can't be used against them. Did you say you were a science teacher? How much of this crap do you actually support? They actually use the 'The Bible is true because the Bible is true' argument further down that page. Would you let your students get away with answers like that? |
| Date: 2007/10/05 21:05:34, Link 90.195.252.90 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
The ID answer is fairly obvious: in this case, unlike most sims where Dembski can pretend that somehow humans are always unwittingly smuggling in the information when they tweak the variables... an intelligence is doing all the selecting. I have a question: because the program asks for only a face, is it likely that the odd background clutter which sometimes looks like hair, will ever calm down, or will it get randomised because it's not selected for? |
| Date: 2007/10/07 07:37:05, Link 90.195.252.125 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Great Frith. What is it with fundies and their total inability to comprehend humour? It's like they confiscated it from a bunch of rebels a hundred years ago and have been trying to reverse-engineer it ever since. |
| Date: 2007/10/11 08:59:58, Link 90.194.167.161 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
My understanding of the critiques of Dembski's work is as follows: The mathematics is correct - it is true that, averaged over all possible arrangements, no fitness function is greater than any other. But this is not an interesting result. It's like saying that if you stick a sausage in a blender, you get a mushy paste - whereas biologists are more interested in sausages. It's basically the mathematical equivalent of quote mining - Dembski takes this uninteresting result and tries to claim that it applies to biology, where actually, the situation is quite different. In evolution, we have fitness landscapes, which are full of hills and valleys and mount improbables - in the NFL, we have a random spiky mush. The result of this is that we can define neighbourhoods in fitness space. One of the examples given by (Haeggstroem?) is that of DNA; we know that, quite often, changing just one nucleotide does not change much at all; the resulting organism has similar or the same fitness. This implicitly defines a neighbourhood; the neighbours to any DNA sequence are all those that can be reached by mutating one nucleotide - and this is how evolution works! (In fact, it's just one of several ways, which gives the fitness neighbourhood even greater population). But the NFL does not work on this. The NFL is only interested in spiky mushes, where no neighbourhoods can be defined. It would be like a rabbit giving birth to cloud of meat every time one of its nucleotides changed. So Dembski is math-mining. He goes on, however, to claim that, IF the fitness landscape is so well defined, well, what are the odds of that! It must have been designed! and at that point, you have a man who is quite divorced from reality, and who seems to be claiming that fitness gradients cannot occur in nature. In other words, if you hold Dembski to his words, all the peppered moths have a random chance of being eaten. Well, that's my understanding of the papers. I am not a mathematician, however, and am more than welcome to be corrected. Mostly it seems that Dembski is claiming stuff so incredibly dumb, underneath the cover of math, that no one will believe he could be so dumb, and instead are left with something incredible. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 09:21:41, Link 90.195.252.226 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
My gosh. I don't normally visit UD, but the ignorance on that thread simply crushes me. I mean, they must know, really? They can't just keep on saying 'Darwinism sux!' forever without actually studying anything that didn't come from The Bumper Creationist Book of Truthness, can they? How long can people go on applying fallacies to their enemies before they eventually realise that perhaps, just maybe, those fallacies can equally apply to themselves? Even more horrifying, two people who I thought to be trolls on PT I now find to be perfectly normal posters on UD. I want to cry now. |
| Date: 2007/10/12 19:28:40, Link 90.195.252.226 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I wanna see Ftk's answer! Because I'm totally in agreement about the sheer bollocknaiseness of Bornagain's stuff. It's the creationist tornado-in-a-junkyard that was refuted as being a child's caricature of evolution about ten, twenty years ago? Go on, Ftk! Show me wrong! Don't censor yourself! PS. I know I used a rude word above, so I'll give you some blank space to cut and paste over it, and then you can answer. There you go. |
| Date: 2007/10/15 16:52:31, Link 90.194.167.222 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Whoa. So THAT's what ARN does with its time! How did this one get past them? This one argues /against/ Dembski. |
| Date: 2007/10/19 13:52:38, Link 90.195.252.172 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Oh, gosh, that would be awesome! I wholeheartedly support this idea. :) |
| Date: 2007/10/19 13:58:47, Link 90.195.252.172 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Ftk, why don't you answer questions? I wanted to hear your defence of Bornagain's stuff on the Uncommonly Dense thread... you seemed to imply you were behind him, but didn't say why. Now I look here and you're avoiding all these good questions? How do creationists and ID people delude themselves into believing they have a case, when they must be aware they can't address their own topic, and the other side can? |
| Date: 2007/10/19 15:40:20, Link 90.195.252.172 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
What exactly was God's reason for killing all those people? All I ever hear is that they were all wicked or something. Seems a bit of a half-arsed solution to drown all of them. Even we mortal humans don't nuke the country when someone commits a crime. |
| Date: 2007/10/19 15:56:38, Link 90.195.252.172 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Ahh, see now, I made a stupid mistake by jumping in with my God bashing without looking. I apologise. I hope Ftk can take comfort in my fallibility, and not feel afraid to answer those questions? :) |
| Date: 2007/10/20 20:36:11, Link 90.198.114.121 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
It looks even better if you have evolution and ID on the same graph. But then that's what happens if you can't talk about your own theory without mentioning someone elses. :) |
| Date: 2007/10/22 08:06:59, Link 90.195.252.72 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| My gosh. I see why you call her a troll now. You're not even slightly honest, are you Ftk? |
| Date: 2007/10/24 12:54:59, Link 90.194.167.249 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
This is scarily close to a quote from the parody science program Look Around You.
EDIT: for clarity |
| Date: 2007/10/26 17:05:01, Link 90.194.167.1 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I so wanted to ask Galapagos Finch to explain his cheese-grater-slide joke. Because frankly I suspect he hasn't got a clue what his point was. Ftk? Can you explain the joke to me? |
| Date: 2007/10/26 22:31:09, Link 90.194.167.1 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I hope you're happy. I'm crying now, literally. XD |
| Date: 2007/10/30 20:40:22, Link 90.195.252.195 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
My gosh they are twits. Nochange:
Congratulations, UD! You have retarded this person. Are any of them going to correct this hopelessly wrong view? It isn't just wrong - it's the OPPOSITE of what is correct. Which makes me wonder - why does nochance feel that he knows how evolution is 'postulated', when he can get it backward like that? Evolution is all about partial success, and some stuff being more partially successful than other stuff. I note also how they skip over the other work on that page debunking IC. Which is odd, because they could do it. I tried that IC applet and was disappointed - the people who made it seem to have made a vital omission, which is that when the graph fills the screen, it stops evolving - which means that it's missing out on vital time to evolve out a few more nodes and become even more IC. |
| Date: 2007/10/30 20:55:23, Link 90.195.252.195 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
|
Mmmmf! Granville:
No way. Are they /really/ dumb enough to bring that back up? This was one of the most retarded statements I ever heard from them, back in 2006, when Dave Thomas was whipping their bottom with his Steiner algorithm. I mean, what can you do with this? It was explained at the time why it was hopelessly wrong and still even DaveScot went along with it (I seem to recall an anecdote with parachutes, but that may be some odd fit I had). Once again UD leaves me in despair. I don't know how you chaps stay cheerful all the time. |
| Date: 2007/11/01 11:04:58, Link 90.194.167.104 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
That's that weird parachute anecdote I was remembering. By the way, your word GA looks really good :) |
| Date: 2007/11/01 16:54:12, Link 90.194.167.104 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Patrick is basically saying that complexity = length of word, and that Zach's program can't jump from a five letter word to a fifty letter word if there are no similar words intermediate in length between them. The evolutionary answer to this is 'Well, duh'. Of course, Patrick is wrong. 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' is specified but not complex. 'qjcicnfkgzafnvuehhgosifhfga' is complex but not specified. 'All Science So Far!' is complex and specified. ID: Our Theory Is So Complicated, We Need It Explained To Us EDIT: I mean, Patrick is wrong about the definition of complexity, not about evolving 50-letter words. |
| Date: 2007/11/01 19:44:44, Link 90.194.167.104 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
cdk007 is awesome. Who is he? If I had money and weren't a cheapass, I'd suggest donating him a proper video program. :) Like the one this chap has. |
| Date: 2007/11/15 19:56:31, Link 90.195.252.222 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
creationists have beaten you to that too. www.commonsensescience.org They have actually produced some plausible scienceness (I read a paper of theirs before they took them down) but still can't quite do it without mentioning jesus. someone should point batshit77 to this stuff, he'd appreciate it. Apparently the judeo-christian worldview predicts a load of stuff and is the best way to do science, instead of going against common sense and introducing 'randomness' like science does. when are these dicks going to learn that science is the opposite of common sense? |
| Date: 2007/11/18 14:09:48, Link 90.198.114.191 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
It looks like the logo of the Babylon 5 spinoff, Crusade |
| Date: 2007/11/19 09:11:25, Link 90.194.167.182 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
The irony! It's almost like us Darwinists aren't using the scientific theory of evolution as a lifestyle guide at all! |
| Date: 2007/11/21 11:06:31, Link 90.195.252.50 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I'll admit it's slightly funny (I get a Ray Martinez kind of vibe from solon) but you chaps need to stop... you're making some of the other commenters seem intelligent. It's funnier to watch them cry persecution when they aren't being persecuted. |
| Date: 2007/11/21 11:46:06, Link 90.195.252.50 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
solon, at UD:
Ray Martinez, talk origins:
|
| Date: 2007/11/21 12:14:54, Link 90.195.252.50 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
This is what I hate about Dr Dr WAD (aside from him being a deceptive scumbag). His total inability to grasp satire. Here's a clue, Dr^2 : simply repeating the words that you FEEL are wrong, will not make other people believe they are wrong. You do this in your Panda-monium game. You did it with your Judge Jones animation. And you just did it here. I cannot believe a man with four times my education (that's an estimate: I have only a measly BSc degree, so real Drs may correct me if I'm underestimating their efforts :) ) resorts to this kind of 'repeat what your opponent said in a funny voice' argument. It's what eight year olds do when they can't win and just want to piss off their siblings. Returning to the squirrels: what was your point, Dr Dr? You didn't make one. You just put out that video as if it was somehow an inherent satire - indeed, if I didn't know the way you behave, I would have thought you were being completely honest. That's how much you suck. You're so bad at arguing, you actually argue for the other side. It's notarguing. Now if only I could post this on UD. :) |
| Date: 2007/11/26 09:26:09, Link 90.195.252.113 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Lazarus on the ongoing renewal of comedy effort:
I really hope there is. Really really. I'm waiting for a picture of a mud pit and a caption that goes 'IM IN UR GOO NOT EVOLVIN TO YOO'. For me that would destroy evolution totally. UD Humour - It Makes You Want To Die And Obligingly Chokes You Upon Your Own Vomit Too |
| Date: 2007/11/26 09:32:33, Link 90.195.252.113 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| And I just reloaded the page and... 404BOOM! It's gone! |
| Date: 2007/11/26 10:19:25, Link 90.195.252.113 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Um... aren't you breaking copyright by posting that here then? |
| Date: 2007/11/26 14:39:30, Link 90.195.252.113 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I hope it isn't just me who can see Denyse O RLY's face in that. |
| Date: 2007/12/05 21:19:19, Link 90.194.167.116 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
http://www.uncommondescent.com/evoluti....rwinian |
| Date: 2007/12/24 08:55:37, Link 90.195.252.30 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
For their God's sake. Dembski, you malicious twat. Look at what you've done to KF. He still, after your God knows how many years, thinks that evolution says things should assemble by blind chance. Because YOU TOLD HIM THAT. Sometimes I think hey, let's just let the ID people get on, it's only fair, and then I see this, and I get all pissed off. They abuse my good faith in people. On the subject of applying the EF, I actually tried to come up with a way to do it (I want to be the first person to make a Java applet to apply ID theory ;) ) and I have to conclude it's impossible. I broke it into three parts: 1) Filter natural law events Anything that can be explained by the laws of physics is ruled out from design, but there's a larger trick here. Anything that can be explained by ANY law, physical or not, can be ruled out from design also (it can be produced by an algorithmic process), so I conclude from this that the outputs of all possible Turing machines (or equivalent computing systems) are not designed. Thus to apply this category one must in theory iterate through all possible Turing machines. I'm pretty sure the Halting Problem rules this approach out. 2) Filter for 'chance'. An easy one: run tests for randomess. 3) Filter for CSI: The first two rule out data which is specified but not complex (nature), and which is complex but not specified (chance). Dembski seems to imply that what you're left with can only be design, so in theory this step is unneeded, but it seems to be in the EF for some reason. Problem is, it looks to be impossible if natural law is defined as above, because any algorithm that can detect CSI must have a mathematical means of doing so, which would imply CSI is natural, and thus ruled out from design. Thus I conclude that CSI is either natural, which disproves Dembski, or unquantifiable, which is scientifically pointless and disproves Dembski's claims it can be measured. Given Dembski's penchant for avoiding evaluation of his claims, what do you suppose my chances are of posting this on UD? |
| Date: 2008/01/14 20:29:49, Link 90.198.114.118 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
God that's lame. It's been said before, but it bears repeating that even creationism is more scientific than this bullshit. I should get over there. I'm not banned yet. I was planning to save up my shot at UD for the next Galapagos Finch joke to see if I could get him to explain what he thinks the joke is, but asking them to explain exactly how these predictions are formed from ID theory could be just as fun. The junk DNA one especially. I love how ID theory can't say anything about the designer... except when it can, like now. |
| Date: 2008/01/15 08:38:03, Link 212.85.19.24 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
this is fun. I post the most plausible bullshit I can about DNA atomic forcefields, and in the very next post DaveScot offers his own theory which by pure coincidence happens to be similar to mine (but without the forcefields, which is a shame). Luckily I have been doing my research and can back up DaveScot with lots of possibilities. :) |
| Date: 2008/01/16 22:36:00, Link 90.194.167.139 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I found the other day that ERV's blog is the first hit on google for the search 'erv', which is pretty respectable for a three-letter search. Unless you turn full safesearch on, which makes it disappear quicker than William Dembski when asked for his ID predictions. |
| Date: 2008/01/17 19:41:53, Link 90.195.252.83 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I actually can't argue with the response they've given me. I asked for a dna protection mechanism and they gave me one, even after I bullshitted about forcefields and completely made up the term 'retroamino introsposon'. I fail at tard-mining. :) |
| Date: 2008/01/19 09:31:33, Link 90.195.252.57 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
PaV knows what he's talking about
I reckon I can infer the existence of another piece of UD Tech from this; some kind of compressor that enables people like PaV here to cram amounts of error and illogic into a tiny paragraph that would otherwise fill a page. |
| Date: 2008/01/21 09:28:27, Link 90.195.252.108 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I argued via email with a chap from the Edinburgh Creation Group who was making a similar argument; he claimed that evolution is a philosophy built upon a foundation that goes all the way back to the Vedics, and added, as creationists often do, that evolution is responsible for all kinds of social ills. I pointed out that evolution is a scientific theory, not a philosophy. What pisses me off is that their solution to these social problems is to get rid of the science of evolution, and not address the social problems themselves. (if they even ARE caused by that scientific theory, which I doubt.) It's a mean, dirty, underhanded way to advance Biblical doctrine. And somehow, whenever the analogy is made with chemistry being socially responsible for guns, or atomic theory being socially responsible for the atom bomb, they won't accept that it's EXACTLY THE SAME. Hypocrites. Who among us wouldn't support the eradication of racism? Yet that's not what creationists seem to want. They want to remove a scientific theory which they claim has racist foundations (yet which, oddly, identifies all humans as being the same species). They paint US with the racism card, despite the fact that we actually CAN separate a scientific model from the real world, and from society, and from morals, and can form moral judgements without a lot of prejudice. They don't seem bothered about any of the other sources of racism in the world; why not? I want it all gone, whether it's white superiority, black superiority, whether it's caused by evolution theory, or Mein Kampf. To attack a science that threatens you by playing the race card is as cowardly as a guy claiming that he was racially abused in order to avoid the blame for starting a fight (and this has happened to me). Jesus would be ashamed of you. |
| Date: 2008/02/06 06:50:15, Link 90.195.252.194 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
If he really feels argumentum ad file size is acceptable, perhaps someone should point out that the text 'THIS SITE IS ENDORSED BY THE DISCOVERY INSTITUTE' is far smaller than that tiny icon. |
| Date: 2008/02/06 15:44:18, Link 90.195.252.194 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
You have to see the description next to that diagram to get the full tard. These guys have got to be cargo cultists.
This sounds like crap that I'd invent, except I actually attempt some logic at least. I mean, if you translate it to English it says: 'Only intelligent design can increase information, therefore natural selection and random mutation cannot increase information.' Seriously, I want ID to spread this research as far and wide as possible. It has rather a spreadable texture. |
| Date: 2008/02/06 15:47:12, Link 90.195.252.194 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
 |
| Date: 2008/02/07 07:20:05, Link 90.195.252.7 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Paul Nelson sighting! on the Panda's Thumb, with added irony!
my emphasis. EDIT: to add URL |
| Date: 2008/02/07 13:22:55, Link 90.195.252.7 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I've just commented on it (and note the difference between URL and title, someone got there quick :) ). I love the way he wants to say that evolution decreases information, but can't back himself up with math. It looks like the filters applied on evolving art; picbreeder is a fun site for that.
|
| Date: 2008/02/14 19:41:00, Link 90.195.252.80 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
this is true by the way. the example is invented (but no less valid), but the program does exist.
|
| Date: 2008/03/05 15:36:50, Link 90.194.167.147 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
That gets my Post of the Week. :) |
| Date: 2008/03/06 10:59:05, Link 90.195.252.3 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Let me give you an equivalent example from science fiction. An episode of Deep Space Nine, in fact. A fleet of enemy ships is on its way to the planet Cardassia (I forget whose) to blow stuff up. The good Captain Sisko wants to warn them, but a treaty prohibits them from sending a message. What does he do? He calls the station's resident tailor (and former Cardassian spy) Garak, to come and alter his uniform. Immediately. In the middle of the briefing where all this is being discussed. That way, he hasn't actually told Garak anything, and yet the spy now is able to warn Cardassia. Find that acceptable? It seems to me you're doing the same. You can't teach creationism, so you're going to piggyback on the science that coincides with it. Of course, we all know this, and have done for a long time (even before the Wedge Document put it in writing), but it's interesting to see you practically admit it. It's even more laughable when your WHOLE BOOK is nothing but 'science that overlaps with creationism'. As Dembski might say, that's so unlikely that it could only have come about by design. In short, you're not fooling us, and we'd like to stop you fooling people less experienced with the scam. |
| Date: 2008/03/06 12:54:12, Link 90.195.252.3 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I can't believe you didn't know that, with your taste in atheism icons. For a fun twist on it, see Heddle's icon. :) |
| Date: 2008/03/07 12:49:26, Link 90.195.252.219 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I can't believe you are playing this childish game, Paul. You've gone from Young Earth Creationist to Used Car Salesman. How about this, Paul? 1. You make a lovely flowerbed, and put up notice saying 'DO NOT WALK ON THE FLOWERBED'. 2. I tie newspapers to my feet, and trample your flowers. 3. When asked, I tell you that I was actually walking on newspapers, not your flowerbed. Do you honestly believe we can't see you're playing the same game? You disgust me. |
| Date: 2008/03/07 13:06:43, Link 90.195.252.219 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Paul, I suspect you know fully well that there is nothing logically or legally 'wrong' with what you're doing. That's the whole point of 'critical analysis' of evolution - it's a cheap, twisted way to game the system. You have taken a bunch of creationist arguments and renamed them 'critical analysis'. Your whole book comprises this. It isn't illegal, but it is morally wrong to deceive people in this way. You know, morals? I think Jesus mentioned them once or twice? |
| Date: 2008/03/07 14:25:12, Link 90.195.252.219 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Paul: no, it isn't morally wrong to evaluate evolution, and that wasn't what I was accusing you of. I was accusing you of deliberately deceiving people by taking creationist arguments, and renaming and changing them to critical analysis (one wonders if we'll see the phrase 'ccritical analysisists' anywhere?) And once again, I've already said what you're doing is not technically wrong, just like me trampling your flowers. Therefore, your quote probably is acceptable (although I wouldn't bet on it, I'll let people with more knowledge analyse the claims therein.) It's as acceptable as forcing schools to put disclaimer stickers in their textbooks - no reason why you CAN'T, but it clearly shows a lack of care. You don't want to teach kids. You want to stop them from doubting the Bible. Otherwise, I'd expect to see quotes like: Newton's theory of gravity, while often used in real life, is actually false. Gravitation theory has no explanation for why gravity occurs, or how the universe was formed. There is no experimental confirmation of gravitons, despite massive detectors having been run for years to detect them. Intelligent Design does not explain who the designer is, whether it still exists, how many designers there are, what its intent is, where the designer came from, how it designed, or when it designed, nor indeed if design even requires intelligence. It is not known if Einstein's spacetime is a fully accurate model of gravity. Thermodynamics is forced to use statistical formulae to model large systems of particles, which cannot give accurate results about single particles. All of the above are true, Paul, and some are even mentioned in textbooks (it's often important to know the range of validity of a model). My annoyance is at you twisting truths into propaganda at the cost of the education of children. There are a whole bunch of things that evolution does not explain. Some it hasn't explained yet, and some it wasn't ever meant to (it's quite common in the creationist lit for people to confuse the two, which is why Expelled! presents evolution as being abiogenesis). In short: I'm not objecting to whether what you say is true or legal or not. I'm accusing you of using cheap tricks and loopholes to get what you want, at the cost of anyone who gets in your way - which will probably be children. |
| Date: 2008/03/07 15:17:09, Link 90.195.252.219 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
My points still stand, Paul, if you'd just read them. I don't believe you've actually directly responded to a single one I've made, or you'd realise that my problem is not with you presenting truth, but presenting propaganda. As someone else pointed out, you aren't equipping children with the ability to critically analyse; you're just making them do it, to what happens to be the one subject which creationists don't want their kids to learn. |
| Date: 2008/03/13 10:28:03, Link 90.194.167.247 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I'd still like to hear the answer to the Doc's earlier question: is EE attempting to imply that tortoises were created suddenly in some unknown manner? Or are we to skip past the fact that EE expresses exactly what creationists want kids to hear, while wrapping it up in a neat 'scientific analysis' package? I don't understand why you're here Paul, honestly. Half the time you spend not answering questions, and the other half you give answers that I wouldn't even have gotten away with in school (unless you really expect us to be convinced by 'it's not creationism! It's just that all the arguments are FROM creationism!') (long refuted creationism, at that... sure, I really want my kids on stale arguments made up for religious purposes.) (if I had kids.) |
| Date: 2008/03/18 17:21:57, Link 90.198.114.36 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
The museum's explanation is accurate. Remember the three laws: A robot shall not harm a h- Wait, not those laws. Newton's: 1. A body will remain at constant velocity unless acted on by a net force. 2. F = ma 3. All forces act in equal and opposite pairs. These seem to be true, although schools have yet to teach the controversy about the failings of Newtonian gravity at speeds close to that of light. What this means is that the Earth does indeed push up on you with the same force as you push down on it - it has to be, or it'd be violating the first law (you're not moving up or down, so the net force on you is a zero, balanced force). Similarly, when it comes to your body, all the internal forces are balanced, by tension (which is also a force). If you go to a planet with super-gravity, then you'll find what happens when your body doesn't have the ability to balance the forces; they get balanced for you when your bones and organs puddle onto the ground. It's the same with the penny, but horizontal. The penny is travelling at a huge velocity until it hits the plate and decelerates to zero. The first law says that a force must have applied to cause this. The third law says that a force is also applied equal and opposite to that. The second law tells you a little about the forces effect. Since the plate is large and probably mounted, it'll shrug off the penny's force without much problem. However, when the penny takes the force in the other direction, its tiny lil body doesn't have the internal strength to decelerate and keep its shape, so it bends and crinkles. Try to envision what happens if the plate is replaced with a piece of paper. This time, the penny wins; the paper can apply a force to slow the penny, but can't possibly take the reaction force without tearing, so the penny makes a hole in it. |
| Date: 2008/03/22 14:07:15, Link 90.195.252.80 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
They also plug the movie Expelled, which is about their kind, freedom-loving voices being censored by us evil Darwinazis. I have to wonder about their whole 'lying to save souls' philosophy. I mean, they may swing people who are already on the fence anyway, but they're driving people like me further and further away, since I'm hardly likely to worship a God who supports their sleazy tactics. In other words, they're effectively sending me to hell. Is it just a numbers game? It's okay to have a few go to hell if more go to heaven? |
| Date: 2008/03/23 16:39:00, Link 90.195.252.221 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| He's still on talk.origins afaik. Last I saw him he was arguing with Ray 'logic is a trick by atheists' Martinez. |
| Date: 2008/03/28 13:57:28, Link 90.195.252.62 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
A company (I believe it was Imperial Leather, but I can find no references to it) did a beautiful parody of this way back in the 90s. They start in a lab with scientists in labcoats, one of whom is talking about their new soap. He points to a molecular ball-and-rod model to illustrate, and at the exact moment he talks about the 'complex molecular structure', a scientist walking behind him slips up on some molecule balls and falls over. At the end they show the effect of their soap thirty seconds after application, and if I recall, it causes a white lady to turn into a six foot tall black man with dreadlocks. For some reason few people have tapped into the comedy gold of this kind of advert since. :) |
| Date: 2008/03/28 15:00:33, Link 90.195.252.62 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
Thanks! I didn't know it was Paul Merton. The one I'm thinking of is a fan-done parody of this parody, as it happens. :) |
| Date: 2008/04/07 12:40:38, Link 90.195.252.50 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I'd actually quite like astrology to be taught in science*. I read this book, you see, about Pagan astrology, and it had all these diagrams and calculations, so there's something to teach already. It'll fill the gap nicely while we wait for ID to be finished. *no, honestly. I much prefer magical fairies and elemental monsters to the weird dominatrix bloodlust of Christianity. And if it comes to all-worldviews-are-equal, Paganism has the upper hand - after all, it's already based on nature. |
| Date: 2008/04/07 13:54:05, Link 90.195.252.50 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I'll have a go, Kevin. 1) All those statistical methods and repetitions that scientists perform are their way of checking the data. On the other hand, paradigm problems occur when the current theory is meeting events that it can't explain. Relativity, for example, came about when Newtonian gravity just wasn't working at the scale of planets. Einstein showed that his way was much better, and everyone saw that it was true. No all-interpretations-are-equal there: relativity explained what they saw, and Newton didn't. Or take quantum theory. Classical physics wasn't working - scientists were getting silly results like infinite energies being radiated in the ultraviolet frequency, and they couldn't explain why electrons were able to orbit nuclei without losing energy and spiralling in. It took a scientist to take the utterly stupid step of fudging the math to pretend that all the electrons were stuck in energy levels, and everyone laughed at him (I think it was Bohr) - until they found that it predicted what they were seeing perfectly. Note the common theme in those two. They made predictions which they then showed to be true. If you can do that, you don't NEED this debate. The theory of evolution HAS done this part already. It predicts the pattern of life on Earth to astonishing accuracy. ID, on the other hand... it's hard even to tell exactly what they're trying to do. Can you name even one prediction of ID? I can't. About the most you can get out of them is 'junk DNA has function' (an old creationist claim, of course, but what do you expect), and if you ask them how that prediction follows from their theory then you'll hear a lot of running away before you realise that there is no theory from which to make predictions. Seriously. There is no logical link between the various scraps that IDers throw about. It's pretty pathetic. I'm not making any of that up. Check for yourself. See if you can do it. And see if you can get them to tell you how to do it, which is even harder. 2) There isn't anything to stop God throwing lightning bolts or inseminating women. Science doesn't rule that out - it just says we can't study it, because we can't repeat observations. You have mixed up 'science cannot describe this' with 'this does not happen'. No one says science explains everything. It doesn't. If we regularly saw God chuck lightning bolts out of the sky, we could take measurements of the kind of electricity he uses. How much more powerful is divine lightning? What's the spectrum of that? How does he target people without it being attracted by other bodies? We can experiment and theorise. |
| Date: 2008/04/07 15:11:13, Link 90.195.252.50 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Who is saying science explains everything? Not scientists, that's for sure, and they would know. I know Ben Stein is saying that evolutionary science should explain everything up to and including the origin of the universe, so perhaps you should stop listening to him. There isn't any reason why we couldn't see the effects of God's action on the natural world, but God is not a scientific phenomenon and we can't describe him that way, any more than we can model the likelihood of students coming into fields with planks and making crop circles. The question doesn't make sense really. |
| Date: 2008/04/08 07:20:29, Link 90.195.252.222 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Why, Mr Anderson, why, WHY! |
| Date: 2008/04/08 14:47:05, Link 90.195.252.222 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
I'd like this answered also... in fact, I think it's the most important question you have to answer, Kevin. If you can't, then can you please tell us if you're annoyed at being deceived by the ID people? I mean, you've made a film about this wonderful scientific theory called ID, and now you find out you've been hoaxed. You were lied to. It doesn't exist. Me, I'd be a little unhappy with this. |
| Date: 2008/04/11 21:12:02, Link 90.195.252.183 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
My gosh the tard on that thread, especially from Apollos. It's really bizarre to watch them talk about it, and somehow manage to totally deny any wrongdoing. Can you even get any logic out of post 7? He seems to want to say that the expelled team 'somehow made a similar animation' without saying 'they copied it'. |
| Date: 2008/04/16 09:10:29, Link 90.195.252.18 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Welcome back Paul. One does rather wonder why you wrote a textbook on the subject that inspired Hitler to kill millions of Jews. ;) |
| Date: 2008/04/18 08:10:10, Link 90.195.252.17 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
My God, even their photography sucks, and I am NOT a photographer. However I know that the three top rules of photography are: 1) Don't point camera at sun. 2) Don't point camera at things that are pointing at sun. 3) Don't photograph people next to trashcans. Of course, it may be one of the writing staff, in which case I apologise to the Dalek homeworld for insulting one of their offspring. |
| Date: 2008/04/18 14:38:19, Link 90.194.167.224 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
I actually have to disagree here. The truth of the statement 'Expelled is too nice' does not depend on the truth or falsity of the if. |
| Date: 2008/04/18 15:40:29, Link 90.194.167.224 | ||||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||||
I didn't see what Kevin was commenting on, so I could be wrong, but the conditional does not seem to link to the statement that 'Expelled plays too nice', but rather to the fact that they could be caught red-handed. |
| Date: 2008/04/18 19:50:59, Link 90.194.167.224 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
This from the same chap who denies any 'clear connection!' between ID and religion. |
| Date: 2008/04/21 09:53:23, Link 90.195.252.80 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
I have. Not even making up entirely phoney scientific terms could get me banned. :) |
| Date: 2008/04/22 11:23:16, Link 90.198.114.111 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I just posted this on the Biologic Website thread at UD
hasn't shown up yet. EDIT: to clarify which thread. And because I can, apparently. |
| Date: 2008/04/22 13:38:49, Link 90.198.114.111 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
.look what UD decided to let through instead of my comment |
| Date: 2008/04/23 14:43:44, Link 90.194.167.72 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I don't believe Dr Dr Dembski has read the site. I just did, and it is a nicely factual review of atheism - no bias, no spin... it could even turn undecided people toward atheism. I posted a comment on UD to this effect, but I guess I got put into their reality filter because none have shown up lately. |
| Date: 2008/04/23 14:56:06, Link 90.194.167.72 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Oddly enough, I have MET the author of that book. Not Shakespeare. The other chap. |
| Date: 2008/04/23 16:45:48, Link 90.194.167.72 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
IT'S OVER 9000! |
| Date: 2008/04/25 14:37:49, Link 90.198.114.235 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I noticed that too. I search for ERV on Google because it's easier than typing in the url, but it's gone again. |
| Date: 2008/04/28 16:13:25, Link 90.194.167.103 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| ERV's blog seems to be back. |
| Date: 2008/04/30 15:31:48, Link 90.195.252.221 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
aaarg why am I even bothering. Defintions are so fluid there, it's like swimming in piss. And I would know. no, wait. |
| Date: 2008/04/30 17:33:15, Link 90.195.252.221 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
I give up, I have failed you. I'm not even fit to be in banned camp. *cries* |
| Date: 2008/05/01 09:35:33, Link 90.194.167.217 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Why, what's wrong with Dembski? |
| Date: 2008/05/12 12:26:08, Link 90.194.167.26 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I was arguing IC on Uncommon Descent a week ago here, where I told them they should stop clinging to the flawed notion, but they still believe it's credible, and I rather failed at showing them otherwise. Apparently they are aware that nothing in evolution prohibits IC, but still insist that it be shown in practice else ID wins by default. I know a goalpost has been moved somewhere there but my argument-fu is weak. In any case they're asking for evidence which is unreasonably difficult to obtain in practice, but easy to show in principle. Personally I believe that emphasising the power of gene duplication is the key, since that, as far as I know, is the method for adding information (by their definition) - the mechanism they claim doesn't exist. how exactly do they deny that one? we know genes duplicate, we know that it doesn't always harm the animal, we know that they can mutate in different ways to the original gene, we know that this can be selected for, and we have evidence of genes which look like copies of others. |
| Date: 2008/06/10 07:47:26, Link 90.195.252.17 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Is that the same as Common Sense Science, which is offering an alternative chemistry because quantum physics isn't Christian enough? (I wish I was joking.) |
| Date: 2008/06/13 17:33:30, Link 90.194.167.26 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| is the front cover illustration the result of a cameraman stumbling into an orion slave woman? |
| Date: 2008/06/15 08:06:23, Link 90.194.167.132 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Oddly for South Park, that episode was very lacking in satire, and Dawkins pointed that out - it presented some of Dawkin's arguments, but it had nothing on the other side except Garrison being lewd and bitchy. They didn't do the research very well. |
| Date: 2008/07/01 16:08:02, Link 90.194.167.108 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
That sample chapter is quite laughworthy, but it adds nothing new. It's basically 'Darwinism is replacing christianity and destroying faith, and ID is the answer to how you can keep your faith but it's not about religion. Also we're being oppressed.' Dembski (assuming those bits are his) seems to have a knack for very eloquently putting forward the other side's good arguments, and then trying to refute them with his made up crap. I mean, normally I have a little patience for religion and spirituality, but Dembski clearly lays it out: if what the Darwinists are true, Christianity is WRONG WRONG WRONG. He's putting that dichotomy there himself, and the only thing that he's holding people onto his side with is his made-up scam of a theory. This seems to me to be a very fragile position to put his readers in, because as soon as they realise the nonsense he's offering on his side, the other is going to look exactly as inviting as he says it is. |
| Date: 2008/07/04 07:51:47, Link 90.195.252.17 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
It's okay. I speak Jive. |
| Date: 2008/07/06 13:21:22, Link 90.194.167.44 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I can't see what's wrong with this. It is true that the odds are always 50/50 for a fair coin. The probability of five heads also doesn't change if five heads have been thrown. What am I missing here? |
| Date: 2008/07/08 15:11:58, Link 90.198.114.106 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
hey I'm on that list. do I get points for that? I'm pondering buying a few of the wacky ID and creationism books from Amazon (some have gone really cheap and if I get enough I get free delivery). Then no one can say I haven't read Dumbski's books. :p |
| Date: 2008/07/10 08:36:54, Link 90.195.252.30 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Davescot forgets that UD's policies don't extend to the civilised world:
Denys o'reality made me laugh, however.
It must be a curse to be such a fantastic writer and have no humour with to have express it which. PS. Kwok really is looking like a twat. |
| Date: 2008/07/10 08:54:46, Link 90.195.252.30 | ||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||
Forget what I just said.
I'm glad someone on UD knows about theology. I was getting bored with all the science. |
| Date: 2008/07/10 20:31:33, Link 90.194.167.149 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin]
I have to say Heddle is coming across as the more reasonable, and Kwok is coming across as, well, a twat. He's showing exactly the kind of evasion that places like this teach me to spot. I mean, why doesn't Kwok just point out what's wrong with Heddle's points, instead of mislabelling him as a Dembski fan? |
| Date: 2008/07/15 06:59:59, Link 90.195.252.161 | ||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||
Hey, FTK... you're on UD, and the Uncommonly Dense Thread. You know that the latter is reaching its 1000th page. That represents all the discussion of Dembski and co's public escapades over two and a half years. That's an awful lot of opportunity for ID science to get done there. I mean, Tiktaalik was discovered DURING that time. Did you ever see any of it? On either thread? Any new ID science coming up, being discussed, being picked to death (as happens in science, and as would certainly happen on the Uncommonly Dense Thread)? Did the Explanatory Filter ever get tested during that time? Did anyone try to measure CSI? I mean, seriously, I'm running out of questions to ask here, because these buzzwords are ALL THERE HAVE EVER BEEN. But let's not forget what we have seen on the premier ID blog which is about the sciency science of ID. We now know that there are at least 12 things religion predicts. We know that ID lets you keep your faith if you're worried about evolution (as per the green buttocks book.) We know that it pays lots of money to go to events and teach how much atheism sucks. We know that evolution is an assault on faith and that Hitler used it to kill the Jews. (Ironically, we also have by Dembski's admission that eugenics falls under ID, but everyone forgot it when Expelled came out.) I'm sure you're also on UD for entirely unreligious reasons, FTK. Given that all this happens in the years following the Dover trial, where it was shown that 'creation science' was replaced with 'intelligent design' as if the two were synonymous (that wasn't a legal trick - they actually did it), and that no change has occurred (again, if you heard any ID science discussed in the meantime, do tell), why would anyone not believe this was a religious scam? |
| Date: 2008/07/23 11:12:37, Link 90.195.252.223 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin]
actually if you read it totally literally, the parents are only required to SAY that he's a glutton and a drunkard. It doesn't say that this has to be true, or that it has to follow from the child's disobedience - it just says they have to say it. Would I be criticised for being stupidly over-literal there, and if so, am I closer to God's intended word than you, who needed to add in the additional step to determine what God actually means? |
| Date: 2008/07/23 12:33:48, Link 90.195.252.223 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin]
Well, that sucks, because I hate my brother. |
| Date: 2008/07/28 20:29:48, Link 90.194.167.130 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
The problem is, you likely don't understand the science, so you can't 'believe' in it. It's like the creationists who use their own ignorance as evidence against evolution (eg. Behe with 'I haven't read any papers which disprove me', the ID movement in general with 'I can't understand this therefore design') I was arguing with a man from the Edinburgh Creation Group who believes that because he's made a model of the moon's orbit using a 2D model of simple Newtonian gravity, he's proven the Moon couldn't have formed (you can find this masterpiece at the Edinburgh Creation Group website). He apparently hasn't heard of angular momentum, many-body systems, precession, or relativity, all of which and more are essential to model planet formation and orbits, and when I told him of these, he said 'show me a model which works then!'. Of course, I'm not a scientist. I can't. Even if I did, what would it mean to him? If he doesn't understand it, how can he accept the truth or falsity of it? The same question goes to you. How can you accept evolution? Do you know what exactly evolution scientists do? How they make trees of relatedness? How they model natural selection? How important natural selection is? (the last one, even scientists don't know exactly). |
| Date: 2008/07/29 07:35:47, Link 90.194.167.130 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
And what you were saying about belief doesn't seem unreasonable? You were saying you couldn't accept science because the just-so stories seemed unbelievable (let's skip over that these are normally testable or even tested hypotheses, which have little bearing on established theory), but you're willing to trust a feeling of euphoria which you believe comes from a person you can't see? Seriously, why not just come out and say it? You don't understand evolution, and you don't like it. It's ungodly and we're all going to hell. Be the fundie you want to be. :) |
| Date: 2008/07/30 08:07:54, Link 90.194.167.130 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
[Graffiti moved to Bathroom Wall. -Admin] Well, we try, but creationists don't always lie openly - they spin. (Like Jesus would be doing in his grave, if he hadn't ascended.). Paul Nelson wrote a textbook, Explore Evolution, which claims to critically analyse evolution, but is based almost entirely on creationist claims. When we demanded an explanation, he said words to the effect of 'is there any rule that says we can't use a claim if a creationist has used it?' And no, there isn't. He's allowed to do that, it's just very dishonest. And childish. Dembski often lies by omission. He won't put ID theory in a form where it can criticised. He won't say a word against the hundreds of creationists who are now using ID theory to back up their claims, yet he still gets to claim that ID isn't religious. We also have the evidence of creationists being corrected on their mistakes, and then repeating them later. And quote-mining. But even with evidence against the other side, who's going to listen to what they don't want to hear? |
| Date: 2008/07/31 05:10:30, Link 90.194.167.130 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| The flytrap, ironically or not, is one of the organisms that talkorigins.org uses to DEBUNK Irreducible Complexiferity (they wanted a mousetrap, but it was the next best available). Are they taking my name in vain? |
| Date: 2008/08/01 08:29:18, Link 90.194.167.226 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Hey, Denies uses plenty of language. We're just not sure which one. |
| Date: 2008/08/04 09:16:06, Link 90.194.167.208 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
Don't be hard on DaveScot. He's putting people in moderation to reduce the tardflow to more manageable levels for us. Tardflow of course has units of tard per unit time. By analogy we can see that the momentum impulse of tard is equal to the force of people slapping their foreheads x length of comment thread. It's believed that this undergoes quasi-random fluctuation as a thread approaches the critical 404 boundary and becomes vacuum tardity. Of course, this relies on you being able to measure tard. unless you have some kind of magic filter which eliminates mathematics. |
| Date: 2008/08/05 12:08:47, Link 90.194.167.178 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
how stupid am I if I don't even slightly get this? |
| Date: 2008/08/05 13:23:29, Link 90.195.252.121 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Never heard of him. Personally I feel ID is better represented by this. |
| Date: 2008/08/06 13:56:40, Link 90.198.114.33 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| That thread is about to erupt with tard. I can feel it. Did Dembski really put the debunked creationist guinea pig/human genes argument in The Design of Life? Is he going to pull a Nelson on us? |
| Date: 2008/08/06 15:07:45, Link 90.194.167.22 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Larry asks why people call ID 'ID creationism', and gets a quick reply... unfortunately, it's mine, and it's in the moderation queue at 45.
|
| Date: 2008/08/06 15:56:18, Link 90.194.167.246 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| And... it's gone! Silently obliviated. |
| Date: 2008/08/10 20:37:42, Link 90.195.252.208 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
lcd: if you spent time writing your comment, you may want to post it here so you have a copy of it, because those wankers will delete it out of the moderation queue if they don't like it. |
| Date: 2008/08/11 19:10:05, Link 90.194.167.240 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
because some of us don't just begin worshipping invisible people the moment we can't explain stuff. We do science instead. Also, some of us actually understand evolution, and know what to expect, which is why this doesn't surprise me. Evolution is EXPECTED to be messy. Unless there's a need for biology to tidy itself up, it won't happen (that would require intelligence, you see). |
| Date: 2008/08/12 21:35:52, Link 90.194.167.15 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| It's also merely spooky circumstance that this is a very old creationist claim. One of the worst, in fact, on a par with WERE YOU THERE!?! |
| Date: 2008/08/13 14:09:20, Link 90.195.252.86 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
God damn you I actually spluttered on my screen. With chocolate. |
| Date: 2008/08/13 15:15:16, Link 90.195.252.162 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
My gosh... this is the chap who the DI moaned about being fired? (which apparently is the same as not getting tenure - hey, I don't make the rules). He does some research that suggests that by a quirk of mathematics, habitable planets, because of their orbits, are more likely to have the setup for perfect eclipses than uninhabitable ones. This is interesting, and I like it. It's one of those weird mathematical tricks like two people sharing birthdays in a large group. So he's shown that the fact we have nice eclipses IS NOT SURPRISING OR MAGICAL - in essence, score one for the godless atheist naturalist side. But then he throws in this utter illogic about eclipses driving scientific discovery. Um, what does that have to do with anything? Archimedes was turned on by bathwater. War has been a highly effective way to advance science. But his whole argument hinges on the suggestion that some intelligence set up the universe and the moon in such an unlikely way as to make science all that much easier for us. I'm pretty sure I can come up with many, many ways that scientific discovery could be made easier. For one, not having THE DARK AGES. For two, not having people who are trying to bring back THE DARK AGES. For three, how about not having clouds at all, or at least having them move in paths which run around our telescopes? Because I'm one of many people who didn't see the 1999 total solar eclipse BECAUSE OF HUGE CLOUDS. (I went to Cornwall to see it and all). Like the Explanatory Filter, Gonzales idea relies on being able to go through an infinity of possibilities. In the EF, one has to rule out all natural laws, discovered or not; in the Privileged Planet, one cannot claim that our current position is the best without knowing all possible positions. What if we were in one of those little dwarf galaxies over the Milky Way? The whole Milky Way swirly would fill the sky*. We'd be able to watch stars orbit the central black hole. With an X-ray telescope perhaps we'd detect the streamers and deduce the existence of other quasars easily instead of all that difficult science they had to do. I suspect Gonzales work is going to be just like Dembski's; sloppy in all the areas where the argument is, rejected by science, but fuel for creationists. Hey, I've already had a creationist give me the eclipse argument. * Stargate Atlantis shows us what this might be like. Sorry, I just watched the episode with the midway station between the Milky Way and the Pegasus galaxy and it's jawdroppingly pretty. edit: italic |
| Date: 2008/08/16 10:46:53, Link 90.195.252.169 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Out of interest, what is that multicoloured blobbycircle? It looks like a cellular automaton, something I've always felt the ID people should be studying. |
| Date: 2008/08/16 17:08:04, Link 90.194.167.215 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
In my opinion, cellular automata are a perfect testing ground for ID hypotheses, because they are a universe which is under total control - unlike ours. For example, the Explanatory Filter requires that all natural laws are ruled out before we can identify design - what better place to do that than in a universe built on rules that we specify? One structure kind which I believe would be perfect for an ID study is the Garden of Eden pattern - an arrangement of cells which has been mathematically proven to be impossible to form within its CA (that is, there is no precursor pattern which can possibly form it). This is in effect the ID poster child, because it can never appear in a CA - it HAS to be created. If they really have anything which detects design, it should flag up an enormous honk on that. Which is why they won't ever do this, because they don't have a theory and they don't want to test it etc. etc. |
| Date: 2008/08/16 17:35:13, Link 90.194.167.215 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Did you even read what I said? |
| Date: 2008/08/18 09:10:09, Link 90.195.252.136 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I've always wondered why there are no balloon animals in the air. Filling a sac with gas is really easy, much easier than flying. |
| Date: 2008/08/18 20:32:12, Link 90.195.252.210 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I reckon my one's fairly worthwhile. The Gardens of Eden have been mathematically verified, which means that in the world of a CA, at least, it is possible to mathematically determine that something is a designed entity. I don't actually know how they do it, but I suspect it's something like an advanced version of irreducible complexity; ie. not the crappy version ID people use which doesn't take into account most mutation mechanisms, but one which rules out, cell by cell, all possible precursors which result in that cell. I mean, just reading a paper on HOW IT'S DONE would be a fine piece of research. |
| Date: 2008/08/19 10:08:07, Link 90.194.167.69 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I also want to know why I should accept Gonzales' version over this, since this has Stonehenge and aliens in it. |
| Date: 2008/08/21 12:13:50, Link 90.194.167.169 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
I play a card game called Mao, which sounds like this only less useful. One of the rules is that you can't be told the rules, and that you have to deduce them as people play. The core rules are simple (lay cards of like suit, or like value, some cards have special effects like the 8 reversing direction of play, etc.) but the reward for winning (by losing all your cards) is that you get to add a new rule of your own invention, which must then be deduced by the other players. This eventually results in lots of rules acting at once, which is why the game has an explicit Point of Order which can be called if two players need to decide if their rules are clashing and which takes priority, etc.) It's neat. Unless, in my case, you utterly wreck the game by suddenly doubling the number of suits to 8 and making it near impossible to win, and they wouldn't let me cancel my rule *grumble grumble* |
| Date: 2008/08/22 18:06:23, Link 90.194.167.100 | ||||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||||
I know it's an esoteric process you may not have heard of, but it's called evolution. If a gene is duplicated, the organism still has the functionality of the old gene, as you point out, which means that a mutation in that section is now no longer as dangerous to the organism. This is one reason why irreducible complexity is a load of bollocks; this gene duplication process is a safety net which gives the genome more material to play with - and not only that, but material which ALREADY is in a useful shape, and which could easily be bent to other shapes. And guess what? Because this isn't some undefined, wishy-washy bullshit like 'intelligence only comes from intelligence', we can actually test it with simulations, maybe even by looking at real genes. And guess what? When we look at DNA, we often find sequences which look EXACTLY LIKE they were duplicated in this way. And then you come along and wonder why we can't accept the obvious truth that stuff looks designed. Hello? We can has evidence for our position. Try some.
English plz?
You know this how? I don't believe you. Show me why this is true.
Because one is testable, and one involves pixies.
|
| Date: 2008/08/29 09:28:06, Link 90.195.252.225 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Ha, don't you worry, we're on top of him. He'll be expelled from the scientific community faster than you can say 'Adolf'. Then we can get back to, um, worshiping the null god. Or Darwin. I forget which. |
| Date: 2008/09/02 09:45:20, Link 90.195.252.225 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
My gosh, have you seen that creation science site. Even AiG has more sophisticated babble than that. YU CANT PROVE ORIGINZ! NO TRANSISHUNAL FORMS! RADIOCARBON IZ FAKE! It's like talk origins never existed. :) |
| Date: 2008/09/03 17:39:02, Link 90.195.252.225 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
It just went 404. Taking a comment of mine with it which just came out of moderation, unfortunately. |
| Date: 2008/09/04 12:42:06, Link 90.195.252.225 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
This is not incredulity. It can be mathematically shown that chaotic influences render a system unforecastable - the whole field is called chaos theory. Even a system of three bodies under gravity is chaotic. How can you not know this? Weren't you a teacher? |
| Date: 2008/09/11 18:28:56, Link 90.195.252.225 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
Charlie: nice, but the evidence shows that it's junk... occasionally easily identifiable junk which allows us to predict evolutionary relationships, exactly as if they had evolved. Do we just ignore that? Not only that, but the theory of evolution gives the perfect reason for junk to be there at all - you try programming an evolutionary algorithm, and I bet you junk will form spontaneously. You'd actually have to specifically remove it if you didn't want any. Do we just ignore that and go with your reasoning, which has no evidence whatsoever? |
| Date: 2008/09/18 20:28:02, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Well, except that there seems to be a boundary beyond which the distinction between life and molecules gets more and more vague (viruses? prions?), and that the further back in time you go, the closer life gets to primitive forms like this. Since it's clear that we were not among those forms, is it really that much of a leap to speculate that life may have arisen from the molecules which make it up? Meanwhile, ID asks us if it's such a leap to suggest that if humans can make neat stuff, and biology is neat, maybe someone made life. Which is nice, except they then spent twenty years giving talks about this idea, making fancy computer graphics about it, and sending DVDs to schools about it, while real scientists were working on abiogenesis hypotheses. Miller and Urey actually put some gases in a glass globe. People have actually modeled bilipid layers to see if the RNA world hypothesis is feasible. ID people, in the meantime, have stalled. Nowhere can you find people running simulations which measure CSI, or a mathematical treatment of irreducible complexity. This isn't because of oppression. No one can stop Dr Dr Dembski from putting a Java applet up on UD (maybe under the Panda-monium game?) showing off his Explanatory Filter. Of course, if ID was just a sham as evidenced by the Wedge Document and all the creationists that are free to quote ID to support their crap, then it'd make a lot more sense. |
| Date: 2008/09/21 21:03:11, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Could we have the quote that got him banned? Because what Dembski posted actually makes not the slightest sense. GCU's comment holds no contempt for ID, but for the hypocrisy of UD, and is not at all instructive for Dr Dr Twatball's* propaganda purposes. * alternative spelling |
| Date: 2008/09/21 21:16:19, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Hey wait, I can add it myself:
EDIT: for ineptness |
| Date: 2008/09/23 11:44:13, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
My gosh, that's some vintage tard. It's definitely matured over the years to give it that strong, rich kick, and the addition of JAD lends it that little bit of fizz. It's worth it just for RB's attempt to explain that computation is independent of the machine which performs it, and could be done with logs and ropes, to which Davescot replies 'well why don't you BUILD one then'. Classic. ^.^ |
| Date: 2008/09/29 14:05:51, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
That's quite some slimy scumbaggery there. |
| Date: 2008/09/29 14:30:00, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I believe the moment he lost his credibility with me was when he said words to the effect of 'JUST because a creationist MAY have used an argument in the past, means that WE can't use the same one. There's no RULE against it'. This was his appalling justification for Explore Evolution being full of near nothing BUT creationist antievolution propaganda, under the guise of inquiry-based learning. And I realised then that this was basically a politely-voiced 'fuck you' to me, to honesty, to parents, and to the children that would be fed this propaganda. |
| Date: 2008/10/01 05:58:31, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
'Reality is much more important to me than some made up piece of fiction. According to this book of ancient tales I live my life by.' |
| Date: 2008/10/01 07:48:01, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I must say I'm really amazed this didn't make it past moderation.
|
| Date: 2008/10/01 09:29:10, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
Unsurprisingly, this has already been done. Kind of. I keep suggesting that the ID people should focus some research on cellular automata or similar, because a lot of what they are talking about HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE. Chris Langton, in like the 1970s, noticed that cellular automata seemed to fall into one of four categories: You had the empty ones which just fizzled out to nothing. Then you had the ones which formed lots of regular patterns, but didn't do much else. Then you had the ones which were so jumbled that they were just a chaotic mess. And finally, you had the ones which were in between the last two, the 'complex' ones, which seemed like randomness but which coalesced into weird, amazing structures. The Game of Life which Davescot so seems to hate is one of these. People not asleep at this point will notice that these near exactly correspond to Dembski's ideas of regularity, chance, and complexity, so much so that if they weren't all running a creationist scam over there, it'd probably have been mentioned. But what's really neat is that Langton quantified the 'microstates' of these systems, if you like, with a simple number, which he called lambda. It's a dimensionless fraction, and I forget how it's defined, but it's something like the number of available states divided by the total number of possible states - a kind of measure of computational potential. And with this number, he could tell whereabouts a system was in terms of chaos, regularity, or complexity. Personally I believe that the very existence of cellular automata like these blows the whole notion of ID out of the water, but still, if I were trying to pretend to be doing research, I would totally be playing around with CAs. |
| Date: 2008/10/06 07:54:40, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Sal has convinced me that there is no God, by somehow remaining unstruck by lightning all these years. |
| Date: 2008/10/08 13:10:05, Link 90.194.167.13 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
actually the Leviathan could have been a neutrino. YU CANT PRUV IT WASNT |
| Date: 2008/10/17 14:15:22, Link 90.194.167.248 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
I've just watched a video (http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/intelligent-design.xml) by the Edinburgh Creation Group which I found slightly interesting. Not because it was correct (it's a load of crap, which I'll go into in a moment) but because after years of watching near zero ID output from Dembski, this chap called Kirk Dunston comes along and actually presents what he claims is a working ID hypothesis. He begins with a long ramble on what ID is, how science really uses it even though evolutionists don't admit it, it's not about God, etc, but then he gets to his Design Hypothesis, which, to spare people having to listen to the rest, is at about 18:00 to 30:00, and it is: Entities which are intelligently designed should have significant amounts of functional information. We've heard this from Dembski, of course, but he then goes on to define functional information. He claims that this is a new formula from a paper in 2007: I(Ex) = - log2(M(Ex)/N) where I = the amount of functional information, in bits x = the function you're considering Ex = the degree of function x (basically how well it performs function x) M = the number of ways there are to perrform function x this well N = the total number of ways function x could be performed. Beneath all the gloss it's very simple: it boils down to 'how many bits do you need to distinguish between the ways of doing the function well enough, versus the ways of not doing it properly?' For example (his was crap) suppose there are a billion keys in the world, and you have a door with a lock, and you decide that function x is 'using a key to open the lock'. If it's such a crap lock that any key will open it, then the functional information is zero, because you don't need any kind of specification of how to do it. (in the formula, it's - log2(1 billion/1 billion) = 0). If half the keys work, the functional information is 1 bit - the amount you need to distinguish between two possibilities. And if only one key works, then it's the negative log of 1 billionth, which is probably around 20 bits. It's basically the same as Dembski's negative log of how improbable stuff is, yet he doesn't mention Dembski in the video at all. That alone is suspicious; surely Dunston has heard of him? Anyway, it gets worse. With this defined, he then goes on to use some bogus math to disprove evolution. Just like Dembski. Here it is: He first defines any non-intelligent search as 'blind search'. Just like Dembski. So already he's ignoring the cumulative search ability of evolution. He then claims that for a natural process (which uses 'blind search'), M(Ex) can only reasonably be 1, and N will be the number of trials in the blind search, which, by considering a hypothetical population of billions of organisms mutating, he works out to be 10^42 trials. Plugging this into the formula then gives: 140 bits of functional information which can possibly be produced by natural processes. This, of course, is such a load of nonsense that I find it difficult to believe he isn't a fraud. Even if you accept that evolutionary search is a blind search (it isn't), he has plugged these numbers into the formula for no reason whatsoever. The formula measures the amount of information required to distinguish a good solution from a bad one. It says nothing about the amount of information inherent TO a solution. It says nothing about performing a search, either. Dunston does not define a function x; he does not say how many possible ways there are of doing x, and therefore cannot say how well nature can do x. I can only assume that Dunston is trying to say 'there are 10^42 possible ways of doing this and nature can only do one', which is meaningless. I mean, am I wrong here? Has Dunston just totally shoved in these numbers to sound sciency (just like Dembski)? I cannot believe he did this without deliberate intent to deceive, since he apparently does this in his job. He then goes on to give examples of intelligent design and how it has more functional information, and goes into tornado-in-the-junkyard mode (just like Dembski) and says that just one protein has hundreds of bits of information, a minimal genome needs about 267,000 bits. By this time I was fed up with this nonsense, and frankly I don't know how he can do his job and mess all this up so badly. He doesn't even give a 'conservation of information' law like Dembski does, he just assumes that there is one, that you can add up amounts of it, and also that functional information is a universal value and not totally dependent on how people define a function. In fact, the actual mechanism of evolution only comes up once, and he dismisses it as 'vague'. Nice personal incredulity there. Possibly the laugh of the video comes at the end, where he moans that scientists always unfairly accuse ID of being all about religion. Who's he complaining to? A group of people at an event organised by Edinburgh University's Christian Union. Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. It really annoys me to see these people and not know if they're totally incompetent (which is worrying) or deliberately lying (which is annoying). If he is merely stupid, then I'd like to offer him the following advice: scientists aren't shunning ID because it's religious. They're shunning it because, like you've just shown, it's a load of bullcrap. |
| Date: 2008/10/20 09:10:39, Link 90.194.167.248 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Hehe, one of the links on Wikipedia's page about Dawkin's weasel is Sean Pitman's site. Luckily, his creationist crap is so long winded that no one will even get to the propaganda. |
| Date: 2008/10/20 09:21:42, Link 90.194.167.248 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| and the top link goes to this wacky site about neo-darwinism, Gaia and stuff. Maybe I should take them away... I already had to remove a creationist model of the hydrogen atom from there :p |
| Date: 2008/10/20 09:32:59, Link 90.194.167.248 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
but on the subject of Demsbki: I've been thinking that maybe he just doesn't realise what he doesn't know. I've always thought he was pushing the ID stuff because he's a crook, but maybe he simply, genuinely, is worse at his own subject than everyone else is. I mean, he was fooled by the Bible Code, which means he cannot tell how probable it is that words will appear in a random slice of text. If he can't even see past equidistant letter sequences, how can he possibly make a probabalistic argument about evolution? It's all very well him saying 'I just can't see how this can have evolved'... well maybe that's just because he totally fails at probability? I mean, humans in general are... I know I was easily fooled by the Birthday paradox, the Monty Hall problem, etc, and perhaps it's just arrogance that prevents him doubting himself. Then again, after watching a guy come up with a clone of Dembski's ideas and blatantly fudge the math, it's hard to say. |
| Date: 2008/10/20 14:38:22, Link 90.194.167.248 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Because current physics is evil and materialistic. Sound familiar? |
| Date: 2008/10/23 09:36:08, Link 90.194.167.248 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
No, your honour, I didn't steal it. I mean, of course I was holding the money, and of course I left the building, and yes, I may have spent an equivalent sum of money on a car, but how can you possibly connect those events? |
| Date: 2008/10/23 19:58:47, Link 90.194.167.248 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Possibly this is me being very stupid, but I'm finding the section on No Locking of Characters nearly unreadable. It's very difficult to follow. |
| Date: 2008/10/23 20:03:22, Link 90.194.167.248 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| As for the program, it's quite nice, although it brought up an error on the first run because it didn't expect the display fields to be empty, and it doesn't clear after a page reload. Aside from that it seems fine. :) |
| Date: 2008/10/24 08:52:24, Link 90.194.167.248 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I'd say Java is probably easier to use than Javascript because it's more strongly typed, easier to debug, and you don't have to mess around trying to cater for every single browser... the only real difficulty with Java (assuming you're already familiar with curly brace languages like C++) is learning what the pre-existing classes do so you can use them. Like with the Applet class, you have to use its init() and paint() methods and be basically familiar with how it updates the applet window, etc. A Java weasel program would look roughly like this: import java.applet.*; // for the applet classes import java.awt.*; // for graphics and buttons and stuff import java.awt.event.*; // for reading button presses public class WeaselApplet extends Applet { // variables like Strings or char[] arrays for the weasel, etc public void init() { // applet setup stuff, like inititalising a dedicated thread // for the processing, and the input listeners, etc } public void paint(Graphics g) { // gets called every time window needs repainting } public void someOtherFunctionThatIAlwaysLeaveOutButWhichIProbablyShouldntReally() { } } A tutorial on the web is probably better, but that's more or less it. |
| Date: 2008/10/28 15:25:19, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Dembski drops the occasional hint as to his position, which, I believe, is that he has no ability to detect bullshit. He was taken in by the Bible Code, which most people, especially academicianalic-kinds, should be able to see through immediately. I mean, let that sink in. The Bible Code. The book that you can find in your library next to books on numerology, chakra, and faith healing. And, of course, faith healing. Dembski believed that people can invoke the powers of angels to heal the sick and wounded, in spite of infinity cases of this not working, ever. The man cannot sense bullshit. He can't see past the Comic Sans and the BOLD ITALIC UNDERLINE OF PROFESSIONALISM!!! to the crap underneath. And this wouldn't matter for ID if ID had ever actually made its case scientifically, and made predictions, and fulfilled them, because then Dembski would know if it was bullshit or not. But without the math or the evidence, he simply has to believe it isn't bullshit. And what do we know about Dembski? HE CAN'T DETECT BULLSHIT. |
| Date: 2008/11/01 05:59:48, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Damn. This just got personal for me, because I have been struggling with OCD for years (at one time being near totally incapacitated by it), and Jeffrey Schwartz is THE man from whom people have been getting their therapies. I mean, in my fairly expensive therapy sessions, I was actually TAUGHT his 'Brain Lock' technique, and I know that it's general advice for anyone who has OCD. And now I find he's an ID chap, which instantly casts doubt on either his honesty, or his gullibility (or, indeed, his ability to seperate fairies from science). :( Maybe it's lucky that his Brain Lock idea never really worked for me. |
| Date: 2008/11/03 17:27:15, Link 90.195.252.236 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I know this is a little gruesome, but I wondered, if a person was bisected down the middle in an instant, which side has the soul? |
| Date: 2008/11/07 10:58:14, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
God damn it why won't these people just go AWAY. It really is sickening watching these childish tactics of pretending you don't really mean what you mean. WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO DO, IT HASN'T ESCAPED OUR ATTENTION THAT CREATIONISTS HAVE BEEN TRYING TO DO IT FOR DECADES, THAT YOU'RE ALL BASICALLY CREATIONISTS, AND THAT YOU SAID TEN YEARS AGO, ON PAPER, THAT YOU WERE GOING TO DO THIS IN THE NAME OF GOD. You lying scumbags. The more they do it, the less I believe in their god, who should totally be frying their asses with holy lightning. |
| Date: 2008/11/07 11:43:33, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
I actually came up with my own kind-of definition, but I've yet to implement it. Take a system S with N parts. Score S's function according to some fitness function. Now iterate through all the scores for all systems with N-1 parts. Obviously, many of these will be broken if you've removed a critical piece, so you'll end up with a table of scores ranging from total fail to maybe not broken that much. The measure of fail would be Fail = how crap it scores now/how it originally scored and goes from 0 to 1. Now, Behe's definition seems to be that an IC system will end up with a table full of fail (because removing any bit breaks it), so the mean fail would be close to 0 for IC systems. This is of course hard to do in real life; I was intending it for evolutionary algorithms where it'd be very easy to remove parts and calculate the score hundreds of times. Then, of course, I remembered that ID is a scam so they would evade it with rhetoric if it actually worked. |
| Date: 2008/11/10 07:32:07, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
BKD: I've never been sure exactly how to apply ID theory mathematically. Could you give me a quick, simple demo of a design inference on something small, say, a few short strings? |
| Date: 2008/11/11 17:10:15, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I believe they actually use the atheists-not-being-nihilists as an argument against atheism. Something like 'see, they don't believe in God yet they hold themselves accountable to some higher force... clearly they want to believe in God really! How can they maintain that we're just animals and not go around murdering innocent people, their whole argument breaks down yadda yadda'. It is on the face of it a compelling argument; I mean, I personally can't explain why I have a conscience, or why I desire to do good when I could easily get away with doing nothing, or even being bad. But it becomes another argument of the gaps; is God filling that gap which explains my morals (which I arrived at independently, as far as I can tell)? Given the success this line of argument has had in the past, that doesn't seem likely. As for animals: whose morals are they following? I don't agree with that. |
| Date: 2008/11/12 07:56:04, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
...I'm not sure if Americans use that word. :) |
| Date: 2008/11/18 11:45:26, Link 90.195.252.236 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
On a totally different note, I was just searching for Zachriel's Mutagenation,* and found this bizarre blog which seems to have copied one of his blog posts, run it into a web translator, and then back to English again. Is that what cool kids are doing nowadays, or is it some kind of spam site? * Dr Dr Sean Pitman is STILL going on about aa's and binding residues you see. He should totally take over UD, he can bullshit a lot better than Dembski. |
| Date: 2008/11/20 14:15:50, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
That's if a bisection is an instant death; I was considering the more gruesome possibility that both halves live for at least a few seconds. However, I've kind of worked out an answer myself; either the soul is in the middle, in which case it gets destroyed for an insta-death, or it's in the half which stays 'alive'. Thus it's an undecidable question. If the soul was outside, both halves would surely still be attached to it, and you'd have a person split in half but still aware of the other side. That's impossible to test as well, but since it relies on magic I reckon it's less likely. :p |
| Date: 2008/11/27 15:43:24, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Take a peek out over the horizon. See that glowing, orange cloud rising into the sky, way in the distance? That was my irony meter. |
| Date: 2008/12/04 12:54:15, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
What a piece of excrement. |
| Date: 2008/12/11 10:20:01, Link 90.195.252.236 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Well that's my POTW. XD |
| Date: 2008/12/11 11:19:15, Link 90.195.252.236 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
I keep going to UD meaning to say something. Not even anything that would need them to moderate my post away. And... I can't. I just can't. It's like being Alice in Wonderland. I'm trying my hardest to make sense of the rules of the place. I'm drinking the tea, moving along the table with the hare, and suddenly Dembski changes the rules AND EVERYONE CARRIES ON AS NORMAL. A very merry unbirthday, to him! |
| Date: 2008/12/17 16:27:21, Link 90.198.114.253 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Have you noticed the 'Put a sock in it' page of stuff UD doesn't want to answer questions on has been updated with recent events, like Dembski's Eggplantery Filter? |
| Date: 2009/01/13 12:16:27, Link 90.195.252.105 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
My god he's fantastic isn't he? I read some of Fuller's book about... er... Darwin? a while ago, and I couldn't even work out which side he was arguing for. The English language just seems to slide around his words. In fact, from reading this it seems like he's on our side. Which one of you is Fuller?
Er, thanks, Fuller, except that most people who rebut the mousetrap tend to say exactly WHY the two examples are dissimilar (flexibility of the genome, fact that mousetraps don't have babies, etc.), so it's hardly knee-jerk, is it? |
| Date: 2009/02/01 02:47:58, Link 90.194.167.53 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
In the spirit of UD's claim that they'll listen to their opponents fairly, here's a comment of mine on the Kirk thread that didn't get past moderation a few days ago.
The comment after this, thanking them for backing up my opinion that they're not interested in the science, also didn't make it out of moderation. |
| Date: 2009/02/04 03:46:40, Link 90.194.167.53 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
I did like the video Dr Dr Dembski posted. The tune is perfect for that (and ironic given the tune's real music video). But honestly, is he trying to suggest that he's had no resources to use? He's had the backing of the DI for ten years. He's had people willing to criticise his stuff for ten years. He's had TEN YEARS! Someone needs to do a parody of this video showing the 'exponential growth of ID'. 1999: 0 peer-reviewed ID papers were available to the world. 2009: 0 peer-reviewed ID papers were available to the world. |
| Date: 2009/02/04 11:35:53, Link 90.194.167.53 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
In the interests of fairness I've been thinking about their main gripe that the Darwinian process of natural selection gets a free ride without question, while ID has to prove itself. And I have to admit that it does, to someone like me, seem that this is true. I've been following the evolution/ID wars for about four years, but I've not seen anyone offer any kind of mathematical evidence that natural selection is doing the job. We get evidence for evolution itself - that's easy, fossils, tree of life, etc - but it seems like people just assume natural selection is doing the job of changing one species into another. Since I'm not a creationist, I know the difference between personal ignorance and reality, and therefore, just because I don't know how natural selection is shown by scientists, I'm not going to assume it isn't. But I would like to know what to say to creationists who bring this up. Why do we say natural selection, and not some other force? Why can we be so sure? Is there some kind of proof-by-induction where we can mathematically represent populations, selection, mutation, reproduction, etc, and show that these processes result in new forms? I even tried doing it myself, but that was hard. Also, all my attempts to simulate evolution have failed. So basically, I'm running on faith, but a skeptical faith - one that knows the ID side is pushing a pile of crap and lying about it, and that scientists have no reason to lie. But even so, I feel like an evangelist, preaching what I believe instead of what I know. I feel no better than the side I'm fighting. So that's my question. What is the evidence for natural selection being responsible for evolution? How strong is it? What should we expect to see if natural selection is responsible for evolution? What would we expect to falsify it? |
| Date: 2009/02/04 14:55:23, Link 90.194.167.53 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I'm fine with evolution. But remember that the people at UD have been suckered into saying that ID doesn't dispute evolution, just natural selection as the mechanism. That's the gap they're trying to push intelligent design into, and it's so much easier for them when it seems that evolution doesn't even try to explain its own mechanism. Everyone else: thanks for the resources. I'm reading about the Price equation at the moment. And it's pretty disgusting that UD - even Dembski - doesn't mention that stuff like this exists, and even denies that it does, and is using that to try and elevate their fraudulent science to an equal level! To me, I have a vague awareness that 'scientists do math stuff like this with evolution', but seeing the math makes it less esoteric, even if I can't understand it. |
| Date: 2009/02/15 05:59:20, Link 90.198.114.124 | ||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||
I still wonder to this day how they interpret the Dover trial as being won on false pretenses. I mean, we evil atheist materialists didn't write those drafts of Pandas, nor did we replace 'creationism' with 'intelligent design', nor did we make up 'cdesign proponentsists', nor did we try to get schools to teach it, nor did we get filmed as saying it's all about the Jesus and then lie about it to the judge. It was all them. I must be a godless atheist liberal because I can't see any way you can spin this other than 'they lied'. |
| Date: 2009/02/23 16:11:31, Link 90.198.114.124 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
then why was |
| Date: 2009/02/24 14:34:55, Link 90.198.114.124 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
This worries me. Not only is there no attempt to justify this, he seems to be implying that we should follow a pre-defined moral law regardless of how we feel about it. In other words, if his God says kill babies, we should do it. Why? Because if we don't follow an absolute law, the world will fall into chaos! It's just more of fundies projecting their failures onto atheists. He can't envision how he'd function without laws put down for him, so he pretends that everyone has the same problem. |
| Date: 2009/03/12 14:08:12, Link 90.198.114.124 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
 |
| Date: 2009/03/18 07:48:59, Link 90.198.114.124 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Well, they've got a little more clever than that. They say that there are fewer ways to achieve a function than not to achieve a function (which is likely true) and that as the size of a protein increases, there become exponentially more ways to fail than to succeed (which is likely true). Therefore, larger protein = less likelihood of evolution. However, I've noticed that this actually doesn't account for a protein being built up slowly. They assume that because evolution is a random walk, it's not possible to teleport over sequence space. But in fact, adding little bits of protein is the same as teleporting from a smaller sequence space to a larger one, and with natural selection you're guaranteed to end up on the equivalent island in the larger space (since the protein will likely do what it did before). In fact, how about this example? I take a bit-string and decide that its fitness is decided simply by how many 1s it has. I can now make a list of increasingly large possible bit-strings, and their fitnesses. 0: 0 1: 1 00: 0 01: 1 10: 1 11: 2 000: 0 001: 1 010: 1 011: 2 100: 1 101: 2 110: 2 111: 3 0000: 0 0001: 1 0010: 1 0011: 2 0100: 1 0101: 2 0110: 2 0111: 3 1000: 1 1001: 2 1010: 2 1011: 3 1100: 2 1101: 3 1110: 3 1111: 4 and so on. I could take the string 0111111111111111 (fitness 15), and KF would tell me that the chances of getting something with that much fitness is 16 / 2^16. Tiny! But not true. In fact, I began with the string 0, and added a 1 each time. And ended up on that tiny island. I know this is a silly, simple example, but I bet evolution works the same way. Am I wrong? :) |
| Date: 2010/02/23 08:35:36, Link 94.8.205.196 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Hi chaps! I've been away from here for quite a while. Did I miss anything? |
| Date: 2010/03/07 12:34:42, Link 94.1.159.234 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
Holy crap... I'd forgotten how greasy they could be. Check out their attempts to imitate the other side on the Rube Goldberg Machine.
Nice, Clive. Fancy doing some work on ID, now? I reckon it must be like the way some oppressed minorities take insults and turn them into self-labels (like 'queer'), except they do it with criticism. 'We don't have a mechanism! We don't have a theory! Get used to it!' |
| Date: 2010/03/09 12:55:13, Link 94.1.159.234 | ||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||
I've been thinking lately about what would happen if we did just turn around and say 'fine, Darwinian evolution is wrong. What have you got?'. Because all the fine research that Dr D has been doing to pick away at evolution would suddenly be completely irrelevant, and we'd be left with the theory of 'anything we can't explain is designed', which has about as much use as the 'tall buildings have a lot of height' theory. But it did kinda give me a glimpse into the ID way of seeing, I think. Because, when you get down to it, I don't really know how Darwinian evolution works. At least, not when it comes to, as IDers say, 'mechanisms forming out of chance and necessity'. Certainly I appreciate the idea that something could form one piece at a time, and those pieces could change, interact with other pieces, etc. But I have no idea how you'd go about proving or denoting something like that, or even if that is what population geneticists actually do. I think ID supporters are the same. They see only the black box of Darwinian evolution (the mysterious 'chance' mechanism), the black box of ID (the mysterious 'designer did it'), and consider the two to be of the same merit. The problem is, the public know even less about evolution than they do, so they're going to see it the same way. Is there no way to make the Darwinian box more open to those uneducated in biology? |
| Date: 2010/03/17 05:26:11, Link 127.0.0.1 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I'd also like to know the CSI of a Garden of Eden pattern in Conway's Game of Life (or any cellular automaton), as by the rules of that universe, it meets the most major requirement for design: it absolutely cannot come about by natural laws (and cannot arise by chance either). If it ever appears in the Game of Life, it HAS to be created. By the laws of the Game of Life, this thing should be the most CSI-ey thing in existence. Of course, since a Garden of Eden doesn't have any function beyond 'being a Garden of Eden', ID can't analyse it, which just shows that Dembski's claim to 'finding patterns which indicate design' ultimately means 'inventing a pattern and then claiming that evolution can't do it'. In essence, he sneaks in the very information he finds by specifying a function, then claiming that the inability of natural causes to produce that function IS the information. |
| Date: 2010/03/24 08:08:45, Link 127.0.0.1 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
|
1) I hate Mornington Crescent because everyone looks at my favourite card game, Mao, and says 'Hey, that's Mornington Crescent!' and then they won't take it seriously (or at least, with the minimum seriousness required for Mao). 2) Sewell's essay is quite frightening.
It's hypothetical, true, but this is about as bad as the guy who wrote a moon simulator that left out various details such as, you know, the fact that bodies rotate, or having more than two bodies in the system, or tidal locking, or anything that scientists actually use to model moon formation with, and then declaring that because his sim shows the moon can't form naturally, maybe we should look outside the universe for answers. |
| Date: 2010/03/24 09:27:35, Link 127.0.0.1 | ||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||
C.Hunter
Yes, we should instead start using a science that makes no predictions at all!
Common descent? Seriously?
You know, it's one thing to pick at bits of evolution that are difficult to grasp. Like natural selection. According to UD, nobody knows how natural selection works, and for all that I can grasp of it, I might as well believe them. But common descent? Douglas Theobald
One of these things is not like the other thing. I wonder who's wrong? Also I find it kind of amusing that none of them are concerned about what happens to ID theory if common descent is false. Because for all the concern that Sewell shows, the answer is 'bugger all'. You can't hurt a ghost. |
| Date: 2010/03/24 09:44:01, Link 127.0.0.1 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
Sadly, no. I actually argued with him by e-mail because he runs the Edinburgh Creation Group's website, which is full of this kind of badly argued crap. When I told him that real science is slightly more detailed than this, he said 'Well show me a model that works!', as though his personal say had some bearing on the matter. Also note that he clearly IS aware of the actual scientific theories, and has decided to dismiss them. The normal mode of operation for the ECG is: - spend 50 minutes talking about things which science says which nobody has a problem with - say something monumentally stupid - declare that because of [monumental stupid], science is wrong/science is evil/therefore Noah/therefore Jesus. - be monumentally stupid for 10 minutes - everyone leaves |
| Date: 2010/03/26 21:23:38, Link 90.220.222.176 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Those aren't furries. No furry would wear a human suit. :) |
| Date: 2010/03/30 03:57:56, Link 127.0.0.1 | ||||||||||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||||||||||
Well, that's a fairly reasonable argument, and I would say that
Oh, sorry. Never mind about the reasonable part. |
| Date: 2010/05/04 10:06:11, Link 81.149.105.206 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
Challenge 4 is easy. Using a Dembski integral, one can derive a surjective submorphism from string one to string two. If we incorporate that into a Mullings Matrix M, where M = cT, c of course being the Cordova metric, we can then invert M and Behe-filter it about l (l being the Leary Curve, which you should have obtained from the integral). This should leave you with a vector V, in which V(1) = the identifier of the designed string V(2) = the CSI in string 1 V(3) = the CSI in string 2. |
| Date: 2010/05/04 11:57:25, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
You mean this counts as showing my work? :) |
| Date: 2010/05/14 04:37:40, Link 81.149.105.206 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| Those scrunched up balls of paper on the front page look so designed. |
| Date: 2010/05/17 10:15:49, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I actually have a reply from the person who gave that talk, since I e-mailed him a few years ago to complain that it was a load of bull. I don't know if I should post it, though - I asked at the time if I could repost his reply, but he never answered that question. |
| Date: 2010/05/17 10:57:49, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
And no love for Lamarck? He invented evolution as well. I'm pretty sure he was a pagan buddhist capitalist or something. |
| Date: 2010/05/19 05:01:20, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I was about to argue with this, but then I saw that he enclosed *cannot* in asterisks, which makes his argument completely undefeatable. I might as well give up now. The best I've got is a few weedy little carats. |
| Date: 2010/05/19 10:20:39, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Why don't you try? It's good practice. |
| Date: 2010/05/20 09:27:16, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
I'll have a go, then. This is 'the atheist's riddle'.
I offer the following counter: a) All minds are ultimately the result of DNA, since it tells the body how to form, and there are no known non-biological minds. b) Following from point 3, this means that DNA was designed by a mind which was formed from DNA, which was also designed by a mind, in an infinite chain of causality. c) Since the universe has existed for a finite time, this cannot be the case. Therefore either point 3 is false, or there exist minds which are not biological - something science has never observed. d) Therefore, DNA was not designed by a mind. If you can provide an empirical example of a non-biological mind, you've toppled my counter. |
| Date: 2010/06/04 13:30:04, Link 94.0.219.187 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
Hmm, I know that name. :) http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/ All science so far! |
| Date: 2010/06/10 10:28:37, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
So the ID position is that there is this thing called intellect, which is unmeasurable by science, and they know this because they... can't measure it, presumably? |
| Date: 2010/06/21 07:46:54, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
But you (and by you, I mean Clive, who is currently the fastest way to communicate with UD) don't even take 'logical relationships' into account. The only thing you do is calculate probabilities, then pretend that this is somehow the same thing as design! That's your only 'logical relationship', and it's pretty weak. Design is ALL ABOUT THE HISTORY. The only reason you cut the history out is because you know, in the case of biology, that history is EVOLUTION. Take your calculations of complexity for example. For people who are obsessed with tiny bio-machines, you don't actually study machinery at all. You study brute force combinations of molecules. It's a bit like claiming to have written a chess-playing program when all it's doing is checking each of the 10^120 possible games of chess each move. That has nothing to do with how chess is actually played. Is a machine with 3 cogs less complex than a machine with 4? Is a machine with two disconnected cogs less complex than a machine with two interlocking cogs? You don't know. All you can do is look over every machine that can possibly be made and see which ones don't work. Where is your 'logical relationship'? How is that your 'primary consideration'? What does that have to do with complex machines? Zero. And also, if you don't care about the design process, then what was all that about irreducible complexity? 'Irreducible complexity can't evolve', remember? Seems like you were very interested in the historical process when you could take a stab at evolution. |
| Date: 2010/06/21 10:09:28, Link 81.149.105.206 | ||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||
So I was a little off with the chess games figure then :) |
| Date: 2010/07/05 18:31:29, Link 90.221.21.6 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
|
This is off topic, but too awesome not to share. A newly discovered fractal called the Mandelbox which looks amazing. Although for fun I suppose we could ask UD how much CSI it has. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO9ugnn8DbE |
| Date: 2010/07/16 14:39:02, Link 90.221.21.6 | ||||||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||||||
It's a very woody name. |
| Date: 2010/07/17 07:01:32, Link 90.221.21.6 |
| Author: Venus Mousetrap |
| I don't have a puppet at UD, just myself. Still in moderation, though. |
| Date: 2010/07/31 09:56:06, Link 90.221.21.6 | ||
| Author: Venus Mousetrap | ||
How comes you know what a set is but not the definition of equality? |
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