avocationist
Posts: 173
Joined: Feb. 2006
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Darn it Mike,
If systems or items tend toward equilibrium, then that ought to be a part of what we see, regardless of how deeply we understand its workings and the mathematics thereof. I think entropy is not only so defined as you state. This is in wide common usage, no doubt for that reason. How am I arguing against scientific principles when I am just wondering how they work? And how in the he11 does this bring us to God of the gaps? Your assumptions are showing. I have explained three times that that is not what I'm groping toward.
Paley,
I know there is no thermodynamic relevance to your links. But you had just asked if anyone was going to answer your thermodynamics questions. I was in a hurry, and didn't write clearly.
ID is falsifiable if things like IC can be acounted for.
| Quote | Evolution can't explain A yet.
Therefore Intelligent design. |
In the end, I can see only two choices. Ether there is a mind involved in the whole process of this cosmos, or there isn't. They aren't the same at all, and they won't look the same. I would just not worry too much about diminishing God by finding natural explanations. The question is, do we live in a universe with a mind or not. The idea that God shrinks is downright silly. Supposedly, people were real deflated when they figured out angels didn't push the planets around. So they said God lost a job. What nonsense. Isn't the truth more magnificent, the planning more impressive? The old way of looking at things was like a fairy tale, with a magic-wand God. God's domain can never shrink. It is a nonproblem.
| Quote | | Just imagine, for a moment, whether the regulars at UD, in a comparable situation, would be anything like as interested in or ready to debate with someone from our side |
Sure, they would. You guys just keep disappearing.
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What about (using Behe's irreducible complexity) other functions of the flagellum? Such as the e coli genome and base pairs? Is the flagellum's specification merely reliant upon the rotary itself? Well umm NO. If we take the blueprint o a flagellum (e coli genome/dna molecular function) can it be stripped from the flagellum (referring to the other subsystems of the flagellum)? It can't. So is using Behe's irreducibly complex systemisation to create his specified complex system, valid in this argument? No. Because it is applying variables where there are none.
In a nutshell: Dembski takes into consideration the rotary of the bacterium, disjointly and rather casually ignoring its subsystems to create a system based on redefinition of scientific terminology to make things "fit". |
First paragraph, if it could be rewritten in more regular English, second paragraph, what subsystems?
Cedric,
I guess I don't find the issue of God quite as important to the ID discussion as other people do. Some people just don't want to see any God or weird reality at all. Some people believe in God in a very faraway, nonvibrant form, and they want him to stay in his place. Any overlap between science, which is the study of reality, and God which is the source of said reality, is very uncomfortable. Some people, really want their anthropomorphised and sanitized God of their ego gratification to be true. Some people want a God who is grand and not petty, and it is horrifying to them to contemplate one who would poof a flagellum. Miller might be like that. Some just don't want to see God get diminished by natural explanations for things. They are embarrassed for poor God and don't want any humiliation for her.
The God of my understanding is pretty invulnerable, but I do see the situation (and tried in vain before to express it) as a divide between pure atheism, and all others. Deists, theists, religionists - they are all on one side. Because once you posit a God the deck is stacked and it is just a matter of what level of involvement you want to subscribe to. We are either in a God universe or we aren't, and as Dawkins has blessedly understood, they aren't the same ball of wax.
Now, why did I write this post to you...had to go back and reread yours a few times. It was where you questioned my finding ID it intellectually satisfying.
But I think if you have kept up with my earlier posts, you'll see I envision the natural world unfolding in a step by step way, however I think this whole shebang isn't chance, and isn't a result of willy nilly interactions of matter.
I don't find a tinkering God at all satisfying, and I think of the whole universe from its inception as one unified system. The parts of ID that I think are strong are the information arguments, and also the IC arguments. I liked the Meyer paper for a pretty readable rundown of the information arguments.
I suppose it is offensive that a bunch of people are not only into ID, but in their minds they know good and well who did it, the God of the Bible. But I see ID as simply that we are at a crossroads right now - there are two possibilities. Either things are accidental or they are designed, and the two can be told apart.
I just don't find Darwinian mechanisms compelling. I don't expect either side to win, although I think ID is correct. I think we are working on a puzzle that is very, very hard, and without enough pieces we keep trying to interpret the whole.
Neither Dawkins nor the fundies will get their desire, because neither are correct in their assumptions. IMHO
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