Posted on 10/20/2005 3:00:56 PM PDT by DoctorRansom
Ooooops! Very embarrassing.
That should read: "the equivalent view of entropy as being proportional to the natural logarithm of the number of potential microstates...."
Thankfully, the argument remains fully valid with this correction.
Michael Denton, author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, has written a new book, "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design. In it he says this:
"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.
Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
Actually the idea that life is an inherent property of matter is close to the dominant position in Intelligent Design, although poeople differ in how they would express this.
My nephew thinks we were all created by giant booger men. No ad hominem slanderings of the source, please.
[. . .] Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
[. . .] On the evolution issue, the ACLU on the side of reality and against ignorance. Yeah. Stopped clock.This analogy seems flawed.
He swears it's true, and I don't think he'd make it up. So it's just another legend, backed up by little physical evidence; there's a lot of them around.
He claims he did, and I wasn't there personally to verify or deny. So I just have to take it on faith.
That's all you need. Duplicate an existing gene, let the two new genes diverge functionally, and you have a new capability.
That's all evolution requires.
Are you perhaps instead considering abiogenesis?
Well, the problem is, most of the major figures of the ID movement have at one stage or another identified the designer with their god.
Behe made a remarkable admission on the stand. He said that ID says nothing about the designer (contradicting various statements by other IDers already in the court record.). Then he said ID is purely about mechanism. Then he said the ID says nothing about mechanism, except that intelligence is involved. But, of course, that intelligence is involved is a premise of the theory (that's why it's called intelligent design). So, it turns out, as a scientific research program, ID can do nothing except to attempt to confirm its own premises.
So this is science?
In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled Barf Alert: ACLU's 'intelligent design' in Dover case, DoctorRansom wrote:
"I shan't defend ID all that much; it's not nearly adequate as a "scientific" perspective and operates according to the evolution-believers' core assumptions about uniformitarianism and the very nature of science. More here."
In other words you ADMIT that "Intelligent Design" isn't science. Which means that the people who advocate teaching it in science class are dishonest. Which means God will put them in a pit of burning magma for the rest of eternity because they are liars.
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