Ah, here it is - down here at the end.

The argument about the perfect ratios and delicate balance is an old one.  Think of this - the universe we can see with our current technology is a tiny fraction of the total universe.  And we know nothing of whether life can exist - or not - with different constants.  Is god a twiddler?  Twiddling knobs to fine tune the galaxy for humans?  And it seems really strange - only one planet in the probable billions of planets has humans.  It doesn't seem as if the universe is all that wonderful for humans or we would have some neighbors, don't you think?  SETI has had no contact with possibly sentient beings regardless of sci-fi movies full of wishful thinking.

Scientists who are religious can be productive.  As long as they don't throw up their hands and say "goddidit".  The minute you stop searching and researching and questioning is the minute you have to hang up your lab coat.

There is a flaw here -- predicating what is from what we understand. Until our understanding of the universe is perfect, there will be things we cannot entirely answer to the complete satisfaction of some. However, our understanding does not determine what "is." It's exactly the opposite: that which is determines our understanding.

The phrasing here smuggles in the concept of the god of the gaps. We don't entirely understand something: therefore, God.

That's all well-and-good. The interesting thing is, there is a probabilistic model that explains how all of these "irreducibly complex" structures can come to exist. That fits well within the rules stated above.

This whole argument fails both on an epistemic level, and within the confines of the argument itself. We have discovered nothing within evolution that cannot be adequately explained in a probabilistic level. Evolution is a stochastic process, and has been modeled as such.

Le sigh. Of course he uses the cosmological argument.

The cosmological argument is pretty damned poor. It lacks all subtlety, and is founded on a false assumption. Like the myth that scientists once determined that bees are incapable of flight, the concept of a "finely-tuned universe" is not even wrong.

First, it is entirely probable that the relationships of the universe are tied together, much like the angles and sides of a triangle. If you add up all the angles within a triangle, they add up to 180 degrees, independent of the length of the sides! Wow! Isn't that incredible? Isn't it?

Second, like the "bees can't fly" myth, the fine-tuned universe came from a rudimentary study, in which only one value was changed at a time. If you alter many of the universal constants, there are vast swaths of uninteresting universes, certainly. But there are other vast swaths of interesting universes, in which structures will form. So, while there are an infinite number of uninteresting universes, there are also an infinite number of interesting universes (though of a lower ordinality). So any number of those infinite interesting universes might exist in our stead.

They just wouldn't be our universe. But then the life that arises in those universes would marvel how perfectly-tuned their universe is, too, wouldn't they?

Really? Tell that to the Muslims. (Islamic countries used to be the best at math and astronomy. Until belief in God interfered.)

Tell that to Copernicus, Bruno, Galileo, Darwin, Halley, Hubble, and Descartes.

While belief in God does not necessarily lead to suppression of novel ideas, it is often the case that churches -- the power structures that form around belief in God -- do. Their power is based entirely on their ability to dictate what the people believe. When someone arrives at a new idea that is distinct from what the church desires, there is conflict. And the church almost always has more power than the person they attack.

Take a look at the apologetics presented by the OP. That is filled with statements that go against both science, and the advance of knowledge. By placing restrictions on what can naturally be, the statements attempt to erect a wall between scientific knowledge and belief in God.

So, while belief in God does not prevent the world from advancing in technology and science, it sure as fuck ain't for lack of trying. And his own post proves it.

Just correcting one of the more obvious mistakes there...

Is not correct.

ALL mutations will be passed on, except those which prevent reproduction.

The mutations which significantly reduce reproductive success will disappear relatively quickly - neutral ones, which is most of them, can persist indefinitely, and provide the raw material for a really new and positive genes.

This guy isn't worth registering. I'll point out a couple of examples of why, and then I'm moving on.

Spoken like someone who doesn't understand the scientific method at all.

I was referring only to the introduction of a new entity (in this case, God). In science, if you don't like the findings of something, you can only approach the problem with more science. That is: observation, hypothesis, prediction, more observation. Rinse and repeat.

The flaw in his original statement is the introduction of an entity (God) as a method of mortaring in the areas of ignorance. He presents no finding which might be declared invalid. He presents bald assertions, and then is unable to back them up. He uses well-debunked cliches, such as the cosmological argument (for which the standard riposte is the weak anthropic principle, though there are stronger arguments as well).

In science, the current findings stand until something else takes their place. As an example, Einstein's theory of relativity has replaced Newton's Laws as an understanding of gravity. Now, there is evidence via neutrino experiments that relativity might not be completely accurate. It too might be replaced one day -- but only via observation, hypothesis, prediction, and experiment (more observation).

And considering I never predicted we'd have perfect understanding of the universe, the final sentence above is slightly arrogant.

I have given an epistemological frame of reference: science. Science is the only epistemology that has provided accurate, objective, reproducible insight into our universe (through the practice of the eponymous scientific method). From that, "perfect understanding" can only be achieved through observation of how the universe works. When there is no new observations to make, when there are no novel predictions, when every instance of every process is understood, we will have achieved perfect understanding.

We will never get there.

That does not mean our incomplete, our imperfect understanding is not effective. It does not negate our current understanding at all. Our understanding of the universe today is far greater than it was 50 years ago, which is far greater than it was 50 years before that -- and not one instance of our increase in knowledge is attributable to faith in God. It is all based on science.

If he has some other method, I'd be glad to hear of it. However, I would expect that method to have practical, provable results.

Do I expect we'll ever have "perfect understanding?" Not really. I hope we'll one day puzzle out quantum mechanics, which might provide deep insight into the reason our universe is they way it is. But really, that's a hope. It's a hope founded on inductive logic, though: science has worked consistently and accurately in the past. There's no reason to expect it to fail just yet.

First question: which epistemic approach is he proposing, and how is that epistemic approach vetted? Science has proven itself valid. Has his proposed epistemology done the same?

Second, comparing statues on Easter Island to the complexity of a cell, or the formation of the universe, is a non sequitur. He's very fond of non sequiturs, but here is one perfect example.

We know the statues on Easter Island were designed specifically because they are out of place. We would not expect to find them naturally occurring on the island like that. We know they are man-made (and therefore designed) because we have a long string of evidence indicating pillars formed in the shape of people are generally man-made. That, coupled with other evidence of a once-existing civilization, make the conclusion of design simple.

Finding "design" in nature is a different beast entirely. Crystals are beautiful, and often resemble sculptures; they may appear to be out-of-place, just like the statues on Easter Island. The simple conclusion is that they were designed by an artist. Understanding of simple chemistry, however, shows how they might be made by simple chemical bonding. Crystals appear all over the world, in a variety of places, many of which have no history of human settlement. As some appear in caves, or attached to other rock formations, other evidence indicates they are natural, in spite of their seeming complexity.

No. i contend that all phenomena must be observable. I contend that a valid epistemology must be based on the fewest assumptions. I contend that the history of science, the very fruits of science, have shown its efficacy. I contend that no other epistemology has shown to be consistently effective. I contend that, until science has been stymied, there's no reason to abandon it.

I contend whatever epistemology he may hold, it has proven to be ineffective at unraveling any mysteries whatsoever.

Assuming design when design is not necessary is called "getting the cart before the horse." Or, as the Tlingit like to say, "Wishful thinking."

Actually, we've made great strides at understanding the origins of the universe. All understanding of the origin of the universe so far has come only from science. Religion gave us a 6-day work-week for God. Religion gave us a world which was vomited up by Mbombo. Religion gave us a universe born from two loons playing with mud. Religion says that Raven freed man from a clam.

Science has given us an approximate age to the universe. Science has provided us with a minimum extent of the universe. Science has given us a model of the stars in their courses. Science has given us plausible models of how the universe came to be.

And now he wants to usurp that with religion?

That's a bold statement, declaring there is nothing governing the configuration of the universe. That's precisely what research into quantum mechanics is all about -- modeling the most basic levels of reality.

You might, but suspecting a natural process that produced squares (such as some crystals) makes far more sense, and employs fewer entities.

Uhm, no, it's not the best study today. He is working with conjectures originally posited in the 1960s. Models today suggest an interesting universe is far more likely than original estimates. That was my fucking point. How did he miss that? I thought I was explicit.

There are also other possible naturalistic conjectures: Lee Smolin has posited a method for the evolution of universes. The initial predictions of that model hold true in our universe. It is entirely possible that universes evolve from other universes, and only universes capable of producing black holes (which would also incidentally include universe that produce life) can reproduce. This method of selection would result in many interesting universes.

And that's just one possibility! There are others: that there are an infinite number of universes, and life will only form in the interesting ones. There is only one universe, that expands and collapses infinitely, and we find ourselves in one instance which is interesting.

Note that not one of these posit something that is far less likely than the universe itself.

That's something I've never understood. It seems that theists are very incredulous at the "complexity" of the universe, but extremely credulous when it comes to an infinitely more complex God. The universe is unlikely, but God is? How does that makes sense in the least? If the universe is so complex it couldn't've come from something less complex than itself, then God must be at least as complex as the universe, and so has the same problem of complexity as the universe. Saying that God needs no creation is special pleading -- if God (who is at least as complex as the universe) needs no creation, they why does the universe?

It's all circular logic and special pleading, all based on a strawman version of the universe.

I think he has a problem with comprehension. I explicitly stated there were other configurations of cosmological constants that would produce interesting universes. I specifically stated if one of the infinitely-available interesting outcomes occurred in our stead, that it would be other life, made from other matter, asking the same questions he's asking now.

Was I that incomprehensible? I try to be clear in my writing. That sometimes makes me dry, because I am often unable to be both entertaining and clear. But I don't think I was that confusing.

Here is another case of intellectual dishonesty. I do not like playing shell games. The original quote to which I responded was this:

Muslims believe in God. The original quote did not specify Christianity -- it specified belief in God.

And Christians aren't that different from Muslims. They wish their own version of Sharia law. They use violence and terrorism to get their way (shooting abortion doctors, for instance, or killing witches or homosexuals such as is happening in Africa right now). Here is both moving the goalposts, and special pleading.

Nice evasion. It is insufficient to deflect the whole point of what I said. I'll grant Copernicus (though there is sufficient evidence he feared persecution by the church, and so delayed by many years publication of his work). Galileo was persecuted by the church. He stood trial for heresy for supporting heliocentrism. Whether or not de Brahe opposed the ideas is not the issue -- de Brahe did not have the power to suppress Galileo.

It was belief in God that drove the church, not support of one scientific idea over another for the sake of discovery.

And I see his strawman. I never once claimed the Church was the only suppressor of knowledge. I was merely showing he was completely and absolutely wrong in his statement that belief in God does not impede the progress of knowledge. It demonstrably and unequivocally does. Any time science presents new ideas, it is religious belief that is at the forefront of opposition. Other scientists with different ideas also protest -- but evidence will win out, and old theories pass in favor of those better supported by evidence.

With religious belief, no amount of evidence will sway the debate, because religious belief is not founded on logic or evidence. It is founded on earnestly-held fantasy. There's no reasoning with fantasy.

My. He does like his non sequiturs, doesn't he?

We weren't talking about mass murder. We weren't talking about oppressive regimes. We were talking about the suppression of science due to belief in God. He seems to be uncomfortable with the evidence against him on this. (How long did it take the Catholic Church to apologize for their treatment of Galileo, again?)

I state only that science relies on the minimum set of assumptions for a working epistemology.  The epistemology proposed here seems to take those assumptions (after all, they work for science, and science demonstrably works) and layer on top the assumption that an infinite, invisible, eternal, supernatural being exists and fucks around with the universe. The added assumption is currently unnecessary (as science still works), and rather silly.

And, as a certain friar might say, it multiplies entities unnecessarily.

There may come a day when the application of science comes to the conclusion that an entity resembling God exists, and created the universe. I do not limit the universe in that way -- after all, it's reality, and I'm merely an observer.

That day is not today.

So, not only does our poster not understand physics and cosmology, but he also doesn't understand evolution at all.

First, almost every case of "irreducible complexity" presented so far has been demonstrated to have an evolutionary path. In many of those systems, what would be considered a "useless" mutation turned out to have a function that was later subverted in the "irreducibly-complex" function. Second, any mutation that is no directly detrimental does not change the chances of propagation one bit. Useless (and often mildly-harmful) mutations survive all the time.

Third, I will simply refer our erstwhile evolutionary expert to the Lenski experiment. It produced a structure that Behe would've called "irreducibly complex," if its evolution had not been observed in the lab.

This is a perfect example of how belief in God impedes progress. The energy and effort dedicated to both asserting and contradicting irreducible complexity drains resources from other, more progressive work. If the church had more power, it might very well suppress the results of the Lenski experiment, for example, the same way they suppressed Galileo's support of heliocentrism.

So my example of faith in God impeding science still stands.

I'm done. I don't like moving goalposts. It indicates either intentional evasiveness, or intellectual sloppiness. Either one results in tedious discussion with no progress, and I'm no longer interested in that.

nigelTheBold i really do appreciate your time and intellect. Very impressive, thank you.

How extraordinarily unimpressive and useless. Note that this isn't even attempting to actually define design, it's the opposite. It puts the label design on the unknown. The god of the gaps-mentality that permeates ID has rarely been more clearly illustrated.

I will expand my request a bit:

Get him to show us what actual verifiable knowledge (along with whatever system he uses to validate it) our rejection of the supernatural has prevented us from seeing.

The distinction between ID and evolution is extremely relevant to understanding and dealing with the emergence of new diseases.

What your mate is doing is endeavouring to excuse god from the normal processes and methodologies that would normally surround acceptable proof in order to install his vivid imagination as the font of universal truth. This is nonsensical.  If god exists in this universe, we should be able to prove he exists in this universe. We have not done so. If god exists outside this universe and is a sort of puppeteer who spends all his time hovering over our ant farm, we can never and will never know it. Claiming something not proven to exist in this universe in fact exists outside of this universe indicates a desire to believe in one's god no matter how impossible his existence clearly must be.

P.S. Pol Pot's regime followed a version of Theravada Buddhism and used it as justification for their peasant-led rebellion. Any one who pins the atrocities of authoritarian regimes onto atheism is no more than a dozy fuck indulging in vile adhom. I grew up being force-fed this evil shit and it disgusts me more deeply than I can say. If you haven't told this person to sod off yet, now is the time.

You know, I have yet to have any IDer tell me how the human prostate is so perfect.  I live with a man who takes medication for it and still has to get up twice a night. 

Perfection?  Route a flexible waste tube through a structure that swells with age.  This is intelligent?

Four engineers were sitting around one day trying to figure out who might have designed the human body.

The first fellow said, "I think it might be a Mechanical Engineer, because of joints and muscle and sense of balance." The other three nodded their heads and said, "Yeah, could be."

The second fellow said, "I think it might be an Electrical Engineer, because of the nervous system and neural network." The other three nodded their heads and said, "Yeah, could be."

The third fellow said, "I think it might be a Chemical Engineer, because of hormonal balances and metabolism." The other three nodded their heads and said, "Yeah, could be."

The fourth fellow snaps his fingers and shouts out, "I know, it HAD to have been a Civil engineer!" The other three ask "Why?"

"Well," replied the fourth fellow, "who else would put a waste water drainage right through a recreational area?"

http://humorvault.tripod.com/engineer/engin_11.html

Bah. He only needs to respond to Bob's post asking for concrete examples of how science has been blinded to discovery by its assumption that God does not exist. I have given examples of how belief in God (through its political expression, the church) has held back knowledge. Now it's his turn.

I suck at science too. But scientific method is not a field, it is a tool that scientists use in different fields. Scientific method is not hard to understand and you already hinted in the op to its core "falsify". In layman's terms it is merely the ability to replicate and falsify.

Entertaining something that cannot be replicated and falsified is stupid, and that alone makes ID bullshit. You don't have to be an expert when the claim itself already lacks credibility from the start.

The reason ID exists as a claim is because of a political religious movement, not any real scientific data they have. The prior name for this political movement was "Creationism", and both are nothing more than Christians trying to prop up their myth through government.

Even if you want to go beyond their absurd starting point, which has no prior data to back it up, it still has logical flaws, that laymen like you and me can see without being a PHD biologist.

If everything is designed like they claim, then nasty things too, like cancer, and ecoli, and AIDS are designed too. Watch how fast the cockroaches scatter backpedaling to escape this inconsistency. They'll try to dodge that with "fall of man" "sins" "free will" yadda yadda yadda, and so on.

And even if we pretend, for argument's sake only, that "everything is designed" that still would not prove that the Christian god did it, and not the Muslim or Jewish god, or any god for that matter.

What allows believers to buy into this argument is that they never consider complexity as being an emergent property coming from simplicity. Instead, they assume a needless conflated super hero which begs the question "if everything is designed, then who designed the designer, and who designed that designer, and so on and so on" . That mistake they make is ignoring the problem of "infinite regress".

You do not have to be a neurologist to have good crap detector. You just have to have the simple mindset that when someone makes a claim, can they repeat it, and can it be tested. If they cant, the simple explanation to why they cant, is because they had nothing to start with in the first place.

Not really -- there's no underlying principle, except that "some entity must've planned out our genetics." On the surface, there's nothing really evolution. There are some old-earth creationists (like Behe) who believe evolution occurs, but that there is some sort of guiding force. What that force is, who can say? Behe believes it is God.

That's really all there is for a "basic precept." I don't think you're missing much there.

There are some implications, though. In Behe's case, he claims there are some structures that simply could not have evolved. This has the effect of stopping cold some lines of inquiry. If something was designed, there's no need to figure out how it evolved.

To me, the biggest problem is this mindset -- ID is, at its heart, a god of the gaps. That means some things are inexplicable, because God Did It. At its most extreme, it looks very much like the Lenski Affair, and idiots start denying basic research just because it contradicts their beliefs.

I believe that's why Bob mentioned that ID is relatively innocuous in microbiology as long as the researchers and doctors don't let it interfere with their knowledge of evolutionary biology. But you end up with folks like Andy Schlafly, and you have a recipe for plagues of Biblical proportions.

That's my take, anyway.

I think it's a matter of understanding. To use a completely inapt analogy, I'd say it's like programming. You can be a perfectly decent programmer without knowing exactly how a computer works. In my experience, though, programmers with a deep understanding not only of current computer architecture, but the history of computer architecture, make better programmers.

I'd bet that someone like Behe would make a perfectly decent pathologist. He doesn't deny evolution, he just believes God has a hand in it. There may be very specialized instances in which understanding of the evolution of "irreducibly complex" structures is vital to understanding how to treat a disease, but I'm no microbiologist.

Someone like Andy Schlafly, though, would make a terrible pathologist. His denial of evolution would interfere with his ability to understand how pathogens adapt to treatment. His denial of the results of the Lenski experiment pretty much proves that.

Andy Schlafly makes for a great useful idiot; that's why he's writing a reference website for GOP politicians.

That doesn't change the fact that atheistic interest in evolution is primarily because of ideology, not because of significant ramifications it might lead to regarding the Human Condition.

Same difference, Bob. Theists attack it because it goes against their (religious) ideology.

It appealed to me when I was 10-11. Had an entire book dedicated to long-dead species, starting from the oldest Agnathans known.

Now I see it as relatively easy to take for granted -after all, it happens regardless of what humans think about it.

I was never a little boy.  And I remember thinking dinosaurs were mildly interesting but I didn't get what my younger brother saw in them.  And then when I was all grown up, my family went to a natural history museum and they had a display of the carboniferous era.  3 foot cockroaches.  Dragonflies big enough to carry off kittens.  I had to be drug away as the guys (husband and boys) insisted they were going to lose lunch if we didn't move on.

And then I found out about the Burgess Shales.  And stromatolites and diatoms and ...  Did you look at AtheistExtremeist's post about the 1.2 billion year old multi-cell critters they just discovered using x-ray chromatography?  I think he has the title not quite right.  But isn't that cool?

Muahehehehehehehe. She's returned...

*Cue evil materialistic laughter...

Yeah, I can. It's called "free will."

"The big deal wasn't masonry, it was secular humanism."

Is free will free? Or is it a characterization of human-animals regarding other human-animals and their decision-making processes?

"Free will", from my understanding, is nothing more than an endless complex chain of chemical reactions. You are welcome to demonstrate otherwise...

Oh, geez, you two. Get a room already.

I was going to join you. I just have to pick up a bottle of wine and some roses first.

If you believe that free will is illusory, then the onus is upon you to prove it.

ewwwww.......... bug spray!!!!!!!