"A Planet without Laughter" by Raymond Smullyan

[Tank]

We already know that to form the human population and the diversity you see in it, you need more than a single pair of humans, that just throws the story of Adam and Eve completely out of the equation.

We do not "already know that to form the human population and the diversity you see in it, you need more than a single pair of humans," Niya. Such assertions are disputed (see, for example, http://creation.com/genetics-primal-couple). That's why I think it is best not to prematurely base any argument on the speculations of either side, but rather stick with things we have first-hand personal experience with.

If you can tell your objections to evolution, may be we could discuss those. ID to me is simply a God of the gaps argument.

My objections to the evolution paradigm, all based on first-hand experiences, are many; I'll give you four:

First, the process is utterly foreign to me. I understand (and have fruitfully employed) the concept-design-creation paradigm to add new facts to reality in every area of my life since I was a child; this post is itself an example. But I haven't seen a single example of the proposed random-mutation-natural-selection paradigm being used to create new information in any field; nobody uses it for anything useful.

Secondly, I find the creationist paradigm simpler and thus more likely true. As simple as possible, in fact, but no simpler. As I said above:

The beauty of the design paradigm is that it works the same through and through and has but a single difficulty. We dream up things and make them happen; God dreams up things and makes them happen. The only part that's difficult to imagine is that God isn't just a creator, He's a self-existent creator. So one difficulty (an adjective, "self-existent", that occurs just once in the paradigm); the rest is familiar territory.

The alternative paradigm is much more complicated. It postulates two altogether different kinds of creation: the kind we all know and do, and the kind that nature does. We dream up things (that are less than ourselves) and make them happen. Nature doesn't dream at all, and yet somehow makes things that are greater than what she had to work with in the first place. So in this paradigm we've got at least two difficulties: creation without anyone dreaming up anything; and greater things inexplicably emerging from lesser things. And those difficulties are not isolated: they permeate the whole of nature from end to end and from the beginning to the indeterminate future. Well, except in us. We somehow emerged from that unfamiliar system and decided to work in the opposite way all the time.

Thirdly, I find the evolutionary paradigm not just intellectually unsatisfying, but emotionally and aesthetically lacking as well. Downright depressing, in fact. Here's an example. This morning I received an email update from a Christian song site where some of my own songs are posted. It said:

"It started out as a little chorus that I sang to my children. Then we found out my father had cancer, our "adopted" son was shipped off to Iraq, and our youngest child and only daughter passed away - all within 3 months. I completed the song and we began to use it just before Papa started his treatments. He developed terrible nightmares due to the medication. One night he woke up in a cold sweat, panic stricken with his heart racing. This song came to his mind and he began to sing it! The reality of it struck him and he was able to chuckle, lay down and go back to sleep. The song literally pulled him through......us, too, I guess! Our church still requests it nearly every service. After all, it really DOESN'T matter what is on your plate, because with Jesus in your heart, EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT!" I hope this song will bless all who hear it - feel free to pass it on and God bless you! Much Shalom, Rebecca"

I don't see where the evolutionary paradigm offers such people any comfort in times like those described above; and I certainly don't see how it could ever inspire the kind of song she's talking about. Here's a link to the song: http://4praise.com/cgi-bin/files/mp3/5668.mp3

Fourthly, the evolutionary paradigm is diametrically opposed to every intuitive perception I have developed (and have found reliable) over the years. Again, from above:



On the top, we have three images of a guitar amp I designed and built: from the outside; with the "skin" removed; and a close-up of one portion. On the bottom, similar photos of a person. Now to me the parallel, the analogy, is obvious. The one system I know to be designed, and the other appears to be designed. The important point is that this appearance, no matter whether I look from far or near, is so striking, so compelling, so obvious and overwhelming -- the complexity so vast and the engineering so subtle and the functioning so sublime -- indeed, the elegance and grace and overall beauty of the whole is so moving that I really can't imagine the human body not being the result of design. It's all I can do to hold myself back from saying something like, "Praise be to the Creator!"

In short, I can easily and intuitively "see" the creationist's point of view; but I just don't "see" the evolutionary paradigm producing anything of value, large or small, no matter how much time you give it. The evolutionary way is simply -- according to all of my 60-plus years experience -- not how things work.

In a nutshell. Gerry is right and the whole scientific community is wrong.

[xSilverPhinx]

You should be getting your Nobel Prize soon, Gerry.

[Gerry Rzeppa]

I didn't ask about known hoaxes and fabrications. Please answer my question about the hominid fossils honestly... The fossils which are evidence for species like Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis are in a completely different category, yet it seems to me that you blithely implied that they're fakes. Do you believe that?

I do not believe they are what they are claimed to be; I may be wrong. But there are too many assumptions that precede the conclusions reached for me to even get interested in the subject. Let me put it this way: my interest in scientific investigation ends with that which can be experimentally reproduced and verified; the rest is not science in my mind, but historical and/or philosophical speculations disguised as science.

The only people who deny that the Earth existed 100,000 years ago are those who insist that when the findings of science conflict with what the Bible says, the Bible is always correct and the science is wrong.

And the people who promote evolutionary theory are, by and large, people who also have an axe to grind: specifically, that God does not exist. So (a) the issues are hotly contested, and (b) both sides are obviously biased. Which is why I don't argue those points.

There are multiple sources of empirical, verifiable evidence which converge to support the age of the Earth, and the universe.

There are also multiple sources of empirical, verifiable evidence which converge to support a young Earth, and a young universe. The interpretation of the data depends on one's initial assumptions. Which is why the issue is contested, debated, and anything but settled. So I don't use that kind of thing -- either way -- to support my positions. I'm arguing from direct personal experience; stuff we all know and do every day.

...if we accept the religious zealot's view then the only reasonable conclusion is that their god is a deceiver on a grand scale who seeks to purposely mislead human beings.

We've been over that. Think of God as an artist, not a mechanic, and the problem vanishes. When I write a book where one character is older than another, but the younger character actually existed before the younger in my universe, I'm not deceiving anyone in the story's universe, nor am I deceiving the reader. That's simply how creation sometimes works.

This sounds like willful ignorance to me. Hardly the approach of a scientist, it's more in line with what I'd expect to hear from somebody who is blinkered by their religion.

No, it's the difference between a scientist who prefers to work empirically, on subjects where lots of tangible data and working simulations are available, and those who prefer to imagine possible origin scenarios that can never be conclusively established.

Ignoring empirical evidence because you're able to convince yourself that somehow it's irrelevant shows that your status as a scientist is very likely to actually be something you've bestowed on yourself to try to give your statements some credibility.

That's a very loose use of the word "empirical". I'm ignoring hypothetical historical scenarios based on scant evidence and an assumed philosophical perspective, not repeatable empirical evidence.

It's having the opposite effect on me. You're unable to give sound scientific reasons for questioning the validity of the scientific evidence, so you resort to transparently lame justifications for what appears to be outright rejection of it.

I'm simply describing how I see things. Many others, in all walks of life, see the same things I do. And find them compelling. That's what the stories I've mentioned in this thread are all about. I don't expect you to adopt my point of view based on my say-so; but I do think you should be able to see that it is a rational point of view given the uncontested data that I'm working with.

Living organisms are "already in the initial domain."

But not living organisms with the degree of complexity that is claimed to have evolved.

Natural selection in biological evolution progressively narrows the domain to produce viable organisms.

So natural selection takes a domain that doesn't include, say, people, and narrows that domain to produce people?

The algorithm used by the NASA scientists replicates that process.

The algorithm in question was designed to produce a certain kind of result. Both the so-called mutation process and the selection filter in that program were specifically designed and tuned to produce the desired result -- which was known ahead of time. There's nothing "evolutionary" in the program, and certainly nothing "evolutionary" in the way it was created.

Your bland denial of this merely serves to show that you're unwilling to accept a fact that directly contradicts your assertions.

The example doesn't contradict my assertions, it supports them. The algorithm was clearly designed to produce antennas of a certain type; every line in the program was written with that goal in mind. And when it runs, it does what the designers intended it to do.

[Asmodean]

I didn't ask about known hoaxes and fabrications. Please answer my question about the hominid fossils honestly... The fossils which are evidence for species like Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis are in a completely different category, yet it seems to me that you blithely implied that they're fakes. Do you believe that?

I do not believe they are what they are claimed to be; I may be wrong. But there are too many assumptions that precede the conclusions reached for me to even get interested in the subject. Let me put it this way: my interest in scientific investigation ends with that which can be experimentally reproduced and verified; the rest is not science in my mind, but historical and/or philosophical speculations disguised as science.

Well, then it's you mind that's the problem, not science, is it not?

[Niya]

We already know that to form the human population and the diversity you see in it, you need more than a single pair of humans, that just throws the story of Adam and Eve completely out of the equation.

We do not "already know that to form the human population and the diversity you see in it, you need more than a single pair of humans," Niya. Such assertions are disputed (see, for example, http://creation.com/genetics-primal-couple). That's why I think it is best not to prematurely base any argument on the speculations of either side, but rather stick with things we have first-hand personal experience with.

That article is really very awkward and poor Gerry. It fails to mention or identify that we have Genetic markers belonging to more than a single couple as we dig into DNA. We have mitochondrial DNA that effectively proves more than a single ancestor. This is no assumption, this is pure evidence Gerry. We have more than a single couple dna. So it is beyond any doubt whatsoever.

Infact the bottle neck being reference was atleast 3000 persons at its minimum and around 12000 at max. But it was never in single digits, nor the genepool could afford it to bring out the diverse human beings on this planet.

And to be honest, there is nothing wrong with making an assumption as long as we have merit to make one. The only assumption which is not acceptable is the one which has no spine to back it up. In this case particular, we not only have merited assumption (which is not arbitrary at all) regarding the bottle neck size but we have evidence of more than a single pair in our DNA, it is proof in it self and that kind of makes the bottleneck quite insignificant.

I'm short on time so I will respond to the rest of your post later. Merry Christmas.

[Recusant]

I didn't ask about known hoaxes and fabrications. Please answer my question about the hominid fossils honestly... The fossils which are evidence for species like Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis are in a completely different category, yet it seems to me that you blithely implied that they're fakes. Do you believe that?

I do not believe they are what they are claimed to be; I may be wrong. But there are too many assumptions that precede the conclusions reached for me to even get interested in the subject. Let me put it this way: my interest in scientific investigation ends with that which can be experimentally reproduced and verified; the rest is not science in my mind, but historical and/or philosophical speculations disguised as science.

The only people who deny that the Earth existed 100,000 years ago are those who insist that when the findings of science conflict with what the Bible says, the Bible is always correct and the science is wrong.

And the people who promote evolutionary theory are, by and large, people who also have an axe to grind: specifically, that God does not exist. So (a) the issues are hotly contested, and (b) both sides are obviously biased. Which is why I don't argue those points.

There are multiple sources of empirical, verifiable evidence which converge to support the age of the Earth, and the universe.

There are also multiple sources of empirical, verifiable evidence which converge to support a young Earth, and a young universe. The interpretation of the data depends on one's initial assumptions. Which is why the issue is contested, debated, and anything but settled. So I don't use that kind of thing -- either way -- to support my positions. I'm arguing from direct personal experience; stuff we all know and do every day.

...if we accept the religious zealot's view then the only reasonable conclusion is that their god is a deceiver on a grand scale who seeks to purposely mislead human beings.

We've been over that. Think of God as an artist, not a mechanic, and the problem vanishes. When I write a book where one character is older than another, but the younger character actually existed before the younger in my universe, I'm not deceiving anyone in the story's universe, nor am I deceiving the reader. That's simply how creation sometimes works.

This sounds like willful ignorance to me. Hardly the approach of a scientist, it's more in line with what I'd expect to hear from somebody who is blinkered by their religion.

No, it's the difference between a scientist who prefers to work empirically, on subjects where lots of tangible data and working simulations are available, and those who prefer to imagine possible origin scenarios that can never be conclusively established.

Ignoring empirical evidence because you're able to convince yourself that somehow it's irrelevant shows that your status as a scientist is very likely to actually be something you've bestowed on yourself to try to give your statements some credibility.

That's a very loose use of the word "empirical". I'm ignoring hypothetical historical scenarios based on scant evidence and an assumed philosophical perspective, not repeatable empirical evidence.

It's having the opposite effect on me. You're unable to give sound scientific reasons for questioning the validity of the scientific evidence, so you resort to transparently lame justifications for what appears to be outright rejection of it.

I'm simply describing how I see things. Many others, in all walks of life, see the same things I do. And find them compelling. That's what the stories I've mentioned in this thread are all about. I don't expect you to adopt my point of view based on my say-so; but I do think you should be able to see that it is a rational point of view given the uncontested data that I'm working with.

Living organisms are "already in the initial domain."

But not living organisms with the degree of complexity that is claimed to have evolved.

Natural selection in biological evolution progressively narrows the domain to produce viable organisms.

So natural selection takes a domain that doesn't include, say, people, and narrows that domain to produce people?

The algorithm used by the NASA scientists replicates that process.

The algorithm in question was designed to produce a certain kind of result. Both the so-called mutation process and the selection filter in that program were specifically designed and tuned to produce the desired result -- which was known ahead of time. There's nothing "evolutionary" in the program, and certainly nothing "evolutionary" in the way it was created.

Your bland denial of this merely serves to show that you're unwilling to accept a fact that directly contradicts your assertions.

The example doesn't contradict my assertions, it supports them. The algorithm was clearly designed to produce antennas of a certain type; every line in the program was written with that goal in mind. And when it runs, it does what the designers intended it to do.

 What a wonderful Christmas gift! I really do appreciate posts full of Creationist malarkey. Gerry Rzeppa, you do a fine job. I've seen better, but not all that many.

I'll enjoy knowing it's here, but am not going to involve myself with a proper response just now.  

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

[Gerry Rzeppa]

In a nutshell. Gerry is right and the whole scientific community is wrong.

Well, they've been wrong before, and in big ways. When I was born, the universe was 5 billion years old. Now it's 13.8 billion years old. But scientists are especially bad at spotting elephants in the room.

And here's the biggest of those elephants. The creationist paradigm is inescapable, while the evolutionary paradigm is clearly optional. I can easily escape the evolutionary paradigm simply by doing what I normally do: dream things up and make them happen. But the reverse is not true. Even the most dedicated evolutionists must plan their work and work their plans. Every experiment that has ever attempted to demonstrate evolutionary principles, every article ever written in the defense of evolutionary principles, every speech promoting evolutionary principles, has been conceived, designed, and implemented in a thoroughly creationist way. Even to say I'm wrong in a reply to this post, you have to dream up what you want to say, choose the words to express it, and then force the laws of nature to bend to your will as you strike the appropriate keys. Irony of ironies! It's necessary to become a creator -- in thought, word, and deed -- in order to deny the existence of my Creator!

[Gerry Rzeppa]

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

I'm one of those who "esteems all days alike" (Rom 14:5), but thank you anyway. And the best to you and yours as well.

[Tank]

In a nutshell. Gerry is right and the whole scientific community is wrong.

Well, they've been wrong before, and in big ways. Especially when it comes to missing the elephant in the room.

And here's the biggest of those elephants. The creationist paradigm is inescapable, while the evolutionary paradigm is clearly optional. I can easily escape the evolutionary paradigm simply by doing what I normally do: dream things up and make them happen. But the reverse is not true. Even the most dedicated evolutionists must plan their work and work their plans. Every experiment that has ever attempted to demonstrate evolutionary principles, every article ever written in the defense of evolutionary principles, every speech promoting evolutionary principles, has been conceived, designed, and implemented in a thoroughly creationist way. Even to say I'm wrong in a reply to this post, you have to dream up what you want to say, choose the words to express it, and then force the laws of nature to bend to your will as you strike the appropriate keys. Irony of ironies! It's necessary to become a creator -- in thought, word, and deed -- in order to deny your Creator!

Gerry, you do not understand science and you are not a scientist. Science will quite possibly always be wrong to some extent. It is a progression of understanding based on the continuous discovery of new information and/or the refinement of existing information based on new data/insights. Science works, the evidence is the computer you are sitting at. You can't deny the efficacy of the scientific method. If you use a computer you can't deny the same process that produced the Theory of Evolution. Your personal dislikes and prejudices don't count Gerry.

Now if you're going to attempt to discredit science on the basis of a few fraudulent claims you had better watch you back. Why? Because the history of religion is a story of lies, deception, delusion and fraud. There isn't one jot of truth in any Institutionalised Superstition at all. Religions are built on fraud and deception. If you have any doubts then just take Scientology and Mormonism. Just two religions created by charlatans. There is no religion that does not ultimately rely for its existence on the willing suspension of dis-belief of reality on the part of it's followers.

You are a victim of your own evolved human desires to feel empowered and important in a universe that is utterly ambivalent to your, and my, existence. We're apes with just enough brains to be dangerous. And when our ancestors sat in the dark of the night hearing sound they didn't understand, sleeping and dreaming things that terrified them they imagined a Great Sky Daddy to make existence bearable. That is when mythology took root and in your case it's still deep in your mind. Only when you realise that will you see the universe for what it really is.

Gerry, we have no common ground when it comes to our views of the universe and its origins. But 24 hours a day every day science grows our understanding of reality and 24 hours a day every day creationists have to create ever more torturous excuses/explanations as to why their fairy tales true.

Merry Christmas Gerry

[Gerry Rzeppa]

Science works, the evidence is the computer you are sitting at. You can't deny the efficacy of the scientific method.

The programmable computer was originated by Charles Babbage, a English polymath -- mathematician, philosopher, mechanical engineer, and yes, a Christian. After a fruitful lifetime of study and invention, at the age of 73, he wrote, "Almost all thinking men who have studied the laws which govern the animate and inanimate world around us, agree that the belief in the existence of one Supreme Creator, possessed of infinite wisdom and power, is open to far less difficulties than the supposition of the absence of any cause, or of the existence of a plurality of causes."

If you use a computer you can't deny the same process that produced the Theory of Evolution.

The computer and the theory of evolution are not comparable, and were obviously not produced by the same methods. Computers are physical electro-mechanical devices, and everybody agrees that they actually work. The theory of evolution is an amorphous and fickle collection of ideas regarding the origin and history of life in the universe -- and a much disputed theory it is.

We're apes with just enough brains to be dangerous.

So why does an ape like you care what an ape like me has to say? What danger to I pose to you and yours? Pass me a banana.

[Asmodean]

and a much disputed theory it is.

Actually, no, it is not. Like any other scientific theory, it expands and changes to reflect the current knowledge, but the myth that it is being overall disputed by any one worth listening to is just that - a myth.

Evolution the theory explains evolution the fact and both are better documented than many other mainstream scientific facts and theories.

To be clear, you and your creationist ilk disputing evolution does not make it disputed in the sense you seem to imply.

[Tank]

Science works, the evidence is the computer you are sitting at. You can't deny the efficacy of the scientific method.

The programmable computer was originated by Charles Babbage, a English polymath -- mathematician, philosopher, mechanical engineer, and yes, a Christian. After a fruitful lifetime of study and invention, at the age of 73, he wrote, "Almost all thinking men who have studied the laws which govern the animate and inanimate world around us, agree that the belief in the existence of one Supreme Creator, possessed of infinite wisdom and power, is open to far less difficulties than the supposition of the absence of any cause, or of the existence of a plurality of causes."

When he wrote that most people were Christian. That doesn't make what he wrote true. Another pointless appeal to authority. How long ago did he say that?

If you use a computer you can't deny the same process that produced the Theory of Evolution.

The computer and the theory of evolution are not comparable, and were obviously not produced by the same methods. Computers are physical electro-mechanical devices, and everybody agrees that they actually work. The theory of evolution is an amorphous and fickle collection of ideas regarding the origin and history of life in the universe -- and a much disputed theory it is.

Another example of you avoiding the point. The ToE is only disputed by idiots and idealogs. No reputable scientist disputes it. All science, physics, chemistry and biology are driven and based on the scientific method. Evolution is the underpinning of all biology. Your personal needs and consequent disingenuous rhetoric are irrelevant to science and the scientific method. Your beliefs are just futile hand waving. 

We're apes with just enough brains to be dangerous.

So why does an ape like you care what an ape like me has to say? What danger to I pose to you and yours? Pass me a banana.

Because you're a liar and deceiver Gerry. You're the intellectual version of Osama Bin Ladin. People like you have had it your own way ever since the first ancestor screamed in fear waking up from a dream. But no longer Gerry. Your mythological and superstitious ideas are going to wither and die because they are wrong. Get over yourself Gerry, you and your kind have got nothing, you're playing with a busted flush and no amount of bluffing is going to work this time. 

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Gerry, if you could see God, wouldn't you intuitively think he was designed?  Would you be correct?

[OldGit]

Bruce is right: faithheads pack up all the hard questions into one box labelled "God did these".  Easy.  But the faithheads won't see that they've now set themselves a much bigger and harder set of questions concerning God.

[Gerry Rzeppa]

...the myth that [the theory of evolution] is being overall disputed by any one worth listening to is just that - a myth.

The ToE is only disputed by idiots and idealogs. No reputable scientist disputes it.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

So these 800 scientists are a myth? are idiots? aren't reputable? C'mon. Dispute is dispute. And it's always the minority view that advances science. Always.