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Intelligent Design vs. BaseBall Bat

SCIENTIST: A house- an example of intelligent design, as it was clearly built by humans who were more intelligent than the lumber itself. A tree- not an example of intelligent design because it grew itself from a seed instead of being built by people.

ID PUNDIT: THE TREE WAS BUILT BY AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER JUST LIKE A HOUSE, WHICH DISPROVES EVOLUTION! THEREFORE INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT!

JUDGE: I declare both theories equally valid. Otherwise he won't shut up.

SCIENTIST: I guess it's too late to ask why he had to bring this in front of the courts instead of the scientific community...

ID PUNDIT: YES! THIS PROVES IT IS A SCIENCE AND IT IS ACCEPTED BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY WHICH YOU WOULD KNOW BUT YOU DON'T DO YOUR RESEARCH YOU STUPID ATHEIST! JUDGES MAKE IT TRUE HALLELUJAH AMEN!

GHOST OF SOCRATES: Back in my day, we had sophists too. Fortunately they weren't as loud.
 
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c4ts said:
SCIENTIST: A house- an example of intelligent design, as it was clearly built by humans who were more intelligent than the lumber itself. A tree- not an example of intelligent design because it grew itself from a seed instead of being built by people.

ID PUNDIT: THE TREE WAS BUILT BY AN INTELLIGENT DESIGNER JUST LIKE A HOUSE, WHICH DISPROVES EVOLUTION! THEREFORE INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT!

JUDGE: I declare both theories equally valid. Otherwise he won't shut up.

SCIENTIST: I guess it's too late to ask why he had to bring this in front of the courts instead of the scientific community...

ID PUNDIT: YES! THIS PROVES IT IS A SCIENCE AND IT IS ACCEPTED BY THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY WHICH YOU WOULD KNOW BUT YOU DON'T DO YOUR RESEARCH YOU STUPID ATHEIST! JUDGES MAKE IT TRUE HALLELUJAH AMEN!

GHOST OF SOCRATES: Back in my day, we had sophists too. Fortunately they weren't as loud.
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Just one fault in your scenario, in the last part. Old Socrates had a little problem with judges and sophists too, if you recall, that kind of shortened his career.
 
bruto said:
Just one fault in your scenario, in the last part. Old Socrates had a little problem with judges and sophists too, if you recall, that kind of shortened his career.
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As I recall, the problem was with the sophists who put him on trial more than the people of Athens who found him guilty... that was one of the reasons he chose to drink hemlock when given the opportunity to flee the city.
 
Mycroft said:
Ouch!

But the problem here is the man's kneecap was broken by intellegent design. The break was not a random mutation, but the design of the scientist who used his intellegence to guide the baseball bat.
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Evolution isn't all about "random mutations". It's that IDers will harp on "randomness". So the scientist used a random act to show how ridiculous the claim of simple "randomness" is.

Evolution is more driven on successful traits, but naturally. Is every divergence a random mutation? What about straight hair vs curly hair? Blue eyes vs brown? Fat (low metabolism) vs skinny (high metabolism)? The success of one or another isn't random. The traits get selected for depending more on environmental causes/changes. A skinny person will be selected for in times of "bounty". But in times of hardship, the fat (low metabolism) people will be skinny-but alive, and will be the only ones available to be selected for.

The IDer certainly didn't agree that the act of violence was "random". The scientist never claimed it was an accident either. But the IDer will claim evolution is easily poo pooed because they focus on "randomness" even though that is not the single driving force behind evolution. It is ridiculous to simply call evolution random, just as it is ridiculous to claim that the bashed in knee was just due to randomness.

We know the act isn't random, and we know there is more too it. The same goes for evolution. The scientist knows that IDer will now prefer the scientific process to prove it now too, over entertaining ideas of a supernatural explanations that it was "meant to be" or "it was designed that way (bashed in), and you can't prove otherwise".

Throw in further the fact that the leg didn't "just get that way". That can be proven through the scientific process. The IDer claim that something can't be proven with the scientific process will suddenly be thrown out the window.

Basically:
Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind.
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Just picture the ider saying, as usual,

"Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of genes could cause macroevolution of any kind."

Sure, a random mutation CAN cause a trait to be more successful than another. There is more to the story though. It has to be a good trait that is selected for.

Consider the creationut explanation about how random mutation regarding evolution is so very laughable:
"It just seems like a stretch to say that everything came from single-celled organisms in random combinations. If that was the case, why is it that, according to science, all fish came first, then all amphibians, then all reptiles, etc.? If it was random, why couldn't amphibians have come at the same time as fish?"
- Jiggy37, RaptureReady
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So it is silly to just call the scientist's actions "random".
There is more behind the scientist's actions, and sure he has a brain, but we more focus on the IDer claim that you "cannot prove it". We can prove evolution. We can observe it, we can explain it, and we can use naturalistic explanations.
 
Well, looks like one of my pet peeves just came up. No, there is no such thing as a "random mutation". There is nothing random about mutations. We know how they come about, we can control them, we can predict them, and some mutations are pretty much hardwired in our DNA. Mutations are not random in any property whatsoever.
 
Francois Tremblay said:
Well, looks like one of my pet peeves just came up. No, there is no such thing as a "random mutation". There is nothing random about mutations. We know how they come about, we can control them, we can predict them, and some mutations are pretty much hardwired in our DNA. Mutations are not random in any property whatsoever.
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Tell the creationuts that. I went to "vacation bible school" when I was a kid. They poo pooed evolution EVERY time with the notion "random" mutation.

One lady even took a busted up clock in a bag and shook it. She claimed this is what evolution was ALL about...that random actions like shaking a bag full of parts is what makes up everything on earth.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
One lady even took a busted up clock in a bag and shook it. She claimed this is what evolution was ALL about...that random actions like shaking a bag full of parts is what makes up everything on earth.
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That's hilarious. High vaudeville for sure. Crackpots will never cease to amuse me.
 
No, mutations are not random. I defy anyone to name one random property of mutations. If you really want to address this, start a new thread and I will post scientific studies and facts available on the Internet that completely disprove this belief.
 
Oh come on. It doesn't matter what arguemnts are actually relied upon, they'll just squeeze the designer into another gap when the originals fail.

"So mutations aren't random. THE DESIGNER GUIDES THEM AWAY FROM EVOLUTION!!"
 
Francois Tremblay said:
No, mutations are not random. I defy anyone to name one random property of mutations. If you really want to address this, start a new thread and I will post scientific studies and facts available on the Internet that completely disprove this belief.
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Moot point even; as natural selection is anything but random. I think this is even harder for creationists to understand (they never seem to).
 
Eos of the Eons said:
Tell the creationuts that. I went to "vacation bible school" when I was a kid. They poo pooed evolution EVERY time with the notion "random" mutation.
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You said 'poo poo'.
Sorry, anything faintly resembling scat humour gets me all giggly.
I thought I was in the 'colon cleansing' thread by mistake.

On the subject of excrement, my local paper, The Windsor Star, published a letter last week from an ID'er as the Letter Of The Day. I seethed all weekend.

Yesterday there was a letter from a YEC'er that stated, in part: "Regarding evolution being "real" and "fact," there are many things that evolution cannot account for and that demonstrates that the Earth could not be billions of years old, which is necessary for evolution to be real or fact.",

and "That the Bible speaks about God and spiritual matters is no valid reason that it should not be understood literally. Non-literalism is nothing but a well of confusion, speculation, and uncertainty."

The last straw (man).

I fired off my own letter to the editor, as follows:

To respond to Mr. Turpin's letter (Bible and evolution, 31 Oct.) I'll alter two of his sentences slightly: That the Bible speaks about God and spiritual matters is no valid reason that it should be understood literally. Literalism is nothing but a well of confusion, speculation, and uncertainty.

That there are many things that science cannot account for YET certainly does NOT demonstrate that the earth is not billions of years old. The Bible is not a science textbook.

In response to Mr. Chalmers' letter (Open for discussion, 28 Oct.) I would say that you are confusing philosophy with science. Go ahead and challenge evolution on philosophical grounds, just keep it out of science class. There is zero scientific evidence backing Intelligent Design.

There is no physical test for God, nor philosophy to science.

"Most people use the word theory to mean uncertainty, guesswork, or a rough idea, but in science it has a different meaning. A scientific theory explains facts or phenomena that have been shown to be true by repeated independent tests and experiments. An educated guess in science is called a hypothesis.

Scientific theories are not laws, which describe phenomena thought to be invariable. Theories are generally used to describe why certain laws work. For example, the law of gravity is known to be true for falling bodies, but how and why it works is explained by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's theory was accepted as true only after repeated experimentation and observation. Yet not even laws are absolute. They are rarely overturned, but they may be amended should new data warrant it." --Maia Weinstock

Would you replace the "theory" of gravity with "Intelligent Falling"?

PS: Darwin was a Christian.

Larry Leeder

I only wish the paper allowed letters longer than 300 words or these people would've gotten the blasting they deserved.

I'll keep everyone up to date on the replies that are surely to come.

Pesto to all!
 
Francois Tremblay said:
No, mutations are not random. I defy anyone to name one random property of mutations. If you really want to address this, start a new thread and I will post scientific studies and facts available on the Internet that completely disprove this belief.
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Well, I'd say that a general mutation in E.coli has about a 1 in 10^-8 chance of happening. We can actually test this, you know. How about you explain, in short, how mutations are not random? Sure, we know how they come about, and we know the mechanisms for their repair, but we do not know all the factors in most types of mutations. Furthermore, given a single base-pair, what are the chances of you being able to predict accurately when it will mutate?
 
We don't know *all* the factors ? That's not the same claim as "mutations are random". If mutations were random, then there would be NO factors, let alone being able to know most of them. Just because we are unable to predict mutations in a natural system does not change the fact that they are not random.
 
Francois Tremblay said:
We don't know *all* the factors ? That's not the same claim as "mutations are random". If mutations were random, then there would be NO factors, let alone being able to know most of them. Just because we are unable to predict mutations in a natural system does not change the fact that they are not random.
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I see the problem. You confuse random and 'truely random'. These are two different concepts. Mutations are random, in that we are (for the most part) unable to predict their outcome. This does not, however, mean they are 'truely random', in the sense that there is is no way to know the outcome.

ETA: To clarify, 'random' things are things which we are unable to predict. 'Truely random' things are this that there is no possible way to predict (think quantum fluctuations as the best example of a possible 'truely random' thing). When we say "mutations are random", we simply mean "we cannot predict mutations".
 
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When I think of "random mutations", I don't think of the timing. I think of the effect.

Can the effects of a mutation be predicted?
 
TheBoyPaj said:
When I think of "random mutations", I don't think of the timing. I think of the effect.

Can the effects of a mutation be predicted?
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It depends if we know where the mutation took place, and what kind of mutation it was. If we just grew a bunch of bacteria, some of them would have mutations, and we'd have almost no way of knowing before hand where these mutations took place (we could guess, though, that there would be more at certain 'mutation hotspots'). If we knew the nature of the mutation, however, we might be able to predict its effect.
 
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