Lies or Incompetence?

[ElCodeMonkey]

I am often fascinated by the fact that people cannot come to an agreement about something. I can lay out what I think is solid and rational argument only to find the recipients entirely incapable of comprehending. Similarly, the arguments brought forth to me sound ridiculous and easily defeated, but they can never see how they've been defeated so soundly and logically. It's easy to see them as incompetent or dishonest yet I strongly believe they feel the same about me. They are absolutely just as convinced as I am in the opposite direction. We often think the other side is just being dishonest, evil, or stupid. And yet the other side thinks the same. So how in the world can we ever truly know? Is there a method of knowing if we're lying to ourselves and we're the dumb ones? Has science shown anything in the brain perhaps that can reveal that we truly DO understand something but choose to reject it and so deceive ourselves? What is really going on? Or is one side of an argument actually just evil incarnate like we're led to believe?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 40 by mgb]

But this is just shifting the question back; how is this signalling process determined by the genetic code - if such a code is really responsible?

You had asked how cells "know' how to form a skull, and I was giving some references (especially Davies' book) which describe, in significant detail, how such a process actually does work. The question of what got the whole process started is a completely different question, and to answer that you can't start with a human skull and imagine that it just appeared and formed without any precursors.

You have to start with the first single-celled organisms and work up from there. Since we don't know exactly what these first replicators were ... yet anyway ... that is no way to answer some of the detailed questions on how the specific proteins and signal systems developed and what path that took. But given what we can observe, it is safe to say that things started out much simpler than the existing systems in modern animals, and became more complex over very long periods of time.

This is evident in the fossil record where sponges and the like appeared much earlier, and were much simpler, than modern mammals for example. And prior to the first multicellular creatures things were simpler still. So my point is that you can't start with the present situation as if this suddenly appeared in all its complexity ... you have to go back to some 4 billion years ago and investigate those systems, and all we have from those times are things like stromatolites where no soft tissue is left. Many of the answers are not yet known to science, but thinking that things like cancer came from "the fall" is as nonscientific as it gets ... that whole story is nothing but a bronze age myth that is unrelated to any reality whatsoever.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 31 by Guy Threepwood]

if SETI found a tiny fraction of the digital information drifting across space, that would be the only evidence for intelligence

SETI has no ability to detect anything beyond a tiny few dozens of light years from earth unless some civilization developed transmitters the size of Jupiter blasting yottawatts in directed beams directly at earth.

That's another one, and by that rationale- if you have to exit the highway and double back a couple of miles to get to Wendy's, this is evidence that the highway was not intelligently designed

That's still a very bad analogy.

by the way- any luck finding that short necked giraffe ancestor yet?

Why on earth would you expect there to be a short-necked giraffe? Nothing about ToE predicts that there should be short necked giraffes!

what we DON'T understand is how natural mechanisms could even hypothetically achieve the same

But we do ... you just reject it because (presumably) it conflicts with the ID hypothesis. Some interesting stats are that 97-98% of scientists of all stripes believe and accept that ToE is the best, and correct, explanation of how live diversified on this planet. But only 2/3 of the general public believe that the agreement is this high among scientists (see point 2):

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... arwin-day/

ID is also roundly rejected by most of the scientific community:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... ent_design

and many religions also accept evolution as a valid theory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_ ... _evolution

So there is a great minority among scientists in general that don't believe in ToE as a valid theory. Fortunately for science and humankind, their influence is completely negligible and does not impact real progress in understanding nature and how things actually do work.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 42 by DrNoGods]

SETI has no ability to detect anything beyond a tiny few dozens of light years from earth unless some civilization developed transmitters the size of Jupiter blasting yottawatts in directed beams directly at earth.

even if true that would be beside the point:

IF SETI found a tiny fraction of the digital information drifting across space, that would be the only evidence for intelligence- which you would gleefully accept, yes?

My transmitter- (WIFI)- can barely make it to the other side of my house. The one on my house, can barely make it to a tower a couple of miles away- and not at all in heavy snow

by this rationale our current communication is impossible. The reason we can is the same reason people communicated 100's of miles with beacons on hills or hunters across a forest- relay has been a fundamental part of communication from the get go- the range limit of the direct signal is not the range limit of communications

For interstellar communication, the mountaintops are the stars, and as discussed, we can easily reach the next mountain top/star even with our brand new fledgling communication technology.

Your hypothesis that nobody else ever figured any of this out and ran with it to a logical conclusion, even given billions of years instead of a century- supports the point- we are probably alone

That's still a very bad analogy.

As the recurrent laryngeal nerve curves around the subclavian artery or the arch of aorta, it gives several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the oesophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea and some filaments to the inferior constrictor [Constrictor pharyngis inferior].
(Gray's Anatomy, 1980, p. 1081

So the idea that the RNL is some sort of mistake, in not taking a single direct route,
is based on extremely outdated superficial physical examinations and assumptions
it has long been known the the nerve bundles several pathways en route, just like the ribbon connectors in a PC, highway, power lines, internet relays- whatever analogy you like, the design logic is the same

But we do ... you just reject it because (presumably) it conflicts with the ID hypothesis. Some interesting stats are that 97-98% of scientists of all stripes believe and accept that ToE is the best, and correct, explanation of how live diversified on this planet. But only 2/3 of the general public believe that the agreement is this high among scientists (see point 2):

99% of paranormal investigators believe in ghosts, and they should know, they're the experts right?

cmon Dr No, academic consensus is not science, Galileo, Planck, Lemaitre, Einstein could all tell you that! In fact when appeal to authority is the best argument a theory has left, it's often been on the way out historically

So there is a great minority among scientists in general that don't believe in ToE as a valid theory. Fortunately for science and humankind, their influence is completely negligible and does not impact real progress in understanding nature and how things actually do work.

fortunately untrue

One of the most promising lines of investigation in cancer research today, arguably the greatest medical challenge of our age, was/is being pioneered by James Tour

(synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University in Houston, Texas, United States.)

Tour is a signatory of dissent from Darwin and a proponent of ID and funded by ID proponents and approaches his work from and ID perspective, which makes very different predictions than NeoDarwinsim- (including junk DNA not being junk btw)

lifting the arbitrary 19th C Darwinian restrictions on understanding biology, is also lifting the restrictions on progress in the 21st C, and may very well save the lives of us or our loved ones one day- that's what I call science, regardless of non compliance with the vagaries of academic fashion

As Einstein said, it doesn't take 1000 scientists to prove me wrong, it takes one fact

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 43 by Guy Threepwood]

IF SETI found a tiny fraction of the digital information drifting across space, that would be the only evidence for intelligence- which you would gleefully accept, yes?

Yes ... if organized EM signals were detected here on Earth that could indicate intelligent life existed out there somewhere I would gleefully accept that. But this kind of thing is not the only evidence for "intelligence" that might exist. If we ever did get the ability to travel to an exoplanet and found purpose-built structures we could conclude an intelligence of some sort, but it doesn't have to be at the level of human intelligence. Are beavers intelligent? What about bees?

Humans have evolved a brain capable of a high level of 'intelligence" relative to other animals, but there could be life throughout the universe represented by some mix of creatures that don't have the ability to generate organized EM signals and transmit them (eg. as earth was from 150 years ago back to ~4 billion years ago). You seem to distinguish "intelligent" life from other life, with the criterium being that human intelligence is above the line and everything else is below the line, and you want to only consider "intelligent" (at a human level of above) life as having any meaning as far as us being "alone." In my view human intelligence is just the result of having evolved a more complex and capable brain than anything else on this planet, but is not something special that puts humans in a different category altogether, which you seem to be doing. If we found a planet with a diversity of life equivalent to the earth 5 million years ago, would you consider that insignificant because none of the creatures could organize EM signals, and transmit them directly to earth?

The reason we can is the same reason people communicated 100's of miles with beacons on hills or hunters across a forest- relay has been a fundamental part of communication from the get go- the range limit of the direct signal is not the range limit of communications

OK ... so now we not only need a Star Trek level of civilization, they also have to have co-opted exoplanets or stars to relay their signals ... directly to an insignificant, tiny speck of dirt (earth) light years away for some reason. Got it. This is getting more and more into fantasyland with each post.

Your hypothesis that nobody else ever figured any of this out and ran with it to a logical conclusion, even given billions of years instead of a century- supports the point- we are probably alone

I never suggested such a hypothesis. My points have been (prior to this new twist of relaying off stars ... really?), (a) the strength of a directed transmitter that would be necessary to reach earth with any detectable signal size is gigantic and would require a level of technology far, far greater than ours, so something like SETI would not be expected to see any signals for the short time it has been operating, (b) there is no reason to suspect that if there was some civilization out there with this capability, that they would choose to direct signals at earth in the fist place. What would make them even think of targeting a nothing speck of dirt so far away?, and (c) there could be exoplanets teaming with life that is simply unlike that on earth, and it may not be at a human level of intelligence, or above. That would prove that life is not unique to this planet. The level of "intelligence "it may have is beside the point.

So the idea that the RNL is some sort of mistake, in not taking a single direct route

No one claims it is a "mistake", which is why your Wendy's analogy isn't correct. The point is that in the first creatures where this nerve appeared it was likely a more direct route, and it persists in the long-necked giraffe precisely because the evolutionary path tradeoffs (between that creature and the giraffe) favored leaving it where it was rather than creating a whole new solution. So this routing is perfectly compatible with evolution, but not with ID as it is less than 100% perfect.

99% of paranormal investigators believe in ghosts, and they should know, they're the experts right?

And yet again ... a completely irrelevant analogy. There is zero evidence for the existence of ghosts, or bigfoot, or fairies, etc. (or gods of any kind). People believe in these things for various reasons, but there is no evidence to support their existence. ToE has mountains of supporting evidence, which is exactly why 98% of the scientific community accept it. Surely you can see the difference!

cmon Dr No, academic consensus is not science, Galileo, Planck, Lemaitre, Einstein could all tell you that! In fact when appeal to authority is the best argument a theory has left, it's often been on the way out historically

But why were these guys accepted in the end? That is the point that you seem to be completely missing. Experimental evidence showed that they were correct, and when enough of it came in their ideas transitioned from hypothesis to theory. It isn't just that all the scientists got together and had a show of hands on whether or not they decided to believe the hypothesis, as you are suggesting. It is that the hypotheses were supported, again and again, by observations from many different researchers, the results were repeated many times, and confirmed and only then was there a scientific consensus. You're analogy with ghosts is completely unrelated to this scientific method process.

fortunately untrue

Really? Name just one example in the science world where ID has been shown to be a correct explanation. This has never happened. Plenty of hypotheses that ID is the answer, but no cases where this has been through the process described above and ended up the consensus.

Tour is a signatory of dissent from Darwin and a proponent of ID and funded by ID proponents and approaches his work from and ID perspective, which makes very different predictions than NeoDarwinsim- (including junk DNA not being junk btw)

OK ... so he's from the 2% that don't believe science.

As Einstein said, it doesn't take 1000 scientists to prove me wrong, it takes one fact

That's right ... and ID has yet to have even one hypothesis that has survived scrutiny and been shown to be a valid explanation. Not one, ever, and that is likely to continue. It is made up to try and support religious beliefs, but so far has failed to actually explain anything. Here your ghost analogy would be very relevant!

[mgb]

You have to start with the first single-celled organisms and work up from there. Since we don't know exactly what these first replicators were ... yet anyway ... that is no way to answer some of the detailed questions on how the specific proteins and signal systems developed and what path that took. But given what we can observe, it is safe to say that things started out much simpler than the existing systems in modern animals, and became more complex over very long periods of time.

Yes, I am not disputing that evolution began simply. I am disputing the idea that this immensely complex of gene switching sequences and protein production could have been put together by chance mutations or any other sequence of events based on chance. Growth is an immensely complex process and how the skull, for example, could become so finely tuned and specialised by random events is beyond me. And most of this is supposed to have happened in only 55 million generations since the Cambrian Explosion.

you have to go back to some 4 billion years ago and investigate those systems,

If you examine evolution from the Cambrian Explosion onwards and consider how much has happened since then it is hard to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that it happened by a chance mechanism.

Many of the answers are not yet known to science, but thinking that things like cancer came from "the fall" is as nonscientific as it gets ...

But why do you think that science is the only path to knowledge or understanding? It is not. Understanding can come also from God. Don't ask me to prove it but I know it is true.

Just because the fall does not appeal to the way you think does not mean it is not true. The real conviction of a world view is in its ability to explain the world and, for me, the doctrine of the fall makes sense of many things. But it is important to examine these teachings not in isolation but in the context of an entire theist world view. Dismissing these things as 'bronze age' is neither here nor there. After all, those folk were clever enough to bring about bronze age technology which is no small thing.

[mgb]

Really? Name just one example in the science world where ID has been shown to be a correct explanation. This has never happened. Plenty of hypotheses that ID is the answer, but no cases where this has been through the process described above and ended up the consensus.

My personal view is that the truth lies somewhere between ToE and ID. I don't believe that incremental chance mutations can put the thing together but I do believe in some sort of evolutionary process. A process that has a grain of ID in it in the sense that evolution jumps forward in dramatic leaps, hence the missing links. ID is convincing because there is a grain of truth in it* but there is more to it than that.


*ie, the idea that design emerges without any apparent immediate precursor; missing links.

[Guy Threepwood]

[Replying to post 44 by DrNoGods]

Yes ... if organized EM signals were detected here on Earth that could indicate intelligent life existed out there somewhere I would gleefully accept that. But this kind of thing is not the only evidence for "intelligence" that might exist. If we ever did get the ability to travel to an exoplanet and found purpose-built structures we could conclude an intelligence of some sort, but it doesn't have to be at the level of human intelligence. Are beavers intelligent? What about bees?

Humans have evolved a brain capable of a high level of 'intelligence" relative to other animals, but there could be life throughout the universe represented by some mix of creatures that don't have the ability to generate organized EM signals and transmit them (eg. as earth was from 150 years ago back to ~4 billion years ago). You seem to distinguish "intelligent" life from other life, with the criterium being that human intelligence is above the line and everything else is below the line, and you want to only consider "intelligent" (at a human level of above) life as having any meaning as far as us being "alone." In my view human intelligence is just the result of having evolved a more complex and capable brain than anything else on this planet, but is not something special that puts humans in a different category altogether, which you seem to be doing. If we found a planet with a diversity of life equivalent to the earth 5 million years ago, would you consider that insignificant because none of the creatures could organize EM signals, and transmit them directly to earth?

same criteria as SETI, if we can detect specified information beyond what fluke can account for, we know it's probably from an intelligent source- that's the point- the information IS the evidence for ID, regardless of the source.

Yes, there could also be intelligence we can't detect of course.

We are having this discussion, we are aware of the universe- in other words, we are the only means we know of, by which the universe can contemplate it's own existence, we have the capacity to colonize it as we are discussing. That absolutely puts us in a different category than a beaver yes- no matter how we got here.

A book written in french is probably intended for a Frenchman, even if it is inhabited by billions of bacteria that are never aware of what they inhabit

OK ... so now we not only need a Star Trek level of civilization, they also have to have co-opted exoplanets or stars to relay their signals ... directly to an insignificant, tiny speck of dirt (earth) light years away for some reason. Got it. This is getting more and more into fantasyland with each post.

This all seems to be new to you, but this is standard old stuff for SETI, the Fermi paradox says yes the galaxy is pretty big, but its really old- which gives lots of time for possible outcomes to unfold- and many/multiplying small fast robotic probes feeding off energy from stars and relaying info as they go is, for them, a pretty standard prediction of what civilizations would likely do- and given enough time (which they have certaintly had) we might expect them to be quite prolific, in fact we have similar projects on the drawing board already involving thousands of individual probes for investigating nearby systems- all within our current technological grasp already & barely a century after getting off the ground with powered flight .Call our technology 'Star Trek' if you like, we have already surpassed what they envisioned in the 60's in many regards.

But why were these guys accepted in the end? That is the point that you seem to be completely missing. Experimental evidence showed that they were correct, and when enough of it came in their ideas transitioned from hypothesis to theory. It isn't just that all the scientists got together and had a show of hands on whether or not they decided to believe the hypothesis, as you are suggesting. It is that the hypotheses were supported, again and again, by observations from many different researchers, the results were repeated many times, and confirmed and only then was there a scientific consensus. You're analogy with ghosts is completely unrelated to this scientific method process.

well it would be unfair to compare Piltdown man to a ghost.. since we can't be entirely sure all ghosts are hoaxes! yet he was accepted as a foundation of human evolution for some 40 years- from repeated observations? rigorous experimentation? no on the authoritative word from a couple of 'experts'- which the rest of academia was compelled to go along with or be accused of 'not believing in science'

science the method and science the academic institution are two completely different things, quite often diametrically opposed to each other

Name just one example in the science world where ID has been shown to be a correct explanation

ID is the correct explanation for the rosetta stone, or this digital information system we are using, can you name just one example of this occurring spontaneously?

OK ... so he's from the 2% that don't believe science.

yup, just like Galileo, Planck, Lemaitre and Einstein were, only even lower percentages I would think? and similarly making great progress

I'm not so interested in whether something currently has enough votes to be declared 'science'. I'm a lot more interested in whether or not something is actually 'true' how about you?

and ID has yet to have even one hypothesis that has survived scrutiny and been shown to be a valid explanation.

Darwinism has yet to be shown to be a valid explanation- remember 'it's too early' to draw conclusions on many crucial questions as you yourself conceded earlier

ID predicted that the gaps, jumps, sudden appearances were real, not artifacts- punctuated equilibrium has acknowledged this. ID predicted that junk DNA is not really junk, also validated- and that assuming a design perspective for nano-molecular machines can lead to more fruitful direct approaches that Darwinian shotgun ones in tackling cancer

come on, get with the winning team Dr no

[/b]

[Divine Insight]

These questions you ask are indeed scientific questions. In fact, there are scientists who are working on answering those very questions. So why don\'t you become a scientist and look into those questions yourself?

They are working on them but they have not come up with the answers. I'm simply pointing out that fact. We are constantly told that 'genes done it' but scientists cannot show this to be the case in many instances.

It's not always genes that are responsible for the behavior of cells. Scientists have also shown how this works in some situations. Therefore, all you seem to be objecting to is that scientists have not yet completed their work. That's hardly a reason to hypothesize an imaginary intelligent creator who is intervening in biological processes at the cellular level.

What is your current answer? To just throw up your hands and say, "[i:295324eb2e]God must be telling individual cells what to do[/i:295324eb2e]".

I am pointing out the difference between established scientific fact and hypothesis. Scientists should not present hypothesis as fact.

They aren't doing that. What they are saying is that they have already shown how cells differentiate in various situation and therefore they have no reason to think that this won't always be the answer. In fact, until you can show otherwise, you are the one who is presenting your hypothesis of a God as though it should be considered to be fact, when in reality there is no basis for your speculation.

Are you aware that there are huge theological problems with your conclusion? A God who needs to constantly intervene in the workings of every cell in everyone\'s body would then necessarily also be personally responsible for creating cancer cells.

I don't see why it is necessary to work with each cell individually. Cancer is not from God, it is a result of the fall.

But your entire objection here was that individual cells wouldn't know where they are and that there is no mechanism that could explain how they could know to behave in the way they do.

Based on that objection, what could your answer then be other than some magical God is directing these otherwise clueless cells to behave in a way that is appropriate for the overall design. So your God must necessarily intervene in real-time to instruct these cells on how to properly behave.

So your "God Hypothesis" necessarily requires that your God is controlling these cells in real-time. Otherwise your God would have put some mechanism in place so that these individual cells could know what to do. But you have already rejected that idea, that's what sparked your original rejection of science.

After all, what could cancer cells possibly be in your worldview? God\'s errors? Then you have an incompetent God. And if they are done on purpose by God, then you have God personally responsible for everything that goes wrong in anyone\'s body right down to the cellular level.

They can be the malice of evil. Evil has intervened in evolution.

And now you are suggesting medieval superstitious paranoia.

Wouldn't it be far more realistic to simply recognize cancer cells as simply a process gone naturally awry?

Basically what you seem to be attempting to argue for is that everything that appears to have gone well must have done so because some loving benevolent God is guiding it, but everything that doesn't go as expected must then have been thwarted by evil demons. Does this kind of superstitious thinking truly have any place in the 21st century?

One great problem with theism is that theists seem to think that they can dismiss science for various complaints they have, yet they don\'t seem to realize that this then means that they need to explain how this works in their theology.

I never dismiss science. I make a distinction between scientism and science: https://www.peele.net/lib/atlcgene.html

I'll be the first to agree that some things that are called "Science" need to be taken with a large grain of salt. I hold this to be especially true in the social sciences. I once took a course on psychology and I actually dropped that course, because IMHO, it was not very scientific. I felt they were making an awful lot of assumptions that have in no way been verified to be true.

But that's quite distant from the physical sciences, including physical biology.

By the way, I do believe that some people are more prone to becoming addicted to various substances than others, and I believe this has much to do with their different physical make-up. Even so, I think it would be quite naive to try to pin it down to a single gene. Although, if it could be shown that all alcoholics have a specific gene that non-alcoholics don't have, then this would certainly be prime evidence that this particular gene has something to do with addiction to alcohol. Where those studies actually stand I do not know, neither do I care since I'm not an alcoholic.

But they don\'t bother with that. Instead they just wave it off saying, "[i:295324eb2e]God works in mysterious ways[/i:295324eb2e]". Or that God\'s ways are too far beyond human understanding.

Yes, they are.

More superstitious mumbo jumbo.

You don't even know if a God actually exists, much less whether or not it could be understood.

In other words, theology is given a free pass to be absolutely nonsensical with no further explanations required.

I think essential theism is coherent.

That's the problem. You just accept this without actually putting it to the test. If you were willing to put it to the test you'd be asking what sense it makes for a God to be controlling individual cells whilst ignoring the cancerous cells.

You need to do more than mere think theism is essentially coherent. You need to actually demonstrate that the theology you are attempting to support actually is coherent.

The theists basically takes that path of least work. I don\'t understand how it could be explained scientifically, therefore "[i:295324eb2e]God did it[/i:295324eb2e]". No further explanation required.

That is simplistic. Theists are not mindless, they just have a different rationale.

What they do is ignore the inconsistencies of their theological claims and call that "rational".

Like I say, you need to do more than claim rationality, you need to demonstrate it.

A theist who wants to claim that a God is baby-sitting every single cell in every living creature needs to at least explain how this make theological sense.

I am not saying God is baby sitting. I am saying that the genetic code is not a convincing answer to the problem of growth and form; there are huge holes in ToE and plugging in a gene to fill the gap - well, that's the Gene of The Gaps Theory.

But see, if you aren't claiming that your God is baby-sitting every cell, then you're leaving the option open that your God has designed a mechanism that informs individual cells how to behave. If that's the case, then scientists will discover how that mechanism works.

And then guess what? Your original objection fails again.

Also, why is this God such an inept designer that he couldn\'t figure out how to make things run on auto-pilot so they don\'t need constant baby-sitting?

Evil has infiltrated everything.

Medieval superstitious paranoia.

This is the 21st century. We now know that demons do not possess people to cause disease and mental illness.

Why cling to medieval superstitious paranoia, when we know better?

You are rejecting a search for real answers in favor of supporting ancient superstitious paranoia that has long since been proven to be false.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to post 47 by Guy Threepwood]

we have the capacity to colonize it as we are discussing...

... all within our current technological grasp

We'll just have to agree to disagree on the issue of SETI and our ability to detect EM signals from some remote civilization, or relay signals off of stars (!), or colonize something as large as a galaxy. When you crunch the numbers and look at practical considerations, this is all highly unlikely. The average distance between stars in the Milky Way is about 5 light years ... similar to the distance to our closest star. If we generated an EM signal here and directed it to the closest star it would be many millions of miles in diameter when it got to the star. Then you are suggesting a relay of some sort that (a) would have no where to sit on a star since there is no surface, and (b) even if it did it would catch maybe 10^-25 of the signal and relay that to another star where a similar fraction would be captured and relayed, etc. Nothing left to detect after just one relay event by the time that got to the second star. Replace the star with a planet and the situation becomes orders of magnitude worse. You have to propose Star Trek technology at a minimum, and we're nowhere near that in terms of speed of travel, just to mention one problem.

well it would be unfair to compare Piltdown man to a ghost.. since we can't be entirely sure all ghosts are hoaxes! yet he was accepted as a foundation of human evolution for some 40 years- from repeated observations? rigorous experimentation? no on the authoritative word from a couple of 'experts'- which the rest of academia was compelled to go along with or be accused of 'not believing in science'

This is just another irrelevant analogy. That 1912 hoax fooled some people for a while, and only a handful of human fossils had been found prior to 1912 and all of these were still under analysis and not at all understood. So they had no real benchmarks to use to determine whether Piltdown Man was a hoax or not. But they kept at it and discovered it was indeed a fraud. Are you really comparing this kind of thing with Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the eclipse confirmations? Where is Piltdown Man on this list?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_h ... on_fossils

ID is the correct explanation for the rosetta stone, or this digital information system we are using, can you name just one example of this occurring spontaneously?

Wait a minute! Are you saying that the fact that we know humans created the Rosetta Stone (because no other animal has the capability to do so ... this we know), that this kind of "ID" is the same as what everyone knows religious people mean when they say "ID" (ie. a god of some sort)? This may be the worst analogy yet! It is no secret what ID means to the religious crowd ... and it doesn't mean anything that appears to be designed by a human. It means the existence of a supernatural being of some sort directing things, and no such being has ever been observed, and such an entity has never been shown to be the correct explanation for any observations in nature. That was my point.

yup, just like Galileo, Planck, Lemaitre and Einstein were

So you're claiming that these guys did not believe in science and instead attributed things to a supernatural being (ID)? I thought you were referring to the famous scientists that have achieved the status of being identified only by their last names, but obviously not. Do you have any links that describe who these other people are that share their last names?

I'm a lot more interested in whether or not something is actually 'true' how about you?

Certainly, that's why I don't entertain hypotheses based on purely fictional beings when zero evidence for their existence, and instead prefer to believe the results of observations, scientific analysis, repeatability, and that sort of thing. I think it is far more likely to reveal the truth than simply making up god concepts and giving them magical powers.

Darwinism has yet to be shown to be a valid explanation-

I can only reference the articles I linked in post 42 that show 97-98% of scientists agree that it is a valid explanation. You are in a huge minority there, but more importantly you have no evidence to support an intelligent designer ... only inferences because "it looks that way."

ID predicted that the gaps, jumps, sudden appearances were real, not artifacts- punctuated equilibrium has acknowledged this. ID predicted that junk DNA is not really junk, also validated- and that assuming a design perspective for nano-molecular machines can lead to more fruitful direct approaches that Darwinian shotgun ones in tackling cancer

ID has not predicted any of these things. Punctuated equilibrium is an evolutionary biology theory proposed by Eldredge and Gould in 1972. Geneticists discovered that what was called "junk" DNA early on actually in many cases was functional. Please don't tell me you also think Russel Humphries' "theory" of planetary magnetic fields is valid?

come on, get with the winning team Dr no

The winning team is described in the post 42 links. The anti-evolutionists appear to be going backwards at ever faster speeds.

[mgb]

It's not always genes that are responsible for the behavior of cells. Scientists have also shown how this works in some situations. Therefore, all you seem to be objecting to is that scientists have not yet completed their work.

I doubt that they have. Don't confuse a description of something happening with an explanation of how it happens. Scientists are far from showing that genes do all the things they are suppose to do.

you are the one who is presenting your hypothesis of a God as though it should be considered to be fact, when in reality there is no basis for your speculation.

There is an extensive basis for what you have called 'speculation'.

But your entire objection here was that individual cells wouldn't know where they are and that there is no mechanism that could explain how they could know to behave in the way they do.

No. My objection is that it has not been shown that genes control growth and form. It is, in my opinion, unlikely that random mutations could construct such an immensely complex process by a chance mechanism.

And now you are suggesting medieval superstitious paranoia.

That is not an argument. It is rhetoric.

Does this kind of superstitious thinking truly have any place in the 21st century?

Then how do you explain why the world is as it is? Why people are the way they are? Do you really think that the holocaust was a result of an misfortunate arrangement of molecules in Hitler's genes? Do you really believe that a person can be produced by a collection of molecules?

You don't even know if a God actually exists, much less whether or not it could be understood.

Yes I do.

But see, if you aren't claiming that your God is baby-sitting every cell, then you're leaving the option open that your God has designed a mechanism that informs individual cells how to behave. If that's the case, then scientists will discover how that mechanism works.

Maybe they will and when the mystery of growth and form is understood it will be even more clear that it could not have been put together randomly.

There are many ways to create form. For example, a sculptor can make a mould and pour bronze into it. Code is not necessarily the best way to do it.

Medieval superstitious paranoia.

The modern world is buried up to its brains in materialism. Like one person said 'You are about to suffocate in your own garbage'. 'Medieval' is in many ways superior to our 'enlightened' and 'rational' century.

This is the 21st century.

I'm afraid it is.

We now know that demons do not possess people to cause disease and mental illness.

Mental illness is often a spiritual condition.

Why cling to medieval superstitious paranoia, when we know better?

We don't.