Intelligent Design: Coming To A State Legislature Near You

[LWsciencejunkie]

Continued from above:
There is an expansion on the "god gene" angle. More, all the time is being understood about the genetics of personality traits. The tendency to be conservative (not just politically) is inherited, as are novelty, sensation, thrill, sensation-seeking; the tendency to be depressive, submissive, aggressive, social/gregarious or more of a loner, more or less impulsive, etc, etc. The theory is that a given band or group of humans need all types of personalities working together in order to optimize the chance that, as different challenges arise, solutions will be found. Take the case of an attack by a predator; some aggressive thrill-seeking cannon-fodder young males will instantly grab their spears and take on the beast. If they survive, they will most certainly project their personality-type genes into future generations. All the other band members will also benefit. In the case of an earthquake, some people (impulsive, not conservative, more fearful) will not even pick a direction and run like hell. Others will freeze where they stand. It is a throw of the dice which group will make the "best" decision; depends upon whether the cave collapses or the landslide takes out the group that's running away. The point is, some live. In a crisis, they don't ALL die. In an extreme food shortage, extremely conservative group members will NOT try to eat a novel or "forbidden" food. A more daring "liberal" member might. If that member doesn't die, he survives and so do his progeny and any of the conservative group that are persuaded by his not dying. If the food is toxic, and the experimenter does die, then that dead experimenter has served his purpose to the group too. My point is that those who have not parted ways with religion in spite of their education may be psychologically resistant to change, which is the actual non-political definition of conservatism.
Read "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki. His treatment is another way of pointing out how important the whole spectrum of personalities and their impact on successful decision-making are. This book was, to tell you the truth, almost spooky.

This, too is a decent treatment:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/artic...

Lastly, the minds capable of understanding and probing the disciplines of physics, math, chemistry are often dealing with both the abstract and unseen and also things that simply "are". That may lean one towards the supernatural.
My husband is a nuke at the top of his field. He is the civvie-in-charge of a large number of military-industrial facilities-that-cannot-be-name d. Many,(most, actually) of the rank-and-file engineering and IT staff are religious. Think about how their minds are oriented: Things MUST be very carefully and specifically designed and built with exquisite accuracy and attention to every detail or disaster ensues. The processes from concept to blueprint, to manufacturing, to building, let alone operating and maintaining enormous, complex and incredibly expensive and potentially deadly dangerous machines that must be operated by thousands of people over many years. They have "scriptures", followed verbatim, and people stand by the reader-of-procedure (scripture) just to make sure chapter-and-verse is correctly followed. It is, we think, impossible for the folks marinated in this sort of education and career to escape a bias toward a Godlike creation or ID.

[Easter Bunny]

Darwins Stepchild wrote:

<quoted text>
Teaching calculus during grad school, I would sometimes relate a little bit about my studies in topology. My students were definitely convince I was a mental case.
Of course, topology DOES severely warp ones mind. <grin>

Hey, maybe you can tell me about this math joke that I heard but cannot completely reconstruct. I think it was told by the singer/songwriter Lucy Kaplansky,'cuz her dad was a math guy.

Anyway, the form of the joke is something like this:

Q) How are the imaginary numbers like the Reals?
A) Yes, but under what topology?

Well, I hope that's close enough to get you to it.

[LWsciencejunkie]

Zeke wrote:

<quoted text>
I've been and it seems to work for a few days--but then I snap right back. I guess it's the same as when jet lag wears off for a non-sufferer, they return to their typical sleep rhythm.

Yep. We're twins alright.

I gave up messing around with all healthful and natural methods of dealing with my lifelong insomnia. I obsess endlessly and relentlessly, and when not obsessing, I have spectacular IMAX surround-sound technicolor 3-D dreams that would turn Steven King running to Satan himself for comfort. Take two stout G&Ts along with 50-150mgs of Trazedone and just SLEEP.

[Resident]

Real wrote:

<quoted text>
Sigh... Again, everything you say is irrelevant to the conversation, and failed to noticed that I didn't want to argue with you, but since your so adamant about arguing so, then let it be so. Ignoring my "wise blabber" as you have so "wisely" stated is another fallacy, but I'll save my breath and not detail the type of argument. Obviously from this post you are capable of writing somewhat legibly, so why don't you do so in every post? You call me a smart ass, I'll call you a dumb ass, all of your posts are trivial nonsense, and the reasoning for reading them, well I didn't read them. Your name comes to mind when arguing in the immigration forums, I can careless what you say, you did side with those folks, but I'm not here to prove it. You think I'm going to pity you for all of the name calling you have received? For all I know you probably deserved it, but for now I'll suspend judgment on this topic. You not being able to argue my posts proves that you're the idiot, idiot. If you can't handle someones opinion to the contrary of yours, then scurry on, you don't belong in a public forum.

Wow, she wrote "topix is a great place to study stupidity".....And that comes from an 8th grade education!.........Is she talking about herself?

[polymath257]

Darwins Stepchild wrote:

<quoted text>
Teaching calculus during grad school, I would sometimes relate a little bit about my studies in topology. My students were definitely convince I was a mental case.
Of course, topology DOES severely warp ones mind. <grin>

My favorite is to just push things up a dimension or two from Calc III. It isn't too difficult to get them to imagine cross sections of a 3-sphere or to get the general idea of I^4. Trying to go up one MORE dimension tends to lose them, though. <smile>

[LWsciencejunkie]

Zeke wrote:

<quoted text>
A similar thing happened to me recently. I watched a brilliant presentation on string theory. It was all making so much sense. I had several "aha!" moments. When it was over, I really felt like I'd learned something.
Until the next day, when I tried to explain it to my buddy :-/

Once I had this dream (very realistic, like all my non-lucid dreams) I was giving a seminar at MIT to a world-class gathering of physicists and mathematicians. I was using a whiteboard to give all of my elegant, beautiful proofs to prove my discovery that zero was a bogus concept. The ultra-elite audience was enthralled to the point of near-tears. I swear it made sense...I still laugh when I think of it.

[polymath257]

Easter Bunny wrote:

<quoted text>
Hey, maybe you can tell me about this math joke that I heard but cannot completely reconstruct. I think it was told by the singer/songwriter Lucy Kaplansky,'cuz her dad was a math guy.
Anyway, the form of the joke is something like this:
Q) How are the imaginary numbers like the Reals?
A) Yes, but under what topology?
Well, I hope that's close enough to get you to it.

Not quite sure I get the joke in that, but I had a chance to meet Irving Kaplansky at University of Chicago one summer. Amazingly funny guy.

[LWsciencejunkie]

polymath257 wrote:

<quoted text>
Removing skank in a shower can be wonderful fun!

HA! You'd probably invite a skank right in!

[polymath257]

Amazed wrote:

<quoted text>
http://www.allaboutcreation.org/origin-of-the...

And your point is? Let's recap what that little video essentially says: based on what we know now, if the constants of nature were different, we wouldn't be here. OK, fine. What does that show? I'd point out that the degree of 'fine tuning' is hotly debated. For example, the resonance between C12 and 3He4 which allows carbon burning in large stars is one that is often mentioned as one of those examples of tuning. But, we don't know the details of how that resonance depends on the basic constants. As mentioned by Weinberg, the fineness of the tuning isn't really all that great in relative terms. So what, if any, conclusions do we draw from it?

Yes, if the strong force were a bit weaker, nobody would be having this conversation. But is it even possible for the strong force to have a different strength? The same basic question goes for the weak and the electromagnetic forces also. Ultimately, we don't know. We have never seen these forces acting other than they do. We don't even have decent hypotheses on how the values *could* change. There are some proposals where, in an infinite universe, ALL possible combinations of values are seen somewhere. If that is the case, then we will, by necessity, be in an area where the constants have values allowing for life. But truthfully, these hypotheses aren't taken very seriously because there is simply no way to test them. So they are discussed around the water coolers as cute toys.

Until there is some type of understanding of how and whether the fundamental constants can vary, to make an argument from design is at best premature.

[polymath257]

LWsciencejunkie wrote:

<quoted text>
HA! You'd probably invite a skank right in!

Only if she was intelligent, sweet, and cute! ;)

[John]

Katydid wrote:

<quoted text>
Sorry for the kidding around John. We are usually serious about our passions for science but you need to understand that we have been discussing this for three years now and we do break away once in a while and get silly, so my apologies.
DS and Polymath are both professors and they are the experts at explaining the mathematical models. DS did a wonderful job several years’ back explaining supersymmetry, super string theory, and the Higgs Boson to me; you can find that discussion in the physics forum.
My field right now is with genetic assays in oncology and I try to teach people that evolution is the cornerstone of biology and of medicine. I have faith also so my posts over the years have not only been geared towards explaining evolution but also to let people of faith know that science and faith, faith and reason are not irreconcilable. Many of us who work daily with the scientific method have faith.
I have many books to recommend: Reconciling faith and reason:
“Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search For Common Ground Between God and Evolution” by Dr. Kenneth R. Miller (researcher, professor of cell biology at Brown University, and star witness at the Dover Trial).
His new one is to be released this June and is now available for preorder at Amazon.com :
“Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul”
“The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Dr. Francis S. Collins, world renown geneticist, director of The Human Genome Project and currently director of the U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) which is involved in the worldwide “1,000 Genomes Project. This project is being touted by scientists as the most detailed and medically relevant look at human genetic variation ever conducted.
If you would like to read about the trial at Dover and the dishonesty of Intelligent Design, the DI and the Thomas More Law Center I highly, highly recommend:
“Monkey Girl” by Pulitzer prize-winning author, Edward Hume, excellent, excellent book.
Next to understand Evo-Devo, Evolutionary-Developmental Biology, please read
“Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Sean B. Carroll.
Next,
“Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body” by Neil (It’s like Holy Cow!! Tiktaalik!!) Shubin
Lastly, to understand how transitional molecular fossils are located right inside of our DNA please read:
“Human Origins: What Bones And Genomes Tell Us About Ourselves” by Rob Desalle and Ian Tattersall
And:
“Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA” by Daniel J. Fairbanks.
That should get you started. If you need more recommendations visit our “Cup and Chaucer” thread, many more rec. there also.
:-)

Thanks. You have saved another poor soul from a life of foolish pleasure.

[Cvvl]

Primewonk wrote:

<quoted text>
I thank you deeply for including me with those truly deep thinkers. But, I'm just a guy that really really likes science. Most of the stuff I've picked up has come from the science guys and gals on various message boards linking to real science sites - Berkley, talkorigins, etc. I do have subscriptions to Science and Nature, and am lucky enough to work in a field that gives me access to millions of full text science articles.
These other folks are light years ahead of me in math, biology, etc. But if ever want to get into the minutia of the neurocognitive aspects of various sleep disorders, then I'm your man.
Again, thanks!

Can you tell me how to get my wife to stop snoring?

[Easter Bunny]

polymath257 wrote:

<quoted text>
Not quite sure I get the joke in that, but I had a chance to meet Irving Kaplansky at University of Chicago one summer. Amazingly funny guy.

Well, if you're not sure you get the joke, then that means you're actually pretty close because it's one of those "Huh?" jokes.

[StopTheInsanity]

LWsciencejunkie wrote:

.......... My point is that those who have not parted ways with religion in spite of their education may be psychologically resistant to change, which is the actual non-political definition of conservatism.
Read "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki. His treatment is another way of pointing out how important the whole spectrum of personalities and their impact on successful decision-making are. This book was, to tell you the truth, almost spooky.
This, too is a decent treatment:
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/artic...
Lastly, the minds capable of understanding and probing the disciplines of physics, math, chemistry are often dealing with both the abstract and unseen and also things that simply "are". That may lean one towards the supernatural.
My husband is a nuke at the top of his field. He is the civvie-in-charge of a large number of military-industrial facilities-that-cannot-be-name d. Many,(most, actually) of the rank-and-file engineering and IT staff are religious. Think about how their minds are oriented: Things MUST be very carefully and specifically designed and built with exquisite accuracy and attention to every detail or disaster ensues. The processes from concept to blueprint, to manufacturing, to building, let alone operating and maintaining enormous, complex and incredibly expensive and potentially deadly dangerous machines that must be operated by thousands of people over many years. They have "scriptures", followed verbatim, and people stand by the reader-of-procedure (scripture) just to make sure chapter-and-verse is correctly followed. It is, we think, impossible for the folks marinated in this sort of education and career to escape a bias toward a Godlike creation or ID.

Thanks. Great stuff. There is also a tremendous amount of nurture (vs. nature) data on learned biases, IQ levels, political/religious/social orientations from influences in extremely young childhood. Linguistic/semantic structure of language and profound differences (e.g., between english vs. asian languages) is another area of cognitive development research. I've read Surowiecki extensively..... love his stuff. Interesting thoughts on structure/discipline/religion. I may have to ask for your permission to cite you in my article.

[polymath257]

Amazed wrote:

<quoted text>
Unless, of course, it inddicates intelligent design, because that would just be ludicrous.

Not ludicrous. Just not supported by the facts.

[adrian]

polymath257 wrote:

<quoted text>
to make an argument from design is at best premature.

To make an arguement from random chance is at BEST 50% probable. Even if evolution proceeds EXACTLY how it is hypothesized, there is no certainty beyond 50% that it was either directed or random. If it was directed then there has to be an outside intelligence.
I think we all are getting really good at saying the same things in different words, and of course quite often the same things in the same words, but whatever.

[Easter Bunny]

polymath257 wrote:

<quoted text>
Not quite sure I get the joke in that, but I had a chance to meet Irving Kaplansky at University of Chicago one summer. Amazingly funny guy.

I should add that I think the joke is that mathemeticians in a conversation might be prone to asking questions like "Under what topology?" a little too readily. Could be mistaken about that.

[LWsciencejunkie]

Resident wrote:

<quoted text>
Wow, she wrote "topix is a great place to study stupidity".....And that comes from an 8th grade education!.........Is she talking about herself?

I most certainly would find Topix an excellent place to study stupidity if it weren't so overwhelmingly ubiquitous and I needed another source of subject matter.
I wish I did not also find petty attacks on inoffensive, gentle and perhaps knowledge-seeking people that you might find less brilliant than yourselves. I take the pointy-end of my trusty multi-purpose (virtual) rock hammer to the rude, the crude and the ugly among the fundies, and great fun it is, too. However, being mean to people like Tinka does NOT represent the intelligentsia in a way that, by association, I appreciate. Why do you do it? Without really trying to be a jerk, here, those last two statements of yours sounded juvenile.
But, you probably have a low opinion of me too.

[EADGBE]

MichiganGEL wrote:

<quoted text>
Since I am positing a "Designer/Creator" why would the requirement for a "mechanism" still hold (or even be meaningful)? The only scientific question is whether or not such boldly-proposed front-loaded DNA would still be detectable in today's protozoans (perhaps in its "junk DNA"?).
If, for example, the DNA sequence for the eye is found, how could that be naturalistically explained?

Well, with all due respect, that's a big "what if" and frankly given the fair sampling of genomes sequenced, I would offer this hypothesis hasn't found any support as we would have undoubtedly heard about the protist with the full complement of human eye genes.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez...

You might as well ask, "how could God coming down here to be interviewed by Leno be explained naturalistically"? Truth is, I'm not sure it could be. But then again, there was a time when afflictions that couldn't be explained naturalistically were attributed to demonic possession. Clearly, nowadays we have a much better understanding of epilepsy, schizophrenia, etc, and naturalistic explanations have allowed the development of effective treatments and a rejection of exorcism. An inability to account naturalistically doesn't infer that a natural explanation doesn't exist.

Again, if we observed uniquely mammalian eye DNA in a protozoan, this could undermine details of the ToE, but it still doesn't constitute positive evidence for a designer. It may simply invoke a reformulation of our current understanding of molecular evolution and this clearly isn't the same as positive evidence for design. If we were both on a quiz show in a two person showdown, my answering a question incorrectly doesn't automatically make your answer correct as you could also be providing an incorrect answer too...

In science, positive evidence requires the confirmation of an asserted mechanism. The ToE's mechanism of molecular evolution has been validated in the field and in the lab as a predictable occurrence with the key word here being "predictable". Again, ID's mechanism is creationism which has never been observed and cannot be predicted.

Back to the eye gene hypothesis, what we have found appears to go the other way, i.e. proteins that were useful in an earlier stage of our evolutionary history that aren't important any longer, but still kickin' around in our genomes as non-functional pseudogenes.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/...

All of that said, nothing science discovers or any new finding supporting the ToE will ever dismiss ID as a philosophy given that science cannot address a philosophical or supernatural contention. The philosophical ID and ToE are not mutually exclusive, e.g. Theistic Evolution. However, the proposed "evidence" for ID thus far is nothing more than a negative argument against the ToE and a non sequitur of supernatural designer given an unreasonable rejection on the part of ID/creationism proponents of the validated evolutionary explanations.

Cheers!

[polymath257]

Amazed wrote:

<quoted text>
http://www.allaboutcreation.org/origin-of-the...

I've found an interesting contradiction in the tactics of some IDers. Some, like this video, will go on and on about the fine tuning of the universe and how it is so well designed for life. But then they will turn around and claim that the earth is a very, very special place because it it and the moon and the sun didn't have exactly the characteristics they do then life wouldn't have happened here. If the universe as a whole was THAT well designed for life, it would be common and the earth wouldn't be special. If it takes an intelligent intervener to get life started on earth, then the universe as a whole is NOT fine tuned for life!

So, all you IDers, where was the intelligent design? In the universe as a whole, or just on our little planet? Was the whole universe fine tuned so that life could exist (and hence so it would be common)? Or was it so poorly set up that special intervention was required to get life started on earth? How do we tell the difference? Is it a local designer or a global one? Perhaps two different designers with different scales of operation? One made the universe, the other (obviously much smaller) made the earth?