1. The Case of the Typing Monkeys
The “Monkey Theorem,” in its popular form, holds that if you have an infinite number of monkeys banging away at an infinite number of keyboards, eventually you will get from one of them Shakespeare’s Sonnet Eighteen, the first four lines of which read:
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? /Thou art more lovely and more temperate./ Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May/ And summer's lease hath all too short a date.Well, in the 1990’s the British National Council of the Arts, in an inventive use of taxpayers’ money, placed six monkeys in a cage with a computer. After banging away at the keyboard for a whole month – and using the computer as a bathroom at the same time – the monkeys had typed 50 pages but failed to produce a single word in the English language, not even the letter “a” by itself. [Gerry] Schroeder applied probability theory to the “Monkey Theorem” and calculated that the chance of getting Sonnet Eighteen by chance was 26 multiplied by itself 488 times (488 is the number of letters in the sonnet) or, in base 10, 10 to the 690th. If that number is written out, it is 1 with 690 zeroes following it. But, as Schroeder showed, the number of particles in the entire universe – protons, electrons and neutrons – is only ten to the 80th. Thus, even if every particle in the universe were a computer chip that had been spinning out random letters a million times a second since the beginning of time, there would still be no Shakespeare’s Sonnet Eighteen by chance. As [philosopher Anthony Flew] concluded, “if the theorem [the Monkey Theorem] won’t work for a single sonnet, then of course it’s simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance.
(HT: Cranach)
2. Carol Platt Liebau, who recently wrote a book about sex in America, on the term "prude":
[A]s I point out in the book, the word "prude" derives from the old French "prude femme," meaning "a good or virtuous woman." It's revealing that, these days, the term "slut" has become a widely accepted, affection term of familiarity among girlfriends, but being labeled a "prude" is nothing short of a social disaster.
3. Mike Huckabee on SNL
(HT: Reformed Chicks Blabbing)
4. Annie Murphy Paul, writing in The New York Times, has an eye-opening feature on fetal pain:
If the notion that newborns are incapable of feeling pain was once widespread among doctors, a comparable assumption about fetuses was even more entrenched. Nicholas Fisk is a fetal-medicine specialist and director of the University of Queensland Center for Clinical Research in Australia. For years, he says, "I would be doing a procedure to a fetus, and the mother would ask me, 'Does my baby feel pain?' The traditional, knee-jerk reaction was, 'No, of course not.' " But research in Fisk's laboratory (then at Imperial College in London) was making him uneasy about that answer. It showed that fetuses as young as 18 weeks react to an invasive procedure with a spike in stress hormones and a shunting of blood flow toward the brain - a strategy, also seen in infants and adults, to protect a vital organ from threat. Then Fisk carried out a study that closely resembled Anand's pioneering research, using fetuses rather than newborns as his subjects. He selected 45 fetuses that required a potentially painful blood transfusion, giving one-third of them an injection of the potent painkiller fentanyl. As with Anand's experiments, the results were striking: in fetuses that received the analgesic, the production of stress hormones was halved, and the pattern of blood flow remained normal.
5. Millennials need to get real about work world
Advertising executive Owen Hannay, for one, has placed a moratorium on hiring people fresh out of college unless they’ve done a work-related internship or have an advanced degree. That’s quite a shift for the 45-year-old principal of Slingshot LLC, whose Dallas agency is known for its leading-edge marketing.
It’s not that millennials lack the creative genius or technological know-how that he’s looking for. Far from it, he says. It’s more that they lack the real-world grounding it takes to deal with responsibility, accountability and setbacks…
“[The Millennials have] been overparented, overindulged and overprotected…They haven’t experienced that much failure, frustration, pain. We were so obsessed with protecting and promoting their self-esteem that they crumble like cookies when they discover the world doesn’t revolve around them. They get into the real world and they’re shocked. “You have to be very careful in how you talk to them because they take everything as criticism.”
(HT: Joanne Jacobs)
6. Quote of the Week: "“Show me a woman with a good three inches of cleavage on display, and I’ll show you a woman who, rightly or wrongly, has little faith in her powers of conversation.” --Hadley Freeman in The Meaning of Sunglasses: And a Guide to Almost All Things Fashionable via The Smart Set
7. Adolescents and preteens are swearing more publicly than ever:
It's conversational swearing – in the hallways and in the classroom – that is on the rise, says Timothy Jay, one of the leading scholars on cursing in the United States.
Teens are more likely to drop casual expletives, or "fillers," than the generation before them and have more trouble adjusting their conversation to fit their audience. That means adults – especially strangers who cannot sanction the teens – hear more of the same language that the teens' friends hear, says Jay, author of "Why We Curse."
He estimates that the average adolescent uses roughly 80 to 90 swear words a day.
(HT: Ypulse)
8. Conservatives Just Aren't Into Academe, Study Finds
9. NYT: Under the Influence of…Music?
Teenagers listen to an average of nearly 2.5 hours of music per day. Guess what they’re hearing about?
One in three popular songs contains explicit references to drug or alcohol use, according to a new report in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. That means kids are receiving about 35 references to substance abuse for every hour of music they listen to, the authors determined.
10. Heather Mac Donald on The Campus Rape Myth
If the one-in-four statistic is correct—it is sometimes modified to “one-in-five to one-in-four”—campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. No crime, much less one as serious as rape, has a victimization rate remotely approaching 20 or 25 percent, even over many years. The 2006 violent crime rate in Detroit, one of the most violent cities in America, was 2,400 murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults per 100,000 inhabitants—a rate of 2.4 percent. The one-in-four statistic would mean that every year, millions of young women graduate who have suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience. Such a crime wave would require nothing less than a state of emergency—Take Back the Night rallies and 24-hour hotlines would hardly be adequate to counter this tsunami of sexual violence. Admissions policies letting in tens of thousands of vicious criminals would require a complete revision, perhaps banning boys entirely. The nation’s nearly 10 million female undergrads would need to take the most stringent safety precautions. Certainly, they would have to alter their sexual behavior radically to avoid falling prey to the rape epidemic.
None of this crisis response occurs, of course—because the crisis doesn’t exist.
11. Why Eating a Big Mac is Cheaper than Eating a Salad (HT: The Presurfer)
12. Jonah Lehrer, in the Boston Globe, on "Grape Expectations
SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting. They provided people with cabernet sauvignons at various price points, with bottles ranging from $5 to $90. Although the tasters were told that all the wines were different, the scientists were in fact presenting the same wines at different prices.
The subjects consistently reported that the more expensive wines tasted better, even when they were actually identical to cheaper wines.
13. Obsolete Skills
14. NYT: Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter
The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.
The report, published in this month’s Journal of Adolescence, paints a far different picture of teen boys than the stereotype of testosterone-fueled youth. Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego surveyed 105 10th-grade boys whose average age was about 16. The boys, most of whom said they were heterosexual, were given surveys asking them to select various reasons why they asked girls out, dated and pursued physical relationships. Most of the boys had dating experience, and about 40 percent were sexually active.
15. Timewaster of the Week: Untangle
16. Ending Tradition, NBC Dismisses Fall Debuts
It soon may be time to retire the phrase “fall television season.”
NBC Universal took a big step toward undoing one of the television industry’s oldest traditions by announcing Tuesday that it would move to a year-round schedule of staggered program introductions. The move is intended to appeal to advertisers, who crave fresh content to keep viewers tuned in.
The question that should be asked is why didn't they do this sooner. I've always thought it odd that a technological medium like television would follow what is essentially an agrarian calendar schedule.
17. Scary Global Warming Story Headlines (Part I) -- Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
18. Scary Global Warming Story Headlines (Part II) -- Pythons could squeeze lower third of USA
19. Booktrust, “an independent charity set up in 1921 to encourage people of all ages to read,” has recently polled British readers and come up with a list of the fifty best children’s books. (HT: The American Scene)
20. How to turn a Calculator and an AM Radio into a Metal Detector (HT: Lifehacker)
21. On the Duke Rape Case (Part I) -- Duke lacrosse players sue city and school :
More than three dozen current and former Duke lacrosse players filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming they suffered emotional distress during the furor over the now-discredited rape case against three of their teammates.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Durham, accuses Duke University, the City of Durham and several school and police officials of fraud, abuse and breach of duty for supporting the prosecution of the case.
22. On the Duke Rape Case (Part II) -- Julie Ponzi is less than sympathetic
Team sponsored (whether "official" or not) drunken parties with strippers? I’m not so naïve as to be shocked by the occurrence of these things . . . but I am offended by a call for my sympathy to be attached to the idiots who get caught with their pants down--so to speak. Boys, if you don’t want to end up in this situation here’s an idea . . . don’t go to these kind of things. Don’t hang out with drunk sluts you don’t know and can’t trust. Exercise some judgment if you can’t exercise your virtue. If you don’t, it may go badly for you. And, when it does, perhaps you’ll have a legal case if you don’t end up in jail. But so what? You’re still an idiot.
I completely agree.
23. The Economist notes some interesting tidbits on currency:
A MAN'S angry wife once ran $30,000 of his life savings though a paper shredder. Fortunately the nest-egg was in dollars and help was at hand in a little-known corner of America's federal bureaucracy. Since 1862 the Mutilated Currency Division of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has pieced together partially destroyed American currency. So long as 51% of a bill remains and can be proved genuine, Uncle Sam will refund its full value.
With magnifying glasses, tweezers, scalpels and many gallons of disinfectant, the mutilated-currency specialists can spend up to two years analyzing a single bill. “We don't care if it was in a fire, buried underground or water-damaged,” says one. “Maybe your dog ate it. Came out the other end. Clean it up a bit. We'll take care of it.” In 2006 the currency forensics handled about 20,000 cases and sent out cheques worth $66m.
24. Good Ideas Distract Groups From Generating Great Ideas -- Good ideas can have drawbacks. When information is freely shared, good ideas can stunt innovation by distracting others from pursuing even better ideas, according to Indiana University cognitive scientist Robert Goldstone.
25. LOLCat of the Week
26. Working Alone May Be The Key To Better Productivity, New Research Suggests -- Solitary workers may be faster workers, according to research by neuroscientists. Individuals given a specific task are slowed when witnessing someone perform a different task nearby, suggesting that workers may perform better if they are in isolation.
27. Film critic Kyle Smith eviserates one of the most overrated Oscar-winning films of all time: Raging Bull.
In the climactic moment, when La Motta is jailed on a morals charge, he attacks the stone walls of his cell with his fists and his head, crying, “Why? Why? Why? . . . They said I was an animal. I’m not an animal.”
But that is exactly what he is; De Niro himself, Scorsese says in a documentary included with the DVD, compared the Bronx Bull to a crab, and animal noises such as an elephant’s roar frequently appear in the sound mix when La Motta is in tantrum mode. For all of its technical mastery–the sound effects by Frank Warner and Michael Chapman’s black-and-white photography are monuments to their craft–Raging Bull is not what Roger Ebert called it: “an Othello for our times.” Tragedy presupposes downfall, but a roach can’t fall. Nor is the film an investigation into evil; this guy is just a jerk. At the beginning he is a fit jerk, at the end he is a fat jerk, and he is a jerk at every point in between.
28. Reihan Salem wonders, "Is Charlie Bartlett the Best Teen Movie Ever?"
You come away from Charlie Bartlett wanting to be more in control of your life, and also wanting to be kinder, not least to your parents. The wish-fulfillment of most teen movies, and tween television, involves a world without adults, or in which adults are hilariously incompetent. Here we see imperfect adolescents and adults, bobbing and weaving around each other, all terrified of having their defensive barriers breached, and all fundamentally scared in the same ways.
29. Why Perfect Dates Make Lousy Partners
The best "catches" in dating land may be the worst choices in the long-run, new research shows.
Popular people who monitor themselves carefully in social situations and thereby appear to be the most socially appropriate are often highly sought after as romantic partners, a study finds, but these people show less satisfaction and commitment in relationships than socially-awkward people.
By self-monitoring, people assess how their actions affect others and adjust to fit the appropriateness of the situation. They screen their words and behavior to suit the people around them.
30. A new study suggests cat owners are less likely to die of a heart attack:
The study, by researchers at the University of Minnesota, found that feline-less people were 30 to 40 percent likelier to die of cardiovascular disease than those with cats.
Yet dog owners had the same rate as non-owners. "No protective effect of dogs as domestic pets was observed," said the study, which was presented Thursday at the International Stroke Conference in New Orleans.
(HT: Fraters Libertas)
31. Oral Contraceptives Could Work For Dogs, Cats, Pigs, Maybe Even Deer And Coyotes -- If you're a land owner and animals such as coyotes or wild pigs are driving you hog wild, help may soon be on the way to control their numbers in a humane way -- in the form of a birth control pill for animals being developed at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences. The concept would be to get it to wild animals through baited food, researchers say.
32. Sun Will Vaporize Earth Unless We Can Change Our Orbit -- New calculations by University of Sussex astronomers predict that the Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun in about 7.6 billion years unless the Earth’s orbit can be altered.
33. Editing: Oscar's Obscure Category
Hollywood editor Mark Helfrich walks us through well-edited scenes from this year's five Oscar-nominated films. (This year's winner was "The Bourne Ultimatum", edited by Christopher Rouse)
I understand the idea that darkroom skills are essentially obsolete, but they're still so much fun and still produce a better product than digital. The rich texture still can't be attained. Maybe someday, but not today.
Collin
http://www.brendemuehl.net/images/modelshot.html
Ok, the print has some issues. But there's still nothing to truely compare with a print from a 4x5 or 8x10 neg.
then of course it’s simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance.
Yawn, why don't you ask yourself why atoms are NOT like keys on a keyboard? Perhaps the most obvious answer is that unlike keys on a keyboard atoms have different distributions and different affinities for each other. A keyboard does not require less energy to type a 'u' after a 'q' and the number of 'e''s is exactly 1, which is also the number of 'x''s. In this regard, using monkey's to type a sentence is a pretty poor test of chance. A better test might be randomly throwing down a bag of scrabble letters. The letters, after all, are at least distributed in proportion to how common they are in the language (more 'e's than 'x's etc.).
How much easier would HS Chemistry have been if atoms were like the letters in the monkey hypothetical? IF all atoms just fit together and you can make any chemical you wanted by just putting them together? That, though, is not how it works. If you mix oxygen and hydrogen you are going to get H2O and you will not get...say...H13O25 or H3O88 even though those would be possible if it was all about 'random chance'.
One in three popular songs contains explicit references to drug or alcohol use, according to a new report in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. That means kids are receiving about 35 references to substance abuse for every hour of music they listen to, the authors determined.
Not to be picky but why is a 'reference' to alchol use equated as 'substance abuse'? I know pop culture has a lot of fun with getting high and getting drunk but they are legit. subjects to cover in art and not all popular songs reference drugs or alcohol with the simple fraternity idea of "getting drunk is fun". How would Evangelicals feel to see the New Testament's story of Jesus turning water into wine lumped in as an 'explicit reference' to alcohol use? (And no I'm not equating the New testament to popular music).
Ohhh my God, look at #12!
SCIENTISTS AT CALTECH and Stanford recently published the results of a peculiar wine tasting.
Noooo just when I thought I was doing a good thing by making the kids ditch their MP3 players and read Joe's blog instead what do I find! Explicit references to alcohol use! How many kids will fall victim to Joe's constant references to substance abuse!
Re: Duke Rape case
I’m not so naïve as to be shocked by the occurrence of these things . . . but I am offended by a call for my sympathy to be attached to the idiots who get caught with their pants down--so to speak. Boys, if you don’t want to end up in this situation here’s an idea . . . don’t go to these kind of things.
The problem is that the idiots didn't get caught, they were framed. Should they have attended a party with a stripper? If the stripper really had been raped would this jerk have said "I have no sympathy because...well everyone should know being a private stripper is a job that puts you at great risk of these things".
Joe:
The Monkey Theorem as applied to the origin of life argument needs work. In your presentation, the odds for one particular match from Shakespeare was given. But for the origin of life you have to give the odds for any replicating system arising by chance. That is, we aren't interested in the odds of what gave rise to us, but the odds that any life would arise. That requires knowing how many different biological self-replicating systems are possible. Anyone know? Is there even more than one?
Fetal Pain -- very important and good.
Glad you're still watching Huck a bit -- any new thoughts about him, or somebody else, for VP with McCain against Obamamania?
Were it not for Iraq & the US SC, I'd be willing to accept Obama (on big gov't raise tax grounds).
The Monkey Theorem is very interesting, too.
Promiscuity is the problem, whether from drunk sluts or drunk machos. Funny how "bitch sluts" can now start dominating men, but getting drunk, having sex, then claiming date rape. But both sides are wrong.
The calls for sympathy for the Duke Lacrosse team have nothing to do with their hiring a stripper. It has to do with the fact that they got caught up with a prosecutor who was hell bent on proving that they were guilty of a rape he knew they didn't commit. Prosecutors rarely get punished for this sort of thing. It's only when it is either so bad that it pulls on the others in the DA's office to act (like you're going to get an innocent man convicted of first degree murder), or the media is bored and wants to run with it to generate some ad revenue.
I would agree with the argument about them not deserving sympathy if they had dealt with a fair prosecutor, but that obviously didn't happen.
tomgrey wrote
Were it not for Iraq & the US SC, I'd be willing to accept Obama (on big gov't raise tax grounds).
Try as I might, I'm not clear on what you're saying here. You're saying you would support Obama because he would raise taxes?
Is there some rationale for that, or are you just a nut?
Who, exactly, "suggests that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance?" Once again, you repeat the same tired old misrepresentation of modern evolutionary theory, despite having the correct information easily available all around you. If you can't disprove it without misrepresenting it, chances are it's correct and you should just grow up and accept it.
Re: Cat owners and heart attacks....
I bet you this study was funded by the evil cat empire! Everybody knows dogs are better!
I wonder if they controlled for gender in their study....girls have more cats and less heart disease (i think?)
Atheists perhaps?
Too bad the monkey argument is exactly what evolution DOES NOT say what happened either in the development of life or about its origins.
"Atheists perhaps?"
No atheists that I know of suggest that the origin of life was a chance occurence any more than water freezing at 32 degrees is a chance occurence.
Oh? If not chance, what then? Intent, purpose, design, outline, plan, scheme? Do atheists ascribe the genesis of life to any of those? Or do atheists prefer to avoid that question?
"Oh? If not chance, what then? Intent, purpose, design, outline, plan, scheme? Do atheists ascribe the genesis of life to any of those? Or do atheists prefer to avoid that question?"
Do forest fires (excepting arson) happen due to any of those? No! They occur naturally when conditions are right for them. Most atheists I know suspect that life arose when the conditions on Earth were right for it to happen. Is your imagination limited to chance or design? Don't you think some things just happen naturally?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life
There are many theories, and some are not centered on design or chance.
Sounds like a round-a-bout way of trying to avoid saying 'by chance' to me. How do the conditions happen to occur naturally if not by design or chance? Don't you think it would be a awfully problematic that so many conditions would have to occur naturally in the exact sequence necessary to make the ideal conditions to originate life? And to make things more problematic... nearly every other star in the galaxy is different from ours, and nearly every other galaxy is different from ours, and so on. The natural laws that guided conditions to be just right would have to be rigid enough to generate some sort of uniformity through out the universe wouldn't they?
"Don't you think it would be a awfully problematic that so many conditions would have to occur naturally in the exact sequence necessary to make the ideal conditions to originate life?"
Not at all! You and I have no reason to believe that our unique situation is any more unlikely than another. What you are doing is like walking onto a golf course and exclaiming "Isn't it remarkable that of all the blades of grass on this course the ball landed on this one?"
smmtheory
Sounds like a round-a-bout way of trying to avoid saying 'by chance' to me.
Not chance as Joe described it in this post. Joe described a random process with one particular outcome no more likely than another (the monkey typing "the" is no more likely than the monkey typing "xys").
Rob described a non-random situation. When you have trees, low humidity, oxygen, and a spark you will get a forest fire. There's no randomness there. You don't put those things together and, say, sometimes end up with a blizzard or sometimes a hurricane.
Don't you think it would be a awfully problematic that so many conditions would have to occur naturally in the exact sequence necessary to make the ideal conditions to originate life?
You have no idea how problematic it is because no one knows either the conditions or sequence necessary. Life may be essentially everywhere there's water or it may be a once in a galaxy occurrance.
And to make things more problematic... nearly every other star in the galaxy is different from ours, and nearly every other galaxy is different from ours, and so on. The natural laws that guided conditions to be just right would have to be rigid enough to generate some sort of uniformity through out the universe wouldn't they?
Different in the sense that every snowflake is different, that doesn't alter the fact when trillions of them get together you have a snowstorm and when the temp. goes up you get liquid water. The essential atoms of life such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen etc. have been detected in just about every place we have looked. Even more complicated molecules such as sugars and amino acids have been found in the clouds of other galaxies. As far as we can tell, natural laws that guide chemistry and physics are indeed uniform accross the visible universe.
No, what I'm saying is that intelligence had to make certain that the situation occurred, whereas you are saying that it just happened to occur by itself. Not only do you require that the non-random situation exists for there to be a blade of grass for the ball to be on just happened to occur by itself, you also require that the non-random situation pre-existed it to have made that blade of grass possible just happened to occur by itself, which also requires that the non-random situation pre-existed that made grass possible just happened to occur by itself, which also requires that the non-random situation pre-existed to make plants possible just happened to occur by itself, which also requires that the non-random situation pre-existed to make proper soil to grow the grass possible just happened to occur by itself, and so on and so forth. And that doesn't even account for all the non-random pre-existing situations that were necessary for creating a golf-ball that coincidentally just happened to occur by themselves. Where did all this coincidental non-randomness come from? One underlying beginning non-randomness that just happened to occur by itself? That sounds like God to me.
So take your pick for the origin of life... God or Chance.
Rob Ryan:
I get really tired of seeing this kind of caricature. To make the analogy fit, the blade of grass should identifiably unique - for instance, it is the only blade of grass on the course that is painted white. It is the difference between the probability of the ball landing on any specific blade of grass and the probability of the ball landing on a white blade of grass versus a normal green blade of grass. This is the same thing I pointed out in a past entry about fine-tuning: you're not looking at the probability of a specific outcome but rather its probability based on a relevant criterion (or criteria) in comparison to other probability that do not meet that criterion. If you want to have a cogent criticism, attack the relevance of the criterion/a.Simply inserting the phrase "just happened" does not magically negate the fact that physical processes do indeed just happen.
Cynic
I get really tired of seeing this kind of caricature. To make the analogy fit, the blade of grass should identifiably unique - for instance, it is the only blade of grass on the course that is painted white.
But every blade of grass is 'identifiably unique'. The only reason all of them seem alike is because YOU are choosing to ignore the things that makes them unique and only look at what they have in common.
It is the difference between the probability of the ball landing on any specific blade of grass and the probability of the ball landing on a white blade of grass versus a normal green blade of grass
Is it? And how, again, do you know how many 'blades of grass' there is in the field and how many ones are painted white in order to calculate this probability?
"I get really tired of seeing this kind of caricature. To make the analogy fit, the blade of grass should identifiably unique - for instance, it is the only blade of grass on the course that is painted white. It is the difference between the probability of the ball landing on any specific blade of grass and the probability of the ball landing on a white blade of grass versus a normal green blade of grass."
And I get tired of half-baked criticisms like your comment. You want to paint the earth white and all the other worlds green. Is every non-earth world "normal"? Are the other worlds not as unique as ours? If you need for me to fine tune the comparison, I will. Every blade of grass on the course is a different color. You exclaim how remarkable it is that the ball landed on the (choose a color) blade.
Sheesh.
Boonton, the analogy isn't the best - remember, I was adapting it, so it wasn't my choice - but the point remains that the design/fine-tuning/what-have-you proponent is not merely arguing purely about the probabilities of equally probable outcomes.
But this misses the point of what I said as a whole: the unique quality must be relevant. (The whole nonsense about "choosing to ignore" some vague sort of uniqueness is just that: nonsense. You could say, "This is the only blade of grass that takes up this space," but I frankly don't see how that's relevant in the least.)Skipping comment on the next point for the moment...
Rob:
Excuse me, but when you misrepresent a position, you deserve criticism for it (and asserting that it is 'half-baked' doesn't make it so).Case in point:
This is a total caricature of what I have said thus far. Not only that, it verges on total absurdity - it's almost as if we're going to hurt other planets' feelings if we say that Earth has some relevantly distinct characteristics (like the qualities that make it such a great breeding ground for evolutionary processes). If you want to make an argument for why, say Venus, meets some relevant criterion/a for design or fine-tuning, then be my guest.Hey, that's a nice segue for:
See, here's the point at which one could question the criterion/a for the inference: here, why any specific color is better than any other. A valid reason would be that the criterion/a is/are not limiting enough; a good example would be taking live satellite imagery of New York City, closing your eyes, and pointing at one of the indistinct figures representing a person. If that person was an American citizen, your criterion would be useless because there are a great deal of American citizens in NYC (despite being quite international as well).(As an aside, your analogy would fare better if you would show how it has any real connection to, you know, reality. Multi-colored golf courses are a novel idea, but I don't exactly see how it contributes meaningfully to your case. In other words, if it is so obvious that the numerous possible outcomes are all equally probable with no relevant differences between any, you should be able to come up with a more obvious analogy.)
Getting back to the main point of my intervention in these comments: There are indeed reasons to make these sorts of inferences. While I don't quite endorse the typical biological design arguments, I think that fine-tuning arguments (which are of the same generic type) can have firm grounding in our knowledge of constants and the results of different values. That's not to say, however, that they can't be countered, but they may be legitimately made.
But this misses the point of what I said as a whole: the unique quality must be relevant. (The whole nonsense about "choosing to ignore" some vague sort of uniqueness is just that: nonsense. You could say, "This is the only blade of grass that takes up this space," but I frankly don't see how that's relevant in the least.)
As Rob pointed out, though, every planet is unique. Many planets have rings but only Saturn has rings exactly like Saturn's rings. Even if you found a planet that looked just like Saturn, its rings would be different...even if you had to 'zoom in' to the level of the rock and dust that make up the rings. Didn't everything have to be 'just right' for Saturn to have the exact rings it does?
Multi-colored golf courses are a novel idea, but I don't exactly see how it contributes meaningfully to your case.
I think he was pointing out that even in a 'green' golf course every blade of grass is its own unique shade of green. If a ball lands on one it will land on a 'unique' blade. No need to paint one white and try to aim for it.
I think that fine-tuning arguments (which are of the same generic type) can have firm grounding in our knowledge of constants and the results of different values.
The problem with them is that they assume something we don't know, they assume that constants can or could have varied and furthermore they assume to know how they could have varied.
For example, say the average adult is 180 pounds with a standard deviation of 20 pounds. Is it amazing to find a 225 adult? No. A 2,250 pound adult? Yes.
The fine-tuning arguments begin with something like Magic Constant X is 35.000000001. If it varied by as much as .000000001 in either direction, the universe as we know it couldn't exist. Fine, whose to say:
a. It can or could have varied at all?
b. If it could it wouldn't vary with a standard deviation of .0000000000001?
"But this misses the point of what I said as a whole: the unique quality must be relevant."
Relevant to what? Earth's ability to sustain life as we know it is obviously relevant to us as living beings, but how is it relevant to my comparison? Any qualities that impart uniqueness will do. As has happened so many times before, geocentrism leads to folly.
Each planet (that we know of) is unique. We could exclaim with wonder at the uniqueness of each (your silly spin on the planets' "feelings" are not to the point), or we could suppose that such diversity is natural (the pebbles in a mountain stream are similarly diverse) and to be expected. Your presuppositions color your interpretation. The only uniqueness you seem to be concerned with is the ability to sustain earth life. My comparison is not that narrow because that very narrowness produces a deceptive effect, one that you are actively promoting. The same extremely long odds could be assigned to ANY planet, given criteria specific to that planet.
This is going nowhere. I'm only going to respond to a few things because I'm not going to waste much time here.
Boonton:
You said earlier that "physical processes do indeed just happen." I don't deny this. But certainly the assumption that these physical constants could have "just happened" to be different doesn't seem too far-fetched - on the other hand, what reason do we have that the values of the constants were necessarily such? You wouldn't buy this if I were telling you that God was necessary, so why should I believe you if you tell me the same about said values?I don't know of any fine-tuning proponents who deny that variation couldn't have happened to smaller degrees than they contend would cause different results, but that doesn't change the argument as I presented it to you last time: There is still a much smaller range - still fine-tuning involved - than the range of possible values that would cause the collapse of the current conditions. Your standard deviation objection doesn't affect that.
Rob:
This isn't about "wondering" at any given uniqueness, and it isn't about the ability to sustain "earth life." Again, I think a lot of presumptions are being made about exactly what kind of argument I am personally making - to reiterate, I don't necessarily endorse biological design arguments. My main interest is in the overall habitability of the universe; that might intersect somewhat with Earth but not entirely. Moreover, if there were another planet that could sustain multicellular (and especially intelligent) life, then I would think that the planet would have a relevant quality for such an argument.But all that is really irrelevant - I'm arguing why arguments of this token can be legitimately made. You're attacking a specific argument. I'm not making a specific argument (especially not the one you're attacking). If you want to make a relevant criticism, show me why arguments of this token are overall invalid.
After refuting this argument dozens of times over, it's time to take it apart and see how it works.
1. Hype 'chance' as if evolutionary theory and origin of life theory was little more than saying someone put a bunch of atoms in a bag, gave it a good shake and out popped Joe!
2. Come up with some probability game that has an amazingly low chance of ever happening.
3. Conclude that because of #2, #1 almost certainly did not happen.
Here, let's see how it works:
Ohhh what's the chance that one guy will win the lottery 50 days in a row buying just one ticket a day?
What's the chance monkeys will type a sonnet hitting keys at random?
What's the chance that a golf ball will hit blade of grass #12,345,560 on the golf course?
But the problem is for any desired probability you can always invent a 'just so' scenario to match it.
What's the chance that the lottery will have at least one winner 50 days in a row? (Pretty good)
What's the chance that a golf ball will land on grass (instead of sand or water)? (Again Pretty good)
What's the chance monkeys will type something that is NOT proper English (Pretty good).
The failure of the argument is equating the probability in #2 with #1. In other words:
Step 1: Call the probability of A is equal to X.
Step 2: Say the known probability of B also equals X
Step 3: Therefore the probability of B happening is the same as A
BUT this only works if B=X. The people making this argument, though, do nothing to support such an assertion. They just picked a probability out of a hat (monkeys typing a sonnet, a ball landing on a particular blade of grass) and declared it equal to X.
I can pull off the same trick, though. I can say B is some event that is almost certain and declare it is equal to X. If you guys don't have to play by rules why do I?
Likewise you can declare B to be some event that has any probability of happening you please. Want it to be 50-50? Compare it to a coin flip? Want it to be 1 in a million? Compare it to winning the lottery. Want it to be 1 in 52? Have it be picking out a particular card from a deck of 52. This is all a bunch of intellectual masturbation, though. To make this argument honestly you have to actually explain why the probability of your B is equal to the probability of X.
Cynic
I don't know of any fine-tuning proponents who deny that variation couldn't have happened to smaller degrees than they contend would cause different results, but that doesn't change the argument as I presented it to you last time: There is still a much smaller range - still fine-tuning involved - than the range of possible values that would cause the collapse of the current conditions. Your standard deviation objection doesn't affect that.
I'm not sure I'm following you fully here but I'll try. The standard deviation argument recognizes that we are ignorant of any possible range that our constants could have 'collapsed to'. If their deviation was very tight then indeed our universe could be a random result. It just seems fine tuned to us because 0.0000000000001 seems like a small number while 10 does not. In mathematics they are all equal, though. Perhaps the number is so small on our scale because we developed inside this particular universe of constants. Perhaps in this hypothetical 'metauniverse' where baby universes are made the difference between a 10 and a 15 turns out to be 0.0000000000001 inside our universe.
You said earlier that "physical processes do indeed just happen." I don't deny this. But certainly the assumption that these physical constants could have "just happened" to be different doesn't seem too far-fetched - on the other hand, what reason do we have that the values of the constants were necessarily such?
We can make two possible assumptions:
1. The constants 'just are' and could not have been anything else.
2. Some process produced the constants that are in our universe.
You are correct only in that we cannot at this point assume either assumption is correct. We just don't have the information. There are plenty of theories, for example, that propose multiple universes where either all possible combinations exist at once or some process churned out a set of particular types of universes or even harder to contemplate 'reverse causality' ideas where somehow our existence created our particular universe backwards in time. All these theories operate under some form of assumption 2.
Where the argument goes off track, though, is when theists here demand that we accept assumption #2 and exclude assumption #1. While they are perfectly free to add their own idea to the zoo of theories floating around under the assumption #2 tent they cannot demand that we take assumption #2 unless they have good reasons.
So now you would have us believe that conditions naturally occur that cause such diversity in planets (extrapolated from star systems and galaxies of course), but also leads to uniformity enough on at least one of them to produce life? In other words, conditions naturally occured that caused a planet that would eventually have conditions naturally occur that would produce the genesis of life, but those planet forming conditions that are generally discrete enough so that we are unable to distinguish other occurrences having occured (inferring this from the general lack of extremely similar stars as ours, and for that matter the lack of extremely similar galaxies as ours) would have happened no matter what? Sort of a predetermined outcome? The stellar gas of the exact volume required to make it (our solar system) all happen occurred naturally. And the supernova that had to naturally occur so that exact volume of stellar gas occured naturally at the right spot in the galaxy for our solar system to form without randomness or chance... and the stellar gas that naturally occured without randomness or chance to make the giant star that super-novaed right on time. Oh, but you also insist there is no God to make sure it all occured naturally. Just out of curiosity though, with no randomness or chance in the whole system, how in the world did we ever develop the notion of randomness and chance?
So now you would have us believe that conditions naturally occur that cause such diversity in planets (extrapolated from star systems and galaxies of course), but also leads to uniformity enough on at least one of them to produce life?
Not very surprising. Every snowflake is unique but they are uniform enough to be all lumped into the stuff we call 'snow'.
The stellar gas of the exact volume required to make it (our solar system) all happen occurred naturally. And the supernova that had to naturally occur so that exact volume of stellar gas occured naturally at the right spot in the galaxy for our solar system to form without randomness or chance... and the stellar gas that naturally occured without randomness or chance to make the giant star that super-novaed right on time.
Indeed the set of all possible things that could happen is probably near infinite so yes when you look backwards it may indeed seem amazing that one particular set of things happened...but what isn't amazing is that one particular set of things did happen....
In other words, next time it snows you catch snowflake with design #12,234,345,321 on your nose. That's cool to a degree but it doesn't require the supernatural to ensure that if you are out in the snow some snowflake of some design will land on the tip of your nose.
If the conditions requires for life are like a forest fire then life will appear when the conditions are present. If those conditions are very exacting then its appearence will be rare (like well formed diamonds are rare). If they are not that exacting then life will be more common (like snow).
So if the conditions are certain types of steller gas and a supernova....well are not supernova and gas clouds very common in our galaxy let alone universe?
"Oh, but you also insist there is no God to make sure it all occured naturally."
Actually, I do not "insist there is no God." One can't prove a negative. Try to refrain from making me your straw man. It seems to me that you are the one insisting upon a God and I am simply questioning the assumptions that lead you to your conclusion.
My point is that I see no evidence that would lead me to conclude the universe or earth in particular is the product of intelligent design. Your tired (and now repeated)argument from incredulity shows you haven't been following the thread, since that was what I responded to in the first place.
Boonton:
I'll grant you that the idea that mathematics was influenced by the constants is interesting, but it's a rather large leap. That aside, I've been talking about comparative ranges, not exact values.Let me try to illustrate using the earlier model you gave of the Magic Constant X being 35.000000001 ftus (rather than using real units, I'm conveniently making one up: fine-tuning units) with a possible variance of .000000001 without the criteria for a given condition (such as habitability for life - let's not go for the universe's existence just yet) collapsing. (I'm changing this very slightly just to make the numbers a little cleaner.) That means that the range of possible values is 35 to 35.0000000002, only .0000000002 ftus. If you take this in comparison to the range of values that would make the criteria collapse, the difference is quite remarkable.
Conversely, let's assume that Magic Constant Y is 35.001 ftus with a possible deviance of .001. The range of values is thus 35 to 35.002 or .002 ftus. Compare that to the range of Constant X - it's a 1:10^7 ratio (provided I've done my math right). The idea is that the smaller the possible variance, the more it should appear like the values have been toyed with. ("Appear" is of course the operative word.)
Here's where I'll go ahead and agree with you - as I said earlier, I concede that arguments of this token aren't always compelling to everyone. You might say I'm a "friendly theist" in this regard: I welcome individuals to accept your assumption #1. However, I don't think that it answers any real questions or even provides us with any starting point for inquiry, whereas assumption #2 does, as you've demonstrated in providing many different theories. I happen to think that such is good reason at least to give assumption #2 some thorough consideration.What can I say? It's a naturally occurring event. It was bound to happen since all the conditions were right.
Oh I follow you alright. You say it wasn't random events, it was bound to happen because the conditions to make it happen were bound to be fulfilled in the exact order necessary for the genesis of life to occur, but it wasn't designed that way, because design would imply intelligence, and you don't believe in that intelligence that would have been behind the design. But the way you are describing the eventual outcome implies a logical progression, or order; an orgranized sequence of events that lead to certain conditions being just right and also assured no outside interference from the diversity occurring around the rest of the universe. Maybe my argument is from incredulity, but I think you have the source of the incredulity misplaced. I am incredulous because it seems to me that in summation you are saying - I believe in order, but I don't believe in order.
I'll leave the golf ball on your blade of grass to address the seeming contradictions in your belief system.
smmtheory,
Do you have a coherent idea of what you mean by random? Is a random event, in your book, the same thing or not as a natural event?
Cynic
Let me try to illustrate using the earlier model you gave of the Magic Constant X being 35.000000001 ftus (rather than using real units, I'm conveniently making one up: fine-tuning units) with a possible variance of .000000001 without the criteria for a given condition (such as habitability for life - let's not go for the universe's existence just yet) collapsing. (I'm changing this very slightly just to make the numbers a little cleaner.) That means that the range of possible values is 35 to 35.0000000002, only .0000000002 ftus. If you take this in comparison to the range of values that would make the criteria collapse, the difference is quite remarkable.
The criteria is, though, something that exists at 35.000001 ftus but not 35.00002 or 3 or 4. One has to shrug and say again so what? Of course the universe would be different if it was 2 or 3 or 4. The universe would likewise be different if snowflake 135 landed on your nose rather than 134. Perhaps you wouldn't notice the difference but it's technically different nonetheless.
The idea is that the smaller the possible variance, the more it should appear like the values have been toyed with. ("Appear" is of course the operative word.)
Not really, whatever the variance you're still left with the fact that it is something and it would have been different if it was something else. So what? Yes our universe might look radically different at 2 or 3. That's about all that can be said. That alone does not provide any evidence at all that someone or something 'set the dial' at 1 and away from 2 or 3.
(Needless to say, while 'life as we know it' may not have existed at 2 or 3 that doesn't mean life wouldn't exist. Has anyone really tried to work out all the implications of a universe with different constants? I doubt it. We still don't know whether carbon, for example, is really needed for life or whether life can be built based on some other element).
I welcome individuals to accept your assumption #1. However, I don't think that it answers any real questions or even provides us with any starting point for inquiry, whereas assumption #2 does, as you've demonstrated in providing many different theories. I happen to think that such is good reason at least to give assumption #2 some thorough consideration.
I agree but the 'argument from fine-tuning' starts out by assuming assumption #1 is invalid. This is incorrect, unless some reason can be presented for why we should find assumption #1 any less likely than assumption #2.
"Maybe my argument is from incredulity, but I think you have the source of the incredulity misplaced. I am incredulous because it seems to me that in summation you are saying - I believe in order, but I don't believe in order."
Of course I believe in order. I even believe in design. Could you show me where I said otherwise, or are you too busy whacking that strawman?
I see plenty of order and design in the universe. Tides, day and night, seasons, gravity; these all reflect order in some way. The natural world is full of design; molecules, cells, snowflakes. Perhaps you are so blinded by your dogma that you can't conceive of design without intelligence. Tell me how a snowflake requires an intelligent agent. Elements (water, for instance) have certain properties that often lead to design when acted upon by forces (gravity, for example). Design also seems to result from natural selection, as in the case of finch beaks.
Would you please address the things I actually say and stop putting words in my mouth? It's easy to make fun of absurdities you invent and put my name to.
Ah, Boonton, now we're getting somewhere. :D
I disagree; as I mentioned earlier, the criteria can be more specific than just existence, such as the universe being habitable for life. In this case, a small range of values is precisely such that we should be surprised to discover that the exceedingly small range of values obtain in our universe. (Coincidentally, there is another feature of one particular segment of living beings - consciousness - that makes the surprise even more compelling to me: for not only did the conditions have to be just right for life to come about to observe those very specific conditions, they also had to be just right for conscious beings to arise so that they could be aware of them. That, in my estimation, is a thought worthy of awe.)I think you're far understating the treatment that some cosmologists - religious or not - have given to fine-tuning. Robin Collins is a great example; although I haven't read it very thoroughly (and space constraints make the argument very summary), you might check out his argument for cosmic design from the Great Debate on the Secular Web.
Oh, that's ridiculous. The argument is conditional - there are plenty of arguments that start in a similar premise: "Assume P." This approach does tend to rule out (for the sake of argument, quite literally) diametrically opposite views, but it's perfectly valid. The primary reason I don't think that the fine-tuning argument is ironclad is because one could merely deny the conditional premise (which is true of most arguments anyway), but it does provide a solid basis for persuading individuals who would might have a strong intuitive agreement with assumption #2. If someone thinks that assumption #1 is likely, then the fine-tuning argument won't be compelling to them. That's just the way it goes.
I disagree; as I mentioned earlier, the criteria can be more specific than just existence, such as the universe being habitable for life. In this case, a small range of values is precisely such that we should be surprised to discover that the exceedingly small range of values obtain in our universe.
What's kind of interesting is that life seems to be a side show in our universe. Even if you assume a large portion of stars and planets develop life the odd fact remains that normal matter is only a fraction of our universe. One has to wonder if our universe is really optimized for life? Could one adjust the 'constants' in a way to make life easier to happen? More common? This would require being able to work out the full implications of different constants which seems to be something that is computationally beyond us at the moment.
That, in my estimation, is a thought worthy of awe.
Awe is fine, it means:
"A feeling of fear and reverence. " or "A feeling of amazement.". It does not mean a feeling that you got the answer. What I don't like about this argument is that most who make it cheapen what should be awe into a half-baked probability argument.
I think you're far understating the treatment that some cosmologists - religious or not - have given to fine-tuning. Robin Collins is a great example; although I haven't read it very thoroughly (and space constraints make the argument very summary),
I skimmed his page, maybe I'll try to read it more in detail later. But I'll pull this out from it to illustrate what I mean:
This is all well and true but short sighted. Kind of like saying if it wasn't for Columbus America would have never been discovered by Europe. Well yes but not quite. Europeans wouldn't be riding around in planes and going into orbit unaware that two giant continents were sitting across the ocean. Super strong gravity would indeed have prevented humans from developing. Is that everything though? No. Imagine working out all the consequences of super strong gravity? All of them. Would nothing like life ever develop? Nothing like intelligence? Yes I know it wouldn't look anything like us but are you so sure? As I said you may be surprised...our universe may NOT be very well optimized for life after all and it exists in our universe hanging by a thread while other alternative universe have an easier time of it.
Oh, that's ridiculous. The argument is conditional - there are plenty of arguments that start in a similar premise: "Assume P." This approach does tend to rule out (for the sake of argument, quite literally) diametrically opposite views, but it's perfectly valid.
Ok. I don’t object to beginning a debate with “Assume the constants we have in our universe were not always constant and could have been something else if things had happened differently”. There are plenty of theories that begin like this. For example, the theory that our universe began as the product of a collision of two ‘branes’ in higher dimensional space would be one where the constants were ‘set’ by whatever physics governs such things. Likewise the idea that the big bang happened inside a larger universe and random ‘universes’ are spawned all the time with different characteristics is another example.
Where this goes off track is essentially assuming the conclusion you want ahead of time. The universe could not have resulted from physical laws because we are here therefore God set it up special just for us. Therefore, I’m not just going to assume #2 but also assume a flavor of #2 and ‘prove’ it by ‘showing’ how unlikely any other flavor of #2 is. Unfortunately the proof by probability involves making up numbers without any real reference to reality…(hence this is why this begins with monkeys typing….why not use the probability of a coin toss? Or pulling the Ace of Spades from a deck of cards? )
ENT, URGENT, URGENT, URGENT,
PASTORS WILL PREACH ON SUNDAY IN TEXAS AND OHIO SO,,,,,THIS IS MY MAX- OUT- FOR- MIKE- URGENT MESSAGE.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... DEAR RANGERS AND FRIENDS
PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THIS LETTER (BELOW) THEN E- MAIL TO CHURCHES
IN TIME FOR SUNDAY'S
SERMONS, THEN VOTING
TO TEXAS CHURCHES FIRST, THEN OHIO....ON SAT, MARCH 4
REMEMBER THE ALAMO..(AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE COMPUTERS BACK THEN)!!!!!
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
THE LETTER:
DEAR FRIENDS:
IN LIGHT OF RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS, AND KNOWING HOW FAITHFUL YOU ARE TO GOD, FAMILY, AND FREEDOM, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO PLEASE EXAMINE MIKE HUCKABEE'S INCOMPARABLE, IMMACULATE, RECORD ON MY BEHALF,... AND CONSIDER HIM AS YOUR CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT !
PLEASE READ THIS, EVEN IF YOU HAVE ALREADY VOTED.
A VOTE (OR FINANCIAL HELP) FOR MIKE HUCKABEE IS A STEP TO PRESERVE AND IMPROVE AMERICA ..IT IS ESSENTIALLY A VOTE FOR ALL WE HOLD DEAR ! YOU KNOW I AM USUALLY NOT POLITICAL, BUT TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT WE AMERICANS CAN ALL LOSE IF WE AREN'T MOTIVATED AND INFORMED, AND CAREFUL:
HILLARY WANTS TO TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHT TO EVEN SPEAK ABOUT ABORTION(cnn.com, issue :abortion) AND REINSTATE HER HUSBAND'S (BILL'S) VETO BY ALLOWING THE KILLING OF AMERICAN BABIES WHEN THEY ARE HALF IN AND HALF OUT OF A WOMAN'S BIRTH CANAL (PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION). PRESIDENT BUSH STOPPED THIS OVERTLY-HORRIFIC EVIL ACT.
SHE WILL BRING IT BACK, IN ADDITION WANTS A BILL PREVENTING FREEDOM OF SPEECH. ANY TALK, COUNSEL OR HELP FOR THOSE WHO ARE CONSIDERING ABORTION WOULD BE ILLEGAL !!!!.UNLESS YOU WERE A GOVERNMENT ENTITY (REVERSE GLOBAL-GAG RULE)..... WOULD THIS AFFECT OUR PRIESTS IN CONFESSION ? (CHECK OUT CANDIDATES VIEWS ON ISSUES ON CNN.COM)....ESPECIALLY ABORTION !
BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA : "THE TALK,TALK,TALK-SHOW HOST", JUNIOR SENATOR , WHO HAS BEEN "APPROVED" OF ,BEING "UNPATRIOTIC", AND REFUSED TO HONOR OUR SIMPLEST TOKENS OF RESPECT (OUR SACRED AMERICAN TRADITIONS), WANTS THE SAME RIGHT TO KILL AMERICAN OFFSPRING (WITH PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION ). HE ALSO STATES THAT HE WOULD LIKE TO "PARTNER WITH
IRAQ" (REAL quote FROM SUPER TUESDAY-).... HE IS "GONNA" CHANGE THINGS. UNLESS, AS HE STATED, VOTERS ELECT SOMEONE ELSE TO RUN "THIS THING". (HIS REFERENCE TO AMERICA).
McCain HAS BEEN WISHY WASHY IN GENERAL ON SOME KEY ISSUES. HE SLIPPED TODAY (FEB 29) AND CALLED HIMSELF A LIBERAL..ONE MUST WONDER, THOUGH...... SINCE HE PARTNERS WITH /HAS THE BACKING OF, A MAN WHO HATES CATHOLICS AND CALLS THEIR CHURCH A "WHORE", AND "ANTI-CHRIST". ..............
IN ADDITION,ON THE RIGHT-TO-LIFE. THIS "MODERATE"( MC CAIN) HAS STATED THAT HE BELIEVED IN STEM CELL RESEARCH (USING ABORTED BABIES IN PETRI DISHES FOR RESEARCH). THIS IS HOW THE NAZIS PROCEEDED!
POSSIBLY ROBBING VOTES FROM MIKE HUCKABEE, TOO... (IN WASHINGTON STATE) BY NOT DEMANDING THAT THEY COUNT ALL THE VOTES ?!? YES, SENATOR JOHN MC CAIN, IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE A HERO FOR HIS SACRIFICES. THIS IS IRREFUTABLE. YET WE MUST KNOW WHERE HE STANDS NOW. NOT JUST ON THE WAR IN IRAQ. CURRENTLY,HE IS REFUSING, (BY IGNORING A PETITION), TO DEBATE MIKE HUCKABEE IN A REPUBLICAN DEBATE.( I SPOKE WITH THE PERSON WHO BOOKED THE NATIONAL TV NETWORK, YESTERDAY). MR. MC CAIN HAS YET TO REPLY (TO THE PETITION).
THIS, ALL OF IT, IS TOO REMINISCENT OF GEORGE ORWELL'S BOOK , 'ANIMAL FARM'..
2008 IS A YEAR FOR "CHANGE" ALRIGHT...BUT WHAT KIND, AND HOW IS IT BEING MARKETED IN ELECTION 2008 ?
WHEN THE GOVERNMENT DECIDES WHO SHOULD LIVE AND DIE, WHO SHOULD SPEAK OR NOT, AND ABORTED BABIES CAN BE "FARMED" FOR RESEARCH,WE ARE SURELY GOING TO "CHANGE" !
AS GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE SO WISELY AND ELOQUENTLY STATED: "GOVERNMENT DID NOT GIVE LIFE, AND GOVERNMENT CANNOT TAKE IT AWAY".
A PRUDENT MAN, AN HONEST CANDIDATE, IN D.C.! ? ! HELL WOULD FORBID !
DO YOU KNOW MIKE HUCKABEE HAS READ PROVERBS EVERY DAY SINCE HE WAS IN HIS TEENS? I CONTEND,YOU CANNOT READ THE WORDS OF KING SOLOMON (PROVERBS) EVERY DAY AND NOT BE WISE.
JESUS SAID: "BY THEIR FRUITS YOU SHALL KNOW THEM."
HE IS PRO-GOD, PRO-LIFE, PRO-AMERICA AND PRO-FAMILY...
HUCKABEE, WANTS TO "TRIM THE FAT". GO WITH A MAN WHO ISN'T PLAGUED BY SCANDAL OR SQUANDERED MONEY ! (HILLARY CAMPAIGN-131 MIL, CAMPAIGN HUCK-9 MIL )
ELECTION 2008 ...JUST FINE...BUSINESS AS USUAL...YOU'RE RIGHT... IT'S NOT BAD...IT'S HORRIFIC!
WANT A REAL CHOICE? VOTE HUCKABEE IN 08 !!!!!, IF YOU ALREADY VOTED..DO YOURSELF A MAJOR FAVOR, JUST CHECK HIM OUT AT HIS WEBSITES, BLOGS, AND FACE BOOKS (ON THE COMPUTER) AND ON "YOU TUBE" THE COMPUTER-ACCESSED "VIDEOS"...BUT DON'T DELAY , DO IT TODAY! . HE IS ROCK SOLID !
HE IS THE TRUE CONSERVATIVE. OH, BY THE WAY, MC CAIN IS TRYING TO IGNORE A HUGE PETITION FOR A REPUBLICAN DEBATE WITH THE REMAINING CANDIDATES...EVEN THOUGH HIS REPUBLICAN CONSTITUENTS WOULD LOVE ONE !
THIS UPCOMING VOTE IN TEXAS IS CRUCIAL ...TEXAS CAN CHANGE THE TIDE AND EVERYTHING IN THIS ELECTION, TOWARDS MIKE HUCKABEE ,AND REALLY SAVE THIS COUNTRY!
WHEN COMMUNISTIC SYMPATHIZERS (read:OBAMAS COMMUNIST TIES,WIKIPEDIA), AND NAZI-LIKE TACTICS RULE THE DEMOCRATS AND THE REPUBLICANS SUPPORT STEM-CELL (EXPERIMENTS ON HUMAN FETUSES)...WHEN WE
HAVE NO VIABLE, TRUE CONSERVATIVE VOICE IN "JOHN MC CAIN AND COMPANY" ... THEN WE MUST VOTE AND HELP MIKE HUCKABEE , OR WE WILL HAVE HELL TO PAY.
HUCKABEE---CONSISTENTLY PRO-AMERICA, PRO-FREEDOM AND PRO-LIFE.
GOD DID GIVE US LIFE..LET US GO FORTH TO HELP HIS TRUE SERVANT, MR MIKE HUCKABEE MAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE !!
PS: YOU KNOW, I HAVE NEVER BEEN POLITICALLY-INCLINED BEFORE THIS ELECTION..BUT I BELIEVE WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL THAT EVERYTHING WE VALUE MAY BE A STAKE IF WE ALL DON'T HELP MIKE HUCKABEE GET THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATION !
HE IS A WISE AND HONORABLE MAN AND THE ONLY REMAINING CANDIDATE WHO HAS EVER EVEN GOVERNED !! (VOTED AS A TOP GOVERNOR -10 YEARS) REMEMBER THE ALAMO ???? ---AMERICANS OVERPOWERED 40 TO ONE ! REMEMBER WHO WON?
GO TEXAS ! GO TEXANS !*
VOTE HUCKABEE! GET THE WORD TO THE PRIESTS, PAPERS AND PREACHERS, AND PARADERS ! PROCLAIM IT FROM THE PULPIT...PRAY IT IN THE PEWS! AMEN ! STICK IT IN THE HYMNAL BOOKS .
CIRCULATE THIS LETTER OR ONE OF YOUR OWN ...WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO REALLY HELP THIS MAN, HELP US, IF HEAVEN WILL HAVE IT'S WAY.
PEACE BE WITH YOU,
BONNIE BUCKLAW-ORTIZ
GOD'S KINGDOM COME. GOD'S WILL BE DONE. ON EARTH,AS IT IS IN
HEAVEN---------------------------------
Well, first of all you said that you don't believe in God, which in my estimation is the author/creator of all order in the universe. Without God, there would be no order. It is as simple as that. So when you say you don't believe in God, but you do believe in design and order, those inconsistencies allow you to make absurd declarations like: "Perhaps you are so blinded by your dogma that you can't conceive of design without intelligence." I guess if saying you have inconsistencies in your belief system is whacking at a straw man, then I'll probably keep whacking at that particular straw man as long as atheists continue to set it up for me. Perhaps you are so blinded by your dogma that you CAN conceive of design and order without intelligence.
Shall I hazard a guess as to your thoughts on how order came about in the universe; or how the rules of physics came about that supply structure to snowflakes, and design to finch beaks, and enable conditions to exist that give genesis to life?
"Well, first of all you said that you don't believe in God, which in my estimation is the author/creator of all order in the universe."
We disagree on that.
"Without God, there would be no order. It is as simple as that."
Non sequitur. You are making a circular argument here.
"So when you say you don't believe in God, but you do believe in design and order, those inconsistencies allow you to make absurd declarations like: 'Perhaps you are so blinded by your dogma that you can't conceive of design without intelligence.'"
To this point, you haven't proven your assertion that order comes from God; therefore, your characterization of my views as inconsistent lack any basis other than your opinion.
"I guess if saying you have inconsistencies in your belief system is whacking at a straw man, then I'll probably keep whacking at that particular straw man as long as atheists continue to set it up for me."
It is a straw man until you show how atheist thought is inconsistent. You haven't even hinted at attempting to do so, and I've seen little in your comments to encourage me that such an effort is in the offing. You can keep calling atheists inconsistent if you wish, but it is hard to take you seriously unless you at least attempt to support your assertion.
"Perhaps you are so blinded by your dogma that you CAN conceive of design and order without intelligence."
That seems unlikely, since your dogma was my starting point. I was raised to believe as you do. Reason, not dogma, led me from that, since when I cast dogma aside, I had none to blind me.
"Shall I hazard a guess as to your thoughts on how order came about in the universe; or how the rules of physics came about that supply structure to snowflakes, and design to finch beaks, and enable conditions to exist that give genesis to life?"
Go ahead, if you wish. Maybe it will be interesting.
And likewise you have not proven your dogmatic assertion that order comes without God either. Clearly the reasoning would be circular in that regard as well... I.E., there is order in the universe because the order is tangible, or even worse, because there is no other way since a system base in chaos or random rules would not be stable. You didn't cast aside dogma, you merely replaced Christian dogma with another dogma, but the effect wasn't what you thought it was because the end result was blindness instead of vision.
The difference is that I haven't labeled you as inconsistent.
Also, my burden is lighter in that we all know nature exists. The same cannot be said of God.
No, I labeled your belief system as inconsistent. I have not labeled you as anything, you have adopted the atheist label yourself.
Yeah, we all know nature exists. I can say God created nature, and you cannot say what created nature. Whose burden is lighter?
"No, I labeled your belief system as inconsistent."
Correction noted. My point stands, since I have not labeled your belief system as inconsistent and failed to show how, as you have done.
"I can say God created nature, and you cannot say what created nature. Whose burden is lighter?"
Mine is, since your advancing a theory does nothing to establish its validity. I could say that nature is and has always been, and I would be in a more supportable position than you, because I don't have to invoke an agent not in evidence. My stack of turtles is one turtle short of yours.
That's a pretty bold proposition since the evidence is stacked against you. The preponderance of evidence in nature points to a beginning and an end. Or perhaps you are in the habit of ignoring evidence that doesn't suit your dogma.
"The preponderance of evidence in nature points to a beginning and an end."
Unless you think the universe is cyclical...but then you are probably unaware of multiverse or Big Bounce theory.
"Or perhaps you are in the habit of ignoring evidence that doesn't suit your dogma."
That's a good one! How much evidence do you ignore to cling to the Genesis account of mankind's origin?
I'm aware of those theories. And to the extent they say anything at all, they do not say how the cyclical or the multiverse were created. you keep avoiding that. Any particular reason?
You are of course assuming that I believe the Genesis account is anything other than allegorical; that I believe it is a factual account of the creation of the universe and everything in it.
Out of curiosity though, which account of creation in Genesis did you think I adhered to? The one where the animals were created first and then Adam, or the one where Adam was created first and then the animals?
I'm aware of those theories. And to the extent they say anything at all, they do not say how the cyclical or the multiverse were created. you keep avoiding that. Any particular reason?
Let me jump in. A cyclical theory would argue that the Universe wasn't created. It, as Rob, said, simply always was. The Big Bang, then, would simply be the beginning of our universe (note I'm capitalizing Universe when talking about everything that is and using the lowercase to talk about the visible universe). There's different types of multiverse theories but the most extreme would probably be something along the lines of every possible combination exists so creation wouldn't have much meaning.
Lighter multiverse theories do involve creation by the dynamics of what causes creations happen in places that it is difficult to make any direct observations of today (like the multiple dimension 'brane' theory).
"Out of curiosity though, which account of creation in Genesis did you think I adhered to?"
*gasp* You mean there's a conflict? To satisfy your curiosity, though, I had in mind the Chapter 2 version, in which man comes before "every beast of the field".
I am intrigued to learn you are not a biblical literalist. Do you think the world was ever inundated by a flood? How old do you think the world is? Sorry...I'm getting carried away.
"And to the extent they say anything at all, they do not say how the cyclical or the multiverse were created. you keep avoiding that. Any particular reason?"
I'm not avoiding that. See Boonton's response.
I believe it may have seemed that way to some relatively unsophisticated prehistoric survivor and that the story of the flood (as well as the other stories contained in Genesis) was related for many generations by word of mouth and subject to all the distortions that are inherent to that form of 'record-keeping'. That describes the bulk of Genesis; three or four different oral traditions originally transcribed within different socialogical groups and then blended together some time after the Israelites started using written languages to record tradition. It was probably woven together about the time the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity. It may not have seemed important to them until then.
As for how old the world is... certainly, I believe it is much older than 6 millenia. I believe most geologists subscribe to the 4-5 billion year calculation. I have no basis to object or refute that estimation. And it is not really important to my way of thinking.
A Cyclical universe is pure conjecture. I'm even skeptical as to whether there is any scientific principle remotely associated with it.
http://geo.ya.com/kotimare/ bleper