Ringer

I know, but this is the data I have and is still relevant. I think the data is similar around the world, but I could be wrong because, like any good American, I am blind to the rest of the world . But of course I could be mistaken I guess I'll look into it when I have some extra time. But this doesn't mean that cell phones are the cause of the the distractions. According to the data in the NHTSA study there were 45,230 drivers involved in fatal crashes 5,084 were distracted and 1,006 were distracted with cell phones. That means that only around 2% of fatal crashes involved drivers on their cell phones. Sadly it doesn't give the cell phone distraction numbers for all years but I would assume, admittedly bias, that it is similarly low.

No any assumption we make should be based on subsequent evidence and experience. Based on this everything we have explained has been done so using completely natural processes. That's why we should assume natural processes, not because I feel like it. You still refuse to link all these amazing discoveries that have biologists scratching their heads that I don't know about and I can't understand why. That would be the easiest way to prove your point. I didn't say ID has no direct evidence, I said it has no evidence and that is what I meant. People saying that something looks designed isn't evidence. Indirect evidence is fine, but they don't even have that. What evidence do they have, you still haven't given me any. When you start giving evidence for your side I'll really start a good debate with you, until then we are just going in circles. We do have indirect as well as direct evidence for evolution, so don't even start up with that crap. Sure, which is what they do. I've never seen a middle or highschool biology book talking about abiogensis, and since there is tons of evidence for evolution and none for ID it wouldn't change anything except make these 'critical thinking' laws illegal. Show me this indirect evidence you keep talking about. The claim would apply to everything, that's why you would have to explain the other origin. Why, exactly, would you not need to explain the origin of the other intelligence? You mean there are differing opinions in science? Heavens no! Of course there are scientists that believe this and believe that, all that really matters is the evidence. There are many things that are still unexplained, thankfully or we would all be useless, but that doesn't mean they are unexplanable. Things that are explained doesn't mean the explanations are entirely correct, or correct at all for that matter. All that matters is they explain what is observed to the best of current ability and make accurate predictions. Again, please, please, please start providing the evidence you keep talking about. It is in no way the same thing. Why would you assume the intelligence is not natural? Just because you want to? The entire first part is based solely on an argument from incredulity, most of the rest of what I read is misunderstanding some of the ways things actually happen (I'll admit I didn't read it all). He doesn't give any evidence that the parts of the flagellum would actually be useless without some parts, you could do this by knocking out some proteins and not letting it develop fully although this would have other problems even if we know exactly what to knock out, only saying that he believes it do be so. But here are some further reading that could help understand why your link is wrong. http://www.talkdesig.../flagellum.html http://www.millerand...n2/article.html In addition to moon's link watch this [edit] I figured I say that I know he mentions one of these articles on his site and says the flagellum evolved after the proposed mechanism, but since he doesn't mention the exact evidence and I can't access the papers he cites I can't say with certainty that that is what they actually propose[/edit]

This is the main study I've seen sourced and it shows very little difference in reaction time using hands free cell phones than hand held. I find it hypocritical that the laws still allow hands-free if they are basing laws on this sort of study. You would also think that if cell phones were such a danger that there would be an increase in driving related fatalities, but that really doesn't show in the statistics either.

Because it had nothing to do with what he was asking, it seems like you just put an aside for the fun of getting some sort of rise. There are always times when overqualified people work crap jobs, he wasn't asking for employment advice.

^least helpful quote of the day? OP, if you don't just want to do biochemistry you could also feasibly do things like genetics, pharmacology, and the like depending exactly on what you see yourself doing. I don't know much about the European system but many universities in the states will offer jobs as T.A.s or lab assistants to help you with your tuition fees. I would look into that as well as prices if i were you.

Then are those who do not have the ability to have discussions such as these less than human? If so why should we not take anyone with sever brain damage and kill them? What makes humans so much more valuable? Because that's what we are?

Well, I will wait for your evidence. You still haven't provided an answer as to way we should do this though. There's no reason to think that just because we can't explain something now we never will be able to; because every time someone in history has thought that something is impossible to explain it still gets explained. So why would we accept that we can't explain it? The biggest problem I have with this is that you are saying we should accept an explanation that there is absolutely no evidence for. That's what I mean by default, something to go to when nothing else comes about. No scientist should support teaching things to people with literally no evidence to support it just because we have falsified other hypothesis. Because if intelligence is required for intelligence to come about the first intelligence must have come about from intelligence. If this is not the case you must accept that intelligence is not required. ID proposes that there is a designer because they don't believe natural processes can explain life and intelligence, but they then refuse to explain where this designer may have come from and why it doesn't follow the rules put forth by IDers. I am not saying not to search for a designer, but logical consistency is a must. If I'm not mistaken SETI searches for extra-terrestrial intelligence, not some sort of designer. I don't see anywhere on their website that they talk anything about design, only about extra-terrestrial intelligence and the search of such. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/originoflife.html http://www.mcb.ucdavis.edu/faculty-labs/scholey/journal%20papers/Ricardo-Szostak-SA2009.pdf I'm not going to go into everything that's wrong about your link because I'm feeling a bit lazy, but my main question is how does this prove a designer instead of, say, replicating compounds that were on a planet with different atmosphere that created this life, frozen in an asteroid and brought to Earth? Earth was in no way how it is now when the first replicating organisms formed, so comparing Earth, or living compounds, to how they are now is intellectually dishonest. What extreme cooling capabilities in what animals are you referring? What worn out receptors? The photoreceptors are nerves just like any other and don't just become worn out and replaced. Not to mention apes use their eyes more than most other animals and would be greatly improved by being able to more efficiently absorb scattered light. Why would a designer choose reversed retina in us? Just saying that both have their uses is not good enough to explain a design in certain animals. You would have to explain why a designer would choose that design for each animal and why it is better in that animal that all the other choices. After all that is the least an engineering company would have to do when pitching a design. Please link to that article so I can read it and respond to it in kind. Apparently you don't know that what I was pointing out was the bladder flowing straight through the prostrate thus causing problems with urination and infection. Not the prostates build of itself. We are not arguing that these things work and allow a species to survive, sounds an awful lot like evolution, but whether these things were designed. All of these things are easily explained in evolution but poorly explained with notions they were designed because they could be designed much better with better functionality. Like the pandas thumb that could be so much better designed by our, by IDers stand point, limited and ignorant engineers. Also your flightless bird example assumes that birds, and their feathers, were made to fly, but that doesn't seem to be the case. There is much more evidence that feathers were first used as insulation and just happened to be useful in flying, so would you consider flying birds a degeneration of archaeopteryx? Also the idea of convergent evolution has been experimentally shown, how would you test common design? What can evolution not explain, abiogenesis is not an avenue of evolution so that isn't part of this particular argument. For ID to gain acceptance in the biology community you must both disprove the competing theory and provide evidence for yours. I haven't seen ID do anything to disprove evolution through experiments instead of just saying it's impossible or providing evidence for design that doesn't have an easy counter example. So you don't believe something single celled can become multicelled? What do you think of this? Even though this a some problems with yeast because it used to be multicelled, but you say you are a creationist so that shouldn't bother you since it couldn't have had enough time to evolve from multicelled to single celled. Also how do you explain being here since we used to be two single cells in two separate bodies. Please, please, please, please start providing examples and evidence Yes many scientists can't get over their own pet theories, but I'm not talking about individuals. How does this under mind my statement? The old will die out and wrong ideas will change, but they still change.

You're saying that ID should be the default setting as an explanation but refuse to say why it should be that way. Almost everything that has been identified as ID has been proven not to be so and there is no reason to default to unexplainable. If anything, because of all the times ID has been falsified, the default should be naturalistic. Until there is evidence for ID there is no reason to use ID as a default. You still haven't said why it would logically stop at a single designer, which is what ID would have to explain since its would premise is life and intelligence needs intelligence to exist. You don't make a hypothesis and ignore the difficulties of the hypothesis with, "let's not think about that because it could cause problems with our ideas." What information? All the 'information' in an organism is organic compounds. Its not some mystical component that hasn't been explained, organic compounds built from elements that have been observed and explained. Why is it you believe that the origin of organic compounds is impossible? Please read; http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/ It doesn't matter if nobody knows how the first life started, because that's not what you are arguing. It is totally different than saying that it is impossible. Your arguing that life as we know it couldn't possible just come in to being and I completely agree, as do most other scientists I have ever heard of. But the problem is that's not what is believed to have happened naturally, that is what spontaneous generation is by the way, but that is what ID and creationism believes. There are two problems, early Earth was virtually nothing like it is today and the first replicating life forms didn't necessarily look anything like a simple organism today. Then what about eyes that aren't back to front? What about the urethra going through the prostate? Here's a little list that has a few, but not by any means all, little curiosities that I would like to hear explained through ID; http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/jury-rigged.html I don't think there is a scientific paper out there that says, "Oh, by the way god doesn't exist." Science can neither prove nor disprove god so it doesn't talk about it. If you say pure naturalism cannot be falsified you admit that ID is useless because it tries to falsify naturalism. You are not supposed to accept anything as faith in science other than the people who did the experiments did their job right, and if they didn't it'll be pointed out sooner or later. Even that shouldn't really be totally accepted because the results must be replicated. The way you use faith implies lack of evidence, but there is no lack of naturalistic explanations or evidence for the ones that are accepted. The difference between your faith and scientific faith is we will change our ideas if there is enough evidence to prove them wrong. As soon as there is good evidence for the supernatural overall outlook will change. Those scientists went with the evidence of the times. Science is also not incompatible with belief in god, I don't know why you would think it is. There are some that say it is, but there are far more that don't believe that in the least bit. There are still many scientists who believe in god. The reason good science is incompatible with Creationism, not god, is because it ignores the vast amounts of evidence we now have against it. Those Creationists didn't have knowledge of nuclear reaction to maintain the temperature of the Earth, understanding of plate tectonics to explain similar animals in places far away from each other, etc. Please also provide some evidence for ID because at the moment you are only arguing you beliefs without providing evidence for anything. Show my studies why natural explanations aren't enough, with evidence, to explain these things. Show me studies that have any evidence helping your claims. If you can't do that this entire conversation is useless because I am arguing evidence and you are arguing belief.

For most traits attractiveness depends on things like resources and lifestyles, I'll attach a pdf on that just in case you want to read a study and I'm to lazy to find it online, but mainly being symmetrical and average is rated highly on most studies I have read. Here are some studies; http://www.jstor.org/pss/40063377 http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html http://homepage.mac.com/ryantmckay/Perception01.pdf http://pss.sagepub.com/content/5/4/214.short 10.1.1.133.93.pdf

Thought some of you might be interested in this. Darwin's personal library is being put online. Here's a link.

http://academicearth.org/

Alright, I will wait for your later posts then. I didn't mean it as any scientific commentary, with any sort of satire there is an amount of straw-manning being done. But what I was implying, I probably should have said it, is that there is a lot of dodging in those aspects such as the age of the world, dinosaurs, etc. Perhaps there are many who say "well this might be a mentioning of that type of animal" but how I could do that with literally any story. I could read H.P. Lovecraft and say Cthulhu was probably a giant squid and his 'wings' were just the fins on top of the head seen from afar. Just like the argument that in the Noah Ark story the 'giants' people were breeding with that angered God could have been Neanderthals and the flood is just talking about their extinction. Well it could make sense but that doesn't mean it's true. Well I will not argue with your personal religious belief because I honestly don't care what it is (not trying to be insulting or anything but it's just not my business). My 'belief' that ID isn't science is not based on any sort of disdain toward religion or anything like that, it's that I don't know of any strictly controlled study that has been done, verified, and the results duplicated. As I have said before anyone who is willing to strictly test the hypotheses brought about is more than welcome to do so, but to be scientific they must publish results including negative ones. If their results are positive and attempts to replicate repeatedly fail they need to stop saying it is because people they are being 'silenced' by the scientific community. If they fail to verify their hypothesis they must be willing to change their ideas. In my experience none of these have been done. And that tampering was done naturally following natural laws and can be tested and verified. My whole point is all tampering and interaction between the computer and its designer follows natural testable laws, the designer in ID does not so the analogy is flawed. And as I said I have no problem with testing these ideas and falsifying/verifying them. But I haven't seen any sort of quality experiment that has been done, verified and replicated doing this.

Since you said you're breaking your post into smaller bits I'll assume you will answer the rest of my post later. Then how do you scientifically test this for it to be a scientific theory? If you accept that the designer is hiding itself what possible help could assuming it exists be when developing a hypothesis? I think a part of Bill Hicks stand-up summarizes my feeling on this somewhat nicely (it has strong language). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmglGWMsdk&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmglGWMsdk&feature=related Also how would you reconcile this hiding with the other religious doctrine that says the gods aren't 'testing' faith. Actually I'm just going to say right now that all this is leading to me getting you to admit that ID isn't scientific but religious doctrine and shouldn't be thought of as science. But even if all this were true we are still part of the world and experience the same fundamental laws. If it were self aware and something was wrong with it, say part of its memory was corrupt and couldn't be fixed, the programmers would replace this memory chip. Now the computer has tested itself for any sort of self replicating parts and decided it has none. How does it logically deduce that the memory was replaced (for the nit-picky memory has different tags for identification just like a motherboard would)? It would probably assume something that is not itself did it. There are a million different ways a computer program can interact with its designer and logically deduce it was created by something scientifically, but that still doesn't help at all with the idea we were created.

Alright so the source was compiled and is now only binary. You are then arguing that the intelligence that designed us is intentionally hiding from us. Since most proponents of ID are believers that the designer is their preferred deity I don't know if they would agree. How would you reconcile this with the religious ideals of those proponents? I also would think that any such program that gained intelligence had some sort of input/output to communicate with its programmers, otherwise why would it be built in the first place? It could then assume that since something else is interacting with it intelligently that there is another intelligence. It may then assume since it interacts with this other intelligence that one of them was built for the others convenience, etc. But the difference is that these would be testable hypothesis with naturally interacting phenomena. Why would it stop at one level. I am saying that it is the logical step that if intelligence is necessary to build intelligence then you run into the loop. Give me a logical reason to stop at a single level. By all means they can keep researching whatever they wish, it is not my place to tell people what they may research. But when you use the analogy that some things are designed by humans so why wouldn't we be designed you are being slightly shortsighted. Take a watch, the common example, we have never seen a watch be created without intervention of ourselves nor do we have any indication that it would happen naturally. The difference is we do have natural explanations for pretty much all the things that ID tries to explain. What, exactly, are some examples of things that need this designer for an explanation since they are so obvious? What would be his world? He is part of the natural world and, as I said before, can easily interact with the natural world. It experiences the same world and laws as we do. A intelligence that is not natural is something that doesn't need to obey the laws of the natural or somehow lies outside of them. I don't think I follow the rest of what you're saying. What needs ID to be explained properly? The origins of life or just intelligence? What are the difficulties that arise? Why would it not be contained within natural laws? How would you test this, because for something to be scientifically valid it must be able to be validated and reproducible. It would be like saying only believers can hear the voice of god and the reason you can't hear is because you are skeptical. How would this be testable, let alone be able say that this is actually happening. So you are saying that natural laws are not enough to explain the origins of life? Have you read any papers on abiogenesis? If ID is like engineering why are so many animals, including ourselves, so badly engineered? Any human engineer could design a better spine so we don't have the back problems associated with a single column spine. Why do we have remains of a post anal tail, like all good chordates, yet have no use for a tail? I could go on but I assume you get the idea. Our, and other animals, engineering flaws are easily explained if they were inherited from an ancestor the was not developing in a pre-planned fashion. We also go back to the problem of all the evidence pointing towards single ancestry and why the engineer so limited itself. I think you are making an argument from incredulity. When in doubt remember Orgel's second rule. You are mistaken, are assume the only explanations are ID and evolution. What about spontaneous generation? If evolution were proven to be wrong why would we not assume that animals spontaneously arise from inorganic material? Just because you personally enjoy thinking that if evolution is wrong you are right doesn't mean it's true. You have to be able to test and verify your hypothesis is true. If I were to prove relativity was false and went into a conference and said, "relativity is wrong so my pet theory is correct." I would be laughed out if I had no evidence to back up my hypothesis other than other people being wrong about theirs. As I said before, when IDers come up with ways to test and verify their hypothesis and the tests are then verified and reproduced I will admit that it is possible. When those tests start to explain things better than the current theories I will apologize and admit I was wrong all along (after the shock wears off of course). But until then you are just arguing that I am wrong, without evidence, and that has very little to do with your theory being right.

Summer classes and work. Pretty much my regular semester schedule.

I agree, but ID is about the intelligence of the design. If it were to be incompetent then it would just be design not ID. I doubt many of the ID people would say that life was designed by an incompetent thing or group of things. From what I understood his argument was that intelligent beings must have been designed by some sort of intelligence. I am not at all saying that intelligent beings cannot develop intelligent beings, but what I am saying is that when you assume that intelligence must be designed is when you fall into the loop. If it is a convention we have elected to use how would we explain super natural phenomena? As I see it science is the method used to explore and explain the natural world. If we were to start studying the super natural and explain it it would cease to be super natural as I know the word. I say it's useless not because we cannot see the data, but because as of now it doesn't explain anything better, or as well, as the current theories. If it were to explain what we observe better than our current theory then we should by all means start to use it. I agree that some explanations were dismissed out of hand and later turned out to be right, and that's wonderful that some people can see that sort of thing. Indeed it is what science thrives on, but on the same hand many explanations that were thought to be bunk turned out to be bunk. Again, if it does turn out ID is true I will gladly apologize to all I have argued with against its ideas, but as of now that is not the case. Those who believe ID are more than welcome to test their hypothesis and prove me wrong; I would never, even if I had the power to, force anyone not to test and verify their ideas.

Then that would assume that the designer either removed the code to hide itself or it was just a crappy/hateful designer that didn't want its code understood. That is just putting to many assumptions for any sort of meaningful hypothesis. You want the least amount of presuppositions for a good hypothesis. Why would the source code not be present? It was compiled then removed? If that were so how would it propagate? That is the regression that logically follows assumption of a designer. Computer programs are built on logic, if there was intelligence needed to create intelligence, something needed to create that intelligence. It's like writing a program with an infinite loop, it'll just get stuck. In science it is essential that the intelligence is natural. If it is not natural it is not science. That is way ID is said to not be science, and the reason people don't have "less ID", whatever that may mean. You say there is no alternative to ID is ridiculous, that would mean ID is the only answer. The only way that could be said is in the fact that ID, unless being brought into the natural processes needed to be science, is not a scientific theory so no alternative is needed. Because I don't feel like taking the time to do this paragraph by paragraph I'll shorten the whole thing. I never said ID can't be directly verified, I said it can't be verified at all; at least in its current form. If you accept ID in a natural form you go back to the infinite regression where time is a factor that wouldn't allow for infinite intelligent beings. Also, saying that design ideas haven't been able to be carried out is strange. If that were true, why would we be discussing it when there has been no evidence for it. It would be like me saying I have an alternative to relativity; I have no evidence and have carried out no experiments for its verification but it should be given equal weight because there are some people who think it's true. Now if there has been verified evidence for it then that argument doesn't apply. You indirect evidence also doesn't apply because, simply, there hasn't been anything I have ever read that has not been equally, or better, explained by natural processes. This has also been verified by experiments using natural processes. Until it explains more or something better than the current theory it is useless. [edit] I want to point out, because it always seems to come up when talking about ID, that evidence against natural evolution is not evidence for ID. It is a problem many IDers run into that even if natural selection were proven wrong doesn't mean ID is the only other logical answer.[/edit]

The difference here is that any intelligent machine will have direct access to its creator. It will also most likely not be able to reproduce naturally, only write code. Now most programmers write notes with their code to say what certain modules do and the like. So all an intelligent machine would have to do is look at its own programming see the side notes and probably think that there was intelligence involved. We have the same thing, but there are no notes. You could also assume if there were intelligent machines different people would write the codes in different languages, thus showing a difference in origin. Again we have this with DNA, but no evidence of separate origin. Presumable if a team of programmers noticed a machine inferred their existence it would be because of the input they were giving, without that or the evidence given above I don't see how a machine would logically assume an intelligent designer because it would go into the whole who designed the designer ad infinitum. ID isn't unverified, it's unverifiable. That is the difference, any speculation made in science must be testable and use natural explanations. ID does neither and is thus useless as a scientific hypothesis. It's not speculative to a certain degree, it is pure speculation.

Why is vision the criteria? Why not have animals be defined as self aware when they can differentiate between their own smell and the smell of others? Or even their own calls?

Another thing on feathers and wings is that feathers probably originally developed as insulating materials not used for flying. Ratite birds are an example of this, but for lighter species this could allow them to jump higher or sort of glide because of the structure of feathers. This would allow them to both stay insulated and start on the path toward flight.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but I don't see whats different about this approach. Placing electrodes on neurons and creating an action potential would already cause them to release the neurotransmitters in question. If the application is to release them independently of presynaptic neuron, why not just administer the drug.

Start here if you want to learn; http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

To add to everyone else, even if you were to prove evolution is false you would still need evidence for an alternate explanation. AKA even if I am wrong doesn't mean you are right.

The reason chance mutation is inadequate is because it's not the whole story. You forget the selection process that allows some mutations to survive and others to die off. For the OP: Honestly if you want to argue flight, the wing has been done to death. At least do something less cliche like the hollow bones or keeled sternum or something more original.

I'm not sure what language would be helpful but I'm going to take Japanese and hope to learn Thai someday. Don't think either one will be helpful in the long run, but I think it would be fun to learn them. On a side note, Chinese is not really a language. The two main languages of China are Mandarin and Cantonese with a few others and a lot of dialects. Most of these cannot understand each other, they all just use the same alphabet. The alphabet can be translated in any of these languages, thus the blanket term Chinese.