Comment on EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN by Sean Pitman.
You’re right dude, I don’t get it. Your wrote
“I’m sorry Geanna, but if you can’t analyze the statistical probability of your hypothesis being correct when tested over time, you don’t have a scientific hypothesis.†– Sean Pitman
You have yet to give me a statistical probability for YOUR hypothesis that A CLUMP OF DIRT CAN INSTANTANEOUSLY YIELD A LIVING BREATHING HUMAN BEING. What are you saying about your own hypothesis? Hello?!!!
The statistical analysis is in regard to the most likely mechanism that is able to produce a very high level of functional complexity. In other words, the relevant question here is: What is the most likely mechanism that could get a human being or some other equally complex system to be assembled from random component parts (i.e., “dirt”)? According to the odds, the most likely mechanism to explain such a phenomena strongly favors one that has access to very high levels of intelligence – with very near 100% predictive value.
Again, why do you think Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, Sir Roger Penrose, and many other physicists have come to the conclusion that only a God-like intelligence can explain the fine tuning of our universe? Blind faith? I think not…
Come on Geanna, this is a scientific question. There is much more to go on than blind leaps of faith here…
You also wrote
“Tell me, upon what basis do anthropologists or forensic scientists or even SETI scientists scientifically and with statistically significant predictive value propose the need for intelligent design to explain certain phenomena? Do you know? If so, please explain it to me…†– Sean Pitman
No, I have no clue and don’t care.
Then you don’t understand science and you don’t seem to care to understand it. There’s not much more that can be said in that case…
I think your statistical arguments are rubbish especially since they are completely and unequivicaly one sided. You can only apply them to RM/NS as one cause but not to higher intelligence as the alternative cause. Thats disingenous. And its dealing from a loaded deck of cards.
That’s just it! How do you know the deck has been deliberately “loaded” without using science? – without statistical odds analysis?
You don’t seem to have an understanding as to the scientific/statistical basis for determining the need for ID to explain certain phenomena. The statistics aren’t based on understanding the odds of the intelligent agent coming into existence all by itself. The statistical odds are concerned with a given complex phenomena coming into existence without vs. with the help of intelligent design.
This may seem subtle to you, but it is an important difference. For example, let’s say I walk into a room and see a Scrabble board on a table. The letters on the board are apparently scrambled into meaningless patterns. I leave the room for a bit and feel a light earthquake (after all it’s California!). I step back into the room and see on the Scrabble board that the letters are arranged that say, “Hello! I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please take a seat and make yourself comfortable.”
What hypothesis carries the greatest predictive value when it comes to explaining the most likely origin for this particular sequence of letters? – some mindless mechanism or a mechanism that involved intelligent design? How does one reasonably decide between these potential explanations which one is most likely true? A blind leap of faith? – or some sort of statistical scientific analysis?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman Also Commented
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
Um, I think the evolutionists are the ones who informed us about ice ages.
You’re mistaken. Evolutionists were not the first ones to propose ice age theories – theories which were around well before Darwin published Origins in 1859.
For example, Andrew Ure (1778-1857) was one of the top chemists of his day with an international reputation as a meticulous scientist, a prolific writer and an effective teacher. But he was also one of those brilliantly versatile men of science in the early 19th century. In 1829 he published A New System of Geology in which he proposed some new theoretical ideas for the reconstruction of earth history, one of which was one of the earliest conceptions of an ice age, which he speculated would have resulted from the Flood. One of the author’s he quoted was Jens Esmark (1763-1839)
Jens Esmark also argued a sequence of worldwide ice ages well before Darwin. In a paper published in 1824, Esmark proposed changes in climate as the cause of those glaciations. He attempted to show that they originated from changes in the Earth’s orbit. Adding to Esmark’s work, Bernhardi, in a 1932 paper, speculated about former polar ice caps reaching as far as the temperate zones around the globe.
http://creation.com/british-scriptural-geologists-in-the-first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century-part-4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Esmark
They have given us more information about ice ages than creationists have and nothing, I repeat nothing, is going to change that. They have no problem with ice ages whatsoever.
They have no problem with ice ages, true. But, they do have a definite problem with the idea of very rapid, even catastrophically sudden, formation and regression. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that scientists began to realize that glacial melts can happen many times more rapidly than they tought possible just 10 years ago – to include the melting of Greenland’s ice-cap as well as the Antarctic ice. No one thought that such rapid melting could ever happen as rapidly as it is taking place today.
www.DetectingDesign.com/AncientIce.html
What is it with Adventists suddenly talking a lot about Las Vegas, card games, houses of cards, gambling and betting? I’m bewildered.
It is often a very good way to get important statistical concepts across to those people who don’t usually deal with numbers and the scientific usefulness of statistical odds analysis… like you ; )
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So…ice ages are scientifically impossible and therefore could only result from a global supernatural flood. The arctic seas became hot which caused very high precipitation. Then an extreme cold spell came along that made an iceberg out of high elevations and high altitudes, decreased the ocean sea level and dried out the Mediterranean basin. I assume these explanations fit within the 1000 gsaar threshold (geologically supportable argumentative age reasoning) of explanatory complexity
Ice ages are not scientifically impossible. They are certainly consistent with a global catastrophe that involved massive volcanic activity. And, massive meteor impacts may indeed have provided the sudden release of the huge quantities of energy needed to produce the initial catastrophe on a global scale. Also, it is well-known that ice ages would indeed reduce ocean levels quite dramatically – easily below the level needed to maintain water in the Mediterranean basin (which is known to have been dry during the last major ice age).
I fail to see what it is about this scenario that you find so “complex” and unbelievable given the starting premise of a sudden massive release of energy on this planet?… What would you expect to happen? Orderly weather as usual? The whole surface of the planet was broken up by the massive impact that set the whole catastrophe in motion… the aftershocks of which we are still feeling to this day.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
EducateTruth.com promoted on 3ABN
@Geanna Dane:
So did the mammoths dies of cold or starvation? Maybe it wasn’t the intolerable cold, perhaps it was too much snowfall that spoiled access to the vegetation they depended on. Unless most or all of the fossils had identifiable food in their mouths or stomachs (I have heard that some did), how could one possibly know?
It really doesn’t matter if they died directly because of the cold or indirectly because of starvation (though I favor the former idea). Either way, the evidence suggests that they, along with millions of other types of animals, died out very suddenly in line with a sudden global cold snap. That’s the key point here. The cold snap would result in a rapid decrease in the ocean’s water level, resulting in an opportunity to dry out the Mediterranean basin…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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