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Blight
Social climber
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"I was right that you were thinking of the cosmological constant, and so I was right that you were confused."
Eh?
The paper is about the cosmological constant, not the figure. That comes from the boomerang supernovae studies which established that to get a flat universe the energy density must be set to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 to 120.
If you know this figure to be wrong you must be an amazing cosmologist. However, I suspect that you'll have to do a little better than "you're confused because I say so".
Again, if you have specific evidence which shows that the boomerang supernovae study was flawed, or its results incorrect, by all means post it up. Similarly, if you have evidence which shows that I am wrong in my quoting of the paper, please feel free to show me the correct quote. If you don't have this evidence, then why are you insisting that I am "confused"? The paper's findings are quite unambiguous.
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WBraun
climber
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That's cause FingerLocks is really the one who's confused ....
He also said: "everybody knows that the simple idea is either not true at all"
I'm definatly not in his everybody cage that's for sure!
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:06pm PT
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Largo wrote:
And somebody wrote: "And anytime you want to, you can create new supernatural things."
You lost your way there cowboy. You're thinking that supernatural automatically refers to a "thing" with no substance and no effect, that there is no actual existence there at all (no material to measure, hence no existence) ergo it is an idea that you can simply make up and which doesn't exist save in our minds. Is it possible for you to imagine another model? You're trying to reckon the supernatural by way of material.
Ok Largo, what do you think of this since you are a writer: Concrete language can express precise ideas. These ideas might be wrong, but at least the meaning is clear. I could claim to have more FAs than you, but the good folk here on ST would quickly (and rightly) put me in my place. Vague language with a lot of abstract nouns can only express vague ideas and the meaning becomes less clear. Finally, hopelessly muddled language doesn’t express any idea at all. It is not so much right or wrong as it senseless.
If talk of the supernatural is not to be senseless, it needs to be not muddled. We need to say something concrete.
My motto is don’t step in the muddle.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Finferlock...
What I said about Darwin is from his own words.
I'll try to find them.
Your point about nothing being outside the universe,
is ridiculous.
So as the universe expands and there is no argument that
it has, from the size of a pea to the size it is now, according to the Big Bang theory, what is it expanding into?
What was all around it while it was the size of a pea?
"As to laws of science, do you happen to know something about these laws that requires somebody established them? I don’t."
Obviously you don't. I never said require.
Perhaps you think it's possible that if you put all the parts
required to assemble something like a lawnmower, into a box
and shook it up 100 times a day for 10,000 years, it would eventually, just by random chance, assemble itself int a lawnmower.
That is in effect what has to happen with the origins of life
in order for the typical "evolutionist theory" to work.
And that assumes that all the individual complex parts have already been "randomly" created and are available for assembly.
I suggest reading "Darwins Black Box, The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution" by Dr. Michael Behe.
Evolutionists never want to get into that hole in their theory,
they just take it from the point after life was created and just try to explain how life forms have changed over the millenium.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:20pm PT
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"That comes from the boomerang supernovae studies which established that to get a flat universe the energy density must be set to an accuracy of 1 part in 10 to 120."
That statement is confused. The number "10 to the 120" doesn't refer to anything physical about our universe and certainly not an "accuracy". The supernova studies have shown us what magnitude the dark energy is (if the dark energy idea is even right). This magnitude is small. One(out of many)ideas for what the dark energy might be would give a value 120 magnitudes too big. When you miss the mark that baddly, it is time to go back to the drawing board. And they have. Work is under way.
Sorry WB, I should have said "everybody who worries about the dark energy problem" which is almost nobody at all.
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AndyG
climber
San Diego, CA
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He was a big evolutionist until he finally realized after the newer discovery of DNA etc. that there is no way that even a one celled organism of the simplest form could exist wthout
hundreds of complex parts already being created and then
assembled in the right order etc.
Did you read the whole article? Behe's arguments are just not scientifically sound. The root basis for his whole argument is that certain cellular "machines" are irreducibly complex because you cannot remove one part of them without the whole thing stopping. But they are not irreducibly complex in an evolutionary sense. There IS SCIENTIFIC DATA that supports the theory that the bacterial flagellum was originally assembled from several simpler components that originally had different functions. This is a widely accepted evolutionary mechanism but if you read Behe it is as if it doesn't exist. His whole entire argument stems from the idea that this is not possible. But the molecular evidence in, yes, THE DNA, makes it clear that it is possible. Boom, the argument falls apart.
Intelligent Design's (and Creationist's, there is no significant difference) main logical device is to look for any gap in scientific understanding and posit that the gap is only explained if an Intelligent Designer exists. It is proof by absence of data, which is just not logical. The thing is, there are many many gaps. If there weren't there would be nothing left for us scientists to do. So all they have to do is find one that is not close to being solved and use it without immediate fear of scientific disproof of their beliefs. But when the disproof does come, as it always eventually has, they just move on to the next gap. In Behe's case this means moving down to the molecular level since that is where the frontier of biology currently is.
Andy
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:36pm PT
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“Your point about nothing being outside the universe,
is ridiculous.
So as the universe expands and there is no argument that
it has, from the size of a pea to the size it is now, according to the Big Bang theory, what is it expanding into?
What was all around it while it was the size of a pea?”
This is probably the most common misunderstanding of the Big Bang. If we think of something exploding, we think of, say, a small bomb blowing up into a big fireball and expanding into space. This is the only intuitive idea we can have. However, the Big Bang theory is not like that. In the Big Bang, matter, energy, and space all expand together. There is no good way to imagine this since a picture in our head isn’t going to be quite right, but the math all works out. It is not much different than doing math in higher dimensions. We cannot really visualize them, but it all works out precise. Sometime in the last few years Scientific American had a nice article that tried to help explain all this. It is worth a look.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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"But the molecular evidence in, yes, THE DNA, makes it clear that it is possible. Boom, the argument falls apart."
Wrong.
DNA itself is irreducibly complex. Requiring RNA and many other
complex molecules to replicate. Even if a DNA molecule assembled itself, how would it replicate?
All these processes just happened at the same time?
Don't judge Dr. Behe by an article written about him.
Read his work.
"because you cannot remove one part of them without the whole thing stopping."
Also not true. He argues that they would never exist, that
by random chance there is no way that the flagella could
assemble itself even if all the required parts already existed.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:42pm PT
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"Perhaps you think it's possible that if you put all the parts
required to assemble something like a lawnmower, into a box
and shook it up 100 times a day for 10,000 years, it would eventually, just by random chance, assemble itself int a lawnmower.
That is in effect what has to happen with the origins of life
in order for the typical "evolutionist theory" to work."
No, that is not even close to being a good analogy. Right off the bat we see that you have no means of selective pressure. Nor do you have successive generations, nor...should I go on?
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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"In the Big Bang, matter, energy, and space all expand together."
So.
How does that prove that our universe is the only "space"
that exists? If we can't see past it's edge, how do we know what
is beyond it?
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:48pm PT
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DNA and RNA are not the only chemicals that can self replicate. Much simpler chemical systems can too. The details were lost in the early history of the planet, but there are many possible chemical systems that might have developed into the one life uses now. It is unlikely that we will ever have evidence to know which, but we should be able to show what some of the possibities were. This is also a work in progress.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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I'm already giving you ALL the right pieces to make it work.
Who needs later generations.
Pressure?
How about the box is clear, and you can shake it any way you want and try to make it into a lawnmower.
Still won't work.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:53pm PT
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It would have to have an edge. There is a limit to how far we can see--about 14 billion light years if we have got the age of the universe right. But there is no edge there.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 01:56pm PT
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Shack, I thought you were trying to create an analogy for evolution not a build-a-lawnmower game. An analogy is poor if it ignores the most important parts of what it is supposed to be an anolgy of.
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Shack
Trad climber
So. Cal.
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Sorry man, your missing the point.
The lawnmower analogy is the easier thing to accomplish.
If you can't make that happen by trying,
how do you think an even more complex organism came into
existence? Random mutation? Chance? Luck?
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 02:08pm PT
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You first told me that the lawnmower thing was impossible. Now you are telling me that it is the easier thing to accomplish? It looks like you are assuming your conclusion that evolution is impossible.
The two most key bits of the evolution idea is that there are parts that change and then pressures that select between the different parts. Nothing hard about this.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Shack, you have a flair for pronouncements full of a sort of mock finality, as though you were reading same off stone tablets chiseled thereon by the very Hand of God. Makes me curious to know if you are pimping your angle (whatever that is) because you are convinced of it's veracity, or because you long in your heart for a certain view to be true, and can't imagine things otherwise. Likewise, is there something about evolution, as the scientists know it, that you do agree with, or are you suggesting we were made from whole cloth, by fiat, in 7 long days.
I guess I'm saying that by focusing on the holes in other folks' views, I'm not at all clear on your own, especially the motivation that led you there, be it beliefs or a fearless search for what is really true.
JL
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 02:17pm PT
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To answer your question: before there were complex systems, there were not as complex systems, before those there were even not as complex as those systems...... It goes back a really long ways.
A key flaw in the "ID" way of thinking is th assume that all complex biological bits were created for the purpose they now serve. But these bits mostly used to do something else or at least simpler versions of them did something else.
DNA didn't pop into existance whole just to become a gene. It wasn't a case of drawing the one lucky jackpot number. It wasn't a case of shaking a lawnmower together out of previously useless parts. Before DNA there was something very similar to DNA.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 4, 2005 - 02:23pm PT
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Following up on what Largo just said, science isn't done yet. There are issues people are working on; there are issues they would like to work on if they could get some funding; there are issues they would love to work on if they had even a clue as to how to do it. And there are issues that look hopeless and nobody wants to work on. Quite a mixed bag. But it is exciting because science is always coming up with something new.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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IMO, not only is science "never done," Fingerlocks, but the enquiry is never done till you have all the data (and you never will). When someone claims to already have all the important answers, in my view they are NOT being religious or proclaiming their faith, they are exerting a vain and narcissistic effort toward playing God. Socrates used to have a field day with such folks.
It's as though some folks have a mortal fear of ever coming out and saying, "There are things I don't know and will never know."
JL
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