Re: topmind: ID is potentially testable

neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:
topmind wrote:
neverbetter wrote:

[.....]
we do have the analogy with humans. Plenty of humans have worn a white
beard, driven vehicles drawn by reindeer, made toys and given them as
Christmas presents and even gotten shorter people to help out in their
tasks.


Oh great, fist the extremist evo nazi's are on my tail, and now the
Santa Nazi's also :-)

Actually it is similar to the definition of God issue. If you define
Santa as a guy capable of delivering 4 billion gifts in one night
without detection, then it is a long-shot. If you define him as a nice
guy in old Norway (where they actually dress sorta like Santa out of
culture) who gives a few dozen gifts to the local children, then the
probability estimation goes up.

Similary, "God" may simply be a dude(s) with a spaceship who tweaked
Ape DNA to produce humans. He/she/it could rightfully claim to have
"created man".

Yes. If you define "God", "Santa Claus" or "Intelligent Designer" so
that he's possible and testable, you'll find that he is possible and
testable. However, it doesn't mean that God/Santa/ID of any of the
other definitions people are more interested in are testable. It's just
a case of if you define a carrot as a potato, then carrots are
potatoes. If you define things very wide and broad, eventually concepts
become meaningless. The God who is worshipped by Christianity, Jews,
Islam gets his divine status from the idea that He's the sovereign over
everything, the creator of the whole universe, the Supreme Being who
defines the boundaries of good and evil and oversees everything, sees
your every secret thought and heart's desire, an eternal existence that
decides our ultimate fate. Those who worship this God would most likely
think that it's meaningless to call some dude with a spaceship God, if
he may be dead already and has no say about our morality or our
salvation, no power over us, doesn't answer or hear prayers and whose
only common feature with God-as-usually-defined is that he did some
experiments with primate DNA.

Well, we are talking about derivations of ID, not Creationism. ID does
not declare up front the "type" of intelligence that is being tested
for.

ID would have a better shot at being science if it was somewhat more
specific and told us its hypothesis: What is it that we're supposed to
be looking for?

How is SETI allegedly specific? It makes *no* claims about the aliens
other than that they use radio. DNA-ID (or IF where F=fiddle) makes no
assumptions about the nature of the intelligence other than being able
to manipulate DNA enough to leave patterns/messages that we may detect.
Humans have both used radio and have put messages in DNA.

We were talking about ID in general, not about SETI. Something that
does not declare what it's testing for is not scientific.

Suggestions were already given: images, pi, primes, that "language"
algorithm, etc.

SETI is
testing for narrowband patterns, ID is not currently testing for
anything as far as I'm aware, it's just making some vague claims.

When you say "vague" are you talking about the sender, or the thing
being detected (messages, etc.)?

Narrowband *is* a pattern. Further, narrow-band may not be sufficient
such that content analysis is needed, and nobody here is claiming SETI
would no longer be science if they had to turn to content analysis to
make better judgements.


Well, you complained that Zachriel used wrong specifics but haven't
been willing to say what should have been used instead.

I did give specifics regarding searching the already-presented lists of
studies. I thought it was pretty clear that making your own tests up to
find mona was not allowed. Perhaps it was not clear and I misworded it.
If so, that was unintentional. He went outside of the challenge as
originally stated.

Not allowed?!? So, in fact you don't actually want to have DNA-ID
tested; you just want to make claims about its testability and leave it
at that, because tests could turn out to bring results you don't like?

It was a specific challenge. If somebody wants to introduce something
outside that specific challenge, be my guest as long as it is clear
what you are testing and claiming.

Well, it was perfectly clear to me what Zachriel was claiming: that a
relatively simple and unspecific statistical test could detect a bitmap
inserted into DNA.

For what purpose would he want to demonstrate that?

He can work his arse off to prove that frogs are green, but if nobody
cares, he has wasted time.


If you mean they wrote algorithms to detect candidates, I will
perfectly agree that they are further along. But was SETI "not science"
when they first proposed the idea? If not, at what point did it become
science? What is the threashold? Many here behave as if they have these
black-box threasholds in their heads here, but cannot seam to
articulate exactly what they are. It is almost, "I cannot define
science, but I know it when I see it because I am smarter than you".
That is not a usable/analyzable/testable claim. (I am not accusing you
of such, but it is diffucult to get specific threasholds here.)

Haven't we gone over this ground already in these threads? Creative
ideas are a splendid thing but if they are to become science someone
has to formulate them in a specific way that enables them to be tested.
Here's the idea. Here we explore the implications further and try to
make some predictions about things that might also be true if our
understanding is correct. Ok, so now we have a testable hypothesis.
Let's test it. Hmmm, here are the results, let's ponder about them for
a while and get feedback and constructive criticism to see if other
people think it's any good. Well then, now we need to think of further
tests and attempt to do them.

That is like trying to ponder what SETI's aliens are like.


"If God gave us evidence that he did something, we'd have evidence that
he did something" does not constitute a testable hypothesis.

If we're honest about it I think we'd be forced to admit that we
wouldn't even be debating about whether SETI is science or not if SETI
had left it at the level of an idea. "Hey, I got this cool idea that
there might be aliens in the outer space and they might be using
technology, such as radio." However exciting it might be, science it
ain't, and I don't think that you'd easily find anybody who claimed
otherwise.


Okay, but what is the SPECIFIC point in time that it allegedly became
"science", and what is the criteria that made it such at this magic
juncture?


DNA-ID resides currently at "Hey, I got this cool idea that
there might have been somebody somewhere who might have done something
that changed something in some DNA." If it's to become scientific we
need more specific hypotheses that may be tested.


I thought you argued against such before, saying that a literal
biblical interpretation does not support a god who would put logos or
peotry into DNA.

Do you think it does? There's nothing that I can think of in the Bible
that points to God hiding poetry in DNA, and many passages convey the
idea that God's handiwork is clearly visible in the wonders of nature,
not hidden away. Of course, the Bible does not tell us everything that
God has done, and its authors were unaware of DNA, so I don't think we
can say that the Bible denies the possibility but I think that it's
clear that it's not a biblical idea or supported by the Bible, it's
something that modern people have cooked up.

The Bible also has some silly recipes/rituals for cleaning mold off of
walls, etc.

It does? But I think that in this case more relevant examples would be
things that are *not* found in the Bible.

Many don't take these literally. Many view the Bible as a
rough guide, not literal instructions for everything.

Are there any people who view the Bible as literal instructions for
everything? Sure, some interpret what it says literally but I don't
think even they think that the Bible covers everything. There are
plenty of topics it's silent about.

They range the whoooole spectrum.


Some religious
fanatics don't poop until they find permission in the Bible.

Like the man who sought advice about what he should do by randomly
putting his finger on a page and found "Judas went out and hanged
himself." He didn't like that thought much and tried another: "Go and
do the same." Now he got scared and wanted a third one: "What you do,
do quickly."

Sounds like an adult version of that magic 8-ball toy. (Hmmm. I smell
money to be made....)


> >
In any case, why do you drag up the literal biblical interpretation now
when you've repeatedly said that the aim of DNA-ID is not to make
biblical literalists happy and that there are plenty of other potential
designers? Surely then we cannot equate design-from-scratch with
biblical literalism since there must be an infinite number of other
potential designers who did it from scratch but not as described by
the Bible.

I am just exploring the possible links between DNA-ID and the Bible or
Christians as we know them. It is sort of a side issue.

I don't think the Bible says anything about the idea of DNA-ID. It may
or may not conflict with different people's ideas of the Christian God,
but either way it is an idea added to the biblical account, not derived
from it.

I meant as far as the technique that the biblical God used to go about
creation. Did he just snap a finger and "poof", or did he let evolution
(or something else) do most of the work with occassional adjustments.
Some christians argue that Genesis was a simplified version of what
actually happened because the people at that time were simple farmers,
and thus got the easy-to-digest version.

-T-

.

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