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Does anyone believe in Evolution anymore?

Stripe

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We've already agreed that noise adds information to the signal. But the idea that Weaver was using "Joker" as "wildcard" doesn't make sense. Read again:

It is thus clear where the joker is in saying that the received signal has more information. Some of this information is spurious and undesirable and has been introduced via the noise. To get the useful information in the received signal we must subtract out this spurious portion.



Undesirable information isn't a wildcard. It isn't wanted.

It reads like he's using "joker" as wildcard, but ignoring the fact that wildcards are good things in a card game, despite random changes not being good for meaning.

Although it sounds very much like he's used the term previously.
 
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The Barbarian

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We've already agreed that noise adds information to the signal.

This is why the "information" argument of creationists fails. All new mutations add information to a population genome.

But the idea that Weaver was using "Joker" as "wildcard" doesn't make sense.

It's the only reading that makes any sense. Read again:

It is thus clear where the joker is in saying that the received signal has more information. Some of this information is spurious and undesirable and has been introduced via the noise. To get the useful information in the received signal we must subtract out this spurious portion.



Undesirable information isn't a wildcard.

It's the fact that undesirable information is still information; as Weaver says, that's the Joker in Shannon's theory. Otherwise he'd be calling Shannon a joker, which really makes no sense at all.

He meant exactly what he said. A wild card. The Joker is that meaning is not part of Shannon's "information."

"It is thus clear where the joker is in saying that the received signal has more information."

The wild card in Shannon's equation is that noise increases information in a signal.

It isn't wanted.

Shannon showed a way to make the noise irrelevant. You can reduce uncertainty as much as you like by adding redundancy to the message, using checksums for error detection.
 

Yorzhik

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It reads like he's using "joker" as wildcard, but ignoring the fact that wildcards are good things in a card game, despite random changes not being good for meaning.

Although it sounds very much like he's used the term previously.
If he's using it as a wildcard, then it's a wildcard in a game where it shouldn't be here... in other words it ruins the game, or at least would be best dealt with by getting rid of it.
 

Stripe

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If he's using it as a wildcard, then it's a wildcard in a game where it shouldn't be here... in other words it ruins the game, or at least would be best dealt with by getting rid of it.

Right. Poor analogy. I had a look at the source material and it's the only time it's mentioned. Possibly a relic of a forgotten age. :D
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
I think we're pretty much on the same page. This is speaking from our reaction to what the Bible says.

Unfortunately, there exists a group who insist that the Bible actually teaches Darwinism — Barbarian among them. That's not too far removed from the type — Thomas Jefferson included — who might teach that the resurrection is not taught in the Bible.
I was unaware that The Barbarian believes the Bible "teaches" Darwinism. To me, the order of creation in Genesis chapter one rules out that Scripture teaches it.

I consider those who believe in the Resurrection of Christ as categorically different from everybody who does not, and yes, that does mean that all those Christians who believe in Darwinism are on the right side of things, all things eternal considered.

While I think I can appreciate the threat to faith in Christ that Darwinism presents, I believe that the unending reminder of His Resurrection (in the Mass and particularly in the Eucharist) is a sufficient emollient for that disease, and can and does keep it in check---among Catholics. Outside of Catholicism, it could very well be very much 'up for grabs.'
They simply ignore what is plainly written and assert their own agenda.
With the exception of faithful Catholics, who in order to be faithful Catholics, must also maintain that "He is risen" is to be taken as literally as you and I already take "six days." So Catholics who believe Darwinism are no threat to the Christian faith (i.e., primarily faith in Christ's Resurrection).
This makes for an impossible conversation. We can't look at the same text and derive the same meaning from simple words. It becomes a game of who can draw on the higher authority or claim the most support — ie, a debate over nonsense.
I draw something from the lack of any Apostolic addition to the creation account in Genesis. afaik, they said nothing more about creation. To me, this fact bolsters the idea that the Resurrection of Christ and everything that proceeds from that nonfiction historical event is categorically more important than whatever we believe about the origin of everything.
I don't know much about the Catholic stuff. However, science doesn't care about the idea; it only cares whether it is testable and falsifiable.
I think my "science" is more expansive. Science is the application of logic to propositions that are either facts or fictional. Whatever procedure results in us successfully sifting facts from the fictional is science.

The scientific method involves observation and hypothesis, and an hypothesis is a proposition. The logical implications of the proposition suggests possible experiments. And certainly, as you allude to, carefully (competently) designed and executed experiments can deny hypotheses, which is the same as confirming that the proposition is fictional /false.

And you're also correct that confirming an hypothesis does not prove it is factual, it could be that the experiment instead confirms a different hypothesis /proposition, due to factors beyond the control or recognition or measurement of the experimenters, or due to the experiment being too limited in scope (such as experiments confirming Newtonian hypotheses that are denied when taking into account astronomical and Planck scales).
So you can assert a miracle, which isn't either of those and is rightly rejected as a scientific theory, but the effects of a miracle can be tested and falsified.

So if I assert that God made the universe, that is a claim of faith. However, I can point to evidence to say that the universe was created.

A fine distinction, to be sure, but vital in a free and rational discussion.
There's nothing beyond science about a miracle. That a miracle occurred is a proposition that is either true or false, and science through the application of logic to this proposition suggests certain definite and testable things, but in the case of a miracle, like creation, or like the Resurrection of Christ, part of the evidence is direct observation of witnesses to the miracle. In the case of creation, there was nobody to witness it, since Adam was made on the sixth day, after everything else had already been made. But with the Resurrection of Christ, there were hundreds of witnesses, who saw Him alive, who saw Him dead, and who then saw Him after He rose from the dead.

What I want to explore is thinking through modern science and how nice it would be if we had had all sorts of scientific instruments there in the tomb (the Holy Sepulcher), at the moment that He arose. Of course this is an impossibility, but the pattern there is logical and can be applied to the only miracle that ever occurred that has left an undisputedly lasting impact upon the world, and that is the creation of the world itself.

What I see modern science saying, in spite of the basic assumption being that there are "ghosts" called "billion of years" involved, is that it "appears as if" God, "billions of years ago," set in motion the universe, and that through "billions of years," and mechanics /physical laws, we have the world as it is today.

You and I reject that ghosts like billion of years were involved, but I think we diverge from each other in thinking that "it looks like" "billions of years" were involved. And I think further that Had modern science gotten a 'heads up' about Christ's Resurrection, and could have measured and monitored and inspected and observed that blessed event as it actually occurred, that they too would have to say something along the lines of, "It looks like billions of years ago, Christ's Resurrection was set in motion to occur at this exact moment, through a congruence and confluence of an astonishing number of events that all converged to that moment," or something like this.

And that's what I take from the atheistic investigation into cosmology, that it established a pattern for all the miracles that ever occurred. The miracle isn't even that mechanics and the laws of physics all converged at a precise moment to bring about the miracle, the miracle is that this occurred while a person was predicting that it would occur just then. It looked like someone performing a miracle, iow. It did not look like what modern science is saying it looked like, like that "billions of years" converged to a moment in time. Through the investigation of modern science, we know what modern science would say about every miracle, iow. The conception of Christ e.g., would look like it was "billions of years" in the making, but that it all happened in a moment. The "billions of years" is what modern science would say that it took for the instantaneous miracle to occur, but since the miracle occurred instantaneously and not after "billions of years," we know that that proposition is false.
It's regrettable that the Darwinists can't even respect a simple definition for "information," let alone engage over foundational philosophy.
I'm OK with people inventing new homonyms, just so long as we can clarify which homonym they're using.
 

The Barbarian

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Barbarian observes:
This is why the "information" argument of creationists fails. All new mutations add information to a population genome.

Only if you ignore the receiver.

No. The message would not be anything at all without the receiver. You still don't get what Shannon's theory is about.

Shannon focuses on the idea that the message sent should be the message that is received.

No. There are no normative assumptions whatever in his theory.

Any deviation from the original message degrades it.

As you learned, that's not the case. For example, the engineers at Bell Labs, who were concerned about the noise they couldn't remove, found useful information in it. The message was far richer because of noise.

That's a perfect analogy for the genomic "noise" that caused bacteria to be able to digest nylon in factory waste ponds.
 

annabenedetti

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Actually, that's incorrect.

Actually it's not. TOL is a shadow of its former self, a ghost ship in the night.

ghostship.jpg
 

JudgeRightly

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This place is already dying a slow death, you want to accelerate it or what?

Actually, that's incorrect.

Actually it's not.

According to Town, the numbers are going (or at least, starting to go) up, not down. Now, whether they continue to rise is another matter altogether, but for the moment, the trend is upwards.

TOL is a shadow of its former self, a ghost ship in the night.

I agree, compared to what it used to be, but you've moved the goalposts.

You said:

This place is already dying a slow death,...

And that may have been true previously, but it is no longer true.

Which is why I said your claim was incorrect.
 

The Barbarian

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I was unaware that The Barbarian believes the Bible "teaches" Darwinism.

I don't. In fact, more than once I've shown Stripe that the Bible neither endorses nor rules out evolution. I don't know why he continues to insist otherwise. Everyone will have to draw their own conclusions.

I consider those who believe in the Resurrection of Christ as categorically different from everybody who does not, and yes, that does mean that all those Christians who believe in Darwinism are on the right side of things, all things eternal considered.

Which is the Christian position on that issue. Well said.

I think my "science" is more expansive. Science is the application of logic to propositions that are either facts or fictional.

Science is mostly inductive, so one doesn't have the rule book in hand, and must infer the rules from looking at the particulars. There are inductive proofs, but they aren't applicable to most things in science.

Whatever procedure results in us successfully sifting facts from the fictional is science.

This is an archaic (but reasonable) outlook. The "science, so-called" found in scripture is not about science as we think of it, today.

Now what did Paul mean by “science”? The Greek word gnosis means “knowledge” in a general sense, not in the technical sense we use the word “science” today. Greek expert W. E. Vine explains that “science in the modern sense of the word, viz, the investigation, discovery and classification of secondary laws, is unknown in Scripture.”1

The scientific method involves observation and hypothesis, and an hypothesis is a proposition. The logical implications of the proposition suggests possible experiments. And certainly, as you allude to, carefully (competently) designed and executed experiments can deny hypotheses, which is the same as confirming that the proposition is fictional /false.
https://answersingenesis.org/presuppositions/science-so-called/

In other words, if we have a hypothesis that DNA relationships should confirm existing evolutionary phylogenies, then we have have a testable idea. And then we can look at the DNA of various organisms and see if they do confirm the evolutionary lines of descent.

And you're also correct that confirming an hypothesis does not prove it is factual, it could be that the experiment instead confirms a different hypothesis /proposition, due to factors beyond the control or recognition or measurement of the experimenters, or due to the experiment being too limited in scope (such as experiments confirming Newtonian hypotheses that are denied when taking into account astronomical and Planck scales).

Yes, and there's nothing more important than pointing that out. All truth in science is provisional. A great example is Lord Kelvin's determination that the Earth could be no more than a few million years old. He did this based on the assumption that the Earth started as a molten ball of rock, and then cooled over time. His comment was that unless some other source of heat could be found, the world could be no more than about ten million years old. Darwin protested, noting that the fossil and geological evidence needed far more time. But Kelvin's numbers were impeccable, and most scientists went with Kelvin.

Until radioactivity was discovered and the source of heat became clear. And suddenly, Kelvin was wrong. That could happen to evolution, too. But as time goes on, it's less and less likely that any kind of alternative explanation will work. Too many independent sources of information, from many, many different aspects. Still possible, though.

There's nothing beyond science about a miracle.

Science can't touch miracles. Best science can do, is acknowledge that it can't explain the phenomenon. As you seem to suggest, logic can do that, even if science can't.

What I see modern science saying, in spite of the basic assumption being that there are "ghosts" called "billion of years" involved, is that it "appears as if" God, "billions of years ago," set in motion the universe, and that through "billions of years," and mechanics /physical laws, we have the world as it is today.

No way to comment about what it appears God did, in science. You might as well ask plumbing to confirm God's hand in creation.
 

annabenedetti

like marbles on glass
According to Town, the numbers are going (or at least, starting to go) up, not down. Now, whether they continue to rise is another matter altogether, but for the moment, the trend is upwards.

I agree, compared to what it used to be, but you've moved the goalposts.

You said:

And that may have been true previously, but it is no longer true.

Which is why I said your claim was incorrect.


He's talking about view numbers for a single thread. :freak:
 

Stripe

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I was unaware that The Barbarian believes the Bible "teaches" Darwinism. To me, the order of creation in Genesis chapter one rules out that Scripture teaches it.

Of course it does. But he ignores that, preferring a laser-focus on a few words that he feels safe with.

I consider those who believe in the Resurrection of Christ as categorically different from everybody who does not, and yes, that does mean that all those Christians who believe in Darwinism are on the right side of things, all things eternal considered.

Sure. This is not a debate about salvation — as much as Barbarian wants it to be.

I draw something from the lack of any Apostolic addition to the creation account in Genesis. afaik, they said nothing more about creation. To me, this fact bolsters the idea that the Resurrection of Christ and everything that proceeds from that nonfiction historical event is categorically more important than whatever we believe about the origin of everything.

Of course. However, there are applications, examples and parallels between the creation account and the gospels. The story of Christ gets its context and added significance being rooted in Genesis as a historical account.

I think my "science" is more expansive. Science is the application of logic to propositions that are either facts or fictional. Whatever procedure results in us successfully sifting facts from the fictional is science.

I can get on board with any approach you like, within reason. As long as you're willing to stick with the axioms you propose and follow the logic and evidence where it leads.

And you're also correct

Get a screenshot; it doesn't happen very often. :eek:

Experiments confirming Newtonian hypotheses that are denied when taking into account astronomical and Planck scales.

They might not be. ;)

There's nothing beyond science about a miracle.
I think the distinction lies in how we are to rationalize an idea. If someone says that they believe the universe was created yesterday, there's no scientific approach to that claim. However, if they say that observations A, B and C are consistent with their claim, then we do have something to work with.

So, my point is not regarding whether an eyewitness account can be evidence to a miracle — it obviously can — but rather that science — regardless of how we define it — is not an applicable approach to the situation.

I sum that up as: There is more to life than science. Although I usually only use that phrase in a situation where I agree with the proposal. :D

What I see modern science saying, in spite of the basic assumption being that there are "ghosts" called "billion of years" involved, is that it "appears as if" God, "billions of years ago," set in motion the universe, and that through "billions of years," and mechanics /physical laws, we have the world as it is today.

You and I reject that ghosts like billion of years were involved, but I think we diverge from each other in thinking that "it looks like" "billions of years" were involved.

Oh, without doubt. There are a couple of things that are problems for the young-universe hypothesis — the starlight problem wing chief among them — but I think the evidence generally shows that things are about 6,000 years old. Language, societies, art, oceans, rivers, the magnetic field, asteroids, the population... The list is endless.

And I think further that Had modern science gotten a 'heads up' about Christ's Resurrection, and could have measured and monitored and inspected and observed that blessed event as it actually occurred, that they too would have to say something along the lines of, "It looks like billions of years ago, Christ's Resurrection was set in motion to occur at this exact moment, through a congruence and confluence of an astonishing number of events that all converged to that moment," or something like this.
The settled view strikes again. :)

I'm OK with people inventing new homonyms, just so long as we can clarify which homonym they're using.

To be fair, he didn't invent a definition. I was asked about evidence against Darwinism and presented the problem of entropy. Someone else thought that meant thermodynamics, so I clarified. That was roundly ignored and then Barbarian took the mention of information in the sense of a code that conveys meaning and insisted that we have to be talking about Shannon mathematics.

The most pervasive dishonesty is using true things, then when there is pushback, it's easy to pretend those true things are what is at stake.
 

The Horn

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Tell me, how could any intelligent and well-educatied person believe in young earth creationism and consider Genesis to be an accurate description of how earth and the universe came into being ?
So the earth is only 6,000 years old . Hmmm . . . . .. the ancient Sumerians already had an advanced civilization 6,000 years ago . Genesis must have come as quite surprise to them !
How the heck could dinosaurs have existed at the same time as humans ? Does this even make any sense ? How the heck could Noah have gotten two of every one of the millions and millions of animal species which existed then ( so many have gone extinct over the ages in the past 6,000 years ) and provided the kind of food each species required for 40 days and nights ? On an ark made out of wood . The only food koalas can eat are the leaves of the eucalyptus tree . how the heck did Noah keep those two poor little koalas from starving to death ?
How the heck did an imaginary human by the name of Noah ( there is absolutely no historical evidence of anyone by this name ever existing ) get animals such as polar bears , koalas,
kangaroos, wombats , penguins, Kodiak bears ( they're from Alaska ! ) and so many others on his ark ? The authors of Genesis had know way of knowing of the existence of Australia, north and South America existed let aloe knowing of the existence of the animals there .
And was there really a talking snake who got Adam and Eve to taste of "forbidden fruit ?" Why aren't there talking makes today ? It sure would be fun to talk to them !
How did Cain find a mate if the first humans were just Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel ?
Why can't people realize that Genesis is nothing but an ancient allegory , not historical fact ?
There are countless Christians who have absolutely no problem with evolution, including Pope Francis, who is a trained scientist himself . Evolution and belief in a God are not mutually
exclusive at all .
I hope I haven't offended any Christians here . No offense meant .
 

Stripe

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Tell me, how could any intelligent and well-educatied person believe in young earth creationism and consider Genesis to be an accurate description of how earth and the universe came into being ?

Simple. We use the thing that your post sorely lacks. Let's look:

So the earth is only 6,000 years old . Hmmm . . . . .. the ancient Sumerians already had an advanced civilization 6,000 years ago . Genesis must have come as quite surprise to them !

What does this assertion lack?

How the heck could dinosaurs have existed at the same time as humans ? Does this even make any sense ? How the heck could Noah have gotten two of every one of the millions and millions of animal species which existed then ( so many have gone extinct over the ages in the past 6,000 years ) and provided the kind of food each species required for 40 days and nights ?

What does this assertion lack?

On an ark made out of wood . The only food koalas can eat are the leaves of the eucalyptus tree . how the heck did Noah keep those two poor little koalas from starving to death ?

What does this assertion lack?

How the heck did an imaginary human by the name of Noah ( there is absolutely no historical evidence of anyone by this name ever existing ) get animals such as polar bears , koalas,
kangaroos, wombats , penguins, Kodiak bears ( they're from Alaska ! ) and so many others on his ark ?

What does this assertion lack?

The authors of Genesis had know way of knowing of the existence of Australia, north and South America existed let aloe knowing of the existence of the animals there .

What does this assertion lack?

And was there really a talking snake who got Adam and Eve to taste of "forbidden fruit ?" Why aren't there talking makes today ? It sure would be fun to talk to them !

What does this assertion lack?

How did Cain find a mate if the first humans were just Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel ?
Why can't people realize that Genesis is nothing but an ancient allegory , not historical fact ?

What does this assertion lack?

There are countless Christians who have absolutely no problem with evolution, including Pope Francis, who is a trained scientist himself . Evolution and belief in a God are not mutually
exclusive at all .

What does this assertion lack?

I hope I haven't offended any Christians here . No offense meant .

Darwinists are morons.

Offense meant.
 
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