Rob Osborn
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Posts posted by Rob Osborn
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3 hours ago, Vort said:
I don't believe life is over 120 years old. NOT ONE PERSON ON EARTH can personally confirm that the earth even existed 120 years ago! It's all smoke and mirrors!
Fact is, the earth was created fifteen minutes ago, but with the entire backstory in place. Brilliant and amazing, but nothing is too hard for God.
Thats all right, go ahead a mock, when my Creator comes and reveals the truth you can buy me dinner
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49 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:
That is the blatant, ugly spin used to overshadow the subtext of ID, which boils down to "I don't understand it, so it must be God."
Based on the introduction to Intelligent Design on intelligentdesign.org--which I quote, "Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. "
I think you may have just disqualified yourself from constructively contributing to the discussion, seeing as you just declared that you believe ID to be false.
Theres many beliefs regarding how long life has been on the earth. Its irrelevent to ID theory.
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58 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:
This is a jaw droppingly short sighted thing to say.
Fun fact: it's quite likely that the time elapsed between homo sapien and stegosaurus is LESS than the time elapsed between stegosaurus and triceratops.
The start of the Jurassic period was 200 million years ago. That time period represents less than 5% of the Earth's age. The age of the earth itself represents only a little less than a third of the age of the universe.
And you're going to claim that because homo sapien has failed to replicate the conditions of your Designer as proof of your Designer's existence?
Homo sapien's existence is still being measured on the scale of thousands of years. And it took your Designer over eight BILLION years to produce intelligent life!
When put into perspective, I have to say, your Designer doesn't sound anywhere near as Intelligent as you make her sound.
I dont even believe life is older than thousands of years old on this planet. We gotta start there cause millions of years is so far removed from my understanding
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1 hour ago, MarginOfError said:
@Rob Osborn, there is a fundamentail flaw in your argument. You claim is that the failure to prove the absence of a Designer is proof that said Designer exists. This line of logic is a fallacy.
When it comes down to it, there is only one way to objectively and scientifically rule confirm the existence of the Designer. That is to systematically observe each and every intelligent being in the universe until at least one of them is identified as The Designer.
Likewise, there is only one way to objectively and scientifically prove that there is no Designer. That is to systematically observe each and every intelligent being in the universe until it has been shown that exactly zero of them can be identified as The Designer.
That's it. End of story. And any honest scientist will concede that simple logical truth when pressed on the matter.
But you simply cannot conclude that the failure to disprove The Designer is proof that said Designer exists. That is a logical fallacy until the time that every last intelligent being in the universe has been observed (at which point the truth will be self evident).
If you can conceive of the impossibility of observing every intelligent being in the universe, then you might understand why science doesn't trivialize itself with the search for God, and why ID fails as honest scientific inquiry.
Not sure how many times weve tried to cover this here but again- ID theory is not looking for the designer, its only looking for finding out, or ruling out, that it isnt just chance from laws of nature that life arose.
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2 hours ago, Mike said:
I don't disagree with anything you've posted just now. But scientists have yet to observe just one incident of many things including as I mentioned measurable evidence of God's existence. And I think that's alright. It may easily be that all knowledge of how God creates life is forever unavailable to mortals in a temporal sphere. I don't by any means say that scientists should therefore give up searching--because continual scientific research is the door to so many wonderful advancements. I am saying that perhaps part of God's method for creating life is more wonderful and fascinating than anything we can fully imagine or discover even though we can certainly come closer as we continue to research than we were a thousand years ago, or even 20 years ago. In my world view there is room for faith and knowledge even though neither my faith nor my knowledge is what I'd like it to be.
For me its simple- God created man through procreation. Why make it more complicated than that?
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2 minutes ago, Mike said:
Personally, I would more easily accept that Pasteur's experiments showed that mice don't spontaneously generate from sweaty rags and wheat, for example, and not that he proved life cannot arise in so-called natural processes. I'm skeptical that we can scientifically prove that intelligent design is required for life to arise (even though I believe that God created the Universe) any more than we can scientifically prove God exists.
But think about this-
For the better part of a century scientists- the best we have in this world, have come to understand the inner workings of microbiology. They have worked quite tirelessly to come up with a viable workable solution through natural law to create an environment and process that will replicate life. What they have so far found is that as of yet, no scenerio exists that can create life through natural laws. Talk about being skepticle! The problem only compounds the more they understand all the working parts of the inner cell. The amount of intelligent information is so vast inside a cell we do not even have a computer with computatiobal ability that can match its workings and ability. And yet our body is made of trillions of them that work in harmony, networked together like a super computer we cannot even fathom. And yet, scientists have yet to observe just one incident of biological material being formed that can even carry one bit of intelligent information. Yeah, Im pretty skepticle of them.
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1 hour ago, anatess2 said:
But that's the thing... Behe's conclusions of external intelligent input was not derived from proper scientific rigor that's why it got rejected by science.
Okay, here's my attempt at juxtaposition - Gravity. You can't prove there's such a thing as gravity that's why it's not a scientific fact. Gravity remains just a theory so we can have a name to call something. What is scientific is all the repeated measurable effects that we attribute to this thing called Gravity. That's where the science is. From the time we accepted the scientific discovery of the gravitational pull, we have made more scientific discoveries that corrected our original conclusions. But, even after all these scientific knowledge we learned about gravity so much so that we can send a rocket to Pluto with it, we still cannot prove exactly WHAT this thing that causes all these behaviors is. But we're fine with just calling it Gravity. You can theorize it is a magnet, you can theorize it is green men in the earth's core pedaling with their unicycles... all those theories are outside of science because we can't scientifically prove it.
So, in ID... you can have a scientific discovery that this chemical or this gene or this DNA behaves this particular way and is repeatable or that things in nature have a proportion of phi... that's scientific. To attribute this to intelligence is like attributing gravity to a magnet or green men in the earth's core pedaling with their unicycles. It's outside of science. That's where Behe's leap became problematic (among other things).
I disagree. Louis Pasteur proved that life dont spontaneously arise in natural processes. This same principle is being applied to lifes origins on the question if nature can, in like manner, cause life to arise through natural processes. If we can scientifically establish that life requires an intelligent process for it to arise then it will be documented as science.
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14 minutes ago, anatess2 said:
Yes, yes, yes... BUT... We don't have to prove the existence of the Programmer... Because... hello... here I am! So there's no question on whether the designer is intelligence or just a by-product of random (i.e., cannot be scientifically determined) order.
By the way... self-aware AI is completely different from self-awareness of humans. The self-awareness of the AI is programmed into it by the programmer - Hello, here I am! It's not random (even if it appears to be, it's not truly random, it's simply an unintended consequence of the programming). So yes, it is a science because I'm the scientist which is the creator of the robot and is therefore outside the experiment. Now, if you bring that up to the level of humans, it ceases to be a science because the designer is INSIDE the experiment... and, since we can't scientifically determine the designer (i.e. we can only speculate), it is not science. It is Philosophy - that branch of it that is not science. And that's just ok. It doesn't have to be a science for it to be valid.
So, the origins of life is philosophy then because we cant identify the designer. Gotcha. Same with ID, we dont have to prove the existance of the designer, only acknowlwdge it was designed by some external intelligent input.
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1 hour ago, anatess2 said:
Of course it is. It is measurable and quantifiable. Matter of fact, this is my line of work. But yeah, we have to define what constitutes "strong AI".
Then you know and are aware that any program that encodes intelligent information is the direct result or action of the designers or programmers and not the result of the computer doing it on its own. You also aware that a true strong AI, defined as the ability to be self aware and gather intelligent information on its own and comprehend it and create new programming that is new and novel based on that is impossible.
What I am getting at is that it is the computer programmers themselves who write commands into the program that then carries out specified intelligent computations is the only way possible that AI can exist- it only can do that which the programmers designed it to do. There isnt any intelligent programs out there in existance that were written by chance by the computers themselves. There are also not programs out there that learned to be self aware or learned how to compute new novel information on their own.
If we can thus compare that programming to such a structure as DNA, we can show that DNA is also a program that contains very specified intelligent commands or designs. But, and this is where it gets interesting, it sets itself apart from the computer program because its formulations are designed in such a manner that make it only possible to be read or understood by true intelligence that is self aware already in existance. What I am getting at is that the laws of chemistry and nature are not capable of being self aware and intelligent in their own right. Scientists know this but are yet so determined to try to create, through those natural laws, a program that is written on its own from those laws that only true intelligence could comprehend. Nature and chemistry are not the authors of intelligence. There are no laws in chemistry and physics that encode how to create self aware intelligence let alone a program that requires such to comprehend.
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2 hours ago, Godless said:
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that because natural protein formation hasn't been successfully replicated, then it must have an intelligent designer behind it, is that correct? If so, then that's not how science works. You don't prove a theory just because you disproved another theory. "X, Y, and Z didn't work, so the answer must be W" is not science. You have to demonstrate why W is correct, not just why X Y and Z are not. For all you know, the answer lies in K.
And once again, we seem to be talking about abiogenesis, not organic evolution.
There is only two answers possible here. If you disprove one it has to be the other. When we see a design in nature that carries intelligent information, it was either created by an intelligent process or not. There isnt any other possibility to exist.
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6 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:
You can only prove that something is made by an intelligence after you prove the existence of that intelligence, which cannot be done scientifically.
We do it all the time in science. We know what the signature of intelligence is and what it looks like. We have a myriad of evidence that shows that something carrying intelligent information was designed or created by intelligent input.
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16 minutes ago, Jane_Doe said:
Hence to scientifically prove ID, you need to scientifically prove the existence of a designer. Which cannot be done scientifically because such theories cannot be proven or disproven scientifically.
No, thats not right. Its about trying to find out if the designs we see in nature, biology, etc, can happen or rise by what we assume is a chance or random unintelligent process. For example- is the laws of chemistry and nature capable of, piece by piece, creating intelligent information such as DNA from chance events in nature? Of course scientists have been trying to test this for a very long time. So far, the evidence shows that chemistry and nature combined does not produce intelligent information. Now, it doesnt matter whether or not one is on one side of the debate or the other, its working to show the same scientific evidence that intelligent information, as far as science can tell, only comes from a design of intelligence preceding it. It doesnt matter so much to find out the ultimate causation for the preceding intelligent design, only that it must exist otherwise no design of intelligent information could have arisen.
Now, its very interesting that mainstream science is determined to accept only that the intelligent designs in nature have to arise on their own and anything to the contrary "isnt science". So, they go to the lab determined to create the perfect scenerio that could allow their belief (not observation) to take hold. The problem is that even though they can replicate some of the building blocks of life, they cannot replicate a scenerio thst actually produces an intelligent design that carries intelligent information. I think its rather novel that they can make unique chemical combinations. But I find it most interesting that the only thing they are proving is that specified, intelligent information does not rise on its own in nature. What this should be telling them loud and clear is that the underlying principle of an intelligent design can only be the product itself of an intelligent design that preceded it.
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4 minutes ago, Jane_Doe said:
In order for it to be designed something has to be doing the designing. Else it is the product of chaos.
Yes, thats right.
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37 minutes ago, anatess2 said:
Yes, that's science. Why? Because, like any programmer (yeay! Intelligent designer!) can tell you, we can program a computer and measure the useful information you can take out of it, This is different from ID because we can SEE the programmer as a reality and not have to prove there is one.
Do you think its a science inquiry to find out if strong AI can be developed from computer programs?
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31 minutes ago, Jane_Doe said:
Because the idea of a deity cannot be proven or disproven using the scientific method.
Not trying to prove deity through science. Its trying to prove that nature is designed, not just a random product of chaos.
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1 minute ago, Jane_Doe said:
*Bangs head on table*
You can't have a science debated on a non-science topic.
How is it not a non-science topic? Tell you what lets change it up a bit and talk about probabilities of AI creating useful information on its own. Thats science isnt it?
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11 minutes ago, anatess2 said:
Guys, ID aside, I'm truly just dumbfounded that a group of college educated adults cannot get an agreement on what constitutes science,
I mean, I know that the American education system have challenges, but c'mon...
What makes this even more ridiculous is everybody involved in the discussion believe in an intelligent designer except for one - our resident atheist who is very easy to spot because he calls himself Godless. You would think this would be an easy topic.
I have watched the wholevunfolding of the ID movement and I was really excited about it because I was like "yeah, finally we are going to use science to infer purpose and dedign for our existance." But sadly, since then it never took hold and Im sitting around waiting for the next motion.
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21 minutes ago, Godless said:
The only ignorance here is your ignorance of some very basic scientific facts.
FACT: Biological evolution exists. The science behind it, while not perfect, is more than sound enough to shape our modern understanding of the natural world. This fact is also directly responsible for many of the advancements in modern medicine that we've seen over the last couple of centuries.
FACT: Biological evolution and abiogenisis are not the same thing. The fact that we can't definitively explain the origin of organic life does not disprove evolution.
FACT: Evolution and ID theory are not necessarily incompatible. It's probably safe to say that a vast majority of ID-promoting scientists accept at the very least the basic principles of evolutionary theory. It's puzzling, therefore, that you do not.
These are not debatable opinions. They are facts. If you can't accept that, then you don't understand science at its most basic level and this discussion is over.
P.S. - It's very telling to me that the ranks of people who accept evolutionary theory are a mixed bag of theists, atheists, and religious non-theists, while those who reject evolutionary theory are always theists, and almost always biblical literalists to some extent. So where then does the confirmation bias lie?
There are some facts about evolution. Like I said before- we readily see micro evolutionary changes within specues. These are well documented and I readily accept it. Thats not the "evolution" we are speaking about. We are discussing the major macro evolutionary changes and if evolutionary theory is correct. Its a fact that no direct observance of evolution from a common ancestor has taken place. Its not even testable. But, Im fine with calling it "science" nevertheless. What bothers me is that any inferrence in science discussion that leads to intelligent design and suddenly its a drug out debate back and forth about stupid things like "peer review". Who gives a crud! Lets discuss the merits of all angles including intelligent design in a science discussion instead of getting all wrapped up in defining the bias of scientific philosophy.
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1 hour ago, MarginOfError said:
So you're going with the "I'm rubber and you're glue" defense. Classy.
You kinda have to do that in the face of ignorance.
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6 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:
Oy, took a long time to read all this.
Let me add a true story from work today.
I work in a laboratory that analyzes substances that are highly regulated and monitored under very strict controls. We're talking regulations exceeded only by nuclear materials.
One of the groups in the lab recently decided they wanted to use a part from a different manufacturer in one of our instruments. In order to make a change to our instrument configuration, we are required to collect data that demonstrates non inferiority to the original part. This data must be abail able for review should the government request it.
This group wrote up a test protocol, ran their trial, gathered their data, and recorded in writing that the results showed no evidence of a difference, and were so convincing that they could even terminate their trial early.
They ran this trial last June. This week, their report ended up on my desk because a problem was discovered in the new parts that could trigger a non compliance review. As a trained statistician, I looked at a plot of the data and immediately recognized that the results returned by these two parts would show a statistically significant difference. When I did a formal analysis, I found overwhelming evidence that the statement made by the laboratory group cannot be supported by the data.
This prompted me to ask the laboratory group why they hadn't involved me, their statistician in neither the design nor the analysis of the data. Their response was that they didn't want to have to deal with the potential complications or revisions that would be required if the results did not reflect the outcome they desired. They didn't want a scientific inquiry. They wanted something that let them claim they had performed a scientific inquiry.
Why am I telling you this story? Because that approach to science is the same approach Intelligent Design employs. Namely, select the conclusion, then create a scientific looking presentation to justify it.
Sounds like how evolutionists do things. Thanks for the story.
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5 minutes ago, estradling75 said:
I did not ignore it... It simply doesn't cancel what went before. But hey "you know" so hermetically lock that in so when you hear other people who are just as intelligent, just as spiritual (if not more like our GAs) plug your fingers in your ears and go "nyah nyah nyah"
As for the rest of us we will know that you are not here to discuss or learn, you are here for an echo chamber and when that fails to blindly charge ahead without understanding what anyone else is saying, or considering why, smart and spiritual people might not agree with you... Because hey "you know"
But as for me I am done trying to have any kind of discussion with you.
Have a good night.
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2 hours ago, estradling75 said:
Sigh... I am going to have to agree with Vort. We have shown a very clear example of General Authorities disagreeing on the subject. The First Presidency listening to the arguments, pondering it and declaring that it did not matter as long a we all agree that it was with Adam, that God set things in motion.
Yet Rob Osborn demands "his interpretation" of that that means is the official doctrine.
Clearly this is a waste of time
You can ignore the 2002 clarification, thats fine. I already know, thats all that matters to me.
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2 hours ago, Jane_Doe said:
The link doesn't have a peer reviewed article in it. The link in the link doesn't. The link in the link in the link doesn't. And I'm not going to chase this rabbit any further. If you want me to take you serious here, please provide some actual evidence. Until then this is going no where and I should be focusing on work.
Yeah, Im getting tired of your arrogance on the issue. Good day.
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8 minutes ago, Vort said:
Honestly, folks, Rob Osborn's mind is not merely shut. It's hermetically sealed. None of your arguments will change his mind, because he already knows The Truth®. Let him believe what he wants. No skin off anyone else's nose. Who knows? He might yet have something of value to offer on other topics. In the meantime, let him be content in his sure knowledge that he knows Science. Whatever.
Please read the link I posted above. Thanks.
Why Creationism or Intelligent Design is Important
in LDS Gospel Discussion
Posted
BTW, my understanding is actually spot on with official church doctrine so make sure you laugh at the church too.