AL

This is something that has come up in several posts in this forum and i was unable to find a specific thread for it so i decided we might as well create one. What is 'unatural'? how do we define such a thing' date=' wouldn't anything occuring in nature be a 'natural' occurance. I'm sure this could be taken in different contexts so i will just say that it be taken in the context that it is being discussed in the other threads which is unatural behaviour with regards to personality disorders, paedophilia and generally anything we often call 'unatural', and why that is a justified term.

I will post when i have more time.[/quote'] There are many different definitions of natural, and so it would depend on context, just as you say. The word natural can be used to pertain to things not directly manipulated by humans, such as "natural apples" as opposed to ones loaded up with synthetic auxins and gibberellins. Under this definition, everything that humans do would be unnatural, be it driving cars, brushing teeth, typing on computers or having assorted sexual relations.

 

Sometimes natural is used to simply mean what we would consider usual or commonplace, whereas unnatural is used to mean things which are unusual or uncommon. Under this definition, the charge that "homosexuality is unnatural" which gets thrown about frequently around here would technically be correct, but then having a genius I.Q. or being a piano virtuoso would also be considered unnatural as well. I'm not sure why anyone would want to use the word unnatural in this way, as it clearly has a pejorative connotation and we don't typically say things like "Tiger Woods is an unnatural golfer."

 

Lastly, in the loosest sense, everything that happens in the natural world is natural, of course. This definition is useful from a philosophical standpoint, but it leaves very little room for any notion of "unnatural."

I'm still upset about the death of Theo van Gogh.

That was more brutally ironic than the reaction to this cartoon. Well, at least so far. Maybe heads will start rolling and things will start blowing up in a few days....

For that matter' date=' I am pretty sure that whether a virus is alive in the first place is still an open question / being debated. If it is not alive in the first place, I'm not so sure it can ever be dead, either.[/quote']

True, but this is peripheral to the claims made here. The tissue companies could just as well have said "destroy" or "render unviable" instead of "kill."

Normally when you sign up for a webhost, they will give you very detailed, step-by-step instructions or FAQs on how to get a basic site started. Many of them have their own proprietary tools or free software downloads. This is the case with godaddy.com and 1and1.com (two hosts I've worked with not too long ago). In particular, 1and1.com will give you free copies of just about every type of software you'll need to run a site (for instance, they give you wise-ftp, netobjects fusion which is a visual page designer similar to dreamweaver, etc.).

As far as making the site pink and girly, that's just a matter of skinning it properly. If you're going to go with a content management system, once you've found one with the features you like, you can take an existing skin from that system and alter it to make it pink and girly. Or if you don't want to design your own, most of the well-supported cm systems out there have community pages where users submit custom skins and you can just take one of theirs. The last cms I worked with was Mambo (which recently became Joomla), but of course, like webhosts, there are a zillion of them out there, so shop around.

Yeh i saw the programme too. I think its good how more and more "alternative remedies" are being sciencefied (is that a word?) both to illiminate those skeptics who say "it cant work, rubbish" and help guide the people who believe (in this case) in Chi.

The notion of a placebo effect is pretty well-established, and nothing in this article suggests that acupuncture has possibly been "sciencified" beyond such an effect. The comment by Wildsmith that "it is more likely to be effective if you believe it" confirms that his opinion leans toward this being the case.

I'm a satisfied SciAm subscriber. It's pretty easy reading and covers a wide range of topics -- even the social sciences which is a plus (though I'm not sure if other pop-sci mags cover social sciences as well). My main complaint with SciAm is what's the deal with all those ads for bizarre, seemingly pseudoscientific-like products? I'm seeing such ads as Juvenon, a nutritional supplement that allegedly grows mitochondria to promote youthfulness, and ads for books claiming to have some Final Super Ultimate Happy Theory of Everythingness. Not that there is something necessarily wrong with these products, and you can't blame SciAm for wanting ad money as part of their business model (in the same way I can't blame SFN for those bizarre google ads at the top!)...but still, there's something bothersome about these products being plugged uncritically in a mag that should promote critical looks. Anyway, just my aside.

Another way to read Dembski's remarks is as retort to an attack on his credentials; that is not covered by what Card describes as credentialism. Offering the least favorable take of Dembski's reaction to score in a "well' date=' they do it too" attack is also behavior I don't think Card would find especially useful.[/quote']

I am in agreement with Card that resorting to "he lacks the credentials to have an opinion" arguments are little more than irrelevant ad hominems and I make no excuses for proponents of evolution who resort to such arguments so this isn't a case of "well, they do it too" and I am not in any way suggesting that proponents of evolution are justified in doing same. You might view my bringing up Dembski's counter-critique as a cheap shot, a charge I plead guilty to, but I brought it up as an illustration of the fact that people with higher degrees can make bad arguments, people with lower ones can make good arguments. And if we are in agreement that arguing from credentials is fallacious, then calling Dembski on this is both warranted and justified.

 

Then you have a low standard for persuasiveness [1']. A majority of Americans believe that man was created in his present form, and the next largest group excepts gene frequency change but considers either mutation or natural selection to be purposeful rather than random.

I suppose one way to measure persuasiveness is by how much it influences popular opinion, but it certainly isn't the only way. Popular opinion polls don't control for the fact that many people don't gather information on the debate before formulating an opinion, so it isn't a really good way to measure how well argued the case for evolution is if people aren't listening. My main point is that proponents of evolution are not simply saying "take our word for it" as Card suggests. They have a case, and they have arguments.

The Darwinist answer was immediate. Unfortunately, it was also illogical, personal, and unscientific. The main points are:

1. Intelligent Design is just Creation Science in a new suit (name-calling).

2. Don't listen to these guys, they're not real scientists (credentialism).

3. If you actually understood science as we do, you'd realize that these guys are wrong and we're right; but you don't, so you have to trust us (expertism).

4. They got some details of those complex systems wrong, so they must be wrong about everything (sniping).

5. The first amendment requires the separation of church and state (politics).

6. We can't possibly find a fossil record of every step along the way in evolution, but evolution has already been so well-demonstrated it is absurd to challenge it in the details (prestidigitation).

7. Even if there are problems with the Darwinian model, there's no justification for postulating an "intelligent designer" (true).

Regarding claim 1), it may not be strict, literal, young 6,000-year-old earth creationism, but it is a rehash of Paley's natural theology and an attempt to instill a need for a god-concept in science by arguing from the gaps evolution can't explain. Same deal, the only difference is in what they see as the gaps. The young earth creationists think geologists can't explain the Grand Canyon, the IDers think evolution can't explain how the vertebrate immune system evolved. Even if they were both right, this does not substantiate their case beyond "currently accepted theories can't explain this." I also find it silly that Card would say the IDists accept evolution to some extent and that this distinguishes them from creationists. Even a staunch YEC like Kent Hovind will say "microevolution occurs" so it could be said that the YECs too accept evolution to some extent, but this isn't a point of contention if they don't contend it. It's what the IDers and YECs do contend about evolution that is the issue, so of course a statement like "IDers and YECs reject evolution" may be seen as too general, but it should be interpreted as being specific.

For claim 2), I wouldn't doubt some people unfortunately do argue along those lines. Behe has a phd in biochemistry and Dembski has one each in philosophy and mathematics. Both take the approach of their disciplines in formulating their argument (e.g. Dembski tries to recast Paley's arguments using a lot of unnecessary mathematical formalism). Not that it matters even if they didn't have such degrees, as a good argument is still a good argument and a bad one still bad regardless of degree. I suppose I should bring up that Dembski himself resorted to credentialism to dismiss a critique of his use of the No Free Lunch theorems by a reviewer with only a bachelor's in statistics. Unfortunately for Dembski, one of the co-authors of the No Free Lunch theorem (who has a phd) agreed that Dembski misused the theorem.

Claim 3) is just silly. I think proponents of evolution do an excellent job of explaining their theory carefully as well as acknowledging the limits. I think it's the acknowledging the limits part that sometimes gets them in trouble.

Claim 4) is silly as well. It's important to point out where their argument is faulty, but of course it's a straightforward argumentum ad logicam to say because their argument is fallacious that their conclusion is wrong. It is however, reasonable to conclude that if their argument is fallacious, they did not make their case with respect to that argument and should not be treated as though they had (i.e. if we are to call it science, it must at least have a case).

I'm not going to address claim 5), even though I should since this thread was posted in the politics forum. Sue me.

In my opinion, Mark Perakh has written some of the best critiques of ID. Some of his writings can be found on talkorigins, a few you'll have to get in print publications. He does not resort to any silly arguments, and I think Orson Scott Card should read some of his works before suggesting that proponents of evolution are running from the fight.

All that said, I don't deny there are bad arguments made for evolution. To his credit, Dembski addresses a few of them quite well. For instance, it is sometimes said that the Mandelbrot equation implies that complexity can arise by simplicity, since the infinitely complex Mandelbrot set fractal can be generated by the simple complex* equation Z = Z^2 + C. This is right up Dembski's alley, being a mathematician. Dembski argues that this simply isn't true. While the equation is simple, the process of taking a value generated by the equation and plotting it onto a coordinate system to generate the fractal requires a complicated algorithm. I agree with Dembski's counterargument, although I never found this Mandelbrot argument to be very convincing to begin with and a refutation of it certainly does not imply that simplicity cannot give rise to complexity. Moreover, we can still argue over whether there is more than just a nebulous line between simplicity and complexity (which is why I never found the argument convincing), but that's another matter.

*Complex here means it refers to the complex numbers, not complex as opposed to simple or uncomplicated.

Why don't you ask Alpha (Norway's most rational philosopher?) why he makes those statements. Feel free to take an intellectal combat so everyone can see that Alpha is really wrong

Sorry, I've contributed more than my fair share of arguing this point, and would rather not continue with someone who insists all arithmetic must be numerical (such that an objection like "you can't keep adding 9s infinitely" might hold water) as opposed to analytic (where such an objection holds none). All his yacking about Marx, Newton, feminists and political correctness doesn't do much to help convince me he has all his marbles. Also, I'm not sure how to interpret your claim that he is Norway's most rational philosopher as anything but an ethnic slur against the good people of Norway.

And what's funny now is that you don't know why

I don't? That's news to me.

I actually pulled Hiroyuki Goto's name from a book on pi that I have, which mentions him in passing as the world-record holder. For purposes of this thread, I just wanted to find a quick link on the web to his name so you guys can click rather than cite the book I have which I'm certain none of you will go out and buy.

But if you're curious, it's called The Joy of Pi by David Blatner.

Okay, thanks. I didn't understand the first page of that thread, partly because it was in Norwegian.

Now to think about it, I didn't understand the 2nd, the 3rd and the 4th pages either. He seems to extremely anti-communism and curses Karl Marx wherever he can and seems to think that Marx had a diabolical plan to brainwash the entire earth population into believing 0.9 repeating equals 1.

He's not very satisfied with the proofs. Guess we'll never get the $50.000...

Is it $50.000 or $50' date='000?? *Drools*[/quote'] As I mentioned in Trond's other thread, some European countries use a "," where we would use a "." So it's fifty-thousand dollars.

 

Incidentally, you can ask him to write out a number between 0.999 repeating and 1 in decimal expansion form. But he will probably think of some highly intelligent answer to that as well.

Well, not so much a highly intelligent answer as a clever dodge.

There really isn't any math involved in rote memorization of pi.

That said though, there are actual pi memorization/recitation contests. The "pros" use word-length mnemonic poems to recite pi. That is, for each digit of pi, they find a word that has that number value of letters, and they assemble a poem which they memorize in place of pi itself. The basic mnemonic they probably taught you in junior high was "How I wish I could calculate pi," which has 3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9 and 2 letters respectively, the first 7 digits of pi.

The current world record is held by Hiroyuki Goto, who recited 42,000 digits from memory.

http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com/lists/details/goto.htm

Not sure what sort of prize he got, but I'll pat him on the back.

AL, I understand what you are saying, but thinking this way everything is natural. Everything that exists, no matter what it is, must be natural then. And of course that makes sense, but still I think it might sometimes make sense as well to talk about unnatural or supernatural things, even if they would be natural as well in the strict sense.

Yes, all that we know to exist and even those things we don't know to exist but may find out about in the future are all regarded as natural under this definition. The only distinction between natural and supernatural that I have ever heard is that the latter is said to defy the laws of nature. But once you are over the idea that a law of nature is some sort of immutable cosmological mandate rather than a powerful inductive description that can be subject to revision with new knowledge, this distinctinction is of no use, as you would not say that the planet Mercury is supernatural because its orbit violated predictions made by Newton's universal law of gravitation (which was revised by Einstein, subsequently accounting for this anomaly).

I just find it funny that the bible code 1 was written before 9/11 and failed to predict it while the bible code 2 written after 9/11 did predict it...whats the go there?

Well, Bible code 2 didn't technically predict anything. It's a postdiction.

It doesn't pass my stink test, which is that if you flip it around the opposite way it becomes racist, meaning either the definition of "racist" is wrong or the original statement is also racist.

I'm not sure if anyone's ever complained about racism on the TV show Family Guy, but there's plenty of race jokes there, many of which are made by white characters about black people, so this might pass your double-standard stink test. (My guess is that there is probably a way to do racist humor "right" so that it doesn't raise a stink, but just a guess.)

Quick, how many can all the Family Guy geeks here quote?:

"Remember folks: Guns don't kill people. Dangerous minorities do."

"We now go live to Ollie Williams with the Black-u-Weather forecast. Ollie?"

"I'S GOIN' RAIN!"

"Thanks, Ollie."

"Tom, I just plain don't like black people. Ahahah!"

Cleveland: "I must say, I do feel a strange satisfaction watching the black ball topple all those self-righteous white pins."

Joe: "Can't blame them for being self-righteous. The black ball's in their neighborhood uninvited."

Cleveland: "The black ball's done nothing wrong."

Joe: "If the black ball's innocent it has nothing to fear."

VERY much so. Just as I think everybody who has ever worked in an cubicle should be required to watch "Office Space", everyone who has ever laughed at the word "fart" or "testicle" should be required to watch Family Guy. [img']images/smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

There was a time when I thought I was too mature to ever laugh at a fart or testicle joke. That was before I ever watched Family Guy.

I still can't make heads or tails of your posts, Sunspot. Do you have a point, or do you just like sounding like an out-of-context excerpt from a first-draft, unedited textbook manuscript? The only way people can respond to your posts is to nitpick one or two of your sentences here and there, because your sentences taken altogether do not appear to have a point.

Another example is the theory that black holes are in the center of galaxies. Now others see neutron density. If the second turns out to be true' date=' why was pseudoscience called science for so long? The bottom line is the label is as much subjective as objective.[/quote']

It is not the "facts" which make science science, but rather, the method by which those facts were derived. So long as you have developed a theory and can test hypotheses of the theory, it is science. It doesn't matter if new information should arise in the future to render your theory obsolete. That still doesn't make it, in your words, "pseudoscience [that was] called science for so long."

All cells in our bodies have the same DNA.

Good, that is the conclusion I hoped you would reach. It shows that DNA of itself is not sufficient to explain progression into mulicellular lifeforms even though all the needed genes may be present. In fact, if one took the DNA out of the white blood cells, and disrupted the rest of the cell into separated proteins, even with all the separated proteins left in tack, the DNA would be useless for reassembling a viable cell from the blend. The DNA is the harddrive of the cell, but it only functions due to the operating system within the rest of the cell or within the rest of the body. A good experiment might be to take out the DNA harddrive from a cell and transplant another similar DNA harddrive. The cell should still work.

If we look at a fertilized ovuum' date=' if it is taken out of the body, it will only go so far and stop. What it is lacking is not DNA, but the chemical gradients that allows the cells to differentiate. The only gradient the fertiized ovuum had was due to the sperm/ovuum combo which is very limiting in potential. If we next place it into a nutrient gradient, the cells will differntiate into a cellular gradient between embryotic nervous and circulatory tissue. Within this primary gradient, secondary gradients will also form, from which the rest of the cell will differentiate. The DNA harddrive has all the data needed for this progression, by the operating system is composed of the chemical gradients.

 

If one placed one our mini me white blood cells in the proper chemical gradient we could theoretically get it to differentiate into a simple multicellular gradient. If there is enough potential between these two simple states, subgradients would also form.

 

The link between these gradients and the DNA is connected to the hydrogen proton and hydrogen bonding. This is the one variable, that is everywhere within all cells and within all multicellular organizations. At the same time, with the hydrogen proton the fastest thing in water, (100 times faster than any ion or chmeical) it can theoretically transmit potentials and gradients before any chemical agents are able to diffuse. This gets the DNA and cells integrated and ready for the chemical trains.[/quote'] So what you are saying is that DNA doesn't do anything by itself without the aid of cellular machinery such as ribosomes and without proper chemical nutrition to the cell? If so, that's hardly a profound revelation. If not, you're going to need to more clearly express what you are trying to say.

He's Norwegian. I'm not sure about Norway, but many European countries use a "." as a "," in their numbers. Although you are still technically correct that $50,000 is at least £1.

Yes' date=' of course I know that. I just wanted to write down a short definition, but it's not that easy to keep it short and accurate at the same time.

How would you define the term 'miracle' then? Maybe the involvement of something 'supernatural' could be required. But then one could ask, how do you define supernatural? [/quote']

I don't have a concept of supernatural or miracle. However, as I've seen the notion used by others, I do not find them to be coherent, meaningful or useful. When someone says a law of nature has been broken, the reasonable conclusion to draw is that the law of nature needs to be revised to account for this exception, not to say that some supernatural being had intervened to "violate" what is little more than our own description of our universe. Furthermore, if there were a supernatural being that intervened, it would be a misappelation to call it supernatural, since clearly it interacts with our natural world, and so it is itself natural. To say that there is a thing which interacts with the natural world and is not natural makes for a very nebulous definition of natural that isn't very useful.

@AL: That woman from the article' date=' Marlene Klepees, did not only appear on the 700 Club. If you search for her name on Google you come up with other pages, e.g. this one: http://www.heavensscentflowers.com/marlene.htm

 

There's also a french website talking about her, IIRC even with a small video.

That website, as well as the first few dozen that turn up on Google are not critical examinations. They simply assert her claim. They are not even mainstream media outlets -- all of them are Christian evangelical sites, and there's good reason to be skeptical of them. Even the WB network (which broadcasts 700 Club and Christian Broadcasting Network where I live) puts up a disclaimer before the show saying the views expressed and the claims reported within are not the responsibility of the network, and I don't blame them for doing that.

It's one thing to have a case of cerebral palsy where the symptoms inexplicably dissipate. It's a whole other thing to make the inference from that to there being an all-powerful God with a son named Jesus. Someone needs to critically examine her claim, is all I'm saying. Though I suspect that calls for a critical examination would result in her supporters being offended and the critics chided for "lack of faith," as is the case with my two aforementioned favorite miracle scam healers, Benny Hinn and John of God.

Anything that goes against the known laws of nature in an extreme way.

Just to be sure, you do know that a law of nature is not "legislation" that things in the universe are all expected to obey, correct? A law of nature is a decription we make based on our observations. Natural laws do not get violated, but as descriptions, they can turn out to be incorrect. That said, defining miracle to be a violation of a natural law is a poor definition, as a miracle would essentially result from an inadequate description/explanation on our part (i.e. the degree to which something is a miracle is the extent to which we are ignorant of what caused it).

Pat Robertson's 700 Club makes claims like these pretty much every morning, and they always go unscrutinized, unchallenged, and unreported by the media. And before anyone claims the media doesn't report this because the media have a godless, secularist agenda, keep in mind one is talking about the same media that goes bonkers everytime someone sees the Virgin Mary in a carpet stain.

Either someone should critically examine this claim, or proponents should attempt to substantiate it rather than assert it. Until then, I don't really expect the results to be any different from that of hard-hitting investigations of Benny Hinn or John of God.

that korean cloning guy

I already mentioned him in the first reply. His colleagues have accused him of fabricating results regarding the cloning of human embryos (and their stem cells), so his team's research results are questionable. If you're thinking of the scientists who cloned the dog, it's the same guy who led that team. I think it's safe to call that claim into question as well.

More info:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4533786.stm