"That explanation is now more complete, because of recent work by researchers at the University of California at San Diego. They have developed a computer model to show how under the right conditions over hundreds of years, stone and soil organize themselves into patterns, through cycles of freezing and thawing." So stone and soil organize themselves... Too funny. As if stones and soil "organize themselves." Oh man, too freaking funny... Next I can imagine these same hacks saying water and cold weather organizes itself into this: <img src=http://web.ncf.ca/ek867/snowflake.jpg> It is more than obvious that nature itself has organizing power...but nature has this quality or organization simply as a result of random ignorant chance...not from some organized foundation. Sure, of course...whatever... The logic is so bizarre...
Okay. The universe appears organized and designed. So, what is the simpliest possibility? That the universe is a product of design, or that gazillions of accidental seemingly impossible to calculate the chance happenings produced a universe out of noting, and that the universe exists in the most intricate balance and existence of opposite values by random chance, that can sustain life, that is both ordered and seemingly chaotic at the same time.... Oh man, toooooooooo funny. Oh, and I don't care what Christians think, but if your conclusion is that God is mischievous, that suggests that God operates on a human level...and that you could do a better job.
My prediction is that in your lifetime you will see more and more scientific theories fall by the wayside replaced by a new set of scientific theories that will be eventually replaced by a new set of scientific theories that will be replaced by a new set of scientific theories that will be replaced by a new set of scientific theories that will be replaced by a new set of....all by design.
This comes closer than any post in this thread to explaining the ID'ers blind faith. The fact is, religion is above all a comfort for those who fear death. The unnecessary "...all by design" in the above represents the leap of faith. In fact no such leap is necessary. Science will indeed continue to generate theopries which will be proved wrong and will subsequently be replaced by other theories. The uncertainty in this process does not bother me. But it bother Z and those of his ilk, because it generates fear in them, just like death does.
Teleologist asked: TraderNik answered: Really? You have a method to distinguish things in nature that are designed from things in nature that are not designed? So how come when I previously asked you what you would count as evidence that something in nature was designed you were stumped?
Just to clear something up, james. Science does not know what happened during the first few moments after the big bang. I provided a quote, I think from Hawking on that point on another thread. And also note in your quote the author was accurate enough to use the word believe.
James Bond wrote: A mere repetitive pattern as shown in this picture would invoke at best a very weak design inference. Let's see what happens if we make the design inference stronger. What if we had bunches of rocks arranged in the shape of letters that spelled out the message "John loves Mary"? In this case would you conclude "this pattern cannot have happen by random chance, someone must have designed it" or would you go looking for the natural forces that caused this pattern?
First of all, it's "Joe Loves Mary." You should know that. Are you conceding that there is no ID for natural phenomena? Now we're making progress. If you want to argue that the Library of Congress had an intellegent designer, no one will disagree with you.
This really highlights the ignorance of z10. Self-organization is a well-proven concept in nonlinear dynamics. Many works on self-organization have won Nobel Prizes, including Ilya Prigogyne, chemistry, 1977, Jean-Marie Lehn, chemistry, 1987, Robert Laughlin, physics, 1998. These are just the ones immediately come to the mind. I'm sure there are others that I am forgetting. Now who should we believe? Numerous Nobel Prize winning scientists? Or an anonymous poster on ET? Whose logic is bizarre? BTW, snowflakes are a well-understood example of self-organization. I've mentioned this in an earlier post in this thread. Here is a direct quote off the website of the National Science Foundation: "Another rich source of emergent phenomena is self-organization: a general name for what happens when the components of a system create complex structures on their own, spontaneously, without anyone or anything being in charge. (Think of water vapor crystallizing into a snowflake.)"