EVO vs. ID (Part I)

[13:32:03] {ormus} HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) — High school students heard about “intelligent design” for the first time Tuesday in the Pennsylvania school district that attracted national attention by requiring students to be made aware of it as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
[13:32:52] {nule} way to be a trendsetter there, harrisburg
[13:33:19] {nule} talk about the least scientific “theory” imaginable.
[13:33:28] {nule} it’s complex, therefore god did it.
[13:33:31] {ormus} heh
[13:33:39] {nule} science is hard, let’s go shopping
[13:33:55] {ormus} some stuff i’ve read lately…some scientists entertain the idea of intelligent design
[13:34:21] {nule} some scientists are total fruitcakes
[13:34:23] {ormus} though i’m not sure they specify by WHOM
[13:34:35] {ormus} i suppose…but this seemed more a trend than a few stand-outs
[13:34:40] {ormus} trying to remember where i read that…
[13:34:42] {ormus} prolly cnn
[13:35:16] {ormus} it went on to talk about the idea that universes split off from the big bang billions of times a second as it continued
[13:35:36] {ormus} and that there’s 100 billion billion times the number of universes as there is atoms in our universe
[13:35:50] {nule} that’s more believable than intelligent design
[13:36:05] {ormus} yeah, it’s an answer to it
[13:36:37] {ormus} though i don’t see why our universe couldn’t be intelligently designed…by another species, even
[13:36:43] {ormus} the “ant farm” principle
[13:37:30] {nule} if by ‘design’ you mean ‘totally random chemical processes that evolve into life’ then I agree.
[13:37:32] {ormus} so, in h’burg the teachers read the statement but then entertain no questions on the subject
[13:37:43] {nule} nice
[13:37:49] {ormus} that seems backwards
[13:38:08] {nule} there’s no evidence for that ‘theory’ so how do you discuss it?
[13:38:21] {nule} I’d like to see the experiment designed to produce some evidence for it.
[13:38:29] {ormus} so the chemical processes are random…but because things are random wouldn’t necessarily mean they weren’t intelligently set into motion, right?
[13:38:48] {nule} on the other hand you can demonstrate evolutionary forces in the lab
[13:39:01] {ormus} yeah
[13:39:06] {nule} well sure – there has to be a cause somewhere.
[13:39:21] {ormus} i’m not sure why they’d necessarily be mutually exclusive
[13:39:37] {ormus} i.e. someone designed evolution into it
[13:39:57] {nule} again, if you mean random chemical changes as the design, then I agree
[13:40:24] {ormus} i don’t imagine something dictating every last chemical interaction, no
[13:40:44] {ormus} as in continuously intelligently designed
[13:40:45] {nule} and if the entire universe was created as an experiment just to make us, don’t you think we’d be a little cooler than we are?
[13:40:50] {nule} I mean, what a freaking let down.
[13:40:56] {ormus} lol
[13:41:02] {ormus} well…maybe we’re in alpha…
[13:41:33] {nule} are you proposing that some change was enacted on the system after it was created somehow?
[13:41:46] {ormus} errr…no
[13:41:51] {ormus} i’m trying to figure out where you saw that
[13:42:04] {nule} then what do you mean by “continuously designed”?
[13:42:16] {ormus} i meant NOT continously designed
[13:42:24] {ormus} i do NOT imagine that’s the case
[13:43:32] {nule} but we do agree that whatever set things in motion, whether you want to call it god or physics or whatever hasn’t intervened in the general state of things since?
[13:43:36] {ormus} it just seems to me that complete origins of the universe is unanswerable
[13:43:47] {nule} that’s a fair enough postulate
[13:43:48] {ormus} yes, i’m partial to that idea
[13:44:17] {ormus} so no matter how far back we do manage to figure things out…there’s still going to be something unknown preceding it
[13:44:40] {ormus} and that thing will be what we’d really want to know
[13:44:53] {nule} I’d say so – even if we get back to the first moment of the universe, there has to be some other context where the universe was caused.
[13:44:56] {ormus} everything in between is just details, in relation
[13:45:00] {ormus} right
[13:45:51] {nule} I think the answer is likely to be more elegant than we can guess at, at the moment.
[13:46:09] {nule} something like new universes are created in the physics inside a black-hole as the black-hole forms.
[13:46:32] {nule} but it couldn’t recurse forever then.
[13:49:03] {ormus} oh yeah, i don’t assume we’re close to “figuring things out”
[13:49:55] {ormus} i just don’t see why evolution and intelligent design can’t co-exist
[13:50:03] {ormus} brb
[13:52:06] {ormus} .
[13:53:05] {nule} maybe I don’t get intelligent design, but the scale we’re talking about design in is way lower level than evolution.
[13:53:24] {ormus} ahh
[13:53:28] {nule} I think when most people talk intelligent design then mean as a direct, one-for-one replacement of what we call evolution.
[13:53:46] {ormus} for example…i would pose to you: where did blackholes come from?
[13:53:57] {ormus} i know, i know…singularities…
[13:54:04] {ormus} but where did singularities come from?
[13:54:12] {ormus} and then i’d just keep asking until you couldn’t answer
[13:54:17] {ormus} (if that’s possible)
[13:54:56] {nule} whenever there’s sufficient mass in small enough space, the space collapses – it bends in ways that are outside of our common experience.
[13:55:10] {ormus} right
[13:55:16] {ormus} but where did the mass come from?
[13:56:08] {nule} well, if you’re a big bang kind of person, you’d say that sufficient energy was released during the big bang to form all the matter we have today as well as any potential and kinetic energy
[13:56:14] {ormus} exactly
[13:56:22] {ormus} i am a big bang kind of person, actually
[13:56:27] {ormus} but where did the energy come from?
[13:56:28] {nule} me too
[13:56:47] {nule} I don’t think anybody would try to seriously posit an answer to that question
[13:56:58] {ormus} because we’ll never know, i guess
[13:57:02] {nule} that’s not to say there aren’t theories out there.
[13:57:11] {nule} I don’t know if I’d classify that as unknowable, though
[13:57:33] {ormus} for all intents and purposes, though, the answers will approach unknowable as you go back
[13:57:45] {nule} as we learn more and more about smaller scale objects and extremely large objects we get closer to an answer
[13:57:50] {ormus} true
[13:58:03] {ormus} it’s just weird to think there was a beginning
[13:58:06] {ormus} what was before that?
[13:58:07] {ormus} nothign?
[13:58:10] {ormus} how can that be?
[13:58:13] {ormus} how can something come from nothing?
[13:58:21] {nule} define nothing. 🙂
[13:58:37] {ormus} actually, isn’t that the only perfect use of the word “nothing”
[13:58:38] {ormus} ?
[13:59:01] * nule looks between GWB’s ears
[13:59:09] {ormus} heh
[13:59:56] {ormus} it just seems like however much we’ll figure out, you can go one more step backward and say “but how did…?”
[14:00:37] {nule} for me the most interesting thing is that all things in the universe move at constant velocity in four dimensions, so as you go back in time space compresses infinitely, so what happens to time?
[14:00:46] {ormus} so it has occurred to me that the solution to the unanswerable might just be the unproveable
[14:01:16] {ormus} and unproveable leads me to intelligent design, i think
[14:01:17] {nule} I don’t think we know enough to call anything unprovable.
[14:01:37] {nule} I think you need a different word for what you are calling intelligent design.
[14:01:45] {ormus} sweet…
[14:01:49] * ormus sets out to make his own word…
[14:02:14] {ormus} what happens to time as you go back, you mean?
[14:02:18] {ormus} or what happens once you GET back?
[14:02:30] {ormus} allegedly, there was no time before the bang
[14:03:16] {nule} well, there appears to be an asymptote there.
[14:03:16] {ormus} so, does the conventional idea of “intelligent design” fly in the face of the big bang?
[14:03:25] {ormus} and evolutional events since?
[14:03:48] {nule} I think the common idea of ID doesn’t address the big bang.
[14:04:09] {ormus} ah
[14:04:54] {ormus} i’d be interested to do a tally on which of history’s great minds were/weren’t religious
[14:05:08] {ormus} einstein was a christian, no?
[14:06:11] {nule} http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html
[14:06:41] {nule} I’m not aware of which scientists were religious
[14:06:59] {nule} there is a prominent geoscientist today that believes the world was made 6000 years ago.
[14:07:19] {nule} He’s developing very advanced computer models in an attempt to prove it.
[14:07:38] {nule} His models are so good that other scientists are using them
[14:08:16] {nule} they seem to indicate the age of the world at it’s best estimate guess of how many ever billion years
[14:08:39] {nule} he refuses to believe it, though – he continues to attempt to refine his models.
[14:16:50] {ormus} back
[14:16:51] {ormus} sorry
[14:16:57] {ormus} heh
[14:16:59] {ormus} that’s funny
[14:19:38] {ormus} heh…first few sentences of that article…
[14:19:43] {ormus} i love how people always compare US to God
[14:19:53] {ormus} i.e humans
[14:20:59] {nule} well…
[14:21:04] {nule} some of us are
[14:21:14] * nule unleashes a thunderbolt
[14:22:00] {ormus} well..yeah…but the articles i read aren’t by you
[14:25:57] {nule} I specifically caused those people to be created to write those articles.
[14:26:05] {ormus} oh
[14:26:18] {ormus} did they evolve since then, though?
[14:26:39] {nule} Yeah, I didn’t take that into account.
[14:27:02] * nule curses evolution