Has I.D. provided peer-reviewed testable claims?

Kazmer Ujavorsy is great - just check out the way he beats these evolutionists at their own game. He cuts through their argument like a hot-knife through butter. What can I say other that I am glad he is on our side.

http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/comments.php?id=2206_0_1_0_C

You are on the verge of the most exciting scientific discoveries in history?

You shouldn't make claims like that unless you know what is coming. If you do, certainly you can gives us an example? (And be careful not to equate some aspects of quantum theory with the spiratual or immaterial.)

And if ID is not relgious, why are you using an example from the Old Testament?

By the way, what is an "unembodied designer"? Please define and give examples.

Further, please state how you know the designer is "unembodied" or how you know anything at all about the designer?

These generalities are not science by any means.

Goldstein wrote:
"if ID is not relgious, why are you using an example from the Old Testament?"

If Darwinism is religiously neutral, then why shouldn't someone use an example from the Old Testament?

He, he. Gotcha. Darwinism won't allow for the possibility that the Bible might just be a legitimate historical document. It's not religiously neutral at all. This is why they seek to exclude it from discussion.

Here's another stumper for you: If ID is really a just religious view, then why would folks of many different religious persuasions, including those that would not hold the Bible as a religious authority, be interested in it?

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Mario A. Lopez
Ciencia Alternativa

The idea of an unembodied designer is a philosophical one, and yet very likely to be true.

We cannot put such an entity in a flask or test tube for you, but that is not to say that we cannot distinguish signs of intelligent causation vs. those caused by chance and necessity.

To assume that highly ordered and specified patterns are the result of a blind and serendipitous process is to be naive to the extreme.

Now, if intelligent design is measurable and discernable, and furthermore, applicable to biological systems (such as the ATP synthase molecule or the bacterial flagellum), one cannot assume designers ad infinitum. In other words, the designer cannot be an entity within this time/space continuum. Designers that beget designers speak little of final causes, therefore, we must assume that the final cause of the design in nature is both unembodied and intelligent.

;)

If Darwinism is religiously neutral, then why shouldn't someone use an example from the Old Testament?

Well perhaps, not to be rude, because the Old Testament is really weird and people live to 900, angels fling rocks about, things that break laws of physics etc. For my money, ID gets all its strength from a close reading of Hindu texts, and there is no way it sits with Christianity. Surely IC, front-loaded information and macro-evolution are not mentioned in the Bible but are in the ayurvedic text (IV/XII)

Littlejon, I realize of course that it's difficult for us to imagine living to 900 years of age. But just because it's difficult for us to imagine it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. And as for breaking the laws of physics, don't you think that, hypothetically speaking, if God had the power to create the laws of physics that He'd also have the power to suspend them at will? After all, a God that's bound by the laws of physics could not have created the laws of physics and, frankly, isn't really any different than you or I.

Think about it, Littlejon… do you think that the laws of physics are eternal?

Littlejon wrote:
"Surely IC, front-loaded information and macro-evolution are not mentioned in the Bible"

Irreducible complexity need not be mentioned in the Bible in order to be valid. IC is a basic principle of engineering. A mousetrap with one of its five major parts missing doesn't trap 4/5ths as many mice. It doesn't work at all. That's just reality.

Actually, front loaded information is described in the Bible. John 1:1. In the beginning was THE WORD. Information. The thoughts and mind of God. (and also the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ)

You're correct, no mention of macro-evolution in the Bible. But that alone doesn't make macro-evolution false. There are many ways to demonstrate that macro-evolution is but a pipe dream.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

these extracts from a recent peer-reviewed paper published at the American Chronicle show the depth and breadth of his important research

American Chronicle is an online magazine, not a scientific journal. There's no indication the article was peer-reviewed and no indication of any actual "research", either, just pure speculation. I'd also like to see some explanation of how you would test a statement like "human intelligence constitutes the cosmological constant" (among many others).

I'd like to know who is the final arbiter of what should or should not be considered a "peer review" paper? And where does this person's biases lie?

Seriously, I realize there is no single person with such responsibility. I trust the point of this rhetorical question is understood, nonetheless.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

The standards for peer-review are well established:

1. An editor receives a paper. Based on the significance of the paper and its relevance to his journal, he makes an initial decision on whether it is worth proceeding.

2. If so, based on the contents of the paper, he sends it out to a number of scientists ("referees") with relevant expertise. Three is considered the minimum, though a wide-ranging paper may require more.

3. The referees provide feedback on whether the paper is worth publishing. Ideally, they are looking at how the paper comes to its conclusions rather than the conclusion itself, though admittedly this ideal may not always be honored.

4. The editor decides what to do with the paper based on the feedback. This may include rejection, acceptance, or acceptance with suggested modifications. If the latter, it will generally go through another round of peer-review.

A publication either goes through this process with its articles or does not. The ones that do are careful to document the process. See here for how Nature, one of the world's top scientific journals, does it.

If such a journal publishes a paper, it is considered to be peer-reviewed. If it's published elsewhere or just made available online, it is not considered to have been peer-reviewed. (There are plenty of unreviewed articles online at the arXiv repository, so it's not unheard of for scientific papers not to be peer-reviewed, though this is usually a temporary matter.)

This doesn't rule out other approaches to peer-review; however, there's the burden of proof that the other approach is comparable. I see absolutely no indication that American Journal has a peer-review process or that the article in question has been reviewed. However, I am willing to be corrected if someone provides me with evidence that I'm wrong.

Quizzlestick is correct; a profound shift is occurring in our perception of the universe. However persons with blinders still have to see that the evolutionist paradigm is in process of decay, and is being replaced with the paradigm of cosmic ontogeny or epigenesis.

In brief, we are about to realize that our universe does not have a Big Bang origin, but a seed origin, which initial and perpetual cosmic seed represents the zero-point of creation. For reasons of its own this seed-point created the universe for the production of human beings in its own image, similarly as an acorn creates a mighty oak tree for the reproduction of itself.

For modern science to explain the generation of the universe without its parent seed is about as irrational as to explain the generation of a tree without its parent seed or genotype.

Just in case Goldstein wants to know, Jesus Christ identifies himself as the seed of the universe, or as the cosmic system's input and output. In other words in Revelation 22:13 he discloses that he is the cosmic system's beginning and end, or Alpha and Omega.

Now Goldstein would like to know what we can predict based on the revelation that the seed or genotype of the phenotype universe is a man, namely Jesus Christ. So here are some of the predictions:

• If a man constitutes the cosmic system's seed or input, then man is the cosmic system's end product or output as well. Goldstein and others can falsify this prediction by presenting a being that exists beyond and above human beings. If they have such a superhuman being in their closet, we'd like to have it presented for our examination.

• If a man constitutes the cosmic system’s input and output, then the universe is an open system, it is open to human life or intelligence. This prediction can be falsified by the demonstration that a closed system can exist in fact.

• If Christ is the seed of the universe, then he is the universal common ancestor of all things created. This prediction can be falsified by demonstrating that universal common ancestry is not a fact.

• If a man is the genotype of the phenotype universe, then the parameters or determining characteristics of the universe are exquisitely fine-tuned for our production, just as the parameters of an apple tree are exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of apples. Indeed, in astrophysics we find that the universe is remarkably biofriendly and is fine-tuned for our production.

• If we constitute the end-product of creation, then we are supernatural relative to the universe, and consequently immortal. This prediction can be falsified by demonstrating that it is possible to eliminate human life.

• Finally, if Christ created the universe to have children in the form of human beings, then he is both the creator and the observer of creation. Thus the creator in person can make it known to his children how he created the universe for the production of progeny in his own image. Moreover our creator is likely to make himself known to his children. So he’s going to come and live with us again.

Goldstein is asking why the Old Testament is brought into the picture if intelligent design is not religious. First it would be nice to know his definition of religion. Does he mean under that term something not accessible to scientific study? Probably in his mind the creator of the universe is not accessible to scientific study or observation. But is the parent seed of the oldest living tree we have accessible to observation or scientific study? The answer is no, at least not in its initial particle or seed state. Nevertheless the parent seed is manifest in the tree system it generates, and most of all in the seeds which the tree yields in the parent seed’s image. In any case just because the parent seed is not available for observation in its particle state does not mean that it does not exist, or that it is not the creator of the tree system. No sensible person would argue that no seed or genotype was involved in the creation of the oldest tree we have on this planet. Similarly it is a delusion to believe that just because at this time the creator of the universe is not available for our examination, therefore no creator played an intimate part in the cosmic system’s generation.

“The tree is made manifest by its fruit,” we read in The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians (III. 16), and similarly the universe is made manifest by its end product or human output. We know, in systems term, that the knowledge of the cosmic system’s output leads science to the knowledge of its initial input.

In the final analysis what is labeled “religion” is in fact incomparably more rational than science because it identifies human life or human intelligence as the seed or creator of the universe. Thus in religion the understanding of the cosmic system is based on the seed of the universe, just as the understanding of a tree system is based on its seed.

By the way, Quizzlestick is displaying an exceptional understanding of this living cosmology. I still have to find a person who has comparable capacity for clear thinking.

Kazmer Ujvarosy
San Francisco, CA

Very interesting. I have added you to my blog.

In the final analysis what is labeled “religion” is in fact incomparably more rational than science because it identifies human life or human intelligence as the seed or creator of the universe

Bit lost at this bit. Why should bigging up humans be more or less rational than, say, turtles all the way down being the seed? Just sounds like astonishing arrogance; it's all about ME...

LittleJohn's reasoning ability is in proportion to his size. His post provides the indubitable evidence.

Kevin W. Parker (kevinwparker) is correct, American Chronicle is not a peer-reviewed publication, but neither is the Bible, nor most of the publications we have. So what?

Evidently in Kevin’s mind, conditioned by the doctrine of Darwinian evolution from a simple beginning, exclusively papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals constitute pure rationality and the fountainhead of understanding. As theoretical physicist Joe Rosen of the School of Physics and Astronomy of Tel Aviv University pertinently notes in his book, The Capricious Cosmos: Universe Beyond Law (1991), those who have unconditional faith in science are mistaken:

“Contrary to popular opinion in our technophilic age, science is not on the verge of explaining all aspects of the material world. In fact, science will never be able to comprehend the material world as a whole, for it lies beyond science—orderless, lawless, and unexplainable. Any understanding of the whole must therefore come from outside science.”

To make Professor Rosen’s point more understandable for Kevin, any comprehensive understanding of an oak tree must come from the knowledge of that system’s input and output, namely from its acorn, and similarly any comprehensible understanding of the universe must come from the knowledge of that cosmic system’s input and output, namely from man—or, if you will, from Christ.

If we know the genotype of a phenotype, we can make relatively precise predictions based on the genotype’s knowledge. For instance, if we know that we have the seed of a giant Sequoia, then we can predict with confidence the development of that genotype into one of the largest trees on Earth, as well as the parameters of that tree system. Similarly, if we know that a man constitutes the seed of the universe, then we can predict with confidence that man constitutes the cosmic system’s end product or output as well. This prediction is falsifiable, provided Kevin and evolutionists of his type can demonstrate that intelligence above and beyond human intelligence exists. If they have such a superhuman creature in their closet, which is reproductively isolated from man, then we’d like to have it presented for our examination. Until they manage to provide that evidence Christ’s teaching that he constitutes the cosmic system’s input and output, beginning and end, or Alpha and Omega, remains valid and sound scientifically or otherwise.

So seeing that modern science has a self-imposed limitation, and most irrationally it rejects the Creator’s own testimony telling us that the universe is man’s way of making reproductions of himself, just as a hen is the egg’s way of making eggs in its own image, why should any reasonable person go to peer-reviewed journals in order to get this theory of creation published? Mainline science’s mind is made up, the cosmic system’s input and output in the form of man is not science, because scientists have the delusion that only the universe counts as evidence, and neither its input nor its output.

In any case the theory of creation positing that our universe has a seed origin, which seed is Jesus Christ, is so heretical in scientific circles that no editor conditioned to the doctrine of Darwinian evolution from a simple beginning would touch it. To get the theory of creation published in a scientific journal would be comparable to get Christ’s teachings preached by orthodox rabbis in Jewish houses of worship, or to get into Nazi publications under Hitler’s reign articles that exposed the irrationality of fascism.

Regretfully these comparisons are not exaggerations. Deluded evolutionists are controlling what gets published in their journals, and the submitted papers are peer-reviewed by equally deluded evolutionists. Any paper on the theory of creation has the chance of a snowball in hell. There is no way to get it peer-reviewed, simply because there are no qualified peers to review it, only a bunch of lamebrained evolutionists.

Kazmer Ujvarosy
San Francisco, CA

A simple cure for cancer:

http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/cellbiol/2002-May/014688.html

Dave is mistaken: I did not find a cure for cancer, I rediscovered what is called Panacea or Universal Medicine.

Let me add that in our days the Universal Medicine is called Human Genome, or rather the qualities of the Human Genome.

This is for Quizzlestick:

I'm in the process of writing an article with the above title. If you have comments, please let me know by e-mail.

Evidently in Kevin’s mind, conditioned by the doctrine of Darwinian evolution from a simple beginning, exclusively papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals constitute pure rationality and the fountainhead of understanding

Why are you going after me? I wasn't the one claiming that your article was peer-reviewed when it obviously wasn't. I mean, the heading of the entire blog entry is "Has I.D. provided peer-reviewed testable claims?" and uses your article in the American Chronicle as an example. If you want to further your views through other means, that's fine - there's nothing sacred about peer-review, and with the Internet taking over, it will probably be obsolete in its present form inside of ten years - but at least be upfront about it and don't pretend that you're following the accepted process when you're not.

Just in case anyone missed it:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2640

That's a starting point for some ID literature.

From bio.net:

2.. Christ partook of his own semen to show that "we must so do, that we may live."
5.. "Human semen, as medicine, is used by many peoples, as by the
Australians, who believe it an infallible remedy for severe illness. It is
so used in European folk-custom "
THEREFORE?
"In the final analysis it seems evident that if persons with cancer and other noninherited diseases would feed back their body's genetic output into the bloodstream of their own body, that information feedback would enable the human organism to detect errors in its own operation and to drive the errors closer to zero."

So basically, eat sperm and cure cancer? There was no analysis, no experimentation, hardly even any logic involved.

From here: "Similarly, if we know that a man constitutes the seed of the universe, then we can predict with confidence that man constitutes the cosmic system’s end product or output as well. This prediction is falsifiable..." No it's not.

There was a new term that I wasn't familiar with that he used, "bio-photon." At first I wondered what biophotons were, but then I looked it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biophoton#Skepticism_regarding_biophotons
There isn't any peer-reviewed papers on bio-photons, either.

Quizzlestick, if you hold this person in high regard, then as IDists we're doomed.
We have to be on our guard and only accept what can withstand rigorous examination. And this loon cannot.

You simply cannot label revolutionary ideas "loon"; they laughed at Galileo as you laugh at the idea of eating sperm to help your biophotons. Do not fall for the materialist mafia ensuring such clearly true IDeas are not taught in schools. How on earth people fall for ateistic nonsense like that humans have DNA resemblance to chimpanzees, but not the new paradigm of Intelligent Design biophotonsemenics is beyond me.

EJ Klone wrote:
"Quizzlestick, if you hold this person in high regard, then as IDists we're doomed. We have to be on our guard and only accept what can withstand rigorous examination. And this loon cannot."

Agreed. Bravo.

Now, I'm not 100% certain how it happened, but this discussion has drifted from the topic of peer review to something else entirely. And that something else is, well, as absurd and ridiculous as it is distasteful and somewhat nauseating. So, could we please pull the topic back under the cover of the "Intelligent Design" umbrella? Please?

Thank you. Yeesh.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

I just buried my best friend two weeks ago and another friend I've known since second grade is in a hospice right now, his body riddled with cancer. I expect a telephone call any day. If Prof. Ujavorsy has found ANYTHING that cures cancer, I want to know about it. Maybe none of TroutMac's friends or relatives has cancer, but the rest of us aren't that lucky.

Prof. Ujavorsy, what do your sources say women should do to admit a fresh input stream of DNA into their bodies? They don't produce sperm. Would a blood sample do?

I appreciate that according to strict materialist dogma much of what the Prof says does not make sense, but is that his fault or is that the fault of a materialist prison which limits what we can speculate on?

I appreciate that some of Kazmer's theories are highly unorthodox and appear to contradict much of what mainstream science teaches us, but shouldnt we treat his theories with the same level of seriousness as any scientific proposition? If we limited ourselves to strict materialism so many areas of legitimate enquiry would be out of bounds.

In oder to propsperI believe ID needs theorists who are prepared to take a great idea and run with it. Who knows where it might end up. Not every one of Eienstein's ideas was a good one, but we remember him for the ones that turned out right. Mainstream science criticizes us for giving them nothing to test, but Kazmer provides this in abundance. I just bet that some of Kazmer's theories are pure gold waiting to be discovered.

I'm not saying Kazmer is 100% right, heck I doubt even he would claim that - he does make some very interesting points that bring our debate to the next level. All I'm saying is lets listen to what he says okay? Lets try not to be closed-minded like the evolutionists who laugh at I.D. because it does not fit into their simple world-view.

HeLa

I'm in the process of writing an article with the above title. If you have comments, please let me know by e-mail.

I'd love to help - let me know what I can do? If you want to run a draft by me I can make comments? I'm not really an expert in these matters.

Quizzlestick

HeLa wrote:
"All I'm saying is lets listen to what he says okay?"

Well, ultimately, it's up to the moderators at this site. But the major point of my last message was to simply point out that this site was created as a place where high school students (and others) can learn about the controversy over Intelligent Design and Darwinism from an ID perspective… it's not about speculative cures for cancer, reasonable or unreasonable.

So, it seems reasonable to suggest that discussions about speculative cures for cancer belong on sites dedicated to those topics, not so much at a site dedicated to discussing ID vs. Darwinism.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

So, it seems reasonable to suggest that discussions about speculative cures for cancer belong on sites dedicated to those topics, not so much at a site dedicated to discussing ID vs. Darwinism.

I agree, my original post concerned Kazmer's theories that pertain directly to Intelligent Design, plus the materialist obsession that everything (no matter how obvious) needs to be peer reviewed and conform with a preconceived notion of what the truth is. For example Kazmer directly confronts the idea that spiritual and non naturalistic things are not worth scientific study.

That's an interesting point of view, and I think it's something Intelligent Design people should be bringing to the debate.

I agree that talk of cancer cures is highly speculative, but lets not just laugh Kazmer's ideas out of the court of science. That's what darwinists like Richard Dawkins do to reputable ID scientists like Behe and Dembski. We should not make the same mistake.

The primary point of my posting was that a minority of scientists who are more obsessed with "peer review" than "truth" seem to be holding back the whole of science. And secondly I wanted to draw your attention to the kinds of interesting science that are possible when we cut loose from the shackles of naturalistic materialism.

Kazmer's theories are unbound by the restrictive thinking that has plagued the last 200 years of materialist science and philosophy. He is one of the most interesting critics of Evolution, and I think his opinions ARE relevant to this forum.

Peace

Quizzlestick!

Sorry if this is off topic, but that has already happend!

It seems to me that cancer is actually a good example of survival of the fittest and the difference between natural and intelligent selection. In other words, whilst natural selection may choose those mutations which facilitate uncontrolled cell division (enabling an increase in the relative numbers of cancerous cells), intelligent selection would foresee the full implications (ie the death of the organism).

It seems highly probable (given the required increases in genetic information) that a similar process could occur in the macroscopic world. Off the top of my head I can think of multicellular organisms evolving the enzymes necessary to digest cellulose and convert this into offspring. Again, similar to cancer natural selection would favor those organisms at the expense of the long-term implications.

In fact, one could take this argument the next step and wonder why the most evolutionarily successful organism (ie the one that produces the most surviving offspring) is the one that made its appearance first in the fossil record (ie bacteria) and why subsequent evolution has seen a pattern of reduced fitness, not to mention reduced population sizes and resilience to environmental changes.

It could even be argued that if natural selection were to give evolution any ultimate direction at all it would be to increase fecundity, fertility periods and life expectancy alongside greater resistance to environmental and temperature changes. I see no reason whatsoever to believe mankind is the inevitable product of evolution (directed by natural selection).

Ren wrote:
"It seems to me that cancer is actually a good example of survival of the fittest"

Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But understand that nobody on the ID side is denying that natural selection exists, so whether cancer is a good example of natural selection is somewhat irrelevant.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

I was not denying natural selection (I believe in it totally at the intra-type level), only what it would likely achieve given the requisite raw material. I was using cancer as merely an illustration to a wider point.

The point would not be as irrelevant as you claim if higher organisms had evolved the necessary enzymes required to digest celulose or lignin - we likely would not be here talking about it.

In fact, I noticed your a Young Earth Creationist. This argument, if I recall, was also brought up by Young Earth Creationist Jerry Bergman (an excellent article if I remember correctly) and I dont think Mr Bergman denies Natural Selection.

Ren, I wasn't saying that you were denying natural selection. Read my post again. I was saying that since ID proponents in general do not deny that natural selection is real, finding "good examples" of natural selection is rather redundant. The existence of natural selection as a factor in the evolution of species is not controversial.

What's controversial is whether natural selection can explain the entire variety of life on this planet. It can certainly account for some of it. But can it account for all? Absolutely not.

Indeed, Jerry Bergman probably doesn't deny natural selection. Neither do I. I'm not aware of any young-earth creationist that denies natural selection. That's the whole point. Natural selection is not controversial.

What natural selection can do, however, is very controversial.

See what I mean?

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Perhaps what I said was a long-winded way of saying that nature is a finely balanced system and that natural selection coupled with a mechanism to increase genetic information could potentially lose that balance (in the example I gave - with disastrous consequences).

Ren wrote:
"…coupled with a mechanism to increase genetic information…"

Well, that'd be neat if somebody could conjure up such a magical mechanism. But so far the only thing we know of that can produce information (complex specified information) is intelligence.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Troutmac, Ren, Quizzlestick and any others out there that may be offended by the turn this thread has taken (and taken due to me, I guess - I'm the one who discovered this aspect of Professor Ujavorsy's researches), please hear me out. Although this topic may be (heck, definitely IS) somewhat gross, it may also be the big breakthrough that ID needs to finally become as accepted as Materialistic Science.

Think about it. Why do so many people prefer materialistic science to ID? It's certainly not because ID is harder to understand than a blackboard full of math or a complicated chemical synthesis. It's not because materialistic Science has been around longer than ID. It's because of all the material benefits that materialistic science gives to people.

Think of that for a moment. Materialistic science has given us antibiotics, surgery, anesthetics so you can stand the pain of surgery, antiseptics so you can survive the surgery, airplanes, radio, television, telephones, cell phones, computers, automobiles and ten thousand other things that people not only enjoy, but absolutely depend on to get through their daily lives. By comparison, ID is so young (as an organized lab science) that it hasn't delivered one one hundredth of the bounty of materialistic science to the average person.

And that's a BIG clue to why ID, which can be understood by just about any "man in the street" is still fighting and losing to "conventional" materialistic science that is completely unintelligible to most people. The ordinary man in the street is afraid that if he embraces ID science, the wings are going to fall off his airplane the next time he flies or that he will at least have to give up future inventions as remarkable and useful as airplanes, modern medicine and a thousand and one other benefits of materialistic science.

But what if Professor Ujavorsy is on to something here? What if he has really re-discovered a cure for cancer? More to the point, what if ID science can provide the world with a cure for cancer? Then the tables would be turned completely. In that case the man in the street who spurns ID for materialistic science would have to GIVE UP a cure for cancer! Think about that! Can you think of a better inducement to take a better look at ID?

My nephew is a missionary (in Burma!) and he says that bringing modern medicine to the native tribes is the single best inducement in the missionary playbook. He says you can preach to tribesmen until you're blue in the face, tell them all about Jesus, heaven and hell and they'll listen politely and then go right back to their native gods. But once you give someone with an infected, suppurating leg a shot of antibiotics and the tribe sees the sufferer "magically" recover, you suddenly have their complete respect and you and your religion become the most interesting thing in the world to them. When you stop talking theory, even if the "theory" is Jesus Christ, and start curing diseases, the tribe is all but converted.

Well, you can think of ID as a missionary movement and the "tribe" it's trying to convert is the whole world that presently worships materialistic science. So far, we don't have any material, tangible thing to offer the "tribe" to show them the power of ID, just dry "theory". But if ID can give the world a sure cure for cancer - especially if ONLY ID can give the world a cure for cancer - than the whole world will be ripe for conversion to true Christianity. That's something worth overcoming a little natural disgust for!

It would greatly benefit ID in another way too. One of the strongest materialistic criticisms of ID is that (according to them) we don't do any lab work or write anything up for the infamous peer reviewed literature. Well, this may be the breakthrough we've been looking for. If this seminiphagia pans out, that complaint is dead, dead, dead! Ten minutes thinking will give anybody a hundred different research topics. How much semen must be drunk? What's the optimal amount? Can we mix it with something to make it more palatable? Can drinking something other than semen "reprogram" the genome? What about women? What can they drink? Overnight, we will have more research topics than we have scientists to research them. People will be converting from materialistic science to ID science every day. ID will start winning the Nobel prizes while materialistic science looks on in envy.

This is taking too much space, so I'll quit writing, but before that, I want to urge everybody to take a long, hard look at seminiphagia. It may be the biggest hope that ID has got and if we let it go ... I don't even want to think about it.

But what if Professor Ujavorsy is on to something here? What if he has really re-discovered a cure for cancer? More to the point, what if ID science can provide the world with a cure for cancer? Then the tables would be turned completely. In that case the man in the street who spurns ID for materialistic science would have to GIVE UP a cure for cancer! Think about that! Can you think of a better inducement to take a better look at ID?

Exactly my original point - we should take Kazmer's testable theories and test them, and only if they fail, then rule them out. Remeber, ID is trying to re-write the scientific play-book.

I'm sick of Science being defined as what Richard Dawkins does not (or refuses to) understand. Science should be about the truth and we should not be afraid to follow the truth wherever it leads us.

That my friends is Science!

Just because something sounds "icky" does not mean it is wrong. For example, who amongst us could keep our composure as we watch a heart transplant. I for one would have great difficulty watching it even though I know it is a life-saving procedure.

It's also proof that the Designer has designed us with interchangeable parts. The intelligent designer anticipated that one day we would have the technology and has given us the wisdom to use it. Darwin never predicted that heart-transplants would be possible but Intelligent Design makes exactly that prediction. It's a shame that we will never be credited for this discovery, but that should spur us on to even greater discoveries.

I want the world to know that ID scientists like us are not afraid of whatever truth the Intelligent Designer has chosen to reveal to us. We should be bold in our quest for HIS TRUTH.

Peace

Quizzlestick

Quizzlestick: "Just because something sounds "icky" does not mean it is wrong."

Exactly! If anybody ever sees a loved one (or even a good friend) dying of cancer, with their body corrupting before your eyes, the room filled with the stench of decaying flesh, them choking on their own fluids and the tears in their eyes from the horrible, unrelenting pain, with nothing to look forward to but death, eating a little of YOUR OWN semen won't seem very icky at all!

This is not homosexuality we're talking about here, people, it's LIFE!

And for ID it's the big break we've been looking for. This is our chance to vault ahead of materialism. ID gives people a cure! Materialistic science can't explain it. All they can offer is chemotherapy, radiation therapy, the mutilation of surgery (my mother had breast cancer - she is one of the lucky survivors, thank goodness) and other really horrible treatments that usually don't even cure you. ID science offers a simple cure. So it's a little icky. Big deal.

And think of a world where all the hot research is coming out of ID labs and the big name science magazines are fighting to attract ID submissions - and Big Science has nothing to offer but a newer, even nastier chemical for chemotherapy. Which would you choose?

Thanks Dave M - I pretty much agree with you. One of the key strengths about ID at the moment is that we are such a young science it's not too late for anybody to get involved. All you need is an insatiable curiosity and respect for the truth.

You don't need ivory-tower qualifications and a vocabulary of obscure mathematical symbols to make a contribution, but heck if you are a certified genius like Michael Behe, William Dembski or Prof. Dr. Kazmer Ujavorsy then we wont turn you away either.

By contrast, evolutionary biology is run like a "mafia" family. If the boss (Dawkins) denounces you then nobody in the "evo" community is allowed to talk to you again. Your papers will be ignored (no matter how sensible) and institutions will be prevented from funding your research. Could the evolutionists be turning ther back on real science and important discoveries - you bet:

If even 1/100th of what Kazmer says is true it's going to totally rock the world of science. Surely that's worth investigating?

What are the common criticisms of Kazmer's theories. Neo-darwinists claim that he goes outside what is allowed by rationalist materialism. They say he does not have peer-reviewed publications and that his theories are not testable or just plain nonsense. I think I've demonstrated that all of these allegations are bunk.

Once you realize the real flaw is not with Kazmer's ideas but the "reality filter" of naturalistic materialism then the whole thing starts to make sense.

Dave M and quizzlestick:

Here's the problem I have, besides the fact that the "ewww" factor of this discussion is just plain off the charts:

I don't see the relevance to ID in this. Or, said another way, it appears to me that this "cure for cancer" could be explored (and discovered) just as easily from a non-ID perspective as from an ID perspective. What, just because sperm carries genetic information? So what? It's not as though materialists don't "believe" that sperm contains genetic information.

Now, having said that, I am quite certain that we will discover, or are at least much more likely to discover, a cure for cancer if we shift the paradigm of biology from one of evolution (Darwinism) to one of Intelligent Design. I'm absolutely convinced that the longer we persist in deluding ourselves scientifically with evolutionary biology, the further a cure for cancer will be from us. But this has nothing to do the injestion of semen.

Do you think that just because ID scientists pursue such a thing (whether it has anything to do with ID or not) and discover something beneficial, that people will just automatically become enamored with ID? Just because it was ID scientists doing the work? Well, let's just pretend that such a thing was possible. We would also have to imagine what would happen if this theory went bust and turned up nothing. What would people think about ID then? They'd think we were a bunch of whack-jobs, that's what.

EJ Klone is right. We need to embrace such a theory like we need another hole in our collective head.

BTW, where anybody got the idea that Christ "partook of his own semen" is beyond me.

Speaking of gross, I've heard of people "recycling" their own urine, too, thinking there is some health benefit.

Now, I have no problem with the professor testing his theory, even though it appears to me that his theory is nothing more than wild, wishful speculation based (in part) on some extremely unfortunate misinterpretation of Biblical text regarding what Christ ate. But, test away. Prove me wrong. But I don't see what connection, what reliance, this has upon ID whatsoever, even if this did produce a cure for cancer.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

I don't see the relevance to ID in this. Or, said another way, it appears to me that this "cure for cancer" could be explored (and discovered) just as easily from a non-ID perspective as from an ID perspective. What, just because sperm carries genetic information? So what? It's not as though materialists don't "believe" that sperm contains genetic information.

Okay, the relevance is I wanted to show that it's still possible to come up with interesting testable theories once we abandon materialism (one of the philosophical fossils that is delaying the inevitable acceptance of ID).

I really do not want to dwell on Kazmer's theories about cancer. These are interesting and I am sure he will test them out as soon as his hectic lab schedule allows. You are right - this alleged cancer cure is highly speculative and simply not relevant to the basic issue of ID.

On the other hand, Kazmer is one of the most widely published ID advocates I know and he has been prepared to take the non-materialist, pragmatist platform established by Behe, Dembski and others and show just what may be possible once we accept them as truth. He is unafraid to confront the culture of materialism / evolution head-on and in doing so he makes some original and unique statements.

Sooner or later most scientists are going to understand that it's time to ditch materialism. Kazmer Ujvarosy is merely ahead of the curve. Once you abandon the flawed basis of materialism a whole new vista of science opens up to inquiry. Kazmer's theories while currently untested are an absolute proof of this.

So to answer your original question, Kazmer Ujvarosy is very relevant to proponents of ID because he opens our eyes to the kind of interesting science that might be possible once a rejection of materialism becomes a foundation of science.

Alright, thanks for that explanation, quizzle.

Now, to get more into materialism. I won't pretend to speak for all ID proponents here, but here's my approach to this and I believe it is reasonable and defensible. I would not suggest that we abandon materialism altogether. The conclusion I've reached is that we simply need to recognize its limitations.

DaveM provided a long list of success stories that were built on materialism. Computers, automobiles, cell phones, airplanes, etc. I would agree with the materialist if they said these technologies would not have been developed if it weren't for materialist protocols in scientific research.

So I'm not claiming (and I don't believe that the 'big name' ID proponents are claiming) that materialism is completely useless and should be abandoned completely.

I would only claim that materialism hits a brick wall when we get to the question of origins. The long list of scientific success stories, where technology advances, airplanes are developed, etc., all began by presupposing the existence of the laws of physics and chemistry. None of those scientific developments bothered to explain why those laws exist or where they came from. Why? Two reasons… 1) because that wasn't the question they were trying to answer and 2) because materialism simply doesn't have the capacity to answer those questions. You can build a fantastic airplane from a materialist perspective, but you can never explain why that airplane works the way it does in the 'exhaustive' sense. That is, you cannot explain why the laws of physics are there to begin with.

I'm fine with adhering to materialism when we're just trying to build a better airplane. Or find a cure for cancer. And in fact, I'd say that in these kinds of pursuits, the results will be much better when materialist protocols are adhered to. I don't see any reason why you can't do research that's governed by materialist rules of scientific experimentation even after you've concluded, based on scientific observation, that biological life is the product of Intelligent Design.

So it's not that materialism doesn't work at all, or always leads us to the wrong conclusions. It's just that materialism can't answer questions of origins. I've said this in various places in other discussions here, but when it comes to origins, materialism is an excellent example of profoundly silly circular reasoning.

The materialist seeks a material explanation for the existence of material. Obviously, this is impossible. What's funny is that the materialist will never express his idea in those terms, because he knows it'll expose the irrationality and circularity of his position. But that is what a materialist tries to do, regardless of whatever double-speak he might use to express the idea. In trying to explain the origin of material (i.e., anything tangible) you cannot invoke that which you're trying to explain. And yet, this is precisely what materialists seek to do. If the material "realm" doesn't exist yet, you can't pull an explanation out of that realm in order to explain the existence of that realm. It's absurd and ridiculous.

So I don't agree that materialism should be abandoned when seeking a cure for cancer. But what I mean by that is that we should still follow basic precepts of the scientific method. Empirical observation, documentation, etc. But I also think that these methods will be much more fruitful if we approach the problem with the understanding that biological life is the product of design, not chance and necessity; that organisms had a purpose in the eyes of the designer.

The proposed 'cure for cancer' discussed earlier appears to me to be not much different than theorizing that shaving my head will enable me to fly. I mean, if we abandon materialist protocols altogether, I could propose such a theory, right?

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Trout,

The proposed 'cure for cancer' discussed earlier appears to me to be not much different than theorizing that shaving my head will enable me to fly. I mean, if we abandon materialist protocols altogether, I could propose such a theory, right?

The way I see it, the materialist assumption is either wrong or right.

If materialism is valid then thats all we ever have... ever. You can never make a non-materialist argument ever because they are automatically assumed to be invalid. The materialist assumption is that materialism is valid 100% of the time, no exceptions. You are only ever allowed to explain stuff naturalistically.

On the other hand if materialism is not assumed to be valid then we must expect that non-material thinking is valid under some circumstances. But what circumstances? OE Blogger Patrick. gave an excellent answer. He proposes pragmatism as an alternative to to materialist natrualism:

"Pragmatism, on the other hand, holds that the merit of an idea, policy, value or proposal must be determined by its usefulness or workability or greater explanatory power. Pragmatic naturalism developed out of the work of late 19th and early 20th century American naturalistic humanists like Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. In different ways they each posed a marriage of naturalism’s dedication to scientific method and pragmatism’s rational approach to the problems we face as individuals and social beings. Pragmatic naturalism wants simply to understand nature and doesn’t care what entities or causes are invoked to facilitate that understanding, so long as they prove conceptually fruitful."

A pragmatic approach clearly favors I.D., but is that all it favours? Actually we cannot be sure that origins are the only area where materialism is falsified. To make special pleading for origins-science would be to fall into the materialist trap yet again.

A more intellectually honest approach is to say that while materialist thinking appears to work, there may be many situations (in addition to origins science) as yet undiscovered where it does not.

This is exactly why it is sensible to ask wether a cure for cancer or AIDS might come out of a non-materialistic approach like ID. Perhaps it is the materialist bias of biologists that has prevented progress in these areas? Perhaps God does not want us to find a cure for AIDS? Materialism ignores these questions, but should it?

Under this more pragmatic approach, anytime something does not make sense we are allowed to investigate non-naturalistic explainations. In this light, the approaches Kazmer Ujvarosy and Michael Behe are refreshingly different from restrictive mainstream science. Both have observed phenomena that are not adequately explained by known science and have offered non-materialistic explainations.

According to materialism this approach is madness, but according to pragmatism this is just sensible. Any idea that work (i.e. leads to further avenues of scientific investigation) must be right. And what could be more pragmatic than research that confirms the truth of the Bible. This is research that brings people closer to God and therefore must be right.

I just bet as soon as we have a single verifiable discovery that comes from non-materialistic science the whole "science community" will be turned on it's head and ID will be accepted overnight. Behe, Dembski and Ujvarosy are both leaders in non-materialistic science, that is why we should support them.

Peace

There's a perfect example of circular reasoning. We can't bring God into the science classroom because it's "not scientific" which means that there's no (materialistic) scientific evidence for God. But the kind of non-materialistic evidence that would show that God exists is systematically suppressed by materialistic science."

I have two problems with this comment:

Firstly, I am getting the impression that no one here is a practicing “scientist”. If you were you would know that scientists are NOT a unified and coordinated organization able (or willing) to band together and “suppress” something. I am a scientist and I actively dislike many other researchers and wouldn’t go out of my way to support their research simply because they are a fellow scientist. I don’t stick to a science “dogma” that is trying to kill “God”. If I could find evidence for a designer I would do it because I would become as famous as Newton or Darwin.

Secondly, the term “non-materialistic evidence” is an oxymoron. Can you tell me how something non-materialistic can be evidence? Can you give me an example? We certainly have non-material forces in nature that interact with material (i.e. gravity) but we know they exist because we can observe and measure their effects. How can we observe and measure “God” interacting with the universe? If we observe something that we think might be an example of "God" interacting with the universe we shouldn't automatically assume it is "God". People used to think a flower following the sun was a miracle but later careful observation and experimentation found natural mechanisms for it. Instead we should first pose other possible explanations of what if might be. In the flower example, we should consider that there is some natural process we don't yet understand.

Throughout this thread people have used the “intuition” argument for design i.e. it looks designed therefore it is. You need to be careful doing this. We see Mount Rushmore, or a watch lying on the ground, and can TELL they are designed objects. Why can we tell this? ONLY because we know people carve rocks and build watches. If we see a complex biological structure we can't make the same assumption since we don’t know for certain that there is some type of omnipotent intelligent designer. We need to consider that complex natural process we don't fully understand may have also lead to the formation of the structures.

Earlier in this thread some one said that materialism is valid for some areas of science but not others. How do we decide where to draw that line? What if some one had said that a flower following the sun was obviously a miracle and therefore no sensible person should bother to study it? Invoking the supernatural runs the risk of killing research. All things should be open to study or else nothing should be.

If ID wants to be taken seriously as a science it needs to be scientific. Saying an intelligent agent played a hand in designing some biological structures is a hypothesis. What evidence do we have to support it? Do we have independent evidence that a designer exists? Is the bible a reliable source of evidence for the divine or simply a collection of stories made up by Iron Age humans? What is more likely? We have evidence that there are lots of religions in the world that all believe different things. They can’t all be correct. Is it therefore possible that all religions are a product of human imaginations? Is it impossible that biological structures can have developed naturally? If we can’t conceive of any possible way they could have evolved does this simply mean we haven’t done enough research? Do the people who attack science/evolution really think they have good evidence to do so or are they trying to push some other hidden agenda?

By all means study ID but do it using the tried, tested and proven methods of science.

Americans will soon agree that the only way to purify science of the taint of darwinian materialism is to use our constitutional rights and our democratic majority.

In response to this comment, SCIENCE IS NOT A DEMOCRACY!!! All evidence is not equal!

1 + 1 = 2
or
1 + 1 = 3

All dogs have four legs.
or
All dogs have six legs.

Sorry to be flippant but this explains the point perfectly. Should we vote on this? No, we go out and check. Simply because there is a religious tradition in this country does not mean that tradition is correct! It might be correct but voting on it will not prove that it is.

In response to this comment, SCIENCE IS NOT A DEMOCRACY!!! All evidence is not equal!

Thats exactly the problem - Science is disregarding the strongest evidence we have, the unadulterated words of the Holy Spirit in the Bible. Most sensible people believe that God created an ordered universe and that the bible is a literal truth.

Michael Behe has shown that aspects of evolution theory are as sensible as saying "1 + 1 = 3". When things dont seem right, what do sensible people do?

We fall back on something that we just KNOW is right. The foundation of all knowledgge is the Holy Bible. After all, where did the rules of logic and thinking come from - they came from God!

Dr. Nic made some interesting comments in his two posts. Among them, these:
"Simply because there is a religious tradition in this country does not mean that tradition is correct! It might be correct but voting on it will not prove that it is."

Agreed. Why is it, then, that Darwinists rely so heavily on what the scientific consensus is? Apart from that, no one (not me, anyway) is suggesting that ID be 'voted on' to become scientifically valid.

Dr. Nic:
"Firstly, I am getting the impression that no one here is a practicing “scientist”."

I can only speak for myself and, you're right. I'm not a scientist. Having said that, being a scientist doesn't give one a license to dodge the rules of logic. Nor does one have to be a scientist in order to use and apply logic. So whether someone is a "scientist" or not is really not the issue. Scientists are no more perfect than the rest of us.

Dr. Nic:
"people have used the “intuition” argument for design i.e. it looks designed therefore it is."

If you believe this is a fair characterization of the ID argument, or a fair characterization of arguments that have been made on this site, then it appears you are unfamiliar with the ID argument or haven't been reading the entries here very carefully.

Dr. Nic:
"We see Mount Rushmore, or a watch lying on the ground, and can TELL they are designed objects. Why can we tell this? ONLY because we know people carve rocks and build watches."

This is incorrect. There are ways to detect design independent of our knowledge that people carve rocks and build watches. You want proof? SETI. We don't know that there are intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe. You may be personally convinced there are, and based on your presupposition that life is born out of chance and necessity, that's not unreasonable. But in the end you don't know that life is born out of chance and necessity, and in fact, scientific evidence points in the opposite direction. So, you don't know extra-terrestrial intelligence exists, and yet the folks at SETI think they can detect it.

"If we see a complex biological structure we can't make the same assumption since we don’t know for certain that there is some type of omnipotent intelligent designer."

If we see biological structures which exhibit some of the same characteristics (such as irreducible complexity and CSI) as those things which we know are products of intelligent design (human) and if unintelligent, undirected causes for CSI have never been directly observed (and they haven't) then this is the very evidence by which we can conclude, quite logically, that there is an intelligent designer.

Secondly, we know (although many deny it) that there ultimately can be no materialist explanation for the origin of material, no natural explanation for the origin of nature simply because you cannot invoke as an explanation that which you are trying to explain the origin of.

Dr. Nic:
"arlier in this thread some one said that materialism is valid for some areas of science but not others. How do we decide where to draw that line?"

I think I was quite clear on this point. If you are trying to explain the origin of matter and energy, or the origin of the material realm, logic will not permit you to consider causes which are themselves material, or part of that which you are trying to explain. That's simply impossible, illogical. But when the question is simply figuring out how to make an airplane fly, where you have the luxury of being able to take the laws of physics and chemistry as a given, materialist explanations work very well indeed.

Dr. Nic:
"Is it impossible that biological structures can have developed naturally? If we can’t conceive of any possible way they could have evolved does this simply mean we haven’t done enough research?"

No, it's not possible. And to the second question, again, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." In ID, we have a very good explanation for these biological structures. We know that intelligent agents produce these kinds of structures. For example, in manufacturing we see that intelligent agents (humans) use assembly jigs of various kinds to ensure consistency and for the sake of efficiency. In the assembly of a bacterial flagellum, we see tiny protein "assembly jigs" which serve this same purpose and are cast off once the structure they are "responsible" for is complete.

Dr. Nic:
"If ID wants to be taken seriously as a science it needs to be scientific. Saying an intelligent agent played a hand in designing some biological structures is a hypothesis. What evidence do we have to support it?"

Again, if you have to ask this question, then you haven't been reading very carefully. The mere fact that DNA carries CSI ought to be evidence enough, but there is far more.

Dr. Nic:
"Do we have independent evidence that a designer exists? Is the bible a reliable source of evidence?" and (paraphrasing) "All religions cannot be correct."

It's true that all religions cannot be simultaneously correct. If someone says all religions are truth, then what they're really saying is all religions are false, just a human construct, which is a possibility you raised. But guess what… there's one possibility that you did not confront and one that can and should logically be considered. ONE religion might actually be true.

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer

Quizzlestick - Once people just KNEW that the Earth was flat, just KNEW that Zeus made the weather, just KNEW flowers following the sun was magic, just KNEW that Earth was the center of the universe, just KNEW that if we didn't make human sacrifices the Gods would punish us. Observation and experimentation has amassed evidence that these are not the case. We don't just KNOW some biological structures are designed. We can hypothesis they might be but we need to do experiments to test this. Whilst I am on this topic - we don't KNOW that evolution theory is correct. It is simply the best explanation we currently have based on our observations and experiments - it makes testable predictions that have been confirmed. i.e. For evolution to work we needed heritable material, low and behold DNA was discovered.

How do you KNOW the rules of logic came from God? Now YOU are using circular reasoning. The fact that God exists is a sensible conclusion to reach because God gave us reason powers to know this is a sensible thing to know???

Sure, that’s one explanation. Here’s another explanation – we are hunter gathers and therefore reasoning ability was selected for in our ancestors because we needed to use reasoning to find food. i.e “There is not much food right here, if we stay we will starve. We could walk aimlessly in any direction and we may find food. BUT we saw storm clouds on the eastern horizon last winter therefore it probably rained over there therefore grass is probably growing therefore if we spend ten days walking that way we will find game to hunt and plants to eat.”

Like I said in my previous post, there are a lot of religions in the world and they contradict each other so there is a chance they are all incorrect.

Dr Nic writes:

"By all means study ID but do it using the tried, tested and proven methods of science."

They do, they use the same methods for detecting intelligent design that archeologists use (amongst others). The problem is not that they use difference methods, but that the tried, tested and proven methods actually show up intelligent design in many biological systems such as the avian feather.

Compounding this problem is the fact that Darwinists are unable to show that natural mechanisms can produce specified complexity or irreducibility.

Your a practising scientist (and you think you are the only one here) may be you could provide us with fossilized intergrading forms leading unambiguously from scales to feathers - or failing that reconstruct the transition hypothetically by providing a plausible genealogy including all the intermediate forms and a thoroughly convincing explanation of how each stage of the transformation came about?

HEY, WHEN AM I GOING TO GET A POINT ?!?!!?!?!?

Dr. Nic wrote:
"Once people just KNEW that the Earth was flat"

I'm curious, Dr. Nic… during what period of history did people know, or believe, that the Earth was flat?

TRoutMac
Intelligent (Graphic) Designer