Over at the jokebox, which has descended further into stupidity than I ever thought possible, GilDodgen makes a "refutation of materialism". His premises?
Well...pretty pitiful:
1) Is the existence of the number 2 a refutation of materialism as well, my numbnutted friend? Or have philosophers introduced conceptualism and nominalism and covered this territory long before you were making a public ass of yourself?
2) Really? Show me information with no physical or materialistic properties, ID-iot. Show me what the word itself means, apart from minds, objects and mathematical constructs. Show me how you store or relate information without imprinting it on some medium, then interpreting it through another.
3) This was possibly the winner of the group. What in materialism says that you cannot have identical objects existing in different places at the same time? Are gold atoms not the same? And do they not exist simultaneously in different places? Conversely, I would love to see how this moron would explain how this information exists in the same place at the same time...now that would violate physical laws. But, if you back up your hard disk, you always back it up to i) other sectors of the same HD, ii) a removable storage device, iii) another HD. So you imprint this information on another distinct physical medium (see #2 again). How does his version violate materialism? We are only left to guess.
4) This displays his fundamental stupidity. First, he needs to read a book or two in particle physics, especially on the ability of lasers through Cs crystals to promote photons to 300c, and on Cherenkov Radiation. He clearly admits that nothing without a rest mass of zero can have an average velocity = c. Now, in normal physics, photons (and other particles) are capable of having an instantaneous velocity = c, but not an average of c over distances, and the photon rest mass is thus calculated as ~0. He doesn't clarify this. Next, show me, oh sage of information theory, how one transmits information without particles, and if one is limited by the velocity of the particles, then how can information travel faster than the particles?????? Did you take stupid pills as a kid?
5) What in the hell can I say to such a hubric pile of ignorance? Life is not based on chemistry, but on information??? He is now reifying information, and contradicting himself earlier, when he said that information exists (in #2) without a medium.
6) "...the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life." How does GilDodgen support this philosophical value judgment? He doesn't. How does he argue that his opinion on the importance of free will refutes materialism? He doesn't. How does his opinion stack up beside of hundreds of years on the debate between libertarian and compatibilistic versions of free will, and the interplay of either God or physics to determine mental states? It doesn't. How does "freedom", in the sense of uncaused acts of the will, become guaranteed if you have a dualistic ontology? Um, you see the trend here.
7) Here we have another value judgment about the importance of design. And an appeal to emotion/pride. "What are you, just a bunch of matter?" This is truly pathetic. Dembski, why not just put a disclaimer on your site that ID-iocy may cause intellectual suicide?
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Technorati tags: Philosophy, Intelligent Design
- The existence of information is a fundamental refutation of materialism.
- [Information] has no physical or materialistic properties whatsoever.
- Back up your hard disk and that information will exist in two places at the same time.
- You can transmit that information at the speed of light (at which speed nothing with rest mass can travel).
- Life is not fundamentally based on atoms, molecules and chemistry. These represent the media and low-level mechanism in which life’s information is stored and expressed.
- Unless the choices people make can be predicted with certainty, we have the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life. Without the supposition of, and existence of functional free will, life would be absurd and unlivable.
- This is why the question of materialism versus design is so important. It impinges upon everything that ultimately matters. Are we fundamentally information-based, non-material free agents, or are we natural-law-based, biochemical automatons?
1) Is the existence of the number 2 a refutation of materialism as well, my numbnutted friend? Or have philosophers introduced conceptualism and nominalism and covered this territory long before you were making a public ass of yourself?
2) Really? Show me information with no physical or materialistic properties, ID-iot. Show me what the word itself means, apart from minds, objects and mathematical constructs. Show me how you store or relate information without imprinting it on some medium, then interpreting it through another.
3) This was possibly the winner of the group. What in materialism says that you cannot have identical objects existing in different places at the same time? Are gold atoms not the same? And do they not exist simultaneously in different places? Conversely, I would love to see how this moron would explain how this information exists in the same place at the same time...now that would violate physical laws. But, if you back up your hard disk, you always back it up to i) other sectors of the same HD, ii) a removable storage device, iii) another HD. So you imprint this information on another distinct physical medium (see #2 again). How does his version violate materialism? We are only left to guess.
4) This displays his fundamental stupidity. First, he needs to read a book or two in particle physics, especially on the ability of lasers through Cs crystals to promote photons to 300c, and on Cherenkov Radiation. He clearly admits that nothing without a rest mass of zero can have an average velocity = c. Now, in normal physics, photons (and other particles) are capable of having an instantaneous velocity = c, but not an average of c over distances, and the photon rest mass is thus calculated as ~0. He doesn't clarify this. Next, show me, oh sage of information theory, how one transmits information without particles, and if one is limited by the velocity of the particles, then how can information travel faster than the particles?????? Did you take stupid pills as a kid?
5) What in the hell can I say to such a hubric pile of ignorance? Life is not based on chemistry, but on information??? He is now reifying information, and contradicting himself earlier, when he said that information exists (in #2) without a medium.
6) "...the functional equivalent of free will, which is all that matters in real life." How does GilDodgen support this philosophical value judgment? He doesn't. How does he argue that his opinion on the importance of free will refutes materialism? He doesn't. How does his opinion stack up beside of hundreds of years on the debate between libertarian and compatibilistic versions of free will, and the interplay of either God or physics to determine mental states? It doesn't. How does "freedom", in the sense of uncaused acts of the will, become guaranteed if you have a dualistic ontology? Um, you see the trend here.
7) Here we have another value judgment about the importance of design. And an appeal to emotion/pride. "What are you, just a bunch of matter?" This is truly pathetic. Dembski, why not just put a disclaimer on your site that ID-iocy may cause intellectual suicide?
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Technorati tags: Philosophy, Intelligent Design
I think you are misunderstanding Gil, and ID as well.
ReplyDeleteThe whole ID premise is that life as we experience it daily is incompatible with materialism. You said "If ID was carried out by material agents, ie advanced civilizations, aliens, time-traveling green men, whatever, then there is no problem."
The whole point of ID is that we are not purely material agents. That's the whole point of the design inference and the whole shebang. That what we do when we make choices is fundamentally different from law and chance. THAT IS THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF ID.
"It is only in admitting that ID must be attributed to an immaterial agent (GOD) that GilDodgen spills the beans."
As I was pointing out, humans fit this description as well. That's the whole point of ID.
crevo,
ReplyDeleteNice to hear from you again.
The whole ID premise is that life as we experience it daily is incompatible with materialism...The whole point of ID is that we are not purely material agents.
You're equivocating on "the premise/point of ID" -- the definition of intelligent design, from the DI:
The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.
The whole premise/point of ID is that we are not the result of undirected/random/unintelligent causes, not that we are the result of immaterial causes.
They would never have gotten out of their planning bunker had they injected the phrases "materialism/physicalism/dualism" into the spiel, for it would immediately have been apparent that ID was nothing but dressed-up philosophy and creationism. They have at least attempted to display the facade of science.
I thought the whole premise of ID was "design detection"? That certain features of our universe were "best explained" as a result/product of intelligence, such as IC and Dembski's UPB? Are immaterial substances "features of our universe"? Or are there features of our universe which may or may not be explained by appealing to material or immaterial substances?
Are immaterial substances necessary for the universe to exist? For information to exist? These questions are what GilDodgen asks, and he tries to mishmash them with science, and botches up both philosophically and scientifically. These also have *nothing* to do with science and *everything* to do with your ontology. And, these questions (as I showed) he contradicts himself on with respect to human life *being* information which is *imprinted* on the medium of matter [after asserting that information is immaterial].
And it appears clear from GilDodgen here that materialism and design are *not compatible*. That is to say, not only was information/intelligence required to design, but an *immaterial intelligence*. GilDodgen takes no burden of showing us how intelligence is incompatible with physicalism. He also takes no burden of showing us how information is, he just asserts it.
GilDodgen clearly repeats the same mantra that the "Wedge Document" did years ago -- that ID is a politio-religious attempt to "defeat materialism and its cultural legacies". And that is not science, my friend, but philosophy, which is what ID has always been and will always be. Those of us who are honest are willing to admit that...(hint hint)
I don't disagree that ID contains philosophy. But if you can find me any scientific enterprise that does not contain philosophy, I would greatly appreciate it.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, as far as politics go, do you think that politics should be divorced from science? Or should it be informed by science? If politics is informed by an incorrect science, is it faulty for someone to want to correct it with better science? If not, why do you fault the Discovery Institute for doing this? (obviously you disagree as to whether or not it is good science, but that is beside the point -- they think that it is)
The point of the Wedge is that (a) materialism is a faulty philosophy that many scientists adhere to, and thus is overmixed in the claims of science. (b) The political sphere (and other parts of society) has taken the faulty materialism of scientists as the one and only truth in the formulation of law. (c) By fixing the science we can also fix the parts of society which are based on faulty science or scientific philosophies.
I just don't see what's so spooky about that.
Equally, I would note that philosophy does inform and has always informed politics. The infamous Scopes case was as much about the oppostion of progressives such as Bryan (with whom I'd assume you would agree on many other issues, like security of employment and a decent wage) to 'Darwinian' Philosophy in the workplace and politics as to a belief that Darwin's origins account was incompatible with scripture.
ReplyDeleteI've said it once, and I'll say it again, the best propagandists for creationism and ID are Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.
The problem, my friends, is that the philosophy it contains is certainly not "1st-amendment neutral". And thankfully, that relegates it to its proper place -- outside the science classroom. We teach philosophical and religious ideas in their respective courses.
ReplyDeleteHiraeth,
ReplyDeleteI might see Dawkins as a force to instill fear in all the creos out there to further shield their children from reality, but Dennett?
Also, how many educated persons are afraid of science education for their children? Are you? What will you do and tell your kid about evolutionary biology?