Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[INtErNeT mYsTeRy]

Ya it’s kinda like how Science has proven that zillions of years ago, one day a couple of guys woke up and looked around outside and noticed some reddish stuff in the hills. We’ll call them Bill and Ralph and Ralph says: Eureka, I’m gonna make us some metal implements to make it easier to kill our dinner/enemy and ease our labor and also so we won’t have to eat with our hands all the time and everything else like that.
Then Bill replies: heh Ralphy-boy, don’t forget the kiln to fire up the red stuff up in. Then Ralph says: what’s a kiln? Then Bill replies: you dummy, it came to me scientifically just like you had your dream about a big bang or something which miraculously made us know somehow what to do with the “red stuff” in the hills. Don’t you know anything about Science man? Then Ralph says: What’s Science? Then a 3rd guy, George, overhearing interrupts and said: relax you guys, what we’re about to do with the “red stuff”, won’t be called Science until after we’re dead and when someone asks how we came into existence. The others replied saying; how did we? George says, well according to my dream, I think there’s mainly two theories; we either came from a liquid ooze or a big explosion? Then Ralph says: what’s ooze and Bill says: what’s an explosion and George says: I dunno, guess you’d have to as whatever or whoever it was that made me dream that up? Then a 4th guy, Bob, overhearing says: what’s a dream and a theory?
Later that night after they all took a dump by the fire and were contemplating odor; out of the dark they heard a woman yelling: hey my dream was right; these leaves keep my hands clean for wiping my butt after taking a dump; Eureka, toilet paper!

[Keith Russell]

I don't see any sort of "argument" here at all...

[PaulNZ]

You seem to be making a point at odds with your thread heading.

If your argument is that science has existed in one form or another since we have existed it isn't very clear from your example.

I think what you might be describing is technology, advancements of which have at some very pivotol points in our evolution have catapulted us forward, eg use of language, hand tools, fire, written communication, agriculture, etc etc the latest advancement that might be considered pivotol might be this interwebby thing?

Is that what you are getting at?

[Groktruth]

This is philosophy?

One widely affirmed philosophical method of doing science is strong inference. A good argument debunking evolution theories is that they have not been tested using strong inference. Another well affirmed method is the bayesian approach, where it is regarded as best to use either intuitive popularity or inductive reasoning to assign prior plausibilities, and to begin by testing the hypothesis with the highest prior plausibility. In the case of modification through fescent (a part of evolutionary thinking)/ artificial, not natural selection has a higher prior plausibility.

A third methodological principle is that null hypotheses cannot be proven, and are only useful as a basis for comparison with other hypotheses. But natural selection is a null hypothesis.

A fourth principle is that there ought to be a clear prediction from any theory that would lead to the conclusion that it has been falsified. We do not have such in evolution.

Meanwhile, the alternative hypothesis that some very smart person has created living species, perhaps through genetic engineering, or artificial selection, as we have inductively observed happens with the not so smart humans, remains undebunked. The main falsification prediction, that this "very smart person"ought be able to be found, and interviewed, and able to prove their creative efforts, has been tested, and invalidated. Jeffry Satinover in his book on the Bible Codes, reviews the various efforts to interview the Creator, asking Him when' in fact, this creation took place. There were two such interviews, one two thousand years ago, and one one thousand years ago. In both, the date of "creation" was givem By "God" as about 15 billion years ago. This date has been confirmed by science. There are thousands of other reports by others of interviews with the Creator, affirming His role.

It is well confirmed that most biological diversity comes about through a very long time of modification through descent, with some sort of genetic modification between generations. But some, perhaps total intelligent, volitional, involvement is by far the most likely mechanism. Evolition, not evolution, is the hypothesis or theory most likely to be true. Darwin ought to have titled his book, "The origin of species by means of artificial selection."

As things stand, we have "The origin of specious by the selection of natural means." Nice try, God thieves. But His claim of "royalties" on His created species stands. Pay up!

[Steve3007]

Groktruth:

artificial, not natural selection has a higher prior plausibility.

Only if there is some evidence for the existence of a creator and a reason to believe that a creator explains something that cannot be explained by other means.

But natural selection is a null hypothesis.

In what sense?

A fourth principle is that there ought to be a clear prediction from any theory that would lead to the conclusion that it has been falsified. We do not have such in evolution.

A rabbit in Cambrian fossil beds, for example, would do it.

Meanwhile, the alternative hypothesis that some very smart person has created living species, perhaps through genetic engineering, or artificial selection...

I guess it would have to have been more than just genetic engineering, as we understand it. Genetic engineering by humans has never yet, to my knowledge, created new life from non living material.

...as we have inductively observed happens with the not so smart humans, remains undebunked.

To my knowledge, we have never yet observed a new species being created by humans. Incidentally, if we did observe it, it would not be an "inductive observation". Induction is the process of arriving at general rules, not making specific observations.

The main falsification prediction, that this "very smart person"ought be able to be found, and interviewed, and able to prove their creative efforts, has been tested, and invalidated.

The main falsification critereon for a creator would necessitate some knowledge of the purpose of the creator which is not based solely on observation of the living things that he supposedly designed. We need to know what his intention was so that we can assess whether living things appear to be designed according to that purpose.

There are ample well documented aspects of the living world which make sense according to the evolutionary model but which make absolutely no sense according to our own human ideas about what constitutes good design. One of the key features of good design (to us human designers) is forsight - planning for the future. There is plenty of evidence of "bad design" in nature resulting from the inability of evolution to plan for the future.

Of course, you can always counter that we cannot judge the creator by our own standards. He may have his own reasons for the features that make no sense, or seem counterproductive, to us. But that just serves to illustrate the unfalsifiability of the creator theory. It does not require us to explain any feature of living things. Nothing we discover could ever be shown to violate his purpose if we ban ourselves from judging what that purpose might be. If we're talking about "design" then we must be doing it by analogy with human design. We know of no other. So the only way we can possibly judge that design is by saying something like: "what would we do if we wanted that function?" or "what kinds of creatures would we want to design, and how would we go about it?".

So the main falsification prediction is not that we need to talk to this creator - just that we need to know something about what his purpose is.

Jeffry Satinover in his book on the Bible Codes, reviews the various efforts to interview the Creator, asking Him when' in fact, this creation took place.

I suspect this is one of those "faces in the fire" pattern finding exercises? You go looking for a pattern of a particular kind in any large block of information (e.g. the Bible) and you find it.

There were two such interviews, one two thousand years ago, and one one thousand years ago. In both, the date of "creation" was givem By "God" as about 15 billion years ago.

But, still, I'd be very interested to hear where I could see the evidence for this claim.

There are thousands of other reports by others of interviews with the Creator, affirming His role.

You mean lots of people think they've spoken to God? I'm sure they do. It doesn't necessarily make it true. 80% of the american population (according to a 1997 CNN poll) believe that we've been visited by aliens but that the government is covering it up. Doesn't make is so.

But some, perhaps total intelligent, volitional, involvement is by far the most likely mechanism.

In your opinion? Or according to some kind of objective measure?

Evolition, not evolution, is the hypothesis or theory most likely to be true.

How have you assessed this likelihood?

[Groktruth]

Steve3007,

The state-of-the art in scientific methodology is tha Bayesian model for scientific thinking. In this model, we estimate objectively the plausibility of an idea by estimating it as P(X/Y). where X is the theory being true, and Y is some evidence that we can consistently observe. When the evidence is a priori unlikley (P(Y) is low), but highly likely given the hypothesis is true, (P(Y/X) is high), then the Bayesian formula shows that finding the evidence increases the value of P(X) from it's prior value.

The widespread historical significance of personal subjective bias, rationalization, and wishful thinking, have placed some contraints on the estimation of prior plausibility of hypotheses. There is no support for the adoption of a personal opinion, even one supposedly defended with "reason." Two two main ways of dealing with controversial ideas is one, to average the educated guesses of interested parties, or better, to use inductive reasoning, basing the prior plausiblity on some sort of prior experience. This less than satisfying approach is deemed okay, because errors are quickly corrected by the Bayesian process. As it proceeds, each step uses the estimate of plausibility from the previous step. If the idea is true, it can be proven mathematically that P(X) converges to one, no matter what anyone thinks it ought to be. Objectivity rules then, for those who truly want it, and will play by the rules.

Inductively, we observe in biology "levels" of living beings, which increase in "creativity" as they become "higher" in intelligence and number of senses. We also note that "lower" beings, with fewer senses, are commonly oblivious to the presence of higher beings. Earthworms do not normally experience robins, until the robin is trying to pull them from the ground. The worms have reactions, we suppose, to the presence of the robins as manifested indirectly, say through vibrations in the soil. But they are then sensing the vibrations, not the robin per se. There is no reason to suppose this is not true of humans considering the possibility of living beings higher in intelligence and power, with more sense, than we have. We already know that we are aware of only a small fraction of the universe. We know that the idea that we are as smart as it gets is hubristic, and so flawed that we ought to recuse ourselves from the debate. And, most of Homo sapiens has either an intuitve or an experiential sense that these higher beings exist. So, there is no sound philosophic basis for assigning a low prior plausibility to the idea. Of course it is not "proven." Raising that issue is unphilosophical, for it implies that, being unprovens mean improbable. It deflects objective debate about the prior plausibility, by changing the subject to the already settled issue of provenness.

So, your first comment

"Only if there is some evidence for the existence of a creator and a reason to believe that a creator explains something that cannot be explained by other means."

is unphilosophical, and probably wrong.

"Null hypothesis" has a standard definition in statistical methods in science.

How would a rabbit in a Cambrian fossil bed falsify natural selection, and not artificial selection?

Higher beings than us could possibly create species and genetics. Given time, we will probably learn how to do this. Inductively, we keep increasing in our powers to do such things, and so it is likely this trend will continue.

Why would conversations with the Creator not resolve issues about why He created things a certain way?

I gave you Satinover's name, and the name of His book. What more do you need?

You say,

"You mean lots of people think they've spoken to God? I'm sure they do. It doesn't necessarily make it true. 80% of the american population (according to a 1997 CNN poll) believe that we've been visited by aliens but that the government is covering it up. Doesn't make is so."

So, there you go again, deflecting the debate from "How likely is it?" to "Not proven, Not proven!" which is meaningless. Nothing can be proven! The goal is to assess plausibility. A government suppressed alien event is more likly than it would be without the testimonies. But, how likely is that? Let's get busy making an objective estimate.

Using Bayesian methods, the plausibility of "evolition" is substantially higher than "evolution."

[Steve3007]

The state-of-the art in scientific methodology is tha Bayesian model for scientific thinking. In this model, we estimate objectively the plausibility of an idea by estimating it as P(X/Y). where X is the theory being true, and Y is some evidence that we can consistently observe. When the evidence is a priori unlikley (P(Y) is low), but highly likely given the hypothesis is true, (P(Y/X) is high), then the Bayesian formula shows that finding the evidence increases the value of P(X) from it's prior value.

I'm not particularly familiar with Bayesian stats/probability, so please excuse me (and maybe correct me) if I've misunderstood what you're saying here and make mistakes.

Presumably you're talking about Bayesian design of experiments. But surely this is essentially about designing efficient ways to test hypothesese and navigate the most efficient route through a problem space? I don't see how it has direct bearing on the validity or otherwise of the theory of evolution as a whole. My understanding is that Bayesian methods have in fact been used successfully in many individual areas of evolutionary theory, as in other individual areas of science. But you seem to be trying to apply it retrospectively to the generation of the whole original hypothesis of evolution and asserting that it lacks prior plausibility?

(Incidental point: I presume you mean P(X|Y), not P(X/Y)?)

A good argument debunking evolution theories is that they have not been tested using strong inference.

As far as I can see, this is essentially the standard scientific method: Thinking of observations that could falsify your hypothesis, etc. Evolution has been going through this process for 150 years. It's about as well tested as any scientific theory could be. The scientist who discovered solid verifiable evidence to overturn the whole of evolutionary theory would go down in history. There's quite an incentive to do it, as there is in all of science. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If a scientific theory has been established over a long time by a large body of diverse interconnecting evidence, it takes very convincing evidence, and a new theory which explains all the discoveries of the previous theory, to overturn it. That's why the people at CERN who seem to have discovered that neutrinos can travel faster than light checked their results over and over and over again and then put them out to the wider physics community to see if anybody else can find out where they went wrong. That's why a British physicist said he'd eat his own shorts if Relativity had to be replaced!

Another well affirmed method is the bayesian approach, where it is regarded as best to use either intuitive popularity or inductive reasoning to assign prior plausibilities, and to begin by testing the hypothesis with the highest prior plausibility.

Highest prior plausibility to whom? You seem to take it as a given that a creator based theory of artificial selection has higher prior plausibility. On what basis? Human instincts? Do you have good inductive reasons to believe that our instincts should be trusted in this case because they've worked before in devising hypotheses for parts of science that are outside of direct human experience? I think not.

In the case of modification through descent (a part of evolutionary thinking)/ artificial, not natural selection has a higher prior plausibility.

Says who? Your application of Baysian reasoning to the entire theory of Evolution requires, essentially, a vote of interested parties or induction from previous experience. But "interested parties" means people who have examined reproducable evidence, not the instincts of the population at large. Nothing wrong with instincts, but they are not a good indicator of truth when taken outside of their sphere of experience. And there is no previous experience of what works in this case.

Evolition, not evolution, is the hypothesis or theory most likely to be true.

Says who?

The widespread historical significance of personal subjective bias, rationalization, and wishful thinking, have placed some contraints on the estimation of prior plausibility of hypotheses. There is no support for the adoption of a personal opinion, even one supposedly defended with "reason."

That's absolutely true. It is notoriously difficult to remove personal biases from scientific observations. Some of the most famous examples are Kepler's insistence that the planets must travel in circles (because of his attachment to ancient Greek ideas of mathematical perfection) or, perhaps, Percivel Lowell's observations of "canals" on Mars (because of his Victorian ideas about engineering and a mistranslation of Italian!).

The human talent for spotting patterns (even when no pattern is present) together with strong desires for a particular worldview to be vindicated can be a dangerous combination.

This can mean that people have wasted a lot of time with hypothesese that don't fit the evidence. Kepler did eventually accept the evidence of (approximately) eliptical orbits, but he had to struggle to overcome his prior expectations.

I don't know if Bayesian inference would have helped Kepler to overcome his predjudices. Obviously a calculation of P(X|Y)/P(X) in his case would have show that the "circular orbits hypothesis" was a very bad fit to the evidence, but he knew that anyway! The impression I get is that it is more suited to quite specific individual hypotheses, among many, within a subject area, not the discovery of entire new paradigms. But maybe I'm wrong. Perhaps you can set me straight!

Inductively, we observe in biology "levels" of living beings, which increase in "creativity" as they become "higher" in intelligence and number of senses. We also note that "lower" beings, with fewer senses, are commonly oblivious to the presence of higher beings.

I don't think this picture you're painting of a heirarchy of beings, with each layer being aware of those below it but oblivious of those above it, is particularly accurate. Creatures are generally aware of what's important to them, regardless of where it sits in this supposed heirarchy. Robins are aware of their prey (e.g. worms) and their preditors (other large animals like cats). Animals are generally most aware of their prey, preditors, offspring and potential mates - the parts of their environment that are most relevant to their reproductive success.

The whole concept of "awareness" and "consciousness", and the extent to which various creatures possess it, is of course a topic in itself. But I suspect that a worm would not be aware, or conscious, of any other creatures, either above or below it, in any way that we would recognize. A dog, or a cat or a chimpanzee, on the other hand, would probably be aware of humans just as much as it is aware of any other animal.

So, as far as I can see, this downward-looking heirarchy of awareness that you postulate looks a little bit like one of these ideas that look superficially plausible and which is obviously attractive to you because it fits with you aim of showing that there exists a higher form of life of which humans are unaware, but is not really bourne out by the facts. Nice try!

There is no reason to suppose this is not true of humans considering the possibility of living beings higher in intelligence and power, with more sense, than we have.

Sounds like a tempting analogy. But of course up until the human "level" you were talking about life on Earth. Presumably, above the human level, you're talking about something else? Extra-terrestrial Aliens or Gods? Quite a radical departure from the heircarchy up to that point. Not really part of the pattern you're trying to establish.

And, most of Homo sapiens has either an intuitve or an experiential sense that tExhese higher beings exist.

It's true that we've always had a strong tendency to see agency in the world. In the past we have tended to see individual agents controlling individual natural phenomena, whenever we don't understand the mechanism for those phenomena. More recently some of us have come up with the idea of a single intelligent agent behind all of nature, while others have stuck to the "different agents for different tasks" model, and others have no concept of supernatual agents at all.

As with a lot of human behaviour, we can see psychological reasons why we do this, and why it would be useful to us. But, as I said before, the simple fact that many people believe a particular thing doesn't necessarily constitute evidence of that thing. It constitutes evidence of a propensity to a particular belief. We can then talk about why that propensity exists.

We can see from the discoveries of much of modern science (Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and all that) that our intuition is often a bad indicator of truth when dealing with things that are outside of our direct everyday experience.

Even older "classical" physics can be counter-intuitive. Newton's laws were a breakthrough, and a departure from the Aristotlean ideas about motion, precisely because they were counter-intuitive. Our everyday experience of objects tends to disagree with the idea that an object continues to move at constant velocity unless acted on by a force (because in practice it's difficult to remove friction). Our intuition is probably more in tune with Aristotle's ideas about things like the laws of motion.

It's easy to draw conclusions based on intuition - common sense. The breakthrough ideas are usually those that go against common sense.

So, there is no sound philosophic basis for assigning a low prior plausibility to the idea. Of course it is not "proven." Raising that issue is unphilosophical, for it implies that, being unprovens mean improbable.

You seem quite keen to put the words "proven" and "proof" into my mouth. Of course what is not proven? What issue did I raise? Did I claim that the absence of a creator was proven? I certainly don't remember saying that. Obviously it would be impossible to prove the absence of a creator. I simply suggested that the concept of a creator is not necessary as an explanatory mechanism if it doesn't explain anything.

So, your first comment

"Only if there is some evidence for the existence of a creator and a reason to believe that a creator explains something that cannot be explained by other means."

is unphilosophical, and probably wrong.

I don't know what you mean by "unphilosophical". Do you mean it's an invalid argument?

From your previous comments, you seem to think I was talking about proof here. I wasn't. I was talking about the necessity or otherwise to postulate the existence of an intelligent creator in explaining the diversity of life on Earth. I don't think there is a necessity. Obviously it's possible to postulate the existence of all kinds of things and many people do! But to be scientific they have to have predictive power.

"Null hypothesis" has a standard definition in statistical methods in science.

Indeed it does, which is why I was querying your use of it to describe something which is clearly not a null hypothesis because, apart from anything else, it is falsifiable. Either you're misusing, misunderstanding or redefining the term. I can't find out which of these you're doing by looking up the standard definition. That's why I asked you.

How would a rabbit in a Cambrian fossil bed falsify natural selection, and not artificial selection?

The theory of evolution by natural selection makes predictions about the way in which life evolves from one form to another which would be challenged by the discovery of an anachronistic creature in an ancient fossil bed.

I don't know if it would challenge your idea of artificial selection because I don't know what the creator's purpose is. If it is to precisely mimic evolution by natural selection, then I guess artificial selection is falsified by the pre-cambrian rabbit too. But it becomes a superfluous idea. (although, of course, he might have just changed his mind and decided not to mimic natural selection after all). If he has some other unknown purpose then it's perfectly possible that the Cambrian rabbit is a part of that purpose. Who am I to judge?

Why would conversations with the Creator not resolve issues about why He created things a certain way?

They would if the evidence that they yield were consistent and independently verifiable. But anyone can claim to have had a conversation with anybody about anything. And a lot of people do make all kinds of diverse and colourful claims about such things. I see plenty of people in the world claiming to have been spoken to by the creator and they are most certainly not in universal agreement about what he said or what his intentions are!

I gave you Satinover's name, and the name of His book. What more do you need?

Of course I googled him and briefly read about his book but, like everyone else, I don't have time to read every book or reference that is cited to me in enough depth to get a really proper idea of it. So I have to rely on others who have done so. You seem to have read his book, sO I was asking you for more information. You're not obliged to give it.

But I do vaguely remember hearing of similar sounding ideas which are, essentially, statistical tricks. Seemingly astonishing predictions can be "discovered", after the event, by looking for patterns in any large block of information (i.e. any large book). Apologies to Mr Satinover if this is a misrepresentation based on misunderstanding of what he was saying due to my minimal research.

So, there you go again, deflecting the debate from "How likely is it?" to "Not proven, Not proven!" which is meaningless. Nothing can be proven! The goal is to assess plausibility. A government suppressed alien event is more likly than it would be without the testimonies. But, how likely is that? Let's get busy making an objective estimate.

There you go again putting the word "proven" in my mouth! I didn't mention or imply proof at all! I simply said that opinion that a particular thing is true does not necessarily constitute evidence that the thing is true. People hold opinions for all kinds of reasons, and most people have an opinion on most things, whether or not they have any actual knowledge. That's human nature. The whole point of scientific investigation is to minimize our human predjudices and opinions by setting standards for the collection of verifiable, reproducable evidence.

Some people, in some countries, still routinely believe in witches. This is not evidence for the existence of witches. It is evidence for the existence of a particular aspect of human nature. It does not give us reason to start a research progamme into the existence of witches. It may give us reason to start a research programme into various aspects of human psychology and culture.

Using Bayesian methods, the plausibility of "evolition" is substantially higher than "evolution."

You haven't really given any details of what you mean by "evolition". But you've suggested that you mean an intelligent agent selectively breeding and/or genetically engineering living things to create the diversity we see today, and that of the past which is implied by the fossil record.

If this is true, a huge body of evidence suggests that this intelligent agent seems to want to precisely mimic the effects of environmental pressures using artificial means. It's as if he wants us to think that evolution occurred by environmental selection by carefully manufacturing an exact replica of what would be happening if he were not involved. So far, no evidence has ever been found which goes against this apparent motive.

So it's a bit like imagining a creator who made the entire universe last Tuesday but filled it with diverse mutually supporting evidence (including our own memories) suggesting that it's a lot older. It's sophistry, but it could be true. But if the behaviour of the world never deviates from what you'd expect if it wasn't true, then why complicate things?

If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then the best hypothesis until some contrary evidence is discovered, is that it is a duck.

[Groktruth]

Steve3007,

Lots to address in your post. Let me take the issues one by one.

The Bayesian model for the scientific method looks at the P(X given or /Y) idea where X refers to the plausibility if the theory, and Y to some evidence. (My keyboard lacks the vertical line). The problem that is hopefully getting solved objectively is getting mathematically, not subjectively, an estimate of this value. The joint probability of the prior for the theory {p(X)} and the conditional for the evidence {P(Y/X)} (their product), divided by the prior plausibility of the prediction, solves for the conditional probability of the theory given the evidence.

In the case of evolution, we do not have much to work with, but the place to begin is with the prior for the theory. At first, there was a lot of concern for the time scales involved, and for the idea that the natural variation come about through a process of modification through descent. In Darwin's day, the religious environment made a lot of now known to be implausible ideas seem plausible. As I note, in contrasting evolution with evolition, natural versus artificial selection, the prior evidence from induction was all in favor of artificial selection, as Darwin noted. There was also at the time. Plenty of inductive reason to suppose that higher beings were out there, either earth-bound or extra-terrestrial. And even more evidence today to this point. The alternative idea, that Homo sapiens was as smart as it gets, was so hubristic, as to be implausible on just that account. The democratic assessment, as you note, has weaknesses, but hubris has a worse track record in philosophy than self-delusion. And nature was full, as I have noted, of "higher" living beings. There seemed no good reason to suppose that this hierarchy was topped by us.

But we have been through all this. To do more Bayesian work, we have to generate some predictions from evolution and evolition that contrast. Some way the one theory predicts something that the other does not. Maybe evolutionary rates could be shown to be slower than evolitionary rates.

In a legal setting, we would look at the issue as a royalty case. Here is this person, God, who asserts in writing that He has created species, which others may refer to if and only if they acknowledge His authorship. He claims that the document He provides as evidence can be proven to be authentic. He has inserted both Bible codes and theomatic number patterns that are beyond human capacity into the text, as a sort of watermark of validity. This prediction is quite unlikely to be confirmed, unless the Creator is telling the truth. So, many have searched for the authenticating codes and found highly improbable patterns validating the claim. What then is the plausibility of the evolition hypothesis (God created species using, at least, genetic engineering and artificial selection), given that we have observed highly improbable evidence supporting His claim to creatorship and royalty rights? Higher, I think, than it was. Not proven, of course, except maybe beyond reasonable doubt.

Note that the bible codes researchers use "monkey" texts," of random mutations of the letters in the Torah, to try to produce the same codes by "natural selection." This always fails to produce the sorts of improbable patterns found in the text supposedly produced by God's artifice.

Evolutionists, on the other hand, collect evidence that confirms long time periods, or modification through descent, and then claims that this evidence confirms natural selection. Some sort od selection, yes. Natural over artificial? No. Random mutation over genetic engineering? No. When intelligent design comes along, and asks to team up with evolutionists to generate strong inference predictions that, before they are tested, both sides agree distinquish the two theories, they are excluded from the debate.

I will get to your other points in a later post. Read R.A.R Tricker's little book on "The assessment of Scientific Speculation" to get up to speed on Bayesian thinking.

In other words, the behavior of the evolutionists identify them as hubrisites an dishonest scientists. Further diminishing the prior plausibility of their hypothesis.

[Groktruth]

Steve3007,

let me walk you through using baysian methods.

Make an educated guess at how likely it is, that there is a living being "like"us, only with greater intelligence, powers, etc, that frequently operates outside of our capacity to sense or recognize it. That relates to us as we relate to earthworms, say.