math researcher / computer scientist

Earl...


"her California sense of a life"

That's a great line.

Exactly,

the irrational number are merely a defined set of things. The term
"irrational" as used in daily English has nothing to do with the term
"irrational" as used in mathematics. The term "complex" for example,
also has no special purpose except that it indentifies the imaginary
numbers (which, incidentally, are not imaginary). More over,
transcendental numbers are no transcendental, whole numbers are not
whole, rational numbers are not rational (unless you speak Latin). There
are a whole host of other number types (p-adic, dyadic, primitive,
Stirling, etc) and their adjectives do not imply any relation to the
English phrases.

Pi is a great example. It's irrational and transcendental, but I cannot
think of a more rational or concrete number.

Irrational numbers are irrational because the are the algebraic closure
of the ring of rational numbers. They are precisely the limit points of
Q.

Away with words
Those devilish things.
They are a slimy discrete packet of doing nothing.

Words words words to motivate
Intimidate exaggerate and lie

Words start more fires than they extinguish
And push peace farther and farther away.
Words are like a piñata with no candy inside;

Words dress up and go to church
But they don’t sing or read, or listen at all.

Away with words, they roll off the tongue.
The tongue, with its poison, finesses the letters like
The crest of a wave ever progressing towards the shore.
By the time it gets there, it’s full of fury and ready to crash.


They don’t get anything done, but destruction.
Actions are preferable in every way. But,
Oh how I lament the fact these very words are words themselves.

I like it dude...

Abra:

It has been nice talking with you about this. On a final note, however,
I have to disagree that mathematics is quantitative at all. Mathematics
is philosophy, it is purely thought and abstraction. If observation
helps on understand math, this is merely because observation is a lesser
thing.

Mathematics begins by asserting some particular axioms, and then
proceeds to demonstrate what must be true given that the axioms are
true. It says nothing at all about reality. Empirical logic is the
business of determining which of the mathematical axioms happen to also
be useful in observational practice. But this does not mean that there
is any relationship between the axioms and whatever we want to call
"truth." For instance, I am working on a paper about algebraic geometry.
It is perhaps the most arcane and useless type of mathematics you can
possibly think of. It has no connection to the real world, provides no
technology. But it may explain answers to philosophical questions about
what we call "truth."

I agree with you that philosophy is not valuable for material
satisfaction or material well-being. But, then again, why should I think
that material satisfaction or well-being are important in the first
place?

Obviously I have to eat food and protect myself from nature. And to some
degree, empirical logic enables me to do that. But that does not mean
that empirical logic should be believed in every setting that it can
possibly be applied. I am merely saying that evolution happens to be one
very controversial setting in which empiricism cannot help us reach any
meaningful conclusion.

I would agree that God defies human understanding except in those ways
that he chooses to let us understand him. But if God defies logic, then
there is no point in investigating him. The same is true for evolution.
If evolution is believed merely because we dogmatically accept
empiricism on all acounts, then there evolution is vacuously true and
there is no reason to believe that anything about it corresponds to
"truth." And until someone can demonstrate to me why I should believe
that empirical evidence can possibly help me understand things about the
distant past, I will dispute them.

Abracadabra:

You're right that I think this is a purely philosophical problem. I do
believe that everything can (and must be) known through thought alone.
The reason: even if you conduct experiments and witness observations, it
is ultimately just sensory data submitted to your brain for you to think
about. Therefore, to understand when empiricism is the correct way to
think requires philosophical inquiry. To understand when empiricism is
a bad way to think also requires philosophical enquiry.

In the case of pharmacology, for example, I think empiricism is
beneficial and helpful to mankind and does help us determine true things
about reality. In the case of evolution, though, I think empiricism is a
bad line of thinking that does not lead to correct conclusions. My main
interest in this topic is trying to figure out why modern humanity
thinks that empiricism should be uniformly believed in every setting.

I think empiricism works great in engineering, but poorly for evolution.
It works great for Newtonian physics, but poorly for quantum physics. It
works very well for science, but it does not work at all for mathematics
or (necessarily) philosophy. And since I feel that the questions about
evolution have to first be settled philosophically before you can even
start talking about what the observations say, I therefore feel that it
should be disputed.

I need to get some sleep now, but I just wanted to say that I think you
two are totally cool for debating this as you have.

I can tell for sure that you are good opponents because you have not
once resorted to calling me out on my many typos and spelling errors.

AdvetureBegins:

I totally agree!!!! This is why I can't believe religious people fight
about evolution. Especially within the same faith. Christianity, for
example, has nothing to do with evolution, and to let it divide people
of a common faith is ridiculous.

I would drop the matter, except that I have strong feelings about why
the government wants to make sure students never ever get to hear about
the philosophical and scientific case against evolution.

But, I firmly agree. Live life to enjoy it and do not let these matters
occupy too much time.

Abracadabra:

Case 1, for example, cannot be verified because you cannot use empirical
logic to determine whether or not empirical logic provides you with true
conclusions. That's merely a fact about which I am making an
observation. You would need to undo about 300 years of the philosophy of
science if you want to dispute that caim number 1 is a fact.

I'll grant you that the others are bit more subjective, but I feel I can
make a case for them. And yes you are right to point out that this is my
belief system. But at no point have I said that you should believe what
I believe. I am saying that if you take the particular set of axioms
which I have taken, you get the results I have gotten. And then I made a
case (not a proof, etc) that my choice of axioms is better. If it
doesn't convince, that's fine. I wish I was a better convincer in that
case. But I still feel confident that my reasoning is sound.

That, I think, is a much more plausible view than the classical one. I
also believe great changes come out of catastrophes (the greatest
changes coming from Noah's flood).

Suppose that some new catastrophe happens and out of it we do observe
speciation and adaptation. All this can demonstrate is that in this one
instance of a catastrophe, it happened this one time. We have no idea
whether that's how it happened before and we cannot use science to know
that. It just has to be believed (like a religious belief).

Your theory about catastrophes is not the religious part. Your idea that
if a catastrophe happened tomorrow it would tell use something about
catastrophies before... that is the religious part. And while I agree
with empiricism in some cases, I do not think it should be uniformly
believed. But I totally respect the attitude that it should be uniformly
believed, if that is how you feel.

AdventureBegins:

The following beliefs cannot ever be verified as true my observing data:

1. The belief that empirical logic leads to true conclusions.
2. The belief that being skeptical leads to true conclusions.
3. The belief that there was a time when no life existed on earth.
4. The belief that there never was a time when life did not exist on
earth.

Since these four beliefs, for example, cannot be verified, then you
cannot use beliefs 1 and 2 to claim true statements about beliefs 3 and
4. This is all I am saying. At some level, however far back you want to
take this, evolution rests on unsubstantiatable claims. Science itself
rests on claims like these. The only reason we deal with it is because
science is useful if it can provide immediate application.

In this sense, evolution clearly is a religious belief. For example,
there are about 12 different philosophies within evolution, many of
which contradict each other. The very famous evolutionary author Stephen
J. Gould believed in punctuated equilibria, which says that mutations
accumulate over thousands of years and then BAM they appear in fossils
all of the sudden. Richard Dawkins, however, another very famous
evolutionist, thinks this ideas is completely silly.

Let me be clear, it is okay within science to have very smart men who
disagree. But when the science they are disagreeing about cannot be
substantiated with observation, and then two very smart people disagree
about a very fundamental detail (like how mutations ultimately provide
speciation) then it is obvious that it cannot be founded in science. If
it were scientific, then there would (at leat in theory) be an
experiment that could theoretically tell the difference between
punctuated equilibria and gradualism. But no such experiment can
possibly exist because we cannot possibly know whether the way in which
point mutations accumulate now relates at all to how it used to
accumulate.

Again, if you wanted to, you could merely accept the philosophy of
uniformitarianism (as Dawkins does) and then assert that mutations take
effect gradually. But there is not way to scientifically or
observationally validate the philosophy of uniformitarianism. This is
what I have been saying all along.

If you take for granted the religious (philosophical) belief that since
things look gradual today, they must have always acted gradually, then
yes you can make sense of evolution. But you cannot use science to
justify that initial religious idea of gradualism... that must simply be
accept or rejected based on some other kind of evidence.

Since evolutionary theory rests on this axiom (uniformitarianism) it is
a religion. The most baffling thing that evolutionists try to do is make
the case that their belief system requires no axioms. However, that is
absurd. Even the belief that your own thoughts are trustworthy requires
axioms to some degree. You have to believe that your sensory information
is not somehow distorted from the time it hits your eyes to the time
your brain processes it. I agree this is an extreme example, but it
illustrates my point that all sets of beliefs, including the
evolutionary set, require axioms. And any et of beliefs that requires
axioms and attempts to explain the origin of the universe is a religion.

Abracadabra:

Why do evolutionists always resort to this? Again, you provide no
evidence for your claims, you just state them. You say you have evidence
for evolution, but you don't supply it. At least I am providing detailed
arguments for what I am claiming.

Secondly, you must have misread my post about Quantum Loop Gravity,
because I did respond to that and pointed out how it is little more than
a religious belief with no obervational foundation. String theory is
even worse and almost all credible physicists that I know reject both
QLG and string theory.

Secondly, I am only 21 but that does not mean that I cannot think
deeply. I am open to all arguments, but I believe I have answered your
replies at every account. I agree with you that we're not making any
progress (rarely do debates about this ever produce progress). Evolution
is a religion like all others. My beliefs are likewise a religion. I
adopt a religion because I cannot explain everything. Evolutionsists do
the same. Accusing me of being narrow minded because of my age is only
showing narrowmindedness on your part. Regardless of my age, I let the
logical, philosophical, and scientific analysis speak for itself.

Finally, why is it that you believe skepticism is important, if not for
faith that you'll be more correct by being skeptical. All people,
regardless of how vehemently they deny it, believe in some things merely
on faith. If you dogmatically assert than nothing should be accepted on
faith, then that very dogmatic assertion represents a faith-held belief
of yours. I know this is very recursive and difficult to sort out, but
it is nevertheless true. As humans, with limited ability to evaluate the
world in the finite amount of time we live, we have no choice but to
accept some things by faith. Even if that "thing" we accept on faith is
the belief that we should always be skeptical.

AdventureBegins:

"Correlation between that creature and the
closest current example of that creature show that said creature did in
fact produce offspring as a species. A comparison of fossils from
diferent epochs can indeed give an indication that evolutanary processes
"

This is precisely what I am disputing. There is no correlation between
fossils and the animals living today unless the fossil is of exactly an
animal that has been living in the last 7000 years. You cannot translate
fossils into genetics, and genetics is the only possible evidence that
counts in the evolution debate, because you cannot demonstrate that
whatever particular animal it is that became fossilized ever produced
offspring. Further, you can't compare fossils from different epochs
because there has only been less than one epoch of existence for the
earth. In order to accept a fossil as a correlation between species now
and prior species, you'd have to agree that the bones in the ground give
you a good indication of whatever animals lived. We cannot possibly know
whether that is true or not except in the case that the animal was
fossilized in the last 7000 years.

I see your point. Really, what you are saying if that IF gradualism is
true... THEN fossils provide evidence. I am saying that fossils cannot
be used to support gradualism. Gradualism has to be true FIRST and THEN
fossils become important. You make a good point, but it does not
eliminate my claim.

Also,

I misspoke about entropy above. I meant to say that entropy always
increases in a closed system. I typed that it never increases, which is
silly given the context of the post.

One final note,

in response to the LQG theory you mentioned.

If the intelligence present in the universe can only be explained via an
infinitely recursive sequence of previous universes that no one can
possibly observe, how is that idea different from any religious belief?

If you can't observe them, they fall outside the real of science. Thus,
LQG is a religious idea. I'm open to debates about different religious
ideas, but I am arguing that science precludes evolution and gradualism
from being believed, and hence atheism cannot be a logically
self-consistent set of beliefs either.

Your particular set of beliefs is sefl-consistent, I just happen to
disagree with the philosophical reasons you have for believing it. I
also can't see how you can reconcile your beliefs with the modern
theories of evolution and the big bang.

Abracadabra:

I don't see how you can reconcile your beliefs about an eternal ambient
god-like "force" with your obvious skill and knowledge of science.

First I would like to note that nowhere in your argument did you
challenge any of the claims or evidence that I brought up. You merely
assterted, without support, that evidence for the big bang and evolution
are undeniable. This is merely dogma. You would harshly criticize any
religious person who claimed that the evidence for Christianity (for
example) is undeniable, saying that the evidence "from where you're
sitting" does not give you the same picture.

What I am saying is that in order for intelligence (i.e. discernable
code contrasted against non-code) to exist, there must be a causal agent
that has caused it to exist or else it must have always existed. This
realization prevents atheism from being a meaningful philosophy. I think
we both agree on that.

You ask how it is that I explain where the intelligence or the
information contained in God came from. Be careful, though, in reading
my argument. I said that every effect has a cause. That does not mean
that every thing has a cause. Some thing clearly must exist in its own
right. Some thing must be self-existant.

You claim that this "thing" that is self-existant is the sum total of
matter, time, space, and energy and the structure that enables these
four to function with each other.

I claim that this self existant "thing" is an external God who has
chosen to reveal himself in particular ways throughout history.

Your claim cannot be substantiated for the following reasons. If the
universe itself were self-existant, then we must believe that the
intelligence and coded information therein is also self-existant. This
is because such information cannot arise from non-information. Thus, to
claim that the sum total of material in the universe is self-existant is
to claim that intelligence itself (i.e. information) is self-existant.

But clearly the understanding of the universe demonstrates that it
always tends to move from a more organized state (less entropy) to a
more chaotic state (less entropy). The laws of thermodynamics tell us
that entropy never increases within any closed system. Your belief that
the universe is self-existant is the equivalent of saying that the
universe is a closed system. Hence, the total entropy within the
universe must always be increasing and it will continue to increase
until the universe reaches a heat death where all matter is uniformly
distributed throughout all space and all matter is resting at the same
temperature. This is the epitome of non-information. This obviously
raises the problem, if the universe is self-existant and the encoded
information therein is self-existant, then why is it irreversibly
required to diminish forever until their is none left?

You will not find a physicist who testifies to anything else in the
course of the universe. Entropy always increases, and this is undeniably
true under your contention that all that exists in the universe and its
contents. One cannot simply view "God" as being the equivalent of the
"life force" of the ambient space of the universe, and you are certainly
a disjoint creature from God himself. If your beliefs were true, then I
would have to accept the fact that all life will die and that in the
future no life (and thus no "god-life-force") will exist anywhere. But
you said at the outset that this "god-like-force" was self-existant. If
it is self-existant, yet it cannot prevent its own non-existence, then
it is entirely contradictory and I do not believe in it.

Even further, you yourself mention the big bang. That would immediately
mean that the universe has only existed for a finite amount of time and
hence is not self-existant. How can you believe that the ambient
universe is a "god-like" self-existant force, but also believe that it
"started" to exist 14 billion years ago? That too is entirely
contradictory.

The only explanation is that there is an external causal agent, wholly
separated from the universe, that caused to universe to start existing.
My very limited brain is certainly not capable of comprehending such a
creator, except in the small ways that he makes himself known to me. And
just because I cannot explain every detail about him does not mean he is
not responsible for creation. I agree that we should apply Occam's razor
to our reasoning (i.e. be skeptical). In fact, that is exactly what I am
doing. Applying Occam's razor to your argument that the ambient universe
is a "god-like-force" quickly shows that such an ambient universe cannot
be self-existant because it cannot perpetuate its own existence (as
demonstrated by the increasing entropy dictated by the laws of
thermodynamics). So again, applying Occam's razor leads me to believe
that an external causal agent (God) is not only probable, but strictly
necessary in order to explain the existence of the universe.

You raised the metaphysical question about how can God have created the
universe yet still be a wholly separate being than it is. I don't
necessarily believe you are articulating the problem correctly. I
believe that I am wholly separate from God, but that I cannot sustain my
own existence. Without an external God sustaining existence, I would
cease to exist. Thus, I am wholly dependent on God. Yet he is not at all
dependent on me. So the dependence goes only one way.

Just as a mother can birth a child that is wholly separate from her, God
begat a creation wholly separate from him. And just as the mother's
survival does not depend on the baby's, so God's existence does not
depend on the existence of his creation.

Again, I would just like to point out that many evolutionists say the
same things which you do, though most of them would not agree with your
religious feelings toward the ambient universe (perhaps Sagan is the
only one who would agree with you).

You make blanket statements such as "the evidence for evolution is
undeniable" but then do not attempt to explain why it is undeniable. In
fact, science prohibits ALL ideas that are undeniable. A theory is only
a scientific theory if it is possible to disagree with it. Saying that
evolution is undeniable is the same as saying it is a dogma, which it
is.

Evolution is a religious belief no different from any others. In that
sense I respect it and find it interesting, but it is by no means
compelling and least of all is it scientifically compelling.

If you guys are serious about free software, then switch from Windows to
Linux.

With Linux you can find a free version of almost any commercial software
that runs on Windows. Better yet, you just go to a little package
manager application in Linux, type in what you want, it searches and
finds it for you, and then you click 'install' and it installs right
then. Very fast, very easy. Many distributions of Linux are very much
like Windows (I suggest Ubuntu for beginners) and there is no need to
really learn a lot of "coding" or "command line crap" unless you really
want to. Once Linux is installed, it can be used just like Windows.
Plus, it and all the software for it are always completely free.

Also,

About the peppered moths.

This particular incident is a classic misuse of bad and very subjective
data. The sample of moths that was used for this study was hilariously
mis-calssified. What happened was that a team of scientists went out to
this small patch of forest and counted the number of white moths vs. the
number of peppered (black) moths they could see on the trees. Then,
after a factory was built nearby, they waited several years and decided
to go back to see if the soot from the factory had any effect of the
colors of the moths. They reported back that nearly all the moths were
now peppered (black) and concluded (very incorrectly) that this was
evidence of natural selection.

What they don't tell you in the text book is that in that initial
observation of white vs. black moths, they only observed about 5% of the
total being white in the first place. When they came back later they
only found 2 white moths overall. All that this says is that the
particular forest area that they studied was a poor choice for comparing
white vs. black moths since hardly any white moths lived there in the
first place.

I had to take 3 college level evolutionary biology courses before a
professor (who is an evolutionist) finally pointed out that the moth
example is a very bad one that was horribly misused by the media.

Thus, not only does the moth story not prove evolution (which is not
possible) but it also does not even act as evidence for evolution. It
merely illustrates how poorly this kind of data is used and the urgent
need for people to start questioning what is written in textbooks.


Some other very blatant misuses of data in the case of evolution are:

Lucy, the "primitive" human set of bones found in Africa.
Archeopteryx, the supposed missing link among birds.
All fossil evidence
All icecore evidence
All radiometric dating evidence

Let me give just a brief description of why I feel this way in each
case.

1. Lucy, the primitive human bone set,
These bones were found scattered over a 2 mile radius. They found the
leg bones extremely far from the rest of the bones, and the total set
amounts to less than 40% of a completed skeleton. In addition, it is
obvious from the skeleton that Lucy did not walk upright. The
archeologist who discovered the bone set found the set of bones exactly
2 weeks before his grant money was set to run out and as a result became
one of the most famous archeologists of his time (Donald Johanson).

2.Archaeopteryx, which was reported as an important missing link among
birds, was discovered in Germany in the mid 1800s. National Geographic
did a huge story on this fossil in the 90s, and then later had to
retract its story when leading paleontologists came out with a new
report about it saying that archaeopteryx was nothing but a different
kind of bird that is extinct.

3. All fossil evidence.
You cannot demonstrate that any animal that was fossilized ever had any
offspring. Thus, we cannot possibly know whether or not they passed on
any genetic traits. We also cannot know whether it was probable that
they did or did not reproduce. Thus, whatever animals that are
fossilized cannot be used to determine what animals were like in the
distant past. A fossil merely shows us that ONE animal that died at some
point. Aside from some minor details about biomechanics, it cannot tell
you any more information than that. I think the flood offers a much
better account for fossils that paleontology.

4.Icecore evidence and tree-ring evidence.
Often you hear people say that icecores and tree rings show just how old
things are. This is completely untrue. For instance, it is an often
believed myth that trees will have one ring for every years that they
grow. Trees have been observed to form between 1 and 10 rings in a
single year. Heat and insect population are factors that control tree
ring formation, and since we can't know those details about the distant
past, we cannot claim that very old trees have exactly X number rings
because they are X years old. The exact same thing is true of ice vs.
snow density patterns in ice cores. These do not form in a predictable
way each year. Some years the ice vs. snow density pattern can vary from
between 6 to 12 rotations. Scientists often just assume that you'll get
2 rotations per year. Thus they get grossly inaccurate age results.

4. Radiometric dating
This one is very easy to dispute. To believe radiometric dating requires
that you first believe that unstable atomic compounds have been decaying
at the same rate as we now observe. Since decay rates depend on many
external conditions, which we cannot know about the past, we can easily
argue that these things decay differently now than they used to decay.
In addition, any radiometric measurement made that claims to talk about
time periods older than 30,000 years will have such an enormous margin
of error that to believe it would be ridiculous. Since only C-14 can be
used to date things 30,000 years or younger, we can reduce the entire
argument about radiometric dating down to C-14. Since C-14 follows
differential decay rates proportional to how much of it is in the
atmosphere, we can very easily see that since we do not know how much
C-14 has been present on the earth in the past, we cannot intelligently
talk about decay rates in the past, and hence cannot use C-14 to date
things older than about 7-10 thousand years.

These are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the details they
leave out of chool textbooks for fear of encouraging "religious"
discussion about origins.