Mumble, you seem like someone who would really enjoy reading God's Debris. It's fiction, he admits it's fiction, but it's a damn good read anyway.

Merry Christmas to you, too.

I don't read ID sites or evolution sites.  I don't get my information from the internet.

Have I read about evolution?  I already stated that I have.  I have read all of Darwin's writings.  I pointed you to Stephen J. Gould.  I read the book by those evolutionists that won a prize a while back (their work on the galapagos finches) - their names elude me at the moment.  I've read more about evolution than anyone I've ever met, which includes some people with advanced degrees in biology.

Some people have the attitude that they don't read about that which they disagree with.  I have the opposite attitude.  My rationale is 1) how do you know that you disagree with it if you don't study it, and 2) how will you be able to argue your disagreements with it if you don't study it?

To be honest, you're probably better off getting your information from internet or popular science sources than you are from classic evolutionary texts, as long as the sources are legitimate ones. (That said, there's a lot of historical and social value in reading Darwin's writings. Props to you for having done so.)

Doh. Wouldn't be the first time an intro had been the best part of a book for me, and I gotta admit I've never thought of Scott Adams as, well, a writer. Gary Trudeau is another matter entirely. If I didn't largely hold prizes and awards in contempt, I'd say he should be the first to receive a Nobel lit prize for an ongoing graphic novel. I'm having 'terribly good fun' this week on account of him having chosen Mark (the gay NPR host) as the avatar for outraged disappointment from my neighborhood of the party. Here's hoping Mark gets around to biting the hand that feeds him hard enough to escape the treacly cluthches of his limousine liberal workplace...

Oops, quite right - I should'a said peptides, which where another place where they went to this well.

Nonetheless my point stands - these (never actually sourced) statistics have been made before, and disproven before.

Jonnan

Good point.

Completely impossiblr, no doubt. I should probably just give up my argument in despair.

pain and despair, despair and pain, woe is me.

Have I mentioned my despair?

Jonnan

Kharma is avoiding the discussion.

Off course being christian impacts your way of seeing evolution. I bet that if the bible said that everything consisted of crystallized sugar we would have had a discussion about how atoms are an dogma and nukes coverups and are actually conventional explosions with lots of actors. 

A sugar bomb, now that sounds nice.

Sorry, I was less than clear.  That was a qualifier on the following statements, not a response to the quote.

Maybe you can help me out here. I've never understood why anyone believes that this is a knockdown argument against creationism or intelligent design.

My understanding of 'who designed the designer' is that it's supposed to function as an internal critique of the argument from design. The intelligent design proponent claims that: (1A) certain complex features in the natural world entail the existence of a more complex designer. Promoters of 'who designed the designer' argue that this implies that: (1B) any complexity, whether natural or not, entails the existence of a more complex designer; and (2B) therefore, the designer must have a more complex designer.

But 1B doesn't obviously follow from 1A. It's always seemed to me that promoters of 'who designed the designer' read more into the argument from design than it actually contains, which explains why 'who designed the designer' is so unconvincing to anyone who believes that there could have been a supernatural first cause, ie. the people whom the argument is supposed to convince.

This is all really fast. I can explain all of this in greater depth if needed. This blog post goes some way in explaining these differences in how design proponents and non-design proponents handle the problem of infinite regress.

I haven't addressed it because, first of all, it is an irrelevant question to the discussion.  If we dug a time machine out of the earth tomorrow, I wouldn't know who the designer was, and I wouldn't know who designed the designer, but I would know the machine was designed.  Funny thing is, you'd know it too, but either you wouldn't admit to knowing it, or you'd try to say "well, it's different."

Second of all, irrelevant question or not (and it is), I haven't the foggiest clue about the designer or designers, so why on earth would I speculate about who designed him/it/them?

Third of all, as I've already said, all the theories on "your side" of the debate have the same issue.  "Oh, so evolution doesn't say how life got started, it just says how life changed into new life.  Well how did the first life get there?"  Or, "So a point of infinite density exploded into the big bang.  Well how did the point of infinite density get there?"  On and on.

If you would state that evolution doesn't address how the first life got there, or that the big bang doesn't address how the point of infinite density got there, then I would state that my theories don't address how the designer got there.

What?  What makes you think I give a rat's ass about the supernatural?

1. You haven't provided any observations or data that can be falsified either, and

2. I don't need to provide anything of the sort.  If your theory is wrong, I can just say your theory is wrong.

LOL.  Pot calling the kettle.

Caves are actually quite nice once you sweep the floors.

^ Ive been saying this for a while. Jupiter is also showing signs of global warming, losing a few of its rings and one of its eyes.

But Humans are arrogant. And think that because shit is changing that they are the cause of it. Reminds me of people of ancient times blaming crops being destroyed by locust as a punishment sent from the gods for our own actions. Science has just become our cultures new Religion. And the masses follow it just like their ancestors followed the bible and their deities.

It it not irrelevent, you are completely sidestepping the fact that if we were created by something, because we are too complex to have arisen by ourselves, the it clearly follows that whatever designed us was also designed, unless you invoke something supernatural.

I'm not sure if you're being obtuse deliberately or not...

Clearly, the explanation doesn't just begin with our appearance, does it? Evolution, the origin of life, the formation of earth, and the formation of the universe are all valid areas for scientific inquiry.

We absolutely are interested in the Big Bang and how it got there, our theories on it are not yet complete enough to tell us (yet). We absolutely are interested in how life originated, but our theories are not yet complete enough to tell us how it happened. We are making every effort we can to turn the clock back as far as possible over all events.

So, you absolutely do have to address how the designer got there, sooner or later. I would first focus on developing a model that shows we were designed.

You said science doesn't discriminate between the natural and supernatural. I told you it filters the supernatural out, or the supernatural becomes natural. I'm trying to guage if you really know how science works at the fundamental level.

I'm actually asking questions about the philosophy of science. Pay attention. You are the one claiming evolution is wrong because of x,y,z, and that you think everything was just designed, but you refuse to supply the one thing you need to begin scientific equiry: observation or data. At least evolution has a fossil record and a ton of models that have been posted here already.

And yes, you can just say a theory is wrong because you think it's wrong, but that doesn't make you right. In this case, I think until you can back up your claim you just look like a crackpot. To disprove a theory, you have to come up with a better model and show it works via experimentation. Otherwise, it's not science, it's a different philosophy.

Nice try. Merry Christmas.