Critique of Intelligent Design

[badger2]

On page 60 of Hedin's Canceled Science, is the Second Law of Thermodynamics:

'There is additional corroborating evidence from physics that our universe is not infinitely old. One such line of evidence derives from an examination of the second law of thermodynamics. You may have heard it described as the law of entropy. The second law states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease with time. Entropy is sometimes described as a measure of the disorder within a system. It also has a more mathematically precise definition used in thermodynamic calculations.

A simple ramification of the second law is that in a closed system, heat energy will flow from a hotter to a colder object, but not in the opposite direction. All natural thermodynamic processes are irreversible like this....The second law is so pervasive in the universe that some scientists associate it with the direction of the passage of time (Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos).'
(Hedin, pp. 60-1)

A question thus arises as to the second law of thermodynamics with regard to the becoming space of time and the becoming time of space (post #480).

"Did the Big Bang Violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics?"

Did the Big Bang violate the second law of thermodynamics?

Believe it or not, cosmologists do understand basic thermodynamics.

ninewells.vuletic.com

 

[badger2]

Neither Hedin nor Broocks (OP) mention a second big bang, as if their non-existent entity, god, may have been smart enough and free enough to contradict oneself:

11 Nov 2023 Scientists Say There May Have Been a Second Big Bang

Scientists Say There May Have Been a Second Big Bang

Instead of a single Big Bang bringing the universe into existence billions of years ago, cosmologists are starting to suspect there may have been a second, transformative event that could explain the vast abundance of suspected dark matter. As New Scientist reports, our recent glimpses into the...

yahoo.com

 

[badger2]

Another take on parallel universes and a second big bang via the James Webb Telescope, mentions 'far more than 90 billion light years' @ timepoint 2:52; 'cat is dead and alive at the same time' @ 8:15; 'Are we looking into another Universe?' @ 10:35.

 

[Libby von H]

This thread will develop a critique of intelligent design, otherwise known as religious creationism. We choose the Broocks-Hedin assemblage because they will be speaking on 25 Oct 2023 in the very town that called them on their supposed "evidence."
4 Mar 2021 A Creationist Writes In

A creationist writes in: Eric Hedin resurfaces

This morning I got the following email, occasioned, I suppose, by the appearance of a new book by Eric Hedin published by the ID creationist outfit The Discovery Institute. The DI is promoting it heav

whyevolutionistrue.com

Well, don't call ID religious Creationism for starters.
released YESTERDAY the updated book that started it all, And he makes that case well, that you are being unscientific

Where in the TofC is religion NOWHERE
THE DESIGN INFERENCE BY Dembski PhD

ET CETERA

SO drop the bigotry, it is obvious to me

 

[badger2]

Well, don't call ID religious Creationism for starters.
released YESTERDAY the updated book that started it all, And he makes that case well, that you are being unscientific

Where in the TofC is religion NOWHERE
THE DESIGN INFERENCE BY Dembski PhD

View attachment 860049

View attachment 860050

View attachment 860051
ET CETERA

SO drop the bigotry, it is obvious to me

Your first command won't suffice precisely due to the theologian and physicist in the OP, who fuse ID and Creationism.

 

[badger2]

Well, don't call ID religious Creationism for starters.
released YESTERDAY the updated book that started it all, And he makes that case well, that you are being unscientific

Where in the TofC is religion NOWHERE
THE DESIGN INFERENCE BY Dembski PhD

View attachment 860049

View attachment 860050

View attachment 860051
ET CETERA

SO drop the bigotry, it is obvious to me

So we take a closer look at Dembski. We mentioned Coyne in post #129. Here is a Dembski-Coyne assemblage (both are U. Chicago, both are Jews). The 2009 publication should be of interest:

Coyne Compares Dembski to a Holocaust Denier

Coyne compares Dembski to a Holocaust denier | Uncommon Descent

'....2009 paper, Life's Conservation Law: Why Darwinian Evolution Cannot Create Biological Information.'

 

[badger2]

In the article by Dembski and Marks, "Life's Conservation Law," one notes in the abstract this passage:

'Though not denying Darwinian evolution or even limiting its role in the history of life, the Law of the Conservation of Information shows that Darwinian evolution is inherently teleological. Moreover, its shows that this teleology can be measured in precise information-theoretic terms.'

Extracting the word, 'teleology' there is
'Teleology. The philosophical study of manifestations of design or purpose in natural processes or occurrences, under the belief that natural processes are not determined by mechanism but rather their utility in an overall natural design; such ultimate purpose or design. New Latin teleologia: Greek teleos, complete, final, from telos, completion, end.
(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

We next show the link between Dembski and Hedin via the Derridean khora:

'Whether they concern the word khora itself ('place,' 'location,' 'region,' 'country,') or what tradition calls the figures -- comparisons, images, and metaphors -- proposed by Timaeus ('mother,' 'nurse,' 'receptable,' 'imprint-bearer'), the translations remain caught in networks of interpretation. They are led astray by retrospective projections, which can always be suspect of being anachronistic. This anachronism is not necessarily, not always, and not only a weakness from which a vigilant and rigorous interpretation would be able to escape entirely.

We shall try to show that no-one escapes from it. Even Heidegger, who is nonetheless one of the only ones never to speak of 'metaphor,' seems to us to yield to this teleological retrospection, against which, elsewhere, he so rightly puts us on our guard. And this gesture seems highly significant for the whole of his questioning and his relationship to the 'history-of-philosophy.' '
(Derrida J, Khora, in The Derrida Reader, ed. Wolfreys)

 

[badger2]

"Wherever there is transcendence, vertical Being, imperial State in the sky or on earth, there is (religion [italics]); and there is Philosophy only where there is immanence....only friends can set out a plane of immanence as a ground from which (idols [it.]) have been cleared."
(Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy)

We've found at least three places in Hedin's book, Canceled Science, where we think he is using the Derridean khora, which Derrida would call 'khora' and not "the khora."

 

[badger2]

Before fine-tuning our critique of intelligent design, we'll point to the three places Hedin uses khora, then explain how Derrida used it and excerpt from his "Khora," which first appeared in Poikilia: Etudes offertes a Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1987).

Hedin, Canceled Science, Khora I p. 37
'Chapter 2. Rooted in Reality. One of the first Boundaries of Science classes I taught met in a two-story circular building just across the road from the campus duck pond. Among the students in this class were two young men who turned out to be outspoken atheists....I often ended up walking with these two for about ten minutes across campus on our way to our next classes.'

Hedin Khora II, p. 91
'Chapter 6. The Lives of the Stars. Some of my favorite outdoor destinations are hikes deep into the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, their massive trunks the pillars of a cathedral of living green, one stretching out in every direction as far as the eye can see. And of these ancient woods perhaps my favorite is the Hoh Rainforest in Washington's Olympic Peninsula. The ancient rees there feel almost eternal.'

Hedin Khora III

Chapter 9. Information and the Origin of Life. Off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea lies the island of Gotland. My wife and daughter and I approached it by ship, and soon were docked in the picturesque old town of Visby. We were on a trip to visit my Swedish relatives who lived in a summer home on the far side of the island. Their quaint cottage was nestled in the pine woods just a couple hundred yards from the beach. After we arrived, we couldn't wait to explore this shoreline of the Baltic Sea.'

Chapter 9's khora goes further, though will suffice for our forthcoming comparison to the khora of Derrida.

 

[badger2]

Before continuing Hedin-Derrida khora investigations, and because RFK Jr.'s new book, The Wuhan Cover-Up was just released a few days ago, we point back to post #35 that links Broocks to Francis Collins, sidekick of the Jesuit Elf, Anthony Fauci.

'Chapter 22 How Drs. Fauci and Collins Lifted the Moratorium

But under our form of government, we must put our ultimate faith in ordinary men, not machines or experts.
(John F. Kennedy, October 10, 1957

By its terms, President Obama's moratorium would remain in effect pending an independent review of NIAID's gain-of-function research. But the White House put NIH in charge of hiring the "independent" contractor who would perform that review. The risk assessment's outcome was therefore never in doubt. Drs. Fauci and Collins, as usual, has the system wired. That exercise serves as a primer for how technocrats gin up pre-baked exonerations of pet projects they seek to acquit.
....
Richard Ebright told me that he personally likes Casagrande. "Rocco is a good guy," Ebright says, adding, "But when a contractor gets a large sum from an agency head, and he knows how that person wants the study to come out, the contractor will tend to tailor that report to meet those expectations." '
(RFK Jr., The Wuhan Cover-Up, pp. 132-3 How Drs. Fauci and Collins Lifted the Moratorium)

So christian mafiosi Broocks comes disturbingly close to an inner circle of bureaucrats who manipulated gain-of-function research before the SARS2 pandemic.

 

[badger2]

Ebright has been relegated Musk's Wax Museum:

https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright

***************************************************

'First the programme. The cosmogony of the Timaeus runs through the cycle of knowledge on all things. Is encyclopedic end must mark the term, the (telos [italics]) of a (logos [it.]) on the subject of everything that is: (Greek text here) trans. 'And now at length we may say that our discourse concerning the Universe has reached its termination.'

This encyclopedic (logos [it.]) is a general ontology, treating of all the types of being, it includes a theology, a cosmology, a physiology, a psychology, a zoology. Mortal or immortal, human and divine, visible and invisible things are situated there. By recalling it in conclusion, one picks up the distinction between the visible living thing, for example, the sensible god, and the intelligible god of which it is the image (eikon [it.]). The cosmos is the heavens (ouranos [it.]) as living, visible thing and sensible god. It is unique and alone of its race, 'monogenic.'

And yet, half-way through the cycle, won't the discourse on (khora [it.]) have opened, between the sensible and the intelligible, belong neither to one nor to the other, hence neither to the cosmos as sensible god nor to the intelligible god, an apparently empty space - even though it is no doubt not (emptiness [it.])? Didn't it name a gaping opening, an abyss or a chasm? Isn't it starting out from this chasm, 'in' it, that the cleavage between the sensible and the intelligible, indeed, between body and soul, can have a place and take place? Let us not be too hasty about bringing this chasm named khora close to that chaos which also opens the yawning gulf of the abyss. Let us avoid hurling into it the anthropomorphic form of the pathos of fright. Not in order to install in its place the security of a foundation, the 'exact counterpart of what Gaia represents for any creature, since her appearance, at the origin of the world: a stable foundation, sure for all eternity, opposed to the gaping and bottomless opening of Chaos. We shall later encounter a brief allusion of Heidegger's to khora, not to the one which in Plato would designate the place (Ort) between the existent and being, the 'difference' or place between the two.

The ontologico-encyclopedic conclusion of the Timaeus seems to cover over the open chasm in the middle of the book. What it would thus cover over, closing the gaping mouth of the quasi-banned discourse on khora, would perhaps not only be the abyss between the sensible and the intelligible, between being and nothingness, between being and the lesser being, nor even perhaps between being and the existent, nor yet between (logos [it.]) and (muthos [it.]), but between all these couples and another which would not even be (their[it.]) other.'
(Derrida, Khora, in The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances)

 

[badger2]

Aspects of Khora

Before a more intense exegesis of Hedin's modus operandi in Canceled Science, there are some important aspects of Khora.

Deregionalizing Ontology: Derrida's Khora

https://euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/E1754850008000109

(5., the 7th paragraph) 'That negative theology might well be a priori is a crucial point, because it suggests that negative theology itself is of the arch, that is, at the very least, archaic: transcendental....After all, this a priori that goes under the name negative theology is apophantic: it is Desein's first encounter with Being before one has a proper logic such as Aristotle's within which to 'forget Being,' as Heidegger might caution. To approach Khora primordially, transcendentally, one has to have recourse to at least something like a negative theology. Hence apophantically: there is Khora (il y a Khora) but Khora does not exist; Khora gives nothing in giving place; having nothing of its own, Khora gives form, and so on.

(8th paragraph, 'midwifery') Socrates is addressing the skill of the midwife who not only delivers infants but matches up men and women. The midwife stands back from the couple. She is 'shy even of matchmaking.' She acts outside the sexual act as the one who determines it.'

We've already mentioned the eerie way in which Broock's and Hedin's presentation at the University of Wisconsin was working its way up to the most delirious and absurd thing, an altar call for Jesus, as the presentation came to an end. Three of us (two women) got up and left.

But Deleuze and Guattari say that men are never more homosexual than when they arrange marriages.

 

[hadit]

The bigger question is, if evolution, as proposed by science, is true, why do so many people still not believe it?

Because they instinctively understand that design requires a designer, art requires an artist, music requires a composer, and chaos, not order, results from chaos. Nothing, not everything, comes from nothing.

 

[badger2]

Because they instinctively understand that design requires a designer, art requires an artist, music requires a composer, and chaos, not order, results from chaos. Nothing, not everything, comes from nothing.

The concept of "instinct" used here is a poor substitute for science, because the substance that's being designed may also be the designer. There's simply no need to anthropomorphize this concept whatsoever, which by default will revert to a non-existent, conscious entity that some call god.*

*Antinomy. 1. opposition; contradiction. 2. contradiction between inferences or principles that seem equally necessary and reasonable.
(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

 

[hadit]

The concept of "instinct" used here is a poor substitute for science, because the substance that's being designed may also be the designer. There's simply no need to anthropomorphize this concept whatsoever, which by default will revert to a non-existent, conscious entity that some call god.*

*Antinomy. 1. opposition; contradiction. 2. contradiction between inferences or principles that seem equally necessary and reasonable.
(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

So, to put this in terms that are easier to understand, I believe you are saying something that does not exist can create itself (see bold above). I do not believe that, because we've NEVER seen that happen, anywhere, at any time. That requires a whole lot more belief than it does to believe in a creator. Would you care to elaborate on that?

 

[badger2]

So, to put this in terms that are easier to understand, I believe you are saying something that does not exist can create itself (see bold above). I do not believe that, because we've NEVER seen that happen, anywhere, at any time. That requires a whole lot more belief than it does to believe in a creator. Would you care to elaborate on that?

No, something that exists can evolve into other things. The idea that the Universe has always existed gives it plenty of time to create things.

 

[hadit]

No, something that exists can evolve into other things. The idea that the Universe has always existed gives it plenty of time to create things.

Except that the prevailing scientific belief is that the universe has not always existed.

 

[badger2]

Except that the prevailing scientific belief is that the universe has not always existed.

Doesn't matter all that much: substance itself can be the designer no matter how long it has existed.

 

[hadit]

Doesn't matter all that much: substance itself can be the designer no matter how long it has existed.

We are talking about substance that does not exist creating itself, then designing itself. Quite fanciful, that. Do you believe that the matter and energy of the universe has always existed?

 

[badger2]

We are talking about substance that does not exist creating itself, then designing itself. Quite fanciful, that. Do you believe that the matter and energy of the universe has always existed?

No, your claim of substance not existing before it was created is pure speculation on your part and can't be proven.