Stephen C Myer Books and ID org

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

 

Anyone read any of his books?

 

There are also videos from Illustria Media to support Intelligent Design.

 

I am trying to find out who finances them. While much of the science is what we expect, much of the spiritual side is questionable. Also dabbling in social issues, euthanasia and gun control make it difficult to recommend their site.

 

I did like the mathematical equation to prove, that even of the whole earth was organic soup, the universe has not been around long enough for the 'chance' connection to produce 1(one only) protein.

And, as expected, there are those that still will not concede to the science.

 

 

Other books like this would be of interest to me. TIA

 

Older

{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2018 by carlos
rotated the pic

[Beggar for the Spirit]

Hi Tony,

 

We all have different consciences, but for me, I really like to watch the videos and read articles/books about Intelligent Design, including those by Meyer, ID.org, and the Discovery Institute. I have never read their "dabblings" in other social issues, but the good reasoning they use supported by modern scientific evidence is excellent in my opinion. And more scientists, biologists, chemists, etc, are joining their organization. The ""Discovery Institute" which Meyer is part of explains their organization this way:

Quote

 What is the Center for Science and Culture?
The Center for Science and Culture is a Discovery Institute program that supports the work of scholars who challenge various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory and scholars who are working on the scientific theory known as intelligent design, as well as advocating public policies that encourage schools to improve science education by teaching students more fully about the theory of evolution. Discovery’s Center for Science and Culture has more than 40 Fellows, including biologists, biochemists, chemists, physicists, philosophers and historians of science, and public policy and legal experts, many of whom also have affiliations with colleges and universities. The Center’s Director is Dr. Stephen Meyer, who holds a Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from Cambridge University.

 

 Is Discovery Institute a religious organization?
Discovery Institute is a secular think tank, and its Board members and Fellows represent a variety of religious traditions, including mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, and agnostic. 

If they were a religious organization and tried interpreting the Bible, then I would have a different view of them. But to me it is so refreshing to see scientific evidence presented supporting the fact that there is a "Designer". 

Edited May 8, 2018 by Beggar for the Spirit

[bohemian]

I have read both of Stephen Meyer's books and I really like them.  Also Douglas Axe's "Undeniable" is very good.  David Berlinski wrote an excellent book called "The Devils Delusion".  These I would recommend if you like ID books. 

Re their website, you do have to be somewhat selective.  I look at "evolutionnews.org" and find some interesting articles and podcasts.

 

Another good choice is Dr Lennox.  He is a Roman Catholic and writes very persuasively against the 'new atheists'. "Gunning For God" and his reply to Stephen Hawkins "Whose Design Is It Anyway?" are both good reads.

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I got this from one of the books.
If I got this wrong, please correct me.

It appears there is still an unanswered mystery in our DNA. Yes, we can spell out the letters, but we cannot 'read' it. But he made a comparison where a CAD program can be used to design a component 'on-screen'. Then that can be 3D imaged, to check it will work out in the 'real world'. Once the design has been tested 'virtually', it can be sent off to be 'machined' and created in the real world.
Now if I understood this correctly, It is possible that the CAD program can send full machining codes, so they can be fed straight into a 'milling machine', and 'voila', the 'real' component is made.
Now here is the comparison....
The CAD program and the milling machine BOTH use the same code. One 'writes' it and the other can 'read' it and turn it into something real.
Our combined DNA has our full biological make-up. But, what is the 'milling machine'?
Yes, there is the womb, and while that is more like the 'factory building' (Sorry - no offence meant), where are the instructions decoded and actioned?
What device 'reads' the code, and says to the stem(?) cells, ok, you are bone. Stop, you are soft tissue, you are now going to be nerves, turn left here, join to the back of the retina... etc
We see the cells split and multiply before our eyes, but we see no directive 'milling machine'.
The womb hosts the new growth, but who, how or what directs the growth?
I never thought of that before.
If the chances of the DNA code coming about by chance are astronomical, what are the chances of another device to read and interpret exactly the same code?
Or is the code replication self managed, like a 'zip' file. (maybe it is not junk DNA, but a zip file - a code within the code!)
I cannot grasp the details that Meyer outlines, but if I understood just this part right, the complexity of life is way beyond a 'chance' happening.
Chance 'Life' is the definition impossibility.
Feel free to correct me if I got this wrong.

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

[jayrtom]

11 hours ago, TonyWenz said:

I got this from one of the books.
If I got this wrong, please correct me.

It appears there is still an unanswered mystery in our DNA. Yes, we can spell out the letters, but we cannot 'read' it. But he made a comparison where a CAD program can be used to design a component 'on-screen'. Then that can be 3D imaged, to check it will work out in the 'real world'. Once the design has been tested 'virtually', it can be sent off to be 'machined' and created in the real world.
Now if I understood this correctly, It is possible that the CAD program can send full machining codes, so they can be fed straight into a 'milling machine', and 'voila', the 'real' component is made.
Now here is the comparison....
The CAD program and the milling machine BOTH use the same code. One 'writes' it and the other can 'read' it and turn it into something real.
Our combined DNA has our full biological make-up. But, what is the 'milling machine'?
Yes, there is the womb, and while that is more like the 'factory building' (Sorry - no offence meant), where are the instructions decoded and actioned?
What device 'reads' the code, and says to the stem(?) cells, ok, you are bone. Stop, you are soft tissue, you are now going to be nerves, turn left here, join to the back of the retina... etc
We see the cells split and multiply before our eyes, but we see no directive 'milling machine'.
The womb hosts the new growth, but who, how or what directs the growth?
I never thought of that before.
If the chances of the DNA code coming about by chance are astronomical, what are the chances of another device to read and interpret exactly the same code?
Or is the code replication self managed, like a 'zip' file. (maybe it is not junk DNA, but a zip file - a code within the code!)
I cannot grasp the details that Meyer outlines, but if I understood just this part right, the complexity of life is way beyond a 'chance' happening.
Chance 'Life' is the definition impossibility.
Feel free to correct me if I got this wrong.

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}
 

Hi

Nice topic. I too have read Meyer's Book on ID and found it excelent. I particularly liked the argument about probabilistics resources (that I think you mentioned on the first post)

I think there is no way to counteract the power of this argument: For instance, it's very difficult to launch 16 dices and all of them show the same number. But we can increase the probabilistic resources of that event which is done by lanching the 16 dices several times consecutively. There is an amount of times that we launch the dices that makes the event of giving the same number, probable! (we would call it probable if the probability of the event is at least 50%)

Now, someone could say the same for the event of Life coming by chance: Giving enough time,  an extremely unlikly event such as this would become very likely. But then we can estimate the amount of probabilistic resources that are available for this event by answering this questions:

How much was available for the universe to launch the dices?

How many times could we launch the dices per unit of time?

And other questions like this...

It's possible to know the probability of a single aminoacid appear by chance 

We know also for how many years the universe exists

Also how many particles are there in visible universe (there is no point in thinking in multiverses or unseeable particules because they can't interect with the others within the study)

Then the calculation considering how many interactions are possible between all the particules in universe for all the time the universe has been in existence still gives an amount of probabilistic resources that clearly atates how unlikly it is for a single aminoacid to appear from simple chance (let alone the DNA)

 

 

As for the questions you pose in this post I think that the DNA has the code built in for every type of cell. When the DNA is being read each sequence gives the instruction to make what ever is needed - Search for replication and transcription

[bohemian]

It was once thought that the DNA contained all the information to make you, but it is now seen to be a myth.  There is a huge amount (possibly more than the DNA) of epigenetic information i.e.information not contained in the DNA which contributes to things like the order of gene activation and the timing etc.  Also it is being realised that the once-discounted Lamarckian idea of acquired characteristics is not altogether wrong, but at the cellular level, at least, it is still a valid proposition.

What was once considered junk DNA is now seen to be vital. The ENCODE project has done amazing work on that.

14 hours ago, TonyWenz said:

If the chances of the DNA code coming about by chance are astronomical, what are the chances of another device to read and interpret exactly the same code?
Or is the code replication self managed, like a 'zip' file. (maybe it is not junk DNA, but a zip file - a code within the code!)
I cannot grasp the details that Meyer outlines, but if I understood just this part right, the complexity of life is way beyond a 'chance' happening.

Molecular machines read the code from dna into rna, then this is in turn read by other molectular machines to make proteins. The folding of proteins and their amino-acid makeup determine their function, although it is now known that they can fold in maybe two ways and perform two different functions.

Watch this tedx talk on evolutionnews:

 

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Thanks for your comments.
I first learned about Meyer by a DVD someone gave me.
A comment he made on that DVD has stayed with me. I think it showed him addressing an audience and made reference to some legal term, to say (in effect)... 'while we are discussing the chances of the sequence falling in the correct order.... this is no way addresses the insurmountable problem, where did all the 'matter' come from?'
This question still remains unanswered.
Based on Newton's 3rd law, there is only one answer.

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Looks like another good read. If anyone has read it, please let me know your thoughts. Ty.
(I'll be in the States in a couple of months and might be able to get one if it is worth it.)

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

[bohemian]

I have just bought it on Kindle from Amazon and have it for my holiday train ride reading next Saturday.

[jayrtom]

On 6/10/2018 at 4:26 PM, bohemian said:

I have just bought it on Kindle from Amazon and have it for my holiday train ride reading next Saturday.

Me  too

[bohemian]

4 hours ago, jayrtom said:

Me  too

Wow. Where are you going on holiday by train?  My wife and I are going from London to Berlin.

[jayrtom]

13 hours ago, bohemian said:

Wow. Where are you going on holiday by train?  My wife and I are going from London to Berlin.

Loool. Well that's a long journey 😉 The maximum time I travel by train is 2H when I go from Oporto to Lisbon. But my imagination travels a lot and far far away

[bohemian]

Got back from Berlin on Sunday and this evening I completed the book Heretic.  I enjoyed the book very much as it is very much a personalised explanation of a mental journey.

There was not a great deal of ID information that I was not already aware of (I keep a close eye on Evolution News website), but there was some good detail on enzymes etc.

I think it is worth reading.

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Ty. I'm off to the US next month. I'll try get a copy (I like books..) Thanks for the critique.... Cheers

Older
{still waiting for the 'Wiser'}

[bohemian]

A book which I am currently re-reading is Tom Bethell's "Darwin's House Of Cards" and this I can heartily recommend.  Written in a very readable style it is a very well-documented critique of neo-Darwinism.

https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-House-Cards-Journalists-Odyssey/dp/1936599414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531140805&sr=8-1&keywords=tom+bethell

 

[jayrtom]

3 minutes ago, bohemian said:

A book which I am currently re-reading is Tom Bethell's "Darwin's House Of Cards" and this I can heartily recommend.  Written in a very readable style it is a very well-documented critique of neo-Darwinism.

https://www.amazon.com/Darwins-House-Cards-Journalists-Odyssey/dp/1936599414/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531140805&sr=8-1&keywords=tom+bethell

 

Thanks for the suggestion and your reviews. Just bought it and is in line for my nex reading 😉

[bohemian]

 

[bohemian]

I finished Tom Bethell's book yesterday (2nd time of reading) just in time for my latest purchase to drop on my doorstep today - 

Nonsense Of A High Order: The Confused World Of Modern Atheism by Rabbi Moshe Averick.

 

[bohemian]

A very interesting point from the above book, something I had not really thought about before.

When discussing the existence of God, if the atheist refers to evolution then it is totally irrelevant!  Evolution, even if it were true in all its Darwinian glory, has no bearing on the existence of God.  Evolution can only operate on life (if it operates at all) so the real question is: How did life originate?   

No-one has any idea, say all the scientists researching this area. To get from non-living chemicals to the "simplest" of cells i.e. the bacterium, is absolutely beyond any scientific explanation. I put 'simplest' in quotes because a bacterium is anything but simple! The dna, the rna, the nanomachinery, ribosomes, cell membrane etc etc. are incredibly complex, not to mention its ability to self-replicate. 

[bohemian]

Following on from the above, it is not just the complexity in itself that needs to be explained, but the specified information that the cell contains.  It is like a language which can be understood, not just complex but conveying specified information. DNA needs an RNA machine to read it so that it can form proteins and RNA itself.  So if RNA is needed to form itself you have a classic chicken and egg scenario.

The argument from design is very effective as the only source anyone knows of that can produce information is intelligence.

[bohemian]

I found a great quote in a book about the evolution of the long-necked giraffe by W-E Lönnig:

The quote is by A. Lunn

"Faith is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links unseen."

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

I see he has a new book coming up...

The Return of the God Hypothesis

Older {waiting for wiser}

[bohemian]

.ReturnofGdHypth.pdf

 

Here is a link to Stephen Meyer,s Essay The Return of the God Hypothesis.

[carlos]

Thank you, Christopher!

[➕👇 ꓤꓱꓷꓠꓵ🎵Tone]

Another clever argument posted on their website.

Ann Gauger writes, "Think of a situation where you have to crack the code on a bank vault, with many dials in the code, say 150, each specifying 1 out of 10 digits."

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/11/in-arguments-for-intelligent-design-definitions-and-assumptions-are-important/

Older {waiting for wiser}