Crystallizing a few reflections

Once upon a time there was a crystal which reflected on its own light. So that is what it did, as it was its nature and it was good. In a moment of reflection it thought it good to crystallize more crystals like itself that would form reflections of their own. Yet it reflected on this thought for an extra moment, weighing the danger of allowing others to reflect its light in themselves against the possibility of being able to infinitely reflect on things together with others. It allowed its thought to crystallize. For a moment the danger did not crystallize and all the new crystals reflected on things in harmony with each other. But there was an illusion that crystallized in one which drew so many in to reflect itself that it seemed to be reflecting its own light just like the original crystal. This crystal apparently illuminated many questions, yet it was all just an illusion that the original had already reflected on before it began.

Being mean enough to mean a little something

From a comment:
I didn't know where else to post this comment, but I thought it needed to be made.
To put it blatantly, you're a jerk.

If you call me a jerk then I may cry a little tear about it. After all, I'm a person too.

You approach each opinion and article that you refute like the person who wrote it was a clear idiot.

The interesting thing about text is that even if the person who wrote it is an idiot, they may be right because words have to be taken on their own terms. For example, you approach what I write like I am clearly a jerk and yet you apparently believe that I may be correct.

I treat honest idiots who happen to have a low IQ as the result of a disability in their brain with a form of respect, perhaps a little pat on the head.

They are people, wrong or not they deserve some respect.

This is all well and good in theory, yet in fact when you make a judgment you need to have examples in mind. So far all you've said is that a post where I suggest that people do not want to understand is the perfect example of a lack of respect, yet what if many do not want to understand. I wouldn't say that I respect all equally, at any rate.

You won't convince anyone if you're a jerk.

As social patterns in America indicate you'll never convince young men to be "nice" and feminine based on a feminized form of Christianity, instead they'll just leave Christianity.

I'm not sure that my goal is to convince anyone but if it was I wouldn't try to convince men based on how nice I am. You refer to biblical texts yet who knows what its writers might write to people who do not love to speak the truth and seek comfort by avoiding it in the name of love.

A perfect example is in this particular entry. Did you consider that people were actually struggling to understand your writing - that they WANTED to understand it and thus commented about it? ....

I have considered that, which is why I suggested some of the faults typical to my writing. Yet I also noted that they seem to begin to understand enough to know that they do not want to understand as is illustrated by the fact that their comments fail to focus on the facts or issues at hand. Typically they shift from the truth to dealing with whether or not I'm a nice fellow and so on but the truth is that even if I am not a nice fellow facts and logic will still be what they are. I wouldn't say that I'm always a nice fellow anyway.

But that is not the point, the point is that they are not lesser beings – they do not deserve your scorn.

It is because I do not consider them to be lesser beings that I treat what some write with contempt or disdain.

Refute away! Use the brains God had given you – but do so in love – as God has called you to do.

It seems that for you love can be summed up with: "Be nice." If that is your view of love and it is correct then you need to live by your own words because you're already failing by beginning a comment on being nice with: "You're a jerk." For that just doesn't seem nice!

Global Warming and the U.N.

A letter from skeptical scientists:

It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables. We therefore need to equip nations to become resilient to the full range of these natural phenomena by promoting economic growth and wealth generation.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has issued increasingly alarming conclusions about the climatic influences of human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2), a non-polluting gas that is essential to plant photosynthesis.
[...]
The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems.

(Emphasis added) (The full letter)

It seems to me that the environmentalists haven't dealt with the contradictions in their own philosophy. For example, on the one hand it's wrong to upset the balance of an anthropic principle apparently written into Nature while on the other man and technology are viewed as unnatural, causing "pollution" and misanthropic tendencies are allowed an outlet in this way. It's worth questioning, what is the basis for the judgments typical to environmentalists? Another example, many seem to be ignorant enough to believe in the Darwinian creation myth yet they object when one species causes the extinction of another. If all the diversity of Life has been created by random mutations being filtered by the process of natural selection then why object to more filtering?

Obviously you cannot create diversity or find the "origin" of specification of form and species in a process of filtration, which is why even Darwin noted that natural "selection" might more aptly be called natural preservation. Perhaps on some level even ignorant environmentalists know that their creation myth is false, therefore they know that species have value and are worth protecting because fundamentally different life forms do not and will not emerge based on processes of extinction or random mutation filtered by natural "selection"/preservation of form and information that already exists within a group of organisms. I.e. a group of organisms may be filtered through a process of natural selection all you like but all you can do is draw forth forms and adaptations already specified within the range of information already specified in the genome, perhaps even less given genetic entropy. Ironically this is the view that many environmentalists seem to adhere to in the real world of empirical facts. It's only in the imaginary world of Darwinism where one can cite their own hypothesis as the equivalent of empirical facts that they apparently believe that species or life forms emerge from natural selection filtering processes of death, extinction and so on.

Intelligent Design blog...

Intelligent Reasoning on ID type logic.

Comments

No biologist or biochemist argues we understand all the mechanisms of nature.
Clearly we don’t.
However, we need not look to intelligent design for the explanation of these puzzles, but rather await the stepwise progress of human technology and knowledge.

He seems to be summarizing how biologists train themselves to be blind based on myths about Progress and so on. Apparently biologists are indoctrinated, step by step, with imaginary notions of natural progress. They “need not look” or try to be aware of intelligence when simply imagining things about the mechanical tick and tock typical to technology, attributing their imaginings to the Blind Watchmaker is so much easier.

Ironically “stepwise” progress will never come if biologists sit around waiting for their Mommy Nature to make the type of selections that they imagine come naturally to her. Given their indoctrination it seems that generally they’ll never admit to the quantifiable impact of sight on things like intelligent selection and the progress typical to technology.[1] Indoctrination is not education, although those subject to it will fail to understand that. Sight is not blindness, although those who are blind may be confused on that point. Recognizing and seeing ID as a possible falsification of naturalism is only a science/knowledge stopper to those who want to act as if knowledge drawn mainly from their own imaginations is on a par with harder forms of science like physics which need not be propped up by or linked with philosophic naturalism.

Note that as knowledge tends towards progress “stepwise” based on the use of technology which tends to progress in such a way what is being found is that philosophic naturalism is less and less tenable the more that can be observed. Yet somehow progress towards something other a philosophy of naturalism is apparently interpreted as being based on “gaps” in knowledge, as many biologists want to fill all gaps with their own imaginations instead of admitting that the work of a mind can have effects which can be known as such. They seem to close their mind of the synaptic gaps as a supposed matter of principle and then imagine that opening it again will be the end of all progress towards knowledge as we know it. Every biologist that I’ve ever debated has been quite the fearful fellow as a result of the notion of Progress that seems to come naturally to them, yet putting aside all the fear and reading between their lines it still seems that they have a little mind left even if it is trying to crawl back into the womb of their Mother Nature, step by imaginary step.

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But surely the burden of proof lies with the challenger?

It seems to me that the burden of proof lies with those who claim that their theory is like the theory of gravity, claim that there is overwhelming evidence behind what they say, argue that the State must support their position and only their position, dictate that all parents must use their education dollars to teach their position and only their position, etc.

Also note that if someone is allowed to cite their own imagination as if it is evidence or proof then the burden of proof is itself imaginary. If ID types keep trying to specify a falsifiable definition and specification for Darwinism instead of joining Darwinists in blurring essential specifications then technology will naturally be on their side. Ironically, it will most likely keep evolving, step by step, to lift the burden for them with respect to revealing a number of highly essential specifications in the origin of the Cosmos, to the origin of life and perhaps even to the origin of specifications observed in many “species.”

By the evolution of technology I mean things like microscopes, telescopes, etc. I.e. it seems that technology will tend to reveal more specifications favorable to the ID hypothesis, naturally.
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[1] This was a reference to quantum mechanics. If you got it, then you're a bit of a geek. If you keep up with the debate there's a few layers of meaning here and there and probably some bad grammar as well.

A comment...

...if an infinite number of other possible universes exist then why is it not also infinitely possible for a infinitely powerful God to exist? Using the materialist same line of reasoning, if it is infinitely possible for a infinitely powerful God to exist then He, of 100% certainty, does exist no matter how small the probability is of his existence in one of the multiverses, and since he certainly does exist, according to the strict materialistic reasoning you gave me, Then all possibilities by default become subject to Him since He is by definition Omnipotent. As well logic dictates there can only be one infinitely powerful “Lord” of the multiverses. As well, the “recycling universe” conjecture suffers so many questions from the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) as to render it effectively implausible as a serious theory. The only hard evidence there is, the stunning precision found in the universal constants, points overwhelmingly to intelligent design by an infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator who originally established what the unchanging universal constants of physics could and would do at the creation of the universe. The hard evidence left no room for the blind chance of natural laws in this universe. Thus, naturalism was forced into appealing to an infinity of other untestable universes for it was left with no footing in this universe.

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bornagain77, 11/30/2007 (Uncommon Descent)