Think Science .

One of the most commonly used arguments concerning an Intelligent Designer is the “Watchmaker” argument… Basically that anything complex requires an intelligent designer. Now Richard Dawkins basically blew this argument out of the water, but since ID people won’t read Dawkins, I’ll go ahead and explain the logically fallicy of the argument here.

Nothing designed is original… They are merely the result of small, incremental improvements over time. In other words, an evolution parallel.

Lets take the Watch as an example as it appears to be one of the favorite used by ID proponents:

The watch wasn’t invented one day by a man who decided, “Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to tell time?” It was a long, slow process involving thousands of years.

First there was observing the Sun. People could tell approximately what time of day it was merely by looking up and seeing where the sun was.

Of course that wasn’t always accurate enough so the Sundial was produced. Markings around the sundial could give much more accurate information in regards to what time of day it was.

Then there was the problem of cloudy days (not to mention nighttime) which led to the invention of the mechanical clock. The markings were the same as the sundial and even the hand moved in the exact same direction (clockwise). Other hands were eventually included to make the clock more accurate.

The first clocks weren’t very portable. They required weighted pendulums and weighed several tons. For that reason there was usually only one in each town (usually in a central location such as a church or clocktower). Refinements to the design were made until eventually the clocks weighed only a couple hundred pounds apiece and could therefore be placed in individual homes.

As clocks became shrinking in size, there became a challenge amongst engineers to create a portable version. Once the weighted pendulums were replaced by a series of springs, the clock became truly portable and the “watch” was invented.

Of course these first watches weighed between 10-15 pounds, but incremental improvements over the years eventually brought the size and weight down to the point where they could be comfortably strapped to the wrist.

Other improvements included a small pendulum inserted into the winding mechanism (self-winding) through replacing the mechanics of the watch altogether with piezoelectric crystals.

As you can see, the watch wasn’t just invented “out of the blue” by some genius in Switzerland, but rather evolved through thousands of years with small, incremental changes over time.

So, we can see pretty easily that the “Watchmaker” argument does not prove ID, but rather supports evolution rather nicely. ID proponents point to the watch as proof of the necessity of a designer. Dawkins refers to this as “The Blind Watchmaker” argument because it relies on the watch being invented by an individual that had never seen a clock, a sundial, or even the Sun itself to be valid.

I’ve already covered so many posts on evolution. So i decided to cover some fitness in evolution. Fitness, in evolutionary terms, is the ability of an individual organism within a population to pass its genes to future generations. That’s it. Nothing more and nothing less. Thus, if a particular variation (long beak or long legs or being faster or slower or more colorful) enables a particular INDIVIDUAL (organism) within a population to reproduce more (thus passing on its genetic structure) it is more fit.
So, if more women want my babies than yours I am the most fit assuming I have no problems with reproducing.

Survival has nothing to do with it. A peacocks bright and showy feathers are deleterious to its survival. However, a peahen will not mate with a bland male. Thus, you could be the last male peacock within a population - surviving because your feathers are less showy and bright. However, if the peahens won’t mate with you your fitness is zero.

Quite interesting. It raises few questions in my mind. Why the used gigantic PHENIX detector to record virtually every type of particle expelled at a right angle from the collision. After analyzing their data, the team found significantly fewer particles than conventional theory predicts. What do we mean by detectors and recorders capable of recording virtually every thing that is scattered by the collision? Do these record anything if it is dark?

My this quriy is based on the recent observation of the Dark Energy occupying as high as 72% of universe. If this energy which is extremely cold happens to be a constituent of mass and is released as impact of the collision would not get detected and recorded and would account for the missing mass that is the difference in the expected and detected particles. Based on this and such many other scientific experimental results/observations and other possible interpretations I am working on a new conceptual theory for “Beginning of Universe as duality and formation of particles with mass and observed properties and characteristics” which is nearing completion. This theory is purely philosophical as I am very poor at math. There are no mathematical expressions in it.

While the active material in CFLs is mercury which has already been shown to be the most dangerous pollutant on the globe, the active material in LEDs is arsenic.

I will grant that arsenic is much easier to contain/recycle than mercury, but LED bulbs have their own problems… Top of the list is that the energy output required to produce them actually exceeds the energy saved by using them.

The “green energy” people do have it right… We need to concentrate on cleaner, more efficient, and renewable energy sources. Even putting pollution aside, the Earth has enough oil reserves to last about another 60 years or so… and then we’re pretty much out. We have coal reserves to last about 100 years or so, but that’s got it’s own set of problems.

Of course the “conservatives” are intentionally blind as well with their focus on “nuclear” power because the uranium reserves are even more limited than oil. We have enough uranium to last about 50 years or so.

Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric, and whatever new technology we come up with in the future isn’t just “nice”, it’s necessity. At least for those of you planning on being around in 60 years.

First off, the next Ice Age is predicted to begin at around 2100AD, and that has been the prediction for about 50+ years. Things are moving right along schedule.

As far as stuff like the “unprecedented water run-off” goes, I’m sure you can figure out why that’s pretty much a crock. Basically, if we only been measuring the glacier run-off for about 50 years or so we doesn’t have an adequit baseline to begin with. I’ve always found it amusing that most of the “Global Warming” nuts state you can’t look at global climate “short term” because the “slight cooling trend” we are experiencing now is a short-term anomoly. but try to get then to go before 1860 and they balk. All their models collapse unless you concentrate solely on the last 150 years.