The issue of chance... (My own introduction) (Evolution)

by Matt S. , Thursday, June 04, 2009, 02:18 (5650 days ago) @ David Turell

Godel's incompleteness theorem didn't say that... it says that in an axiomatic system involving arithmetic on the natural numbers some propositions will exist that are not provable by using the axioms in the system. His incompleteness theorem is misused all the time by creationists and ID proponents, usually by asserting that evolution cannot be proven by its own assumption. - To show why the theorem doesn't apply to the natural sciences, just note 2 things, that natural science is based on the system of Real numbers (Not natural numbers) and that natural science attempts to build theories by evaluating data... where in mathematics you formulate an idea and try to prove a result, or you look at existing theorems and try to prove similarities or corollaries. The differences are vast! - A joke illustrates this best. An astronomer, physicist and mathematician were vacationing in Scotland, when suddenly the astronomer cried out "Look, in that field--a black sheep! All sheep in Scotland must be black!" - To which the physicist replied "No, statistically, only SOME can be black." The mathematician looked skyward for a moment and then replied, "In Scotland there exists a field, in the field exists a sheep--and at least one side of it is black! - As for the information-theoretic arguments, the most notable author is Dembski (a comment has been deleted here.). There's a website that has tracked his peer-reviewed literature since graduate school and the only two such papers he published were about blood-clotting mechanisms, then his books pertaining to ID and then just things defending ID. No science. No results, just philosophy. When shown that he solved an algebraic equation wrong, he (to date) has yet to fix the result (its still in print). (Comment deleted.) 
For his information-theoretic arguments he tried to unite two unrelated results of information theory, but the most damning issue is that he completely mis-stated one of the theoretic components. He states the Kolmogorov theorem as high complexity/information content, not low complexity/information content--completely invalidating his own result. - From time to time I've come across other claims based on information theory, but they all (to date) have made some egregious error (such as inferring causation from correlation). - The search for design is ill-placed in the realm of physical arguments. Science has a pretty damn good lock on studying physical phenomenon.