What's the connection between Physics and Intelligent Design Theory?

[rachmaninoff]

"Physics supports I.D. theory!"

There's an Intelligent Design Theory lecture coming up at my university next Monday. Someone put up a poster for it in our Physics Department. The speaker is a "Dr. Brian Miller", nothing useful comes up on him on google. I read the poster. I feel sick. Now I'm too depressed to do anything.

So here I am on GD.

 

[cronxeh]

Brian J Miller, PhD Physics, 1997 - Duke University
Adviser: Behringer

Stress Fluctuations For Granular Materials, D. Howell, B. Miller, C. O'Hearn, and R. P. Behringer, In Workshop on Friction, Arching, Contact Dynamics, pp. 133--147, D.E. Wolf and P. Grassberger, eds. World Scientific, 1997.
Stress Fluctuations For Sheared 3D Granular Materials, pp. 333-336, R. Behringer and B. J. Miller, Proceedings, Powders and Grains 97, R. Behringer and J. Jenkins, eds. Balkema, 1997.
Stress Fluctuations For Continuously Sheared Granular Materials, B. J. Miller, C. Hearn, and R. P. Behringer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3110-3113 (1996).

 

[ComputerGeek]

you know what annoys me about ID? That its supporters think it is an alternate explanation to evolution, but it is not. We know that evolution occurs in organisms that are in existence, all evolution does is talk about that process, not how the organism got there. ID focuses on how the organisms got there, so, it would be in a manufactured conflict with some theories in physics and pre-biotic chemistry.

 

[Evo]

Rachmaninoff, we feel your pain.

 

[Pengwuino]

There's an Intelligent Design Theory lecture coming up at my university next Monday. Someone put up a poster for it in our Physics Department. The speaker is a "Dr. Brian Miller", nothing useful comes up on him on google. I read the poster. I feel sick. Now I'm too depressed to do anything.
So here I am on GD.

Why don't you go see it, maybe it's not what you think... or he figured out the equation to God!

There was a flyer out for a colloquium a couple of weeks ago that looked suspiciously like someone was trying to refute the idea of discreet energy levels in the Bohr model... but it wasn't.

But then again maybe it was, I could barely stay awake.

 

[ZapperZ]

It's rather silly to proclaim that "Physics supports ID", when a major professional physics society has these official statements:

http://www.aps.org/statements/81_1.cfm
http://www.aps.org/statements/99_5.cfm

And as an antidote to the pain, if you can get access to it, read the Back Page opinion page of the 8 Oct. issue of the APS Newsletter by Marshall Berman. Ask Miller if physics is compatible with ID when the proponent of ID, the Discovery Institute, has THIS statement as one of its governing goals:

"To defeat scintific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"

... i.e. we don't care what is scientifically valid. We only care that it fits with what we believe in.

"To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"

So Miller is essentially using physics to support something that would like to kill physics in the first place. He, of all people, should know what a "paradox" is.

Zz.

 

[quantumdude]

There's an Intelligent Design Theory lecture coming up at my university next Monday. Someone put up a poster for it in our Physics Department.

I teach at a small college, and last year we had a speaker (can't remember the name) but he advertised himself as The World's Greatest Mentalist. What a pathetic statement that makes on the school's emphasis on real education.

 

[El Hombre Invisible]

I teach at a small college, and last year we had a speaker (can't remember the name) but he advertised himself as The World's Greatest Mentalist. What a pathetic statement that makes on the school's emphasis on real education.

'The World's Greatest Mentalist" would have a very different meaning in the UK. You would expect such a claim to be made perhaps in a prison, but not in a school.

 

[Kakarot]

NO i am the world's greatest mentalist!

 

[quantumdude]

So it was YOU who ripped off my school.

Ooooh, you are so banned!

 

[Pengwuino]

No IT IS I who is the greatest mental case!

 

[Chi Meson]

Reminds me of Tobias Funke (of TV's "Arrested Development"), who was the world's first "analrapist" (that's analyst/therapist).

How about a new thread where we can all declare ourselves "the world's best..." whatever.

Ooh, ooh, I just started it!

 

[matthyaouw]

No IT IS I who is the greatest mental case!

No, I am Spartacus!

Oh sorry, wrong thread.

 

[Smurf]

No IT IS I who is the greatest mental case!

That may be the most accurate thing you've ever said.

 

[rachmaninoff]

No IT IS I who is the greatest mental case!

That may be the most accurate thing you've ever said.

Hopefully it's not the most grammatically accurate! He wrote is where he meant am.

 

[Integral]

Brian J Miller, PhD Physics, 1997 - Duke University
Adviser: Behringer

Stress Fluctuations For Granular Materials, D. Howell, B. Miller, C. O'Hearn, and R. P. Beringer, In Workshop on Friction, Arching, Contact Dynamics, pp. 133--147, D.E. Wolf and P. Grassberger, eds. World Scientific, 1997.
Stress Fluctuations For Sheared 3D Granular Materials, pp. 333-336, R. Behringer and B. J. Miller, Proceedings, Powders and Grains 97, R. Behringer and J. Jenkins, eds. Balkema, 1997.
Stress Fluctuations For Continuously Sheared Granular Materials, B. J. Miller, C. Hearn, and R. P. Behringer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3110-3113 (1996).

Clearly his credentials include knowledge of evolution and other biological processes... NOT

If this guy were going to talk about metallurgy it may have been worth your time. He is out of his field and is no more an expert on I.D. then any layperson on the street.

 

[Pengwuino]

Clearly his credentials include knowledge of evolution and other biological processes... NOT

Reminds me of that guy who was a professor of theology that was giving lectures on why the WTC had to have been blown up (and oddly enough, didn't mention anything about God coming down and destroying it himself) and how some old fighter jet attacked the Pentagon.