ID number: 5584351557878935033
Permalink: http://escapist5.blogspot.com/2008/06/creationism-irresponsible-pseudoscience.htmlYou're given a flyer about a talk, "Information: The Key to Understand (sic) Nature and Science". The fellow making the presentation, "some head of Information Technology" from "some university". It's an event organized by the engineering department of the university in collaboration with the foreign students department.
Now, thinking that it must be interesting, you turn up for the talk. Much to your surprise, you discover that, heck, the talk has nothing to do with "Information Technology". The fellow turns out to be some proponent of creationism, who has the nerves to refute Darwin's theory of evolution when he appears to be ignorant of the subject.
Unfortunately, I was one of the unaware idiots who attended the talk. My only consolation is, there's a bigger idiot who draws ridiculous conclusions based on flawed assumptions. A friend suggested that I should file a formal complaint to the university but considering that I was quite amused by his so-called "theorems" (so the session wasn't a total waste of time), I decided not to. Nevertheless, I strongly think that it was irresponsible of the organizers in coming up with such a misleading title for the talk.
That night, I Googled for the professor's name. My search returns an entry of that fellow's page on Wikipedia. (You've gotta love Wiki!) Werner Gitt, as I found out, is a famous proponent of creationism from Germany, whose theories, however, are rejected in the scientific community as pseudoscience. (It didn't come as any surprise, though.)
The pdf version of his book, "In the Beginning was Information" is available online. So, I'm not going to elaborate too much on his flawed theories. Simply speaking, he dimissed evolutionism, claiming that macro-evolution (a fish turning into a frog, for instance) is impossible.
Why?
Because a creature who has the DNA of a fish cannot possibly turn into a frog. The DNA is designed to do only what it is supposed to do. Darwin knew nothing about DNA and therefore drew wrong conclusions.
Oh yeah, neither do you, Professor Gitt. Go read up on natural selection. For goodness sake, don't make assumptions when you have no understanding at all about the subject.
Besides, the complexity of the DNA proves that it must have come from an designer. And this is whom we call, the creator.
Oh wait, Professor Gitt, that sounds familiar. Ah, the watchmaker analogy! But isn't that obviously self-contradicting? It means, to be able to design such a complex thing as the DNA, the creator must be complex enough, and therefore has to be designed by something even more complex.
Aha! That is why the creator is omnipotent!
Erm, is that even a valid argument?
And, considering that the DNA contains an astronomical amount of information, we can also conclude that the sender (as in the "sender" of the "information") is omniscient.
Uh, sigh...
Unfortunately, not much time was allocated for discussion so there wasn't any chance to point out his flawed views and see what he had to say.
Professor Gitt brought along enough copies of the translated version of his book to give away for free. (Again,) when I Googled for the publisher いのちのことば社, it turned out that the company publishes books for churches.
Ah, now that explains everything! I wonder when are they going to stop misleading innocent minds.
Atheist Resources:
Free Inquiry
Religion is Bullshit
Richard Dawkins.net
Now, thinking that it must be interesting, you turn up for the talk. Much to your surprise, you discover that, heck, the talk has nothing to do with "Information Technology". The fellow turns out to be some proponent of creationism, who has the nerves to refute Darwin's theory of evolution when he appears to be ignorant of the subject.
Unfortunately, I was one of the unaware idiots who attended the talk. My only consolation is, there's a bigger idiot who draws ridiculous conclusions based on flawed assumptions. A friend suggested that I should file a formal complaint to the university but considering that I was quite amused by his so-called "theorems" (so the session wasn't a total waste of time), I decided not to. Nevertheless, I strongly think that it was irresponsible of the organizers in coming up with such a misleading title for the talk.
That night, I Googled for the professor's name. My search returns an entry of that fellow's page on Wikipedia. (You've gotta love Wiki!) Werner Gitt, as I found out, is a famous proponent of creationism from Germany, whose theories, however, are rejected in the scientific community as pseudoscience. (It didn't come as any surprise, though.)
The pdf version of his book, "In the Beginning was Information" is available online. So, I'm not going to elaborate too much on his flawed theories. Simply speaking, he dimissed evolutionism, claiming that macro-evolution (a fish turning into a frog, for instance) is impossible.
Why?
Because a creature who has the DNA of a fish cannot possibly turn into a frog. The DNA is designed to do only what it is supposed to do. Darwin knew nothing about DNA and therefore drew wrong conclusions.
Oh yeah, neither do you, Professor Gitt. Go read up on natural selection. For goodness sake, don't make assumptions when you have no understanding at all about the subject.
Besides, the complexity of the DNA proves that it must have come from an designer. And this is whom we call, the creator.
Oh wait, Professor Gitt, that sounds familiar. Ah, the watchmaker analogy! But isn't that obviously self-contradicting? It means, to be able to design such a complex thing as the DNA, the creator must be complex enough, and therefore has to be designed by something even more complex.
Aha! That is why the creator is omnipotent!
Erm, is that even a valid argument?
And, considering that the DNA contains an astronomical amount of information, we can also conclude that the sender (as in the "sender" of the "information") is omniscient.
Uh, sigh...
Unfortunately, not much time was allocated for discussion so there wasn't any chance to point out his flawed views and see what he had to say.
Professor Gitt brought along enough copies of the translated version of his book to give away for free. (Again,) when I Googled for the publisher いのちのことば社, it turned out that the company publishes books for churches.
Ah, now that explains everything! I wonder when are they going to stop misleading innocent minds.
Atheist Resources:
Free Inquiry
Religion is Bullshit
Richard Dawkins.net
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2 comments:
I am still confuse. What does information technology gotta do with omniscience?
I thought information technogy just about binary numbers. 8bits..16bits...32 bits........
His definition of information isn't just limited to computer data. Gitt lists out 5 criteria for "information".
the following are picked from gitt's book.
1. statistics
– How many letters, numbers and words make up the entire text?
– How many single letters does the employed alphabet contain
(e. g. a, b, c,..., z or G, C, A, T)?
– How frequently do certain letters and words occur?
2. Syntax
– Only certain combinations of letters are allowed (agreed-upon)
English words. Other conceivable combinations do not belong
to the language. It is also not a random process when words
are arranged in sentences; the rules of grammar must be
adhered to.
3. Semantics
- the meaning of the contents
4. Pragmatics
- Information always leads to some action, although, for our purposes, it is immaterial whether the recipient acts according to the sender's wishes, responds negatively, or ignores it.
5. Apobetics (Gitt coined this term)
- ...any piece of information has a purpose, and (we) have come to the last and highest level of information, namely apobetics
since DNA satisfies all criteria, it thus qualifies as "information". and this information must have a sender, namely the creator. since the dna contains a colossal amount of information, it can be concluded tat the creator is omniscient and to put it in gitt's words, "knows everything about the present, everything in the past till eternity, and of course, the future."
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