Thanks to a commenter going by the 'nym of djm, I found in a comment yet another hilarious example of how credulity towards pseudoscience of one form often goes hand-in-hand with other forms of pseudoscience. It looks as though the "intelligent design" creationists are down with Steorn's claimed free energy machine as "evidence" against materialism:
Steorn's findings totally undermine the basic premise of materialism, simply by demonstrating a confirmed physical effect that materialists predict cannot happen. These clever Irish researchers have demonstrated that the principles of thermodynamics function in a manner far closer to the predictions of William Dembski and William Brookfield than the clearly flawed thermodynamic claims of Hawkings and Maxwell.The same scientists who tell you that Intelligent Design is impossible also dispute the hard-facts of Steorn's peer-reviewed findings. I predict that this humble contraption will show the world just how much materialists have misled mainstream-science.
And, in the comments:
This is perhaps the best physical evidence I have ever seen against the absurd assumptions of materialism. The materialists are utterly convinced that "free energy" is impossible, but they have totally ignored well documented evidence of miracles (e.g. walking on water, reviving the dead).
Let me explain: Such acts would have required a great deal of energy brought in from apparently nowhere. The laws of thermodynamics as Hawkings understand them say this can never happen. In hawking's world-view reviving the dead is impossible because a long-dead body contains a great deal more entropy than a healthy living body. On the other hand, well documented evidence says these miricales happened. As scientists we must follow this evidence wherever it leads.
This is a perfect example of how ultra-materialists scientists deny legitimate scientific inquiry. It's hardly surprising that the dogmatic neo-darwinist nay-sayers are often the same people who deny that Steorn's perpetual motion machine is possible WITHOUT EVEN SEEING IT!
Unfortunately, this drop-dead evidence against "materialism" appears to have a few glitches, as documented at Free Energy Tracker and announced on Steorn's own website:
Sean McCarthy CEO stated that "technical problems arose during the installation of the demonstration unit in the display case on Wednesday evening. These problems were primarily due to excessive heat from the lighting in the main display area. Attempts to replace those parts affected by the heat led to further failures and as a result we have to postpone the public demonstration until a future date."
He continued that "we apologise for the inconvenience caused to all the people who had made arrangements to visit the demonstration or were planning on viewing the demonstration online."
Over the next few weeks the company will explore alternative dates for the public demonstration.
I guess those people who traveled long distances to see this amazing device are just out of luck. Anyone want to take any bets about whether the "next few weeks" turn into "the next few months" and then to "never"?
I didn't think so.
It would appear that the laws or thermodynamics, which creationists frequently use to try to "disprove" evolution are merely suggestions when it suits them to use them to attack "materialism." Overwhelming Evidence is billed as a "site where high school and college students (though non-students will be permitted, this is a site geared towards and created for students) can network and communicate their views on intelligent design and evolution." However, the stuff posted there is so out there, so idiotic, that I'm still not entirely sure that OE isn't a huge hoax put on by "materialists" in order to mock ID creationists!
I am underwhelmed by Overwhelming Evidence. They were averaging @ ONE POST A WEEK, now there is a virtual POSTING EXPLOSION that has kicked up their posting to @ ONE A DAY - WOW!
I predict that this blog will soon go the way of the rare Norwegion Blue Parrot....
The bottom line is that it's just not that easy to fool kids today, right Dr. Dr. Dembski?
The overwhelmingevidence site (er, shite) is full of gems. I just spotted this one, Practical medical advances from ID:
Fortunately, I have a fairly strict rule: No drinks on the table when reading web shites, or else it'd be new keyboard and monitor time again!
Are they really so clewless so as to think unfettered access to antibiotics would be a good thing? (I wonder what their spin is on the various forms of, say, TB?)
Plus a set of usual suspects, a cartoonish view of evolution, no evidence for ID, and no actual "medical advance" from ID (despite that being what the article is supposedly about). Nor any specific prediction of what such an advance might be (at least not in the article--I didn't listen to the podcast).
And one odd-ish thing about that s(h)ite: It claims to be for students to "network and communicate", but the articles (at least) don't read like student-written. To me, they read like they were written by paid professional hacks.
Hawkings?
Hawkings?
Gaaah. These godtards can't even get the names right of the people they fail to understand.
Oh those pitiful, moral theists - don't they know evil always increases? It's SCIENCE!
Basically the 2nd law states that the amount of chaos (evil) in the universe can only increase; It's basically another way of formulating the creed of nihilsm. Anybody with spiritual knowledge knows that there is ultimately a more powerful force of order; and that we have been promised that eventually all evil will be overcome with God's divine order. The fact that the 2nd-law cultists have failed to account for this should prompt us to check if it has any basis in fact at all.
Hawkings? Gaaah. These godtards can't even get the names right of the people they fail to understand.
That's actually worth 5 points per instance in the crackpot index.
If their machine breaks because of camera lights, they have bigger problems than refuting the laws of thermodynamics. Apparently, their machine follows Heisenberg Uncertainty at a macroscopic level.
"due to the intense heat of the camera lighting."
Yeah, apparently they had set the thing up in a 1940's TV studio. Those old TV tubes really need a lot of light.
Anyways, even it the device is ever show to work that wouldn't mean it was actually working as advertised. The history of Perpetual motion machines with hidden mechanisms to power them is a long one.
Apparently, their machine follows Heisenberg Uncertainty at a macroscopic level.
Sewell's Law at work!
Bible stories != well documented evidence
Unless I'm really missing something, in the highly unlikely event that someone succeeded in demonstrating what Steorn is claiming- "free energy"- the consequence would be that our current model of how the natural world works would be supplanted by... an improved model of how the natural world works. (And a lot of scientists would make their careers out of developing that model.)
These birds seem to be getting increasingly desperate for gaps into which to stuff their God. Perhaps they should hire a few of those guys who work in the Tokyo subway, ramming commuters into packed cars.
The "free energy" stuff seems like merely an interesting example of syndromism, or the "betcha can't swallow just one" effect so common with pseudoscientific crankery and paranoid conspiracism, but the stuff quoted above about antibiotic resistance in bacteria is genuinely disgusting. I wonder if the flack who wrote it would want to repeat it to the face of someone suffering from an MRSA infection, or multidrug resistant TB.
The Overwhelming Evidence poster who wrote that calls herself Helena Blavatsky, after the old fraud who founded Theosophy. That alone should be good enough reason to laugh her out of the room.
No doubt she believes that Steorn's perpetual motion machine is the same model used by the Atlanteans to power their flying saucers and warm their crystal cities under the Antarctic ice. Now that we have discovered that power we will finally be judged worthy by the watchers from Pliedies to join the great galactic consortium along with our Yeti cousins. Little does she know, the Atlanteans used a completely different model.
Watch, they'll suddenly have to build a new prototype after this and will ask for monetary donations to "help keep the fight for free energy alive."
These clever Irish researchers have demonstrated that the principles of thermodynamics function in a manner far closer to the predictions of William Dembski and William Brookfield than the clearly flawed thermodynamic claims of Hawkings and Maxwell.
I'm sure I'm not the only one here that would pay top dollar to see the no-holds-barred intellectual tag team match pitting Dembski/Brookfield against Hawking/Maxwell. Bambi vs Godzilla was a nailbiter by comparison.
Its rather funny reading some of the comments on the Steorn forum at the moment.
http://www.steorn.com/forum/
They clearly have a mix of believers and skeptics who are acting according to form in the light of the (complete lack of) evidence.
I've been keeping an eye on Steorn for a while now.
I know someone in the company who tells me they think its all a scam. Steorn has been acting competely as expected throughout, using the usual Perpetual Motion Machine Inventors scriptbook (telling everyone that they have made a paradigm shifting discovery, comparison to Galileo, Science establishment is all against them, don't trust peer review and claiming to have finally produced a magnetic perpetual motion machine that will solve the worlds energy crisis).
Apparently they made the invention three years ago in their company headquarters (they are a software company that had no engineers or scientists working for them!) The invention is small, lightweight and has only a few moving parts, yet its taken three years so far and they cannot show it working. They put an advertisement into 'The Economist' last year asking for '22 of the worlds top scientists' to join an anonymous panel (picked by Steorn, naturally) who would test the invention and then release their findings. They've been a bit quiet so far, for some reason.
Gotta love that ID reasoning:
Evolution violates the SLOT, therefore evolution must be wrong.
Orbo also violates the SLOT, therefore evolution must be wrong.
Note to fundamentalist christians:
Please stop going to our doctors.
Just let your god take care of you.
Thanks.
"It's hardly surprising that the dogmatic neo-darwinist nay-sayers are often the same people who deny that Steorn's perpetual motion machine is possible WITHOUT EVEN SEEING IT!"
And yet you are claiming it works... ahem... "WITHOUT EVEN SEEING IT"?
I'd love to see this 'well documented evidence' of people being brought back to life. I love zombie movies.
Dan:
IDiots don't need doctors, since their bodies were intelligently designed and not subject to disease. They are also immortal and cannot be killed. Go ahead and try. And don't be afraid to use a bigger hammer.
Surely you guys are intelligent enough to realize that Steorn is a satirical project, and that Overwhelming Evidence is in on the joke?
And you have to admit they're doing a pretty good job of it. And the earnest-mocking responses from otherwise reliable scientists and surgeons will be prominently displayed in Steorn's future art installations and PR campaigns.
There will be much laughter.
This is beyond hilarious- creation "scientists" supporting the so-called "fact" of perpetual motion. It's too funny to discuss rationally. I also got a huge kick out of their assertion that there is "documented evidence" of "reviving the dead". "Documented evidence" like WHAT? The bible? LOL!!
Mike
http://quicktrivia.com
From a Christian . . .
1. Simultaneously laughed and cried when I read the two excerpted comments at the top of the post. I apologize on behalf of Christians w/ brains (CBs!). Our number is legion, although we tend to just shake our heads and stay away from people who make comments like this.
2. For those who care and may not know, there are a few broad distinctions to keep in mind with Christians and their views toward origins:
A. Creationists - The world is 6-10k years old. Universe was created in 6 literal days. Shoehorn evidence to fit theory whenever possible. Ignore counter-evidence. Both these commenters fit that description.
B. Intelligent Design Proponents - Not the same as creationists. May or may not give ascent to evolution. Important: ID is NOT anti-thetical to evolution. You can be an adherent of both evolution and ID.
Some ID proponents are just creationists using the term, but the basic claim of ID is that the configuration of the natural world is best explained as having causal influence from some sort of intelligence.
That DOESN'T get you the Christian God. It gets you intelligence. Maybe that's the Christian God. Maybe that's a deistic God. Maybe it's Plato's Form of the Good. There's no direction connection that ID can make to the Christian God. Anyone claiming otherwise isn't clear on the claims of ID.
3. Theistic Evolution: Evolution is true. God either set the initial conditions for evolution to take place and/or guides the evolutionary process.
(2) and (3) differ in that (2) claims that natural laws are not sufficient to account for the complexity of life. (3) does not make that claim.
Hope that may be a help.
Faith, it's all about faith. (Obviously not brains.) Anything that no matter how weakly tries to refute evolution must be correct. Hawking be damned Moe and Curly are right! ID is the way of the future! (war, famine, pestilience, and death.)
Manual trackback
Also amusing is the assumption that if this were somehow found to be correct, then "materialism" would be overturned. Conservation of energy is an observation not a fundamental tenet of materialism. Quantum theory allows for local violation of energy conservation over very short times and distances, and I'm sure that one could come up with universe models that permitted energy to "leak in" from somewhere.
The incredulity is not because energy conservation is absolutely required, but rather because it is a generalization that has held over hundreds of years of study, despite assiduous efforts to find exceptions, in realms of science as disparate as chemistry, stellar dynamics, and nuclear reactions. The fundamental tenet being violated here is merely that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Jay: Yes, we know the various theological positions you discuss all too well. Please note however that many of us insist, in full knowledge of your observations, that ID remains a form of creationism. Two main reasons: First, we think the proportion of fairly traditional creationists claiming to be or masquerading as IDists is much higher that I think you think (oooh, headache...too much thinking!) Google "cdesign proponentsists" sometime, let alone the Wedge Document. Second, we tend to view "Okay, evolution happened, but it couldn't without (unnamed entity coughGodcough) tickling our DNA throughout the course of history" as a form of creationism. If I dam the river, did I create the lake? Perhaps it's a potato/potahto thing.
I would read OE with caution as interpreting it as fully ID. IIRC I have seen bloggers who claim they have put up several Sokal type fake posts there, for fun and because 'it can be done'.
It could explain the increased traffic, btw. :-o
As trrll notes, that isn't guaranteed. Violations can occur, or non-local correlations in a Matrix universe, or simply a Last Thursday setup.
But assuming our physics theories are correct the local impression of an extra sets of events interacting with preexisting physics would likely be much more noticeable than simply an increased energy density in a volume. Our gauge fields doesn't particularly like non-local correlations and when they destabilize I bet the effect would be impressive.
So I would add to trrll's analysis with "easily observable extraordinary claims require extraordinary faith to explain away".
(Of course, one reason we don't see bits of space explode around humans walking on water could be that instead an event horizon forms around the affected volume. But that wouldn't be very demonstrative for a miracle, would it?)
Your description isn't adequate.
Technically and socio-politically design ideas as well as many theistic evolutionist ideas are creationist. A design or interacter or finetuner demands a designer.
Which makes most or all TE variants claiming that natural processes aren't sufficient, btw. What they do is taking a perfectly fine science and press a description of possible extra processes onto it because they can't accept the natural description.
Follow up to ,,,From a Christian.
It might be interesting to know that one of the largest repositories for ID is the book Of Panda's and People. Which used the term creationism until the 6'd edition when that phrase was removed and replaced with the term ID.
It's hardly surprising that the dogmatic neo-darwinist nay-sayers are often the same people who deny that Steorn's perpetual motion machine is possible WITHOUT EVEN SEEING IT!
That's the most amusing statement of the whole piece. She clearly is completely clueless about what a scientific law is. The entire point of the first and second laws of thermodynamics is that they make it possible to reject any and all perpetual motion machines without even seeing them. The details are completely irrelevant. If they violate the first or the second law, they don't work!
I love the 'sciency' description of how Orbo operates:
"time variant magneto-mechanical interactions"
IOW Magnetodynamics, apparently the group didn't take five minutes to crack open an undergrad EM book. It's amusing that you can derive the conservation of energy FROM Maxwell's equations: if it's magnetic/electric and it moves, he's got you covered. They go on to mumble something about magnetic fields moving at the speed of light while gravity doesn't(it does, it's the reason Mercury's orbit precesses). The claims are demonstrably false.
Call me when they have James Randi's million dollar prize.
http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/06/19/the-alternative-science-respectabi…
"absurd assumptions of materialism"
They may be absurd according to your worldview, but they are also what we have to live with.
As for those wimpy weakened drug-resistant bacteria. All IDiots should have a dog tag, which precludes using any antibiotic apart from the early ones, say penicillin and tetracycline. After all anything that has become immune to those as far as they are concerned is totally weakened and unable to do any harm.
Keep on bashing away at intelligent design, crackpots and woo.
But please, please stop embarrassing yourselves by attacking Steorn. Steorn is clearly a satiric art project meant to test the credulity of the media in general and science journalists in particular.
The added comedy comes from American scientists and science bloggers who are so used to having to fight the good fight that they are completely blind to any form of satire that doesn't bite them in the nose while shouting "this is satire!"
Attacking Steorn is like attacking an episode of South Park that "promotes" mormonism. "But mormonism is so irrational! So stupid! How can you promote mormonism?"
The difference is that satire on South Park is always so obvious that even science bloggers get it. Steorn asks you to stop and think for a moment before you type.
Or perhaps this whole post and its comments are some form of meta-satire that flew over my head.
If I'm understanding the furor, Steorn's machine generates energy by taking it from God ... without requiring prayer!
I'd have thought anti-christians would be quite excited by this prospect ...
Following frodo, I really wouldn't be surprised if this whole affair was a Sokal-style hoax to expose the credulity of the media (especially sci/tech oriented media, I'm looking at WIRED to fall for this hook line and sinker any minute now). I'm also pretty sure that those posts at OE are parodies, they're just too contrived...
Keep on bashing away at intelligent design, crackpots and woo. But please, please stop embarrassing yourselves by attacking Steorn. Steorn is clearly a satiric art project meant to test the credulity of the media in general and science journalists in particular.
I actually agree with the assessment that the company knows it's a hoax, but I don't think it's meant to be satire. To quote Ed Berger of the Houston Chronicle, "Recall that Steorn is a former e-business company that saw its market vanish during the dot.com bust. It stands to reason that Steorn has re-tooled as a Web marketing company, and is using the "free energy" promotion as a platform to show future clients how it can leverage print advertising and a slick Web site to promote their products and ideas. If so, it's a pretty brilliant strategy." It seems more plausible that a company trying to reinvent itself (and bail itself out of a 6 million dollar deficit in the past 3 years) would try a slick new marketing campaign, not unlike creationism in 1987.
In browsing through Overwhelming Evidence I came across this creationist wet dream:
While I suspect that the intelligent designer of our universe was careful to cover his tracks and make it appear as if natural phenomena could account for the existence of all things, I think it would be wise to initiate a hunt for evidence of the designer's "Easter Eggs." By Easter Eggs, I mean carefully-hidden indications of intelligence in situations that might otherwise be explained as natural phenomena. There are many places where a designer could hide such EEs. One place would be the fossil record. There among the bones of dinosaurs, pterydactyls, and trilobites, a designer could cleverly conceal a few tablets written in Linear A, or perhaps a DVD of the first season of The Sopranos. Such a discovery would quickly show Darwinists for the fools they are, and bring about a massive conversion to traditional Bible-based Christianity (even among obstinate Jews and terrorist Mohammadans). It strikes me as strange that no such geological Easter Eggs have yet been found, given the many blessings this would bring to our world.
So ignoring for a moment all the self-contradictions to be found in this... just how would a Sopranos DVD, found in lieu of a dinosaur's left hip, establish Christianity as the true religion, at the expense of Judaism and ... Mohammadism?
Wanting to have this explained to me, I posed this question as a comment, only to find that:
Your comment has been queued for moderation by site administrators and will be published after approval.
I.e., I'll never see it answered, much less posted. Ah well.
You've got to give the "godtards" (ha ha!) credit for persistence. Decade after decade, one false hope after another arises, one scheme after another, one "proof" after another fails -- but they never quit.
Such is the power of belief. PWNED
Now they are calling themselves "scientists". There are going to be a lot of confused eight-year-olds before they're done.
If their objective is to carry out a Sokal style hoax of the scientific press then they have been about as successful in this as their perpetual motion device has been in generating power. They have been ignored completely primarily due to them following the standard crank ploy of starting out criticising the scientific method in general and the peer review process in particular and instead decided to appeal to authority - a panel that they would choose themselves - to validate their invention. Even the local TV stations in Ireland have given up on them. Their motto was George Bernard Shaw's quote "All great truths begin as blasphemies" - unfortunately they left out the next line "but not all blasphemies are the truth".
He even uses the word "Hawkings" as if it's a plural. That's so cute. Those stupid Hawkings with their materialism.
And the satire becomes all the more obvious. You don't seriously think they thought they would get away with that quote-mining, do you? This was Steorn's way of saying: "If you have so much as a single brain cell left, you will realize that we are joking."
If you like that, then you would love The Retroencabulator.
Surely you guys are intelligent enough to realize that Steorn is a satirical project, and that Overwhelming Evidence is in on the joke?
Me bollox it is.
"Me bollox it is."
Nå forstår jeg ikke helt hva du mener. Jeg skulle ønske du kunne skrive normert engelsk, og ikke denne snåle dialekten.
"And the satire becomes all the more obvious. You don't seriously think they thought they would get away with that quote-mining, do you?"
Well, I'm convinced. After all, no serious creationist ever quotemined so badly. ;)
For me to believe "intelligent design", someone would have to dig up a 1:4:9 proportioned black monolith, constructed of an unknown but extremely durable substance (See "2001: A Space Odyssey", which is Arthur C. Clarke's fictitious take on what Intelligent Design really implies.
And all that would prove is that something, once, long ago, tampered with the evolution of life on Earth. But it would not at all imply or suggest any form of God. It would not be inconsistent with "God" but it would not prove God either.
Nå forstår jeg ikke helt hva du mener. Jeg skulle ønske du kunne skrive normert engelsk, og ikke denne snåle dialekten.
ScrÃobh as Danmhairgis más mian leat. Is amadán amadán as teanga ar bith.
'Me bollox' er udtryk af skepsis i Dublin.
" (I wonder what their spin is on the various forms of, say, TB?)"
I'm sure they've never heard of multi-drug-resistant TB, or heard of it but didn't believe it.
ScrÃobh as Danmhairgis más mian leat. Is amadán amadán as teanga ar bith.
'Me bollox' er udtryk af skepsis i Dublin.
Heheh! You win, man.
What the hell is "materialism"? Is this some new branch of science? It seems the ID folks are opposed to scientists studying actual "things" (materials), and instead should be studying "made-up stuff" like Biblical miracles (which are apparently "well documented").
It's easy to write it all off as a joke, but the ID folks never fail to amaze me with their ridiculousness (see the "peanut butter proves evolution is bunk" videos on youtube for reference).
(YES I know, "materialism" is a branch of philosophy, but WHEN did it become a branch of science? Or is this just another way the creationists try to discredit science, by equating it with philosophy, and thus open to any interpretation you can invent?)
Illlich: It's generally used as a complaint about science's insistence on methodological naturalism, that is, what we observe has natural explanations. So yes, they are indeed griping that we study natural things and reject supernatural explanations.
That's partly why they claim evolution and science in general is "religion," because they see our rejection of the supernatural as an arbitrary act of faith. They're generally blind to the fact that most supernatural claims themselves make material, testable claims, such as claims to the efficacy of prayer...claims which of course never survive scientific scrutiny. And since their supernatural claims MUST be true, they conclude that the scientific method is fundamentally flawed, pointing at (again) methodological naturalism and arguing the scientific method itself should be weakened. They covet the authority of science, but hate its rigor.
By what can only be a coincidence(!) the demonstration of the Tilley Foundation 'over unity device' was brought to a premature halt when a wheel bearing on the demonstration car failed. Google "tilley foundation free energy" for some interesting insight into the 'free energy' business.
I noticed that Sean Macarthy, the CEO of Steorn has come up for air on the company's forum. He's explained from where he suspects the free energy is generated with their non-spinning magnetic spinning device.
"We have measured every energy source that it is possible to measure and hence we are confident in our claim that it is free energy. There is always the possibility that the tech taps ZPE/Dark Energy, but it is just not possible to measure these. Even if we are tapping ZPE/Dark Energy the net result to all of us is the same, the energy is free."
So its all coming from 'Dark Energy'.
Phew! That should put your mind at rest if you were wondering that they might simply be scamming people.
Clearly they know what they are talking about and have the whole situation under control.
A while back I posted here and wondered when woo would start invoking dark matter/dark energy.
The 'free energy' business will become more lucrative as the old sources are drained and the market diversifies. Especially if there will be a bottleneck.
But that is nothing - when they can offer free beer, I will start to listen. :-P