Richard Dawkins says that Intelligent Design is OK*

*As long as the designer is not "God". See his interview in the upcpoming movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed".

So what happens if we allow for Intelligent Design and in the course of our investigation we discover that the designer is "God"?

It would be too late to say that ID is not science because of some arbitrary definition. That would be like shutting the barn door AFTER the horses got out.

The Word is "Patrilineage"

Zachriel and blipey have been trying to tell me about a paternal family tree without understanding what that was. The word they were looking for is:

Patrilineage

Line of descent as traced through men on the paternal side of a family.

IOW they can't even get the terminology correct!

Who said it?

A containment hierarchy is a hierarchical collection of strictly nested sets. Each entry in the hierarchy designates a set such that the previous entry is a strict superset, and the next entry is a strict subset. For example, all rectangles are quadrilaterals, but not all quadrilaterals are rectangles, and all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. A hierarchy of this kind is to be contrasted with a more general notion of a partially ordered set*.

A taxonomy is a classic example of a containment hierarchy.



*A familiar real-life example of a partially ordered set is a collection of people ordered by genealogical descendancy.

A Paternal Family Tree is NOT a Nested Hierarchy!

Seeing that neither Zachriel nor blipey the clown would listen to reason, I sent an email to the author of the website that I have been referencing to support my claim- that a paternal family tree is NOT a nested hierarchy:

Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 9:33 AM
To: tfallen@facstaff.wisc.edu
Subject: Nested Hierarchy- a question



Sir,

I am hoping you could settle some confusion. On your webpage about hierarchies, http://www.isss.org/hierarchy.htm , you say that an Army command isn't a nested hierarchy because the General does not consist of nor contain the soldiers below him. I understand that.

My question is does a paternal family tree represent a nested hierarchy or a non-nested hierarchy? For example this tree http://www.internationalspecialreports.com/middleeast/99/jordan/8-1.gif

It seems obvious to me that the same rules that prevent an Army command from being nested also apply to a paternal family tree.

Could you please clarify this for me.

respectfully,

Joe Gallien

This afternoon I receved his response:

This is not nested. There is a single rule that applies top to bottom, not nesting.



Timothy F. H. Allen

Botany Dept, 430 Lincoln Drive

University of Wisconsin

Madison WI 53706-1381

Now what Zachriel? Are you going to say that an authority on hierarchy is wrong and you and a clown are right?

Go pound sand and come back when you are ready to substantiate your claims with VALID references.

Until then it is obvious that dealing with you is a waste of time- entertaining but still a waste of time.

BTW- CJYman has a blog- click of "reality cheque" in my Links section.

Male Descendents- the Violation- again

Enough with the hints. It’s apparent I will just have to cut to it.

It was first posited that a paternal family tree, which Zachriel posted as having a father, alone at the top level as the patriarch, is a nested hierarchy.

It was then shown that a patriarch does not consist of nor contain his male descendents. That wasn’t enough.

Now that has evolved to the top level being whoever you choose, as well as all of that person’s male descendants. Each subsequent level has some male descendent(s) occupying it. D(x):x={x, all male descendents of x}.

All along I have dropping hints.

blipey spewed that I was saying “fathers have fathers” so it isn’t a nested hierarchy. So close and yet so far

I kept hinting at the female side of the equation. That has fallen of deaf ears. Not my fault.

So here it is:

If all sons have mothers, and all mothers have fathers, how many hierarchies does Sam’s son- D(sam)->D(sam’s first son)- belong to?

HINT: He is the descendent of two potentially unrelated men- his father and his mother’s father.

Maybe your tree has your father and your mother’s father as the same guy. Otherwise you have a violation as the sets are no longer contained.

Can one soldier belong to two different squads or two different divisions at the same time?

Can a human belong to two phyla?

Nested Hierarchy for Dummies-again

Nested Hierarchy for dummies, ie evolutionitwits:

A nested hierarchy is nothing more than a well defined(super) set which contains and consists of other specified (sub)sets.

A good visual would be the Russian nested dolls.

For example when discussing Living Organisms we divide everything into Kingdoms. Humans are Homo sapien sapiens- Homo being the Genus, with the species and subspecies- are in the Kingdom Anamalia.

IOW the Kingdom Anamalia consists of and contains every level below it. Anamalia being the superset, with Chordata a more refined subset and Primates being a more refined set of Chordates so on down to the species level. Each level being a more refined level of the one above. Each level containing and consisting of the levels below it.

In the Army example we would be classifying the US Army which is broken up into Field Armies, which contain and consist of Corps, which contain and consist of Divisions, which contain and consist of Brigades, which contain and consist of Battalions, which contain and consist of Companies, which contain and consist of Platoons, which contain and consist of Squads & Sections. Squads and sections contain and consist of soldiers. Each level, down to the soldier, has a well defined role and place in the scheme.

Here is the $64,000 question:

In a paternal family tree scheme does the top level, the father, consist of and contain the lower levels?


(If you answer "yes" you are a complete moron and if you answer "no" then you see why a paternal family tree is not a nested hierarchy. You are not a complete moron.)

Thorton hears a who

Thorton calls me a chicken-shit and a coward because he is unable to understand Intelligent Design and unable to substantiate the claims made by his anti-ID position.

That's evolutionary thinking for ya.

Then there is the fact that thorton is noticeably missing from all of my blogs dealing with biology. As a matter of fact blipey, Richie and rishy are also missing from those blogs. And why is the only thing that Richie and clowny posted in the design hypothesis blog, nothing but ignorance-driven drivel?

I would like to thank all of you for helping me make my case for ID and against the ToE.