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Based upon an intersting theory about how life may have started on Mars in the first place, sending people, plants, even a few rodents that might get loose would mostly be going back home rather than genuine contamination.

More than likely a few hunks of the Earth filled with bacteria and other life from the Earth made it to Mars as recently as the K-T event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Concerns about contamination of the Martian ecology, as much that it may have, is way overblown and likely is already there, if not from stray meteors then from all of the spacecraft that have been landing or crashing into the surface of Mars over the past several decades.

Of all the things to worry about on Mars, this is dead last in terms of priority and is going to happen no matter how hard we may try to stop it, presuming that Mars isn't already contaminated as I've noted above. I'd put it very unlikely that Mars is as pristine as is claimed.

http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/pjdogma1.htm

An excerpt:

To illustrate the fossil problem, here is what a particularly vigorous advocate of Darwinism, Oxford Zoology Professor Richard Dawkins, says in The Blind Watchmaker about the "Cambrian explosion,"

The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago. Immediately after the passage above about the Cambrian explosion, Dawkins adds the remark that, whatever their disagreements about the tempo and mechanism of evolution, scientific evolutionists all "despise" the creationists who take delight in pointing out the absence of fossil transitional intermediates. That word "despise" is well chosen. Darwinists do not regard creationists as sincere doubters but as dishonest propagandists."

The Peppered Moth is a famous example, but a dreadful one. There are several problems with Kettlewell's experiment, many of which are pointed out here: Second Thoughts about Peppered Moths

Thanks for that comment. It inspired me to post a snippet of a similar conversation I had months ago, with your links and some others added:

Is it right, however, to lump together those who are skeptical of evolution with those who are skeptical of AGW, particularly CO2-driven AGW ?

Creationists confuse religious faith with falsifiable science. Among the general public, climate-change contrarians (and your average Greenpeace/PETA loony) confuse political affiliation with falsifiable science. In both cases, scientists are much less likely to agree with either claim, and that likelihood decreases with increasing relevance of the scientist's field. That's probably why both groups tend to accuse the scientific community of conspiracy and/or widespread incompetence.

At my blog, the following statement is both legible and has popup titles describing why that link was chosen. Here it is without the links first: "And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational levels."

And, in my experience there's a significant overlap between the two groups. Most of their arguments seem to be at similar intellectual and educational lev els.

Whether the universe is deterministic or not does not really have a great deal to say to the free will debate.

The usual argument runs something like this: If the universe is deterministic, then we cannot have free will, because our actions are determined.

The trouble is with this view is that it equates free will with indeterminacy.

By this argument, to have free will there must be some fundamentally unpredictable element that contributes to your will in order to make it free. (If it were predictable then it would not be free, goes the argument.) But saying that something is fundamentally unpredictable is the same as saying that it has no deterministic cause. If that is the case, then the 'free' part of your will must be something that you - your mind - doesn't determine. But if so, then can it really be called your will?

On the other hand, in a purely deterministic universe, some kind of free will could be possible. Donald MacKay came up with a logical argument that demonstrates that there is no prediciton of an agent's future behaviour that could be given to that agent that the agent would be logically compelled to believe.

There's a reasonable explanation by Dennis l Feucht that Google has just thrown up for me.

Others have done so many times over.

5. The Non Sequitar â" âComments or information that do not logically follow from a premise or the conclusion.â(TM) [24]

Stephen M. Barrâ(TM)s review of Dawkinsâ(TM) Unweaving the Rainbow is spot on:

It is not often that one can find exactly the point where an author goes off track, but here one can. It is in the fifth sentence of the preface of the book, which begins, âSimilar accusations of barren desolation, of promoting an arid and joyless message, are frequently flung at science in general.â(TM) However, what people object to in Dawkins is not the science but the atheism. Because he cannot see the difference, he writes a book that is a 300-page non sequitur.

3. The False Dilemma - Two choices are given when in actuality there are more choices possible.

When it comes to explaining biological reality, Dawkins asserts: âThe only thing [William Paley] got wrong â" admittedly quite a big thing â" was the explanation itself. He gave the traditional religious answer [that life was created by God]. . . The true explanation is utterly different, and it had to wait for one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all time, Charles Darwin.â(TM) [14] Dawkins fails to point out that belief in the doctrine of creation and the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection are in fact compatible. Michael Poole explains why the choice between creation and evolution is a false dilemma:

7. Wishful Thinking - âa fallacy that posits a belief because it or its consequence is desired to be true.â(TM) [28]

Discussing the theory of âchemical evolutionâ(TM) or abiogenesis [29] (the supposed naturalistic appearance of life from non-life), Dawkins says: âNobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying â" a replicator.â(TM) [30] Dawkinsâ(TM) belief in abiogenesis is wishful thinking in that he wants it to be true because it is necessary for an atheistic account of origins, despite there being a large body of scientific evidence against the theory. [31]

9. Straw Man Argument - âa type of Red Herring that attacks a misrepresentation of an opponentâ(TM)s position. That is called to burn a straw man. It is a surprisingly common fallacy, because it is easy to misunderstand another person's position.â(TM) [36]

According to Dawkins: âScience shares with religion the claim that it answers deep questions about origins, the nature of life and the cosmos. But there the resemblance ends. Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.â(TM) [37] But as McGrath responds:

Dawkinsâ(TM)s caricature of Christianity may well carry weight with his increasingly religiously illiterate or religiously alienated audiences, who find in his writings ample confirmation of their prejudices, but merely persuades those familiar with religious traditions to conclude that Dawkins has no interest in understanding what he critiques. . . The classic Christian tradition has always valued rationality and does not hold that faith involves the abandonment of reason or the absence of evidence. Indeed, the Christian tradition is so strong on this matter that it is often difficult to understand where Dawkins got these ideas. [38]

10. Ad Hominem â" the fallacy of attacking the individual instead of the argument (Ad Hominem is Latin for âagainst the man.â(TM))

According to Dawkins: âFather Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are part of the charm of childhood. So is God. Some of us grow out of all three.â(TM) [39] Dawkins implies that anyone who believes in God is childish be

"ID is NOT backed by evidence and is NOT falsifiable, thus it is NOT a theory."

I don't agree with ID but please don't lie. I've read lots from both camps on the net, ID and not, so I know many commenters here are talking out there ass.

Next in principle ID must be falsifiable, otherwise it's antonym (naturalism) is also unfalsifiable in principle. Either they both are falsifiable or they are both not falsifiable, you can't have it both ways.

Your argument would make SETI and archeology not really 'sciences' which I doubt anyone would dispute. The truth is SETI and archeology already prove that ID theories already exist for a whole host of phenomena.

Here's many ways you could falsify ID, explained here:

http://www.arn.org/docs/behe/mb_philosophicalobjectionsresponse.htm

Just hear me out on this.

Michael Behe wrote a book on 'irreducible complexity' stating that (among other things) the Bacterial Flegella is made up of over 40 incredibly complex proteins, that self assemble into a molecular motor, complete with a driveshaft (see animations here)

If a single one of those components was missing, then the motor would simply not function.
And as Darwin pointed out in the origin of a species (page 90 in the first edition):

Until you solve this small kink, you can not prove that evolution is correct.
The reason you have never heard about this before: Behe's book was labeled fringe science, and shunned by the scientific community.

But the observation that the flagellum couldn't evolve with our current understanding is completely valid science.

Just like my car, DVD player and computer *fell together* unintelligently... right. Intelligent falling is not even in the same boat, it is nowhere near the outlandish claims of evolutionary theory, that claims you can get sophisticated technology that self-organizes and self-programs sophisticated technological machines if you simply wait long enough.

That's quite the claim. Getting sophisticated technology in life, like this from non intelligence is a claim no one can prove nor disprove, our science isn't even proto-science yet, ou science is nowhere near complete so comparing the theory that their is an intelligence (be it aliens or something else) that gives birth to technology like such below (in a bacterial nano-machine), to one that claims no intelligence is responsible, when the science is too primitive to answer such queestions is just bluster... We've found life is nano-techonology, paley was correct that life was sosphiticated machinery nad darwin was correct that organisms self-modified and changed over time, seems to me both are true.

One does not rule out the other, that's a false dichotomy.

Sophisticated technology in life:
http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/n.gif

lots of other animals have almost the same eye structure except it's the right way around

Actually, all vertebrates have this "outside-in" eye. And there's more to than it's just because the optic nerve gets in the way. Like I said, there are resources. For example: On the Design of the Vertebrate Retina.

The human eye itself is one of my favorite examples of why a designer is unlikely

And the human eye itself is one of my favorite examples of why a designer is likely. Thousands of engineers over the course of more than one hundred years have yet to make a camera that competes with the eye in its combination of resolution, sensitivity, exposure latitude, agility, and size.

"Almost all of history's brightest people who lived before Darwin were creationists of one stripe or other. Almost none were who lived after Darwin."

I know this will be unpopular but here goes anyway.

Which doesn't mean much, the same could be said of many theories held onto over historical time from even before aristotle, and plato onward, histories smartest people were also incredibly stupid they just had a monopoly on institutional authority, looking back through scientific and medical history early pioneers look like children despite their intellectal gifts simply because they lived in an age where they were unable to observe enough to really formulate a viable perspective. Thats the tale of human hitsory right there: Most people dont live long enough to figure much out, therefore just because darwinism and evolution is popular today doesn't mean we wont find evidence of panspermia or seeding or some other sci-fi concept tomorrow, in one of the episodes of star-trek Picard, and all the other races (klingon, romulan, etc) learn they are the result of advanced race that seede the galaxy. Sure it sounds far fetched but history isn't over yet, just like people once thought biblical creationism was the truth of the universe, the truth is we don't live long enough to figure much out there is just too little time to get it all in and learn it all, that must be admitted. Thats the biggest problem with every new generation of kids and then adults: they become so wrapped up in their superiority over the old generation, then after when they start geetting older and dying off their kids will look at their cherished dogmas' scientific and otherwise and take up new ideas and leave the outmoded views behind them.

The smartest people of the time usually adopt (what they percieve to be) the the best explanation available without truly understanding much of what they accept. Most non-specialist people who accept evolution have studied it to the point necessary to make any kind of sound judgement on it. On the other hand biologists like Michael Denton and other biologists dispute many aspects and claims of evolutionary theory.

Lastly darwin wsa totally ignorant of biochemistry and the actual mechanisms of biology. In short, darwin had no clue what was going on at the ultimate (molecular) level. He was ignornat of the mechanisms and evidence he would have truly needed to get his idea spread. If he was alive today I believe even he would be looking back to paley again once he saw this video below, sure he would still believe evolution is the best explanation he would not go so far as to be naive in that the existence of life is purely explained through naturalism by science as it stands today, that is pure folly and will take much more time to flesh out then we have in the time and age in which we live. There are many unexplained things about life, so much so that Francis crick proposed panspermia because he was aware of lifes exceeding sophistication.

http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/motorzoomuprotation-2.m ov

That the flagellum, the spitting image of technical engineering we do on a daily basis, one could even make the hypothesis that life is technology, and if technology then one must ask the next question: We know technology only comes from people who have reached a certain cognitive threshold to be able to understand nature and science as well to do the engineering necessary. There messy scientific aspect to it that most naturalist do not want to touch becaoue it hits too close to disrupting their idea of a pristine closed naturalist order and in this sense they are like the religious they so dislike.

If darwin knew then what we know now about molecular biology he would have had a lot harder time developing his theory of evolution, with the molecular evidence staring him in the face as a enormous obstacle. One of the reasons evolution caught on was simply because there was no better alternative

Promoting critical thinking and debate is exactly the idea of this decision.

Oh, bullshit. It's pandering to religious parents.

They have more right to be pandered to than the academic left, which sees brainwashing everyone as its inborn right.

I think it's also designed to avoid the issue ever being discussed in class again, because it makes it that much more difficult to deal with some parent mafia

"Parent mafia"?! Eat shit and die, scumbag - NEITHER YOU NOR GOVERNMENT NOR OBSESSIVE ACADEMICS GET TO DECIDE WHAT KIDS ARE TO BE TAUGHT.

You are not owner of the kids and though neither the parents are, THEY have the right to decide what their kids are taught. Not you or a few shallow careerists and leftie lobbyists. Get your hands off kids or you will have them shot away. Dumbass.

and stick to whatever their crazy ideas of "alternative views" are. Do you think the parent in question would be happy with alternative scientific opinions? I don't think so. He wants religious views included. In science.

It's not, idiot. Evolution is probably right - at least the part on natural selection - but it's still _ex post_ hypothesis. No predictive power = not very scientific really, hardcore falsifictionist would say not at all.

The critics are right, whatever their motivations. Painting all the critics of evolution in color of a fundie idiot is exactly against the core of scientific method, or at least falsification a la Karl Popper: it's argument ad hominem and trying to intimidate the critics with a lot shouting and hostility as opposed to involving in intellectual debate.

Vicious morons like you are little but "Darwin rottweilers", so aggressive that they don't even understand they are caught in Catch-22s and other fallacies:

http://www.arn.org/docs/williams/pw_dawkinsfallaci es.htm

You're a believer really, a lot worse than those fundies. They at least are not driven by viciousness and mindless screaming like you are.

Evolution per se has problems, and not just religious people noticed that. This guy put it very well:

http://www.fredoneverything.net/EvolutionPhiladelp hia.shtml

I used to think that criticizing evolution at school is a bad idea, because all in all, it's the best hypothesis we have, but after reading about the issue I came to conclusion that it is actually very good: kids learn there are no simple answers and textbook problems almost always are skewed towards finding one and easy solution, while in real world it doesn't work like that.

Yes, this is done for sake of education, but it has bad side effect of too many people leaving school acquiring habitual attitude towards problems that resembles that textbook exercise attitude, and so they become simpletons like you, expecting one correct answer, evolution in this case.

You know, in that same vein! ( :( ) there is a product called Thrombin JMI, which is recombinant bovine thrombin (aka activated Factor II. It is a spray that will aid in blood clotting. But this again is for small oozy/capillary type bleeding.

Only a few.

You also have to ask yourself: what would you expect an evolution-dominated textbook to say? "We're presenting six hundred pages on evolution here, but we don't think it's important?"

Repeated assertion is not proof.

Evolution is a theory (perhaps I should say Theory) which attempts to explain Linnaeus' organisation. That it succeeds is what's in question here. The Creationists explain the same things which evolutionary principle has had kingship of claimed for it, many of them far more plausibly. They claim, with this as justification, that creation is the central organising principle of biology.

You assert that "creation science has yet to generate a single testable, falsifiable, hypothesis, which is the first step to becoming a theory", but you do so speciously. Creation science sites are awash in hypotheses and you simply haven't noticed. Fixed speciation is one such hypothesis, and it matches reality exactly. The absence of interspecies fossils is another prediction of Creartion, and so far they've won the day on that one pretty convincingly (the closest to a refutation we've come is that glorified hoatzin called archaeopteryx).

Early Creationists (at least in Europe) got too carried away with this and insisted that not just species but individual subspecies of animal were immutable. This in the face of cross-breeding programs. Mind you, this was back in the day when Spontaneous Generation was accepted as the scientifically valid opposition to this concept, so I'm inclined to cut both sides some slack here.

Go and actually read some Creationist sites -- know thy enemy and all that. They've got reasonable-sounding hypotheses on geology, astronomy, all manner of stuff. If you're going into a battle of wits, do remember to go in armed! Read some of the refutations of DDI (and DCD's errata) as well. Have an argument, not a shouting match! (-:

Meanwhile, there are many evolutionary biologists who would cheerfully donate a limb to the cause if they thought they'd get a naturalistic self-organising principle out of it. That alone should be a big hint that there's something major still missing from the panacea called evolution.

Because unfortunately most scientist's religion of choice is Darwinism! Haven't you heard of the Church of Darwin? These poor souls usually join this church mostly out of peer pressure. It takes an enormous amount of religious faith to believe in macro-evolution:

(apes + time + billions of scientifically inexplicable miracles) = human

You see, one of the most painful things an evolutionist can hear this day and age is that they are the newest incarnation of the old holy roman catholic church, (and they would subconsciously like to burn all naysayers at the stake if it wasn't so illegal...) I feel sorry for these poor sheep who willfully follow each other off the cliffs of logic (KQ6 baby!) and reason...

But seriously, I think the saddest and most ironic part of all is the fact that *most* scientists adhere to these inane religious beliefs and call it science- these the very folk who the rest of us are *relying* on to have discriminating and skeptical thought processes.

Irreducible complexity: certain things like the human eye and bacterial flagellum are so complex, relying on so many independent pieces, that it could not have evolved from chance.

For example, if evolution occurs through gradations, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye -- the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth -- since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Feel free to take four minutes and eight seconds to learn precisely how the human eye probably evolved.

If you can handle the four minutes and eight seconds, perhaps you'd be willing to do some reading about how a bacterial flagellum could form without a designer.

I'm also sure you've heard the name Behe before. Did you know that in 2001 Michael Behe admitted that his work had a "defect" and does not actually address "the task facing natural selection." Futhermore, irreducible complexity is rejected by the majority of the scientific community. The main concerns with the concept are that it utilises an argument from ignorance, that Behe fails to provide a testable hypothesis, and that there is a lack of evidence in support of the concept. As such, irreducible complexity is seen by the supporters of evolutionary theory as an example of creationist pseudoscience and amounts to a "God of the Gaps" argument.

Can ID answer the following questions?

• Why do we have vestigial fingers on our feet?
• Why do our nasal passages drain into our lungs?
• Why are our ankles so damn thin and weak compared to our weight and height?
• Why are our ribs "designed" to carry weight horizontally?
• Why are some whales born with legs?
• Why do our eyes have blood vessels directly in front of our field of vision?

If you can't answer the last one at the very least, stop reading now. Go back to the link above, click on it, and spend the four minutes and eight seconds educating yourself.

The point to those questions is that NONE of them can be answered with ID. Can't be predicted with. Can't be tested with. None. Zero.

But do you know what can? Evolution, every one of them.

That said, while you accuse others of not understanding what ID actually is, I contend that you do not understand what evolution is.

(1) the specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view, ie natural selection etc.
(2) The "big picture" of how the planet is full of human beings now where it was once only a molten planet.

First of all, the article this discussion is linked to references how scientists have learned new "specifics of how life evolved from a scientific point of view..."

Second, evolution has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with how life was created on what was once only a molten planet. Nothing. At all. Evolution is the transition -- of a population -- from one form of life to others forms of life over (usually long periods of) time.

Creation of life where there is no life is what is known as abiogenesis, not evolution. Now stop what you're doing! I can see you reaching for that reply button and Googling for references to the Miller-Urey experiments from the 1950s.

Stop it! You didn't even read that abiogenesis link, did you? I didn't think so. Nothing I can say can convince you to if your mind is already made up (read: clouded by mindless dogma). However I will leave you with one thing so that you can look it up yourself and do the research.

Abiogenesis experiments conducted by Dr. Sidney Fox. Don't even b

Slimmest scientific backing? You, sir, give them far too much credit. Try "Creationism that cannot be disproved and is therefore not even remotely related to science in any way."

Of course it can be disproved... Simply prove that life can create itself from nothing. From what I can see, the problem ID supporters have is that they keep asking for proof, or even a reasonable theory that would show it possible beyond a 'random chance'. Yet their detractors, rather than providing the thing requested, reduce to name-calling. ("It's not science!" "You still think the earth is flat!") You can insist that your side is right in a debate, but you should have answers to the basic questions that the other side raises. If you don't, what does that make you?

Something that I recently read, and that says quite a lot, IMHO, is the article by Stephen C. Meyer here. One thought that I found particularly interesting is: Scientists in many fields now recognize the connection between intelligence and information and make inferences accordingly. Archaeologists assume a mind produced the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone. SETI's search for extraterrestrial intelligence presupposes that the presence of information imbedded in electromagnetic signals from space would indicate an intelligent source. As yet, radio astronomers have not found information-bearing signals coming from space. But molecular biologists, looking closer to home, have discovered information in the cell. Consequently, DNA justifies making what probability theorist William A. Dembski calls "the design inference."

Thoughtful, well-written explanations are the way you'll convince someone. Maybe it's things like this that give ID supporters their resolve. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the lack of explanations like this from the anti-ID camp.

[A] Christian academic and scientific community ought to pursue science in its own way, starting from and taking for granted what we know as Christians. (This suggestion suffers from the considerable disadvantage of being at present both unpopular and heretical; I shall argue, however, that it also has the considerable advantage of being correct).

Sorry, dave (and many others here). ID is not simply about irreducibly complex biological features (such as molecular motors). And ID does not claim to disprove evolution -- this is a common misunderstanding.

In many ways, Intelligent Design is a complimentary science to Darwin's evolution. However, there are certain aspects of biology that pure evolution theory does not attempt to explain, such as molecular design or prebiotic life (i.e. chemical abiogenensis).

If anyone here truly has an open mind, I recommend reading the paper "DNA and Other Designs" by Stephen C. Meyer. This essay exposes a number of problems with abiogenesis research. More importantly, however, it details several aspects of biology that at least appear to exhibit design and how logical inferrence can lead to ID.

IMHO, it is incredibly close minded to simply dismiss ID as some attempt by the reglious-right to open the door to the teaching of creationism in public schools. ID is a very serious scientific effort to promote thought and perhaps help explain some of the defenciences that currently exist in the theories of abiogenesis and evolution.

Right-wing Catholics may listen, though, and there many of them who side with the ID folks. A famous example of a pro-ID Catholic is Rick (I wish my name didn't have another meaning) Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who has added pro-ID wording to legislation.

Of course, there is no proof that this will do any good. In particular, the extreme right-wing Catholics of the Mel Gibson variety, like many fundamentalist protestants, have already given up on the pope.

Right-wing Catholics may listen, though, and there many of them who side with the ID folks. A famous example of a pro-ID Catholic is Rick (I wish my name didn't have another meaning) Santorum, Republican Senator from Pennsylvania who has added pro-ID wording to legislation.

Of course, there is no proof that this will do any good. In particular, the extreme right-wing Catholics of the Mel Gibson variety, like many fundamentalist protestants, have already given up on the pope.

Here's a bonofide machine for you:

http://www.arn.org/docs/mm/flag_labels.jpg

And yes this machine (look up the definition yourself) exists in nature. That is just one of the countless machines that exist within life.

ickofthisshit,

Hey I see your point, very clever, you got me good.

I am not sure that actually changes the meaning in the Bible of "four corners of earth", maybe it does because I was too stupid to defend what it says, maybe that makes it incorrect?

Maybe you can come up with a better translation for: " tessares gônia gç"

Here is what I have for the translation:

Tessares: "four"
Gônia: "the four extreme limits of the earth"
gç : "the earth as a whole, the world"

This is the literal translation of the original text in the Bible, feel free to make it out to be what ever you like, it seams to be the custom of the day.

There is an interesting prophesy in the Bible, of course there is some controversy on the meaning. I personally believe it is a message to the church of today, the Christens that try to ride the fence and say I accept the non-science of evolution and secular philosophy and I also accept the Bible in an allegorical form of stories on how to be a good person.

Notice I said non-science because I love science and agree with Einstein when he said "God does not play dice with the universe". I am in the same science camp as Einstein not someone who flunked out of school and got his ideas from people speaking with spirits.

Here is the prophecy:

Message to Laodicea

14 "To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:
The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, Beginning of the creation of God, says this:
15 'I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot.
16 'So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.
17 'Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked,
18 I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.
19 'Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.
20 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.
21 'He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
22 'He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.' "

Feel free to save your karma by not resending just to show how stupid I am and how smart you are:

You seam to have all the answers, where would you teach this: http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od201/peeringdbb20 1.htm

God bless you and keep you.

Where do you teach this: http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od201/peeringdbb20 1.htm ?

First I would like to point out that ID is falsifiable just as Evolution is falsifiable; as a matter of fact they are opposites of each other, in other words, if you prove one you disprove the other, this has been stated by many atheists.

Quote:
Evolutionist Quote of the Week

"Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing."

- G. Richard Bozarth, The Meaning of Evolution, American Atheist, p. 30, Sept. 20, 1979.

For all of you who have not taken the time to actually delve in to the finer points of irreducibly complex systems here is an article that might help:

Notice the credentials of the author:
Joseph W. Francis
Associate Professor of Biology
Cedarville College, Ohio

http://www.arn.org/docs/odesign/od201/peeringdbb20 1.htm

I believe this man is no different than you or I in that he is in all security doing the best job he can and following the facts as he sees them.

Scientists speak about evolution:

"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?"--*Charles Darwin

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/01-evol1 .htm#top

More information about evolution the atheists don't want you to know:

http://evolution-facts.org/

More links:

http://www.icr.org/
http://www.trueorigin.org/ca_rh_03.asp
http://www.setterfield.org/simplified.html
http://www.origins.org/
http://www.trueorigin.org/

One of my favorites: "The Origin of Language and Communication"
http://www.trueorigin.org/language01.asp

I understand you will dismiss the authority of these scientists because the day they admit they are a Christian they all of a sudden become blabbering idiots. It reminds me of a friend of mine who teaches hand-to-hand combat to the special forces, he upset his teacher and his teacher demoted him from 7th degree black belt to white belt, like all of a sudden his knowledge was sucked out of him by magic, he is still one of the toughest guys I know, LOL.

BTW - Having a formal education in physics, and three engineering disciplines I was very skeptical when I came across this information. The problem was, as a scientist, I was curious and the more I studied the more I realized these other scientists weren't a bunch of crackpots. These scientists felt so strongly about what they had learned they sacrificed their careers in order to pursue alternate scientific postulations of the given data.

Given limited resources, they have driven discoveries in the field of science that the current university system has totally ignored because of the atheistic agenda. This is the very system that puts boundaries on scientific study based on personal beliefs and the ACLUs control by amending our constitution with Thomas Jefferson's unofficial letters to justify their atheistic position.

I think it is a sad state of affairs when an atheistic or

[S]cientific creationism is defined by the following six tenets:
[1.] The universe, energy and life were created from nothing.
[2.] Mutations and natural selection cannot bring about the development of all living things from a single organism.
[3.] "Created kinds" of plants and organism can vary only within fixed limits
[4.] Humans and apes have different ancestries.
[5.] Earth's geology can be explained by catastrophism, primarily a worldwide flood
[6.] The earth is young--in the range of 10,000 years or so.

Intelligent design, on the other hand, involves two basic assumptions:
[1.] Intelligent causes exist.
[2.] These causes can be empirically detected ...

Well I assume that the evolution-fairytale site is already a response to richard dawkins god - tooth fairy comparison:

http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/dawkinsquestions0223 03.htm

However, this shouldn't keep anybody from writing a response though.

The other thing is that if you talk to friends and parents you will still get a bias since you probably select your friends, and your parents have too large an influence on your development so this is a no-no too.

Independently of what you do, if you can assume that directly asking Slashdot readers is biasing your outcome, there is a good chance that asking /. readers about there environment will still lead to biased results since they influence their environment and vice versa. (recursive polling doesn't work ?)

Evolutionism Propaganda Article by Dr. Richard Paley

The subject of Evolutionism's use of propaganda to spread its false doctrines is a broad one that would require many pages to deal with in full. That they resort to propaganda is just evidence that they have no honest arguments in favor of their position. The paucity of pro-Evolutionistic arguments has been widely documented and I won't go into it here.

What I would like to discuss are some prominent and current instances of Evolutionism propaganda: The PBS's series Evolution, the use of subliminal Evolutionism, and Evolutionism's place in the computing industry.

PBS's "Evolution":

PBS (supposedly the "Public Broadcasting System" although one has to wonder which public they serve with all the anti-Christian junk they put on) is currently airing a new series called simply Evolution. This series (running for eight nights, at two hours a night) is nothing but a commercial for Secular Humanistic pseudo-science.

Darwin questions God's existence from the bowels of the Beagle...

...while above deck, Capt. Fitzroy is mockingly portrayed reading the Bible aloud to the crew.

Thus far, the first episode (called "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" -- at least they are honest in the title) was a melodramatization of Charles Darwin's life. Darwin is portrayed as a sympathetic character who is attacked by ignorant Christians for his "revolutionary thought" which he is shown likening to "confessing a murder" (again, another slip of honesty). All those who historically questioned and pointed out flaws in Darwin's ideas are portrayed as villains: Richard Owen, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, Captain Robert Fitzroy of the H.M.S. Beagle -- all are made into unrecognizable cartoons whose only purpose is to act as foils for the noble Darwin and his crusade against Christianity. Even God himself is turned into a villain; at one point in the episode they had the audacity to blame Him for killing Darwin's daughter!

Interspersed with the costume drama were talking heads explaining to us why Evolutionism is the One True Way. These included some doctors and biologists -- one of whom openly expressed the religious nature of his belief in Evolutionism -- whose names I can't remember as they were unnotable persons in the scientific community. Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who wrote a polemic also called Darwin's Dangerous Idea , was on hand to tell us in no uncertain terms that Darwin's ideas excluded the need for God. Needless to say Stephen Jay Gould made an appearance, although he did thankfully refrain from talking about baseball this time.

The episode also included "real life examples" of Evolutionism to try and convince us that it is a real science. One of these was -- and I am not making this up -- a primatologist who taught some chimpanzees to "count". Supposedly this proves that we are a monkey's uncle. Another example used was AIDS. They argued that AIDS is constantly evolving and if it weren't for Darwin we wouldn't understand why and thus would be helpless in treating the disease (they conveniently neglect to point out that Darwinistic propaganda equating us with animals might have helped to spread the disease in the first place). This is a common false argument made by Evolutionists; the random variations of AIDS is not the same as the transmutation of species that Darwin wrote about and that is the basis of Secular Humanism. All those little changes aside, AIDS is still AIDS. Show us AIDS evolving into a cat -- which is essentially the Evolutionistic position of common ancestry for all lifeforms -- and then you'll have something worth noting.

Remember, this was all in only the first episode! We still have seven more to go -- or fourteen more hours of this (PBS doesn't even allow us commercial breaks to help us regain our sanity!). One can only

You're at UCBerk? Cool. I'll give you an A* in Asskicking if you go to the law school, find this guy and hurt him. Lots.

.... but here you are talking about biochemistry and the fossil record, and more shamefully, asking about predictions based in evolutionary theory.

Just for starters:

Darwin's moth. This appeared in National Geographic magazine a few months ago.

I better refer you to a better explanation that puts your claims to shame

..."It Just Evolved".

There are many, many physical situations in which Intelligent Design is easily the top Ockham's Razor candidate.

But thanks for yet another example of argument from ridicule. <sarcasm>We really, really needed another one of those</sarcasm>

The only reason our friend would have trouble addressing those arguments would be if he was undereducated in the sciences himself.

Where, unfortunately, "undereducated" means we think anything which breaches our a priori assumptions about the nature of the universe is dumb.

By that standard, most people, most scientists are "undereducated". For the longest time geology avoided anything that smelled of catastrophism, paleontology avoided anything that smelled of a flood, and astronomy avoided anything that smelled of structure.

For good scientific reasons? Not a bit of it. Because they were afraid of being labelled as one of the enemy, those insidious creationists, and ostracised like J Harlan Bretz was for 40 years.

A very highly qualified scientists have been brave enough to state outright that they are not impartial, like Richard Lewontin and his famous "cannot let a Divine Foot in the door" statement, but they are the exception.

The result in each of the above cases was that the science in question was held back by decades.

Meanwhile, one D Russell Humphreys had made some fairly specific predictions (in 1984) about the magnetic fields Voyager would find in the outer planets, which turned out to be both bang on the money and well wide of any other expectations when those fields were measured two years after publication. One of the more spectacular demonstrations that this "alien" and "impossible" perspective has predictive, scientific merit.

Anyone wondering why more such papers don't appear in the mainstream scientific press need only turn to the furor which exploded when the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published a carefully peer-reviewed paper from well-known Intelligent Design advocate, Stephen C. Meyer. The then-editor, Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg (a double PhD with many published articles himself), goes to great lengths on his website to explain that every positive scientific and journalistic step of the process was followed for the paper and had been independently verified and approved by highly qualified scientists before publication.

It is quite clear that the paper is being criticised on political/philosophical grounds, not because of any scientific merit or demerit.

The Origins show is based on philosophy, not on science. This is well and good except that it is presented as being purely based on science.

I need hardly point out that such misrepresentation is in itself unscientific, a meta-flaw under which to group all of the unscientific teleological statements about features "appearing" (ex nihilo, apparently) and organisms having "figured out" and "striving" to achieve "goals" without any guiding hand. Nevertheless, it will go ahead, and millions of viewers will be taught that random numbers have hidden intelligence and/or miracle-working ability which repeatedly transcends mere statistics, and introduced once more to a capricious goddess who goes by the name of Nature - all the while suffering the constantly asserted doublethink mantra that there is no supernature.

Meanwhile, back at Reasons , Hugh has had the more obvious inconsistencies and contradictions among his theories publicly pointed out to him

Well I don't know about you but religion is the last and only reason why biological science is being railed against and might take a turn for the worse, check out sites like www.arn.org and whatnot for the modern creationist movement based on some convoluted concept of "special creation" of the first cells (in Behe's case) or as some Old earthers in the movement would have it human beings. In fact religion is the cause of a lot of human division in the world where you have a lot of nutjobs believing entirely different things about the origins of humanity, the age of the earth, how long humans have been on the planet, how they got here, etc.

For people that might flame me I do not believe in seperating the bible from history there is no historical or rational basis in doing so I do not subscribe to "different models" of faith (as seen here: Faith and reason - Internet encyclopedia of philosophy that were created because we found out that the earth was old and the bible's history is not history at all. Before scientific times this could be somewhat excused as a culture needs to have some worldview base/common values, history and culture but it's not now.

ID is based off an incorrect and outdated worldview unless you really believe God did the whole job in 6 days a few thousand years ago, global flood, noah's ark and all that (Local flooders: if the flood was local why not just have Noah and animals move, or warp him some place also why does the biblical god a good 99% of the time use nature (or something) as an intermediary to destroy human beings, esp when it's claimed that as god you're omnipotent and have full control over matter/nature's laws?).

Also I want everyone to look up Mathew 8:30-34 you can check out this website. Effectively disproving 1) The notion that Jesus is god (either you believe demon beings exist and cause disease/unnatural/violent behaviour, or christ is not god as god would know such things don't exist) 2) Christ promotes and endorses superstition and ignorance he actually 'plays along' with the excorcism if you don't believe in demons, which is tantamount to lying and bearing false witness which disqualifies him as the Son of god (since lying is a sin!). 3) If he was really the son of god and had eternal life he would have stuck around to make the world a better place, the christians rationalized his death away in the gospels because they lived in hopeless and harsh times, in short they were deluded.

Finally even the OT and gospel authors conclude those who dont view the bible as historical in it's entirety on fundamentals (i.e. the first chapters of genesis, creation of adam and eve, the fall, the origin of death in humanity through 'great gran-daddy'adam's disobedience). Don't take my word for it paul's whole basis for the christian religion was that it was rooted in reality and history (or so he thought anyway). Here's the bible characters own own words on his stance towards the OT (the 'bible' before the gospels were written).

"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

"Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."

"As by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men - . . death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam's transgression... [I]For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ".[/I] - Please notice the contrast taking place here it spells it out in HUGE LETTERS that the origin of physical death is rooted in adam not evolution or progressive creation.

See problems with non-literal or theistic evolutionist interpretations of the

A big problem with science education is just that; teachers often are ill equiped to answer important and difficult questions. I've most often seen evidence of this in the evolution versus creationism debate. If a kid asks (probably in highschool) how evolution could be possible in light of the second law of thermodynamics, most high school teachers cannot give an adequate answer. That doesn't mean that adequate answers do not exist (they do).

Take for another example the intelligent design propaganda piece Ten questions to ask your biology teacher - excellent and compelling answers to all of those questions exist, but they are seriously tricky and would trap an average educator. You need to be very well trained in biology and other natural sciences to field those questions. Most teachers with an undergraduate degree in science and an education after degree simply don't have the knowledge.

...beginning of the end. This is the good first stab at a systematic approach to bio-engineering, which of course can lead to robust theories. The scary part is the potential for 'virus' creation; it's inconceivable that the technology could be sequestered into "good hands" indefinitely.

The evolutionary aspects of this were also intriguing. This will provide material for a substantial test of Bill Dembski's theories about the limitations of evolutionary algorithms. These theories have become important (if true) in several areas, including NIST's attempt to create self-driving cars.

Hugh Ross is an "Old-Earth" Christian who argues that the universe itself gives evidence for design.

Michael Behe is the point-man for the Irreducible Complexity argument.

Alvin Plantinga (link found in first post) rejuventates a much older line of thought called the "Transcendence Argument".

Those will get you started; some other time, if you are interested, I can give you links and bibliography for the philosophical side of things. Gotta go teach!

Regards,
Jeff Cagle

can it really be said to exist in any practical way?

"Practical way" subtly implies an observer, so it can't exist in a practical way. It can't exist in a non-practical way either, because that implies that there is a practical way, which implies an observer. It would have to exist in a way that is completely independent of practical. I have no idea what that means, but it's logical.

'irreducible complexity' problem WRT the eye. Can you point me in the right direction?

First the ID side, which I think is wrong, but probably not maliciously so:

Home page of Michael J. Behe. For more info, pick up books or writings on the web by Behe, and William A. Dembski. Google is your friend, there's a huge amount of stuff out there.

Now, for the skeptical side:

The talkorigins website

When someone puts forward the idea of irreducible complexity, remember two things: first, it's up to the person saying that the eye is irreducible to prove that it is. The argument must satisfy the skeptic. Second, irreducible complexity sounds a lot like the fallacy of argument from lack of imagination. Just because one cannot imagine how something could happen is not a reason to believe that it did.

The talk origins website has a lot of information on there, hope you enjoy reading some of it.

As I understand it, evolution/natural selection is the natural effect when beings are subjected to adversity: only the strong survive. Thinking about this, it becomes clear that in a model where evolution is the sole factor traits that affect survival are gradually weeded out over time because those without such traits are more likely to survive. So too beings that experienced beneficial mutation are likely to preserve such traits.

But this article raises an interesting consideration. When I was in junior high, we took a brief field trip to collect pond water to view under microscopes, and one of the most interesting things was how those little critters with the thing called a flagellum would zoom around. This article brings up the point that this device, which is not exclusive to pond scum, is "irreducibly complex": it is made up of several parts, none of which separately would be of beneficial use to the creature employing it (in fact, such a creature would probably die off under natural selection.) The odds of a mutation creating all parts simultaneously are astronomical, and consequently, the only accepted theory that can sanely describe such a thing is intelligent design, which has been hinted at in many different real-life examples as well as probabistically explained by Pascal's Wager.

This theory is currently derided and discriminated against in favor of older theories, mind you, much as Galileo was in favor of the theory that the Earth was flat, because it threatens to dredge up the uncomfortable unknown. But like any theory, the more evidence that is found to support it particularly to the exclusion of existing theories, the more likely it is correct. So as skeptical as I am of intelligent design, I can't help but notice how much of our biological model it predicts. Has anybody heard anything more about this?

As of now, the parent is modded +4, Troll. The wonders of creationism debate.

Much comes down to exactly how "big" these transitions in fact are, in terms of complexity. Michael Behe, professor of biochem, says they're really, really complex, beyond what is statistically reasonable to assume via random mutation (check out the book, an analysis of the chemical processes involved in sight makes it appear to be as complex as, say, Mozilla).

He's a professor of biochemistry. Asking one to arbitrarily toss out his analysis is as closeminded as the "creationists" are accused of being.

And... how exactly do you know what meaning "creationism" has for any given person? One can be of the view that the entire universe runs via scientific law, but that "God" caused the initial "Big Bang" event. Your argument strikes me much like those of other academics I've seen, so stridently insisting on the absolutism of their viewpoint, they're willing to just engage in straw man arguments in a strained effort to impress.

Have you actually read the theory of intelligent design at all? It's the most utterly ridiculous thing I have ever read.

Here is a site refuting the idea of intelligent design.

Here is an essay by William Dembski expaining the theory behind ID.

If you read both and still think that ID is a good thing (tm), you're either

A. Not very good at math or
B. Gullible

My apologies to your crackpot professor.

I do have this link to Behe saying that in his book he said that he wasn't a creationist and did not doubt common descent. (Common descent with modification is, of course, Darwin's theory of evolution.)

Just to clarify he then goes on to say that his belief is that, "evolution occurred, but was guided by God."

Does that suffice to establish that Behe believes that macroevolution happened?

PS A tip for online discussion. Going to lengths to declare your credentials is a bad idea. If you actually deserve those credentials it will be obvious fast enough anyways. And anyone can declare anything - making the declaration worthless. (In fact it has negative value - people see it as an admission that you are saying something that isn't very believable.)

Go to the Access Research Network (a creationist website) and search on "Gonzalez", and you'll see he has his own page there.

Go to the Access Research Network (a creationist website) and search on "Gonzalez", and you'll see he has his own page there.

The theory of evolution is one of the best supported scientific theories. An overwhelming number of scientists working in related fields concur.

And most of them are Christian.

Just because it's in a book doesn't mean thats it's true!-Christian mom upon seeing son with genetics textbook.

Wrong. Intelligent Design theory says nothing and attempts to say nothing about the characteristics of the designer. You're projecting here.

Oh really? Well, that's the ID drill (ARN ID FAQ) - but only because teaching the inference of "A Religion" from ID in public schools would be unconstitutional in the USA...

The whole point of ID theory is that it only posits the existence of a designer, and nothing about the designer's characteristics.

Hmmm... The whole point of ID seems to be to overlay religious agendas onto the framework of science, to combat "godless humanism" ;>

As I said, if there was any real evidence of ID, it would be like finding the black monolith in the film 2001... It would be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity...

The trouble is, the vast majority of life scientists - the experts in the field - think Behe and his fellow IDer's are simply seeing what they want to see - the fingerprints of god in natural processes.

Most Christians Scientists world-wide are happy to accept everything science teaches as "the work of God". That isn't enough for IDers.

Although it pretends otherwise, ID is a political movement motivated by a desire to support religious agendas.

PTET

For example, the discovery of Santa's flying reindeer would be a big step on the road to understanding the physics of his journey, akin in chemistry to discovering the transuranic series, and would have much more impact than finding yet another sign of a stressed creator. For example, the CIA would be absolutely fascinated to get a handle one someone who ``knows when you've been naughty''.

``But seriously folks,'' add to this the 250,000+ species known from fossils and it should be clear that at least every 8th-to-80th transitional form should have shown up in the fossil record we've exhumed so far (BTW, the above ref cites TL Erwin in The Tropical Forest Canopy within Biodiversity, 1988, NAP (WA DC) for a generous ceiling of 30 million species, mostly insects). If we had equal parts transitional and stable species (really, we need many times that because most attempted changes would fail according to any reasonable theory), for example, there should be an absolute scratching minimum of about 2,000 known transitional species discovered in the fossil record by now.

While we're having fun, take DM Raup's figure of 99.9% ( Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? , 1991, WW Norton NY - see this too for commentary and a ceiling of 40M species) extinct species, there should be at least 20 transitional species alive today, and using the 10-30 million species range vs 2 million known, we should have found somewhere between 1 and 4 of those by now.

Maybe one of those is Santa's reindeer? Which, BTW, are probably female...

Well, there's far too much here to reply to point by point, so I'll just point to this whole page of Behe addressing his critics criticisms.

Best,
-jimbo

Behe's response to talk.origins is here.

Best,
-jimbo

Behe refutes this refutation here.

Best,
-jimbo