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So, you say that the FSM "spoof" is flawed because they make reference to a specific creator? It's a more direct parody of religion itself rather than of the "Intelligent Design" shroud that creationists have created, but that's because ID is so thin that upon any brief inspection you discover that it is creationism in disguise. Anyway, the important thing about FSM is spurring discussion, like we have done here for instance. As long as we're talking about ID, do you recognize the fact that ID is not science? Have you ever heard an ID argument that wasn't merely an attack on the the theory of evolution? The reason people "keep talking about" FSM is because creationists are trying to force their supernatural beliefs into public science education! Do you realize how pissed off people are about that? We're talking about an attempt to undermine the very foundation of our society -- rational thought and logical argument!

Religious types try to blow off FSM because it cuts so close to the bone. It's a ridiculous explanation for the way the world works, and it's just as definsible as any other religion on the planet. In other words, not very.

Sorry if I sound accusatory, but I'm pretty riled up over the state of education in our country. I don't know what your position is on this whole debate, other than your opinion that the FSM parody misses the point. If you don't know much about the scientific theory of evolution, or if you end up in an argument with someone who doesn't understand it, you might find this FAQ to be very useful.

Here's to open mindedness and rational argument! May the best supported ideas win!

Of course. It's the usual ID claptrap that's been refuted hundreds of times. Skeptic had two pages of scientific rebuttal, as well as pointing to a more detailed rebuttal

In Dover, Pennsylvania apparently. Although since there is no scientific theory of ID to teach, and no ID lesson plan; teaching it basically amounts to reading a really vague and erroneous statement to students.

But ID will face its first big legal challenge next month when Kitzmiller v. Dover gets underway. And from what I've read so far it looks as though the school board isn't going to come out victorious in this trial.

I'd then sincerely suggest that you spend some time with the The Pandas Thumb. Some interesting conversations..

Check out The Panda's Thumb, a blog dedicated to this topic...

Ahem

Here is the definite web repository on Evolution. Feel free to look around and refute any of the evidence for evolution they present.

Here's another.

And another.

Not quack pages. Real, serious pages.

Oh, and thousands of Christian clergy also support the truth of evolution.

Now, nobody can take YOU seriously when all you do is claim there is no evidence for evolution (which there is, see above for but a small sampling), talk about the multitudes of evidence for ID, yet fail to show any such evidence?

So let me ask:

What is the process of speciation that ID endorses?
What observed or experimental evidence is there for this?
Where is the evidence for this from other fields, such as physics, chemistry or archeology\anthropology?

Let me know when you can present this.

I am more than willing to change my view of ID if the evidence is presented and can be verified and can hold up to scrutiny. Are you willing to do the same in regard to evolution? Are you prepared to admit that evolution is correct if the evidence is shown? Even if that means the Bible is wrong or it opens the possiblility that God doesn't exist or isn't needed?

You can also use Talk Origins, Talk Reason, Talk Design, EvoWiki and Panda's Thumb to find lots of info on why these people are wrong. If you want to donate money, donate it to the NCSE or Talk.Origins, or perhaps buy some of the books of creationism refuters - I'd reccomend Robert Pennock's book 'Tower of Babel' as quite a good introduction.

Even my lowly blog has a few things on the ID/creationism debacle.

However, the book I found most convincing from a scientific perspective was "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe. Basically, his argument is that, at the micro level, many cellular functionas are irreducibly complex - that they require a host of different parts to work, none of which do anything independent of the rest.

So, how would all these parts have evolved gradually when each of them was useless without the others?

"You can see this happen on a small scale with bacteria becoming resistant to anti-biotics. The changes in the bacteria are very physical. But I suppose this is not macroscopic enough for you."

I know of many ways that bacteria become resistant, and I don't think any of them qualify as evolution.

1) Natural selection -- the resistant bacteria live, the non-resistant ones died. No new information, in fact we're losing information within the population.

2) Plasmids -- antibiotic resistance can be transferred between bacteria through plasmids. These plasmids are already in existence, and no new information takes place.

3) Removal of a pump -- if a mutation of a gene causes a bacteria to _lose_ the ability to pump a large class of material in, some of which happens to be antibiotic, this can hardly be qualified as the kind of evolution required to go from minimal complexity to maximal complexity, because we're going the wrong way. If instead you showed that brand new kinds of cellular pumps were being generated in response, and not as the result of plasmids or any other pre-programmed response, that would be something.

"I don't suppose you believe all the 'historical' accounts of ancient gods and goddesses, atlantis, fantastic creatures like cyclopses, etc etc?"

As I pointed out, the difference is that there is agreement among cultures that the event happened, and for a long time artifacts of the event remained in public viewing.

"in which case you would have to claim that all our dating methods, and huge amounts of other research are false"

There are many reasons to believe that is the case.

"Scientists have looked honestly at evolution. There is no other possibilities."

There are many scientists who disagree. Or do you think Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, Ariel Roth have done nothing scientific in their entire careers? Why did the Smithsonian's peer-reviewed biology journal include an article on Intelligent Design? If the editor was biased, how did such a prominent scientist come to be biased towards Intelligent Design if all the evidence points away from it? This whole "the argument is closed" idea is nothing more than a power grab.

"Your own link has shown that at least one creationist 'evidence' is full of dishonest reporting."

You don't think that evolutionists are capable of dishonest reporting? This is silly. The fact that there exists one or many dishonest reports from creationists does not invalidate creationism. The same is true of evolutionists.

"As I've said before, creationism does not make any usefull predictions."

The fact that Brutus killed Caesar does not make any useful predictions. The question is if it is true. Creation, by its very definition, is speaking of one or multiple singular events. To say that singular events don't happen because they aren't subject to mathematical reasoning is silly.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

Read for yourself Richard Steinberg's account. For fairness, I'll give you Panda's Thumb's Rebuttal.

The statement of the Biological Society of Washington is amusing at best. Instead of criticizing research methods or other scientific grounds, they simply announce that now it is a matter of policy not to publish ideas that are counter to the status quo. They said that it is outside their normal scope (Taxonomy) which Sternberg fairly easily repudiates in his answer.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

I love it when people say "scientists can't be wrong because they are scientists. It makes them superhuman with regard to the influences that happen to mere mortals."

You'll find all the brothers-in-arms you could want at The Panda's Thumb.

Evolution is about as "pseudo-science" as The Theory of Relativity and the Theory of Gravity.

Perhaps you should look up what a "theory" means in the scientific realm. Evolution has an ever growing body of evidence supporting it. Creationism or "Intelligent Design" as they like to call it, has no evidence supporting.

Care to actually learn more?

Talk Origins
Panda's Thumb

Or how about a highschool biology text. Or do you live in Kansas?

The US are a very strange place, and seemingly increasingly so.

So, when are we going to step up and demand an end to this nonsense?

Good point. However, it is not as if those who want to protect reason in the classroom and in society in general were completely unorganised: Have a look at The Panda's Thumb, also carrying an article on this issue. Also have a look at the links there.

The US are a very strange place, and seemingly increasingly so.

So, when are we going to step up and demand an end to this nonsense?

Good point. However, it is not as if those who want to protect reason in the classroom and in society in general were completely unorganised: Have a look at The Panda's Thumb, also carrying an article on this issue. Also have a look at the links there.

Check The Panda's Thumb for the latest antics of the creationists. Most of the material pertains to official actions from fundies trying to pass off "intelligent design" as science, but you also hear about fundie teachers doing it one class at a time and occasionally someone will relate a tale of how difficult it is for teachers to actually teach evolution without having some fundie's kid argue that it's all an atheist plot to deny God.

If 80% aren't spherical one must ask why the other 20% are NOT.

Why even bother to ask why? If you come across something and you can't figure out how it could have occurred, just claim the event or process is the product of Intelligent Design .

Why spend year after tedious year engaging in reductionist scientific inquiry when you can just bail out immediately with an answer that cannot be falsified: Intelligent Design .

Worried that your invisible sky-ghost or imaginary all-powerful personal friend isn't getting the deferential worship He deserves in this age of secular humanism? Sneak your sky-ghost back into the schools and indoctrinate another generation of devout sheep with Intelligent Design .

Remember the "Argument from Personal Incredulity": if you're too thick to figure out how something works, it must be because no one can figure it out! Don't sweat it! Just explain it away by saying it was caused personally God^H^H^H an Intelligent Designer!

Don't waste time asking question or doing science! Just give credit to an Intelligent Designer and go back to sleep!

Two minutes per idiot adds up to a lot of time!

You didn't follow any of the links already supplied in the grandparent post, did you? Is your mind so made up that you don't want to be confused by any facts?

Dude, there was a total of one link in that post, and I did follow it. Siting text references doesn't work so well in a web-based forum; please endevor to find web-based versions of the articles, or paraphrase them in your own post.

On your opinion that I should make up my mind and not getting confused by facts:

Sir, I've already thought myself through a major philosophy shift once in my life, away from the very things you are arguing for and towards a more skeptical outlook on the world. That itself should point out to you that I am convincible, though I doubt you will take me at my word.

But you are NOT going to convince me by saying "Follow the bouncing ball very slowly and carefully!" I've been careful not to talk down to you through all this, you can at least have the courtest to do so. And you are not going to convince me *easily*, I'll tell you that for free.

A Google search for: "Stephen Meyer" "Discovery Institute" "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington" turned up the following very interesting link:

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal : Déjà vu All Over Again by Chris Mooney. It sheds some much-needed light over this paper, and the drive to get Intelligent Design published in reputible journals. (Here's a hint: it all boils down to politics.) It reveals that the three reviewers who approved the article are unnamed, and that the editor of the journal was sympathetic to the Intelligent Design cause. It is interesting reading, more interesting than your link in any case. And linked from that article is The Panda's Thumb : Meyer's Hopeless Monster, by three named, mainstream scientists refuting the article you presented, and the Biological Society of Washington itself has repudated the article.

It is trivial to show that self-creation by accident is mathematically well beyond impossible. There's not nearly enough time (1E17 seconds) and materials (1E81 atoms) available under even the most stupidly optimistic of circumstances to achieve the required result.

I disagree -- those are huge, huge numbers you're talking about. You're going to have to explain that one to me.

Seconds: 100,000,000,000,000,000.

Atoms:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000.

The Atom number, while nineteen zeros short, is not far in length to actually giving us a use for the word googol. The seconds number is a bit suspect: there is an average of around 31557600 seconds in a year (including leap years). Diving your number by that brings up a figure of about 3.17 billion years, which is short of the period of time the Earth has been around, and is far short of the universe's estimated age.

But you should realize that the scientific community is far from certain about their numbers. I don't think anyone stakes definite claims for either of them. Science works by trying to figure things out, not being certain about them beforehand. Otherwise, how would Einstein have been possible?

Bring on the self-structuring molecules, bring them all together and interact them at incredible rates in amazing quantities, do what you please, it still falls utterly flat.

Again, those are not small numbers up there. Rates do not have to be amazing within that time frame. And even if they are, it's possible that those processes got an accidental boost to bring forth life on Earth, due to the so-called anthropic principle: it happened, because we

I just went to Wikipedia and perused the articles you mentioned. My confusion is about what you found erroneous in them? They said that evolution is by far the most widely held belief about the origin of species, except in the United States and Southeast Asian Islamic countries (I am not certain about sub-Saharan Africa -- given the recent strong importation of US fundamentalist Christianity, evolution may now be a minority position there also). They said even in these places, the majority of scientists are convinced by evolution, although the percentages are dramatically lower than in the rest of the world. Although it is most strongly championed by fundamentalists in Christianity (and to a lesser extent Islam), creationism is also an important influence politically among mainline denominations of Christianity, which is also true.

Now if you are arguing the articles are too lenient with respect to creationism, note that the great majority of discussion is in the realm of philosophy, politics and religion, which is where it does have (in the countries they mentioned) a significant foothold. And at the bottom of the creationism article, a rather extensive bibliography of creationist/IDist websites are given as well as sites that explain objections to them in more detail. I would have preferred The Panda's Thumb to be added to the bibliography, but otherwise it's a rather strong pair of articles, in my opinion.

Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.

Getting back to the topic, ID proponents are somewhat like James Van Allen; both assume that they already know all that is worthwhile or necessary, so there is no need to go further except for those things which particularly interest them (plasma physics or biblical exegesis, take your pick). Both are wrong.