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The Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design
Mime Narrator writes "An article over at Kuro5hin discusses the controvery over the Intelligent Design movement. The Dover, Pennsylvania school board recently adopted a policy requiring that high school science teachers teaching evolution tell their students that evolutionary theory, a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again, is flawed, and that intelligent design is a valid alternative. The ACLU, along with the AUSCS (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State), and 11 parents, are suing the school board, accusing the board of violating the separation of church and state. "
Honestly, just what is the deal with these fundamentalists? I have two issues with these people.
One, if a literal interpretation of the Bible is correct, what about all these fossils? Scientists have clear evidence of the evolutionary process throughout history via these fossils...where exactly did they come from if the planet is in fact only 6000-odd years old? I've asked creationists this question, and they've actually replied that they were placed here by God to test our faith. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a serious problem with this hypothesis. I for one refuse to believe that God would give us brains capable of rational, abstract thought, and then plant fake clues to punish those of us who had the gall to use those brains to attempt to understand the world we live in. Of course, this is the same god who told Abraham to sacrifice his only son to Him, and waited until the knife was actually descending to say "Psych!".
Two, regarding the wider scope of Intellegent Design, why does that necessarily have to conflict with the established theory of evolution? This is like saying that a particular statue could not have possibly been carved by ancient man, because it is clear that it was in fact carved with a stone tool. Can't the ID folks consider the possibility that evolution is the tool God used to create us? Evolution does not disprove the existence of God.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Evolution has been shown to be very accurate throught the past century. Granted there might be small little holes in the theory, but Intelligent Design is swiss cheese comparatively.
By this, I mean that the process of evolution is a thinking intelligent process. Or to state it another way: Evolution is intelligent.
This means that all signs of evolution also will be signs of intelligent design, simply because evolution is a form of intelligence.
So, instead of the intelligence reciding in the metaphysical head of a super
natural being called God, it resides in DNA and their interactions with the
world through life and death.
All this according to the Kolmogorov Complexity definition of intelligence.
Intelligence is the process of rationally building and testing theories about
the world, and then using those theories for useful stuff. DNA is mutated,
recombined, merged through sex, and otherwise changed. These changes are
hypotheses about the world, in the form of new life forms trying to survive
there. Thus life forms which do not reproduce are falsified hypotheses. The
useful stuff is survival.
As for those people preaching intelligent design:
They are all religious, and do not know what theories or evolution are. They
just pretend and believe they know. Remembering this, they are easily exposed,
as long as you yourself really know what theories and evoution are.
Kim0
So, are we supposed to have a good academic discussion about where we stand on the issue or are we supposed to flame anyone who is a proponent of Intelligent Design?
Because the summary seems predisposed towards the latter.
"Intelligent Design" is nothing more than an effort by christian mythologists to keep their invisible man relevant. I'd like to ask these ID kooks just what god it is that developed all that they propose? Certainly they aren't speaking of Hindu gods or Egyption gods, they're pushing their own brand of myth on hungry minds. Any teacher that propagates that rubbish should have their teaching credentials revoked as they aren't putting the best interests of the students first.
The "christian taliban" will stop at nothing to keep the money flowing to the coffers, perpetuating the ignorance for another generation is the only way to guarantee it.
Hee, my "Friends/Foes" mail should be entertaining tonight.
Trolling is a art,
What next? "Serious Doubts About Pyramid Schemes"? "Scientist Uses Paper to Wipe Ass"?
Intelligent design essentially reduces to this:
Fact 1. The universe is extremely intricate and complicated
Fact 2. We design things such as automobiles or aircraft that are intricate and complicated.
Which leads to the conclusion:
Conclusion 1: Everything that is intricate and complicated must have a designer.
Conclusion 2: Conclusion 1 indicates that the universe requires a designer.
Conclusion 3: God is that designer.
(Western) Conclusion 4: This designer is the God as described in the Holy Bible.
The real failure of the argument is in Conclusion 1. It amounts to saying "I have absolutely no idea why the universe is complicated, therefore God did it." When a person studies physics, Conclusion 1 becomes even more untenable. There are many very simple systems that give rise to very complex behaviour. Consider the Newton-raphson method for finding roots of a polynomial. The method goes "pick somewhere close to the root and then start iterating and the iteration will take you to a root". If you're brighter than I was at school, you might have asked: "Okay, but how can I guess where the root is mathematically so I can start the process." The answer is far more http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/newton / ">complex than you think.
And besides, if Conclusion 1 is true then surely God is intricate and complicated and thus needed a designer. To which the theist replies: "God doesn't need a designer, It's God". To which I respond: "If God doesn't need a designer, why does the universe? Why not just cut out God and proclaim that the universe is undesigned? And there in is the true failing of intelligent design.
Another argument comes from the fact that the universe seems fine tuned to life. This a bit premature. First of all, we can't even show life is possible in our universe from first principles; that is, taking the complete set of the laws of physics and using it to simulate life at the atomic level on a super-computer. How can we be so sure life couldn't exist in some form with different laws of physics? My second objection is that we should expect life to depend heavily on physics. As an example, the proteins that deal with the replication of DNA are quantum optimised, the speed at which they move down the DNA is the minimum allowed by quantum mechanics. There is also evidence that the machinary uses quantum mechanical tunnelling to halve the error rate during copying. I'd argue that the fact that life depends so heavily the laws of physics being exactly right is a product of selection - there is a distinct advantage in exploiting the physics of the universe. In the begining of life, the instruments of life were probably a lot cruder.
As an atheist, I am alarmed when people try to mark religious belief as science. I don't mind you having religious belief, but if the US wants to remain a technological super-power you've got to make sure your children are taught cold, hard science. By letting the cherrished beliefs of a few cloud the judgement of the youth on an entire nation, everbody loses out. As a scientist, I enjoy having the key theories questioned but it becomes annoying when such a throughly discredited theory as Intelligent Design is peddled again and again without the proponents bringing any new ideas to the table.
Simon
It just means there will be fewer well educated people from the state of PA. if the community feels they need to go back to the dark ages, they have every right to do so. when their children can't compete for jobs and are a laughing stock of the nation, they'll know who to blame.
No intelligent designer or engineer would put a waste pipe across a recreation area.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I teach physics. Every theory in physics is most likely flawed. In fact, every theory in natural science is flawed. Should I have to point it out again and again?
The owls are not what they seem
We'll say that in our classrooms when your ministers say "God is a theory, not a fact" on their pulpits.
And fundies, just to pre-emptively shoot down your argument that taxes pays for these schoolbooks and so you shouldn't be forced to read that stuff, consider it a fair exchange for all of the tax exemptions that the church gets. Dollar for dollar, you guys are getting off EASY.
why the fuck?
a shdot.html
here's a revelation:
DON'T GIVE THEM ATTENTION
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/klee/misc/sl
Seriously, that's what the problem is. With most schools teaching science only as 'a body of facts', why should we be surprised how faith-based things like ID gain ground?
We need to be teaching kids about the scientific method, the scientific process. Popper etc. The importance of skepticism and falsifiability.
If they still have the impression that the fact that Evolution is a theory represent a weakness, not a decisive strength, then how can we win?
ID has nothing to do with science, and /. is obsessed with science.
The extent of any intelligent conversation with ID must be limited to the above. Anything else is not only superfluous, but also in danger of ennobling those quacks.
Just so long as I'm equally entitled to conjecture that the Bible was placed here by Satan to test our faith in him (the true Lord).Don't think they should have a problem with that, do you?
I have a coworker, a man I deeply respect, who has told me he has lived his life by listening to an inner voice that guides him.
That, in itself isn't bothering. He's a story about how he was living semi-nomadic, moving from job to job, and when it came time to move south he went to take a position doing radio towers (he'd done it every year). This year, however, his 'voice' told him to skip it.
The crew that ran the towers was killed when a freak gust of wind knocked them off. The owners brother, who was filling in because they were short handed, was killed as well.
Which makes you not wonder why a repeated event like that would lead someone to believe there is a higher power granting directions to you.
He also went on to tell me he believed in the great flood and that the bible talks about life on other planets, and how those aliens came to earth and impregnated our women to form the scourage that was wiped clean with said flood.... but like I said, I respect the man deeply.
I just don't agree with him.
I spend my high school time (12-18) at a catholic school in Europe.
In biology we spent a lot of time learning about evolution. When those classes where over, the teacher said he was obligated (well, don't know by who actually. School or govn.) to mention intelligent design. It took him no more than two minutes, and the entire class had a good laugh.
At the time I was surprised that he had to mention it, though.
He knew the gullible bint was going to eat the apple. He never had any intention of letting mankind stay in the Garden of Eden. He just wanted to be able to say "Gotcha!".
D.
http://www.cornellevolutionproject.org/
I have a copy of the dissertation itself...I might scan it and post it in the name of free exchange ideas, although it would be somewhat dishonnest.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Yes it is a theory, by the scientific definition, in the same way that ID does not qualify as a theory, it is merely a hypothesis. Theory in science does not mean "unproven", remember.
It seems that school boards often do this to reach some sort of compromise due to political pressure from religious groups.
The idea that there can be some sort of fair time given in science classes to religious theories is flawed.
If a religion posits that "number theory is only a theory", and comes up with some religious alternative, then should math classes give them equal time?
What determines the validity of an alternative viewpoint? Popularity?
Though it may seem otherwise, anti-intellectualism and the desire to subvert bodies of knowledge to preconceived notions is really no more prevalent than it ever was. That is the problem. Aren't we supposed to be advancing?
I wish there were Secular Humanist organizations exerting more influence on our school boards.
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
my point is, Integgegant Design != God
Good point. If we assume that the designer is not a God, how do we explain the evolution of the designers?
The problem with ID as far as I can see is that it seems to violate Occams Razor. Now, theres no hard and fast rule, that the simplest theory is the correct one. But by including a designer I think ID is adding a whole lot of complexity based on assumnptions which don't seem to be very valid.
The alternate approach is to admit that we don't know everything about how evolution works. Fine with me - it just means we have to do some more work to find out what its all about.
Not pass the buck of onto some God figure
(Thats always something that has bugged me a little about religion [I'm atheist]. People prefer to be able to blame/pass the buck of onto something/somebody else rather than just say 'I don't know'. But then again, thats their choice)
With Intelligent Design, the proponents start with a conclusion and try to find a way to get the facts to fit the conclusion. With Evolution, the proponents are taking the facts and trying to find a conclusion that fits the facts.
The theory of Evolution is not perfect, but as a theory based in the scientific method, it is able to change as we learn.
it is a theory people. Theory. It still has holes, giant unexplainable holes.
This also describes gravity.
General Relativity is a theory, in the same sense of the word as evolution is a theory. So is Newton's theory of gravity.
We know Newton's theory of gravity is "wrong" because in places where it makes divergent predictions from GR, observations show GR to be right. Of course, Newton's theory is a limit of GR, and the fact that it is "wrong" doesn't stop us from predicting the motions of planets or of spacecraft.
We know that GR is "wrong" because it makes nonsensical predictions in areas where it must be mixed with Quantum Mechanics (another well-tested and well-verified scientific theory). But, once again, it works extremely well where it works.
So you could say that our theory of gravity is full of holes, giant unexplanable holes, and you would be right. But that doesn't mean that I can't succesfully predict that if I drop my keys, they are going to go down. It doesn't mean that I can't explain the formation of stars through the gravitational collapse of molecular clouds.
We don't know everything, but we know something!
In fact, although we can make far more precise predictions with our theory of gravity than we can with our theory of evolution, in some sense evolution is on less shaky ground than our current theory of evolution. After all, we don't have very strong evidence that the theory of evolution is wrong somewhere, but we do for gravity!
You ID and Creationism. advocates need to get over this term "just a theory" that you use. It just shows ignorance. You need to realize that the popular use of the word "theory" (to mean "speculation") is extremely different from the scientific use of the word "theory" (to describe an explanation of natural processes which may be extremely well tested and well understood).
-Rob
Or so such trollish moderation would indicate. Just because you don't agree with something, doesn't mean that the person posting was intending it to be a troll. A troll is a post designed to attract adverse attention - the parent was merely a logical transposition of the attitude displayed by ID'ists, not an attempt to inflame hatred.
gravity is just a theory as well. Dare you to jump off a building.
The problem with ID is that it doesn't fulfil the two basic requirements of a science - It's not falsifiable (how do you proof it wrong?) and it doesn't follow occam's razor (why not just argue invisible unicorns created us?)
Intellegent design does not mean it was God who did it. Does not say who did it just that some intellegance did it. This is a viable theory. Don't attack it based on how religious organizations use the theory but on it's merits
I don't think you get it. It is not about whether evolution or intelligent design are viable theories or not. Evolution is falsifiable, intelligent design (ID) is not (or at least I haven't seen anyone show how it is falsifiable). Consequently, ID at best is philosophy masquerading as science.
Anand Rangarajan anand@cise.ufl.edu
It seems that the author knew about one specific area of research and set out to write an article that was beyond their capbilities.
Too bad, as I.D. is a deeply flawed effort, but every attack against it that I've seen outside of the highly technical have been arm-waving affairs that can be easily shot down.
Real problems with I.D.:
- It applies Occam's Razor in reverse. That is, it starts with a conclusion, and for every complex question resolves that the simplest explanation is not to deviate from the conclusion.
- Evolution is not linear. One thing that many people looking at existing species forget is that many of their traits are the result of FAILURES as much as success. An example of this would be marine mammals, which have many structures that are so different from other sea creatures that you could conclude that they could not have evolved naturally. And yet, when you factor in land-mammals the features of sea mammals are easily explained: they are the vesiges of a (as far as marine mammal evolution is concerned) failed attempt to adapt to land.
- Evolution and design are seen as radically seperate topics because of the nature of the initial assumptions, and yet the idea that evolution could progress from some initially designed state is equally (im)plausible.
- Evolution and natural selection are often conflated incorrectly
These are just thoughts off the top of my head, and I'm sure that there are many other excellent examples.The problem with Intelligent Design "theory" is that it's not really a theory.
There's no description of the process, as there is with evolution. There's no observable current phenomena which can illustrate that process, as there is with evolution. There's no specific evidence that such a thing even happens, as there is with evolution.
At best, you could call Intelligent Design a "conjecture" or perhaps a "hunch."
Also, regarding evolutionary notions of the Descent of Man: It's not really enough to say "there are many flaws"... certainly not in this crowd. Kindly point a few of them out.
Personally, I don't think either theory runs afoul of Hebrew/Christian concepts of God. After all, the scriptures don't say: "And The Lord made light." The say: "And The Lord said, 'let there be light.'" It almost makes it sound like the creation of the universe was pretty much the tacit act of allowing it to come into existance.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again" Is that a joke ? There's no theory yet explaining the origins of life, and we're pretty much FAR from it.
I'll start by saying I am a christian so you know where I stand.
You lost me already.
There are Christians and there are Christians. It's an extremely diverse religion.
I am a Christian. However, I accept the evidence for evolution and believe (not in the faith sense, but in the same sense that I believe that a neutral Hydrogen atom has one electron) that all complex life evolved from simpler forms through a process of mutation and natural selection (which is well established, though not perfectly understood). I believe that the Universe is at least 13.7 billion years old, and that it was once extremely hot and dense. (Science right now can't really take us to the moment of the big bang, but it does take us back to a when the Universe was a soup of protons and neutrons and electrons that hadn't formed into elements yet.)
All of that, yet I'm a Christian. So how can I know where you stand?
I am also extremely angry when religions try to interfere with the progress of science, and when creationists (whether they call themselves that or intelligent design advocates) assert that science must be wrong when it disagrees with the Bible, or when ID advocates assert something like irreducable complexity simply because they don't have the imagination or intellectual capacity to imagine how something complex could have happened without the direct interference of a supreme being. I'm very angry when Christians assert that to be a Christian, you must believe the literal truth of the Bible, even though reading just the first few chapters of Genesis shows that the Bible contradicts itself and that any reasonable thinking person can't accept it all as literally true. I'm boggled that some Christians think that for something to contain wisdom and truth, it must be literally true-- is your view of God so amazingly simplistic? For heaven's sake, Jesus taught in parables! Make the connection, people! And meanwhile, stop trying to spread ignorance about science in our schools and set our children back into the dark ages by refusing to allow them to learn about the best understanding we have of modern biology!
-Rob
If they say "It's the theory of evolution" they'll be sued by all the Fundamentalists who don't believe in science.
If they say "It's possibly guided by some greater power that we aren't allowed to speak about" they'll be sued by both the Fundamentalists who will tell them they MUST say what power made it, or by the {insert four-letter-acronym} who says the schools are the state, and can't mention anything having to do with religion, even though religion is a HUGE part of the entire history (and present) of the world.
If they say "It could be both", they'll still be sued, since Fundamentalists on both sides will say "Our Beliefs are the One True Way (tm)", and refuse to accept that any other view may have merit.
So...
I propose they just hand out little cards to the students that read:
While it doesn't allow for much learning, it doesn't detract from their education any more than the lawsuits are doing. And it will help the school board manage their budget a little better, rather than spending the (already tight) budget on legal fees.frob
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
I would say we don't know much about evolution or ID. But, to presume one over the other and attack the other side is both wrong for anyone.
You don't know much about evolution.
Humanity as a whole, however, does.
You speak from ignorance. Your points are all well-taken, except that you assume that nobody else knows more about evolution than you. They do. Which means that your whole post is "wrong" by your own definition.
-Rob
Nope, no Christian-bashing is implied. If you move outside the USA, you'll find that the majority of Christians are quite happy to accept that modern science is not antithetical to religion. There are many Christian biologists -- and working in biology without accepting that evolution is an inescapable *fact* is like working as an architect without believing in gravity.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Wikipedia has quite an extensive range of articles on this. (See the NPOV pages etc).
Basically it boils down to would it promote an even more open mind if we suggested that perhaps invisible unicorns did it?
Speaking of Galileo, it was the church the suppressed him...
The difference is, none of those Sci-fi authors claimed to be writing anything but fiction.
Except for L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology, who are widely regarded as kooks.
The intelligent design guys are claiming that their theory is actually how life and humanity started, which is a whole different thing from writing a "what-if" story in Analog.
Example 1: human eye. The nerves are connected to the photoreceptors from the outside - the blind spot is where they go through the retina. An engineer would obviously connect them from the outside.
Example 2: Flatfish. An engineer designing a flat fish would probably come up with something resembling a stingray - straight spine plus symmetrical ribs on both sides. The flatfish is totally unlike this - strangely twisted, it ( "undergoes a metamorphosis that involves the migration of one eye across the top of the head to a position adjacent to the non-migrating eye on the right lateral side" It probably reflects the way it evolved from some kind of "non-flat" fish that had to lay on its side to hide from predators.
Intelligent Design is NOT a theory with real merits. It is a hypothesis with equal logical potential to what is presently the most likely theory.
The difference being that there is a great deal of real evidence supporting Evolution and NO evidence supporting ID. In the world of science that is a relatively important distinction. So important, that without evidence, you can not call it science at all.
That's an idea! I'll be not so pissed of with churches trying to teach their junk in PUBLIC schools when they are forced to teach evolution in their own turf. Enough said... I see the US becoming more like IRAN in the next few decades...
Jesus taught in parables!
Thank you. It never fails to amaze me how many Christians believe that the Bible must be taken literally while Christ taught many of his lessons by telling symbolic stories.
Isn't it kind of arrogant of us to think we know so much. Does a fly know how a car runs? Could it be that the who and the how is just beyond us?
It would indeed be arrogant to say we know everything about everything.
My point is, that since we do not know everything about everything, there a lot of unanswered questions. Rather than solve the unknowns by placing a designer what is wrong with saying we don't know and leave it open till furtehr evidence comes in?
The immediate objection to this is that ID is an alternate view, so why not consider it? The problem with that is that the merits are very few.
I don't think ID really provides an explaination in the sense of how some thing works or has come to be. It's always seemed to me to be a placeholder or stop gap measure, filling in a void which people are uncomfartable with. The fact that it does'nt seem to follow the scientific technique very well is another line of argument entirely.
You mention: I do believe both sides should be taught on their merits and their questions
In a science class, I would assume that the teacher is duty bound to teach the scientific method and things that come about from the scientific method. Certainly, the fact that some people thought the sun went round the earth should be mentioned but I would'nt expect a teacher to spend 1 class on that.
But then again, we all know evolution has not been fully 'proved' and there are flaws. But is that an excuse to spend class hours on a theory that has not really been developed according to the scientific method? Evolution has holes and we don't know the full story - certainly true - but there are scientific ways to test aspects of evolution.
Can we apply the scientific method to aspects of ID?
I have no objection to a science teacher mentioning ID in a classroom, if only ot make students aware of other views. But to spend time on a theory that has not been developed on the basis of the scientific method and is more based on faith, would be a real disservice to the teaching of science and the inculcation of scientific thinking in students.
(Just as a side note, Carl Sagans, 'A Candle in the Dark' is an amazing book)
You ID and Creationism. advocates need to get over this term "just a theory" that you use. It just shows ignorance. You need to realize that the popular use of the word "theory" (to mean "speculation") is extremely different from the scientific use of the word "theory" (to describe an explanation of natural processes which may be extremely well tested and well understood).
I was totally in to your response as creative and well stated until this paragraph. To think that a person that believes in ID or creationism is incapable of understanding basic scientific philosophy or even incapable of being true scientists themselves is ignorant and offensive. Being dismissed as a lunatic for raging against mainstream science has plauged true scientists for centuries. Please accept that those of us who like the idea and hypothesis of ID are not low-IQ neanderthals but are in fact intelligent human beings. (Well, at least some of us.)
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Intellegent design does not mean it was God who did it. Does not say who did it just that some intellegance did it. This is a viable theory. Don't attack it based on how religious organizations use the theory but on it's merits
I'll attack it on it's own merits. It is not logically sound to say that humans are so complex that they must have been created by someone intelligent.
Based on my experience with very complex systems, such as computer opperating systems, I've come to the conclusion that as intelligent beings design ever more complex systems it becomes increasingly more difficult to design systems that don't have large flaws (bugs) that will keep the systems from working.
Based on the complexity of our ecosystems where individual organisms rely so heavily on each other and the exact composition of minerals and radiation available, I find it increasingly less likely that an intelligent designer would be able to create such systems without help from evolution.
Evolution sorta assures "success"(survival) of organisms. Intelligent design does not (high likelihood of failure until much testing and re-design is complete). Therefor I find Itelligent desing flawed at the most basic level - it makes the opposite conclusion it's data points suggest.
TW
So you're assertion is, in summary, that any theory, idea, or fairy tale that can't be disproved immediately has equal validity to any theory based on observable phenomena and deduction?
true science is the scrutiny of all possibilities of that which we do not know
I think this is highly debatable. If we took this approach we may as well use random guesses to explain things, because a guess is a 'possibility' in the sense that you describe. And by the way, starting your post with "Wrong." just makes you look dogmatic, not open minded.
As for the 'first instant of life' argument - do you therefore dismiss gravity because you can't explain the 'first instant of gravity'?
Read Pynchon.
In summary, if a highly improbable pattern of events or object exhibits purpose, structure or function and can not be reasonably and rationally explained by the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry or some other regularity or law, then it is reasonable to infer that the pattern was designed. - the product of a mind. Based on the above it is reasonable to conclude that design is the best explanation for the complexity of the postulated ancestral cell.
(see for yourself)
As William Saletan over at Slate.com has observed, this argument is absolutely idiotic - "It offers no predictions, scope modifiers, or experimental methods of its own. It's a default answer, a shrug, consisting entirely of problems in Darwinism. Those problems should be taught in school, but there's no reason to call them intelligent design. Intelligent design, as defined by its advocates, means nothing. "
Also, ID fails to account that human knowledge is constantly expanding. It may be true that we cannot presently describe some things by "the operation of the laws of physics or chemistry or some other regularity or law," but that does not mean that someday we will not be able to do so... but until then (and perhaps for some time thereafter) people will insist on calling it "intelligent design."
Of course, appealing to the public's ability to engage in rational thought is another issue altogether.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Intelligent design is NOT creationism, although creationists often use it to bolster their arguments. Here are some differences.
This is a very different animal from the Scopes trial, at least from a legal and theological perspective. What is at issue is not theology vs. science - i.e. church vs. state - but two competing scientific interpretations. That you may regard ID as a sort of reverse Lysenkoism is not so much relevant as the question of who gets to determine what is taught in the schools? Do you really want to declare that current scientific orthodoxy, whatever that changes into every five minutes, is what must be taught in the schools, without regard to the social consequences? If so, I urge you to consider the prominent role "science" and even "evolution" played in the Eugenics movement. It is wrong - even disasterous - to suppose that the fads of scientific orthodoxy should drive our social process.
And, for what it's worth, I'm neither a creationist nor an Intelligent Design advocate - although I see some merit in the latter. I'm perfectly comfortable if Evolution turns out to be the case all along, because I believe in a God who can work through the random.
"The lot is cast into the lap,
but the decision is the Lord's alone. "
Proverbs 16.33
Now, you don't have to like ID - that's fine. But I would urge those ranting and raging to consider whether their oppositions to Intelligent Design is founded in a considered evalution kof the theory, or in a knee-jerk reaction against your perception of where it will lead?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
ID is a hypothesis with no evidence to support it. Evolution has a great deal of evidence to support it, that is why we call it a 'theory'.
Teaching a random hypothesis with no scientific basis is as pseudoscientific as you can get.
Please accept that those of us who like the idea and hypothesis of ID are not low-IQ neanderthals but are in fact intelligent human beings.
Hmmm, a reference to "neanderthals" in the same paragraph that defends ID over evolution? Interesting.
Are you kidding me? Please tell me that this is a troll.
No? Okay, so here goes:
1. Atheism is not a religion because it has no religious doctrines---it is the denial, in fact, of any religious doctrine.
2. Atheism is not a religion because it has no institutions, no worship, no articles of faith, etc.
3. Finally, atheism is, as I understand it, the view that there are no good reasons for believing in a god, a goddess, many gods, or many goddesses. The arguments in favor of theism fail, and, given the success of the naturalistic worldview embodied in the sciences, it is only rational to deny the veracity of supernatural or theistic explanations. They need not be false so much as utterly irrelevant. (After all, my folks think that there's magic going on in their computer, and have a tough time grasping the whole computer programs just being 1s and 0s represented as electrical current. Their explanation is false, but it is utterly unnecessary, since we know that computers are electrical, and not magical, devices.)
That ain't religion, which has at its core reliance on faith (belief without grounds), revealed truth (i.e. magical texts), and supernatural explanations.
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
Atheism is a religion only if not collecting stamps is a hobby. Lack of belief in diety does not equal religion. Additionally, your quotes about an "atheistic view of evolution" isn't entirely correct. There are theists who believe that evolution is the means by which their preferred deities manage biology/life. Google for theistic evolution to learn more.
Based on my experience with very complex systems, such as computer opperating systems, I've come to the conclusion that as intelligent beings design ever more complex systems it becomes increasingly more difficult to design systems that don't have large flaws (bugs) that will keep the systems from working.
I know I'll get troll-moderated for this, but:
- Cancer - Aids
Intelligent Design or millions upon millions of years of evolution and adaptation - either way, the design of life is far from flawless or without "bugs."
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
More disturbing than discussions of Evolution vs Intelligent Design is the fact that, as a society we seem to have lost track of what science really is. Calling Intelligent design "an alternative theory" displays a clear lack of understanding of what a theory is, and behind that, what science is.
Quite simply, and I know I'll get flamed for some simple mistake in this explanation, science is:
Studying the universe around us, trying to learn about it and how it works. One aspect of this i a theory. If you have an idea about what something is and how it works, that's a hypothesis. You take your hypothesis, and figure out further implications of it, and propose tests and experiments that can test it. You hypothesis needs to make predictions that were previously unknown, and can be verified by tests and experimentation. If a hypothesis survives some amount of this process, it "graduates" to be a theory.
But the most important ingredient is an open mind. A hypothesis or theory may be rejected or modified based on experiments and/or facts, and a scientist should always be prepared to do that.
The early Muslim empire was one of the most enlightened the world has ever seen. Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together prosperously and happily in the Holy Lands. Science was advanced as, "understanding God's works," and for Pete's sake, we still use Arabic numbers. Eventually religious conservatism took over. The US seems bent on following that path, today.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"... that evolutionary theory, a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life..."
While I believe in evolution, evolutionary theory does not explain the origins of life. It does explain the state of current life forms in existance today and how they may have gotten that way.
We can demonstrate evolution in numerous experiments today, with plant life and animal life. So we know evolution is a viable theory. However, the theory of evolution does not address, nor does it try to address the origins of life. It only tries to describe what happened to the life after it existed.
To those of Judeo-Christian Faith out there, evolution does not preclude God's act of Creation. It only describes how the process progressed after that initial creative force.
The biggest hangup with evolution and faith is with the origin of man. Evolution does not state that man evolved from monkeys. It does observe that there are a lot of similarities with other primates and we do share a lot of DNA.
But, evolution also allows for the similar traits to be caused by the environment. For instance, if an opposable thumb is advantagouss to grasping or standing upright in the brush is advantagous, then it is resonable from an evolutionary perspective that both humans and primates share these traits.
DNA sharing is also used to show by some who misunderstand evolution that we came from monkeys. It is true we share something like 96% of our DNA with chimpanzees. But we also share something like 91% with dogs and over half with sea cucumbers. Evolution theory does imply that we would share DNA, but it doesn't comment on whether it comes from inheritance or adaptation. Obviously, using the thumbs thing, from above, there are only so many ways for DNA to create a thumb. Furthermore, the majority of shared DNA between all species has to do with cellular function and basic tenets of live. Evolution does not disallow for that and as a matter of fact predicts that it would happen.
Even if it were somehow proven that man evolved from lower primates, it would not negate God's creation of man, but only further explain the how. At some point in time a pre-human gave birth to another pre-human that was a little bit closer to a human, that gave birth to another pre-human a little closer again, and on and on, until eventually a human is born and at which point God created man.
Back to the original comment though. Evolution, in simplified terms, states that things evolve and adapt to their environment and those traits which give an advantage tend to win out and thrive, becoming new species. It does not, however, say how life began (it's origins, so to speak). That debate is left to the philosophers and theologians.
I find evolutionary theory completely plausible. Some difficult problems remain in my mind, like why the number of chromosomes differs from species to species, but I see no reason that they can't be solved eventually. We see the concept of evolutionary processes demonstrated all around us everyday, and earth is old enough for a lot of evolution to have occurred. As a scientific explanation, evolution works.
However, as a source of all truth, science doesn't work. Science has a fundamental problem with a reliance on logic. Any arguments to prove logic are inherently circular and (by logic) cannot be trusted. Science further has a problem in that when it gathers evidence for one thing, it gathers evidence for many things. We don't use Occams Razor because there is reason to believe that simpler is more true, we use it for our own convenience. Perhaps most importantly, science assumes everything has a cause. When you look back at the creation of the universe and of time itself, you realize that causality must break down. Therefore there must be something or someone beyond science.
In my own life I have seen enough evidence to believe in God and in his son Jesus. As part of that, I believe I am called to believe in Adam, Eve, the garden of Eden, etc.. I do not believe, nor do I expect anyone else to believe, that these ideas are easily compatible with science or much of the evidence we have found of dinosaurs, neanderthals, etc..
However, evolution is only one explanation of the archaeological evidence. Another explanation is misleading clues placed by a god who puts a high value on faith. Another is that evolution was guided by god's hand until he created Adam and Eve.
In short, I don't have a problem with believing in both. When trying to understand the behavior of men and women, both the fall of man and the evolution of man present valuable lessons. Both explain how men and women will react to situations. Both explain the world as it is. And neither belief precludes the other.
As for what should be taught in school, no one can be well-educated in this day and age without understanding evolution. But the students also need to be told that when it comes to history, all science can do is show whether an explanation is plausible. It can never prove what really happened.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
ID has no merits other than being non-Darwinist. There is no evidence supporting a designer being active to generate creatures (interestingly though we still call individual lifeforms 'creatures' even when we claim that they don't have been created by a creator ;) ), there is no conclusion we can draw out of ID that helps us deal with a problem we have with a single or a group of lifeforms.
We all know the problem with antibiotics: If you use them, and you are not reaching every single lifeform you want to wipe out with a deadly dose, some of the lifeforms might survive long enough to have offspring, which in turn might survive the antibiotics too. They even might be able to survive a low dose of antibiotics without any harm, so if you use the antibiotic again, they survive all competing lifeforms, which die due to the antibiotic, making the field free for a growing population of the slightly antibiotic resistant lifeforms.
In the end your antibiotic is not able anymore to harm the resistant lifeform, and all that happens if you use it: You increase the growing of the species, because the antibiotic helps battling all those other lifeforms once competing.
This is evolution at work, and there are enough antibiotics which are not effective anymore, because there are lifeforms resistant to them.
It does not only work for bacterias and other single cell organisms: Exactly those evolutative mechanisms were at work when coca plants grew resistant to RoundUp: The spraying of RoundUp on Columbian coca plantages had a strange effect: Because spraying from an airplane is quite incorrect, and you can't make sure that all plants you want to hit are hit with a full dose, and the one's you don't want to hit aren't, the coca growing pawns in Columbia faced a strange problem after a spraying attack: Most of their crops, coca and other crops, died. Most tomatos, most corn, most vegetables and fruit, and most coca plants.
But some survived, having only got a low dose and were able to survive.
Coca plants are mostly multiplied by the pawns by cutting small twigs and planting them into the earth rather than sowing the coca seeds. After a spraying attack almost the complete plantage of a pawn is destroyed, and only the coca plants which have survived can be used to plant anew, just cut some twigs and regrow your crops. Most cultural plants need to be grown again from seeds, and you have to wait until the RoundUp is washed out of the earth. In the end the whole coca plantages once attacked were replanted with twigs from coca plants that survived a RoundUp attack. And they were growing faster than before because the weed normally growing with the coca plants was suppressed by the RoundUp remains in the soil.
Within four years a coca plant was covering large areas which was completely immune against RoundUp. No genetic engineering (a.k.a. intelligent design) was necessary to outwith the DEA and Monsanto: Just having evolution go its way and taking the survivors of RoundUp attacks and replant the field with them.
You might love or hate Darwinism. But evolution is all around you every day.
Atheisim is simply a lack in belief in a god or gods. No more no less. Buddhism, Taoism and Confusianism are eamples of atheistic religions - that is, religions that exist and flourish, have entire sets fo ethics and philisophic underpinnings that do not have, or see a need for, an omnipotent creator or supreme being.
The point of separation of church and state is to ensure that no one religion, including the atheistic ones take over.
The school board is teaching a science class and is teaching the fact of evolution. Evolution has a tonne of evidence supporting it - evidence that continues to grow, not shrink. "Intelligent Design", on the other hand, has NO evidence supporting it and is simply the latest incarnation of Creationism - a belief based not on facts but on the creation myth of a particular religion, Christianity. As many posters have pointed out, ID takes a conclusion ("God created the Universe" or "We appear to be designed so there must be a designer" etc) and try to find evidence to support it (I can't give an example of this becasue apart from the sophistry of "Irreducable Complexity" ther is none). This is not the scientific method and thus not science.
I would not want the Christian creation myth taught as fact in a science classroom, no more than I would want the Native American one taught, or the Autstailian Aboriginal one taught or the Buddhist one taugh. Like it or not they are not fact. ID can be taught in Comaprative Religion classes or Philosophy even, but not in science because it is not science.
Now perhaps some day some real evidence supporting ID will come along. The beauty of science is, if that unlikey day ever comes along, science will re-evaluate and change it's stance to better fit the observable and experimentally verifyable facts. In this instance ID will become part of the science class then. Ironic that ID proponents don't do the same - despite all of the evidenced to the contrary the refuse to change their view and cling desparately to a myth.
Whether you like it or not, teaching something as fact, based not on evidence but on a strong belief in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, is not science. Teaching this in a public school is the state actively endorsing as fact the mythology of a single religion - Christianity. This is a clear violation of the separation of Chruch and State. Would you like it if the school in question was teaching the "Earth was created by a Dream" Australian aboriginal myth or the Pagan\Ancient Greek version in science class? I doubt you would. And non-Christians don;t want your version taught as fact either.
If you want ID taught as fact in a science classroom, prove it. Provide evidence. Until then, it belongs in mythology class.
Philosphy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
I know a lot of Christians. It's entirely possible that both of you are speaking truthfully here. I grew up in the Bible Belt, Southern Baptists and Fundamentalists and such, and they indeed hold that position. I now live in Newark, OH, which is majority Catholic. When back in Ashland, KY, I could have truthfully said that most Christians I knew believed wholeheartedly in Creationism. Here, I can truthfully say that most of them believe that God uses evolution much like any other tool. {furrows brow} And honestly, isn't the use of evolution by God the whole point of Intelligent Design? You're talking about fundamentalism as regards a policy which accepts evolution. Or are we talking about different values of "Intelligent Design"?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Excuse the capitalisation, but there are two parts of the world that have these sorts of problems.
1. Nutbag developing world theocracies: Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia
2. The United States of America
I would say on recent form I would rather have my education system run by the average developing nation than the USA. At least the China-Japan textbook dispute, for example, is easily understood in terms of racial and historical tensions. They're not, for example, trying outlaw logic and reason.
Seriously guys. The joke's over. OVER. We're all getting very, very afraid of you. I'm starting to be a lot more comfortable with the notion that China and India may soon be superpowers. I'm actually *glad* Russia still has a massive arsenal of nukes: Putin may be a dictator-by-proxy, but AT LEAST HE'S NOT INSANE.
Since the end of the Clinton era:
- fundamentalists have begun winding back your education system to around the 700-800AD mark
- 'faith based' programs have become legitimate government policy
- it has become abundantly clear that the Whitehouse is controlled by a man who does not understand science but does fervently believe in a very particular type of capital-G God
- you have waged war on two moslem nations
- religious voters have become the dominant force in national US politics
- Americans have apparently accepted on faith the ridiculous argument that there is 'no evidence' of global warming
- America has closer ties to other religious-fundamentalist states (e.g. Israel, Saudi Arabia) than it's secular, liberal-democratic former allies in 'old europe'
Now all this would be fine, except that the religious nutcases that seem to have taken over your country are made incredibly powerful by... why yes, by SCIENCE. That logical, agnostic, provable, testable system we all know and love. Well, those of us outside the US know and love, anyway. SCIENCE has made you rich. SCIENCE has made you powerful. SCIENCE has, unfortunately, given you the weapons to destroy the entire world or precisely targetted bits thereof at the press of a button. Could stealth bombers fly from Missouri to any point on the globe and deliver laser guided bombs based on the teachings of Christ? Why, no - that would be SCIENCE we have to thank for that.
Let us take, as a comparison, Italy. A very religious country, by all accounts, rabid devotion to the Vatican, everyone in sight attending church regularly. Yet the Pope effectively outlaws contraception, but Italy's birth rate is startlingly low. Why? Perhaps Italians are so religious that they really do what they're told? Or perhaps Italians are religious but they understand the difference between faith and allegory on the one hand, and logic and reason on the other. They're not noted for their chaste ways, in any event, and I'm sure Durex and Ansell make hefty sales over there.
So how about we cut a deal? I'll even give you two choices.
1. You let your country go back to theocratic-totalitarianism, by all means. Hound down anyone who uses logic and reason to explain the world. Only, hand over everything that's been developed with science before you do so. Give up all those wonder drugs, all your DVD players that allow you to watch 'The Passion of the Christ', all your giant auditoriums with 100 metre high video screens where you go along to sing your Christian songs. We'll look after them in 'old europe' and the antipodes if you like, and you can burn each other at the stake until the cows come home (only the cows will probably be dead because you rely on science for farming these days).
2. You forget the dogmatic crap and listen to the parts of the bible that actually matter, such as *turn the other fucking cheek, *do unto others, *beams and motes, *the good samaritan, *the FUCKING MONEYLENDERS IN THE TEMPLE YOU STUPID FUCKS. FUUUUUUUUUUCKKK!!!!!!!!!
And if you're not a religious nutcase but you are in the U.S., don't fucking apologise. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
Ok, I'll now be modded into oblivion, but I feel slightly better.
####THIS POST BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE WONDERS OF SCIENCE####
Read Pynchon.
One problem is this:
The claim "intelligent design is a valid alternative" is LOGICALLY FLAWED, and here is why:
Answer this Question: "Was the Intillegent Designer intelligently designed?"
If YES, then there is an endless recursion of intelligent designers.
If NO, well then consider that WE HUMANS tend to think of ourseleves as intelligent designers. If a Universal Intelligent Designer could manage to exist without being intelligently designed, then why can't WE exist without being intelligently designed?
Q.E.D.
Here we get into some deep juju, which I can't deny is speculative. However, it has always seemed to me that if anything had to simply exist - i.e. if something were to spontaneously come into being utterly ex nihilo - that matter, the laws of physics, the point that became the big bang, etc. were too complicated to be that something.
To my way of thinking (and I have a fair background in academic theology although my specialty is New Testament) the best way to conceive of God is as pure, creative will. (I'm going to go ahead and say "God" here rather than trying to dance around it.) Out of that will - that ability to decide, if you will - everything else comes into being and is sustained in its being. God's will made the point that exploded in the primordial bang, and God's will made the laws of physics that made that explosion develop into our universe, and God's will made the peculiar set of circumstances that make it possible for other intelligentm, creative wills to exist.
However, before all this, there had to be ONE thing to be "first". Occam's razor requires that that one infinitely improbable thing that was "first" be the thing most able to account for everything else. And I am convinced that the best account for this is a single, personal God.
Seriously - you want me to believe that the simplest explanation is that sex, butterflies, and Picasso "just happened"???? I'm not there.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Possible first hypothesis - yes; but since they are incapable of being tested at this point in our technological development, they are incapable of becoming theories and thus lay in the realm of the metaphysical and are little more then fodder for philosophy majors.
If at some point in the future we are capable of actually testing those hypothesis, then they can be worked up into theories.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The problem is not what other people believe, it's that a fairly large chunk of our society is willing to believe things that directly and clearly contradict physical evidence and to alter our political process and how we educate our childred to remove any references that might be upsetting to their view of the world.
This is an old argument, but for the most part I think we'd agree that when you finish boiling down the evidence ID is simply religion (specifically, some Christian beliefs (that not all christians agree with, not trying for flamebait here, just noting the source)) in camoflouge.
How can you live in a modern, technological society and ignore the evidence of your own experience? To give one example, If you go get an MRI or an X-ray you're benefitting from some of the same technology and body of knowledge that allows us to date fossils. How can a person stand up and denounce evolution in one minute, and in the next go get a chest X-ray? People who are unable to filter out this sort of obvious mental nonsense are driving our politics and our policies, and it's a scary thing.
Nah. ID parallels creationism's key flaws - it moves the action from that which can be examined to that which can not. Philosophically, and scientifically, we don't know what intelligence is. The definition of it shifts from person to person. There is no way we can test for it, no way we can measure it, no way we can explain it. In fact, there is no way we can even prove that intelligence by any definition actually exists. (especially not in other people) What ID does is to assume that certain aspects of life are tied up in the big black box of 'intelligent designer', and so can never be questioned. That's when the whole nontheory loses all scientific credibility.
I am a Ph.D. Molecular Biologist. I am also a Christian. I've studied both sides, and the ID argument (as stated) is generally deranged and foolish. However, the opposed side is equally stupid, mainly because we have non-scientists mucking about with things they don't understand. What many people seem to miss in all of this is the definition of theory. Scientific method calls for hypotheses to be proposed, which are intended to be disproven. If you can't disprove the hypothesis, it eventually becomes a theory. This does not mean the theory is fact. It just means it hasn't been disproven yet! If our schools taught students the definition of theory, we wouldn't have this problem to begin with. The theory of evolution is a theory. At this point, we have no reason to say it is false. That doesn't make it fact. Just not-disproven-so-far. As a biology teacher, an annoying quote often in the news (by school boards and biology teachers) is "I refuse to teach students anything but FACTS." Hahaha! What a joke! And this is what we have teaching our students science? No wonder America is so far behind the curve. Our science teachers don't understand the BASIS of science! On the other hand, the theory of intelligent design is NOT a scientific theory. If your hypothesis is un-disprovable, it is not a hypothesis. As said above, faith can't disprove a theory of science. It's like refuting trigonometry by quoting Shakespeare. These ID folks give us more educated Christians a bad name.
This is a very important point that seems to have been neglected. I'm as strong as a Darwinian as they come but I've never seen it demonstrated that evolution is "shown to explain the origins of life" even once, let alone time and time again. The sad thing is that for someone to say this means that they clearly don't understand what evolution is about and the fact that they need to make this claim means that they are one of these people who has adopted Evolution as a religion rather than as a rational belief. We could use fewer of these people posting stories to /. not more, they're a bit of an embarassment.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again
The theory does not explain the origins of life. It is an observation of life interacting with its environment and the environmnet interacting with it.
However, I think that you are missing the point - an Intelligent Design theorist (and the only one I take particularly seriously is Behe) would say that a designer is necessary precisely because it is simpler to postulate a designer than to postulate the world we know coming about without one
Hmm, I suppose that this would be digression, but it seems that bringing in a God (and all the associated questions) is more complex than what we have now - a process that explains things. How does a God simplify things? It seesm to me to lead to more questions (and recursive ones too!)
And I am convinced that the best account for this is a single, personal God
This is one of things that makes me think ID is more faith than application of the scientific technique. Since you have a background in theology maybe you could answer a question I had posted elsewhere in this story: You mention a single personal god, but Hinduism has multiple gods. Are you then referring to ID as a Christian/Muslim (since these religions have 1 God) theory? Or is it religion independent?
Occam's razor requires that that one infinitely improbable thing that was "first" be the thing most able to account for everything else
One common thing I have seen in the comments in this thread, is that ID appears to try and explain 'life, the universe and everything' (finally an apt usage of a great phrase!).
But evolution talks about life on earth. Since you mention 'infinitely improbably', remember that on geological time scales, there is effectively infinite time for a avriety of molecular interactions. If life did arise from the development of self reproducing proteins (I'm surely using the wrong terminology here) it might be improbably, but given the time scales, not infinitely so.
you want me to believe that the simplest explanation is that sex, butterflies, and Picasso "just happened
I don't think any of these 'just happened'. There were reasons for these things happening and a process for them to happen by.
Sex - still unanswered, but lots of good reasons for it to happen (efficiency, variety in the gene pool etc)
Butterflies - just one branch of the evolutionary tree
Picasso - lots of social factors leading to his paitnings.
None of these require statements on the lines of 'God made them and thats why'
But as I have said, the biggest drawback of ID is that, as far as I know, it does'nt follow the scientific method, but feel free to correct me with some examples.
Intellegent design does not mean it was God who did it. Does not say who did it just that some intellegance did it.
That's just because they're not being honest. They all actually believe God did it. There's simply no other reason to adopt such a hackneyed theory to the extent that you feel you have to prevent eveloution from being taught in schools.
Don't attack it based on how religious organizations use the theory but on it's merits
It has no merits as a scientific theory, and the religious thing is the only thing it's ever used for, and its sole reason for existence.
I'm not saying [evolution] isn't true but as it is stated and follwed, there are many flaws.
No there aren't. It doesn't claim to be the comlpete and final answer, it claims to be the furthest and most likely we can see so far from available evidence. ID does not even come close to fulfilling that criteria.
sudo ergo sum
So far the basic argument is that it's easy to conceptualize step wise changes in a macroscopic level, like: light sensor -> cluster of light sensors -> eye
or
beele -> beetle with poison -> beetle with concentrated poisen sack -> bombardeir beetle
But actually the changes are so profound on a molecular level that they'd never occur by chance (or at least we'd have some evidence of intermediates)
The most obvious problem to me is that this argument could also be used to prove that poodles and mastifs and bulldogs are not derived from the same common ancestor. They are so different and there are so many molecular changes separating them that they cannot be thought to be related. Even a creationist would have to agree that theese animals are all from a common dog ancestor since the divergence has happened while humans have been on the planet.
Another argument he uses is "irreducable complexity." Some systems depend on every component to function so they can't have arisen by chance - in incomplete system would not function at all. The example he uses is a mouse trap which relies on every part to kill mice.
The problem I see with this is that it ignores changes of function during evolution. Evoltion is not directional, it can take circuitous routes.
an example he uses is a bicycle factory. The analogy to mutation is errors in bicycle production. Each mutation can cause a part of the bike to be duplicated or put in the wrong place or some similar transposition, but that's it. So how, he asks, can you evolve to bike to a motorcycle by making small stepwise changes? A caveat is that the changes must be improvements to the bicycle.
there are several problems with this analogy. The most glaring is the restriction that changes must all be beneficial. If resources are abundant enough, neutral and even harmful mutations will likely be tolerated. to go back to te analogy, if bikes are in high demand, many people will buy bikes with slight manufacturing defects. changes in production that alter wheel size or gear ratio might be more preffered by some customers and less preferred by others.
Another big problem is the lack of flexibility in this analogy. There is some validity in comparing a mutation to a slight error in bicycle assembly instructions, but bicycles are not organisms. In an organism, a small change can cause a big difference. This is especially apparent with mutations in developmental genes which can cause radical changes to the appearance of an organism as well as its overall gene expression.
Some mutations can also be completely silent and may not be noticed until another mutation exposes them. if two genes are functionally redundant, one may be mutated randomly without affecting the organism. eventually it could be deleted, or even assume some new function.
anyway, that's what I've gotten out of the book so far. maybe I'll even finish it.
not everything is a science experiment!
The problem is this is being pushed as a religious idea and nothing more. There are a group of people who believe in ID AND believe that Aliens are responsible. The problem is they are not the ones pushing this idea, with no scientific backing, into schools. They are trying to teach ID as a THEORY. But it has FAILED the scientific process. These people PANIC because they feel the THEORY of EVOLUTION is being taught as FACT. So long as teachers are doing their job RIGHT (which is rare in public school), EVOLUTION is being taught as a TESTED THEORY, that has SCIENTIFIC backing.
I am sure someone else would have mentioned this, but there is an episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit on this that while obviously spending its time attacking ID'ers shows that most (if not all of them) are nothing more then religious fundamentalist. BTW, if you believe in creationism great. But I would recommend Index to Creationist Claims
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
So, God created them, and didn't know what they were goign to do, because of free will?
That makes no sense, it really doesn't. You can't create something, and give it something it did not have, calculate out what it's going to do, and be surprised when it does it.
You're also bound by the very matter of the tree: Knowledge of Good and Evil. That means, that Adam and Eve didn't KNOW what good and evil was before eating from it, which means how are they supposed ot know they are disobeying God?
Why didn't God KNOW what they did? Notice how he comes back and goes "Uh.. Why are you covering yourself? Who told you that you were naked?" And where's the Tree of Life that's guarded by the flaming sword??
Don't you dare claim that it's Christ on the Cross - You can't choose to use vague symbolism where it's convinent, and then animately deny a "Period" of time in Ancient Hebrew can only be a Day.
And what kind of entity would create something who's only sole purpose is supposed to be to worship them? I find the whole idea rather offensive.
Not to mention the gradual change - first God walks among garden of eden - then God can't be seen nor touched - only talked to. Then God comes down and wrestles with Jacob... and then God can't be seen nor heard again, until he comes from a mountain and storm. It all changes - which to me is the watermark of People changing, and an ancient culture changing and debating there own view points.
A cogent argument sir (or madam). Now where are those mod points i threw away yesterday.
And if you're not a religious nutcase but you are in the U.S., don't fucking apologise. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
I agree absolutely with this. Hey intelligent Americans - TAKE BACK YOUR FUCKING COUNTRY! We are sick of this shit and many of us are tiring of NOT lumping you all in the same bunch. You are burning serious karma.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
- Cancer - Aids
Intelligent Design or millions upon millions of years of evolution and adaptation - either way, the design of life is far from flawless or without "bugs."
Cancer: The problem there is, evolution doesn't optimize for the effeciency of individuals, but of the species as a whole. It's very possible that the flaw that allows for cancer (which seems to be present throughout most mammalian life) has other benefits.
Aids: Unfortunately, this is an example of evolution's success -- it's an epidemic that's been spead to a large number of people, is it no From the point of view of the Aids virus, it's a success.
Of course it could also be argued that, by killing the host, Aids denies itself further opportunity to spread. But it's a relatively new disease after all, give it a few millennia -- assuming it hasn't killed us off by then. But then, viruses aren't particularly known for their foresight.
In areas of research that do deal with Intelligent Design (forensics and archaeology), determining design can actually be quite tricky. I could walk through a field strewn with Mousterian tools, and not know it. But these sciences ask questions about the designer, who were they, what was their intent, where did they manufacture the object or event, and most importantly how did they do it.
ID, in fact, intentionally tries to shove these questions under the table. It is nothing but Creationism in disguise, an attempt to get God in the classroom. It's a dishonest legal fiction, and most importantly, it isn't science.
Don't believe me, go ask all the great ID advocates why they have no theory or no lesson plan, and why ultimately they want to push for teaching the weakness. When the Dover school board announced they were going to teach ID, mark how the professional IDers in the Discovery Institute backpedalled like nuts. They know they've got a pile of nothing, but they sure don't want a court to stomp them down.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The "Young Earth" (more accurately, "young universe") viewpoint supposes that the universe was created about 6000 years ago. Okay, okay, quit laughing. That viewpoint HAS managed to turn up some interesting cases of rapid rock formation and "instant fossilization" which should really be examined with a more open mind. ANYway, they say that nothing is more than 6000 years old.
Then these same people go on and on about how huge the universe is, with all those stars so far away... star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, galactic clusters, etc. The problem is, most astronomically observed objects are more than 6000 light-years away. So if the universe is only 6000 years old, how did the light from those objects get here?
I've seen a couple ways to talk around this problem. The least idiotic one is, "God created everything in its finished form". They say that animals and people were created as adult creatures, and so the universe was created all-grown-up. Quit giggling and wait for the real obvious problem that they skip.
Okay, so even if you buy into all that about creation, you still have a really, really big problem with measuring distances to the stars. The whole idea is based on the assumption that the light which we see actually came all the way from the star in a more-or-less straight line at the speed of light. We measure angles and we measure parallax to get even more accuracy but it's still based on the assumption that the light actually came from the distant object in the normal way. The problem is, according to the creation doctrine, no light could have been going anywhere for more than 6000 years because that would have been before the pronouncement of "Let ther be light."
What that means is that according to creationist doctrine anything which appears to be more than 6000 light-years away is actually "faked" by God to look that way.
So make a dot on a chalkboard. That's us. Now draw a circle around it. That's the 6k light-year limit of what we can really see and measure by what we know about light. Everything outside of that may or may not really exist because it had to be "faked" by God at creation for us to see it at all. Now for the real fun... Stellar events. Every supernova that we see, since it's more than 6k light-years away, never really happened! It's just a light show that God puts on just to make the universe look old. All those most-distant quasars and pulsars, high-energy signals from the beginning of the universe... none of it is real. It's a gazillion-year-long history falsified, for what purpose?
The heavens declare that the god of these "Creationists" is a liar.
I would say that very few Jews are literalists. Many more Christians are literalists with the Old Testament than Jews are. This is absolute and also by percentage figures.
Most Jews have accepted some of the wisdom from the teaching of Moses Maimonides, the Baal Shem Tov, et alia. I will focus on Maimonides.
He argues against literalism ["Finger of G-d" was a literal finger, Monty Python styley]. Most Jews are the same.
Jews think most stories in the Bible are allegories. Jews are certain to consider the creationist literal 7 days as an allegory. Many, including myself believe that G-d guided evolution.
Who decided that Homo-Erectus wasn't erradicated by influenza? Evolutionary theorists would say luck. I would say G-d.
Both would have a hard time proving it.
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I'm very angry when Christians assert that to be a Christian, you must believe the literal truth of the Bible, even though reading just the first few chapters of Genesis shows that the Bible contradicts itself and that any reasonable thinking person can't accept it all as literally true. I'm boggled that some Christians think that for something to contain wisdom and truth, it must be literally true-- is your view of God so amazingly simplistic?
Excellent post, thank you. I'm a Christian, and I've been called a non-Christian by other Christians just because I don't believe the bible is literally true. It astounds me. If you ask me, it is a representation of our understanding of religion a few thousand years ago. Much like our understanding of science has greatly evolved, so should our understanding of religion.
When it comes right down to it, Evangelicals will never deny a single word or give an inch because if one tiny bit is shown false, then the whole thing comes undone. They'll point to countless "proof" that they say "proves" the bible is true, whether they've actually read any of this for themselves or not. For that matter, it's usually surprising if they've actually read the Bible itself cover to cover... even though they claim it to be the factual word of God himself. A fewer percent still actually follow what is written.
Personally, I believe we can't possibly know what religion is right. I honestly don't believe that any decent non-Christian human is any worse than any decent Christian human. Thankfully, this idea is starting to spread. There's so many diverse ways to be a good person and show faith and love, it should be appreciated, not scorned. I liken it to sports... No matter what team you root for, you're still there for the love of the game.
What saddens me is when people get a theory in their head and they're convinced for life that it's the one and true choice. Evangelical Christians and Atheists alike. I've seen so many people look at religion, find a small issue, and suddenly become stone cold atheists for life. It's sad not because I think they're going to get some kind of ultimate punishment for making a judgment call, but because they're missing out on joy, love, and support just because they refuse to consider alternatives. They'll spend the rest of their lives trying to prove something they can't possibly prove, looking down on religions, and basically being no different than what they pointlessly despise.
In short, a little bit of tolerance and understanding on both sides of the fence would go a long way. The Evangelicals need to open their hearts and minds to others, and Atheists need to consider the beliefs of others, and stop stereotyping everyone into the same groups.
In the end, it was rather ridiculous. There were many people there and over 90% of them were over 50. Apparently, he was trying to start a chapter of his group in the city. Anyway, he wouldn't answer any questions from us youngsters, which left me feeling like I just wasted 2 hours of my time. In the end I was really offended by the man. He was a published astronomer, so as a man of science he must know how ridiculous these arguments are. He's abusing the public's ignorance of science and a yearning for proof of God's existence to advance his beliefs.
Here's how he started his talk:
"Who came up with the big bang theory: Einstein, Hawking, Araham, or Moses? Actually, there's some debate over whether Moses or Abraham was first, so both of those are correct." The man was saying that the big bang theory is in the Bible! If you need proof of twisting an idea, this is it. The school board in Dover is no different. Espousing a scientific theory that hasn't passed muster through the well-established journal peer-review system is an affront to science. I don't mind them believing in it or teaching it to their own children, but don't force it on me and mine.
Exactly. The only logical alternative to infinite recursion is to accept the existence of an universe without a creator.
And the same goes for free will also. If you postulate the existence of some decision process inside your mind that isn't based purely on the interaction between material particles obeying the laws of physics you also fall into the infinite recursion paradox. If I have a soul inside me that governs my feelings, shouldn't this soul have a meta-soul inside it?
Fortunately this last question will be solved someday, if Moore's "law" holds on for a few more decades. We already have a rather good understanding of the basic interactions between neurons and of some of the basic structures in the brain. To make a good simulation of an entire human brain would need something like one million computers and we still don't know what is the overall structure of the brain, so we aren't there yet. But someday in the next fifty years we will probably have a personal computer that mimics so closely a human being that people will assume naturally that it's as conscious of itself as we assume our fellow humans are conscious of themselves.
The Kansas board of education is the one that made the famous ill-fated decision. The article we're discussing is about a decision made in Pennsylvania.
Fundamentalism is not limited to the deep south!
It's well-established that the chance to vote on gay marriage and abortion amendments is what brought out the midwestern voters, who are the ones responsible for this second, ill-fated term.
So don't try to pin this on the south! We might be called the "bible belt", but fundamentalism runs strong throughout this country.
What flaws do you find in evolution?
No really I have studied it for a while and it works fine. Single celled to multi celled takes 1 billion years... Think about that 1 BILLION YEARS for life forms that be born have kids and have there kids have kids in less than an hour X millions of life forms in a cubic foot a water X 5280 X 5280 per cubic mile of water times who knows how many cubic miles of ocean.
Evolution is nothing more than life keeping as many mutations going at the same time and then combining them as needed when your environment changes. Poisonous creatures don't just make one poison they make hundreds so there prey will not evolve protection vs. 10 or 20 of them and get away they would have to come up hundreds of mutations at the same time to get away. That's also why snakes use super doses of venom why pump a mice full of enough venom to kill a human well that keeps mice form evolving a little protection to get them though the times when they got a small but survivable dose and building up ect ect. Now you say why would the snake make so many poisons well he only needed one to start with and then when protection evolved to that he made a 2nd ect until he is making so many that the pray start to select agents the forms of protection that are not needed and it ends up with a balance where snakes can make so many more toxins than are need and it's stable that way (For a while now having those extra toxins are nor really needed... But as long as there in the DNA somewhere there "free" to come out as needed.)
People say that there are these "huge" leaps that occur in evolution with no explanation but they seem to ignore the fact that whales have toes. Now if you ask yourself why whales have toes you can realize that evolution works by recombining existing pieces of it's self so things keep junk around because over time it's better to be able to adapt to change than become super optimized and stuck.
Some ID people say look at this there is nothing like it that's useful for what it does and then you find 1 or 2 things that are like it but used for something else and you can see how most of these great leaps are really just minor changes that are from the ~3+ mutations in every life form that has ever lifted for billions of years. Even then some say you can't win the lottery 5 times in a row I say with enough games you would expect streaks of 100,000 games in a row.
Evolution does can start with people a single amino Acid that can replicate, and mutate. That's all it takes to get the ball going. You don't need cell walls, you don't need DNA you don't need mitochondria for the fist life form you just need replication, there's nothing out there to eat you and nothing is competing with you for space until you cover the earth and your descendents start to duke it out.
PS: As to knowing what your talking about have your ever written a program that uses evolution to find solutions to problems well some people have so humanity does even if you have only heard about doing this.
Sure there are would-be JudeoChristian theocrats. But there are would-be Political Correctness theocrats. Finally, there are the Theocrats of Scientism -- the belief that Science should dictate how children are taught and how public officals should render policy.
Now I happen to be in the Scientism camp but the thing that separates me from the theocrats of all stripes is that I don't insist that others have my religious beliefs crammed down their throats.
Indeed, anyone who believes themselves to be scientific has a conundrum when it comes to applying state power to others:
How dare they?
Science starts and ends with humility toward our knowledge and its own limitations.
The best we can ask of others is to allow us to pursue a scientific mode of living our lives -- we can never presume to tell them how to live theirs so long as they do not present a clear and present danger to our own scientific society.
We can however, and indeed must if we are truly scientific, request that we be allowed to watch the process of their lives so we may learn from their experiments in living. However internally unscientific those experiments are, they are nevertheless scientifically valuable when brought to contrast with other such experiments.
Seastead this.
News for nerds indeed. Why is it that every 6mo or so, yet ANOTHER 'news' story on religion is posted to slashdot? Does Taco like watching someone thrust a stick in the beehive? Seriously, the same debates get played out over and over and over. Give it a rest. The only religious battles that should take place on here should be MSFT vs. Open Source, SCO vs Reason, etc.
You see, there's this theory that when you put your tooth under your pillow, you'll get money from the tooth fairy. It's a perfectly valid theory, right? After all, you aren't able to disprove this theory, are you? Can you find a way to disprove the existence of the tooth fairy?
Well, The reason not to believe in ID is the same reason for not believing in the tooth fairy. There is absolutely no evidence for the tooth fairy's existence and there are much better explanations for how the money got under your pillow. Just because you can't disprove the tooth fairy theory, doesn't make it a viable option.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
As I already answered in another thread having a god that we cannot even start to comprehend is much much more difficult in terms of explanation how things work than not having a god and simply using logic and observation to deduce that energy+time will be enough to create what we see in the universe.
It is worth noting, however, that science has not yet witnessed evolution in action. Until it does, evolution will continue to be no less a theory than creation. - that is just wrong. Scientists as well as non-scientists witness evolution every day. Every time a germ mutates to offset our attempts to destroy a germ we witness evolution. Every time a fetus is created from a couple of cells we can witness evolution of the fetus. We can even direct evolution in our science labs and create mutants by changing environment of their habitat or by playing directly with their genes. That for the first sentence that I quoted.
The second sentence is completely without merit though. Evolution is about an infinite number of times more of a theory than creation will ever be. What I mean is that evolution is a scientific theory while creation is merely a philosophycal discussion without any merit of a real scientific theory. Look up what a scientific theory means one of these days.
You can't handle the truth.
The only evolutionary argument I can see for cancer or other late-life diseases is that an early death after the breeding/childrearing years gives the species a survival advantage by reducing competition for scarce resources. A population that dies young might have an evoloutionary advantage over one with better longevity: because short life allows the environment to sustain a larger population of breeders and juveniles, the short-lived population would be able to out-breed the long-lived one.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Evolution as scientific theory of the emergence of species is reasonable and testable.
Evolution does not speak to origins. By defintion, speculation about origins is philosophy.
We cannot use science to speak of origins, because we cannot observe the event, document it and repeat it. Science can collect evidence and propose theories about it, but since these theories are untestable, it is not scientific to draw conclusions about origins in the guide of science!
Get your naturalistic philosophy out of my science classroom, and I'll stop trying to get my theistic phiolosophy IN!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
And since we cannot travel back in time, we will never know, for sure, where it came from.
The most we can do is to work on various theories and try to test them to see if we can increase our understanding.
Hmmm... so how do you know that your whole salvation is not a parable?... and how are we going to determine what in the Bible is a parable and what is not?
How about: When Jesus taught in parables, it was obvious that he was doing so, such as "And he spake this parable..." (Luke 18:9, 5:36, 6:39, 8:4; Mark 12:1, etc.)... and how about Mark 4:34: "But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples"... sounds to me like he often spoke to large crowds in parables, but explained what he meant by the parable later. Why? Matthew 11:25 and Luke 10:21 might give you some answer.
If you make the decision about what to take literally (i.e., not Genesis 1), you might as well throw out the whole Bible as open to whatever interpretation you see fit (i.e., evolution)
Besides, are you denying that God could create the world in 7 days... or do you prefer to 'reduce' your god to evolution?
Don't give me that line about... what about the fossils, and the carbon-dating age, etc., etc. Do you know what a 'brand-new' world would look like? God could create the world in whatever state he desired.
"Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men." - I Corinthians 1:25
"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;" - I Corinthians 1:27
"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right." - Henrik Ibsen
The general belief is that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and eat of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. God smote them, and banished them from Eden and made Eve feel pain during childbirth as punishment, etc.
I believe that this common belief is all wrong.
In this parable, God gave Adam and Eve a choice. They could remain in Eden for all of Eternity, so long as they denied themselves knowledge. Eve chose Knowledge, and shared it with Adam. As _REWARD_, God set them free from Eden, and allowed them the to explore the world around them.
If God really wanted to punish Adam and Eve, he would have struck them dead and started over. He didn't, and instead all of humanity has the opportunity to explore the Universe He created.
Doesn't sound like punishment to me...
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
Having said that, I think that someone from a Hindu or Buddhist background would probably be more comfortable with Evolution than ID, since these faiths don't tend to emphasize the creative aspect of God. In Christian thought, the aspect of God that is most important is his role in the creation of the universe - if you will, the Christian God is a bit more transcendant than the Hindu gods individually. Hinduism (as I understand it) only approaches the Christian notion of "God" through pantheism, conglomerating all the "gods" into "God". (Qualification: I'm not particularly knowledgable of mainstream Hinduism, so would welcome correction on this point.)
Well, I'm not particularly qualified in science. 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?Here's the thing. Behe (and most other true ID types) are not attacking evolution per se. He is attacking the notion that natural selection alone is a sufficient explanation for Life As We Know It. And he is founding that argument in scientific fact, asking the very legitimate question of how certain structures at the micro level could happen naturally. What I find unhelpful is the ranting and raving that goes on in the scientific community that refuses to actually address the arguments in anything resembling a systematic way.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
"But it *would* have happened eventually, because in infinity, all possible things happen. "
Clearly someone's been getting his logic from Douglas Adams. Adams was joking.
Take the number 0. Add 2 to it. Add 2 to it again. Do this an infinite number of times.
You'll only ever have even numbers. Just because a set is infinite does not mean it includes all possibilities. There's a whole branch of mathematics called transfinite mathematics that deals with this.
Particularly, in the real world, doing some things changes the world so that other things can't be done. If Adam and Eve had said "Ok, we're not supposed to eat from this tree... let's chop it down to make sure we can't" then no matter how infinite the amount of time they lived, they couldn't have eaten from it.
That said, this is the bible. There's about as much point apply proper transfinite mathematics to it as there is teaching a fish to whistle.
Because there is nothing remotely close to proof for ID. The "evidence" is only assumed to be evident. ID does not help us build a larger model of understanding of the universe. It actually impedes the larger model. It also isn't this unspecific, religion unbiased ID that was mentioned. The ID talked about in schools is very specifically Christian.
The idea of ID originated in a religious mind for the religious reasons of combating evolution founded work and to attempt to explain the origin conflicts in Christianity. On the other hand, the evolution founded work was done to further our understanding of the world around us. Of course it extends to our understanding of the entire universe.
This is my sig. The post is over.
>What Christian fundamentalists find so threatening about evolution is that a literal interpretation of the bible forbids it.
There's much more to it. The Christian fundamentalist idea of morality is that it comes from our creation by God. Turtles and turtledoves, wombats and housecats can't be moral or immoral because they're "just animals".
When Christian fundamentalists hear that humans are animals descended from apes, they think they hear that humans are "just animals". Right and wrong don't apply to animals. They fear that the only basis they can imagine for morality is being destroyed.
Remember that often-quoted Senator who blamed Columbine on the teaching of evolution? That's what he meant. I thought it was a hilarous non sequitur at first but it wasn't.
You can't reason with creationists because reason doesn't work against fear. Try pointing out that you find humans to be awe-inspiring ("What a piece of work is a man!") and that you can believe in morals and even ethics if the universe is thirteen billion years old instead of six thousand.
1'st John 4:8: "God is love". I'm sorry, but your reasoning is flawed. You assume that living forever is miserable becouse this world full of evil and imperfect humans is miserable. You also assume that God is miserable, and created humans (and as extention all life, including angels) to share his misery. The fact is, that God is complete in himself. He does not need anyone else around to make him happy. His modivation for creating is love. He wishes to share existance with others out of love.
You could spend a current lifetime studing one species of flower and still not know everything about it. Living forever we would be able to learn about Gods creation and never run out of new things. And, if after a few billon years we do learn everything there is to know about our world, or our plane of existance, God would undoubtedly create more things for us to learn about. Why would he do that for us? Simple. "God is love". The oportunities are endless.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
This is incorrect. First, mutation is not "random." The driving force is genetic diversity within a population, filtered through natural selection. The process of genetic diversification is not fully understood, and this leads a *lot* of otherwise-intelligent people to assume there is something fundamentally wrong with the theory of evolution through natural selection.
I'd say the original poster has a better handle on evolution than you do.
Yes, mutation is random. By any sane definition of the term. The genetic diversity within a breeding population is a function of the accumulation of randomly occurring genetic changes.
Claiming that the process of genetic diversity isn't fully understood is misleading, at best. We understand it fairly well - which is what allows us to do things like use the genetic variation in mitochondrial DNA to work out the spread of homo sapiens across the planet, or to understand that at one time in the (geologically) recent past, cheetahs almost went extinct - which we know because modern cheetahs are almost genetically identical to each other.
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Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The Theory Of UnIntelligent Design (THUID) is a scientific alternative to the discreditted theory of "evolution".
THUID postulates that the development of intelligent life on earth cannot have occurred by blind chance, but only by the direct intervention of an Outside Direct Designer (codenamed "ODD"). This ODD being discloses its very nature in the details of the human structure.
For example, would an intelligent Designer include the appendix - an organ whose sole function is to burst, causing inconvenience and painful death?
What of dental caries: a phenomenon unknown before the development of human intelligence, yet almost inevitable when our human desire for sweets is coupled to the brainpower that ensures a steady, unhealthy supply?
And let us not even BEGIN to talk about the humorous side of human reproduction ...
Please support this SCIENTIFIC study as it battles the twin unscientific principles of EVOLUTION and of INTELLIGENT DESIGN.
Our School Children Must Learn The Truth!
For more information on this TRUTH that I have undercovered, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THUID
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When I went to high school, the girls were NOT built like they are today.
Evolution HAS to be right.
Ah, a sufferer of the "every issue has two sides and each deserves to be heard" sickness. In a past life, you were probably one of the people saying "Well, the Earth could be flat. Let's not presume we know either way." Or perhaps "It is possible that she's a witch, so let us burn her at the stake just to be sure."
Your analogy of the fly and the car is wonderfully inept. To make it apply, you'd have to have a fly that could reason, conduct experiments, and have higher order thought. In which case, yes, it could know how a car runs.
Humans don't know everything, but we have developed theories that explain pretty much everything about the physics of day to day life, and have a good handle on such esoterica as the age of the universe, the composition and behavior of subatomic particles, and the speed of light.
There is nothing to "teach" about intelligent design, unless you think belief and faith can (or should) be taught.
Let me guess, you were home-schooled, weren't you?
a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again
Evolution != origins. That's abiogenesis. Evolution doesn't care about the origins of life AT ALL.
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Not all phenomena that cannot be falsified are necessarily supernatural.
As an example, consider that Belgians serve their beer in glasses designed to enhance their flavour. Presumably this is because the way the liquid warms up, and the way it makes your mouth change shape, and the way that the smell comes out through the neck, and so on. Each type of beer has its own glass, designed for that particular brand.
How can you test this scientifically? I don't think it can be done. You cannot ask someone to rate the test of differently shaped glasses without bias, because you cannot prevent them from knowing the shape of the glass that they are drinking out of.
OTOH, this does not necessarily mean that the shape of the glass has no effect. Nor does it mean that it is supernatural. Rather, it means that there are things that fall outside of science.
I'll start by saying I'm a Christian who thinks speciation is an observable fact and than evolutionary theory explains the observation quite well, just so you know where I'm coming from.
Intellegent design does not mean it was God who did it.
ID makes zero sense unless the Intelligent Designer is a supernatural entity, a god if not the Christian God. Pretending otherwise, particularly when the advocate is a Christian who wants ID to be taught in schools, strikes me as the kind of disengeniousness that goes against what I've been taught about our religion. I have yet to meet a Christian ID proponent who wasn't implicitly assuming that the Designer was the God of Abraham.
It could be God, it could be alians,
How do aliens make any sense at all as the "Designers"? How did the aliens arise and become intelligent? If aliens could develop, become intelligent and powerful enough to traverse the galaxy and create new life on a lifeless planet, wouldn't that be evidence that intelligent life like us could have also arisen without any help from a designer? Saying "aliens could have done it" contradicts the fundamental premise of ID, which is that intelligent life couldn't have risen on its own!
No, ID makes no sense unless "Intelligent Designer" is a synonym for God. ID proponents use "Designer" as a synonym for God, but are hoping that the rational non-Christian listener won't notice and accept it as a valid theory. It is that duplicity which pisses me off about ID.
Now if you'll come out and admit that ID = God, then I'll say that I believe completely in ID, I agree whole-heartedly that God is the Intelligent Designer, and that I believe God used the laws of physics (which He created) as His CAD program to design us.
But at that point you've done nothing more than say "Christianity and evolutionary theory are compatible", which I agree with, but doesn't motivate any changes to school curriculum. Since changing school curriculum to stop the spread of non-religious scientific thought is what all this nonsese is about, fundie ID proponents will not admit that ID = GOD.
The enemies of Democracy are
Consider: once an animal becomes as intelligent as a human, it may occur to it that certain behaviors, though absolutely essential to the survival of the population, are personally very risky and/or expensive. Take reproduction; why become a mother? Why take the risk and expend the energy to produce and support a child, when it's not necessary for her personal survival? There's a good deal of instinct at work there, but humans are known to be able to suppress instinctive behaviors given training and/or a good reason. And why would a man fight to (re-)gain the resources his community needs from his neighbors when the fight might kill him? Even if the campaign is ultimately victorious and his community prospers, he's personally dead!
It seems to me that such unselfish deeds of individuals strengthen the population at the expense of the individual - give rather than receive, trade fairly rather than kill and steal, etc. And in a Darwinian sense, it's the survival of the population that matters, and much less so the particular individual.
So how do you convince a reasoning person to adopt selfless behaviors? One way is by plausibly promising a reward for good behavior. Do these "unselfish" things, and we'll give you these rewards. The spiritual person is generally promised an "eternal" reward - when your life is done, you get to live in heaven/valhalla/etc.
The alternative is negative reinforcement. If you don't act unselfishly, we'll punish you. The effectiveness of this depends on the plausibility of the threat - "if I don't get caught, I don't get the punishment."
So the "Theist" (spiritually-minded individual) is optimistically looking forward to a good reward. The Atheist is trying to avoid punishment. The Theist could be expected to give to the community beyond what the community could ever repay - even sacrificing his life. The Atheist will work for pay, so long as the work is low-risk.
Even if the Atheist is right, I'm not sure it's a better choice for a population.
- The assumption that teaching that our understanding of evolution ( as currently or popularly understood ) is flawed is somehow 'fundamentalist'. In fact, questioning theories is very scientific. The belief that our understanding of evolution is flawless is a basically fundamentalist mindset.
Describing alternative theories of creation in a science class makes perfect sense. How can students learn about the controversy surrounding evolution without being taught that there are alternative theories. ( A science teacher should endorse scientific study of fact not dogmatic argument. That study includes studying ID, if only superficially. ) In my high school bio class we discussed 'spontaneous genesis' in a socratic, scientific fashion. The teacher did not tell us what to believe, only that there was no scientific support for the other theories.
- The assumption that ID, or Creationism, is incompatible with evolution. I have met many Christian, and live with one, who believes that the Design in Intelligent Design mean that the Creator created the rules for evolution. Like building a wind up toy and letting it go do its own things.
This idea attributes the development of fundamental natural laws to a Creator and that evolution is a natural outgrowth. No God design the sparrow, says this camp. The sparrow came about because of evolution on a world, in a universe created by God. The creator may have come up with the basic forces witnessed in the first moment of the Big Bang, and left the rest to sort itself out.
This idea cannot be disproved, and has no scientific answer. Cosmology and quantum physics lead to more theological/philosophical questions than answers.
I personally believe in a chaotic creation, but there is no scientific evidence of that either.
In the end, as a secularist and atheist, I see no particular violation of any church and state boundary in the actions of the school, only bad science education if they refuse to explain the flaws in ID and present it as a True alternative.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Hrmm...
:)
As an American, all I can say is that you're being impatient. We've only had about 5 years of this wacko-fundamentalist crap here - it's only been 5 years since the end of the "Clinton Era". Give it some time. Most of the intelligent people here are working too hard to care about politics. Once things get a little too out-of-hand, you'll see those people at the polls again. It's just going to take a little while.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, you guys were burning people at the stake for HUNDREDS OF YEARS. Oh, yeah, and your continent was filled with internacene warfare between Protestants and Catholics for like 400 YEARS. Let's see... there were the Crusades too. I don't remember any Americans being involved with that lovely affair. Isn't it nice that you guys don't do that stuff anymore?
So, hey, relax. Give us a few years. We'll get our heads together again. I agree with you that it's not good that America's in bed with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and yeah, we SHOULD be more friendly with our historical allies in Europe. But please don't fly off the handle because our errant, democratic system of government produced some undesirable results for a decade or two.
Meanwhile, take comfort in the fact that the U.K. and France and Russia and China have enough nukes to annihilate America.
"Sic transeunt omnia."
You know, the part where you know things that mere mortals do not.You left off the bit about travelling to distant lands and sitting on mountain tops.Bingo! You have much to teach us mere mortals oh enlightened master.Because "Intelligent Design" does not have any scientific basis.
With evolution, it is easy to show how species diverge. With actual animals.I have. And there isn't anything that is scientifically demonstratable to it.
If you believe otherwise, then please enlighten these mere mortals.Why do you assume that people who dismiss it haven't looked at it?
I have and I see that there isn't anything to it.
It simply attempts to cover any "holes" in evolution theory by claiming such "holes" must be because of an Intelligent Design.
It becomes very easy to understand once you know the evolution of "Intelligent Design".
It was too easy to knock the "Creationists" before, so they decided that they could hide "God" behind the phrase "intelligent design" and attempt to get it taught in schools.
But that said, if we introduced philosophy into the curriculum, would we introduce only those viewpoints which were sympathetic to modern materialistic science? Only the empiricists and positivists? What about a bit of Feyerabend, the heretic? Feyerabend would really set the cat amongst the pigeons, since he insists that good scientific practice must be diverse. Feyerabend is absolutely pluralist about science, and offers loads of ammunition to those who want "both views" taught in school.
On the other hand, if you're only going to introduce those philosophies compatible with the view, "evolution is the only scientific theory of origins", then what distinguishes this from outright indoctrination? Philosophy is supposed to be about the development of critical skills, not imparting dogma.
Frankly I'm betting that philosophy will be kept well and truly out of the school system until the final overthrow of said system, since a decent dose of philosophy (involving several views that contradict each other and all make good points) encourages too much thought. God help us if students should start thinking for themselves, and not just act like willing sponges that soak up whatever fact-of-the-day is served to them. Think of the trouble it would cause! Think of how much more work teaching would involve if students had their intelligence nurtured, rather than being made to work according to the pattern of textbook-du-jour.
Philosophy has no place in modern schooling. This is why we are reduced to arguments as to which view of science gets exclusive distribution rights in school. To acknowledge that there might not be one single true view of science would open pandora's box in regards to the teaching of science. The students would start asking those kinds of smart alec questions which undermine the teacher's authority, leading to massive control problems. As someone who made the bad political move of questioning authority in school (as a student), I think I have just explained my way to a clearer understanding of why there was, is, and will be no philosophy in school.
So here's a point to ponder. I think that a goodly portion of the Slashdot audience thinks "critical skills are good, and we ought to encourage them in school". First up, note that my (somewhat cynical) description of the school process above suggests that school simply can not do this without bringing about its own destruction. In short, the students would become smart enough to realise that school is stupid, and revolt.
But that aside, consider the following dilemma. What if it were demonstrated that teaching two conflicting views of science (both of them credibly defended -- not a "real man versus straw man" situation) produces students with better critical skills? If you're one of the many who've commented that "evolution == science, and !evolution == !science", then would you be willing to allow a pseudoscience into the science curriculum if it improved critical thinking in general? No doubt you would not if there were no benefit, but would you be willing to sacrifice the "purity" of science teaching if it fostered greater critical skills? If not, then what about teaching philosophy and including those philosophers that have the best arguments against modern science, like Feyerabend?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
There's a difference here, and it goes to the root of what science "is".
Evolution, as a framework for understanding the world in a scientific and rational way, is always subject to proof or disproof by verification. ID is by definition above and beyond proof or disproof,as arguments about actions of a supreme being. By definition this supreme being can do things we can't, so we can't verify or disprove any assertions about his/her/its actions, because, partially, the whole point of dragging the supreme being into this argument is in response to, or an expression of our admission that we don't understand it.
Science is by definition about things we can prove or disprove. A statement about which we can do neither is, again by definition, outside of the province of science.
In otherwords, it's religion.
It's one thing to say, and reasonable as well, that you have beliefs that are outside of the framework of pure and strict rationality. Pure ratinoality is in itself a pretty weak philosophy to life your life by, at least to me. It's quite another thing to argue that your desire for trans-ratinal beliefs should be afforded the same status as rational ones.
Looks to me like a long-time successful meme (Christianity, 2k years old) competing with a new competitor (scientific method, 400 years old, but not recognized as a competitor until more recently.
Basically, these systems are competing for core memory in the individuals and in societies.
Both of them create a way of interpreting reality that provides different costs and different benefits to their adherents.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It will become very intense in the next few decades, I think, as the progress of science enables knowledge and technology to do things that were unimaginable even a hundred years ago.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Does that mean we can't study the particles we DO know about?
The evolutionists who shout "religion!!!" at any hint of design are just as short sighted. Their claim is basically that random mutation and evolution MUST BE the thing that accounts for the existence of all life in the universe. Because they always bring up the "slippery slope" argument and say "well, if space aliens designed life on earth, then what designed the space aliens?"
But I would ask- what difference does it make if the last 2 trillion generations of life were created by really smart engineers, and in the infinite distance we can never really know who or WHAT started the first spark of organization and life.
And for the record, I think the concept of a God as written in the bible is 100% bullshit. I want to repeat that again- I THINK ALL ORGANIZED RELIGION IS PURE BULLSHIT. If you accuse me of being a bible thumper without re-reading this paragraph, then please go fuck yourself in the ass with a rusty nail and LEARN TO LISTEN.
To ignore the possible branches of study that analyze life as a possibly designed structure, is pure folly. There are only two possible viewpoints of existence- either it had elements of design OR it is purely random. People that discount either possibility out of dogma are retarded and short-sighted.
Right now, it's mathmatically identical to quantum mechanics , or at least 99.999999% identical, and no one is sure where it's not.
The only reason string theory exists is we know quantum mechanics can't explain the universe, because it falls apart at macroscopic levels.
And we have no useful theory of what's actually going on in QM...or, rather, we have too many of them. Transactional and Many Worlds are the best two quantum theories.
We have the math, and nothing behind it, we have no idea what it means. Hence calling it quantum 'mechanics' instead of quantum 'theory'. Quantum mechanics is not hard, we had that like 60 years ago. Quantum theory is some crazy shit, and working on it makes no sense when we don't know why QM breaks at the macroscopic scale. (Aka, collapsing the wave function, which we don't understand at all.)
So we need a theory that works exactly, or almost exactly, like quantum mechanics. Except it needs to stop working like that at a certain scale for an explicably reason.
So someone realized that, hey, you can explain that if particles are actually strings...
String theory is a theory that needs to exist and be testable, but really isn't all the way there yet. They've got some math that matches QM, but that's it.
In fact, I think they've basically turned that into m-brane theory, where these 'strings' are actually two n-dimensional plains that intersect with each other...
And if they were teaching string theory in schools, scientists would probably have a problem with that, too. ;)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"Oh! I hadn't thought of that!" said God, and disappeared in a puff of logic.
Then man went on to prove that black is white and got himself killed by a bus while crossing the street.
10100111001
I found a beautiful painting of a great landscape in the ditch the other day. It was absolutely perfect and beautiful.
I imagine that it was probably created when a paint truck drove by and hit a rock that was in that road, causing some of the paint to spill out. I never did find the rock, but I'm sure it was there.
The wind and the rain must have blown and swirled the paint in just such a way that the clear images I saw in the painting were exquisitly displayed . . . although it was clear, calm, and sunny when I found it.
I'm still not sure where the canvas came from, but I imagine that I'll figure it all out one day.
-B
Should school boards be required to look at potential liability issues when considering whether to incorporate intelligent design into science curricula?
My thinking is that if a school district begins to teach intelligent design as an alternative to the theory of evolution, it could be held culpable for the failure of its graduated students to achieve in the realms higher education and/or technological training. There might be massive class action suits by former students who can demonstrate statistically that they were unable to get the high paying jobs that students in similar schools with sound science curricula were able to get.
I envision an argument something like this: the conflation of the scholastic reasoning of intelligent design with the empiricism of the scientific method had damaged the student's minds (or "reasoning", or "cognitive ability") to the degree that they were unable to compete successfully with students from other school districts in acquiring technological skills. Directly measured damages could be the costs of remedial schooling and the loss of income potential for those years that they played catch-up.
I think there would also be very fertile ground for developing punitive damages, since the School Board could probably be shown to be egregiously negligent in causing this situation (purposefully blind to the risks they were putting the students in, despite being charged with minimizing those risks). And as I write this, I begin to wonder whether individual School Board members might be charged with criminal negligence for the recklessness they exhibited toward their obligations of office.
It seems to me that if this line of reasoning is widely distributed now, it would increase the likelihood of success of the class action suits that might be brought in five or ten years. And might also cause School Boards to pause and consider this concern now, and therefore decrease the number of such potential suits later on.
I would dearly love to hear from PJ or other paralegals or lawyers about this.
Creationism and intelligent design have about as much place in a science class as evolution and chemistry have in a religious studies course.
The other day, I was watching some news program (they all begin to blur after a while) where they were debating Creationism vs. Evolution. The man arguing in favor of Creationism said quite specifically that he believed "every word in the Bible". When anyone says something like that, they're immediately disqualified from any rational discussion, in my book. Maybe I'm a product of my upbringing. I went to a Catholic high school where we learned about the Bible and one thing I learned is that in the first chapter, there are TWO creation stories. If you take one to be literally true, then you cannot take the other one to be true since they're mutually contradictory. Logically then, they CANNOT both be true. This is in the first chapter, for Christ's sake, the contradictions continue throughout the entire book. Since a RATIONAL being cannot take the entire book to be literally true, then the conclusion must be that the Bible is merely an interpretation, opening up the possiblity that science may in fact be correct. After all, science does not disprove the existence of God, nor does it prove the existence of God. The two are mutually exclusive and therefore can coexist. I guess my point is that there is no point in arguing with a Creationist, since s/he is not rational.
I appreciate your help.
San Francisco Photographers
Your argument would be valid EXCEPT that the American guy came from the same country you aforementionned. Especially for the crusade argument. Thee were no american yes, but there were their ancestor there. So please share the guilt. America (N&S) did not pop out of nothing in existance. The people came from Europe. Thus You can only start your comparison from the 17th century. As far as i can tell Burning on stakes occured hundred year ago in USA too. Should we also speaks of segregation which stopped only 50-60 years ago ? If we can say it really stopped... Frankly we can probably make a very long list of bad stuff which happenned on both side of the atlantic. Let us only compare the "now" and right now, we do NOT WANT to give you a few more year. You already had those 4 years ago. And you willingly (as a group) choose 4 more years of the same stuff.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Consider this a draft for the armies of religious zealotry in all its forms. When you want another generation of uninformed groupthinkers, you seek access to the one place where thoughts are still malleable: the school system.
God did not create humans to suffer. You're blaming the wrong sprit creature. Being omnipotent does not mean he fixes our destiny. That conflicts with free will.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Some explainations of how the universe works may be correct but are unprovable. This is one of them.
Such theories are the domain of philosophy and religion, not science. They may have a place in a philosophy class, not in a science class.
Personally, I think the universe is a figment of CowboyNeal's imagination, and I was predestined to write this post. I think the Dover, PA school board should give my world view equal time in their schools. *joke*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
> Seriously - you want me to believe that the simplest explanation is that sex, butterflies, and Picasso "just happened"????
Is it really any simpler to think there just happens to be a god that created sex, butterflies, and Picasso? All you've done is add a middle man... your 'explanation' leaves more to be explained than when you started.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The only change between the slashdot intro and the K5 intro is the sentance, "An article over at Kuro5hin discusses the controvery over the Intelligent Design movement." While not a gross error, unless Mime Narrator and benna are the same people, it should have been in quotes. Such inflamatory writing and unattributed quoting indicates incestuous propegation of problematic ideas.
The quote, "a theory that has been shown to explain the origins of life time and time again" is an interjection of commentary in the reporter's passive third person voice and is not accurate. Surely it is a queue to illicit the contemtuous responses such as such as (Score 5: Insightful):
If the author was wishing to be non-inflammatory, or better yet honest, they would have said, "a theory that has been accepted as an explaination of the origins of life time and time again." Many explanations are accepted in science that are unable to produce repeatable results (even one-off results) because as a framework they explain a lot of what we do see. The unverifiability is overlooked and clearly acknowledged to students. There is no shame in promoting a theory we still lack the ability to ultimately verify. For instance many aspects of Einstein's theory of relativity remain unverified.
However, one may see in this dishonest attempt to reach beyond being "accepted" to being "shown" a peek at the motivation for the piece. It is also pretty indicative of the same mental gymnastics he attemps throughout the piece.
Another example is the ommision of a mechanism for origin of life in the the next paragraph in the K5 article:
One would think this is a crucial item to develop after reading the inherent outrage against the situation "that high school science teachers teaching evolution tell their students that evolutionary theory [sic] is flawed, and that intelligent design is a valid alternative." Where "flawed" simply means it has many unverified elements as does Intelligent Design.
Indeed, if all the author thinks of evolution is the ability for orgamisms/species to change traits over generations then there is no conflict. There is also no mechanism proposed to explain the origin of life with evolution either.
So while outraged at the mear co-habitation of ID and evolution, the contradiction offered is abandoned so quickly? All that is left is just competition. The author chooses not to compete over verified applications of the two theories. Evidence is also skipped. The author instead chooses to make evolution and ID compete in clearly unverifiable ways. The author awkwardly chooses "complexity" as his chosen arena, and chooses mathematical theory as his weaponry.
The rest of the article invokes its own pseudo-science in the use of highly specific mathematical models of statistcal theory as models of natural behaviour and law. At issue is "complexity" and he makes the mistake of using the complexity of a mathematical system to represent the complexity of a natural system, and they are not the same thing at all.
Further damning the piece as a pseudo-intellectual work is his overly constrained focus on "complexity" i
Some will always be above others. Destroy the equality today, and it will appear again tomorrow. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
After reading the comments, I think I have a good advice for some of you: learn the difference between Theory and Hypothesis. Figuring out which one is 'evolution theory', and which one is 'intelligent design theory', is left as an excercise for the reader.
Good info at http://www.icr.org/.
But really? Why comment? Both sides are inherently dogmatic - no one's going to change anyone else's mind via a comment here. I know my religious views (or the lack of - I refuse to specify) aren't about to change because of JoeBlow37's +5 insightful scythe of either side of the issue.
More importantly to discuss - isn't this a great opportunity to begin PROPERLY teaching scientific process in the schools in a meaningful and relevent way? I'm a research chemist who works in an inner-city public school 2 days a week (thanks NSF!!!!) - I've been using this debate to demonstrate that all arguements should be supported (don't bother calling me contradictory here - I see the arguable dichotomy the evolutionists claim the creationists possess here and reject it - the point here is the dialogue), should attempt to address the point where they break down (for example: creationist - evidence demonstrating evolution at work; evolutionist - statistical inprobability of non-protected evolution), and should attempt predictive power (worthy of note - many creationists believe in the process of evolution, just not evolution-as-genesis).
Comments welcome on the educational opportunities afforded by this discussion - but please, if you want to scream about your side/call me biased toward one side or the other/etc., for the love of god/not god, do it in someone else's thread! Otherwise, why comment?!?!
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
We agree violently about your Newton example above. Origins - specifically that of the universe is by definition untestable.
Naturalists and Creationists agree that specific data has been collected. We both theorize about origins and have differing understandings of the MEANING behind the collected data.
Since the scientific method cannot be used, let's stop calling speculation about origins science.
As I said, once naturalists take their phiolosophy out of the science curriculum, I'll cease trying to get my philosophy in. If it's fair to apply materialism and naturalism, then theism is fair game, too.
Until that happens, I think that the textbook stickers are a great idea. If nothing else, it gets people to think, and I hope we can all agree that a thinking populous is a good thing. I will also work to "call a spade a spade" with respect to philosophy in science class.
It's not those 'neutral thinking scientists' versus 'those biased religious nuts' it's
those 'biased materialistic naturalists' versus 'those biased people of theistic faith.'
Let's be fair and acknowledge our bias.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Assumption #1: God gave us free will. (because he loves us)
Assumption #2: God is omniscient.
Since God already knows all our future actions, we no longer have free-will; al our actions are pre-determined. So humanity's free will and God's omniscience are mutually exclusive; you can't have your cake and eat it too.
Im no bible thumper (I'm an agnostic) but your logic is flawed. God is omniscent meaing basicly everything happens at once now then and later are all the same. So in a sense everything has already happened in an omiscent beings eyes. So your statement is like saying everyone in the past didn't have free will because we know now what happend. They had free will at the time they made the choice.
Some geologists support a theory by Thomas Gold which says that petroleum has a non-biological source. The gist is that non-biological methane is converted into longer-chain hydrocarbons by bacteria deep in the crust.
There's a bunch of evidence to support the theory. It may or may not be sufficient to explain all of the petroleum we see, but it could be; it's not a complete crackpot theory.
I'm not supporting ID or creationism here; I think that the intelligent design people are nut jobs and/or hypocrites. But you don't get to call yourself a scientist without taking all the facts into account. Abiogenic petroleum doesn't constitute a shred of evidence against evolution or for intelligent design. It just means that the irony you cite isn't quite as funny as it could be. Sorry.
All those simple lifeforms, that wanted to survive, were competing with each other for limited resources. If one lifeform gets a mutation or ability (Thought, planning, tool-use, etc...) that gives it an advantage over the others, then it gets more resources and is more successful.
It is this constant oneupsmanship over millions and millions of years that results in the insanely complex creatures we have roaming all over this planet.
Wyrd One
> Pseudoscience of Intelligent Design?
Any reason we shouldn't call a spade a spade?
> I'm guessing the insanely biased headline is a sign for all the slashdotters out there that this is simply a topic for attacking Christians?
So much for the Christian pretense that ID is science rather than religion...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Life from non-life is what's known as abiogenesis. Creationists and ID proponents often bring up the early Miller experiments as proof that abiogenesis cannot happen.
I highly recommend reading up on the recent work of Dr. Sidney Fox. The short version is that not only can life be created from non-living chemicals, it can consistently be done and result in near ideal conditions for the development of RNA (and later, DNA).
Google Fox and abiogenesis for more info.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Don't delude yourself. Evolution explains adaptation, change and selection but it most definitely does NOT explain the origin of life (biogenesis).
Biogenesis is a PREREQUISITE for evolution. Evolution can't take place until you have a system that can metabolize energy and materials from its surroundings and use them to synthesize copies of itself.
Some have tried to make claims about 'molecular evolution' and such, but I've never seen any sufficiently detailed (or even feasable) theory that holds water. Handwaving and speculation is SCIENCE!
The theory of evolution meets Occam's Razor. But is it falsifiable?
Evolution has made MANY predictions, and every single time it has passed with flying colors.
I would say the single biggest prediction was back when DNA was first discovered. Evolution PREDICTED that DNA analysis across species would fall into a tree pattern. In fact all life on earth falls into a extremely strong DNA tree pattern. A tree that strongly points to a single root. Sure we're still working out a few details of the tree, but the overall structure is extremely distinct.
Evolution could have very easily failed that prediction. That was perhaps the single biggest test of evolution, and the single strongest strongest evidence. It was certainly not the only test.
Hmm, actually I'd like to add a second test here. One that I have in fact done myself. Evolution predicts that mutation and heredity and selection in a population is sufficient to CREATE INFORMATION and produce great complexity and optimisation. I have run this test myself. I have witnessed the power of evolution in action. In a computer I established the simplest elements - a population, mutation, heredity, and survival selection to an arbitrary environment - and I have proven those minimal elements are sufficient to generate information. Sufficent to create complexity. Sufficient to produce powerful optimization to any enviornment you throw at it. In fact this optimisation process is so powerful that at times it can find designs better than the best designs of human experts. It has been used to find more efficient jet engine designs that save millions of dollars in fuel costs.
So I have given you the single strongest test and validation of evolution, and my personal test and experience validating evolution. Again, these are hardly the only tests evolution has passed.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Gravity is just a theory, yet it's taught as fact in almost all schools.
What about the alternative theory? That we're held to the planet's surface be the combined efforts of millions of invisible pixies called Clarence?
Why not teach the Clarence theory alongside gravity?
and don't even get me started on all this "The Earth is Round" stuff that kids get brainwashed by...
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
No scientist has disputed evolution. The only people who consider it flawed and dispute it are those who feel that evolution conflicts with their religious beliefs and refuses to reconsider those beliefs.
It doesn't matter how many people believe that there is a god. Doesn't matter how good it makes people feel. Doesn't matter how often they trot out the same refuted-to-death strawmen and blatantly false arguments. Doesn't matter that they can't grasp evolution. Their inabilities mean nothing. Evolution is a fact, and for people to want to have ID taught in "public" schools in any manner other than "ID is simply literalist xer biblical creationism dressed in new clothes in order to attempt to fool people into thinking that it's not really some superstition" is tantamount to pushing for phrenology, astrology, and flat-earthism to be taught. It's just that much junk.
Keep ID in theology, where it belongs. I'm glad that many groups are stepping up to expose the fraud of ID and to keep it from being taught in schools. Truth is not democratic, despite what the ID people push. We don't get to vote that Bill Gates is male or that Douglas Adams wrote HHGTTG or that the Golden Gate Bridge is in California--truth isn't determined that way. But the IDers want people to believe that truth is determined by a political vote.
They are sorely mistaken.
If science texts have to give equal time to religion, perhaps the gov could require that all religious texts have a prominent notice that "God" is merely an unproven theory?
I have read the article and I wish to make two criticisms of it. Then I wish to point out the absolute lack of well-reasoned dialogue on this point.
1. benna writes:
Anyone catch the "gotcha"? What ID proponent is going to say that the universe is so "unimaginably... perfect"? This is a classic but cloaked "argumentum ad hominem - abusive": make ID'ers look like extremists so it's "obvious" to everyone that they're stupid before they even look at what is actually being said.2. benna also cites a lack of ID articles in peer-reviewed journals as evidence that nobody in the "real" scientific community believes in ID.
This is a trifle circular. The tools used by those who oppose theistic explanations for the world (including ID) include belittling, caricaturizing, marginalizing, black-listing, not to mention monopolizing money and prestige to the exclusion of all other options from serious consideration. Faced with the scientistic forces arrayed these bodies of ideas, is it any wonder that nobody who wants to be taken seriously later will give articles with an ID point of view serious attention? This is less about ideas "winning or losing" in the scientific marketplace and more about ideas being sand-bagged and informally kept from being heard in that marketplace.
If you don't believe this possible, look at what happened in a slightly different field to Immanuel Velikovsky when what he said didn't line up with accepted scientific orthodoxy in the fields Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos speak to -- whether or not you accept the contents of his books as reasonable alternative explanations.
As to my subject line: it seems that very few people can make a dispassionate, deal-with-the-facts comment on this subject either in favour of or in opposition to Intelligent Design. It struck me that there are more than one kind of fundamentalism and many slashdotters who would sooner die than be called fundamentalists merely suffer from fundamentalism in a different direction.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
People create loaded buzzwords like Creationism and Intelligent Design with loaded connotations that far exceed the necessity of an agreed-upon denotation.
Then they whip out the philosophy or whatever...
Too bad it is not relevant.
Read on for a more proper STARTING POINT for meaningful discussion.
And God bless you.
Here's a little quoteout from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-god.html
3. Evolution and God Q5. Does evolution deny the existence of God?
No. See question 1. There is no reason to believe that God was not a guiding force behind evolution. While it does contradict some specific interpretations of God, especially ones requiring a literal interpretation of Genesis 1, few people have this narrow of a view of God. There are many people who believe in the existence of God and in evolution. Common descent then describes the process used by God. Until the discovery of a test to separate chance and God this interpretation is a valid one within evolution.
Q6. But isn't this Deism, the belief that God set the universe in motion and walked away?
While it could be Deism, the Bible speaks more of an active God, one who is frequently intervening in His creation. If the Bible represents such a God in historical times there is no reason to assume that He was not active in the universe before then. A guiding hand in evolution could exist, even in the time before humans came around. Just because people were not there to observe does not mean that there was nothing to observe.
Q7. So if God directed evolution, why not just say he created everything at once?
Mainly because all the evidence suggests otherwise. If God created the universe suddenly, he created it in a state that is indistinguishable from true age. If he did create it that way there must be a reason, otherwise God is a liar. Whatever that reason may be, a universe that is exactly like one that is old should be treated as if it were old.
Q8. By denying creation, aren't you denying God's power to create?
No. Because God did not create the world in seven days does not mean that he couldn't. What did, or did not, happen is not an indication of what could, or could not, have happened. All evidence suggests that evolution is the way things happened. Regardless of what could have happened, the evidence would still point to evolution.
I don't understand why a large (or at least a loud) group of programmers like the ones here don't give Intelligent Design more credit. In particular, there have been a few arguments along the lines of "how would the designer evolve?"
Look at the designer as a programmer. Heck, I'll use myself as an example. Lets say that I sit down at my really fast computer and create a little artificial world, a la The Sims. The world is populated by intelligent agents (humans) as well as less intelligent agents (animals). Nothing too crazy yet, right?
The designer has complete control over the virtual world. The agents don't. They can only percieve other constructs within this world, and obviously have no idea that there's a fat guy with crumbs in his beard tapping away at a computer making all of this possible.
I tell the constructs that I created them, maybe mention the few parts of myself that are comparable to the game world just so they can put it in their own perspective, and they're cool with that for a while. Eventually they bitch, but I smite them a few dozen times and watch the world progress.
If these guys came up with their own little reasoning system that violently argued that I couldn't exist, I'd have a good laugh at them in their folly. They'd argue along the lines of "there are BILLIONS of 1's and 0's around me! Of course, over time, a few of them would randomly become the code that is me!" These little AIs would have no concept of what happened before the "Big Bang" (I turned powered on the computer), or how I could live outside of their rules of reality(which I laid down).
If I really wanted to teach them something, I might log in as Jesus_Of_Nazareth01 and hack that character a bit so it's not as constrained by the rules the other AIs have to follow. That'd be fun. Heck, it goes a ways towards explaining the God/Son paradigm.
If these people started noticing that monkeys shared similar structures to human agents, I'd roll my eyes and wonder why these AIs had against code re-use.
Okay, let's assume that we're actually interested in science instead of shilling our own particular disdain for those positions we do not hold. Then let's objectively ask "does the theory of evolution explain the origin of life?" Nah, it doesn't. Evolution is a theory which explains how living things change over time, and why doing so is beneficial to the living things. It's not intended to explain how vastly complex molecules somehow formed without oxidizing and just so happened to be able to feed itself and reproduce. What evolution explains is how we got from that first living thing to now. Science describes the what and how. We let theologists come up with the why. If we are going to act superior in our logic and lack of primitive superstition, let's at least be logical and not do the same thing that our opponents do. Mischaracterizing exactly how much of the origin is scientifically understood would be the same as creationists saying that NASA found the missing day in the book of Joshua. An intentional falsehood created to bolster an argument where facts are scarce.
No fair claiming that the religion of no god equals no religion.
And no, you don't need to have robes or rosaries to be a religion any more than you need to have television advertising to be a software developer.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I fully agree - if students were actually exposed to ID, it would do more damage to religous fundamentalism then an army of scientists talking evolution
Intelligent design is philosophy, aka Teleological Argument for Existence of God. The Fundies know they don't want to have someone go philosophical on their asses. They won't argue the nature of God, arguments against the existence of God, problem of evil, etc. in their own churches. The main problem is you won't find qualified philosophy teachers in high school. Why can't religion just be a private thing?
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Yes, technically he's correct. Natural selection is indeed an eliminator. However he fails to acknowledge random mutation. Random mutation adds diversity so you end up with more variations than you start with. Random mutation can be observed easily in drug-resistant bacteria. The ubiquitous undergraduate biology example of fruit fly genetics also comes to mind.
Regarding radiometric dating:
and
The latter is the kicker. All radioactive decay follows the exact same decay curve with only a change in period (length of time). The proposition that this curve alters substantially after say a hundred thousand years is the equivalent to the proposition that the same physics that has sent probes to other planets and unleashed the destructive force of a split atom is fundamentally wrong. Not "I missed a question or two and got a B+" wrong. I mean it would be "I got a D because it was multiple choice and I got lucky" wrong.
Regarding life on Earth:
Just how "recent" are you talking? If you mean "less than 10,000 years," you are sadly mistaken. We've found structures made by humanoids that are at least 500,000 years old.
There are aquatic fossils found on top of Mount Everest. Unless you also discount plate tectonics wholesale and/or expect that Mount Everest was the product of a few millenia of uplifting, why would aquatic creatures be found there?
The only reason to believe that life has not existed on the planet for over a billion years is because it conflicts with the Bible. It is not because the evidence is lacking.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Almost right. This seems to be one of the hardest concepts for some people to grasp. You are absolutely, positively, 100% correct that the resistance was already in the population of bacteria (and bees) before the limiting factor was introduced. That's the good news.
The bad news is that a month ago, that resistance may not have existed.
Random mutation does not happen with a purpose. No strain of bacteria "tries" to be immune to antibiotics. No bees "try" to be immune to the effects or Varroa mites. That's not how it works and is generally the hardest thing for most people to get. You are trying to substitute the will of God for the collective will of bacteria and the model fails.
It actually goes something like this:
* Copy errors during reproduction/replication give rise to what we call mutation.
* That random mutation is not sought out. It's remarkably similar to the game of Telephone where the message that comes out is not the message that went in. All participants in the game can try to reproduce the input exactly, but inevitably, variation occurs. The DNA of bacteria tries to copy exactly, but inevitably, variation occurs. (Random mutation occurs precisely because we live in an imperfect world.)
* Those copy errors can occur for just about any reason: too much sunlight, too little sunlight, exposure to certain chemicals, isolation from certain chemicals, etc.
* Those variations can have a good effect (aid survival), a bad effect (kill the organism or hinder survival), or no effect at all. On the other hand, a mutation that has no effect at all at first -- or even a slightly bad effect at first -- may somewhere down the line provide benefits or drawbacks like drug resistance for example.
So in summary, yes, the trait was already there. However, the trait was not always there. Big difference! We only know the trait was there some time before exposure to the antibiotics.
For more info on this, check out the early genetic study of fruit flies. Random mutation is clearly documented in these early experiments and repeated ad nauseum by others.
Once again, absolutely right. This is why scientists use more than one radiometric dating method at a time. While it is, for example, possible for two different dating methods to be wrong, it is highly unlikely that both will be wrong at precisely the same rate. If you use three or four different isotopic decay models for dating, the possibility that all of them are wrong in exactly the same amount becomes infinitesimal. Add in that others will repeat the results in their own labs and get the same results lends itself to the conclusion that the dates are indeed valid.
Remember, this is not just about C14 decay. This is about the myriad different isotopes used.
Aaaargh! I have been trolled.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Let us be clear. My religious beliefs are not science. I never have claimed that they are.
I believe that you are mistaken when you say that the tests I apply to my faith cannot be proven false. What if archeological evidence directly contradicted what is recorded in the Bible? What if the Bible was directly contradictory about substantive points of teaching?
(Some may be quick to suggest that'the Bible is full of contradictions' but that is an uninformed position. Those supposed contradictions are apparent contradictions, and further study shows them to make sense in context.)
If you discard the written accounts of Christ as unreliable, you must disregard those about EVERY other figure of antiquity. There are orders of magnitude better evidence for the Bible than any other work of antiquity. Do you believe in George Washington? Why would you suggest that the accounts about his existence are more reliable than those about Christ?
there has never been a global flood that covered the whole Earth in water
From a logical perspective, in order for you to say authoritatively that there 'has never been' something, you must have all knowledge about that thing simultanously. What records from the beginning of the earth are you using to assert that point? Also, let me ask you this. What causes fossil formation? Is it not a process where recently deceased creatures are covered with dirt/mud? Is it possible that the fossil record available in the cambrian explosion is a result of a generalized event which a) destroyed a large number of creatures, and b) covered them with watery mud?
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
"Evolution is pretty much an obvious fact"
One (of many) problems with evolution that continues to worsen is that it remains incapable of explaining how anything could evolve that doesn't make biological sense when incomplete.
The wings of birds are the classic example: what good is half of one? Other examples abound. This is a problem that evolutionary theory has promised a solution to for a long time and not delivered. Worse even than visible examples like wings are the complex chemical reactions and molecular structures that living things are made of.
This is the principal point of Darwin's Black Box (these micro-processes are the black boxes), a book too technical to be satisfying reading for the layman but that convincingly argues that many of these micro-processes make sense either complete or not at all.
There are no plausible accounts of how they could have evolved from other simpler processes because as one hypothesizes back down the hypothetical chain of complexity, one comes to a point at which the process simply won't work if it gets any simpler. At this stage, the process couldn't have evolved from anything else because there is nothing simpler for it to have evolved from. And at this stage, the process is still far too complex to have been thrown together by any known non-living chemical event. At one time, knowledge of the complex processes of living things was limited enough, and hopes for the discovery of intermediate processes that they could have evolved from wide-open enough, that evolutionists could ignore this problem. But as biological research has progressed, this gap too has been filled with more and more inconvenient facts.
As in the case of the other problems challenging evolution, the key thing here is the intellectual direction: research is consistently making the problem worse, not better.
The fossil record claims are false and over simplified. See here, here, here, and here.
There are plausible evolutionary models for Flagellum. See here.
Abiogenesis statistics are bullshit and its not like an entire prokareotic cell needs to be be the first self-replicating molecule. See
here.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein