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The Milky Way is Not a Spiral?
ETEQ writes "Space.com reports that new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope showing that the Milky Way is in fact a barred spiral! Looks like all our old astronomy textbooks will have to be thrown away..."
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Just be careful of the words "throw away", "give away" and "books" in Henico County, VA
"Mine, mine! Geroff! Mine!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
a swirl of caramel and chocolate?
antipaucity
The evidence they found tells us that this MAY be a barred spiral galaxy, it is not yet, theres just good strong evidence that could lead to a barred-sprial conclusion.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
Don't throw away the textbooks. Recycle them.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
It's been a few years since we know this.
"the bar is oriented at about a 45-degree angle relative to the main plane of the galaxy"
I'm pretty sure that this means "Do not enter" according to international standards.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Looks like all our old astronomy textbooks will have to be thrown away...
Which happens every year at the university level anyway, where a new 'edition' comes out every year with one or two pages slightly modified, but you have to buy the new one for $150 since the questions and homework study in the appendix are completely different. No, I'm not bitter that the fall semester is coming or anything.
In fact this has been known for some time.
Right, and the next thing you'll tell me is that the Earth isn't flat! And that the sun doesn't revolve around the earth. Blasphemers!
You think that's mind blowing, imagine all the astrologers having to recalibrate. It's like Y2K all over again!
certainly explains why I feel out of shape some mornings...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is actually a candy bar. Here is proof that the candy bar came before the galaxy. A company called Mars, Inc. makes them.
Just wait until the collision happens: http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~dubinski/tflops/
I don't get it.
Well, dammit, I guess I'm going to have to rethink my entire Star Hero Terran Empires roleplaying campaign.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
and my cat's breath smell likes cat food... big deal.
chocolate drinks will never be the same.
This is actually not very surprising. As the article points out, bars are common spiral galaxies. It would have been more surprising to find conclusive evidence against a bar.
We've suspected it for ages, this is just some of the first concrete proof of it.
My high school chemistry textbook said that the atmosphere was 80% nitrogen and 23% oxygen, and that didn't need to be thrown away. So we'll just blame this shape-of-the-galaxy thing on sig figs.
I always knew that the milky way was a bar, and that it is filled with nougat.
You couldn't have failed it worse! Last post, more like. Why do morons like you even try?
...looks like I'm going to have to get new business cards.
The fact the milky way is a normal spiral is a fundamental tenet of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and this new evidenc is just a theory. I demand that people continue to teach my older (wrong) alternative theory.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
... the Milky Way is in fact a barred spiral!
Mmmmmm... Milky Way Bar...
My old astronomy textbook, at least, already says that the Milky Way is probably a spiral. A quick search on the NASA ADS shows this being proposed to explain measurements as far back as 1975: Peters, W.L. Astrophysical Journal, vol. 195, Feb. 1, 1975, pt. 1, p. 617-629
as long as spelling is.
Hey, I'm a classicist. What can I do?
Really now. What prompted this?
Also,
from the well-now-i-don't-believe-in-nothin
A skeptic! Good man!
I'm moving. Where's Dubya and his infinite improbability drive!!!
My belief is that religion is stagnant while science is developing. No, "Scientology" is not progress.
I wish to now coin the term "Christian marauder" (who doesn't necessarily need to be a Christian) but simply any vocal religious type who promotes religion to promote themselves to the detriment of all of Human civilization.
They'll just issue a patch for every book. They'll just give everyone a sticker and tell them wich page and paragraphs to stick it on. ;)
This is actually more of a confirmation of prior work. See the following, for example, which dates back two years.
Title: The Galactic Bar
Authors: Merrifield, M. R.
Journal: Milky Way Surveys: The Structure and Evolution of our Galaxy, Proceedings of ASP Conference #317. The 5th Boston University Astrophysics Conference held 15-17 June, 2003 at Boston University, Boston, MA, USA. Edited by Dan Clemens, Ronak Shah, and Teresa Brainerd. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2004., p.289
Abstract:
Like the majority of spiral galaxies, the Milky Way contains a central non-axisymmetric bar component. Our position in the Galactic plane renders it rather hard to see, but also allows us to make measurements of the bar that are completely unobtainable for any other system. This paper reviews the evidence for a bar that can be gleaned from the many extensive surveys of both gas and stars in the Milky Way. We introduce some simplified models to show how the basic properties of the bar can be inferred in a reasonably robust manner despite our unfavorable location, and how the complex geometry can be used to our advantage to obtain a unique three-dimensional view of the bar. The emerging picture of the Galactic bar is also placed in the broader context of current attempts to understand how such structures form and evolve in spiral galaxies.
Next week, I'm sure we'll all be thrilled to learn that the sky is blue. Rewrite the textbooks!
Especially if you've been in 'em a few billion years.
I hate when the government rezones things without enough of a warning!
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
I hear the galaxy is being sued by Russian astrologers.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I am in agreement with you. I believe in creationism and intelligent design. Having said that, I don't mind going along with the notion that God (who I believe was the creator) could have used many things that scientists hold true and call "evolution" and the "Big Bang" to get us to where we are today. I think there is enough evidence to suggest that I can't be closed-minded about this. I for one have no problem believing that the earth is millions or billions of years old. However, I have friends who subscribe to the "Young Earth" theory which I find an interesting theory, but not very likely and not based on scientific evidence.
I don't try to tell people that don't believe like I do that they are wrong...I just want to have the same right to believe that which I do without being called a moron, fool, etc. just because someone else doesn't agree with it.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
The title says the Milky Way is not a spiral, and the post goes on to say it is a barred spiral. But the wikipedia link starts with "A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy..." So the title should be: "The Milky Way is a Spiral."
e.g.
public class CBarredSpiral : CSpiral
As the article said, "May." We need to send someone outside the galaxy, so they can look and make a positive determination.
Fight Spammers!
Further Proof of why religion is wright and Science is wrong because while religion stays the same science is always changing and proving itself wrong.
I'm sure Galileo and Copernicus would agree - not.
Thank you negative responses for making it harder on my poor virgin fingers to read /.
I for one welcome our new linked-article-quoting overlords.
+5, Truth
The evidence that the Milky Way is a barred spiral has been accumlating for the last 20 years or so. This hardly galaxy shattering news.
In other news...
RTFA writes "dot.com reports that new data from the Spitter Compiler Telescope showing that the GCC is in fact a C compiler! Looks like all our old programming textbooks will have to be thrown away..."
Well, I'm certainly glad they cleared that one up. I can't tell you the sleepless nights I've spent wondering if I existed in a spiral vs a barred spiral galaxy. With answers to such fundamental questions like these pouring forth, I'm sure our friends in Washington will continue to confiscate my property to fund their efforts.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
...you can claim that the milky way is not a spiral, and then go on to say it could be a barred spiral... A barred spiral is a spiral with a bar (usually) through the centre!
Now if you'd said the Milky Way is an elliptical or irregular, then it'd be a different matter (and against the current scientific data that indicates otherwise).
What's interesting is the 45 degree tilt claim - I think that could be fairly rare (though probably not unsurprising given the amount of gravitational interaction our galaxy has with its numerous companions, some of which it is currently consuming...). However, I am not a galactic dynamicist...
Well, Science may not always be Wright, but the Wright brothers were Science, I know that much. I don't think they could have invented the airplane with religion.
Ahh, delicious karma..
Not exactly a "revelation"- I learned that the Milky Way was a barred spiral in a Slashdot story three years ago.
There is a difference between stagnant and conservative. Stagnant means the religions do not change over time, and that is not true, there is tremendous change over the past millennia in religion. Conservative is not taking what is currently popular ideas in blindly incorporating them.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Quick you wonderful slashdot moderators who mod everything correctly, mod this +5 informative!
the plans have been in your local town center on display for 20 years. Since you've had a lifetime of warning, you shouldn't be surprised.
Gravity Sucks
The "throw away the textbooks" comment is a little snarky. The text I currently use, as well as most of the others in use, describe the Milky Way as *possibly* having some kind of barred shape, as there has been evidence along these lines for years. Books evolve. 15-year old books don't have much to difinitively say on the cosmological constant, either, though they may be perfectly good texts on all other phenomena.
> Well the actual problem is people on both sides. First you have one group who believes that science is actual truth, and that all the problems in the world can be fixed with science.
I suspect that most scientists actually believe that science is an attempt to get at the truth, and will likely never be complete. And that only some problems can be fixed with science.
> Religion on the other hand is more of a combined study where you put together many different studies and look at the truth as a whole
Actually, religion looks at mythology and people's opinions about theology, morals, the proper social order, and the existence of a lot of unevidenced supernatural stuff.
> The main difference is science is trying to constantly disprove itself while religion is trying to prove itself. They are not opposing forces just different methods of trying to find truth.
Religion, most often, merely attempts to maintain traditional beliefs and values. Those who are "trying to find truth" usually get kicked out of the club, because truth is rarely deferential to traditional beliefs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
from wikipedia "A barred spiral galaxy is a spiral galaxy" umm...
And, of course:
two wrongs don't make a right
, 2 wrights make an airplane
, and 3 rights make a left.
Everyone's said my directions suck. I kept telling them, "It's a huge spiral, you can't miss it!", and they keep calling me a useless monkey-boy who couldn't navigate my way into a black hole.
Well... they may have invented it with science, but the first time they climbed into it, they were certainly acting on faith!
"Wing and a prayer", and all that...
http://www.roseanneworld.com/media/images/pic_7.jp gRoseanne Barred!
There's a good article over on Space.com about this news, too!
Kneel Before Christ!
What? What do barred galaxies, George W. Bush, and HHTTG have in common? What in the world made you think they would be funny when combined?
The joke-creating part of your brain needs a QC department. Stat.
A recent article points out that the sky is actually a range of wavelengths which we perceive as "blue" because of color mixing in the eye. So it's not just a special property of that frequency of blue, but rather an illusion that nets out to that blue.
Oh, I don't necessarily think you are a moron or a fool. You may just be ignorant. Fortunately, the latter condition is treatable.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
...there are no pictures of the Milky Way from space? Whenever I've Googled for pictures of the Milky Way, I either get artist renderings or these stupid pictures of a strip of the night sky. Since we've supposedly went into space a lot of time, we should have good photos of the Milky Way from space. Even moreso since the Voyager spacecraft left the universe a year or so ago. When the voyager left our universe, it should have had a great shot of the entire galaxy and all it's planets. I mean, the universe is what... like ten million miles wide or something, right?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Please, first of all, don't feed the offtopic troll.
Second, there's a difference between being open-minded and just plain trying to justify remaining religious while supporting popular scientific theories. Personally, as a believer in what I guess is called the postmodern philosophy, I'm extremely skeptical about most things, especially things of universal magnitude. I just don't think there's any evidence whatsoever to suggest intelligent design is possible, and there's plenty of evidence to the contrary that the Divine Scenario and the Scientific Scenario are completely and totally mutually exclusive. The truly open-minded cannot ascribe absolute faith towards any one theory, or they risk alienating the possibility of other ideas (and you realize that christianity, judaism, islam, et. al. depend on absolute faith); therefore, the only options you have are to either admit that you absolutely believe creationism and assert with ultimate certainty that god created the universe, or to assert that you depend on scientific evidence, and that you cannot express with complete certainty that god created the universe.
Also, I don't think calling someone a moron or a fool because of their beliefs is wrong. I think it's a dastardly thing to do unless you actually show evidence supporting your point of view, but I think calling people idiots and fools is an integral part of the free exchange of information; and aside which, they're not getting any more intelligent with you patting them on the back and saying "good idiot".
I intend to be called an idiot and a fool in response to this, and also probably be modded down as much as my karma can stand, but this just has to be said. That's what I believe.
+5, Truth
Looks like all our old astronomy textbooks will have to be thrown away..."
Along with the old physics, paleonthology, biology, etc. are thrown away everytime a theory's proven wrong.
Anyway, astronomy textbooks should be dumped regularly. Just look at the most recent findings in astronomy: Supermassive black holes, Planet X, black holes hidden behind clouds of dust... I wonder what new astronomical discovery appears next month.
For the psicohistorians. No clues about where the Second Foundation is, based on the form of the galaxy.
There's a right to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want without being called on it?
Yep, and there's also a right to be an inconsiderate idiot about people's religious beliefs and berate them, despite having no positive way to know the origin of life, the Earth, or energy and matter. Forgive the worn-out cliche, but "Welcome to Slashdot."
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
I say we all hit it for happy hour this friday and check out the intragalactic chicks!
Marie Sharps is hot
or even if you don't. They've been saying for a while that the data points towars a barred spiral and the only thing I'm seeing that is new is the 45 degree bit which isn't unusual in barred spirals. There's a good number with folded bar layout already in the catalogs. We are pretty sure that the galaxy has eaten other smaller dwarfs and possibly one or more larger ones earlier on, but the upcoming Andromeda collision is going to be the big one. Too bad we'll be extinct through evolution or as one large Darwin Award by then.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has issued the following statement:
"In light of this development, any further mention of the Milky Way galaxy being a spiral galaxy is hereby barred"
Students use used books as much as possible. Publishers already beat down the used book industry with their nefarious "new" editions. Oddly, my astronomy teacher in high school was the first to tell me of this (we used college astronomy textbooks).
"Space.com reports that new data from the Spitzer Space Telescope showing that the Milky Way is in fact a barred spiral!
For the next two hours, its an open-barred galaxy!
*hic*
At any given point in history, in all cultures known and unknown, if you were to ask the current experts and intellectuals they would universally state that everyone who had come before them had at most a small clue, but that they themselves are finally beginning to understand the workings of the universe and creation. There is no reason to suppose that in 100 years or so they'll look back and say that we knew it all; they too will call us ignorant of the truth.
Science is just today's most popular religion, one that denies (in the common interpretation) that mind/consciousness is somehow suspect and not a valid subject of study if one wants to truly understand the world.
Next century the common understanding will include the observer of quantum physics as central, possibly paramount in creation. The next big question will then be the psychological equivalent of the copernican revolution: Is the self the center of the universe (pre-copernicus geocentric interpretation) or is God (post-copernicus equivalent)?
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
I don't think scientists are attacking your right to hold any belief you choose, they're battling to assure that science education isn't undermined by pseudo-science. Considering the trouble that the sciences appear to be in in the USA, I'd say that's a laudable goal.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Galaxy Bar!
Now available in Milky Way.
Actually, science is the study of reality, testing its own assertions. Real scientists don't believe science is actual truth, they believe it's method for attempting to find the truth.
Being willing to acknowledge that it has been wrong from time to time does not mean science is trying to "disprove itself"; it's trying to find the truth, and not simply claim it's known it all along.
I'm not sure what you mean by religion being a "combined study", but it doesn't sound like a religion. Sure people who are religious can study science, and as long as they're being rigorous and willing to admit it when their theories are proven wrong, they're still scientists.
If religion only deals with faith and morals, there's nothing that can be obsoleted in there. i.e. stealing will always be bad, etc, God won't suddenly be a woman instead of a man... because those things are (or are supposed to be) divine revelation.
In these terms, religion is (or SHOULD be) infallible.
On the other hand, there's nothing wrong with science being fallible. Because science doesn't give us FACTS. It gives us THEORIES that explain how things work. These theories are assumed to be correct until new facts are found.
It's a cycle. Nothing to be ashamed of.
Instead of an ordinary spiral?
Any reason why I should care?
The galaxy is still a spiral, it's just got a bar in the middle. Astronomers knew about this, they just didn't know if it was really a bar or an ellipse. This isn't really _that_ groundbreaking.
This proves that evolution is a fraud. If scientists can't get something as simple as the location of a few stars right, how can we trust them to tell the truth about Intelligent Design?
I watched the discovery channel on these suckers but I had taken a bunch of downers washed down with some bourbon so I don't really remember everything. My question is with a Milky Way-like situation, stuff floats toward the barycenter, and that's where cosmic crud clumps up, over time building up more and more mass (and therefore gravity) I'm assuming at an exponential rate. At what point do you call this [theoretically?] a black hole? When it has enough force to retain light? And what's the difference when it's called supermassive (other than it's just a lot bigger)?
It's kinda hazy but I think the show noted that blackholes, even supermassive ones, are no longer theories on account of orbital speed patterns and what-not, stuff getting brighter as it speeds up while bunching up with other stuff on its way into the whole. But isn't that still a theory, saying well we can see this and that and you can only have that if there's something with a lot of gravity so we can declare the mystery of black holes solved?
Also, obviously you can't really send a space probe in to touch the surface, but if you had some kind of anti-infinite-gravity suit on with a really strong jet pack to ease the landing, would the surface of the actual ball be vapor or plasma on account of the heat, or do things chill out once on the hole with crap piling up everywhere? And why do these things die or go dormant or whatever. You'd think the more mass/gravity the merrier. Was the answer that I vaguely remember that the party just gets too hot and bothered that everything repells from one another?
Finally, if one of these babies floated our way [or the opposite, rather], what kind of Bruce Willis tactic could we employ to send us/it off course? Yes I realize it might take more nukes than we have, but if we failed the mission, I bet it'd hurt, albeit for an infinitely short juncture of time, give or take. I appreciate the clarification, I took like six mgs of klonopin with a 100mg trazadone kicker, and I pour my burbon by the glass not the ounce. The TV could have date raped me. Maybe it did but I don't remember. But then it's a Tree falling in the forest issue, so no big whoop, right? Oh yeah another thing, when the sun turns red and gets crazy big in 10 billion years or whenever, maybe in a trillion years of cosmic dancing would it become one of these holes, possibly pick up a lot of universe gunk, and then explode? New big bang maybe? High five!!
Arguments from incredulity may satisfy your faith, but in the pursuit of knowledge, they're in fact worse than useless.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I won't call you a moron, fool, etc. I'd like to discuss this, if possible.
The processes that form the universe, and in turn create life and allow it to evolve, appear to run on their own, following automatically from a number of fundamental constants. The only possible place for God, then, is as the definer of those original constants. An all-powerful Creator would certainly be able to see the processes that would flow from his original definitions, but it's hard for me to agree that God "used" evolution to get us to where we are today. Evolution just goes along by itself.
If there is a God, he seems to live in the "gaps" in our knowledge. Before we knew about universal gravitation, God or gods moved the planets around. Now we know that gravity takes care of this movement, that it happens by itself as a result of a logical process. Currently, our "gap" is in the area of where these forces come from (and also in their exact properties). If we were someday able to show that these forces follow inexorably from some other cause, God would just be moved behind that cause. I believe that it's reasonable to believe that the process of moving God into smaller and smaller gaps can be taken to its limit, whether or not we actually close those gaps, and God can be said not to exist.
I hope I have presented my point of view in a fair and logical enough manner to merit a response.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
We figured out the bars in 2001.
(-1) Completely Incoherent
(-1) Attempts To Pander To Both "Sides" Of Offtopic Argument, Fails
(-1) Doesn't Understand Science
(-1) Doesn't Understand Religion
(-1) Doesn't Understand Logic
(-1) Can't Capitalize Properly
(-1) Can't Use Commas Properly
(-1) Can't Frame Argument
(-1) Can't Spell "Right"
(-1) Can't Spell "Blasphemy"
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
"There's a right to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want without being called on it?
Yep"
Terrific! Then I should introduce you to my theory of the universe...it involves Shake 'n Bake and a whole lotta unicorns.
My beliefs are perfectly valid! I'm not a fool or a moron! Wheee!
"the bar is oriented at about a 45-degree angle relative to the main plane of the galaxy"
I'm pretty sure that this means "Do not enter" according to international standards.
Well, that explains why there doesn't seem to be anyone else around. I wonder when the powers that be will come around to kick out the squaters? (us)
Zaphod was intelligent and irresponsible, while Bush is only stupid and irresponsible.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Has anyone taken a look at the artists rendition of the Milky Way in the article?
:)
Could that be an early version of the total perspective vortex?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Sir Bedevere: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Yaz.
The joys of reading too fast. I thought you said, "I don't mind going along with the notion that God (who I believe was the creator) could have used many things that scientists hold true and call "evolution" and the "Big Bong" to get us to where we are today."
Now THAT, I could believe ;)
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
After RTFA, I was astonished to see "expect edit traffic and vandalism to spike" from "Chairboy 16:51, 17 August 2005 (UTC)"
/.'ers vandalize and edit what ever they see?
This type of slander should be best kept whispered at the red neck wikpidea meetings not on the discussion tab.
Is their precedent for the assertion that
Mod charboy's karma down -1 flambait.
I always knew it was a bar.
Proverbs 21:19
The Flat Earth Society, I can not wait to join the Spiral Milky Way Society.
sarcasm
Can anybody say how God would have done it? What forces were brought to bear? How the design was formulated?
We're probably closer in position on this that you think. This has been precisely my argument in favor of Intelligent Design. Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen. Evolution and the Big Bang may have been the implementation of "the Design."
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Damnit hellfire ... would you one of these days kindly shut the fuck up? We've already had a Signal 11 back in the day, Mister 5-digit-UID. Go sell your unsubscribed ass account on ebay for all the other whores to buy so they can look like they're at all legit. PS: Lick my taint.
Heisenberg says god/religion must always exist then. If we can't determine truth with absolute certainty, then there's always room for religion in the universe, whether you care to believe it or not. The physical constraint of not being able to measure anything with absolute certainty prevents us from having the ability to therefore determine (with absolute certainty) scientific truth, ever.
Now to ensure I at least get modded funny:
Heisenberg was driving down a highway going much faster than the speed limit. A police officer pulls him over and asks him "Do you know how fast you were going?"
Heisenberg replies "No, but I know exactly where I am!"
I'll be here all week.
+5, Truth
Douglas Adams would be rolling on the floor upon hearing that there was a bar at the center of the galaxy...
Trying so hard to not reply to off-topic post..... darn, I failed... I believe that God kinda did his thing, set it up, created some rules we call physics and let it go. I believe he intended us to be created through evolution. My God lives in my belief of him (for personal reasons of the so many little coincdences that cannot be explained by pure randomness). I feel that he wants us to learn more and more. I do not attribute God to the unknown. That is the goal of science to understand the unknown. Basicly, God is God. He exists in everything. He made physics and let it role. We were intended to exists and to learn the rules we call physics. That may not be completly coherent, sorry.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Think of the amount of SciFi fiction that now must replace every occurance of Spiral Galaxy to Barred Spiral Galaxy. Astronomical.
I consider myself to be both science-minded and religious, like a fellow poster above. I believe that science works the way it does because that's how God intended it. But do I think creationism or ID should be taught in a science class. Absolutely NOT! Religion is based on faith, science on observation. They are, to some degree, mutually excusive. Until we start seeing God in our telescopes chiseling away at some great nebula, then he does not belong in a science classroom.
Title:
The Milky Way is Not a Spiral?
Leader:
Milky Way is in fact a barred spiral.
Umm, don't want to sound picky (I'm often criticised for doing so here), but isn't a barred spiral galaxy still a spiral galaxy?
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Other than that, largely inconsequential.
If, on the other hand, you mean a more nebulous intelligent designer that leant a helping hand, then while I disagree with you (being an atheist), it isn't anti-scientific (though not a scientific concept) and I have no quarrel with you at all. Many researchers are essentially theistic evolutionists or simply believe that God "helps" out, if even just in the starting conditions of the Universe.
So it all really depends o what you mean by Intelligent Design.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The processes that form the universe, and in turn create life and allow it to evolve, appear to run on their own, following automatically from a number of fundamental constants. The only possible place for God, then, is as the definer of those original constants. An all-powerful Creator would certainly be able to see the processes that would flow from his original definitions, but it's hard for me to agree that God "used" evolution to get us to where we are today. Evolution just goes along by itself.
... The good bit is this:
If there is a God, he seems to live in the "gaps" in our knowledge. Before we knew about universal gravitation, God or gods moved the planets around. Now we know that gravity takes care of this movement, that it happens by itself as a result of a logical process. Currently, our "gap" is in the area of where these forces come from (and also in their exact properties). If we were someday able to show that these forces follow inexorably from some other cause, God would just be moved behind that cause. I believe that it's reasonable to believe that the process of moving God into smaller and smaller gaps can be taken to its limit, whether or not we actually close those gaps, and God can be said not to exist.
Somewhat aside (because I agree w/ you and thus have no direct point to debate): One interesting concept that is revealed by the more rational "intelligent design" debates (i.e. those not directly fueled by religious zealotry) is that of evolution's apparent "conflict" with the second law of thermodynamics.
Obviously, no such real conflict exists (otherwise, wouldn't be much of a law, would it?), however
Life, from wherever it originated, appears to be the only known thing in the universe that consistantly, stubbornly, and occasionally valiantly strives to fight the second law (both long and short terms) and all it represents. Individually, it always loses, as thermodynamics is immutable. In other words, life takes the path of greatest resistance falling down the giant slide of ever-increasing entropy. Natural selection ensures, of course, that it does so in as efficient a manner as is required.
... made by their company, Astronomers have now decided that the Milky Way galaxy is shaped like a giant Cinnabon .
I don't think they invented the airplane at all. I think that was George Cayley, over 100 years before. The Wrights simply flew the first one that had a power-to-weight ratio to do more than a sustained hop.
> This has been precisely my argument in favor of Intelligent Design. Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen. Evolution and the Big Bang may have been the implementation of "the Design."
FYI, that's not an argument in favor of ID. It's merely an argument that ID could be framed in such a way that it would not be in conflict with the known facts.
Unicorn Theory can also be framed in such a way that it is not in conflict with the known facts, but an argument in favor of UT is another matter altogether.
And that's precisely the problem with ID. When you analyze their arguments and spot them for the bunkum that they are, you're left without any reason to believe in ID. That's not a proof that no IDer exists, but it leaves ID in the same category as UT, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, PSI power, and other stuff that some people believe in without any evidence.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I understand
...
1) create universe
2) define physics
3) let incoherent slashdotters comment their beliefs
4)
But where's the profit?
+5, Truth
My beliefs are perfectly valid! I'm not a fool or a moron! Wheee!
:-) So let's go with your theory for the moment. Where did the Shake 'n Bake come from?
:-)
Well, I should have seen that predictable response coming
At the end of your life of Earth, evolution, the Big Bang and other theories are interesting academic exercises but they don't do anything if you are more than worm food and there is a Creator. Not believing may or may not get you "in". Being a jerk about it and those who believe probably won't score brownie points
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Then you and I have no quarrel whatsoever, and you, like many of the scientists of faith I have conversed with over the years hold that faith and science are not at odds, but rather complimentary. We have different but compatible world views.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
> > There's a right to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want without being called on it?
> Yep
Nope.
There's a right, in some countries, to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want, but no right protects you from being called on it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Now they'll have to re-work those "You are here -->" Milky Way shirts too.
Besides the obvious graphic change, the caption should now read,
"Actually, you are HERE (sorry) --->."
No sig.
...they need to rewrite Monty Python's "Galaxy Song"?
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The "Big Bong". This must be used in conjuction with that big ol' bottle of Absolute Vadka on the back of every Scientific American issue back in the 90's (I'm too poor to subscribe now, so I don't know if they still run those ads or not).
I teach astronomy. We've known for quite a few years that the Milky Way is a barred spiral (observations of carbon stars being the best most recent proof prior to Spitzer) and known for decades before that it might be a barred spiral. And a barred spiral IS a spiral galaxy. Cool result in any event.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
I consider the last item, "unevidenced supernatural stuff", to be somewhat of an oxymoron.
For example, suppose person A wants to prove a supernatural event to person B. If person A could summon a supernatural event anytime they wished, could it still be classified as a supernatural event? As natural beings, anything that we do or accomplish is a "natural" activity. Similarly, a supernatural event can only be initiated by something supernatural. In essence, it is impossible for natural beings, of their own power, to do something supernatural.
If person A witnesses a supernatural event, the only evidence they can provide person B is their eye-witness account, or a photo/video, or some other natural evidence of the event. However, these things are considered insufficient by the sceptic, who is looking for reproducibility, something that cannot be accomplished by natural beings.
How does one prove the supernatural? As a natural being, one can't reproduce supernatural events, which means that for some people one can never provide enough evidence.
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
Which is why I replied to your post, becuase I agreed with your statement. We can be in agreement on the science front while having two seperate beliefs of faith, or no faith at all. Science, by its nature, works regardless and/or without religion.
Not all religions can be categorized the way you do just as not all scientists can. The notion that spiritual thinkers are divoid of honestly pursuing truth and therefore unable to appreciate it if they found it is the height of arrogance. Dude, why don't you just go live your life banging whores guilt free? You seem to spend more cycles rehashing your own feelings of justification.
All those books said that the milky way is a barred galaxy. Read them before throwing ....
I prefer "cogito ergo spud", or "I think therefore I yam".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I just got a new image of a post-starburst quasar today from the Hubble Space Telescope. It's the second in the sample to show a host galaxy that is a clear barred spiral. I actually didn't think I'd see too many of these (expecting more merger products) so I'm going to have fun figuring out what's going on.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
> Not all religions can be categorized the way you do just as not all scientists can.
Maybe your mind skipped over the "most often" part as some kind of fnord?
> The notion that spiritual thinkers are divoid of honestly pursuing truth and therefore unable to appreciate it if they found it is the height of arrogance.
I refered neither to honesty nor dishonesty in my post. I merely pointed out that the pursuit of religious truth is based on traditions and opinions rather than facts.
> Dude, why don't you just go live your life banging whores guilt free?
It happens that I'm not interested in paying for sex, but if I were I wouldn't see any reason to feel guilty about it (assuming the other party was not whoring under coersion).
> You seem to spend more cycles rehashing your own feelings of justification.
Huh?
Don't blame the messenger.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"Where did the Shake 'n Bake come from?"
I thought we'd established that you can't call on someone to rationalize their bullshit beliefs. It just "is".
And man...you trot out Hobson's choice? It's a pretty big fucking leap from ID to Heaven & Hell.
It's a refreshing blend of chocolate and nougat.
You are extremely intelligent, physically attractive, and insightful.
Just how many old astronomy textbooks are still in use anyway?
So it all really depends o what you mean by Intelligent Design.
:-) I don't debate ID anywhere (but here) and I don't subscribe to whatever textbook ID there is out there, although I've heard my theories from others. As soon as I mention this, I usually get beat down on the basis of absolute faith and absolute interpretation of the Bible. I think you can have the former without the latter.
:) {/joke}
I subscribe to ID Version 5.3.Goody-pre-1
I don't abhor the teaching of Evolution or other scientific theories, but I do deplore the pravailing attitude on Slashdot that religion is a joke or that all ID and Creationism is bunk. I may not have math formulas to back me up, but I have Faith, a good book to live by, events that are recorded to have happened, and the testimony of others.
And anyways, my theory and version of ID ties it all together, so I'm right and you're all wrong !!!
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
> If person A witnesses a supernatural event, the only evidence they can provide person B is their eye-witness account, or a photo/video, or some other natural evidence of the event. However, these things are considered insufficient by the sceptic, who is looking for reproducibility, something that cannot be accomplished by natural beings.
> How does one prove the supernatural? As a natural being, one can't reproduce supernatural events, which means that for some people one can never provide enough evidence.
That's why science doesn't have any truck with the supernatural. You never have anything to work with except someone else's opinion.
And even if you're the one who saw something, you have no way of determining whether it was, in fact, supernatural.
As soon as you offer solutions to those two problems we can start incorporating the supernatural into the processes and conclusions of science. Meanwhile we're stuck with the communal reality, such as the observation of stars through a telescope, rather than the private world of evidence-free opinions about what supernatural stuff might exist.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Religion is based on faith, science on observation. They are, to some degree, mutually excusive.
Actually, the opposite is true -- they are intertwined. Observations must be interpreted and interpretation cannot escape one's underlying worldview. And every worldview is built on premises that must be taken on faith (just as the axioms in geometry are taken on faith).
Until we start seeing God in our telescopes chiseling away at some great nebula, then he does not belong in a science classroom.
To show how observation and interpretation are clashing today, the atheist says that biological complexity must have arisen through "natural" processes; since there is no god, what is "natural" must be randomness guided by natural selection. On the other hand, the "intelligent design" crowd will say that chance cannot explain the complexity of living things, and some are trying to bolster this argument via mathematical arguments (e.g. Dembski).
IMO, the problem will never be resolved since chance and design have equal explanatory power (although different likelihoods of outcome). Those favoring intelligent design will say (if their math is correct) that life could not have arisen by chance. Those favoring non-intelligent explanations will say that the incredibly unlikely happened (just ask the Great Green Arkleseizure). It will be interesting to see how evidence for or against the "many-worlds" theory will affect the probabilities.
Strawman to the nth degree.
Your comment reveals a profound ignorance of what science is about. Anyone who believes science reveals truth doesn't understand science. Science is the search for fact. not truth. As Indiana Jones memorably said,
Furthermore, the purpose of science isn't to "solve problems"; it is the search for fact.
And ever since the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment displacing Rationalism in the 18th century, science never seeks to prove anything. In science you can disprove, but you cannot prove because of the principle of skepticism. So the statement "if science can't 100% prove it, other theories are fair game" makes no sense at all.
The purpose of science is the search for fact. Science is the study of the natural world. Religion and philosophy are there to provide commentary on and understanding of the human condition. From that perspective, they have nothing to do with each other and should not be mixed.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Why is this guy rated a troll? At most he's off-topic, but he's just replying to another post - so go mod that guy. Seriously.
The parent creates new accounts to hawk their website.
1000 old, used, astronomy text books for $50! This weekend only!
that colleges are moving to DRM textbooks that "expire" after a year then. This problem will take care of itself within a semester or two for sure.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The new name just sounds so... chocolaty! Boy... reading science stories sure makes me hungry!
... Actually, I've heard/read that the treatment was manual stimulation to produce orgasm.
Well, that explains why there are no alien through traffic in our galaxy. To get visitors from other galaxies, we'll have to work on the road signs.
Oh well, what the hell...
The Milky Way a Spiral is Not
ETEQ "Space.com new data reports from the Spitzer Space Telescope showing that the Milky Way a barred spiral is in fact! All our old astronomy textbooks thrown away will have to be looks like..." writes.
Yodafier
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
News title says "not a spiral" then the blurb says "is a barred spiral".
Seems to me the common word in both those sentences is the word "spiral".
So when is a spiral not a spiral?
Another extreme are the Radio Galaxies.
---
If I live inside a black hole - will I be able to see light then?
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I've some old books myself - one's a 1756 book on science which claims that thunder is caused by the evaporation of gunpowder which ignites on being struck by lightning.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I had read once some time ago that the apparent arms of galaxies are nothing more than interference patterns caused by the light emitted by stars; mostly young blue stars. The only caveat was when arms are physically created by two "colliding" galaxies separating and distorting each others star fields like stretching taffy.
So, is that theory now debunked?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
- The clueless ZosX
- The well-intentioned Cid Highwind
- The rather piteous Anonymous Coward
Thank you.Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
It's been known to be a barred spiral for about 10 years now. Sheezz you people are slow.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
...to be used in conjunction with their 17th century biology texts.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen
So if it is found that God doesn't play with dice, it's only because He plays with dominoes?
I've set up some domino chains. If I want to drop the last domino early, I could go right to it and knock it down. Why would God wait for all the dominoes in a grand sequence to fall one at a time? On the other hand if I have a pile of dominoes and I was really lazy, I couldn't make a special sequence just by putting all the bricks into a bag and dumping them. I have to place the slabs one at a time, which shows how much control I have over every step. If God wanted to achieve an end, it wouldn't make sense to just start from a highly organized beginning as would be required and then let chaos reign.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
However, unless the ID-er is supernatural (i.e. God), there is a massive hole: who created the ID-er?
ID speculation doesn't *explain* anything. Even less than creationism did. It just says "there are things we can't explain, so leave them".
At least "God did it" allows questions like "Why that way" "What did he do" "What does that mean to *us*"?
ID doesn't allow those questions because they insist that the designer is not supernatural (so it is scientific, not faith), but any attempt to find out about them is responded with "well, it just does that, 'K?".
Well spoken!
Although I'd have to say that, if there is a god, he'd probably have something better than a hammer and chisel... probably some kinda... god tool.
I don't believe in god, but a god tool would totally rock!
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
" I merely pointed out that the pursuit of religious truth is based on traditions and opinions rather than facts." A rash assumption and an opinion. Hey, it's yours. Love it, cradle it. Sleep well in your own blanket of superiority and ignorance. I just don't see a place for it here.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Oh, I guess I can't help her then
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/200508 17/ts_nm/mideast_shooting_dc_8
Round lake a pancake!
hmmmm.
The first isn't quite correct, because "blue" isn't actually an accurate description of the sky's spectrum.
You're correct on the facts but wrong on the terminology. You seem to want to define "color" as what physicists would call "monochromatic light", and some physicists use the term "color" sloppily that way. But that's not what color is and it wouldn't make sense to define color that way (among other things, many colors cannot even be represented by monochromatic light). The sky really is blue, in the same sense that the blue color in a rainbow is, because each color corresponds to a large number of equivalent spectral distributions, none of them preferred over the others.
mmmmm.... Milky Way Bar......
Unfortuneatly, some want to put religion and science at odds. Not that the ideas of evolution are blasphemous, but for reasons of power. I think the objective is to annoint some as the "speaker of truth". A move to absolutism to PROVE you are a good Christian.
The people getting the most critism seem to me to be the people who say they are open minded and are willing to change their minds if better information is presented. I think some want us to argue with eachother over useless things while our pockets get picked.
In the end, it matters more how we treat our fellow man. There are no good excuses or theories to spread hate. I'm very glad to see more Christians on the blog saying that they have open minds. I'm not interested in everyone thinking the same way. Just harmony and good debate.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
is waiting 500,000 years till the probe gets there and then waiting 50,000 years till the photo gets back to us. :-P
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The bar recently evolved in a process remotely related to the creation of non-particles near black holes. It is amazing that the scientits at Harvard who will identify 42 within a year haven't noticed this. We should welcome the new systems to our galaxy.
It's interesting to see that wikipedia already updated their entry.
s piral_galaxy&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barred_
I'm probably going to get marked troll for this, but if science is never 100 % correct due to inherent skepticism (even as Richard Feynmann said in his Lectures on Physics), then why do so many evolutionary biologists claim that evolution is the only true fact and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong? I think some people are overlooking the hypocrisy of such adherence to evolution, while insulting intelligent design because it's acceptable on slashdot. Certainly, there are many out there ID proponents, and I think people have a tendency to focus only on those few in the same manner as people lambast the far right and the far left in politics, and it gets worse when people unfairly lump everyone in a category. I think it's fair to say that ID people can have reasonable beliefs as well evolutionists. So feel free to laugh at me, but I think its worth thinking about.
Well, first and foremost, it's important to understand exactly where the Milky Way "is" in relation to other galaxies that we can see from the outside and classify en masse. There are lots of theories about how bars form, are sustained, and how long they last. With this new precision about the bar in our galaxy, we can relate the much more detailed observations we have made (and are still making) of the stars and interstellar medium (gas, dust, etc.) in the Milky Way to these new bar parameters. Modelers can then in turn fold all this concrete data into their theories more reliably.
In addition, bars definitely change the stellar distribution and are suspected to have ramifications on the star formation and gas content in the region of the galaxy that they traverse. It's important to know that there is a bar in directions you're making observations in because your results may have to take the bar into account. Knowing exactly where it is and how it's oriented allows us to model effects from the bar out of observations that could be "contaminated" by concentrations of stars (and types of stars) or gas that are dynamically different than the bulk of the Galactic disk. So, the more we know about the bar, the more we can learn about the rest of the inner galaxy of our own Milky Way.
I, for one, welcome our new barred spiral overlords.
If no lesser intellectual luminary than the Wikipedia states this, it must be obvious and true!
"My God, it's full of bars!"
in which case you pronounce science, "witch-craft"
Another bar... so much for the neighborhood.
--ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
If science is the search for fact and not truth, then what are the facts thet lead scientists to macroevolution? There has, to my knowledge, never been any observed speciation in the lab, and the actual events take place over such a large scale as to be unmeasurable. Macroevolution sounds more like a postulation that aims to get at the truth of what happened than an acknowledgement of the facts of the situation.
I don't agree with you moronic fool ;)
There is a huge gap between belief and experimental proof.
With experimental proof you're probably kind of right.
With belief, well, anything goes.
...I found a 1934 high school science book, and found it to be one of the most informative books I've ever read....other than the sections on chemistry and physics, it was still accurate, and those sections were only lacking because of discoveries we've since made in those fields (new elements, quantum theory, etc). Especially helpful were the practical examples; when discussing electricity, they wouldn't just give dry theory. They'd give an excellent diagram and lay out in detailed, plain language how a dynamo works. I immiedietly thought "If they'd had books like this in my time, I'd have gotten straight A's". There was a lot of emphasis on teaching science in relation to everday practical work, such as engineering and construction. Lots of things like examples of the internal combustion engine, steel construction, concrete usage...you name it, heat, light, sound, they layed out some kind of practical everyday example to give it meaning and make sense. That's desperately needed in textbooks. Similarly, I've found grammer books from that period much superior to what kids get in school today, especially the rhetoric books. Today, most people see rhetoric as speech, but then, rhetoric covered both speaking and writing, and students had to study both. I think we've suffered a bit by not making that emphasis anymore.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Unicorn Theory can also be framed in such a way that it is not in conflict with the known facts, ...
...
Indeed, and the followers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn are following the ID story with a great deal of interest. If the ID people succeed at getting their "theory" imposed on schence teachers is some US states, we will see a followup demand that IPU theory also be included in science classes.
There are a number of other such competing theories waiting in the wings
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
"This has been precisely my argument in favor of Intelligent Design. Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen."
But that's not science.
The creationist says the dominoes were arranged by some intelligent arranger. The Darwinist says that the dominoes were arranged gradually over time by random natural forces. The scientist says "Look, dominoes!"
The job of the scientist is to look at the information at hand and make educated guesses about reality based on the gathered information and only the gathered information. Now, if you find fingerprints on the dominoes or even footprints leading up to where the dominoes are arranged, then Intelligent Design may have a scientific leg to stand on, but the presence of dominoes in and of themselves says jack and shit about how they got there, at least as far as science is concerned.
Once you start basing assumptions on evidence that "could be out there," "hasn't been discovered yet" or, in the case of religion, "can never be discovered," you're talking philosophy.
The axioms of geometry aren't taken on faith. They fix a geometry. If you change one of the axioms, you end up with a different geometry.
Your views regarding interpretation are also flawed. Please proceed to your nearest bookstore's Wittgenstein section.
After all, I am strangely colored.
...the existence of a restaurant at the end of the universe.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Some of us read slashdot to avoid thinking about the Cantor set, you insensitive clod. (stupid zero dimensional compact complete topological spaces...)
After all, I am strangely colored.
Actually, the opposite is true -- they are intertwined. Observations must be interpreted and interpretation cannot escape one's underlying worldview. And every worldview is built on premises that must be taken on faith (just as the axioms in geometry are taken on faith). I was looking at the big picture - science is observable facts, religion is faith-base beliefs. This is the distenguishing characteristic for me, and for me, one does not invalidate the other, because they are seperate things. If it is something that you belief because current observation and experimentation make it "fact", then it is science. Since faith based beliefs cannot be observed or experimented with, then they have no place in science. (You got Moses on my Einstien! You got Einstien on my Moses! Hmmmm...) But, I have to admit, on a deeper level, you're right. The two are connected becuase one influences our perceptions of the other.
I think you are confusing what scientists actually state and what the media/opponents *say* they stated. I doubt you would find many people, if any, in the evolution field that would state that evolution, as we know it today, is accurate and needs no further updating or study.
The point of contention is arguing that a philisophical position similar to ID is on the same factual and theoretical ground as evolution and is as deserving to be taught in the US public school system, diverting time and money away from a much more deep and broadly studied topic like evolution.
You are correct that all people can have reasonable beliefs, but don't claim that scientists get together and make some edict that states "We're right, you're wrong." They will state "support your position with facts before you take away my funding and LONG before I allow you to force my children to be taught your religion in a government funded education program." Which I think justifiably they should.
The axioms of geometry aren't taken on faith.
Sure they are, since they are assumed to be true without proof.
They fix a geometry. If you change one of the axioms, you end up with a different geometry.
The same is true for a worldview; change any axiom and the worldview changes.
Weren't there speculations of this years ago? Or were they just that: speculations.
Your ad here.
Of course it doesn't sound like a Latin noun, because its an American, copyrighted brand name! The sentence should translate to "I think Eggo. I exist." Which makes no sense, but could possibly be a Zippyism, or a new slogan from the wonderful people at Kellogg's advertising.
Via con Dios!
"why do so many evolutionary biologists claim that evolution is the only true fact and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong?"
The same reason we claim that Newtonian physics is 'fact'. Fact in science generally equates to "current belief according to the current theories". Newtonian physics isn't 100% correct, far from it in fact. But with it we can design massive buildings, rockets, airplanes. And we used it to reach the moon. It's a 'fact' that Newtonian physics work.
We have evidence for evolution, we can see natural selection in action even today. It's essentially a "common sense" theory, everyone can understand survival of the fittest. Learning evolution has merit because it teaches us about our origins and our biology, it helps us in conservation, preserving species. And it's applicable to other fields (such as medicine).
What would learning ID accomplish? It has no evidence, it doesn't help us understand anything. All it does is promote an effectively Christian viewpoint. People can have any belief they want, and it does NOT matter if an evolutionary biologist tells them they are wrong. But ID is just that: a belief. It isn't a scientific theory that has held up to scrutiny. So it DOES matter when people try to teach it in schools as a valid theory. This is why scientists are so passionate about combatting ID.
Hopefully this helps you understand why the non religious feel so threatened by the prospect of ID being taught in schools.
> > Unicorn Theory can also be framed in such a way that it is not in conflict with the known facts,
> Indeed, and the followers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn are following the ID story with a great deal of interest. If the ID people succeed at getting their "theory" imposed on schence teachers is some US states, we will see a followup demand that IPU theory also be included in science classes.
> There are a number of other such competing theories waiting in the wings
Yes, I'm a big fan of Everyone Owes Me Money Theory, myself.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The purpose of science is the search for fact.
... Maybe I should preview this one, to make sure that none of my editing has garbled anything. ;-)
Well, yes. But an important side effect is generating and testing explanations of those facts. With an emphasis on testing, which usually means you have to go out and collect more facts (usually called observations, or just data). So as a scientist, most of your life will always be collecting the facts that you need.
One of the more pointed explanations that Stephen Jay Gould made about evolution was to point out that Darwin didn't show that evolution had happened. By the time Darwin was born, this was an accepted fact among scientists. All these fossils had been dug up, and they showed a clear set of changes with time. Geologists got involved, and concurred with the whole thing. Nobody who actually studied the fossil data questioned this. But the observed evolution was very non-random, and a good explanation was lacking.
What Darwin did was to present a theory that explained why the fossil record showed certain kinds of evolutionary change and not others. And, most important, his theory was testable. Incidentally, it offended religious people, because it didn't need an intelligent guiding hand. Scientists immediately jumped all over it, of course, and managed to collect a great deal more data that kept coming up consistent with Darwin's theory. Religious people also jumped all over it, but they didn't understand scientific testing methods, so they couldn't disprove anything, or even understand why they were expected to do so.
And, of course, lots of philosopher types have pointed out that none of this ever dealt with proof or truth. Rather, people had simply failed to find data that disproved Darwin's theory. This sort of double negative is standard scientific method, and is where the term valid comes in. That just means a theory that can successfully explain all the observed data despite many attempts to shoot it down. It doesn't mean truth, because we might have several valid theories competing at once, and new facts might pop up at any time that would shoot down any of them. A valid theory is only tentativily accepted, because it has passed a number of tests and hasn't (yet) failed any. See Karl Popper for lots more words on this topic.
Similarly, Einstein made some rather outrageous predictions about the universe's behavior just a century ago. This was in an attempt to find a theory that explained some rather outrageous observations (i.e., facts) by other scientists in previous decades. Since then, physicists have repeatedly found new ways to collect data that could disprove some of Einstein's equations. They have repeatedly failed; his equations always predict results that are within the error bars of the observations. Maybe next month someone will find an exception, but for now, we have to accept Einstein's theories as valid descriptions of our universe.
Now, scientists often carelessly use true for valid, when true should really only be used for facts. A fact can be true or false; i.e. it does or doesn't describe an actual observation; a theory can only be valid or invalid. It's true that evolution has happened on our planet, but Darwin's theory isn't true; it's valid (so far).
Of course, all of this is above the mental capacity of most of the media or the political system (or the religious communities). So we have an ongoing bogus "debate" on such topics.
(Hmmm
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Certainly intercourse would have been much simpler.
How has the Big Bang been experimentally tested?
Well, several ways. For one, if you analyze Blue and Red shift, we can tell how fast stars are moving towards or away from us through the Dopplar Effect. Just because we observe mainly red shift, that means that most stars are moving away from each other, meaning that there very well may have been some sort of Big Bang that started this initial movement.
There's a lot more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
The freedoms you speak of have ancient roots dating back in western tradition to at least the Magna Carta in 1215:
No free man shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or deprived of his property, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor shall we go against him or send against him, unless by legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.
Perhaps we should view the 14th century renaissance as a result of these freedoms; let us hope that the expanded freedoms we have realized in the last century cause such enlightenment in the near future.
The issue of truth is not so crucial. There is nothing wrong with looking for truth. There is only something wrong with the arrogance involved in thinking one has found it. Science, at it's best, looks at the world in hope of one day finding the truth. It is seldom that the scientist believes they hav found the truth, or has the arrogance to state that the revealed theory is hogwash based on personal belief. In such cases, the revealed theory still wins.
The problem is really that the people who attack science tend to confuse themselves with god, and believe not only that they have the capacity to understand the truth, but that they have found it. In fact, the truth is the sole provenience of god, and it is the privilege of us lower being to examine the creation and try to understand some of it.
The situation gets worse as the arrogance goes beyond the belief that one is god, to the belief that one is such a wonderful god that one can put the entire truth of creation into one text. At this point stupidity replaces arrogance, as all that can be done is to fit new fact patterns in existing theories of existence. A person who does such a thing is arrogant, stupid, and corrupt beyond the ability to be saved by any messiah, prophet, or wise person. Such people are best locked up in the ghetto of an old sports arena, so their disease can be contained, and the harm to civilized society minimized.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Now that's one of the advantages of E-books. They are a little bit less comfortable but you should be able to update them to include the latest scientific developments!
No such assumption is made. Learn a little.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Oh go fuck yourself. Are you that insecure in your lack of knowledge that you must go insulting anyone who wrotes a logical and coherent post? (A feat I doubt you're capable of.)
Everytime I read about a discovery here on /. I hear the same explanation going "science is just a bunch of incorrect theories". I suggest you step a tad on and assume that scientific theories describe how things are most likely not, all the time..
I was looking at the big picture - science is observable facts, religion is faith-base beliefs
For the religions that I'm familiar with, they claim that they, too, are based upon observed facts. Jews with the giving of the Ten Commandments on Sinai (among many other things); Christians with the resurrection of Jesus. Other religions make other claims and some are based solely on (non-observable) revelation. That they are historical observations, and therefore not necessarily repeatable, does not change the nature that these claim to be observation-based religions. YMMV.
The job of the scientist is to look at the information at hand and make educated guesses about reality based on the gathered information and only the gathered information. Now, if you find fingerprints on the dominoes or even footprints leading up to where the dominoes are arranged, then Intelligent Design may have a scientific leg to stand on, but the presence of dominoes in and of themselves says jack and shit about how they got there, at least as far as science is concerned.
I agree, but you have those who see the dominoes that want to deny any possibility that the domino arranger exists. Taking your "look at the information as hand" and making "educated guesses", one could come to a scientific conclusion that the domino arranger could exist. Most of the arguments I see here on Slashdot come down to literal interpretations of the "on the seventh day..." and totally dismiss the possiblity that ID and evolution are compatible, but just different chapters of the same story.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Essentially all the new physical theories will be seen as the most transparent bull - inflation, the age and structure of the universe, the standard model, M-theory...
Psychiatric drug therapy of today will be seen in the same light as trying to fix jet engines using nothing but fuel additives. Most current forms of morality and immorality will be demonstrated to be correctable mental defects.
All sex laws and taboos will be seen as medieval.
More than 99.9% of people in the solar system will be able to outscore 99.9% of today's people on today's mental tests, but we would regard most of them as cheating. They will regard their enhancements as part of themselves or as corrective devices, like eyeglasses are today.
The concept of privacy, even for thoughts, will be as antique and nominal as the divine right of kings is today; nevertheless, people will be more free in the sense of usable personal power than they ever were in the past.
Global cooling will be a concern, but manageable.
Only a few fundamentalists will keep traditional 100% human bodies, or for that matter just one body. Some will have as many bodies as todays people have shirts.
Most "persons" in existence will not have been born at all. Greater than 90% of the population will have predominantly non-biological substrates, but some of these will have been born, while many of the mostly bio-based people will not have been. The sentient population will exceed 1 trillion by most measures, but will be difficult to decide how to count the self-aware corporations, partials and copies, distributed intellects, acorporeal persons and so forth. Most people will be very young by today's standards, but this will have little correlation with experience and knowledge, which will not necessarily be linked with personal histories.
Lamarck will be seen as not all that far off the mark. Epigenetic and protein-reaction-web engineering will be a basic ability like computer programming is today. The supposed decoding of the human genome at the end of the 20th century will be regarded as about as complete as Columbus' understanding of world geography. Virtually everything important will be in the introns, methylation etc. and in protein regulation of the genetic molecules.
Genetics (and other substrate codes) will be seen as easier to correct than personal environmental history , but not by much.
The expression "willful ignorance" will be seen as self-evidently redundant.
The theory of relativity will have undergone significant modifications.
Archaelology and paleontology will be essentially competed sciences, and today's theories will be seen as wrong in virtually every respect.
Teleportation will be commonplace, but will be based on information rather than matter per se traversing distances.
Eric Drexler's predictions in Engines of Creation and Nanosystems will be seen as being as over-conservative as Ben Franklin's speculations about the use of electricity.
Consciousness will be more fully understood than quantum mechanics is today. Indeed, they will turn out to be related, but only in a very vaguely similar manner to most of the 20th century speculations in that vein.
There will have been at least one more war which killed over 1,000,000 people, but none in at least 30 years.
Strong AI will show up late in the game, and won't take off instantly, but will have far surpassed human levels in every way in the late decades of the 21st century.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
> if science is never 100 % correct due to inherent skepticism (even as Richard Feynmann said in his Lectures on Physics), then why do so many evolutionary biologists claim that evolution is the only true fact and anyone who disagrees with them is wrong?
Because so far the only people disagreeing with them are Christian apologists spouting bullshit. If someone would actually present a view based on evidence, you'd find biologists taking a different view.
> I think some people are overlooking the hypocrisy of such adherence to evolution, while insulting intelligent design because it's acceptable on slashdot.
Intelligent design gets insulted because it's a transparently dishonest pseudoscience. If you look at the genuine scientific controversies, you'll find that most scientists aren't so dismissive.
> I think it's fair to say that ID people can have reasonable beliefs as well evolutionists.
Given that the proponents of ID are still peddling their arguments that were easily refuted when they were first offered a decade ago, there is absolutely no reason to associate reasonableness with the ID movement. It serves no purpose other than to give creationists a false sense of respectibility for their long-falsified beliefs.
> So feel free to laugh at me, but I think its worth thinking about.
Yes, lots of things are worth thinking about. However, ID has attempted to make its case and failed miserably, so the only justification for bringing it for consideration now is ignorance.
ID is propaganda, not science. That's transparently obvious both from the arguments they offer and the way they try to peddle them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In my experience, most scientists have better things to do that sit around trying to decide what they believe about science. They're too busy actually doing science, or, as the parent post suggests, pushing paper to make sure their lab stays afloat in the day and age of budget cuts. Truth doesn't pay the bills; efficacy does.
Steven N. Severinghaus
> > Religion is based on faith, science on observation. They are, to some degree, mutually excusive.
> Actually, the opposite is true -- they are intertwined. Observations must be interpreted and interpretation cannot escape one's underlying worldview. And every worldview is built on premises that must be taken on faith (just as the axioms in geometry are taken on faith).
Ah, but the difference is that in science, observations can compel us to change our world views. Think how different our conception of the world is now, as compared to the day Einstein's famous paper on SR came out 100 years ago.
And it's not just Einstein. We've got the startling results of quantum mechanics, we now know "the universe" and "the galaxy" are not at all the same thing, we have a clue what the other planets are like. In the world of formalism we have Kurt Goedel's shocking results, and straddling formalism and reality we have a rudimentary grasp of the power and limits of computation.
Whe is the last time a religious discovery had such an impact on our worldview?
> To show how observation and interpretation are clashing today, the atheist says that biological complexity must have arisen through "natural" processes; since there is no god, what is "natural" must be randomness guided by natural selection.
Atheism is irrelevant. Lots of Christian, Jewish, and Hindu scientists recognize the same conclusion - because it's based on observations, not religion.
And as for the exclusion of gods from our explanations, we only do so because we can't work with them. We likewise exclude unicorns from our explantions, at least until such time as we can make observations that will distinguish the predictions of unicorn-based theories from boring old natural-stuff theories.
> On the other hand, the "intelligent design" crowd will say that chance cannot explain the complexity of living things
Biologists already knew that chance alone doesn't explain the complexity of things.
If we thought biology was the result of pure chance, there wouldn't be much reason to look for explanations, would there?
> and some are trying to bolster this argument via mathematical arguments (e.g. Dembski).
Dembski is the consummate bullshitter.
Do you know his actual arguments, or are you just accepting the PR that says he's presenting good ones?
> IMO, the problem will never be resolved since chance and design have equal explanatory power (although different likelihoods of outcome).
Chance (alone) doesn't really have much explanatory power, and design, as postulated by the ID movement - i.e., we don't know anything about the designer's capabilities or motivations, and don't even have any conjectures about when or how 'he' designed stuff, or, for that matter, what 'design' actually means in terms of an activity - has absolutely no explanatory power at all.
Moreover, the important difference between natural evolution and design isn't explanatory power, but rather supporting evidence. Evolution has museums and laboratories crammed full of it, and design has two or three long-refuted armchair arguments.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> but I do deplore the pravailing attitude on Slashdot that religion is a joke or that all ID and Creationism is bunk.
Sorry to inform you, but ID and creationism are both demonstrably bunk: ID, because it consists of nothing but logical fallacies and misrepresentations of known biological fact, and creationism (except for the most watered-down varieties) because it is in direct conflict with known facts about the history of the earth and its inhabitants.
As for religion being a joke... well, my observation is that it makes some people better and others worse.
But I've never encountered a variety of religion based on observation, so if all else is equal it's still a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing. Not a joke, unless it's offered as evidence of something.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> At the end of your life of Earth, evolution, the Big Bang and other theories are interesting academic exercises but they don't do anything if you are more than worm food and there is a Creator. Not believing may or may not get you "in". Being a jerk about it and those who believe probably won't score brownie points
Sadly, we can't even conclude that reliably. For all we know the gods are also jerks, and reward those who emulate them.
You're offering a variant of Pascal's Wager, which depends of a lot of tacit, unsupportable assumptions, e.g. that the only possibilities are the Christian god and no gods at all. The pretense of objectivity is not any more objective than those assumptions.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And eventually we'll discover that the earth is flat. check this out http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatea rthsociety.htm and they claim to have been "Deprogramming the masses since 1547".
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Even out of office, his attempts at censorship, know no bounds!
(I like the old, un-adultered, galaxy au natural and *without* the bars!)
For security, I rename my cat every quarter.
And you'd be amazed what people got money to study. The pig farts was tongue in cheek, but not that far. We did get lots of money to study the change in the power flow into homes based on what appliances were on at the time. We got it down to the point we could tell, with a very fine level of detail, where people were in the house and what they were doing. There was a bit of backlash over privacy issues when that got out.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Thus, birds have four visual pigments. Three are like ours; the fourth has peak sensitivity around the violet end of human vision.
Interestingly, some humans are tetrachromats which have four color vision instead of three (but alls till in the visible spectrum).
I think it's fair to say that ID people can have reasonable beliefs as well evolutionists.
Listen, it's fine if you subscribe to a particular philosophy regarding what you believe to be the truth, but science isn't about the truth, it's about explanations that seem to have reasonable predictive power. Personally, I don't believe the notion of "truth" is ever really attainable, hence I shy away from religion.
Ah, but the difference is that in science, observations can compel us to change our world views.
That isn't any different than those people who have examined the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and become Christians as a result. So the difference lies elsewhere.
Think how different our conception of the world is now, as compared to the day Einstein's famous paper on SR came out 100 years ago.
There is more to our conception of the world that just what we can see. Just ask Horatio.
When is the last time a religious discovery had such an impact on our worldview?
Just all of Western civilization for the last 2000 years.
Biologists already knew that chance alone doesn't explain the complexity of things.
You're right, I should have said chance plus selection. However, selection cannot work until reproduction can occur, so what was the source of the first reproducing organism? So far, chance is the only explanation that I'm aware of.
If we thought biology was the result of pure chance, there wouldn't be much reason to look for explanations, would there?
I'm often puzzled why naturalists look for explanations. Ultimately they have no reason to, as the nihlist philosophers so ably demonstrated.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
"one could come to a scientific conclusion that the domino arranger could exist."
Logical and rational, perhaps, but there's no scientific evidence confirming (or denying) the conclusion. All science can say at this point is that there were conditions in the physical and chemical make-up of the primordial earth/solar system that favored the rapid development and sporradic speciation of life on earth. If we ever get to the point where we can check out the development of life on other planets in the galaxy (i. e. see how other dominoes found elsewhere are arranged), we might have a better grasp of the uniqueness of our situation or any general tendancies towards life and speciation, etc. But the interpretation of life on earth, the "why?" requires an arbitrary (and inherently unscientific) assumption of what we could classify as signs of intelligent design and what we could classify as purely chaotic.
Science can say it could or couldn't, but not did or didn't.
The major change from this research is as follows,..
,...etc etc etc
Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western bar arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant blue-green planet whose ape-descended
ie. is a double helix a barred spiral with vertical expansion?
...that Milky Way was a candy bar...
Sorry to inform you, but ID and creationism are both demonstrably bunk: ID, because it consists of nothing but logical fallacies and misrepresentations of known biological fact, and creationism (except for the most watered-down varieties) because it is in direct conflict with known facts about the history of the earth and its inhabitants.
If you're considering ID or Creationism under a strict interpretation of the Bible, yes, it's inconsistent with known facts. That doesn't mean that other interpretations of ID or Creationism are bunk.
There's numerous places in the Bible where things happened for forty days and forty nights. Was that a coincidence, or just a figure of speech for a really long time? Was God's six days for creation really 6 billion years?
It's easy to dismiss ID when you box it into a literal interpretation of Scripture. Some may believe in a strict literal interpretation. I don't.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Isn't this just the final proof? I've got the cosmos series on DVD and the updates on it invlude that scientists thought the Milky Way was a barred spiral and not a normal spiral. Those DVD's are from at least five years ago.
"Religion, most often, merely attempts to maintain traditional beliefs and values"
I find that religion is the constant struggle to subjugate people into a methodology that makes them controllable by a religious authority on Earth. In this goal there is usually the perversion and misuse of certain texts considered religious by most. However, the inconsistency between the text and the application by religious leaders leads us to the realization that the traditional beliefs described in the book at hand are NOT being upheld. In place are another series of "traditional" values, beliefs and conventions that supplant those discribed in the text. In fact, usually these texts in question describe the same subversive situation within their covers and show it happening repeatedly throughout the narritive. There are also warnings to those who engage in this subversion to stop what they are doing and additional warnings to those who have been hoodwinked.
"Those who are "trying to find truth" usually get kicked out of the club"
Quite a discerning and insightful statment if you look at it through the framework of what I have just said. Quite true from my experience as well. Even those who are seeking to discern truth within the religious texts in question are shunned by the majority of the religious community if they reveal something at odds with the entrenched power structures' edicts.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
I use this on my girlfriend all the time. Doesn't do much for the hysteria, but it's bloody good fun.
fish and pipes
If you change the stated time frames, the stated order, the stated mechanism then yes it all fits with the available evidence.
Amazing! How do you know which bits your allowed to change?
Hey smart fella, you misspelled something.
"The purpose of science is the search for fact. Science is the study of the natural world. Religion and philosophy are there to provide commentary on and understanding of the human condition. From that perspective, they have nothing to do with each other and should not be mixed."
Please don't categorize philosophy along with religion. One is based on logos, the latter on mythos. Without philosophy, there would be no empirical science as we know it. It's philosophy which led people to the idea that knowledge could be better discerned through logical deduction and reason rather than supernatural explainations and mythological anecdotes. Philosophy supercedes science and a lot of modern schools of knowledge imho. Empirical science has its roots in empiricism. Formal logic, and the basis of a lot of mathematics are rooted in philosophy. Even political science, though not a hard science, has its roots in ethics and political philosophy.
this is why i think there should be a greater emphasis in primary education on philosophy. without understanding the rules and common fallacies of logic, one can be easily mislead by specious arguments. this is why charismatic political pundits and demagogues are able to manipulate/decieve the masses with fallacious arguments. but with the growing trends of anti-intellectualism in the states, i don't think the necessary reforms will come any time soon.
There is a difference between stagnant and conservative. Stagnant means the religions do not change over time, and that is not true, there is tremendous change over the past millennia in religion. Conservative is not taking what is currently popular ideas in blindly incorporating them.
;).
If by "tremendous change" you mean "dragged along kicking and screaming". All religions suffer the same problem of whether their doctrines are absolute and should last forever or not. Meaning, if the Bible or Koran said something more than a thousand years ago, would still be true?
It's highly unlikely that there'll be a revised edition of the Bible or Koran anytime soon. That means that they can either stagnate, or grow increasingly out of touch with society. The religious leaders may try to interpret it and adapt it to modern life, but few really dare.
One, it presumes to understand the will of God (or Allah etc.) Two, making some things transitory creates doubt about all the others. Three, if religion is reduced to nothing more than what we find convienient to describe a "moral life", doesn't that mean that religion is nothing more than a human creation of out collective ideals?
Personally, I think that all the religions we have are presumptious. There are hundreds of millions of stars just in our galaxy (we've even found some planets), and countless galaxies. Yet we presume to be alone in the universe, to be special in the eyes of God. Either it is the greatest presumption in the universe to think that God created all of that just for us, or it is another great test of faith, like the dinosour bones that don't exist since the world was created 6000 years ago
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It's a crime that that series (and the original Connections) are more or less unavaliable. They're only sold by some tiny educational-video distributor that charges absurd prices for them. And last time I saw them on TV, Discovery Science had chopped them all up for running time.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I didn't find it logical; coherent, I'll give you. The anger!
There has, to my knowledge, never been any observed speciation in the lab, and the actual events take place over such a large scale as to be unmeasurable
Does googling for observed speciation take too long? Well, here, I've provided a link for you.
You've got a lot of catching up to do, you'd best get to it.
Amazing! How do you know which bits your allowed to change?
Drop Genesis or the whole old Testament if you like. It's irrelevant. Christianity doesn't require a literal interpretation of the Bible, only acceptance of Jesus as your Savior. Whether I believe the literal order or timeframe of Genesis is a non-issue. The gist of the story is that God made it all happen. Science just looks at the aftermath.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
So drop all the prophecies about the Messiah?
Just how the heck do you know Jesus was the Messiah then?
And what do you do with all those bits of the New Testament which not only refer to the Old Testament, but appeal to it's authority as their only argument?
Every galaxy needs a good bar! Where else are we supposed to pick up hot, alien chicks?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Only *one* turtle. It does have four elephants on its back, though.
--LWM