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Using Copyrights To Fight Intelligent Design
An anonymous reader writes "The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association are using the power of copyright to ensure that students in Kansas receive a robust education. They're backed by the AAS: The American Association for the Advancement of Science." From the release: "[they] have decided they cannot grant the Kansas State School Board permission to use substantial sections of text from two standards-related documents: the research council's 'National Science Education Standards' and 'Pathways to Science Standards', published by NSTA. The organizations sent letters to Kansas school authorities on Wednesday, Oct. 26 requesting that their copyrighted material not be used ... Leshner said AAAS backs the decision on copyright permission. 'We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.'"
We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds
So that's exactly what we're going to do! Instead of getting mostly science with a bit of creationism thrown it, now it's no science at all. Good job denying the young people a science education and punishing the people not responsible.
Holy crap! Two wrongs DO make a right!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Out of all the places in the US to pick, they chose Kansas??!?!?!? This isnt the Wizard of Oz for christ sakes.
On another note, It's good ot see the US is at least making an attempt to keep the country on a the path to educate their people to try to hold on to the technological advances in the US. I hope good things come out of such a small, desolate state.
Intelligent design is nonsense. BUT evolution, based on fossil evidence is a soft science at best. YOU CAN'T DO EXPERIMENTS only make observations. So evolution from the viewpoint of how humans developedis not ahard science.
Luckily, the offical text of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is published under a free license!
Are they afraid people will discover that not every scientist believes in evolution, or that there is no consensus among those who do about which KIND of evolution to preach?
And they call Christians closed-minded!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
For Occam's sake. There is no excuse for this. Not only is it indefensible on free speech grounds, it will only kindle the creationist crowd more. I can already hear the cries of "See? See? They're afraid to let us show you the truth!"
Let them use what they want, and publicly and loudly show them where they are wrong.
(first use in the summary is not spelt correctly)
Why doesn't slashdot just create one article titled "People that believe in God are stupid" and have all ID discussion there?
Heres the text of the letter:
Dear Dr. Posny:
Thank you for your August 22 letter asking us to examine the use of NSTA Pathways to the Science Standards: Guidelines for Moving the Vision into Practice, Middle School Edition in the current draft of the Kansas Science Education Standards. We appreciate the chance to review the treatment of our copyrighted material for accuracy and proper presentation.
Although the majority of the draft Kansas standards could proudly serve as a model for other states to emulate, there are significant errors regarding the theory of evolution. These inaccuracies are of such importance that they compromise the Kansas State Board of Education's (KSBE) stated vision and mission for these Standards, not to mention all of science.
Your mission statement reads, "Kansas science education contributes to the preparation of all students as lifelong learners who can use science to make informed and reasoned decisions that contribute to their local, state, national and international communities."
Your vision statement begins, "Science education in Kansas is intended to help students to develop the understandings and intellectual abilities they need to lead personal fulfilling lives, and to equip them to participate thoughtfully with fellow citizens in building and protecting a society that is open, equitable, and vital. The educational system must prepare the citizens of Kansas to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
We applaud these statements, but the standards, as currently written, will result in Kansas students being confused about the scientific process and ill-prepared both for the rigors of higher education and for the increasingly technological and scientific challenges we face as a nation.
Therefore, despite much outstanding material contained in the standards, we have no choice but to ask the KSBE to refrain from referencing or quoting from NSTA Pathways in the KSES. Specifically, the draft Kansas standards fail to recognize the theory of evolution as a major unifying theme of science and the foundation of all biology. NSTA strongly supports this premise and calls for science curricula, state science standards, and teachers to emphasize evolution in a manner commensurate with its importance as a unifying concept in science and its overall explanatory power. This position is consistent with those issued by the National Academies, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the vast majority of scientific and educational organizations.
However, we believe that, working together, we can resolve the issues that stand in the way of our granting permission, and we stand ready and willing to work with the KSBE to ensure that your students receive the quality science education they need and deserve.
We do not maintain that science is superior to other ways of understanding our world nor do we think that scientific inquiry is inconsistent with a theological search for answers. Rather, there are profound differences between these ways of knowing and failure to understand them will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world.
We appeal to the Board to reconsider its position and work with us for the benefit of your students, science teachers, and your state.
Sincerely,
Michael Padilla
NSTA President
What an interesting quandary: many of us oppose excessive copyright because we want the power to create our own content from what we see around us, appropriate to our community and our standards -- not tied to another culture's expectations. Yet at the same time this leads to a dilution and fragmentation of knowledge, a step away from cohesion and consensus, and even the empowerment of communities that are quite distasteful to us -- public-domain works can be seamlessly rewritten and republished by those we see as our enemies. So where does "right" lie?
They are making a point.
Do you think the parents of Kansas will allow their children to go to schools who do not have the materials to teach science? The idea is to make a ruckus, raise the profile of the idiocy of the Kansas Board of Education, who are basically quietly destroying science education as Dorothy knows it in Kansas.
Now, if Kansas parents collectively shrug their shoulders and say,"Well, no science is Ok.", then they deserve to have their children shut out of every known college/university/whatever-you-name-it in the world (not just the US). Of course, in this case, the children become the victims. But, chances are the KBE will be voted out post-haste before they have a chance to reach this level of idiocy.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
That's what I'm talkin' bout! Time for the scientific community to grow some balls!
I am not to sure what this positoin is besides a religious position. Kinda reminds of the crusades and the inqusitions. Punish Punish Punsih. Seems like they are narrow minded bigots that is the, The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association. I just love narrow minded religious fools.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
[Taken from http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/2005/10/only-d ebate-on-intelligent-design-that.html ]
The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject
Moderator: We're here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des---
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate's kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn't mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible --- it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can't rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn't prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let's not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That's a load of bullpoop sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we'll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it's so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
It's about durned time somebody rekonized that we wuz put here by Ayleens! I luv Intellegent design!
____________________________________
-- I beleve you'll like this -->
"Sometimes true evil cannot be defeated by good, it must be pitted against a different sort of evil"
Shame such a good sounding quote comes from such a godawful shitty movie, if it has a farther reaching origin please enlighten me.
It's strange to see this being used as a tactic. I guess it really shows how law and technlogy are converging...
It's making a point in favor of common sense. There's a fine distinction.
The Kansas school board needs to have a single mother assemble their curriculum! As has been documented here repeatedly, single mothers are exempt from copyright law, and attempting to restrain them from copyright violation is a felony!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
How also can they deny Kansas fair use quotation of parts of their standards documents?
Oh wait, it gets worse!
Therefore, despite much outstanding material contained in the standards, we have no choice but to ask the KSBE to refrain from referencing or quoting from NSTA Pathways in the KSES.
Refrain from REFERENCING them? That's nuts, out of control.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now I don't mean to just single out Dawkins here since this sort of idiocy pervades much of the humanist movement but it is precisely this sort of idiocy that leads to "debates" like the one over Intelligent Design.
Before the high priests of "science" try preaching at the preachers of other religions they should try getting their own house in order. I doubt they'll do this, because just as the Christian Right has their hidden agenda, so the humanists have their hidden agenda -- which is to deny responsibility for possible dysgenic influences of technological civilization.
Seastead this.
Glad to see we've become so much more enlightened.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I believe the idea is more like, the NSTA is saying "either everything with the NSTA's name on it will be good science, or there will be nothing from the NSTA at all".
Instead of getting mostly science with a bit of creationism thrown it, now it's no science at all.
If we go with the second option, then this is only a problem for the people of Kansas. If we go with the first option though, then in addition to being a problem for the people of Kansas then this is a problem for the NSTA, because the NSTA has placed their material support and endorsement on bad science. If the NSTA endorses bad science, this is a direct bad reflection on their reputation and authority. The NSTA is in the end a private organization, and they have a reasonable basis here on which to choose the option which acts in their own interests, over the option which is wholly and unconditionally altruistic toward the people of Kansas.
Good job denying the young people a science education and punishing the people not responsible.
In the end, the voters are the ones responsible. The Kansas school board is elected directly. If the voters of Kansas wish to keep their children from science education this is hardly the NSTA's fault.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The scary part:
Evolution does have reproducable results via experimentation. Biologists, Geneticists, Medical Doctors, and many others have been documenting it for years.
"Intelligent Design", while not distastful to me in light of my religious background, is an idea with no support from reproducable study. It's just an idea that has been shoehorned into our gaps in knowledge, and thus when those gaps in knowledge change, it will have to change too.
So while bacteria are mutating to be antibiotic resistant, animals are changing both form and social function due to human impact on the environment, and scientists in laboratories are using evolution principles to alter DNA- psuedo-scientists take advantage of the fact that verifying first hand the effects of macroevolutionary process would require a study over a million years or more.
So while the scientific community withdraws it's wisdom from the school system, the luddite get to have their day in the sun.
Shame for the widthdrawal of copywrite. Shame on the Intelligent Design proponents for being so stuck on a belief that they have no problem being discriminatory.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
AAAS has long held that students are ill-served by any effort in science classrooms to blur the distinction between science and other ways of knowing, including those concerned with the supernatural.
Note that ID's notions don't necessarily rely on the supernatural. We may be able to create life ourselves someday in the lab, and this does not make us supernatural (even if our creations think so).
Of course this does not answer the issue of where the original creator(s) came from, but that may not be an issue. For example, if time travel is possible (nobody knows right now), then one can simply go back into the past to insert themselves. A recursive creation has not been ruled out.
My point being that if the attacks on ID depend on supernaturalness, then such may backfire in court.
Table-ized A.I.
Meekly, the voice cries out int the wilderness, before the thought police mod him to -2, "this is exactly how the religious zealots used to act in the bad old days!!! At the crazy fringes of quantum physics it's not much different from zen buddhism!!! How can you jive this hostility to "magical thinking" and at the same time not scoff at the Matrix as ridiculous idiocy of a madman! Help, Help, I'm being repressed!"
You haven't figured that out yet?
Anyone interested in this subject should read "Almost like a whale" (publisher black swan isbn 0-552-99958-X) by Steve Jones 1999 - this is a modern rewrite of Charles Darwins Origin of species - in this book Jones really builds up step by step the arguments for evolution - whilst at the same time placing the creationist argument in the place where it truly belongs. An interesting/relevant observation Jones makes in the intro "At the end of the last century few clerics opposed the idea of evolution, most were ready to accept a compromise between 'The Origin' and the Bible. A day of creation might be a millions years long, or might represent six real days that marked the origin of a spiritual man after the long ages it took all else to evolve. Real bigotry had to wait for modern times."
I'm constantly frustrated with the way that both sides innacurately portray Intelligent Design. The point the founders of ID were trying to make isn't that something contrary to science should be taught, its simply that the prevailing scientific view of evolution (among other things) and the existence of a God are separate issues. There are bright theists who embrace evolution, the two views are in not necessarily in opposition. Darwinism is a slightly different matter, if by Darwinism we mean the view that all of life's complexity is a product of random chance (e.g. genetic mutation) and natural laws (e.g. natural selection). ID holds that there are systems in nature for which it is irrational to believe that they were produced by mere chance and necessity. Specified Complexity is the probability theory that deals with the "chance" part. Irreducible Complexity deals with the "necessity" part.
There is some very interesting work being done in both of these areas in science right now that can not be ignored. Darwin gave a concrete way to test his evolutionary theory in terms of Irreducible Complexity, and Michael Behe has done a lot to show instances of trouble cases for evolution when it comes to Irreducibly Complex systems.
All of the technical issues aside, the debate in Kansas is ridiculous anyway because there is no reason a judge should be asked "Is ID good enough science so that it should be taught in public schools?". From a legal perspective, the debate should be "Does the Constitution prohibit the teaching of ID in public schools?". The only direct Consitutional application is really that it forbids teaching of religion, but as I mentioned above the main point of ID is not to be associated with religion, but to suggest that it is a separate issue and not defeated by or opposed to prevailing scientific views. The issue of what should be taught is a great discussion, but it should be happening in the school boards and not the court room.
I agree: Creationism is science. Pseudoscience.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
Not a copyrightable set of rules. (Well it could've been, but it's long been in the public domain).
If they refuse to let Kansas use their standards, Kansas can STILL teach and use science (and they will).
I happen to think that Intelligent Design is stupid (albeit considerably less stupid than the "scientific creatonism" it replaced). But I fail to see it as so incredibly heinous that it requires Slashdot to abandon its previous principled stance on the abuse of copyright and the right of fair use. How can you wail loud and long about Microsoft, The Church of Scientology, etc. to abuse their copyrights, but when The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association do the same thing, then the ends justify the means? Fair use for me, but not for thee?
Evidently any principle can be compromised if you hate your enemies enough.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Learn the truth about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, essentially intelligent design with the diety replaced by the flying spaghetti monster. No more provable/disprovable than ID, and lots more fun.
Remain calm! All is well!
while the cause might seem worthwile in this case, this outlines a worrying feature of the copyright system.
A copyright is a state-granted monopoly. To get a given copyrighted text there literaly ARE no other options than to get it from the ONE producer. (exept maybe the used-book market, hardly an option for a school)
With a monopoly there should come certain obligations, like an undiscriminatory license. What else a school teaches, or whatever other unrelated thing they do should not have any influence on whether the school can buy a license for this work.
Microsoft not selling to people that use Open Source?
O'Reilly not selling books to stores that also carry other tech books?
Or an association that forbids the use of its texts in institutions that also teach certain other things?
Where is the difference?
What if the next time "certain other things" is something else the association does not agree with?
The only ethically "right" way to prevent something to be thaught is to vote, complain, explain the problems etc.
But not these strongarm tactics.
Just as we must constantly update students' computers and books, updating science and core academic curriculum is essential. Keeping them in the dark with an antiquated, unproven teaching theory is impractical and unhealthy. The theory of evolution remains simply that, a theory. Evolution was used by Charles Darwin to explain the unexplainable.
A newer, alternative view provides balance to the age-old argument, pitting creationism against evolution. It's called intelligent design. It studies the science of intelligence or intelligent life. It says the universe shows evidence for design. I don't think any would argue that we are all intelligently and uniquely designed.
You can believe what you want about who created the world and what's in it. As a Christian, I know it was Jesus, but intelligent design doesn't require belief in Jesus. Students can make up their own minds or develop their own opinions about who they believe the "Creator" is. Intelligent design is not creationism or naturalism; it simply follows the empirical evidence of design wherever it leads.
Darwinists describe evolution as "merely change" in living organisms. How absurd. We just changed from one being to the next? If that's the case, who is responsible for that change? How did we come into being before we changed? These are the questions that intelligent design allows students to probe no matter who they might believe is the author of that design.
Opponents to creationism and intelligent design argue that school science classes should focus on genuine scientific theories. Well, evolution certainly fails that test. And to simply say intelligent design is not a genuine scientific theory is simply an opinion, not fact. Intelligent design can and has been proved scientifically.
Intelligent design is accepted by religious and nonreligious academics and scientists; supported by microbiologists and mathematics. In a Natural History Magazine study, three proponents of intelligent design summarize their findings this way:
* Every living cell contains many ultra-sophisticated molecular machines.
* Intelligence leaves behind a characteristic signature.
* Darwin's finches and four-winged fruit fly theories cannot account for all features of living things.
Fair use.
I have the right to quote what you said, whether or not you approve of my use of your words, especially if I am refuting them. If you disgree, publish another article / book refuting me.
"We do not maintain that science is superior to other ways of understanding our world nor do we think that scientific inquiry is inconsistent with a theological search for answers. Rather, there are profound differences between these ways of knowing and failure to understand them will put the students of Kansas at a competitive disadvantage as they take their place in the world. " last body paragraph, but preceeded by this:
"Specifically, the draft Kansas standards fail to recognize the theory of evolution as a major unifying theme of science and the foundation of all biology. "
so:
1) We think that science can be consistent with a theological search for answers,
2) Evolution is a major part of science.
3) Those other methods discredit science, so don't teach them.
4) You don't play by our rules, so we're taking our football and going home.
Copyrights are bad when Big Evil Companies use them, but copyrights are good when Noble Intellectuals use them. Nothing like a nice, hot cup of double standards to wake yourself up to in the morning.
/. where the vast majority of adherents are left-of-center, athiest, or both, but is this really "news for nerds"? When did /. become a PAW (Political Action Website)?
Look, I know this is
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
My first reaction was that the actions of NSTA were unreasonable. I still think they may be unenforceable, depending on the length of the sections taken from the NSTA Pathways. However, NSTA has a valid point I think. By allowing their materials to be intermingled with (what they see as) unscientific nonsense, there is a risk both of confusing the audience and affecting their own credibility. Hopefully, sense will prevail and the views of scientists allowed to shape the science curriculum in the Kansas school system.
We are, after all, talking about people that choose to live in Kansas.
Sounds like a partial solution may be to defund them all (KSEd, NRC), or at least some of their employees. Frankly, as poor as many curricula are in practice, they could chop out both and have plenty of room for improvement in biology. That's an observation, not a recommendation.
Sad that piddling language parsing, legalese, even copyright are what the American Thinkers have to trot out to "win" the debate with the American Believers. How did the intellectuals lose this one --> we had the religious sitting in public classrooms for decades, being taught science and certainly being taught evolution, with blind religious belief kept strictly separate from the curriculum.
Now, less than half of the U.S. "believes in evolution?"
Even I grew up in conservative Catholic schools, but I was taught evolution. It's not as if the majority of Americans were taught creationism in school. We've lost this battle on two fronts: in the classroom, obviously, where we're in complete control and we've no excuses, and then in the churches and temples across this country.
This is a massive, historic failure by American intellectuals and American education. Scientific methodology, philosophy, nay critical thinking have not been adequately communicated to the tens of millions of people who now also believe they, their country and their president "lead the world," "police the world," and are the world's "only Super Power." We have a Believer for what they call "the leader of the free world."
Here's a thought: 99% of us reading and writing here loved science and math class, we couldn't get enough of it. I still see some sigs here and there with "Jesus saved me and he can save you, too" appending an otherwise critically considered opinion. Generally speaking though, we're not blind Believers.
So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?
It could be as simple as communication. Maybe the thinkers should learn to play organs and guitars, write some melodramatic music and stories about the origins of the universe, life and humankind. While marching around with candles and holding up portraits of Great Scientists, we can explain the afterlife (worm pudding), but in a comforting way ( maybe some of Thanatopsis?). We can discuss modding, karmatic /., and maybe Newton's third law of motion (action, reaction) so the congregation understands justice in a critically considered and organized nature.
If we dress science up a bit, teach it as Truth (not as right or wrong, but as critically considered and open minded). We could strongly recommend that all people, for all their life, attend a science class every Sunday morning.
I'm willing to propose that if families regularly attended science class together, we would all enjoy a more reasonable, and more peaceful world.
As much as we intellectuals have failed to "save" the believers, we can take a hard look at where this country has been since 2000 and say undoubtedly, that even moreso the believers have failed us all. Are not the biggest sinners walking this earth today also those most loudly denouncing sin?
BG
As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing. What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
Nearly no reasonable person would claim that selective pressure over a long period of time can cause gradual changes to a species' DNA. This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no problem with it. Also, it's the only process Darwin demonstrated did actually occur. He then generalised this - changes between species - to species changing into completely different species, by assuming a very long period of time for micro-evolution to occur. ID argues that this wouldn't be enough.
The Young Universe concept is completely separate from ID and the two shouldn't be confused.
The only point of difference between evolutionists and ID (different from creationism) is macro-evolution. We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given that intra-species changes occur. This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution _isn't consistent with the scientific method_.
With all the public backlash and misrepresentation of what the ID movement really stands for, I thought it important to add a bit of reason into the mix, to give the majority of people speaking out against ID (who don't really understand what it stands for and just see it as a Bible-pushing fundamental Christian movement) some idea of what ID is really all about.
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
copyright abuse, force-feeding views, and the possibility of turning to open-source text books... all in one story!
bad policy for good science! what is the world coming to when bad science for good policy is turned inside out?
It amazes me that anyone will simply settle for believing in ID (my family included) because it doesn't bother to explore or learn, it is simply settling for the idea that "oh, its too big and complex for me to understand, so some intelligent being must have done it, some greater person must have done it, so there is no point in me trying to understand it"
It doesn't matter 'who' or what created the universe or life, science is about discovering as much as we can about it. 60+ billion year old bones doesn't jive with ID or Christianity. There are thousands of ways to argue, but my point is that who cares... they are BOTH theories, and arguing that one is better or more right than the other is simply making yourself a zealot, and worthy of dispise, or worse, belittlement.
Its just sad that with so much information at our collective disposal, that we still have this kind of zealotry involved in simple things like presenting THEORIES...
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
from the letter:
that's hard coreI'm glad to see Mr. Padilla is not mincing words on this.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Not when you can demonstrate that those pushing ID have an outspoken religious agenda.
Again, the laws of the universe don't count the number of supporters or sample their other opinions before the laws decide whether to activate themselves.
Science should be about testing ideas, not testing people.
What if the Darwin Clan of Human Selection started a religion that worshipped apes and activitly lobbied to make sure evolution was taught in schools (not merely in the books). Would the existence of such a religious group make evolution any less true or less scientific?
Table-ized A.I.
With the whole evolution/intelligent design thing - why won't people (especially on the evolution side) try to debate the actual science...? (Yes, I've done a few research papers on the nature of the debate itself - instead of any science getting pushed forward it *always* goes to evolutionists resorting to namecalling)
Irreducible Complexity IS an example that something contrary to science should be taught.
The basic premise of the theory is "Here is an example of a simple organ that detects light, here is the human eye. The structures in the human eye are somuch more complex and intermingled with each other that it is impossible for it to have evolved on its own SO STOP TRYING"
Basic science looks at the two organs and wonder "How did one become the other, especially with one subsystem being so dependant on the other?" the difference is that the scientist keeps failing and keeps trying again. If he continues to fail he does not throw up his hands and say "it must have been designed that way". He continues his research.
Forgive my childishness but people that support Irreducible Complexity simply do not have the fortitude for proper research and have constructed a quick fix.
I'm familiar with the set theory approach, where zero is defined as the null set, 1 is defined as set the containing the null set plus the set containing 0, 2 is defined as the set containing the null set plus the set containing 1, and so on.
Confused yet?
Deny access to Intelligent Design idiots of any product, medicine or otherwise, that was arrived at through evolution or science. Since there are so many "problems" with evolution, why trust medical breakthroughs based on it? Why not just pray to this intelligent creator to drop down on Earth cures to all common ailments.
This sort of appalling misuse of copyright to advance ideology is another reason why standards should not be subject to restrictive copyright licensing.
No, I am not a "fundamentalist". In fact, I am an atheist who knows damn well that "intelligent design" -> "creationism" -> religion -> bunk. Nontheless I find this method of opposing the establishment of religion unacceptable.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The "intelligent design" and creationist movements, as well as, say, the Discovery Institute are over ten years old; creationism and the movements within the religious right which spawn them predate the career of Richard Dawkins; none of the "intelligent design" movements arguments have changed in the last ten years. Therefore, despite the weak attempt to link this quote to this article, it has nothing whatsoever to the subject being discussed in this slashdot thread.
Please mod down the parent as "offtopic". Baldrson is he is a white supremacist from kuro5hin.org who obsessively attempts to link everything he sees and hears to his belief that mankind can be split into superior and inferior races. Read the parent post clearly and you will realize the reason Baldrson rejects the "church of science" is because he is angered that science does not support his white supremacist beliefs. Baldrson's attempt, entirely offtopic to this article, to focus on and attack a ten-year-old quote where "During a speech at Stanford University about 10 years ago, Richard Dawkins felt it necessary to assert that there had never been any artificial selection applied to humans." is simply an attempt to troll people into starting a flamewar with him about his racist views. Please do not give him the opportunity to do this.
The word "God" has no intelligable meaning. You might as well be believing in "Fod". What's Fod you ask? I don't have a clue, just as I don't have a clue about "God", or "Dod" or, "Tod". No one on this planet has a clue about what the word "God" means. Everyone just spouts out some stupid nonintelligable giberish about infinite this and all powerful that. Anyone who's ever put any serious thought into the whole thing knows that the bible is just plain wrong. The bible begins with an invalid premise, and it ends with an invalid premise.
/. geeks, let me put this to you in technical terms. Your computer screen is made of of a finite number of pixels. Each pixel is made of of a finite number of bits for each color. Therefore the number of possible images that you can ever see on the screen is a finite number. Now is there a computer program that you could write that would show us a picture of a "god" on that screen? This would of course require that the idea of a "god" makes sense does it not? And, if the idea of a "god" made sense, then this would neccessarily mean that the image to which we would need to view it was finitely viewable. So, what's the algorithm to show us a picture of a "god"? How the hell do you even begin such an algorithm?
1. The universe was not created, it lasts forever already.
2. We do not die, we will exist again, and again. There's no need for an afterlife, we're already living it. The only sad thing is that you must lose all your memories when you die. But this is the way it must be, since there is no way to preserve infinite memory. This is NOT reincarnation. There are no levels, no karma, no manefestation of justice that can pass from one episodic life to the next.
3. When you mistreat others in life, you are really mistreating yourself, since due to a non-ending universe, you will eventually end up as the other eventually.
4. There are no Gods, Angles, Deamons, or Devils, everything just is.
5. There is no good, nor bad, just the concept of being constructive, or destructive. Being constructive goes against entropy, while being destructive goes with entropy.
6. Evolution is just the process of the minimization function. Anything which can be realized by the universe through random interaction probably will.
The word "God" does not describe and entity which can possibly exist logically. Just as there is no round square thing. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. THAT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! There is no way in hell that the very idea of a "god" will ever make sense. The word "God" is the description of something which has no meaning. What are you all talking about?
For all you
Yes, people who believe in a "god" are stupid.
In any case, it is possible to solve the mess in a way that gives the proponents of Intelligent Design exactly what they say they are looking for, sort of, and at the same time takes away the pudding.
First we give them exactly what they want. But we add things to it.
In the classroom, we have these kind of discussions:
What would be evidence of Intelligent Design? What would be evidence of intelligent Design, such as genetic manipulation by a scientist, vs. the normal structure of DNA? and what is the normal structure of DNA anyhow? Of Genes? Could you have copyright markers inside DNA?
Actual evidence. And we tie this into the ethics of Biology.
(Note that a recent news item reports that 20% of the Human Genome has already been patented, even through they actually did not design the genes, but have only isolated a possible speculated use)
Also, you can mention all the possible angles on who could be the speculated authors in the theory of Intelligent Design.
Do not forget to mention the Flying Saucer people, who are rumored to have manipulated the genetic structure of mankind for their own ends. What would be evidence of all of this at the genetic level ?
As a side note, there are a number of images of something resembling a double helix seen in ancient sumerian art. This would twist the nose of some folks, although, for the purposes of classroom discussion, you can discuss the coincidence as a coincidence, without being heavy handed on the subject.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...unless school teaches about the Intelligent Designer also. That Intelligent Designer is Jesus Christ: The Creator of heaven and earth, the King of Glory, the God of Life. Without mention of Him, and the Atonement whereby He took upon Himself all the sins and suffering of the world, the study of Intelligent Design is a waste of time.
Jesus Christ should be the central focus of our heart, mind and soul - every minute of every day. All this other academic ciriculum is only skirting around the core issue.
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In any ohter context this would be called censorship. And this is a classic example of how copyrights are used to justify and impose it. This is not the first time, nor the last.
In fact the whole copyright debate is about nothing but lies. They call it protecting children, when it's really censorship. They call illegal copying piracy, when that actually means boarding a ship and murdering people. They call copying "stealing", even though noone has lost anything. They call a government imposed restriction on copying "protection" for artists, when it really is a monopoly for the media industry. And they call it "intellectual property", even though any real free market property right with natural limits in supply and demand would put it to shame. The straight outright lies are so in our face, it is shocking that people could be so stupid.
In all fairness, I can take measures to educate my duaghter myself if the school system tries to teach her something stupid, but how would I protect her from a government that censors things?
On one side there are stupid people reguarding intelligent design, on the other there are stupid people reguarding copyrights. I feel overwhelmed. The cynical reality is that the media industry and christian industry are probably duking it out over some third party revenue issues.
Yes, there's disagreement in science on fine details of evolution.
There's even greater disagreement in science over the so-called 'Theory of Gravity'.
It's time we started teaching 'Intelligent Falling' (http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512) in science classes.
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
I also think dirty tactics are not the way to promote scientific education. Much of Western society is founded on freedom of speech and much of the success of Western science is due to the ability to propose and test theories unhindered by government. If our claim is correct, that teaching evolution will make Kansas a more backwards state, then their ideas will be tested by the passage of time without the need for outside interference. If Intelligent Design isn't up to the task of giving Kansanians a working world view for the tasks they carry out in their lives then eventually they'll have to give it up.
What I don't understand is how this whole issue has even reached this point. First of all, if you are religious and believe in Intelligent Design, then send your kid to a catholic school, or whatever other school run by your religion. I don't see why beliefs of a particular religion are being debated when it comes to teaching it in state-run PUBLIC SCHOOLS. One has nothing to do with the other. Just as one would not expect their child to receive compulory Islamic teachings in a public school, nor should they be taught "intelligent design".
Keep your religious teaching to Sunday school where it belongs.
As for Darwin. It's always been called a "theory" so why stop teaching the "theory"?
Will the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster try to enact something similar? It would be a terrible day if children can no longer learn and coerced into believing about the Flying Spaghetti Monster (http://www.venganza.org/)
And this mess will go away.
All the people making these crazy decisions are elected officials. Everyone from the federal, state, and even the board of education has elections.
If people stop voting based on flashy campaign ads by special interest groups funding the by the religious right and oil companies this problem will go away.
Maybe voters feel only those republicans can protect people from these dangerous terrorists which are hiding under their bed? But you get what you pay for... or in this case vote for. Or perhaps family values were the number one issue in the country which is how bush got re-elected?
This is stupid and the rest of teh world is wondering why the Americans are doing this? We let this happen.
Do something and vote folks and inform others. After a terrible response with Katrina I think voters are realizing that voting republican is not a guaranteed safety net.
http://saveie6.com/
...than people had feared.
... and you ignored them?" he asked.
According to this article that was posted to Fark yesterday... the school administration, aka the ones who voted to include ID in the curriculum, didn't even bother to research the concept at all.
A couple of choice quotes from one of the Einsteins on that board:
"They said it was a scientific thing," said Geesey, who added that "it wasn't my job" to learn more about intelligent design because she didn't serve on the curriculum committee."
and
"The only people in the school district with a scientific background were opposed to intelligent design
"Yes," Geesey said."
Grade-A fucking scary.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
One can always tell that it is an ID-er when he/she starts to use the words theory in bold, and say that it is "just a theory".
An ID thesis has the following components :
(a) A slipshod definition of what the word "Theory" actually means to them.
(b) A promotion of ID into a Theory by assertion.
(c) With this promotion, directly compare ID to Evolution, with the hope that the reader will think that ID actually has as much evidence behind it as evolutionary Theory.
(d) Finally, a series of anecdotal evidence, usually presented in bullet form and almost always wrong/falsified, of ID.
Boy, putting those Bold tags is hard work. How do they get through life?
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Name me one non-trivial, falsifiable, unfalsified claim of evolutionary theory.
And just to save us some time:
"Animals will eat when they're hungry and when there's food around" is trivial.
"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.
"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
They need to show a matrix with a number of proof points vs. the various ideas (evolution, creationism, FSM, aliens, the baked humans (blacks were burnt, whites not enough, and Asians just right), the gods threw us up (Vikings), the gods screwed and made us (Romans), etc. While it bothers me that politicians and hard core theologians are pushing this, I say make the most of it; Show it for what it is.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If you can prohibit use of you IP to select organizations or individuals then couldn't you prevent a unfavorable critic from reading your book or watching your movie?
I must be wrong. Anyone?
And doesn't fair use allow the teachers to use the materials anyway? What about TITLE 17 CHAPTER 1, Sec. 107 the Fair Use limitation says you can reproduce copyrighted material for:
purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
Fighting intelligent design vs. allowing a copyright to be used like a sledgehammer?
Slashdotters heads are popping like blisters all over the globe.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
I look forward (or backward) to the day when science is only taught in special privately funded alternative schools. The girls will wear extremely short labcoats in my vision.
Both Dawkins and I meant it the same way Darwin meant it when he originated the phrase "artificial selection" to contrast it with "natural selection": intentional breeding toward desired characteristics.
Seastead this.
As Peter La Casse shows us, humorous e-mail forwards posted on internet message boards allow us to make sweeping generalizations about the entire scientific community!
Tune in next week, when we learn about what the policies of the oil industry are by analyzing a post by a pro-business poster on the "peak oil" internet forum.
Intelligent design by whom? I am perfectly willing to beleive that the vorlons and the cylons did an excellent job terraforming the planet recently, and the different modification design crews placed convenient markers in one form or another to keep easy track to thier projects. (web feet, blue eyes, the whole thing)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
do you believe in the tooth fairy? leprechauns? why not? they are no more or less valid than the belief in god.
for finally recognizing great humour.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
This is a straw-man argument and it comes up so often that it's virtually a new category of troll.
Fact: Slashdot readers love copyright. The GNU General Public License is a document that depends on copyright. It is a license that documents the terms under which the software developer grants a license to use, copy, and modify the copyrighted work. Fail to comply with the terms and the license is revoked, at which point the customary laws regarding copyright infringement apply.
I don't hear too many people "wailing long and loud" about Microsoft's copyrights. I hear them wailing about Microsoft's crappy software and anti-competitive business practices, but that's not the same thing.
I don't hear anybody "wailing" about the Church of Scientology's copyrights, either. I hear them wailing about what a crackpot so-called religion Scientology is and how it bilks emotionally vulnerable people out of their money.
No principle is being compromised here. I see lots of debate about the National Science Teachers' Association's decision in this thread, in fact, which is a sign of a healthy, engaged public. Please crawl back under whatever dogmatic bridge you came from.
Breakfast served all day!
If Kansas consults its lawyers, they may as well go right on ahead until ordered to desist by a federal judge, and maybe not even then. The extent to which the states and their agencies can be held liable for violation of copyright law is very limited, as the 11th amendment prevents 3rd parties from suing the states in federal court for money damages.
...psuedo-scientists take advantage of the fact that verifying first hand the effects of macroevolutionary process would require a study over a million years or more.
This is plain and provably wrong. I don't know why so many people think major evolutionary changes only occur over many generations. The truth is that the DNA is designed to change in many interesting, major ways. There are not only point mutations, but also things like crossovers and reversals.
Snakes with two heads and people with six fingers per hand are not myths or urban legends. They exist. These major changes are caused by mutations that happened within a single generation.
Isn't this the sort of copyright abuse that would have all of Slashdot up in arms yelling "Fair use! Fair use!" if it were being employed in any other context?
No.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ideology
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." Mark Twain.
Tsk tsk tsk. Mods.
Intelligent design and creationism (one and the same, folks, don't even bother trying to debate that one with me, you will lose, and badly) are nothing but the fronts for strutting demagogues, evangelists and fundamentalist religious groups to extend and consolidate their own power. Obviously enough they are going after the groups with the most impressionable minds, the young, also one of the weakest groups. This contemptable strategy has been mirrored throughout history by abusive groups and the leaders of every religious organisation.
Anytime I hear someone start talking about ID or similar, I don't bother debating the relative truths of these ideas versus science, because thats not what you are really debating. Instead, I start listing off the methodologies used by dominance groups and cults to control their brainwashed servants. Because that gets to the heart of the matter, right quick. So seriously folks, don't waste your time debating with the fundamentalists; thats not what they are talking about anyway. Just list off the following...
Identifying Marks of an Exploitive, Abusive Group
Exploitive, Abusive Groups: * use abusive, manipulative methods to attract and retain members * require unquestioning submission to the leadership * instill the notion that nowhere else will you find as accurate an understanding of "the truth" Four main characteristics:
1. ISOLATION (control of information; encourages members to devote large amounts of time to the group and to socialize only with group members)
2. NON-THINKING (members don't study and come to understand on their own; avoidance of thoughts that are contrary to the group's beliefs)
3. ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE (questioning, doubt and dissent are strongly discouraged)
4. GIVING EXCESSIVELY (tithes and/or offerings/contributions are required to be given to the group)
Other main characteristics:
1. Focused on a Living Leader (who often lives in luxury and is not accountable to anyone; members are devoted to this person who they believe speaks for God)
2. Exhorted to Strive for Perfection
3. Their Doctrine is Considered to be the Ultimate Truth Beyond Questioning (to question is to "come under the influence of Satan")
4. No Gray Areas (the group has all the answers to the questions, which they receive from the leader who has all the answers; everything is either right or wrong, "black or white."
5. Legalism and Control (a member's life is controlled by policies and procedures originating with the leadership)
6. Conformity to established practices and beliefs (uses fear, intimidation and guilt)
7. A Gap between the picture projected to the general public and the inner reality.
8. Preoccupied with Bringing in New Members
9. Those Outside the Group are Regarded as Less Enlightened (most often they are screened before being allowed to attend services)
10. Deceptive Fundraising Techniques (members and public assume contributions go to social causes, while most of money goes to the leader and expansion of the group)
11. Distinct Hierarchy with the Group (everyone has his or her place)
12. Secrecy (there is an inner truth and outer truth; a gap between what is projected to the general public and the inner reality known only to the members)
13. A System of Merits ("works-righteousness" orientation; heavy use and much distortion of passages from the Old Testament, the epistles, and Revelation;
14. Perceived Persecution (one of their hallmarks)
15. Increasing Loss of Freedom for a Member (the demands of the group/leader destroy any other relationships or personal growth, and destroy freedom in every significant sense)
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
If conservatives don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu? :-)
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
> offical text of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is published under a free license!
venganza.org/faq.htm says only that it can be reprinted:
"10. Can I reprint your letter? Yes, but please print the website address as well."
That in no way allows you to change and redistribute the work.
This Is Not a Sig
Maybe if we started trying to teach science in Sunday school these people would stop trying to cram the latest fashionable interpretation of the jesus meme down everyone's throats and schools could get back to the business of educating and learning. Probably not though.
Isn't this why they fed christians to the lions? For trying to force everyone to "get saved" or whatever?
This is a blatant extension of the reigious right "culture war" into the classroom at the expense of the students.
I have said this before in many posts on this subject, and I keep telling myself I'll stay out of this one, but I keep getting suckered in...
So once again for the record, ID is absolutely unscientific at its core. Science is observing, analyzing, testing and drawing conclusions based in objective criteria. ID starts from the premise that some super-being did everything and tries to wrap everything from that context. If something disputes it, it us discarded, hence the attempt in ID to block all discussion of fossil records, carbon dating, continental drift etc. If something disputes a scientific theory, you adjust or discard the theory. That doesn't happen in ID. I can believe that at some point that the theory of evolution may be modified, but I never see the day coming that creationists will ever say that maybe there is no divine being
involved.
This is in spite of the fact all data that has come out supports evolution and all the data refutes any form of creationism.
Should this website have an ID dept?! The site is milking this too hard, maybe?!
What ID actually claims is the life can not be created by any method other than intelligent intervention.
Where does this come from? May I ask for a reference?
I realize there are multiple versions of ID floating around, and that many of them have serious problems. However, I suggest one focus on finding the best variations rather than the worse variations. It is easy to attack the worse variations.
If ID claimed that intelligent intervention can create life, then it would be a scientific theory and this debate would not be occuring.
So if a version of ID can be found that excludes the exclusiveness clause, does that make that version a scientific idea?
Table-ized A.I.
Here's a google search with the key words "Jesus Christ is God". And yes, He is also the Son of God.
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From the article: "...science as a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena."
Who said that science was only allowed to find NATURAL explanations for observable phenomena? Does this mean that even if the explanation was supernatural, then science, by definition, would not be able to recognize, explore, identify, quantify and describe the explanation?
"I believe in only natural science, therefore I MUST conclude that there are only natural causes for what I see regardless of what the evidence shows. I'm not interested in what my be a true explanation for any given event if it does not fit my definition of natural. This is the only kind of science we will let you learn in school. Anything that considers an explanation other than what we define as natural is not something we will let you read about, hear about or talk about. It would be bad for you to consider any other concept of natural explanation except what we tell you is the correct natural explanation. We are scientists. We know best. We are here to help you."
If there was a designer and evidence of design was all around us, wouldn't science be able to detect it? Wasn't that the whole point of the monolith in 2001? At what point would a natural scientist say, what I'm seeing here is not a product of random chance? From what I'm reading, the answer would be never.
Is it really good science to presuppose a universe without a designer? Is it right that this presupposition is not something that can be questioned? I thought that good science allowed for the questioning of suppositions.
It would be good for kids to talk about these issues in schools. What motivates some to work so hard at censoring these ideas from discussion in classrooms?
which, thanks to his distinct style and rarity (thus increasing the value of a forgery passing itself as genuine), invites mucho imitations.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The comment was ... "No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
But the comment you quoted was Darwin laid down the challenge in The Origin of the Species: "If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory..."
Acting to protect another species is one thing.
Having part(s) of your body that serve another creature and not yourself is an entirely different thing.
Don't confuse them. The first is choice. The second would disprove evolution.
Those ought to be easy. All the comments about creationism, well, fighting that is easy too.
What I find intriguing is that no one is actually dealing with the assertions that the proponents of intelligent design are making. All this yammering about "it's junk science" and "re-heated creationism" is helping them out. In order to beat intelligent design, someone has to address the claims that they are actually making. Those claims are more about applied statistics than theology. There are atheists who hold to intelligent design and muslims and other groups of non-christians. They aren't arguing for the book of Genesis. These sorts of ad hominem arguments aren't going to touch the future of science education. I mean, read what the original anonymous coward wrote in, "a robust education." It's ad hominem as well as circular. He may have a much better argument, but he's not voicing that, he's just ranting. These are the kinds of fallacies that make the people backing intelligent design look so much better than the opponents.
Besides, since when have people gotten a better understanding of the truth by excluding more ideas? If intelligent design is in fact bunk, then people will have no problems picking that out. It will rise or fall by its own merits. If no one can refute the claims they make, then it may rise, and rightfully so. But if we can genuinely refute those claims, they will have about a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the next 20 years.
-ex
It's Sunday, shouldn't you be in church?
Trolling is a art,
Those so-called scientific scientists couldn't prove evolution so *created* fake apemen like Java man, Piltdown man, Nabraska man, etc, that are STILL being taught in schools as REAL when it is well known now that they were faked! If all these so-called scientists want to be true to their name, why not come out and tell the world all about the fake apemen and demand they be REMOVED from school textbooks. If they don't want creationism, then first remove their OWN creations!
No, Christian ideas can't be scientific. That is not to say that they can't be right, but that they can't be scientific. For something to be 'scientific', it needs to pass a couple of standards. Possably the most important of these is the ability to be tested and provenright or wrong. This is the ability to define some form of test that, if either failed or passed, can prove or disprove the theory. There is no such test, and can be no such test for a religion. That is part of what makes it religion.
There is room for both to exist and reasons both are important, but neither can be a substitute for the other.
The FSM was invented for a purpose. The people pushing intelligent design claim to want to show that both facts and logic require us to conclude some supernatural force is necessary to bring about evolution.
Which force is usually left unsaid, for that would clearly expose the motivations behind ID. But we all know which force ID proponents have in mind - namely Jehovah, the god of Moses.
With the introduction of the inflammatory FSM, ID proponents are forced to show themselves for what they are - that is, supporters of a Christian, not a scientific, agenda. In other words, cards on the table.
Do you have the slightest idea what you're talking about? Science is the very antithesis of zealotry. A zealot is one who sticks to his guns whether they're loaded or not, whereas a scientist who does the same is not a scientist. The scientific method, itself, does not deal in absolutes but the process itself must be held strictly accountable or it becomes useless. Worse, science subjected to religious and political dictates becomes dangerous because it can be used to support irrational tenets. In fact, it is because the scientific method is so powerful at discerning fallacy from reality that some people seek to corrupt it. So, if by "close minded" you mean that those of us who still have some critical-thinking skills at our command tend to reject religion disingenuously presented as science, then you're right.
Down through the ages, scientists who had the courage to speak out against the prevailing religious "I've made up my mind don't confuse me with the facts" groupthink were often persecuted by those whose minds had already established their own internal reality. The fact that this imaginary reality conflicted with what is didn't disturb them much, but did cause them to act against those who were only trying to understand the true nature of the Universe. There's a guy named Galileo that could explain this to you.
What it means is that the same mindset that brought you the Dark Ages is alive and well, and is living in Kansas.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Science requires decades to come to a conclusion.
You have one life to decide what to do with it.
Knowledge in no way makes a person wise. Understanding does.
Science is about what man can discover and explain. It is inferior to a man's intuitive knowledge. A man is larger than man's Science.
Unpoliticized, science is of great help when handled with care. Politicized, is another poor man's religion.
Evolution is JUST a theory. Groups behing it are political bodies.
Evolution is invalidated by it's lack of evidence and its implications.
Creationism is not oposed to science - it just humbles SOME political bodies.
Creationism is claimed by Scripture. Take your fight with the Bible and not the ones who hold it.
That is true. Christian ideas are based on dogma and lore. Dogma and lore are not scientific.
No it isn't. If your scientific observation is guided by something other than a scientific process, then by definition it isn't a scientific observation.
Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for thousands of years. You can explore the idea that the earth is flat too if you want. Just because some people are exploring it doesn't mean we need to start teaching that to children in science class. Teach that myth the same place we teach the other myths - in religion or humanities classes or the like.
I have an undectable nerf ball that floats above my head and follows me wherever I go. THERE'S NO SCIENTIFIC CLAIM.
But the ghost ball is not interacting with the observable world in *any* way there. ID creates something: life, that can be observed.
Time travel could be tested by sending a clock forwards or back wards through time and observing the result,
Perhaps, but it hasn't happened yet.
ID is impossible to disprove as it doesn't actually say anything that could ever be tested or observed.
I gave an example of a way it could be tested. Plus, just because we cannot think of a way to test something does not mean it is inherently untestable.
For example, nobody has thought of a way to test Multiple Universes of the Anthropic Principle. But that alone does not make it into "religion".
Table-ized A.I.
Qrlx (258924) on Sunday October 30, @03:25PM (#13910149) ...I don't know the origins of the Intelligent Design theory, .....
was heard questioning-
This might help
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
[checked at 1551CDT 20051030 and has 503 error]
This is the organization and objects set forth to "drive a wedge into the tree and split it."
These people are serious as sin and getting it done.
If any of the next elections, including next months mid-terms, get more of the Evangalistic Right elected we are all guaranteed not "to get a hand basket", you know "to hell in a hand basket".
There is a simple, but not practical at the moment test. You take a planet that's empty, put a bunch of simple lifeforms on it and see what evolves! Give humanity a couple millenium and we could test it. The only way to test for an intellegent creator is for the creator to give you a sign himself. That's no test at all.
Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that. --Homer Simpson
Only if "Christian ideas are unscientific" is true.
No. It's enough that some Christian ideas are unscientific, as you can't pick and choose what to believe in the Bible and still follow the dogma. And this is exactly such an example. Faith and Logic can complement each other, but that does not make them mix well - take one idea on faith and all that follows has no basis as far as Logic is concerned.
When just about every culture has a creation myth, doesn't that mean that evidence that supports a supreme creator's existence might be worth exploring?
No. There's no 'evidence that supports a supreme creator's existence' in that. Yet you might want to explore, provided you asked all the possible questions. This is evidence to something, but saying 'a creator' is wishful thinking.[*] Consider similarities and differences within and without the myths. I would not exactly call the various creation myths 'very similar' - and if you want to analyse similarities, you cannot discard differences. Heck, even christian countries have tales of God requiring assistance from the Devil to create the world - or from animals. That is without mention of, say, Greek creation myths - the whole contradictory lot of them. Nope, can't quite say there's evidence for one creator, let alone that it would be the same one everywhere.
Now, of course, you can take a different route to approach Creation myths with scientific inquiry - anthropology, psychology and so on. But biology? Or cosmology? bah! although, it is interesting how vehemently the clergy opposes scientific study from that angle, now that I think about it.
[*] my 2c worth of opinion is that it points to a human need to believe in something greater than the human stature - fate, destiny, gods, whatever name you have for it. Something like the fear that the Universe (even in the very tiny piece that we see) is too big for one human to shoulder alone without going quite mad. And this has no answer to the question of whether these images conjured to banish fears are more than just images or not.
To my mind, it's a pity that basic history of science and history of religion is not taught in schools. It might come as a shock to a lot of Americans to discover that a lot of the people who discovered that Creationism was bunk were mostly ordained clergy in the Church of England (==Episcopalians), working in Cambridge in the 19th century. As they gradually understood the geological history of the Earth and the fossil record, as they took on the ideas of evolution, the sheer weight of evidence caused a lot of them to re-think the basics of their faith. In other words, it was the people with the theological background - men who could easily read the Bible in the original, which is more than I imagine the Kansas Board of Education can do - who accumulated and accepted the evidence that the Bible could not be literally true, and had to think out their theology based on the new discoveries. The -I choose the word with care- garbage that is Intelligent Design is part of a trend of thought that any well educated student of theology will know is fatally flawed. So why is this discussion still going on?
The problem, of course, is that a lot of religion in the US grew in a cultural vacuum. It took place on the frontiers, well away from the academic world in Europe (and the East Coast.) That's how ludicrous religions like Mormonism were able to evolve: uneducated people with limited vocabularies didn't realise that prophets with names like Moron and Ether were either the result of ignorance or exploitation. It hurts me to say this, because I have relatives descended from a family member who was on the first of the Mormon treks to Utah and they are fine people. But they have also not had the educational opportunities of the English side of the family, who in recent history got their educations at Cambridge, Oxford and London and as a result regard both Mormons and Southern Baptists in much the same light as Wahabis or Hassidim. It's extraordinary that George Bush senior, for whom I have a lot of time, is an educated man who knows that Christian fundamentalism is deeply flawed, while his son claims to embrace it. But it's just like an educated Pakistani or Iranian struggling to understand why his son is picking up aggressive (and regressive) ideas down the madrissah.
Until I found that people were still taking this stuff seriously, I used to think that Richard Dawkins and Jay Gould protested too much. But now I realise that there is a huge tide of reaction in the US, and that it needs to be stopped and reversed or it will ultimately lead to new wars of religion. It's absurd to watch American politicians attacking reactionary Islam and claiming to spread democracy while being prepared, in support of reactionary Christianity, to reduce women's rights. Theologically, I suspect all fundamentalists are much the same at bottom, and they are never happier than when they are either fighting fundamentalists of different religions, or fighting non-fundamentalists of their own religion.
Pining for the fjords
Ironically, one of the reasons I've sent my daughter to a Catholic school here is that they teach evolution. They also mention that people who view the bible literally don't believe in evolution; but evolution is taught in the science class as science. Being a Catholic school gives them the freedom to make the simple statement about the literalists without there being a problem with the separation of church and state.
If, however, there had been no school in our area that taught evolution, I would have taught it to her myself. After all, that's what we're here for, isn't it? Any idiot can make sandwiches. It's times like these when you get a chance to actually parent.
There's an important point that the creationists miss in all of that. Kids will still be taught evolution regardless of whether or not they get their way with the standards. 99 percent of the parents in this state will tell their kids that evolution is fact. Some of the rest will find themselves explaining evolution simply to inform their kids about the debate. Still more kids will simply hear it from eachother or from media, the internet, etc.
Everybody will hear or learn about evolution, and the standards won't change which side of the debate people fall on. This whole thing about changing the standards is not only idealogically questionable, it's not practical or effective. They're achieving nothing but ridicule.
I for one hope that the board members continue to vocally extoll their positions and beliefs here; because the more they talk, the more unreasonable they sound. Like most of the ultra-conservative movement in this nation, the Kansas Creationists are running headlong for a backlash.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
ID is not a way of throwing up hands and giving up, but instead of looking at ways for simple organisms to become complex, looking for positive relations between and studying the interactions of complex organisms. The only thing that ID says is not worth studying is shoehorning every biological discovery into a pre-existing evolutionary matrix. There are many leaps of logic in evolution that only make sense if you must have a naturalistic explanation for everything and don't take discoveries for what they are.
Only if "Christian ideas are unscientific" is true.
Science is how, religion is why. The why isn't testable. The Why is interesting, but it is not science. So, Christian ideas of why are very much non-scientific. When they tell us How water was turned into wine, then they might be included. But until then, they do not belong in science.
Learn to love Alaska
Thank the FSM
Pastafarianism wins again!!
They are restricting usage of their own information? This somehow isn't a form of misinformation? What are they afraid of... the truth?
This is nothing short of a cowardly move on their part.
-=Zeus=And=Hades=-
The idea is moronic; don't challenge our position, or we'll take our ball and go home and your stupid hick kids will get nothing. This whole thing smacks of arrogant authoritanianism. Congratulations, scientists, you just validated the fears that every fundamentalist preacher warned about. Why don't you guys just tell them they have to have the number of the beast tatooed on their foreheads to pass class as well? Yeah, way to really win hearts and minds there, Jack.
That smacks of so much arrogance it's incredible. If we don't get our way, we're going to fuck your kids forever, is that it?
Both the copyright threat, and response of people like you to it, display a profound pettiness.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It is frustrating how anti-scientists continually come back to the use of the word "theory" as proof that evolution is bogus. It is the same as refusing to go to a doctor because they are only "practicing" medicine.
They never argue that Newton's theory of gravity should not be taught (or should be taught with a qualification) because they are only a theory. This is especially bullshit as Newton's theory is wrong, and has been known to be wrong for well over a Century. Even Newton's replacement, Einstein's theory of General Relativity is wrong (although it is a lot closer to reality.) In contrast, the "theory" of evolution by natural selection has repeatedly been supported by new evidence.
Whenever IP is brought up on Slashdot, all I see are scathing diatribes against those attempting to use IP laws to their own benefit. Now, when one of the sneakiest uses of IP laws I've seen comes up, I couldn't find a single post decrying it. I guess slashdotters and IP advocates have at least one common enemy. :-)
Only if "Christian ideas are unscientific" is true. It is possible for an interpretation of scripture to be guided by scientific observations, or for interpretation of scientific observations to be guided by scripture.
.... keep it in church. I love science, I am religious. I want my nieces and nephews learning about the values taught by religion (whichever ones they choose) I also want them being taught science, in a science class. I want that science unfettered by political, spiritual or even moral standards.
Absolutely! I implore someone to show me how this is done. I will even relax my normally critical view of scientific standards to say that if a single scientist replicates the miracles in the bible and documents how they were replicated it should be taught in science class. If it is err.... unable to be documented and unable to be replicated and is indeed a miracle
When I learned evolution in high school I was told that it was a theory. I was told that it had more evidence that was observable than any other theory at the time. I was also told that many people believe in creationism and was given an approx. 5 minute explanation of it. To me that is fine and it is a responsible way for a creationist science teacher to deal with it (I found out after I graduated that he was a creationist) he never once mentioned his support for the theory in class. I applaud that.
I remember from my AI class in college that we don't even have a concrete scientific definition of intelligence. So then how can "intelligent design" even be a topic of discussion? We should show students that there is an amazing and remarkable pattern in the evolution of species and in the complexity of their composition, and that this pattern extends throughout the universe. But what to conclude from this pattern is either: 1) It appears to be a pattern only because if the universe weren't so ordered, we wouldn't be here to perceive it in the first place (anthropic principle). This would also lead you to think that there must be an infinity of universes: a continuum infinity of dud universe that have bad physics, and a countable infinity of successful universes that have good physics which actually work out. 2) There is only one universe, so some huge meta-physic must guide its processes. Some may call this meta-physic God. From (1) you might also decide that we're actually living in a dud universe, since it really is breaking down. Who knows, maybe it's nothing more than a flash-in-the-pan pop, and there are actually far more elegant and robust, eternal universes out there.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
When just about every culture has a creation myth, doesn't that mean that evidence that supports a supreme creator's existence might be worth exploring?
No. That's the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity, and even that's a force-fit because the supernatural entities of various religions are often vastly different.
Ideas aren't necessarily with merit simply because a lot of people throughout history believed them.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
C-14 dating has been calibrated many times against samples where we can directly count off the years, such as tree growth rings, annual lake sediment layers, cultural artifacts for which we have documented historical dates, pollen layers, ice cores, oceanic sediments, etc. etc. If the C-14 method were to agree with only one of these other techniques, we could ascribe the agreement to coincidence. But if all of these techniques independently agree with the C-14 dating and with each other, the "coincidence" explanation becomes about as likely as a flat earth.
The evidence vouching for the accuracy of C-14 dating is immense. You may as well dispute the evidence for quantum mechanics, even though the computer on which you write to express your disagreement would not function without the quantum mechanical aspects of semiconductors.
The scientific method has produced amazing things like lasers and computers, neither of which would work without quantum mechanics. Do you suppose that this same scientific method might be equally excellent at discerning the true history of the Earth?
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
Much like our reasoning in many wars. Can't let the first domino fall...
It's not only the theistic scientists who seem to want to mix philosophy and science together: it is clear from reading school textbooks that a few atheistic scientists have also acted very unprofessionally in pushing their own agendas in the classroom, when they combine scientific facts with popular metaphysics from the "church of science". Seriously, some scientists act as though science is their religion, and they get away with publishing these non-scientific thoughts a lot more often than theistic scientists do.
Neither should get away with it. Ideas on origins and other extra-universe concepts are NOT science. Science is a tool, constrained by the testable universe. We have plenty of other avenues for truth-seekers other than science: religion, art, and other parts of culture. When the day is done, the best any one person can do is make a well-thought judgement that is only partially based on objective fact, but largely based on gut instinct as well.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I agree that ID is a "weak" theory/conjecture, but it is as "scientific" as other speculative hard-to-test concepts considered scientific ideas such as String Theory, Multiple Universes (Anthropic Principle), time travel, etc. The latter are often considered "scientific ideas", and ID should be included in these.
The difference is that the proponents all of these ideas - string theory, multiple universes, etc. will admit that their ideas are unscientific. If you complain to a string theorist that string theory is not falsifiable, he will respond, "True, we haven't found an experiment that could falsify it yet, but we're working on it." If you tell a scientist who likes to write about time travel that all her ideas are just speculation, she will respond, "OF COURSE it's speculation, you doofus!"
If you point out that ID is not falsifiable to an ID proponent, they'll either dodge the question by throwing up a smokescreen of botched scientific experiments related to evolution, or they will throw up a smokescreen of gobbledygook about how eyeballs prove it or whatever.
The reason why many members the first group of things get to be in the science is that the people who are working on these ideas are trying to turn it into science, while ID doesn't get to be in the science club because the ID people merely came up with a baroque consipracy theory and called it a day.
Well there are so many good reasons that have been mentioned that the only one I can think of is Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Also see the Wikipedia entry for an explaination of what it means.
The Theory of Evolution predicts that there will be a mechanism (or set of mechanisms) for the two principle components of the theory - "survival of the fittest" and "inheritance of characteristics".
The Theory of Evolution predicted the existence of a mechanism like DNA about 60 years before DNA was discovered.
This was the primary falsifiable, and un-falsified (in fact entirely vindicated), prediction of the Theory of Evolution as it was first postulated by Darwin.
At the very least you could correctly CITE your sources.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy75.html
Yeah, I found the page you're copying from.
And since you're using that person's argument as your own, it is up to YOU to defend it.
First off, start by learning that "species" does not mean "individual".
And saving a redwood does not mean that the human race will suffer.
And he/she/it/whatever is the equivalent of a 10 year old and the universe is the equivalent of the 10 year old's ant farm of a science project. Once he/she/it/whatever gets his/her/its/whatevers grade for his/her/its/whatevers project, the ant farm (i.e., what we fondly refer to as the universe) get flushed down the toilet (or whatever he/she/it/whatever uses to deal with his/her/its/whatevers waste).
Refute it - I dare you.
It really doesn't matter where you come out on the question whether ID is philosophy or science (of course, this isn't a close question -- clearly it is not science), the censorship of the use of good content beneficial to students because you don't like other things done by the school boards is a boneheaded idea.
The best cure for bad speech is more speech. Nothing at all, anywhere, keeps you from showing kids the probalems with ID. Spend your research there. Withhold accreditations, by all means, if non-science is taught as science (BUT BE CAREFUL -- legitimate criticisms about non-falsifiability can likewise be made about string theory), but don't withhold good stuff.
When scientists start censoring the truth, you just establish a vacuum for the witch-doctors to install their own content. Bad news all around.
IMHO, the ideal compromise between the two factions would be to make philosophy a mandatory element of the educational system, like reading and math. Teach evolution in biology, where chemical processes relevant to life are taught, and teach Intelligent Design (TM? it's always capitalized) in philosophy class, right where it should be, along with Ghandi, M.L. King Jr, Marx, and others. Many people might think that Philosophy shouldn't be required for some reason, but on the same token, many people think Iraq attacked us in 2001, and that reality shows aren't scripted. (I have first hand information from a trusted source, eg. a contestant on one of the Bachellorette shows, that they are) Philosophy is the study of thought, from a social-effect point of view, not a hard 'this is the way it is' science, but a soft 'this is what seems to be' line of reasoning. Not EXACTLY science, and not to be confused with science, but important anyway. My $0.02.
This calls for extreme caution. If this works, publishers may be able to use the power of copyright to dictate what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Today the issue is ID. Tomorrow the issue may be entirely different. If it works in science class, it will work in history or any other field of study. Once this power is given, there may be no stopping it.
Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what ya'll thought of them. Obviously very biased towards one side of the arguement, but I've been fairly impressed by some of their work that I've run across.
Articles/Topics from the Insitute for Creation Research
Here's one fairly good example I saw: Radioisotope Dating of Radioisotope Dating of Grand Canyon Rocks: Another Devastating Failure for Long-Age Geology (#376)
-Mikey P
"Isn't this the sort of copyright abuse that would have all of Slashdot up in arms yelling 'Fair use! Fair use!' if it were being employed in any other context?"
= 12259
Fair use is absolutely irrelevant here.
Fair use is about allowing _private_ individuals to make single copies for backup purposes. Making a copy of the Lord of the Rings DVD so you're not screwed if your original gets scratched is fine. Making thousands of copies of a science teaching guide to distribute state-wide is NOT covered under fair use. Stop shouting hypocrisy where none exists.
The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association hold the copyrights to the science instruction guides, and they can at whim (unless they signed a prior contract with the Kansas School system) stop licensing their material. In this case, it seems their decision is perfectly reasonable, since they don't want themselves linked to a science curriculum that's closer to the 12th rather than 21st century. Why should they license their legitimate teaching guide to an institution that's opposed to the very principles they believe in? It's their copyrighted material, and their choice. Your comment about Scientology are entirely irrelevant; the Scientology lawsuits had absolutely nothing to do with withdrawing licensed material.
A more appropiate analogy would've been the National Institute on Media disallowing Jack Thompson to use their name because the man has gone batshit crazy.
Link: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid
You vastly oversimplfy the scientific process. Read some Stephen Jay Gould...or any of several others. Read Einstein. Scientific hypothesis almost never arise out of science. Logic cannot generate it's own hypotheses. Experiments rarely have the kind of serendipitious result that yield vulcanized rubber...and then it's ususally an engineering result rather than a scientific result.
Science almost always STARTS with a wild hypothesis for which there isn't much available evidence. (I.e., there's not much evidence that it's better than the current choice...which might even be no explanation at all. It's got to be consistent with known facts.) Once you have the hypothesis, you start looking for facts to verify it. Once you've verified it a few times, it graduates to a theory...but it started with a wild guess.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
1. God created man
2. man created scientific method
3. man cannot prove God's existence by scientific method
4. man therefore determines God is not real
5. God laughs at man, then squishes him with His toe
OH NOES!!!! You googled someone's citation and found that someone else made the same point! You clever guy, you. If you going to do that, try not to:
1) Carry on as if I'm making the same argument that "Robert Murphy" is making. He's talking about the contradiction in defending redwoods. I'm talking about the contradiction in advocating the termination of the human race. Actually, Murphy appears to even talk about the human extinction movement, so it seems you can't even maintain internal consistency.
2) Place on me the burden of correcting Futuyma's error. You can gripe at me all day about how Futuyma is misreading evolutionary theory. It's still up to you to take it to him, not me.
If individuals helping other species at the expense of their own species doesn't contradict evolutionary theory (after moving the goalposts again), why does a prominent advocate of the theory need to claim such a falsity as evidence? Again, your dispute is with him, not me. It's not my fault advocates of the theory can't get their stories straight.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
id (d) pronunciation
n.
In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs.
and a long string of DNA,
Ill run it through ny compter, and scan the output for valid chunks of engligh, hebrew, and whatever.
I garuntee there will be a LOT of them.
"kilroy was here" will probabaly apear at least once.ill even be helpfull, and create a few coding schemes of my own.
Jesus was the SON Of GOD, NOT The Creator.
:-) ) is a reborn/incarnated Aton and thus related and in unison to/with him at the same time, does also show in the fact that todays "Lords Prayer" is nothing but a slightly modified "cover version" of "Atons Praise" by the Pharao Echn Aton - which curiously enough - means "Son of Aton", or, more precise, Son of God (ring a bell?). Thus some of those who believe in reincarnation (80% of humanity) subscribe to the theory that Jesus of Nazareth is nobody else than the reincarnated individual of Pharao Echn Aton. But thats a different story, albeight a not to far fetched one I'd say. Because if so, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus-Christ, would be the "Son of God" in two ways actually. One as the reincarnated human soul of Priest & Pharao "Echn Aton" (Son of God) and one in being the human with which Christ, the descended "Sun God" chose to unify himself.
Let's be a tad more precise, shall we?
*enter scholastic crashcourse*
Jesus of Nazareth wasn't the Son of God in the sense it's usually understood - as being seperate from "the creator".
He became one with "The Christ" at his babtisation through John. Christ not being exactly a bodily (how could you as a mere spiritual entity?) son of god but a high ranking spiritual entity that choose to seperate itself from - for the lack of a better term - "the heavens" by unifying himself with Jesus of Nazareth and thus bind himself to earth and humanity, sacrificing parts of his "deityness".
What Jesus-he-who-is one-with-the-Christ meant when he said that he was "The son of god" was that he descended from the heavens and his 'older form' in order to be "reborn" as a new spiritual entity that through this sacrifice would be able to guide humanity back to the "spiritual heavens" again. He said that at some other time "No one will reach the light than through me."
The father and allmighty god people, and Jesus Christ aswell, still referred to back then was generally associated with the sun, the old egyptian sun god "Aton". The Jesus-Christ is nothing but that exact Sun God (Aton) that came to earth as human. Which, by the way, no other spiritual entity actually has done - thus Christ being special to other high ranking spiritual entities, such as for instance the ones we call the archangels Michael, Raphael, Gabriel or Uriel.
By the way(#2): Wether the highest god of the world, the Sun God Aton, would come to earth or not (by incarnation in an enlightend human ) was the major disagreement the two high priests Pharao Ramses and his half Brother Moses had. Moses wanted to prepare the descent of Aton to earth by building a more liberal society with people being able to think for themselves without being to dependant on the scholar wisdom of pharaos to function (egypt was an extremly regulated society - also due to its need to deal with flood agriculture in a disciplined manner). It was this disagreement that caused Moses to leave for more moderately climated lands. And, rumors and false bible interpretations to the contrary, he didn't need 40 years to find it. Moses was one of the smartes people back then and the egyptians generally knew their way around the mediteranian (i'd say 3 months aprox, for crossing the arabian peninsula) - it was the new society that needed 2 generations (roughly 40 years) to shake it's old egyptian habbits. Thats the reality behind the metaphor used in the bible.
Thus the ten commandments weren't anything new from god, but the last remains of old egyptian rules that moses changed, modified and broke down for his confused followers who couldn't quite shake the habbit of dancing around golden calfs right away. So to speak. One can presume though that Moses, being an extremly well trained high priest and most certainly 'enlightend', propably had a little help by Aton and some of his subalterns in doing that.
That JesusHeWhoIsOneWithTheChrist (make that a singleton
Interessting isn't it?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Look up into the night sky - is that not proof enough of an Intelligent Designer?
Not particularly. It is however a demonstration of the vast emptiness of the cosmos and the chaotic distribution of matter that's completely indifferent to the existence of biota on this planet.
Everytime I forgive or feel forgiven, love or feel loved, that testifies to me there is a Divine Creator.
That's because of your Mormon background. The same instances that your religion calls the Spirit fit into a previously unrecognized emotional response called elevation
Even you can't deny that in those moments, mortality seems more than just living sinews of flesh coexisting on a giant rock floating out in space.
Well of course I can deny it and so can anyone else. Just because you've become dogmatic and brainwashed doesn't mean others have to accept your worldview.
There is no such thing as coincidence in this life.
Please, now you're just quoting from Latter Days.
Everything is intimately interconnected in this universe, just as one byte of data is sibling to another byte of data in cyberspace (but I digress).
So, that byte of data sitting on Joe Blow's hard drive in San Dimas that forms part of his most-recently downloaded pron is interconnected to little Sally Froo-Froo's pictures of her Bunny-Wunny that her daddy gave her for her birthday?
I somehow think not.
What about the Archaeopteryx? Half dinosaur half bird. It is a missing link.
One thing I think most people need to understand is that complete fossiles of entire species - are extremely rare, but they do exist. And contrary to popular belief there are some missing link fossils and even species floating about like the one mentioned above. There are even soft body samples of Archaeopteryx (I've actually seen one of these) - which can be found in the same limestone deposits the Gutenberg Bible was published from ironically (limestone you see makes a dandy plate for printing).
I'm a Christian too - the reason I never take the side of the creationists or the intelligent designers (both philosophies come from the same roots - just one sounds more scientific) that this isn't science. You'll find that most real life scientists have litle problem with people who want to believe that the earth is 4000 years old, or believe in intelligent design, but all will take issue with people trying to portray it as science when it isn't - as much as people want to want it to be it cannot be - ever. Science relies on observable and repeatable phenomina (which I think science has proved again and again is observable)
There are plenty of interpretations of the bible that side with the theory of evolution.
Without taking a position on ID v. evolution, just a note of caution: The Nobel in Medicine was just awarded to two men who were ridiculed when they first proposed their theory. They were not the first, nor will they be the last, to be attacked by "the scientific community" who KNEW what was right and what was stupid. Scientists are humans--it should not be unexpected that they refuse to change cherished beliefs, that they ridicule new theories, that they protect their own, etc. So let us not ourselves simply accept statements by "scientists" that one theory is "true" and that another is trash, but rather realize that what is true today may be only partially true tomorrow.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Therefore God != science... Don't teach ID in science class.
It's not that hard. Whether you believe in ID or not has no bearing on this. I mean, do you teach ID in shop class too?
We need to protect the integrity of science education if we expect the young people of Kansas to be fully productive members of an increasingly competitive world economy that is driven by science and technology ... We cannot allow young people to be denied an appropriate science education simply on ideological grounds.
Why should we expect X people of Y to be fully Z members of an increasingly A B C that is D by E and F? Intelligent design is bullshit, but so is globalization rhetoric.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Entry: establish
3 a : to make firm or stable b : to introduce and cause to grow and multiply
5 b : to put into a favorable position
Entry: religion
b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
It boils down to the separation of Church and State, in my opinion. If we are a secular country, which we are supposed to be (however, I know that we were founded on Christian principles, which I adhere to), then science should be taught from a pure science perspective. In the context of the issue, I don't see a problem with them pointing out that evolution is just a theory and that theories are always challenged. I think they should push for further exploration of the matter.
If you don't want your kid to learn about evolution, quit your bitching, pay the big bucks and send them to a Christian private school!
Is it really that difficult? If you don't like how public schools teach, send your kid to a private school!
So, I think the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. Politics and education just don't mix...
There is a very powerful and positive reason to keep ID and Evoluton in the curriculum - depending on your point of view, neither may be good pure science, but both cause students and even grown up scientists asking very fundamental and serious questions. The kind of questions that lead some to dedicate their lives to finding answers that benefit all of us.
Questions like where did we come from. How do we explain major changes in speciation? Why are things the way there are? How did they become that way? How do things change? Why is there shuch diversity in life? Is there a God, flying spaghetti monster, higher power, or not?
Science fails when people stop asking questions - and when ideas are supressed by political means, questions that need to be explored are never asked. Even if you do not believe in god, or if you do, there is one thing about the evolution debate I've come to appreciate: real scientific discovery and real leaps in human knowledge only occur when people are allowed to question established beliefs. At present, evolution is an incumbent, accepted scientific belief, and as such should be questioned intensely. As the universe being created in seven days was before that. And the world being flat before that.
There is a reason that science is at a low point in America, and is has absolutely nothing to do with ID vs. evolution. Politics and patents have replaced discovery as the highest order of value for the professional scientist. That ID vs. Evolution is being debated in government halls instead of academic halls is a tradgedy of epic proportions.
-- $G
I happen to be a Christian who thinks that evolution hasn't happened on such a grandiose scale as is taught in science class. I think that certain species were placed here and had some evolutionary changes, but not as significant as changing the species completely, and yes, I am a Christian. But do I think that ID should be taught in science rooms? No, I do not. I think that forcing my ideas that come partially from faith in what the bible shows, is not something that is necessarily science. Science could be wrong, and so could I, but scientific theory is there to be disproved if possible and changed if need be. The thing about my beliefs are that they need not have proof, as Christianity is based on faith, and faith is not scientific. I can have my beliefs, and still learn what others think, and in the end, it will help me to be able to debate what I think is right, and not sound like a bloody idiot for being horribly misinformed.
And people say the Spanish Inquisition is dead. Where is your Christian charity?
Intelligent Design is a load of crap, but this is not the way to fight it.
I don't want copyright holders making my choices for me. This applies just as much to my choices as a consumer as it does to my access to information, even if that information is false.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
No, science is a trust network, a main goal of which is to remove all the ideology humanly possible from its store of data and theories.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
Read the fucking journal entry: http://science.slashdot.org/~Eli%20Gottlieb/journa l/120938
;-).
It really is horrendously stupid to see two religions have a pissing match over who gets to indoctrinate the children. If it weren't for the fact that those are future voters being indoctrinated, it would even be funny. However, the logic of science and education, as applied to this debate, can only lead to one conclusion: Evolvedism, Creationism, and Creationism's evolved offspring Intelligent Design have got to go from the classrooms of America.
On the dominant hand, we have Evolvedism. This is the pseudo-scientific, slightly-more-credible-than-science-fiction theory which states that we are able to use rocks to gain information about a time with no people to observe it or make records. Evolvedism applies the sound and tested Theory of Evolution to these rocks in order to come to its main article of faith: We and every other life form on Earth evolved from single-celled (possibly even non-celled) life forms that floated around in primordial goop over a period of 3 to 4 billion years. Their evidence for this is simply the same application of logic, scientific theory and Ocham's Razor that is used to presume that the milk spoiled while left in the fridge when we weren't looking, but with a flaw. Every experiment, be it leaving milk in the fridge or building a circuit board, has both a beginning and an end at which the operating Laws of the Universe are known, or at least approximated. In all such situations, the events of a middle period of time are extrapolated by applying the Laws known to operate at both the beginning and end. However, nobody was around to know if the Earth even existed 4 billion years ago, let alone to make sure the same Laws of the Universe that work today did then. Ergo, it is illogical to extrapolate today's Laws into a past during which there was no observer to check that they were in operation, and without being able to make this supposition Evolvedism can no longer stand as being a scientific theory of any value to anyone who doesn't lack an alternative view. Things evolve now and indefinitely into the future, but we cannot say so for the past.
Creationism, at least, is honest about the fact that it is a religious viewpoint held on faith and emotion, but its bastard child Intelligent Design isn't so virtuous. ID supporters claim that life is too "irreducibly complex" to have evolved spontaneously, and that it therefore must have been designed by an intelligent being. The identity of this being, of course, is left open to "speculation", or rather, to God. The problem with this view is that the only documented evidence of God is the revelations of His prophets, which even when written down are impossible to verify or distinguish from simple hallucination, and when the position of Intelligent Designer is left open there is no evidence of any intervention on its part that would distinguish it from the operation of Laws of the Universe. Therefore, a non-God Intelligent Designer becomes logically moot, and this so-called theory is revealed for what it is: an attempt to weedle God into the classrooms of a nation founded on the Freedom of Religion.
From this it is apparent that not one of the aforementioned theories are truly scientific, as each one lacks an essential component of that qualtiy. Evolvedism is untestable, Creationism grounded in naught but faith, and Intelligent Design indistinguishable from Evolvedism when it is not hiding Creationism's God in its Designer, so the best possible thing for our science classrooms is to teach none of them and have students learn their theology, be it of genetic selection or Christ, only if, when and how they actually wish to.
And no, the Flying Spaghetti Monster Theory is not seperate, as it is a form of Intelligent Design that still fails to distinguish the Designer from the operation of Laws of the Universe. That means that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the latest lies of the infidels, who will drown in their own blood for it
Which is understandable because you're getting your info from his page, even if you refuse to cite it correctly (and just copy it, word for word, including bolded text).I'm not asking you to correct his error.
I'm telling you that the source your source is correctly citing is incorrect because Darwin never said that.
Nor does the theory of evolution say anything about how any specific individual will behave. YOU can take that up with HIM.
It is possible for him to be wrong, yet for Darwin to be right. Even if he supports what he believes to be Darwin's theory.If you present it as support, it is your fault.
I've shown how the statement was in error because it did not correctly state what Darwin had written.
You can argue all you want about whether some guy who wrote something that wasn't peer reviewed is right when he doesn't quote Darwin correctly.
But the fact is that he did not quote Darwin correctly and Darwin's statement is supported by all the findings of the science known as Biology.
Species, not individuals.
Biology, not choices.
Hypotheses aren't scientific. "Science" is knowledge, and also the process you use to turn the hypothesis into knowledge. If something non-scientific (like scripture) is a part of that process (ie, you assume certain things to be true based upon it), then the process isn't science and neither is the result.
While I'm not a big fan of Bush (and while I think this thread is going woefully off topic)
why isn't it possible to detect the lowest performing teachers and try to correct the problems that they're having. Detecting high performing teachers may be difficult, but the low performers will have detectable defecits.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
... As the scientist walked away, he carelessly dropped his baseball bat. The bat, spontaneously as the creation... er um, appearing of the universe itself, turned into a snake and slithered back toward the Intelligent Design advocate to finish the poor man off. In response to the slithering advancement of the once-wooden creature, the advocate's legs turned into... er... evolved suddenly into two snakes and slithered to meet their mortal enemy in battle. But the bat-snake quickly devoured the two leg-snakes, showing once and for all the truth of how the universe created itself.
It would be nice, but then the universe would fall apart.
Show that all species CANNOT go through enough mutations that it develops into a separate species.
Take a sample of all of the earth's current species. Far far into the future, show that no new species have ever developed.
To be falsifiable, the test doesn't have to be practical, just possible. The classic example is the theory "All swans are white." That is falsifiable, because all you'd have to do is be able to observe a non-white swan. Just one non-white swan - in the past, present, or future - in the entire swan population would falsify it. We are able to observe (see) white swans, the assumption is that we could just as easily observe (see) a non-white one if we were in the right place at the right time.
I hope that makes sense.
Evolutionary theory basically states that given enough time, new species will develop from previous ones. To falsify that, show that new "half-mutated" species (as you called them) are never ever created. An indefinite period of time isn't practical, but it is possible.
Personally, I don't understand the problem the ID camp has with macro-evolution if they accept the idea of micro-evoltion. If a species undergoes a mutation and separates from the original - leaving two populations, "normal" and mutated" - and mutations then happen constantly to both/either lines - they eventually differ by so much that they become classified as different species.
To say that we don't have a complete fossil record of macro-evolution is indeed true - there isn't a found fossil for EVERY step in the evolutionary chain. That being said, each "new" fossil we discover generally seems to fill in a gap. Paleontologists are at least able to theoretically test (find) the fossils.
No, it was IDENTICAL to your post. IDENTICAL. Don't try an play if off now. You've been caught and slammed....
Which is understandable because you're getting your info from his page, even if you refuse to cite it correctly (and just copy it, word for word, including bolded text).
*burying face in hands*
I was quoting a passage from Futuyma's book. Someone else, a few years ago, also quoted this passage. So, apparently, according to you and only you, whenever one quotes a passage, one must not only cite the source of that passage, but everyone else on any internet site who has also quoted that passage.
I really don't know what to say. You're hopeless, you really are. Look, when you quote a passage, you cite the source of that passage, not everyone else who has ever cited that passage. I put the sentence in bold to bring it to your attention, not because some other internet writer has also made it bold. Get it?
Now, to the more important matters: Futuyma has studied biology a lot longer than you have. He has a PhD in the subject. You do not even have a BS. As evidenced from your posts, he's also a lot smarter than you. When defending the validity of evolution to the general public, he feels the need to cite falsities as proof. You're saying I should draw no conclusions about the strength or weakness of the theory of evolution based on that?
I'm sure you can weasel your way out of the mistakes of others. Big difference though: no one has yet told me to read your books to learn why evolution is so solid. It must be great to have such plausible deniability.
"Why should I believe evolution?"
"Here, check out Futuyma's book."
"That book contains blatant errors."
"Pff, what does that mean, that's just one person, I'm sure there's some proof out there, that's why evolution is valid."
Now quick, go back to googling more pieces of my posts.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Generally, because the initial setup of the Discovery Institute was founded by hard-line Christians and Christian Fundamentalists. Even the best "scientific" paper on ID (Meyer) was funded directly by a steadfast C.Fundamentalist.
That's not a reason that people _should_ see it as a bible-thumping ideology, but it is _WHY_ they see it as such. It should be able to stand up to scientific scrutiny on its own, if it wishes to be portrayed like that - as the Meyer paper attempted.
But what about all the people who support Intelligent Design? Oh sorry... I must be new here.
"A good compromise leaves everyone mad." -Calvin
First of all - the problem is that mutation are part of two distinctly different evolution theories... Darwinism and New-Darwinism. In New Darwinism you find the idea that our bodies will mutate in the direction most beneficial for us, in Darwinism however it is all about coincidence... We are then talking about survival of the fittest, which mean the ones that are best to ADAPT to the environment you are in are the ones more likely to SURVIVE, thus MORE LIKELY to bring the genes on to further generations.
:) The theory may however not require mutations...
;)
It is a theory that is quite circular... It is quite hard to prove that the ones who cannot adapt to the environment will survive equally easy as those who do... However it does sound logical, and I accept it as correct
Now New Darwinism however is a different beast, which is not really part of the original evolutional theory but seems to be part of popular believes... Now we would be talking about intelligent adaption whereas we would get "cat-eyes" or sonar skills out of needs to adapt to a darker world, and similar fantacy stories... This type of "evolution" should requires a tremendous amount of prof, and mutations becomes an important element for evaluating if the theory is right or not...
We do see evidence that some humans and animals have been born with too many or too few fingers, same with animals. We see that Japanese don't have facial hair, blond and blue eyes mostly appear in white people, and so on - regardless that we all are Homo Sapiens! All other types of human kind have died out, we are only one race left! Yet we do have quite a few differences but how? Most of it is our natural elections - even though an african person may look much stronger and healthier than lets say a chinese, it is more likely that a chinese would select a chinese looking partner
We breed dogs - what is a dobberman again? A new race of dogs made by crossing a German sheepherding-dog with the Rottweiler! Not really an example of mutation as mutation requires changes in the character or traits not found in the parental type. So yes, it does become hard to prove a mutation have occured... Maybe there never really was a mutation? But even without it, the Theory of Evolution would remain, but New Darwinism would then definitively fail...
There is no evidence that disproves ID. Because ID is an untestable hypothesis, it is not falsifiable. Therefore it is not scientific, because science concerns itself with testable hypotheses.
> Science almost always STARTS with a wild hypothesis for which there isn't much available evidence.
Very true; however, those wild hypotheses aren't taught to high-school students until they become well-supported with solid evidence. Until Intelligent Design, or Crystal Healing, or Jedi Mind Tricks, or There's A Monster Under My Bed have solid, verifiable evidence supporting them, none of them have any place in a high-school curriculum.
Students at that level often don't have the analytical tools to properly sift through reams of questionable hypotheses---even if some later turn out to be true---and also don't have the time to spend on any of the thousands of wild hypotheses currently being investigated. Given the huge body of well-supported and fundamental scientific knowledge that it would be useful for them to know, what justifies giving some of that practical knowledge up for any particular wild hypothesis?
Since Futuyma isn't under discussion here, why bring his book into this AND quote him EXACTLY the same as the other page?
Well, the answer is obvious. You're trying to pass that page off as your own idea but you lack the intelligence to research whether that page is accurate or not. Or whether Futuyma is accurate or not.
Either you stand by your references or you don't.
But trying to lie about it just demonstrates the limitations of your intelligence.
I can refute your references, so now you have to provide better references.
I don't care what Futuyma said, Futuyma isn't being discussed. Futuyma didn't quote Darwin correctly. You're a liar. What else is there to say? Except that you still haven't shown Darwin to be wrong or ID to be correct.
Conservatism is not a religious belief, and it does not equal a belief in intelligent design. You're mixing your ideologies.
If he didn't create the Earth? What did he do?
Why do you believe he exists?
There is no "micro" or "macro" evolution. There is only evolution.
And experiments have been done that show that one colony of fruit flies, divided into two, will, eventually, evolve away from each other enough that they cannot inter-breed any more.
And that is the evidence that evolution is accurate.
This is the most intelligent comment I've seen so far from a self-admitted proponent of ID (or a variant thereof)!
Get real !! Science with a bit of creationism IS NOT SCIENCE>. its myth and fable and takes us back to the dark ages...
> YM pelvic bones, which whales today still have and use to breed.
NO, he means LEGS.
Wow, not only have you been totally flustered, you're actually resorting to calling me a liar. What did I lie about? Can you at least give me that courtesy, or was it just a rank attempt at insulting me?
0 &threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=146&mode=thread&cid =13910476
Let's go back to why I brought up the Futuyma quote. See this post:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16682
Someone was claiming that "No member of any species will act for the benefit of another [species] with no benefit for its own" was "not even evolutionary theory". I quoted Futuyma to challege that statement. I did not copy the analysis on the page you linked at all. I merely used a quote - that someone else happened to use - to impeach a statement someone else made. There was no reason for me to cite that page because I didn't use anything in it except - assuming I even knew about the page - the passage. And to cite a passage from a book, you cite the book, not anyone else who happened to have used that same passage. Get it? It's really not a difficult concept.
Next, you didn't "refute" anything I said, you refuted an evolutionist and then put it on me to defend him. Except one small problem: I agree that he's wrong.
And finally, in the blind fit of rage that led you to calling me a liar (without even referencing the lie I allegedly told) you moved the goal posts and said that I "still haven't shown Darwin to be wrong or ID to be correct". You probably should have added that I also haven't "shown dark matter to exist or the Rosenbergs to be innocent"... I wasn't trying to prove any of that. If you can lengthen your attention span alllllllllllll the way to where I entered this thread, you'll see that the only thing I was trying to show was that evolutionary theory has no non-trivial predictive power.
-not that IDers are right
-not that natural selection doesn't happen
-not even that the history given by evolutionists is false!
To do that, I pointed out a falsified prediction sometimes used as an example of the predictive power of evolution. When someone claimed that prediction wasn't part of the theory of evolution, I cited a prominent evolutionist (NOT another person who wrote an internet article that also happened to cite him!) who claimed otherwise. Remember now?
Pointing out my "failure" to accomplish those additional tasks (that Darwin is wrong or IDers right) shows you don't even remember what you're arguing about.
Got ADD? Or ADHD? Or whatever sensitive phrase they use for it now?
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
The need to get their head out of themselves...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
In the sense that seeking the truth is a religion, in the sense of asking questions and trying to prove the answers right or wrong, in the sense that mathematicians prove that the circle can't be squared.
Good god (pun intended)! To call science a religion is really missing the point. You, sir, are an imbecile.
Infuriate left and right
If you really care: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_Design
The idea has been around, but in its current form it has existed since ~1991 when the Discovery Institute was founded by hardline Christians and Christian Fundamentalists.
Not that how it was formed is a valid reason to dismiss it completely.
It's lack of scientific evidence, rigourous methodology, assumptions built upon analogy, and un-falsifiabity are reasons to dismiss it as being scientific.
In order to defeat your opponent, it is helpful to know them!
Why can't they create life? Because even a one cell microorganism has a fairly hefty length of DNA. [or RNA or whatever]. The fact is cloning bacteria is already a well developed science [so is splicing cells from different organisms].
The problem ID people have is they look at ANY holes in existing science as proof that their is a god. Scientists just look at it as shit we don't know yet. They're not basing it on any logical form of argument and they basically use social peer pressure and intimidation to get their way [try being an atheist in a bible thumping town...].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
A class where all their old creationist canards are systematically brought up and dismantled, where all the "missing transitional forms!!1!11" from flying dinosaurs to walking whales to homo habilis are trotted out, where every child walks out knowing how to find the real age of rocks and stars, where their children are led to question, "If Adam and Eve lived 6,000 years ago, how come we find artifacts and bones from civilizations thousands of years older and expanding hunter-gatherer tribes tens of thousands of years older?"
If so, sign me up. But first point me to the "Intelligent Design" advocate who's pushing for that class, because I've never met them.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?
Transitional forms abound in the fossil record. I think that is what you mean by half mutated species.Transitional forms are consistent with the idea of evolution. But I hesitate to call it a theory. It doesn't deserve to be. Evolution is a hypothesis that is consistent with lots (tons!) of observations. I say this because evolution still has no mathematical formulation. It has no predictive power. Compare it to well formulated physical theories like Classical Dynamics, Quantum Mechanics, or even softer theories like Marshall's Supply and Demand. They are not easily assailed by muzzy thinking. But Biologists have been easy on themselves for over 150 years! They have not developed deep mathematical understanding of the forces control evolution. They are still waving their arms. What is their response when attacked? The attackers are simpletons, visigoths, fanatics. No further discussion required! Not an impressive defense of a profound idea. When biologists develop the the rich mathematical foundations of evolution, which surely exist, the debate with creationists will end.
an ill wind that blows no good
Regardless of the merits of "Intelligent Design" or "Evolution", I think this whole fiasco sets a very, very dangerous path in the amount of use and control that we grant copyright holders. Should a copyright holder be able to dictate each and every aspect of how someone USES (not DISTRIBUTES) a copyrighted work? The copyright holders here claim that they want to use their copyrights to ensure that the children do not lose out on ideological grounds. But is it right and just for the use of COPYRIGHT to force (or deny) a viewpoint based on ideological grounds?
Of course, the school can always change the books-- no one is forcing the school to use a particular textbook. But I believe this is not the way society should go. We have become too much a "take it or leave it" society, where one side gets to dictate all the terms and the other side has no option except to accept them all, or choose a substitute. In my opinion, the copyright holder should not have the right to dictate the conditions on when/where/how a work is used or interpreted. The copyright holder should only have the right to sell copies (as limited per First Sale doctrine), and control distribution. If a school legally buys 200 copies of a book, it should be free to use those 200 copies any way they want. What the school does with its books is its own damn business.
Unable to argue the big issues, so you nitpick the meaningless. I see you've learned well from FARMS.
Well then, it seems the IDers in academia, are the "atheist[s] in a bible thumping town".
It is possible for an interpretation of scripture to be guided by scientific observations, or for interpretation of scientific observations to be guided by scripture.
No, the latter is not possible if you wish to engage in science.
Rightly so: some day the shoe may be on the other foot.
(And in the interests of disclosure, I'll point out that I am a Christian, and a creationist.)
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Rather than look at evolution from start to now, lets look at in reverse.... Humans came from apes... Apes came from fish... Fish came from bacteria... where'd the bacteria come from, where'd the stuff baceria came from come from, the list goes on and on. Yes things may have evolved, but they had to have something to evolve from. If someone can prove to me that mass can be made of nothing without help from an outside source, I will believe evolution. Until then I side with intellegent design.
Leave it to slashdot editors and moders to help you nail down the goalposts the ID supporters, as I have failed to point out on wikipedia due to the "Oh, keep the ID proponerts happy" clause, our Lord and King Jimbo has -rightfully- put in.
Is creationism a pseudoscience or not?" [en.wikipedia] Help out, guys: Is Creationism a pseudoscience or not?
----
As a scientist and a believer in God (and due to the rise of the religious right I will NOT claim to be a christian any more .. ) ID is very scary.
Christianity has opposed science before.
It declared the world was flat because the bible talks about the 4 corners of the earth.
It declared that the sun revolved around the earth
In the USA - the same areas that now are fighting FOR ID - declared that slavery was mandated by God.
Christianity now opposes Macro Evolution and that Homosexuality is genetic.
the evidence for both of these are now extremely well documented... ... to a level far greater than that documenting how gravity works. They all accept gravity - because it doesnt require a change to their teaching.
Using Occams razor stops ID dead in its tracks... but this isnt about truth or about science.. its about religious dogma.
Science in the USA is threatened to its core as politics and religion shackle it. Funding is now only available to areas that dont threaten religious groups. The commitment to searching for the truth is gone... its now fedning belief AGAINST truth...
That is a very disturbing change in an education or research organisation.
Anyone who cares for truth or freedom or science should be fighting ID now.
IF anyone thinks ID is a valid theory - then they should be researching the MANY large areas of inadequacy in it .. not fighting to introduce a demonstrably unprovable theorem into school classes.
History shows an inexorable fall if these anti reason forces gain ascendancy and take us back to the dark ages of religious dogma (compare the otroman empire at its height to the Muslim world today) ... Thats why its important...
Well put I guess ;-)
but you missed a bit
Well then, it seems the IDers in the way of academia, are the "atheist[s] in a bible thumping town".
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It's not flamebait, doofus moderator. I am genuinely puzzled why so many designers (programmers) hold that we can't recognize design emperically.
Got any citations to back this up?
Full article
This was posted originally here: http://www.arn.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topi c/f/24/t/000009.html
I like it and I think it makes a valid point.
----------
It's been a long time since I've had a good rant and I think I'm well due for one. So here we go.
quote:
Stuart Harris:
The truth of what is taught will be tested in the marketplace of ideas, and I don't think Darwinism has much to sell at this point.
I think it says a lot about the failure of scientists to communicate effectively, and of forum evolutionists to present a balanced view, that this is the perception of intelligent, reasonable and educated people about evolutionary biology.
Those of us here who do research in biology or other evolution-related fields (such as myrmecos, RBH, myself and several others) know that evolutionary theory is looking healthier and more relevant now than it has been for decades. Cutting edge research explicitly informed and guided by MET is published in the scientific literature every day, and fast-moving new fields such as comparative functional genomics are almost totally dependent on a theoretical framework provided by MET. There is a new confidence in evolutionary models brought about by advances in the underlying theory, and by the increases in computing power that have allowed us to model accurately complex, evolving biological systems.
Twenty years ago it might have been only a minor exaggeration to say that much of biology would barely notice if evolutionary theory collapsed overnight, but that is certainly not true today. While biologists are certainly aware that there is much left to learn about evolutionary processes, we are more and more confident that what we do know is accurate. New discoveries will refine MET, but they are extremely unlikely to overturn it.
This is the truth, and as a researcher working in the field you would think I'd be in a position to know - but many people reading this won't believe a word of it. Instead, I will sound to them like yet another evolutionist lackey pretending that the emperor is wearing clothes. Many of these disbelievers are neither stupid, ignorant, nor religious fanatics. So why do Stuart Harris and so many others believe that evolutionary theory doesn't have "much to sell?"
Part of it is a failure of biologists to convey advances in MET, and to present research that is explicitly underpinned by MET, to the public. To most members of the lay public understanding of evolutionary theory barely stretches beyond a natty diagram showing the ascent of man from some slimy amphibian, and a vague feeling that the whole process has something to do with "survival of the fittest," whatever that means. Fundamental advances in MET such as our new understanding of neutral evolution, the discovery of epigenetic inheritance, or our ability to use evolutionary models to detect the impact of natural selection on the human genome, are not widely understood. Scientists must bear a large part of the blame for this failure to communicate.
But a large part of the blame must also rest on the actions of the public faces of evolutionary theory, from "formal" representatives such as Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, down to the thousands of anonymous forum evolutionists that confront creationists and IDists in discussion forums, blogs and chat groups across the web. Far too often, queries about the validity of modern evolutionary theory are met with hostility and glib dismissals. Existing holes in the theory (yes, they do exist!) are glossed over, and critics are hand-waved out of existence as religious extremists, ignorant arm-chair philosophers, or irritating obstructionists.
Sometimes these accusations are true, but this is irrelevant. By applying such dismissals universally, we are alienating many people who have done nothing worse than ask questions about evolution. By trying to gloss over the holes in our theory to prevent them being "exploited" by creationists, we open ourselves up to criticism
Great !
This is a fabulous way to raise the stakes.
Kansas is now faced with a scientific body denying them material, this will certainly raise the eyebrows of the public.
ID is utter rubbish, it's being sneaked into our kids as scientific when, obviously, it is not.
We might just as well turn ourselves into a religous state, like Iran for example, stop any scientific progress and worship the sun.
These idiots need to be stopped before the cause some real damage.
How does the Bible "reveal" science?
Name me exactly one scientific advancement that was "revealed" by the Bible.
I just skimmed that article, but as far as I can tell it's basically saying "It's not perfectly accurate so it must be wrong." Uh, okay.
Is that too difficult a concept for you?I see it and I agree that it is NOT part of evolutionary theory.
You believe it is because you've read a page that references a book that says it is and you're to stupid to research whether that book was correct or not.
Evolution deals with species, not individuals.
So you STILL refuse to accept the most BASIC concept of evolution.
But your refusal to accept the facts does not change them. Darwin spoke of species, not individuals.Actually, I have. I've shown where the "expert" who's book you referenced made a very basic mistake with regards to what Darwin said. Again, Darwin spoke of species, not individuals.
But your original statement (and that webpage you seem to love so much) are about individuals.I have shown where you lied. And the whole discussion has been about ID and evolution. So your claims that I "moved the goal posts" is just another lie from you.
But I'm not surprised.And I'm so happy you feel that way. Just because it isn't factual is no reason for you to discard your belief.
Evolution has, accurately, predicted every discovery in the science of Biology since it was first stated. Just because you don't want to believe that does not alter that fact.No. You quoted from a page, quoting Futuyma, but that referenced individuals instead of species.
I have pointed out many times in this thread that evolution is about species, not individuals.
So, your references (and that website) that depend upon the actions of individuals are not relevent to a discussion of evolution (which deals with species).
Actually I hate to break it to ya..
But the God of Moses is actually called Yahweh. Jesus was the son of Yahweh - Jehovah; two distinct and seperate entities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
Libertas in infinitum
Here is why scientists are trying to purge ID from science classes...
There is no scientific controversy about whether or not evolution took place, none, it is as thoroughly demonstrated as the theory of relativity. The only contraversy on the topic is in the United States from religious/political arenas. So to even teach in science class that there is some sort of debate going on would be to give a poorer science education, a better place to teach about the debate would be social studies, and the best place to study ID itself (disproven already) would be philosophy or religious studies.
It's not inappropriate to teach ID, but it's certainly inappropriate to teach it in science class.
Note that the lack of controversy refers to evolution, not abiogenesis, which many people seem to confuse, and there are plenty of technical details inside evolution which could be called controversial, but none at the level taught at high school.
I was interested in your link to flaws in evolution, because everybody says "evolution has holes" but I've never been able to find any of these holes which are supposedly common knowledge in America (I have been looking, I honestly do want to know the holes the in theory). The site you link to is kooky, it's not that they demonstrate complete scientific ignorance on the topics they discuss, for example entropy, it's that they must honestly think that every scientist overlooked such a glaring inconsistency - they must be pretty special. (So if anybody reading this can point me to a scientific account of holes in evolution, drop a reply)
As to why can't scientists yet perform abiogenesis with all of our scientific knowledge? I imagine the same reason we can't make a fusion reactor yet with all our scientific knowledge, or why we can't cure cancer or AIDS yet, or why we can't make carbon nanotubes in the lengths we want - we just don't know enough to do it yet.
You point about the Alien spacecraft at Area51 makes me wonder if I'm replying to a troll.
This is analagous to gravity. Newtonian Mechanics was one theory to explain gravity (the fact). It was eventually displaced by the General Theory of Relativity, but gravity never for a moment stopped being a fact.
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.
Im as opposed to any religion taught as science. I have seen children die because their parents opposed blood transfusions I was denied television as a child because watching it would cause me to be possed by demons. I had science books burnt. My parents were nice well integrated members of our community who let faith orverrule truth. ID is not a scientific theory. Its not verifiable. It doesnt match occams Razor. It doesnt enable prediction. Its also not needed. If creationism is true... evolution must be demonstrable false ... and so far its not.. every anti evolution argument i have ever seen has been disproven decades ago.. including the "They have never found the link fossils"
That doesnt say its correct. It DOES say its the best simplest explanation of all the data available.
ID is just religious belief. I dont object to religion or faith teachings.. taught as religion.
Its very simple and frankly its no more of a real threat to an all powerful creator than a flat earth
Look at the study of Fundamentalism ....
there is a lot of research on this. Conservatism and religion are not the same.. but they are inexorably and closely linked...(as is social dysfunction sadly enough)
Hello, I just thought I'd come clean with y'all, I designed and created earth and everything on it last tuesday. If you're wondering what the dinosaur bones are all about, well it's a funny thing, I was pretty high when I designed them, and forgot to add a brain. Ooops. Oh well, just wanted to say hi. Bye.
P.S: I made Duke Nukem Forever, cos I wanted to have a laugh when y'all are waiting forever. Sorry.
I guess I could have used the more correct Yahweh (if I had thought of it), but most people would not have recognized it as the name for the Jewish-Christian god.
At some prominent point in discussion regarding evolution, a single statement such as "Some religions teach that God is responsible for the sequence of events that led to life as we know it. Such a view cannot be proven or disproven, as divine works are outside the scope of verifiable scientific research.". That is ALL the reference necessary, as with creation mythos. To give equal time to ID or CS should be unnecessary.
Just look out for it, and you'll see something eventually. There aren't a lot of examples in textbooks and papers, fortunately, though there are plenty in pop-science stuff (Sagan, Hawking, stuff like that) -- which is fine; that's where opinionated metaphysics derived from science belong.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Aren't the standards here intended for educating in science? Because an education in science is not what the Kansas board is delivering.
If I were teaching religious studies, and in the Christianity section I was teaching ideas as Christian* beliefs when the Christians* didn't actually belive or promote those ideas, I would think it a fair call for the Christians to refuse to let me distribute their copyright material to further my agenda, infact I would expect it.
* Insert whatever specific brand of Christianity here.
Wow - an atheist and a Christian, agreeing on a copyright issue dealing with impediments to an establishment of religion. On slashdot.
What's this world coming to?!?!
(For what it's worth, I'm a Christian who wonders why God would go through and create a set of rules, and just break them for no apparent reason. Who is to say that He can't use evolution to do His work?)
Personally, I'd like to see teachers say "You know what, we aren't going to teach you what to believe. Some people think evolution is false, some people think the universe was created using evolution, and some people think evolution is true. Here's the factual evidence we've got - draw your own conclusions." Takes all of 60 seconds, and it shouldn't step on too many people's toes. It also doesn't attempt to establish a state-sponsored religious belief in schools, which goes against the spirit of the first amendment.
everyone seems to forget, that we as biological living beings, come from a mother of some sort.. god is far from a motherly figure.. its a bullshit super being created by "man" because a "man" was pissed that pagans worshipped "women" because of them being mothers, the creators of life..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Watch out for the Devolutionists. They look like men, but think like apes.
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
>>> "Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for thousands of years. You can explore the idea that the earth is flat too if you want. Just because some people are exploring it doesn't mean we need to start teaching that to children in science class. Teach that myth the same place we teach the other myths - in religion or humanities classes or the like."
...]
....
... which I find hilarious. What's doubly funny is that a lot of people arguing against a creator argue for a big bang whilst cosmologist are moving towards alternate theories. And to cap it all the big-bang was proposed by a Belgian priest (LeMaitre) - I'd like to think that his faith inspired him at least in part.
...
/ sc0022.htm
[Here's a Christian idea
The big bang? Sure. Explore it all you want. It has been explored for tens of years. You can explore the idea that the Earth is flat too if you want
The big-bang, incidentally is an untestable event as by definition the established principles of physical science break down at the singularity (and how would we observe, a temporal action, before time existed). So, it becomes a matter of faith as to whether there were a big bang or a re-expansion or some other creative event [or none! like Newton, Maxwell, Einstein et al. thought]
I guess the big-bang is probably still the standard model. But every standard model I ever studied was proven to be inconsistent with observations
Oh well.
LeMaitre - http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science
I was confused at first why would one want to oppose anything intelligent in this day and age... then i remembered the "this day and age" bit and what "Intelligent design" means... oh boy, of course its neither but we still have to deal with it. Our language is being coopted and rendered meanlngless by this deliberate ambiguity in naming rhetoric, by the Christian rright and other hardcore revisionist intent on undermining intelligent social discourse. btw this is not an attack on religion the Chritian right has that covered imo, i know many religious and spiritual people of many backgrounds who are aghast at what is going on in the States.
... than to just make stuff up!
On a related note...
A mechanical, electrical, and civil engineer were discussing what sort of training the Intelligent Designer of humans had had. The mechanical proposed, "He must be an ME also, considering the complexity of the hands, feet, and knee and elbow joints." The electrical countered, "No, no, no. He must have been an EE, since clearly the most important aspect of the human design was the nervous system." The civil replied, "Wow, are you both wrong. Only a CE would run a toxic waste disposal system *right* through the middle of a recreational area."
This entire pseudo-debate is getting rather tiresome. What is even more tiresome is the credence people place in it. The issue here isn't one of evolution vs intelligent design, or even evolution vs creationism. The issue is atheism vs christianity, a debate that has about as much relevance to the real world as the question of how many angels will fit on the head of a pin, or whether a falling tree makes a sound when no one is there to hear it. You've got atheists pretending to be advocates of science and christians pretending not to be motivated by religious faith. Both sides know exactly what they other is doing, but they don't dare say so because to do so would shift the debate into an area that the public is not interested in. A debate between two religious faiths, atheism and christianity, isn't going to attract much interest or attention from anyone who isn't already emotionally invested in one side or the other. Not only that, but the entire debate is largely pointless since the position held by both sides is founded upon faith in unprovable ideas. Do the theological aspects of the conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland matter to anyone else? No, only the fact that they're killing each other over them. The rest of the world doesn't give a rat's ass about the religious basis for this conflict. The only thing the rest of the world cares about is the fact that people are getting shot, stabbed, bombed, run down in the street, and otherwise maimed and murdered over it. The assholes on both sides use violence to attract attention to a conflict that would never recieve any attention otherwise. This debate is no different. By attempting to interfere with what our children are taught, these assholes have made their own private little war everyone's problem.
So I hereby officially declare shenanigans on this whole sad affair. The athiests and christians have been very dishonest by coaching their squabbles in terms the public would be snookered into taking sides in. By making our schools into a forum for their petty bickering they've undermined the integrity of our educational system and wasted everyone's time. I propose that evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and the belief that the flying spaghetti monster should all be taught side by side along with an in depth discussion on just how full of shit the people trying to peddle each point of view are. Not only will this allow our young scholars to reach their own conclusions about this issue, but it will also provide them with a crucial lesson in just how much they're being lied to from all sides, which is a lesson that some people sadly never learn.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I have now finally seen the light and joined the ID'ers! The typical response to our theory is that if we we're Intelligently Designed, then who made the designer? The answer is quite simple. The designer was created by another ID! Now, before you ask who made THOSE designers, let me share with you my understanding of the theory.
Mankind was designed by a benevolent ID race, which in turn was designed by a ID race, which in turn was designed by a ID race. This chain goes on for billions of years, with finally the first race at the beginning of time. Now obviously this race was created by the last race in the other end of the chain! And before you go saying time travel is impossible, I remind you of John Titor, who came from the future!
If only Christians (and Muslims) could figure out that the Bible does not answer the question of "HOW" but instead, answers of a question of "WHY."
Of course, they aren't that smart. If they were, they'd be Jews, who know the message of the Bible is philosophical and not an explanation of the natural world.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
"Matter tends towards disorder."
Yes, but only over the long term, and mostly in the absence of any energy added to the system.
Your argument is that if you drop a box of matches it tends to be more disordered than when you started. Is that your argument for intelligent design? That's it?
By that reasoning *no* life could exist because life tends to organize matter and energy. I guess god is holding it all together in his omnipotent hands?
"I am one [a systems engineer]"
I hope they don't put you in charge of anything important. You want so desperately to think that god created the universe like it says in genesis that you ignore not only any smidgen of training you might have, but common sense.
Yes, complicated systems take thousands of hours to design. The universe has had at least a few billion years. Do you understand the scale of time that a billion years is?
Look. I'm a Christian, but I'm bright enough to recognize that the Bible doesn't have to be literally true, nor is acceptence of Genesis literal truth to be a litmus test to be a Christian. If God is really smart he set the conditions for the big bang and then let those events shape the universe. Do you think god is so weak that he is like a clumsy engineer tinkering with genes over 5 billion years to get it right? Please. If anything, Intelligent Design is an insult to God because it makes it seem as if he has to adjust his creations because he had some flaws in the original design.
Hang him for no reason >-(
There are two ways for Kansas to get around this, one tested in court, one not.
The first is to eminent domain to either aquire a license or, if that doesn't work, the entire copyright-ownership within Kansas. The latter would be extremely expensive. AFAIK neigher has been tested in court.
Another way, which won't work for test materials but will work for teaching materials, is to incorporate the copyrighted text into law and require that the teachers have the students study the section of law in question.
The Supreme Court has already said that laws as such are in the public domain. Not only that, but they are in the public domain nationwide: If Kansas did this, other states could require that their students study the relevant Kansas law also.
On the other hand, in the Supreme Court case, the copyright owners actively requested that governing bodies adopt their copywritten books as law, something that hasn't and won't happen in this case.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Artificial selection (what rose and apple growers do all the time) is an experiment that tests large parts of evolution (that selective pressure will change oraganisms over time).
Selection experiments test microevolution, which mostly involves tossing out genes that do not turn out to be useful in a given niche. Creationists acknowledge that microevolution has happened since the deluge. But selection experiments do not test muck-to-mold-to-monkey-to-man macroevolution.
What exactly is "in it's own kind?" Is a yellow rose the same kind as a red rose?
In general, the Biblical Hebrew word translated as "kind" tends to mean a category broader than genus and possibly closer to family.
How much functional and/or structural change do you need demonstrated before you can extrapolate a decade's color change or immunity across a billion years and regard this evolution thing as a likely theory?
"Billion years" isn't entirely settled either. Many IDers believe in a 6000-year-old earth: 16 centuries from creation to flood, 24 centuries from flood to Christ, and 20 centuries from Christ to now.
I'm not sure it's up to us to decdide this is an injustice. If Kansas were torturing their babies, yes, maybe that's time to step in. But all over the world there are people with interesting and diverse belief systems that are incompatible with each other. It seems to me that this is one area where you have to let people do what they choose.
That's the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity
If it is, I don't see it. The fallacy of appeal to popularity means "this is true because it is popular." An appeal to popularity used to allocate resources (as opposed to inferring truth) is not necessarily a fallacy: "we should investigate this because it is popular."
Would people please stop blaming Christians for this ID nonsense. I am a Christian, and I support the teaching of evolution and think ID has worse science behind it then the electric universe "theory".
Please stop blaming all of us for the work of a few fundie fruitcakes. A fight between scientist and normal Christians is exactly what they want.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
...all rolled into one!
copyright + intelligent design = 1000 posts!
I find it interesting that everyone points their fingers at Christians for the concept that the world was created by God. Muslims and Jews also hold to this view, but it's only the Christians being singled out. It's a shame that the view is narrowed to Christians.
If someone figures out how to reverse entropy without increasing it somewhere else, please share it with the world. The last time I checked, increasing entropy was a law, not a theory. Evolution has yet to account for the fact that everything degrades without someone putting some effort to keep it from happening.
Get your Kicks on Route 66
Does no one ask why Intelligent Design proponents are not clamoring to get their views into Chemistry, Physics, and other science classes besides biology? After all, every science has gaps in understanding or evidence. They all use theories, and since ID'ers like to trivialize the word theory with air quotes, why don't they feel their "theory" (which is actually a hypothesis or less) of an intelligent designer doesn't have a place in the other sciences?
This is obviously a rhetorical question - but I feel it is a clear example of the fact that the ID movement is totally an ideological, and political, movement bent on removing evolution from the classroom, and a dishonest movement as well. Their egotism concerning human origins is intense, so while an ID'er can ignore teaching physics students "some scientists believe the laws of physics were designed and put into place by an intelligent force", they cannot stomach a branch of science that to them makes humans less than the image of a god. Since they can't teach their Sunday School lessons in science class, they wrap it up to look vaguely like science, use a bunch of smoke and mirrors arguments, and get god into school that way.
The way I see it, religion is based just as much on repeated observation as science. I, and billions like me, have had first hand experience with things metaphysical which no one in science has ever come close to explaining. So if billions of people have witnessed it firsthand, why is it not science?
Answer: it's not science because it's not measurable, and only quantifiable at best through surveys and whatever. If so, it is no more and no less of science than psychology, philosophy, or any other soft science. There is a weakness to "science," and as long as it is taught like its own religion, these debates will always come up.
Still, I have nothing against a disclaimer in an evolution unit saying "this is called the Theory of Evolution. It is not a law because it has not been proven, and other theories exist." A simple disclaimer shouldn't offend anyone, except the legions of scientists who don't believe in being questioned (thus by definition invalidating their license.)
--Colin Jensen
colinandbethany.com
Brian: "Let me try and summarize this: God is His son. And His son is God. But His son moonlights as a holy ghost, a holy spirit, and a dove. And they all send each other, even though they're all one and the same thing?"
Charlie: "You've got it. You really could be a nun!"
Brian: "Wait a minute... what I just said, does that make any sense to you?"
Charlie: "Well, no. It doesn't make sense to anyone - that's why you have to have faith. If it made sense, it wouldn't have to be a religion!"
Who designed the intelligent designer ? eh ? eh ? Maybe he just evolved from a bunch of idiots.
--- Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity
Do science classes in Israel teach this view that the world was created by God?
If it is, I don't see it.
Appeal to popularity does not necessarily mean stating that the popularity of a belief is proof of its validity. Suggesting that a belief may be wortwhile to investigage because it is popular is also fallacious. Moreover, that only addresses part of my objection; there's also the vast differences between the nature of "higher beings" worshipped and/or acknowledged by various religions, but that has to be glossed over to get the "everyone believes this" argument.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Still, I have nothing against a disclaimer in an evolution unit saying "this is called the Theory of Evolution. It is not a law because it has not been proven, and other theories exist."
I do, because this implies fundamentally incorrect things about scientific laws and theories. Theories are never proven. Suggesting that a theory could somehow become proven and be law is dishonest. Laws are also not proven; they are simply a different type of statement in a science. Theories do not become Laws because Laws and Theories serve different purposes.
There's also the fact that no one is pushing for a disclaimer sticker for any other scientific theory, such as relativity theory, germ theory or atomic theory. Makes me question the motives of those pushing for evolution disclaimers.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
If I understand ID correctly, then any obviously complex system implies the presence of a designer. Such a designer, would themselves be reasonably complex. So, then who designed the designer? And who designed the designer's designer? Ad infinitum...
Why introduce layers of unneeded abstraction? I don't see how ID gets us any closer to understanding the universe around us. If anything it discourages investigating the tough issues -- it's too complicated for us mere humans to understand the will of the great designer.
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
While I agree that a testable theory is different than an untestable theory... sometimes it's not always strictly about science. It's not always just about what can be proven or disproven, a lot of times it's about what makes the most sense.
So in this case you have two theories... evolution/creation... and neither of them has yet to be proven scientifically. Which one works better in the logical realm?
I suppose if someone really wanted to enumerate the whole list of Design hypotheses, there shouldn't only be ID, FSM, or BSD, it should begin to look something like this:
This entire issue is not about science or religion - just follow the money. As Molly Ivans the journalist suggests - there are always two groups of people in any issue - those being screwed and those doing the screwing. What better way to make money screwing people - who will give away their money and/or time to religious institutions - who in turn are told that they (the donors) now can go screw someone because.... . Well because - this is where religions are "wonderful" - just make up any bullshit - to fit the situation and away you go - "bullshit always baffles brains". This is what muslim jihads are all about - not about religion - its power and/or money. What i find interesting - is that the folks in white lab coats have kept quite about this issue until recently - they may have to start justifying the $300,000 grants from the NIH and other tax based grants. We just may find out that the folks in white lab coats have been screwing us too.
lol internet
Transitional forms are missing from the fossil record. For evolution to be true, there would need to be millions of transitionary species in the fossil record. So far not one fossil has been found that can be considered transitional.
In Darwin's own words:
"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them imbedded in the cryst of the earth?"
"Geological research does not yield the infinetley many fine gradations between past and present species required by the theory; and this is the most obvious of the many objections which may be argued against it."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
critical thinking
If we had a populous that was capable of critical thinking it would be the end of commerce as we know it.
If we had a population capable of critical thinking then 90% of all advertising would not be effective. A lot of companies on top right now would not be on top. I am sure there are powerfull business interests that do not want a population capable fo critical thinking.
People would not buy a brand of toothpaste thinking it will help them get laid.
People would not buy humongous automobiles styled to look like war equipment just to feel more secure.
Political ads would no longer work. People would see them and just wonder where the money came from to pay for them.
But as this all plays out and the country becomes anti-science we will lose our competative edge in the world marketplace. Those business interests who wanted a population incapable of critical thinking will lose out.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
> Fact: Slashdot readers love copyright.
:) here, let me clue you in to xenu.net where you can read up on what they do. Based on how Scientologists and Scientology-affiliated organizations have behaved (e.g. "Operation Snow White") I think they're evil crackpots, but they do *everything* they can with those copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and patents to silence their critics as far as I can see. How many religions own their own law firm, after all?
No I don't. I hate it.
[Rant]
I want the Public Domain back sometime in my lifetime. The GPL is a means to that end, using copyright against itself, but if copyright were abolished, that would be a *good* thing to me. Yes, good. As RMS was recently quoted on Slashdot in a story about GPL version 3, the GPL derives its legal authority from copyrights, but its moral authority from the rights of the people. You lose only the right to restrict others by accident or design if you distribute or merge my source with your own (mere use of my work is explicitly *not* covered by the GPL). You remain free to make your own damn software if you don't like the conditions I and other GPL software copyright holders put on our work.
[End Rant]
And for the record, I give my own work away freely.
> I don't hear anybody "wailing" about the Church of Scientology's copyrights, either.
Then you aren't listening. Just in case you've been living in a cave (or basement?
Frankly, this strikes me as a publicity-whoring move by ID opponents. Whatever. I'll go with the science of evolution for myself, but I don't have either the time or the vitriol to tell every poor sod I can find on the Internet something like "OMG!!! YOU ARE A STUPED MORNO WHO DOESN'T KNOW WHAT SCIENCE IS!!!!! DIE!!@#~!#!@#!" for daring even to ask a question, when I myself can barely explain what ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means, or whether or not it is outdated.
My favorite line from this group is:
"We know we'll never see the day there are no human beings on the planet."
At least they figured this much out.
Obviously you believe in some kind of religious fundamentalism that forbids an open debate about religion. And yes pointing out fundamental flaws in a concept is discussion, even if done by means of jokes.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
I graduated from CalTech and then proceeded to MIT for graduate studies. There are many on Slashdot that seem to think that, due to ones believe in ID, they are automatically blinded to the persuit of science and discovery.
The more I learn about biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and molecular biology, the more I realize that some of the timelines given for the the evolutionary period contradicts other sciences.
The more I learn about the above mentioed sciences, the more I believe that this universe was created by someone beyond our current comprehension. More than that, I don't automatically reject evolution. I think, rather, that our understanding not fully understood.
It is certain that creators have the ability to adapt to their environments. We've witnessed elephants being birthed without tusks, after many were killed only for their tusks, even within the past 60 years of measurable time. However, just because certain species are similar to other species, doesn't necessarily prove that one derived from another. It just proves there were variations of a species that may or may not currently exist.
My point in all this is that, as a believer in creationism, has not blinded me scientifically, only motivated me and enhanced my desires to learn more.
Anon.
"They have not developed deep mathematical understanding of the forces control evolution."
Perhaps biologists did not develop it but the branch of maths you are looking for is called statistics. I don't belive that sophisticated maths is a requirement of every theory but it certainly backs most of them up, including evolution.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Wait a minute you were educated at cambrige, oxford, or london and you never were told that juniors and seniors are so because they share a name?
... "At my [insert prestegious school] I learned that [insert populist group] is stupid. I learned that we who go to [prestegious school] are much more intelligent than [people who didn't go to prestegious school] and we should be making decisions for the poor ignorant proletariat"
George H. W. Bush != George W. Bush though they are similar in 3 names.
Scholar fundamentalism is just as reactionary and dangerous as theological fundamentalism. The fact that you are so quick to lump so many christians into the same bin as islamic fundies speaks volumes.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This sort of appalling misuse of copyright to advance ideology is another reason why standards should not be subject to restrictive copyright licensing.
It sounds like a standards body is not authorizing redistribution by organizations that are in bad faith attempting to subvert or ignore parts of the standard. If God had bothered to copyright the bible he could send cease and desist letters to the Devil for quoting scripture at him, fair use or no, et cetera.
I mostly agree it would be nice if there were some good standards and curricula and textbooks under some-rights-reserved CC licenses, and it would be hilarious if this event provided the impetus to actually create them.
This argument has been debunked so many time it ain't funny.
First if you think we find many fossile , think again : There was billion and billion of creature dying over the course of million of year. But fossilisation is a so lucky process that we do not find even 0.0000001% of the specimen which dyed during that time period. So what the hell make you think we would find every specy neatly fossilised ? Why some specy due to their living environnement would not simply never be found ?
Second each time a "gap" between fossile 1 and 2 with fossile 1.5 is filled, the creationist* just say "but what is the gap between fossile 1 and 1.5 , and between 1.5 and 2 ? Creationist will NEVER be statisfied as the only satisfying things would be a CONTINUOUS record of specy but this won't happen due to argument 1 (rate of fossilisation).
Finally there is ALREADY many example of transitional form : lizard->byrd, fish->lizard, lizard->whale , preman->man, prehorse->horse and many other Iforgot, those have fossile a plenty, have been studied, and accepted as transitional form. Sigh.
(*) yeah I call ID'er creationism, to see why see argument about recursive designer in wiki
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
>If someone figures out how to reverse entropy without increasing it somewhere else, please share it with the world.
What pamphlet did you get that from. Entropy increases overall... local variations are permitted. Applying physical laws operating on atoms to systems as complex as living beings is extremely problematic and far beyond any computer available today or in the foreseeable future. Evolution is the GUT of life science, without it Biology makes no sense and its impossible to make the jump from chemistry to biology.
I assume you got that quote from a creationist website rather than from Darwin himself, because if you got it from Darwin you would have known the context - Chapter 6 in Origin of the Species is "Difficulties on Theory" and is dedicated to addressing any preliminary difficulties the reader may have thought up while reading chapers 1 to 5.
It starts out
"Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader"
At which point he lists difficulties the reader may have thought of - one being that bit you quoted out of context, and he then proceeds to directly address those perceived difficulties.
Transitional forms are everywhere, not only in the fossile record, but in your backyard garden.
From chapter 2
"That varieties of this doubtful nature are far from uncommon cannot be disputed. Compare the several floras of Great Britain, of France, or of the United States, drawn up by different botanists, and see what a surprising number of forms have been ranked by one botanist as good species, and by another as mere variety"
Basically, because of all the transitional forms out there, there is no objective way to determine what is a species and what is a variety (for example that stuff you were taught in high school about viable offspring isn't always applicable, and even when it is applicable it doesn't always work). Of course, if life were a continual flow of often divergent change as suggested by evolution, it suddenly makes sense that attempts to box it up into artificial pigeonholes labelled "species" just don't work.
But back to bones:
The missing link is a popular and not a scientific concept
The number of transitional forms dug out of the ground is pretty much as expected, there's nothing suspicious about it.
But lets say you have two fossils, lets call them Betty-sue and Jim-bob, and you claim the skeletal evidence suggests Betty-sue decended from Jim-bob, but critics claim you have a missing link. So you go out and find the missing link, lets call it Mary-kate, now you're in a pickle because now your critics claim you have 2 missing links - one between Betty-sue and Mary-kate, and one between Mary-kate and Jim-bob. It's a trick you can't beat no matter how many intermediate forms you find.
I know that it's rude and intolerant of me to say this but--I really don't care.
I mean--I *really* don't care. If you could turn my *not* caring about this into a fuel, it would power a starship for a journey from here to Mars and back again. That is how much I don't care.
But I will click on the link and edu-ma-cate myself anyway because it's knowledge, and knowledge is good.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I've seen science philosophized into atheism in pop-science, yes.
... Only, I doubt that you can.
But I've also seen quite a few textbooks and there has been nothing like that in any of them. I have also seen this accusation before--and I've witnessed the lack of supporting evidence for it.
Feel free to make this iteration different by offering a specific offending textbook. If you can find one that really does this, I'll oppose it with you.
a left over piece of digestive system no longer used, a spine suited to quadripeds, legs suited to quadripeds, what appear to be the remains of legs in the belly of a whale. Sure does fit evolutionary theory nicely don't you think?
It could be like software reuse. God could of have just grabbed what was around to quickly hack something up. Since there are not a lot of bipeds, either he would have to start from scratch or hack around with quadriped designs for bipeds.
I don't personally beleive that, but sloppy copy-and-paste reuse does match what we find in human engineering and software shops, and often there is a kind of evolutionary-like tree of the first set of pasties and the later ones. One sees the trail of the first bad set and the later improved set as they are repasted during different eras and different projects. It is copy-and-paste archeology.
Table-ized A.I.
How it was explained to me was that think of it as water being able to be in the state of ice, liquid, and gas.
Of course that is one of the great "mysteries" of the faith but it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I think people spend too much time thinking about the specifics, and ithis is the part where science DOESNT help to understand anything.
Libertas in infinitum
The discussion about wheather ID is or not scientific has been done a lot of times and it is clear that it is NOT at all and it is NOT provable NOR testable...
Would there be any value in trying to find out why the heck people believe it? I my opinion it simply ignorance.
Most of the people that believe in ID surely think that dinosaurs existed 4000 years ago (yeah right, and there's even a book on that somewhere...). On the other hand they take The Genesis as a historical fact book whereas it was really the last book written by the hebrews aroung 500 B.C. as a compendium of stories made to teach people what God's intent was, and all of its content has been traced back, from Noha's ark (actually a mesopotamian merchant with a big floating house who drifted to the sea for 7 days), to Abraham.
These people are simply ignorant. That is the real and only fact, and like they say, "God made them, and they gather", only an ignorant can follow another ignorant.
Wake up!
UgaBuga!
They're using copyright as a stick to silence people who disagree with them. It's wrong when the Scientologists do it, and its wrong here too.
Whilst you are correct about the case that God could very well have used evolution its irrelevant to the whole ID thing.... First of all... most fundamentalist Churches believe that GOD LITERALLY WROTE the BIBLE. Now there are many debates on what that actually means and the mechanisms involved but for most fundamentalists it means that every word in the Bible is there because God wanted it there. Every word is literally the word of God. People who believe this need the bible to be literally true so if the bible says creation took 7 days - its gotta be 7 days. So the christians in this vein will fight to any change to their interpretation of the Bible. Of course its happened before and will happen again that Biblical interpretation changes (flat earth, sun orbiting the earth, god wants slavery, homosexuality a choice and ID) The less findamental christians are not so threatened. If they see the bible as having historical context - they are much more willing to accept the bible might use metaphors or apochryphal imagery that should not be taken literally. These people are not threatened by truth or science. These are NOT the people behind ID. The science side is simple. Its either science or its not. ID is not science and should not be taught as such. It maybe that God directed evolution. ID may even be true... Science doesnt contend that ID is NOT true. It merely says that it can never be proven and there is NO evidence to show that its true and as such is Faith based and should be taught as faith and not as science. For an atheist Faith based means superstition and they rank that with the cargo cults and so forth. Would you want me to teach ur Kids IN SICIENCE that they need to throw salt over their shoulders when they spill salt to ward of bad luck when you spill salt ? Its exactly the same thing. So - there two sides are VERY different ... one says only science should be taught in science classes... and they other says OUR interpretation of Christianity (which is not universal even in the USA let alone the first world or worldwide) should be taught in science classes.
The USAs approach to religion has - ironically - caused a move away from religion in almost ALL other first world countries...its CLEARLY documented that the merger of religion and politics is causing social problems which no one else wants> Also the USA is slipping in science achivenment compared to other countries....
This is how important these issues are...
I was wondering what all the fuss was about, so I recently purchased a book of Dembski's on Intelligent Design. It's fascinating to read, and is based in large part on number theory.
Reading through the various posts on this topic, I have yet to read one that appears to even really know the various arguments ID makes.
That's funny because I was wondering why Dembski's "mathematics" aren't addressed in the mainstream media either. Could it be that it's heady stuff, befitting a scientific mind with degrees in math, philosophy and theology--more the solid foundation the theory is based on, unnecessary to understand for most people? Like the solid foundations of genetics, geology and paleontology, whose details (mutation, stratigraphy, the molecular clock etc) aren't necessary for understanding the basics of evolution? And so easily ignored by their opponents?
Well you're in luck because in the latest issue of Skeptic, Mark Perakh takes Dembski's science to task, and finds it thoroughly lacking. I don't want to give away the ending so I'll quote from the introduction:
"Dembski's many degrees and scores of published books and papers cannot conceal, however, that he has never conducted real scientific research. Moreover, Dembski's literary production contains no real mathematics but instead a lot of philosophizing, often saturated with unnecessary mathematical symbolism. . . . In this article I shall concentrate on the most salient features of Dembski's prolific literary output, almost all of which turns out to be poorly substantiated, contradictory, and often self-aggrandizing."
Maybe that's why the tireless arguments of the mousetrap, the eye and the flagellum are endlessly repeated, and Dembski's work largely ignored, or unpromoted: because Dembski's work simply won't hold up. Maybe not. But it's worth noting what Perakh goes on to say:
"Dembski is selective in deciding which critique to respond to and which to ignore. For example, his (mis)use of the No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems . . . was subjected to a strong critique by Wein and Wolpert. In two lengthy rebuttals Dembski spared no effort to reply to Wein, but he never uttered a word in response to Wolpert. It is not hard to understand why. Wein, as Dembski stresses in his posts, has only a bachelor's degree in statistics. This irrelevant factoid, according to Dembski, makes Wein insufficiently qualified to dispute Dembski's work. . . . Dembski could not use such silly arguments against Wolpert, because Wolpert is a highly respected mathematician and a co-author of the very NFL theorems Dembski misuses."
Instead, the posts generally just rant about creationism. Intelligent posts would take the ID arguments and actually debate them one by one.
Perakh does that very thing. If you want to save US$5.95, you can find the whole article here: The Dream World of William Dembski's Creationism.
I read Slashdot for the articles.
I think you have been unfairly moderated down, as you raise valid questions, one of which hasn't yet been answered by the replies to your post.
To address the article you cite, the bit about Dr Wilder-Smith is too vague to comment on, except that since he was not qualified in anything relevent to biology, it's hardly surprising that nobody cared to listen to his [likely religious inspired] foray into the topic.
Professor Dean Kenyon is presented as teaching his personal conclusions as "basic biology" when they are actually far from peer-reviewed science. The university wants its basic biology lectures to stick to what has been established. If Prof Kenyon's work and conclusions are correct, he can establish to the scientific comunity the impossibility for life to evolve naturalistically, then his conclusions will be taught in basic biology.
The rest is a list of one sentence accounts far too vague to address properly, but I'll have a shot.
There are a number of problems with people who accept creationism over evolution.
Firstly, since the evidence for evolution is rather overwhelming, you have to wonder if the person was paying attention in class, but if they can pass the tests then this is IMHO not a valid criticism of them
Secondly, accepting creationism over evolution because of faith rather than because of reason indicates the person either places little value or has little ability in reason or scientific thinking, to many people this lack of value or lack of ability signals a non-scientific mind unsuited to a placement that requires scientific thinking. This is not to be confused with people who disagree with evolution due to reason (Prof Kenyon sounds like he might be an example). The working assumption of natural causes (whether this assumption right or wrong) is foundational for science, and if you don't assume it in your work then your work isn't scientific, even if that assumption means science will always fail to figure out some things. Would you employ an AIDS researcher if you found out they believed the disease was divine retribution for homesexuals - their non-scientific belief conveys a mind unsuited to the job.
The quotes are likely out of context though.
The teachers who were fired were likely fired because they insisted on teaching religion in public schools which is against the constituation, or insisted on teaching non ciriculum material, both of which can get you fired without involving evolution or creationism.
Anyone debating evolution without a thorough grounding in it is rightfully going to be ignored with all the other fundamentalists, even if they have good academic credentials in some unreleated area (maths, physics etc)
One idea is to stop simply challenging (or promoting) ID's merits, and try to determine an argument that would make it testable and falsifiable ("scientific"). For instance, if the universe is a completely ordered system, then it should be devoid of any real entropy. No ordered system has yet been created mathematically that imposes anything which is beyond pseudo-randomness. Though similar to the "first cause" paradox of Aristotle, it is one example to get you thinking of something we can actually "test". As technology progresses we are bound to find new methods of testing old ideas. I am certain that there are those here that could think up much better examples to share.
So I'm preaching to the choir, in some respects, except that rather than preaching I'm really saying: we've failed, failed the American people and in some regard the world, for at least one entire generation. What are we going to do about it?
Holy war. We start by killing all the religious people. Those that are truly religous won't fight back, expecting their God to save their asses.
This is known as "Natural Selection".
The Missing link argument is rather like a version of Xenos paradox... not matter how many times you halv a distance - you never reach the destination.... This sort of fallacy or paradox underlies all the foundation arguments for ID.... You can only believe ID if you are uneducated or not very bright....
We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given that intra-species changes occur. This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution _isn't consistent with the scientific method_.
I admit that the rest of your post is useful and clarifying, but this section alone is reason to mod you flamebait.
We have uncovered many fossils that appear to form a chain (or rather, a forking tree) of evolution. Yes, there are "holes." There will always be holes. Whenever someone finds a species to plug a hole, two new, smaller holes appear. The fossil record will never be complete enough for us to view the entire metamorphisis in its entirity.
But it is most certainly possible, and in this case just being possible is good enough. Anyone who understands how computers work should recognize the cumulative power of many trillions of small changes. Given the proved existence of microevolution and the millions or billions of years that the earth has been around, it is not conjecture to say, then, that macroevolution occured. We don't understand exactly what happened when, but look at it this way: not knowing how or why there is a universal attraction of all matter does not immediately render Newton's and Einstein's ideas flawed. Macroevolution is not flawed because it is the ONLY plausible explanation for the existence of highly developed organisms unless, of course, we were all put here by another, even more highly developed being. But that is not science at all. It is not falsifiable, and it violates Occam's Razor in the worst possible way--it replaces a complex problem with an even more complex, perhaps unsolvable problem. Science generally is not in the business of making the universe less explicable.
We have evidence that inter-species mutations occured. This evidence is, quite simply, our existence. Given that there is no evidence that highly evolved species were present on earth hundreds of millions of years ago, given that we see many similar species in the fossil record apparently representing a macroevolutionary transformation, given that there's no way (magical beings/aliens excepted) that complex life could have been present immediately after the earth was formed, macroevolution is the ONLY explanation. You can whine and cry all you want about how you aren't impressed with the evidence, but when there is only one possible SCIENTIFIC explanation, then that explanation is presumed to be correct until someone comes up with something better.
There is much more evidence than you claim. The evidence is in information technology; it's in Dawkin's bug evolution simulation. The fact that there isn't enough to impress you is of absolutely no importance. You don't like it? Ok then. Falsify it, or prove that it violates Occam's Razor by offering a simpler, more elegant explanation... one that does not create more problems than it solves. (And one that hasn't been thoroughly debunked, like so many of the examples of so-called irreducable complexity.)
Until then, your argument remains nothing more than one steaming pile of horseshit. You did a good job of polishing it, but it's still horseshit, and it is still NOT science. Science is not about asshats sitting around complaining about how they wish there was more evidence.
Mod parent down. You guys should be ashamed of yourselves for not calling his bluff much earlier.
I really despise it when people do that; suggest that the other person hasn't read "Einstein" or "Gould" or whomever you want to namedrop to make yourself look intelligent. It makes you look like an ass.
That doesn't mean you're wrong, just that you used an asshat technique to say so.
Perhaps I should qualify my own remarks by saying that the Mormon achievement in Utah is remarkable. But, as someone who studied sociology of religion, I see Mormonism itself as a unifying system intended to give a sense of social coherence to people from disparate backgrounds. The parallels with the origins of Islam are striking, so much so that students of such things classify both Islam and Mormonism as schisms of Christianity, though I'm not competent to comment on that.
I won't be around in a thousand years time to see if Mormonism has resulted in the explosion of achievement in science, architecture and civilisation that followed the establishment of Islam, but I do think the recently reported fact that Mormons no longer constitute a majority in Salt Lake City is a dead giveaway.
And in answer to your last question - I am not an atheist. However, I do not believe in any kind of afterlife, and I can point to this position being supported at many points in the Bible. I won't bore you with my own theological beliefs, but whether or not you believe in a Creator God the idea that God would create the entire universe just as a kind of juvenile training system for a part of the human race to go on to another, invisible universe for which there is no objective evidence whatsoever - well, it's not worth spending time on. However, people who do believe it are extremely dangerous because they have no vested interest in preserving our planet. I would rather be governed by atheists who believe that this is what we have and therefore we need to look after it, than by people who think that if WW3 happens tomorrow, they will be sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
Pining for the fjords
Hi Ashton, Room.
The problem with ID is that it demands a suspension of logic, at a given point in the past, based on no reason whatsoever other than a thought that exists in an arbitrary person's head. That simply is not the basis for Science.
o For you, Ashton, I assume it is a Christian belief structure of some sort that calls for logic to suspend itself somewhere between 6,000 years ago and the full observable age of life on Earth (let's call it 4 billion years, just to be generous).
- You don't sound like a Literalist, but if you were you would be able to support the idea that the laws of physics we observe today could have been in place for up to those six thousand years, but you could not support the idea that the laws of physics were in place 10,000 years ago.
- Similarly, you would not be capable of sustaining the idea that any object was more than 6,000 years old (early human artifacts, cave paintings and such would require explanations that defy the laws of physics, geology becomes almost imponderable).
- Even as on Open-minded Christian ID Supporter, you would have to believe that the laws of physics did not apply prior to four billion years ago, since the suspension of logic that allows for Intelligent Design would have to take place after the formation of the Earth, thence at least 8 billion years after the creation of the universe (or the universe was created four billion years ago but it *looked* eight billion years old at the time...).
Specific logic prlbmes with ID:
o To deal with ID fairly and honestly you would have to be able to interchange any conceivable relgious belief-set in the place of the Assumed Christianity that goes with ID.
- Established usual suspects: each branch of Christianity; Judiasm; Islam (all three pretty similar, Adam/Eve etc...); Budhism; Hinduism...
- Smaller organized beliefs (i.e. Moonies) down to four-person Cults...
- And from the "Disagreement Does Not Indicate Anyone Is Correct" Dept: Any belief system that could be dreamed up.
- While we are on the topic: if there are any non-Christian supporters of ID out there please speak up, I'd be interested to hear your views.
Any ID argument that would support Supernatural Happenings requiring the suspension of the laws of physics two thousand (or four billion) years ago would also support the Universe being created five minutes ago with this post half-written and all of our memories of a non-existant-pre-five-minutes-ago past already in place in our heads. There is just as much a complete absense of evidence to suggest that the Universe is five minutes old as there is that the Serengeti Plain was populated late one afternoon about tea-time.
To believe ID, you have to be able to imagine that at a point in the past you would have been able to observe large, hairy mammals literally popping into existence out of thin air. If you had stoon on a hillside you could have actually witnessed trees snapping into reality, or at least witness a seedling sprouting from a piece of ground where you had just personally established there was nothing but sand with no biological soil components, not even seeds. This seems to be at least several factors less likely than the idea that rabbits used to be the end result of the flowering of a shrub.
The fact that there is no reason to believe any of these things other than (mutually-exclusive) strings of words should be enough to make it clear that this is not a topic that fits within any definition of Science.
Good luck working out your belief structures, Ashton et al (seriously, I hope it all works out for you), but there remains no logic to teaching ID to my kids in school Science class, and the ability to think logically is what they need to learn there. -cheers!
-chris
Chris Blask chis@blask.org blaskworks.blogspot.com
It is interesting how much of science has been influenced and motivated by people's philosophical and religious beliefs. Kepler, who basically nailed down the laws of planetary motion in the 16th century, formulated his theory because he was intent on proving a heliocentric universe to support his neo-Platonic views. Was this pseudoscience because he was working toward a specific goal, even though he turned out to be right (more or less)? "Pseudoscience" is a word used by people who don't want to actually think about the claims another group is making. Instead of saying, "Gee, these people actually have a point, even if they have a pre-determined goal they are trying to prove." It would be like saying, "Because Kepler was trying to support his philosophical leanings, we have to throw out everything we have learned about planetary motion thanks to him." Ridiculous...
1.) Create Earth
2.) See that it is good
3.) Create life using evolution
4.) Laugh your ass off watching the humans argue over whether you created them or they came into being through evolution
5.) ?????
6.) Profit!
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I suggest you move to europe. Here we have much better copyright laws. Our Copyrights canot interfere with the usage of copyrighted work, they only control who spreads the work.
the standard whale evolutionary path has been discredited, by evolutionists. Just like the evolution of horses.
And how do you suppose the intermediate forms of things like dino/birds work? Things like the lungs are too different to have viable intermediaries.
A great word - lets look at a few things, and make you cower under the table when you realise how little of a foothold you have in reality and science. I pray that you have some expensive and hard earned certificates, diplomas or PhD to hold on to, or to help clean yourself with afterwards.
Lets define what theories we are talking about. The first is Evolution, capital E, that is the theory every 'scientist' on slashdot or otherwise pushes as:
Yet, when asked for this theory, they show you evolution, little e. It depends on the conclusions you draw from this theory. Now that is established, the second theory is 'intelligent design' (which I do not condone - but as an open minded person I have to kneecap you for your ignorance anyway).
I am not going to artificially demarcate either theory based on our limited knowledge, but this exercise in logic should expose you for the charlatan that you are.
Theory 1: You claim this is a falsifiable theory, but on what grounds? Falsifiable means something else is provable that is mutually exclusive. I.e. you can find something that is true that will show this to be false. It may be the same thing. Read some Doyle.
Theory 2: On what grounds do you state this is not falsifiable or testable? Based on our existing knowledge and ability to measure things? You are blinkered, and thus unscientific. Are you yourself clouded by religion?
Macro-evolution is [...] a testable and falsifiable theory.
[...] ID on the other hand is neither testable nor falsifiable
I would love to know explicitly why theory 1 is testable, why theory 1 is falsifiable, why theory 2 is not testable and why theory 2 is not falsifiable.
By what grounds to you measure if macroevolution is testable or falsifiable? You simply state that it is. And why is ID neither testable nor falsifiable? You again, just state this. If you use our current understanding and means as a basis for your response, then you are incorrect. The theory that the world is round would be valid if someone knew how to test it or not.
Based on evidence that we see, both theories exist. Based on the evidence people saw, as ships disappeared in the distance, the theory was valid - and was certainly not testable or falsifiable by the means until someone discovered the means to do this.
Was this when man first went into space? What do we accept as proof? Mathematics, a concept that we are so comfortable with? Our measurements, our own eyes or judgment?
For you to call one un-testable, and not the other, is very closed-minded. It is very likely that Evolution can never be falsified in human terms - if not a fact that it cannot be falsified, or proven, or tested.
I am sure evidence can be interpreted to point that way. If it is true or not, it is highly likely that this is the case. And if you cannot admit that, that is strike two for you.
I am able to say that Evolution may never be falsifiable or testable, even under the pretence that is may be fact. I am also able to state that we may indeed test and prove or falsify it in the future. However, you do not posses the acumen to do the same? For either theory?
You are ignoring a large hole in a theory, you are ignoring the words of the grandparent post, ejecting the idea of micro and macro evolution so you can just open your mouth, say something you are comfortable with, and hope nobody has the time to show you what a whimpering coward of a mind you posses.
You attack another theory by the same grounds by which you ignore the faults in your own theory, one you like to call your own anyway.
You take a leap of faith by stating you believe that macro evolution took place, and, stone me for including the act of abiogenesis into the frame, because evolutionists love to talk long and wide about everything and anything, but they protect the boundaries
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Great subtle nudge at grandparent. Said all I said in about 2000 less words.
I have another theory called the widget theory, where aliens land in a Taiwanese (apologies for econo-typing) widget factory and regard them as dead fossils.
They start to charter the evolution between disparate and unrelated 'species' using 'genetic' variables such as number of sides, colours, materials, spigots, gromits and twidly bits.
The idea is, any chaotic sequence can be classified ad infinitum. Any random collection of organisms sharing the basic building blocks of like can be categorized like a periodic table, and made to look like evolution took place.
You take all the elements that we know of... jiggle them around, and suddenly relationships form.
Yet we are pretty sure elements didn't evolve through natural selection... Hang on how did elements come about?
Oh no, grandparent is an evolutionist; he takes great pride in not having to deal with inconsistencies like the building block of existence and reality.
As long as he doesn't have to explain how the rock came about, or how the rock became a fish, or how the fish became a monkey, he can just point at monkeys and humans, and go 'look, gotta be right ain't it, I mean, we taught this one sign language! innit?'.
Welcome to the world of comfortable science. If science makes you uncomfortable, just act like the Catholic Church, or an angst-ridden king, and behead opponents with litigation, or burn them at the stake with the ACLU, civil liberties for everyone [who agrees with us, and is not some crazy Christian type!].
ACLU: Anti-Christian Litigation Union
Welcome to the freedom to express your views and beliefs, and a freedom to hear and read about others.
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There is a ton of examples of speciation, and there are good explanations for numerous forms of this happening.
"Ring species" are the most glaring example: These happen where there's creatures that breed a bit left and right in a ring around an unsuitable habitat (often east-west around the entire world). At one end, there will be two "species" of birds (non-interbreeding populations), yet these are genetically connected through the ring. If the "middle" of the ring died (the other side of the earth), the genetic connection would disappear and they would be two species.
Ring species have often initially been classified as two species, BTW, as the populations were not interbreeding.
Examples: Salamanders, greenish warblers.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
How about living "half-mutated", quarter-mutated, full-mutated, etc species?
Look up "ring species". Here is a place to start.
Decent books on evolution will cover these among other forms of specication. We have plenty of evidence in various forms. You may also want to learn about "punctuated equilibrium" (note that the contententiousness of this doctrine is if the mainstream has always believed it or it was introduced by Stephen Jay Gould - SJG believed he created it, the mainstream says this has been mainstream since Darwin, using quotes), and various other aspects of specication and mutation/selection around it. There's examples of increased visual differentiation for hybridizable subspecies (as predicted: hybridization will, when the genepools are distinct enough, be worse than either parent), and there's examples of genetically almost identical groups that don't interbreed, considered species "in the process of happening".
We don't need the fossil record to show specication: We can show all the various stages existing today.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
With evolution, biology makes no sense. Let's see you make the necessary amino acids, put them together in the necessary order to make DNA, create an environment that keeps them from degrading and then somehow they become more complex molecules.
If you have not noticed, entropy takes more complex items and turns them into simplier, lower energy state things. There are no local variations without someone doing work to reverse entropy, but in the end, entropy increases.
Science has yet to see a single-cell organism suddenly become a multicell organism and evolve. You can take a bacteria and turn it into many bacteria, but no one has taken bacteria and turned it into a form of life where both cells require each other support themselves.
My pamphlet, a PhD in Chemical Engineering.
Let's talk about your computer. Did it evolve by itself? Or did someone have to create it? DNA by it's nature requires the amino acid chains to be in a certain order. You can't simply put it together. The odds of evolving the right order are astronomical. In one book I have read written by 50 biologists, scientists, mathmaticians, it's improbable.
Get your Kicks on Route 66
I am not sure who are the greatest "bullshiters" - the people in white coats who suck off $300,000 tax funded grants - or the people running the largest corporations in the world - the Christain Church of one brand or another. In one case 60 billion dollars has gone to people in white coats, over a 25 year period - who are trying to discover a cure for so-called HIV=AIDS. No cure yet! In the other case, various people running various churches living lifestyles tht would embarass any corporate CEO sitting in jail now. Ar least the CEOs sitting jail - didn't organize the largest pedophile organization in the world - of course sustained by the biggest corporation in the world - the Catholic Church.
Big stinking deal, They're still fruit flies. Whenever did a fruit fly become another animal like a dog or a cat? Micro just means small single or few genetic mutations. Examples: variations in hair color or bands on a fruit fly. Think, "after their own kind." Macro would possibly mean huge chromosonal changes. Here's where you would see a species change. You don't see those. Adding or removing a chromosomes would result in catastrophic failure unless such a change was carefully designed. Such a change has never been observed nor tested nor proven.
I'll try to find something for you, but I don't really have any of my old college textbooks lying around! I'm pretty sure at least these kind of statements were only in the introduction or concluding chapters, and are probably just an unintentional outpouring of the writer's passion. Also, I bet a lot of times it had more to do with how a teacher would present the information, rather than the information itself.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I don't mean to insult here, but your reasoning here indicates that you have a rather stilted, idealized view on the "scientific method" rather than a grasp of how science really takes place. Unfortunately, that view of science is supported by much of the teaching about science in American K-12 education, even by HS science teachers.
You are implying that the first scientist made his prediciton based unpon some a priori understanding of the phenomenon -- that there was some logical truth within the cause that determines the only possible outcomes of the event in question and so predetermines the effect. No prior observation was required with which to base a prediction upon. Science is based upon empirical data. Scientific knowledge is a posteriori, it requires experience to determine what is true and what is false.
All scientific prediction is based upon observing nature, looking for relationships and correlations, then trying to provide a more generalized explanation of how these things come to be. If and only if that explanation is consistent with what has been previously observed, then it can be reasonably used to predict future outcomes of related phenomenon.
In a sense, you are putting the cart before the horse. Your "first" scientist, if he is trying to make a scientific prediction, would require knowledge based upon your "second" scientist's work before he could do what you suggest. When Isaac Newton said "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," he didn't just mean that great men have come before him, but that he could not have done his work without being based upon the work of previous scientists.
Even the work of the most theoretical physicists is consistent with this process. On the surface, it might appear that their work is based purely on the mathematical equations of their field and thus they have access to some a priori understanding of the world. Those equations, however, come from observations of the known world -- they have empirical foundations which allow for scientific predictions. Furthermore, such predictions do not become accepted as explanations until experimentation can demonstrate that they are the most likely explanations of a phenomenon.
Intelligent Design is not scientific because it relies ultimately upon an appeal to authority as its justification. The universe exists because God said so, figuratively and literally. Such appeals to authority completely undermine any claim of any empirical basis to a theory, and by definition that theory cannot be scientific. The fact that some way of knowing the world is not scientific does not make that way of knowing bad (or good), it makes it non-scientific. Trying to pass off such a "theory" as "scientific truth" is what makes it bad -- bad science, bad reasoning, bad information. In fact, if ID was able to be substantiated as "scientific", then it would be required to cast off any connections to God as the ultimate source of truth. You would have to abandon your faith to verify your faith. Is that truly what supporters of ID want?
If supporters of ID are pushing their view as scientific "truth", they further demonstrate their misunderstanding of the nature of science. Scientific work does not prove the truth of anything. Science is based upon the falsification of claims, not their indisputable acceptance as Truth. As has been argued by many people on this thread and elsewhere, an appeal to an ultimate authority is inherently non-falsifiable. Evolution isn't science "because Da
My pamphlet, a PhD in Chemical Engineering.
You should have stayed for his whole lecture instead of falling asleep after the first few seconds of the "second law of thermodynamics" lecture. Learn what you missed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
Entropy describes the amount of randomness in a system, and basically just shows that reactions which increase entropy are not reversible - it's possible to increase entropy but not decrease it. The concept of Entropy does not mean that everything is slowly degrading. It just shows that *some* degredations can't be undone. While it may be related to things like the conversion of food to energy, or the consumption of food energy during body processes, that's the only way entropy relates to biology. DNA struture complexity has nothing to do with energy input, though for someone who beleieves that accepts an ever-increasing level of randomness it shoudl be reasonable to assume that it could well have been randomly created.
As far as scientists never observing evolution, what about the bacteria which, due to a frame-shift mutation, suddenly developed an inefficient but previously non-existant ability to digest Nylon (a synthetic substance invented in 1935)? The enzyme is only about 2% as effective as the previous carbohydrate digesting enzyme, and has been observed to occur through mutation several times, despite fairly large odds against it. One would think that, if an intelligent designer was planning for bacteria to eat nylon, this designer would have done a little more than a bit shift to make these things. I mean, is the designer just so lazy that a marginally adequate solution is all that's needed?
I meant my old high school textbooks.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I was brought up in a Jesuit boarding school. In one of the philosophy/theology classes my teacher put it like this:
"Imagine God is a pool player. Instead of taking one shot at a time, He does it His way. One shot - period. The cue hits the pack, a red goes down, the cue ball bounces back and hits the next red, which also goes down etc etc. Finally the cue ball pots the black and comes to rest at it's starting point (God has Style). Game over - one shot."
If these creationist guys really believe in an all-powerful God, why do they think He has to do anything in a way their pitiful minds can comprehend? Are they saying that God *isn't* all powerful?
I'm a scientist and I subscribe to Newton's view that learning about the Universe is to "Better know the mind of God".
So what precisely do you find bigoted about my comments? Please quote the passage precisely.
And do you not find it hypocritical that someone who accuses me of hatred should make comments so seething with vitriol?
"(I have been looking, I honestly do want to know the holes the in theory)" If you're serious Mr Cookie - check this out. This book has really opened my eyes - "The Case For A Creator - Lee Strobel" - very affordable as well - AU$5. Brief run down - the author's wife got religion. He wasn't too impressed - being an atheist a journalist & a lawyer - he set out to prove her wrong. Seems many, many upper echelon scientists are silent (even embarrased) when asked if they support evolution. Very few world class scientists find evolution plausible & those that do are pulling all sorts of outlandish ideas out of here hats to keep evolution's place at the table of respected science. I don't know what the ID'ers are pushing in the U.S and I don't have an opinion, but when I was willing to expand my view from simple High School science level understanding, the scenery got a whole lot better. cya
Bitterness is downing the poison pill yourself whilst hoping the offending party will suffer & die !!
I almost hate to do this, but I'll try. After reading through many of the posts, I see the same idea running through many of them. The basic idea is that Christians are against science because (somehow) science invalidates God/the Bible/everything we believe in. I could point to my technical background in computer science, 20 years or industry experience, blah blah blah, to point out that I believe in scientific principles. That is, I do not pray that a bug will fix itself, I used my mind to try to figure out what it wrong (however, I often pray for strength not to hurt the manager who says, "So, can we shrink that 3 month project to 1 week?") But, I digress...
The main idea for (some/most/many) Chrisitians is that science is a process by which we study God's world. We study it to understand it and to be amazed/awed/inspired by the wonders of it. And this is the historical rational behind why many people of science also happened to be Christians. If you look at the biographies of people like Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Keppler (there may be more, but I have personally read the ones just mentioned), you would see that their faith (i.e., Christianity) led them to pursue science.
And, I do not think that I am incorrect in stating that their faith actually helped improve their science. Permit me to mention a few stories:
Pasteur: as I understand it, one of the prevailing theories at the time was spontaneous generation. That is, the idea that life just "appeared." This was not an evolution issue, but was related to the question of why bacteria/maggots/other small animals "magically" appeared in certain uncovered substances (e.g., rotting flesh). According to the biography I read, Pasteur believed, because of his religious background, that God was the sole creator of all life and that these small animals could not just appear out of nowhere. So, he created a series of interesting experiments (involving curved neck beakers, etc.) to demonstrate that this was the case. And his work led to the whole notion of germ theory or at least provided the evidence(I think that last sentence is correct, but I would have to reread the biography).
Keppler: According to the biography, Kepler was dissatisfied with Ptolemy's model of the solar system and planetary orbits. Kepler was convinced that God would not have designed such an overcomplicated (and inaccurate) model as Ptolemy had (I think that Ptolemy used a complex combination of circles to predict planetary orbits). In one of his first steps, he decided to use Copernicus' model which posited that the sun was the center of the universe instead of the earth.
At this point, let the flaming begin about how those Christians (more specifically, the Roman Catholic Church at this time) made it dogma that the Earth wa the center of universe, not the sun. But this just points out a basic belief of Christians: men are fallible, but God is not. There are many sordid examples of Christians using the Bible to support their own preferences, but that is the nature of sin. Not to excuse, but similar things have happened in the name of science (e.g., Hitler's use of the prinicple of positive eugenics). As we see with Kepler (and with Christian-backed slavery), some Chrisitans will adhere to God's word and the truth will win out. Anyway...
Kepler pursued his theory and eventually created a mathetical model which he published in a book, The Comsic Mystery. In the book, he wrote the following song of praise:
Thus God himself
Was too kind to remain idle.
And began to play the game of signatures,
Signing his likeness into the world.
To make a long story short, he had a difficult time getting it publish because of the Copernicus issue (as you would expect, but God never said life was easy), but eventually did. It was still an inaccurate model because it was based on faulty observational data (which Keppler knew). Later, he was given much more accurate data by Tyco Brahe and later went on to write The New Astronony, and Harm
In other words, seeking divine explanations is pretty well by definition not science.
However, as you point out, it is perfectly possible for religious people to do science - that is, to seek naturalistic causes - without sacrificing their faith. I never said they couldn't. To claim that I did is indeed a straw man.
It may not be flamebait but it's certainly idiotic and as a result you are going on my foes list.
First, let's go over the concept of a "lie". A lie is when you state something you believe is false. (That's something you'll learn in college.) I quite reasonably, based on the grade of your posts, thought you had not yet completed college. I then stated that you had not. Since I was stating what I believed, it was not a lie. I'm still not even sure it's false. I don't know how someone could believe he "caught" someone in a compromising position for making an argument that one other person has made or using a citation that another person has used, yet have also gone to college. (That says a lot about declining standards.) I don't even know how you got modded up for finding that someone else cited the same passage! New concept, kid: when a prominent individual says something stupid, *it tends to get cited more than once*. According to you and only you, when I want to cite the passage, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times", I can't just say it's from A Tale of Two Cities. I must also google that passage and then cite everyone else who has also ... forget it, I can't believe I'm even dignifying this point even further.
...I've shown where the "expert" who's book you referenced made a very basic mistake with regards to what Darwin said. Again, Darwin spoke of species, not individuals.
I see it and I agree that it is NOT part of evolutionary theory. Evolution deals with species, not individuals.
So you STILL refuse to accept the most BASIC concept of evolution.
But your refusal to accept the facts does not change them. Darwin spoke of species, not individuals.
And I agree with you on this point (100th time): yes, evolution speaks of species, not individuals. My point (which has again eluded you) is apparently, a much more prominent evolutionist than you, believes otherwise. Your problem is with him, not me. I'm not going to defend a statement I don't agree with, which is what you apparently want me to do.
And the whole discussion has been about ID and evolution. So your claims that I "moved the goal posts" is just another lie from you.
Ah, now the baby talk: the whole discussion is "about" ID and evolution, ergo, you can bring up whatever you feel like. Again, extend your attention span allllllllllllll the way to where I entered the discussion of the article. Do you think you can do that? I think you can. I really do. There, I made the specific claim that evolution - as is claimed of ID - makes no predictions except ones that are some combination of trivial, non-falsifiable, or falsified. That's all I came in here to establish. If you want to bring up other topics so you can defend a more defensible position, hey, good for you. But don't pretend it refutes anything I've said. If you want to refute someone's arguments, you can't just bring up superficially similar arguments and refute them. I am not claiming ID is correct. I am not claiming ID is science. I'm not claiming the history specified by proponenets of evolution is false. I entered this thread merely to object to the claim that evolutionary theory makes non-trivial, falsifiable, unfalsified claims. That's it. If you want to address what I've said, address that specific claim. Don't bring the debate to your "comfort zone."
Oh, what's this? It looks like your very first attempt to say something relevant:
Evolution has, accurately, predicted every discovery in the science of Biology since it was first stated. Just because you don't want to believe that does not alter that fact.
Really? No prediction based on evolutionary theory has ever been falsified? You sure you don't want to take back this claim before I school you again?
Interesting, by the way, that it took you >5 posts to say something relevant to the point I brought up on coming into the thread.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
The statement "All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is indeed nonfalsifiable. It's too general. What is a "basic DNA building block". Does it refer to the GATC bases? Does it refer to substructures of the bases? Does it refer to the elements making them up? Does it refer to just the GA bases?
Obviously, obviously, if you narrow it down to "every species will have this specific kind of DNA, and it will always have GATC as the largest common unit to all of them", that is falsifiable. But when people try to talk about the "same basic building blocks", they inevitably set an arbitrary threshold for similarity. That is what I was claiming is non-falsifiable. No matter how unique a species I find, you can always retreat back a cite a more fundamental unit common to them all. That is why it is non-falsifiable.
I can't believe I even had to explain that.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
By now it is all to obvious that you know nothing about the theory of evolution that you haven't read on such "Intelligent Design" sites.
You continually try to "support" your position by claiming that other people say that evolution is about individuals.
I've destroyed that so many times it isn't even funny anymore.
You're wrong. You're a liar and this conversation
is
over.
So, let's go over what you tried this time:
-You didn't dispute my explanation of what it means to "lie" but rather just re-asserted your previous (refuted) position.
-You again ignore that I am only trying to establish the errors of prominent evolution proponents that everyone points to, and that there are no non-trivial falsifiable unfalsified predictions of evolutionary theory.
Is that it? Yes, that looks like it's all you did this time. I'll accept this as your face-saving concession. When you want to come back address my actual position (and stop dishonoring whatever diploma mill gave you your BS by revealing inexcusable rhetorical practices), I'll be ready.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
When just about every culture has a creation myth, doesn't that mean that evidence that supports a supreme creator's existence might be worth exploring?
Sure. So what's your hypothesis? I'm having a hard time coming up with an explanation for the commonality in creation myths that assumes a common starting point and is not contradicted by the current body of commonly accepted science. You would basically have to look beyond the physical world, but then that takes you outside what can currently be observed, which means that science isn't really an option right now.
We could look at it differently and remove the need for a common creation/creator upon which the various myths are based. Without that, you would need a hypothesis that explains why so many vastly different cultures have creation myths. Perhaps we can get evolution in here and show that a creation myth is a key survival quality of a society or the symptom of such a quality, like the desire to understand ourselves and our connection to the world we live in (which just happens to be the core of science). This could have some interesting findings about the value of science in a society.
How do I put this politely? I can't just say this is total crap, can I?
Ah, the heck with it. This is crap.
EVERY bit of evidence we have is consistent with the FACT that inter-species changes occur regularly and naturally over geological time. And not always over geological time--see the current Bird Flu virus for a very current contemporary example of a real-time species change (switching vectors from Birds to Humans is a change on par with the change between a salamander and a lizard--just happening on a smaller scale).
Enormous segments of DNA sequences--far too large to occur by chance--are shared by organisms as diverse as humans and Planarians, pointing to a distant, but still influential common ancestor. Completely different organs, with utterly separate functions, still use the same basic parts (example gill arch in Fish is to jawbone in Reptiles is to Hammer and Stirrup inner ear in Mammals). Why would any intelligent DESIGNER waste so much time using the same parts? Lack of imagination? Separated species, traced back to a likely common ancestor, show the proportionate change expected by normal random mutation of the mitochondrial DNA. Darwin didn't even know about DNA, much less mitochondrial DNA, but the damn stuff works just the way Darwin's Evolution predicts. Now there's an amazing coincidence for you, if ID really does mean anything.
Everything we can discover about the past and the evolution of species falls in line with the basic outlines of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. There are no exceptions to this rule. The only gray areas are the areas that are hard to investigate because of gaps in the fossil record, or due to the shortness of accurate and comprehensive human record keeping. Every time we fill in those gaps we find our new knowledge is consistent with Evolution.
Every. Damn. Time.
What IDers have so far failed to show is a single bit of positive evidence that what they are claiming--some mysterious designer who guides evolution or creates species out of mud--exists. Just because everything in the Cosmos can't be explained (yet) doesn't make hocus-pocus responsible for it.
ID is not about religion or truth. ID is about destroying the idea of actual truth, in favor of believing whatever makes an individual feel comfortable about themselves and their actions (Iraq had WMD, Men are supposed to boss women around, Global Warming is a myth, Jeebus will return before we run out of fossil fuel, Gawd meant for us to cut down the Rain Forests,
Ironically, I personally believe in a Higher Power. I feel it in my heart, and that is good enough for me. But I would never, ever, presume to say I can scientifically prove that my Higher Power exists. That's not what faith is about.
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
Archeopteryx has been proven a fraud!! It was frabricated!! Here is story about it!! http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf039/sf039p11.ht m
No one is this instance is being forced to remove their content. No one is being silenced.
A group who believes they are doing the right thing has VOLUNTARILY removed their curriculum, at no one's behest, under no threats of action.
Either learn what censorship is, or learn to deal with being called an ignoramus.
Simple test:
* move to the south
* spray for roaches
* wait a month
You now have roaches resistant to the spray used.
Evolution in action.
Antoher test:
* get lots of chickens
* infect them with bird flu
* handle the chickens daily
If evolution is false, then you will not get infected.
Simple verifiable/falsifiable tests anyone can perform.
Why is there a debate again?
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Any intelligent Intelligent Design theorist will readily admit that evolution does happen, but only on a small scale. They acknowledge that evolution happens, but they deny that evolution fully explains how each plant and animal got to its present form.
At least that's as much as I can gather from listening to right-wing-nut talk radio. C'mon. You gotta admit it's entertaining.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
The same dna existing in 2 different species demonstrates that the Creator is great at Cut and pasteing good material, nothing else. What programer/writer do you know that doesnt cut and paste good material.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
supported educational program is what irks many people including myself.
It attacks a fundamental right of Americans to be FREE FROM religions.
Is that not worth defending?
Before you say that ID is not religion, recall that many ID supporters used the same arguments with different terms in the past: "creation science", "creationism" which at least honestly declare the belief in a creator.
People who believe in the 'literal truth' of the bible have probably never read the bible or have a very low regard for logical consistency. The various books of the bible contain numerous inconsistency and sometimes contradictions. Isn't the most critical truth that Jesus has illuminated some transcendent truths about the human state of being? WHY do we have to project an imagined perfection on a compilation of translated writings about him and his god?
I believe most Christians don't insists on a literal interpretation. In fact, I recalled that many ministers used "The Life of Brian" to illustrated how different sects can fixate on minor details which actually obscured the critical truths. Perhaps the Kansis school board should view that movie again.
Ah yes, a random site that simply makes the claim that the fossil is a forgery. It should be noted, of course, that there are in fact 7 different specimens of Archaeopteryx, discovered at various different times in various places and in various degrees of intactness. We aren't talking about a single forged specimen but instead about 7 different independent forgeries that all happen to coincide almost exactly. That's a remarkable conspiracy you're claiming, and you have, let's be frank, absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back that up - the best you seem to be able to point to is a creationist who says "well it looks suspicious to me".
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Classic case of someone falling asleep in Chemistry. Please state which college.
Overall entropy increases in a CLOSED system. Earth itself is not a closed system, it receive energy from the sun that allows it to reduce entropy. The sun, on the other hand, increases in entropy.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
When you grow bateria on a Petri dish, you may start with 1 cell and end up with thousands in a colony. You might say that the bateria colony is now more complex. However, the entropy of the entire petri disk including the bateria had also increased. In other words, the lower entropy of the bateria is more than compensated by the higher entropy of the feed medium over the same period.
Entropy is no help to you. check out some of Ilya Prigogine's work.
If you want to look to DNAs, tell me why a designer would put so much repetitive junk genes in there? Why are we carting around genes which do nothing to enhance our life? What's the point of keeping a separate set of genes in the mitochondria? Why not centralize them?
The other thing to keep in mind, nature had tens of millions of year to brew the prebiotic soup until something replicates. Once it replicates, it'll take off exponentially. When you flip a coin a hundred million times, the chance of it falling on it edge exactly is no longer infinitesimal, but quite thinkable.
Ever heard of the universe? Is it a closed system?
You lost it right there.
Yeah, right...
I never said "all" of /. is against copyrights. However, if you're going to pretend that the vast majority of /. isn't . . . [yada yada yada]
Your rather provocative post heavily implies the "all" of slashdot; I didn't just pull that out of my ass. Speaking of pulling things out of one's ass, let's talk about "vast majority". Or wait, let's not talk about it. Let's talk about slashdot get rich schemes:
1) Post something trollish in hopes of getting a response
2) Get response
3) ????
4) Profit!! (Or write an excruciatingly boring lengthy reply, as you seem to have done.)
Sorry, I don't have time to read your book length "well thought out response". Try to rhetorically mug someone else. When I come across tactics such as yours, I've come to realize that I'm in the presence of a bore, and it really doesn't matter what I say, you're going to continue with your little debate. I avoid your type at cocktail parties.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
As a matter of fact, I've been pushing for a disclaimer on the theory of gravity. There is nothing to prove that there is not a giant invisible hand pushing everything to the ground, and I feel that both sides of the debate should be presented in the classroom.
Very true, but the problem is that those wild ideas, even at their conception, are testable in principle. As you mention Einstein I will use him as an example. The theory of general relativity went many years without being solidly confirmed by experimental evidence. That is because we didn't have instruments or methods that were capable of testing the differences between General Relativity and Newtons theory. But there were differences. You plug the same numbers into both theories and you get two different numbers out, so it was testable in principle, and that makes it scientific. But if you postulate a creator, that is not testable. There is no test you can preform which will solidly differentiate between these two theories. ID makes no predictions that are testable in principle. That is why it's not considered science.
The darkness... controls the music. The music... controls the soul.
Supposedly the change was due to the translation of the Bible into German. The tetragammon is YHWH. The Germans pronounce Js like we do Ys and Vs like we do Ws. Therefore, JHVH is a fairly accurate translation. Somewhere in there, people stuck in vowels for convenience much like those who endorse Yahweh, Yahuweh, or Yahoo-Wahoo do, and we wind up with Jehovah, which was then mispronounced by people trying to read it as if it were English. ^_^ Ah, the inscrutability of God...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
If evolution is truely they way life has arrived here on earth, by blind material process over, well, more years than the current understood age of the universe (12-15 billion years is it??) would allow. Fine. So be it.
But why fight against Intelligent Design? Let it be taught in schools, let it be taught as science (it already is by the way..it's called forensics). If it doesn't stand up against real life experience of how the world around us works, it will fade away...a failed meme...
our present copyright and patent systems obviously have nothing to do with intelligence or design, and they certainly weren't designed by a beneficient being... though they might easily have been designed and given to us by an evil one. ;-)
A more apt subject are out stomach muscles. Why do humans get hernias so easily? Because our stomach muscles were built to support our organs when we were still largely horizontal creatures and the other internal structures just don't hold up to the wear and tear of decades of upright behavior. Personally, I see this as clear evidence that the sedentary geek lifestyle is the right and true way. Standing is just plain unhealthy...
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Gravity is a bunch of stuff (that we will ignore as constants) M1M2, where M1 and M2 are the masses of the objects in question. On earth M1 is normally taken as the earth itself, which is so much larger than any M2 that you can discount the difference. However as M2 changes, the force itself changes.
Now the hard part: setting up an experiment that actually shows this result. This is more complex than you might think.
If you observe from some point in outer space, where the earth is not a frame of reference, then changes in M2 effect the speed the earth falls to the object, not the speed the object falls. So first we need a frame of reference that calls the earth 0. (The gravitational theory works on acceleration, which you can measure)
If you drop your hammer and feather at the same time, arbiterly close to each other, your M2 is the mass of the hammer plus the mass of the feather, and not the mass of each separately.
You might think that you can just put the hammer on the floor, but then the hammer becomes part of the mass of the earth. Better not risk it, put the hammer far enough away that it won't affect anything. (next room should be good for the small masses involved, though you can also rig your experiment to eliminate these effects)
Alternatively you can do both experiment far enough apart that they do not effect one another - but make sure the local constants are the same first. (The earth is not a perfect sphere, local variations of mass can change things you want to hold constant)
Did you notice I specified a feather and a hammer? You need to do this experiment in a vacuum or otherwise account for wind resistance. Even if you just have two rocks, the wind resistance will not be exactly the same between them.
Even if you correct for all the above it may not be enough. We are talking about very slight differences. I'm not sure if science has anything sensitive enough to measure the difference. Even if you have that perfect measuring device, eliminating all the other variables it will measure will be hard. I didn't mention things like space dust, but they could matter (or maybe not). I'm content to look at the math.
There might be some plants/stars you can look at with a telescope that will show the same results, but I'm not sure how to eliminate all the variables there either.
Dude, you're a winner! I'm so happy I could provide some meaning to your otherwise meaningless existence.
Seriously, go pat yourself on the back, dude. YOU WON AN ARGUMENT ON THE INTERNET!!!11
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You're optimist: The Church had lost a fight about the planetary system: the Sun do NOT cirle around the Earth, still it took 30 years after both Soviet and American astronauts rounded the Earth on orbit that the Pope lifted the excommunication ban on Kopernicus (in 1996 as I recall).
:-(
The Christian Church alone has about 0.6-1 milliard/billion followers today.
I'm abolutely positive that in case an interstellar civilization arrives triggered by automatic station send for search of intelligent life for let's say one milliard years ago and they show recordings of the development of the life on Earth the Church(es) will state that it's fake or that the alien civilisation was created by ID.
Lunatics/fanatics will stay lunatics/fanatics
I actually believe in no copyright on software, and a very short copyright term for art. Not because I believe it is crucial for the survival of art, but because I believe art is luxury, cannot cause "lock-in", and limitation on freedom there is just less problematic.
As for music copyrights, though, if you ever asked musicians what they would do if there was no copyright, they would tell you they'd continue to create music, because they love music. At least a significant percentage of them would say that. Whether or not this would actually happen, we can only know by trying. Musicians also have non-copyright means to make money.
This is actually a result of a lot of thought, and the only result that can be reached is agnostic. If you are sure that without Software copyrights the world will crumble down, then you have not thought it through. If you are sure that there will be no problems whatsoever, then you have also not thought it through.
I believe it is likely that it will not be problematic almost at all, and I am pretty sure that the gain will be much bigger than the loss, but the only way to know is by trying.
To set the record straight, anyone who researchs for FIVE minutes will find scientific evidence for some type of intelligent design... even if the person finds themself an agnostic anthropologic.
There are still questions to be answered with ID. There are also serious holes in purely naturalistic evolution. When you have two competing theories you TEACH THEM BOTH.
I don't know how serious you are, but the idea of going to science class with my family for 1 hour every sunday morning is the best idea I've heard in a long time. Seriously. Christ, how many man-hours has this country wasted praying to super heros from outer space to solve our problems? If these hundred-million Americans took regular classes on science, critical thinking, the accumulated knowledge of humanity, etc, we might be able to progress a notch past vicious fucking animals.
We need a Sunday Morning Science Class movement.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
John R. Baumgardner The following article has been adapted from my contributions to an ongoing debate over origins issues in the letters to the editor section of our local newspaper [1]. Our town, Los Alamos, located in the mountains of northern New Mexico, is the home of the Los Alamos National Laboratory which, with approximately 10,000 employees, is one of the larger scientific research facilities in the United States. Can Random Molecular Interactions Create Life? Many evolutionists are persuaded that the 15 billion years they assume for the age of the cosmos is an abundance of time for random interactions of atoms and molecules to generate life. A simple arithmetic lesson reveals this to be no more than an irrational fantasy. This arithmetic lesson is similar to calculating the odds of winning the lottery. The number of possible lottery combinations corresponds to the total number of protein structures (of an appropriate size range) that are possible to assemble from standard building blocks. The winning tickets correspond to the tiny sets of such proteins with the correct special properties from which a living organism, say a simple bacterium, can be successfully built. The maximum number of lottery tickets a person can buy corresponds to the maximum number of protein molecules that could have ever existed in the history of the cosmos. Let us first establish a reasonable upper limit on the number of molecules that could ever have been formed anywhere in the universe during its entire history. Taking 1080 as a generous estimate for the total number of atoms in the cosmos [2], 1012 for a generous upper bound for the average number of interatomic interactions per second per atom, and 1018 seconds (roughly 30 billion years) as an upper bound for the age of the universe, we get 10110 as a very generous upper limit on the total number of interatomic interactions which could have ever occurred during the long cosmic history the evolutionist imagines. Now if we make the extremely generous assumption that each interatomic interaction always produces a unique molecule, then we conclude that no more than 10110 unique molecules could have ever existed in the universe during its entire history. Now let us contemplate what is involved in demanding that a purely random process find a minimal set of about one thousand protein molecules needed for the most primitive form of life. To simplify the problem dramatically, suppose somehow we already have found 999 of the 1000 different proteins required and we need only to search for that final magic sequence of amino acids which gives us that last special protein. Let us restrict our consideration to the specific set of 20 amino acids found in living systems and ignore the hundred or so that are not. Let us also ignore the fact that only those with left-handed symmetry appear in life proteins. Let us also ignore the incredibly unfavorable chemical reaction kinetics involved in forming long peptide chains in any sort of plausible non-living chemical environment. Let us merely focus on the task of obtaining a suitable sequence of amino acids that yields a 3D protein structure with some minimal degree of essential functionality. Various theoretical and experimental evidence indicates that in some average sense about half of the amino acid sites must be specified exactly [3]. For a relatively short protein consisting of a chain of 200 amino acids, the number of random trials needed for a reasonable likelihood of hitting a useful sequence is then on the order of 20100 (100 amino acid sites with 20 possible candidates at each site), or about 10130 trials. This is a hundred billion billion times the upper bound we computed for the total number of molecules ever to exist in the history of the cosmos!! No random process could ever hope to find even one such protein structure, much less the full set of roughly 1000 needed in the simplest forms of life. It is therefore sheer irrationality for a person to believe random chemical interactions could ever identify a viable set of functional proteins o
In addition to the sibling comments (specifically, that secularism doesn't mean atheism)... your logic is fundamentally flawed:
...] the argument that a theory [based] in religion and cannot be taught is in violation of the Constitution". I don't think the Constitution makes that clear. In fact, it's probably at the States' discretion what is taught, except when Congress (and its federal funding) treads near the establishment of religion (you know, by like spreading or re-inforcing religious teachings with its institutions).
The constitution of the USA is clear - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" so the argument that a valid scientific theory has some base in religion and cannot be taught is in violation of the Constitution and the basic rights it grants Americans. (emphasis added)
First, ID and Creationism are not "valid scientific theories". They are theories, granted, but they aren't scientific, and as such it makes it terribly difficult to demonstrate evaluate their validity. Rewriting your argument without this flaw gives us the statement: "The [Constitution] is clear[,
Second, is teaching in public schools "the free exercise" of religion? Is the teaching of Christian belief in State schools the "establishment of religion"? As an exercise in open-mindedness, I challenge you to defend both positions -- maybe it will help you gain some insight into the debate. Maybe it will help you to defend secular education by pretending that you are a Christian in a majority Muslim U.S.; since we enjoy compulsory education in the U.S., would you want all the kids who couldn't afford Christian school to be taught science from the Quran (or the Torah or the Analects and the Five Classics or any other ancient work)? Further, imagine if non-Christian religious education was the norm, would you want your kids to be discriminated against in the workplace because they have an abnormal education?
The only reason I can see Christians being for Christianity being taught and practiced in public (i.e. State-run) schools is the Christian hegemony in the U.S.; the Christian power-elite are blinded by this against minority religions.
The obvious defense is to teach all religions in school! This defense is ludicrous of course -- given there is no fixed number of religions how does one teach the infinite in finite existence? Then there's the opt-out defense which instantly raises the counter: why not the opt-in approach we already use?
Anyhow, nothing personal. I look forward to your well-reasoned defense.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
No matter what the evidence, you can not prove that divine intervention did not occur. Since God is assumed omnipotent, there is always an escape hatch.
For example, if someone suggests that God created the world 6000 years old, and you point out the existence of fossils whose carbon dating shows them to be millions of years old, that person can say "oh, well, God placed those seemingly old fossils there 6000 years ago with those carbon isotopes like that to test our faith".
Thus the proposition that God created the world 6000 years ago can never be proven wrong even if it's not true, and therefore the proposition is not scientific.
The same holds true with the conjecture that God guided evolution.
uhh. yeah I stand by my comment. That is a non-sequiter. Pornography? Adolf hilter was 1/4 jew. OSama wasn't a veyr good muslim when he was younger either. But he was also very rich.
This gave me a chuckle. I think it would be obvious given that G.W. Bush was once a coke-snorting drunk (hardly a good Christian) that bin Laden could have once been a wine-drinking pork-eating rich-kid hedonist (hardly a good Muslim).
Even more off topic: Weird, this kinda holds for the first Buddha and the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). Was even Jesus without sin (well at least he was without original sin) -- I'm asking because I don't know. I can see why a cult of personality would form around any sinless man!
Also: Pronography and prayer don't go together, they're opposites. I know some guys who pray for their pornography to download faster. Porn and prayer hand in hand.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
You refer to increasing entropy as a "law", not a "theory". This seems to be a too-common misunderstanding. Whether something is a "theory" or a "law" is just a matter of convention. Newtonian physics has laws. So does thermodynamics. Modern physics doesn't so much. It has "equations" instead, like Schrodinger's equation or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Why is this? I don't know, but I think most physicsts would say that the uncertainty principle is just as accepted as Newton's "Laws" of motion. For whatever, from what I've seen, biology seems to have mostly "theories". Its all just words, and doesn't necesarily imply that one is any more accepted than the other.
So, as a book refuting evolution, writen in the United States by a christian with no scientific background or education beyond highschool, it's not quite what I had in mind.
However, the book holds my interest in that his credentials suggest the book may shine above the deliberate misrepresentations and outright lies that typify normal creationist tactics (Even in this thread for example, that anonymous coward posting about no transitional fossils when there are thousands, and then deliberately misquoting Darwin). So if the book is honest instead of agenda driven then it will be worth a look.
However, digging deeper, "The Case For A Creator" does not appear to be a genuine investigation, for example:
Fortunately, someone has gone to the effort to source equally expert views on the topics the book covers to to provide the reader with the full story
So I will be able to decide for myself whose arguments are better
I have never read something so conflicted, but was was I to expect during the time of Samhain.... How about this, send the kids off to school year round, one month off during Feb the shortest of them all. Teach a religion/spiritual course on all religions (just like college), let the kids make up their own minds, and if we are all wrong in the end, then I guess we are all screwed. For the part about everyone here jumping on 'the Chrtistains', let me be brief in saying that just about every person I know that is madly religious (which I do not condem mind you) states they are 'Christian', not catholic or baptist, or prespeterian (spelling Im tired...), but just 'Christian'. This is an evil subject to attempt. We are here and now, just live with it, dont worry or fight about how we got here, stop wasting your time while you are here and go enjoy life! :)
And to cite a passage from a book, you cite the book, not anyone else who happened to have used that same passage. Get it? It's really not a difficult concept.
0 &cid=13910607 (had you in fact copied this quotation from another site) you could have made the proper citation with these words:
"
This isn't true. If you had his book in front of you and typed it in yourself from the page referenced you would only cite the book (and author, and page, and edition, and in most circumstances the date of publication and the publisher and often the publisher's city).
When you copy and paste something from the web it is proper to cite the page you copied it from. If you are copying a quotation from a website you cite it as quoted. E.g., Futayama wrote in such and such as quoted by so and so "blah blah blah". This would appear in a a list of works cited as (roughly, MLA):
Futuyama, something. "some book." page x. qtd. in some, author. "some other book." city: publisher, date. page y.
An in-text citation would be something like (Futuyama qtd. in So-and-So: page).
Often when writing about biology (as we are in this case) you might prefer ACS to MLA. You can google for the rules in your profession with the words "indirect sources".
In your case http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=16682
"Really? Then explain this quote from Douglas Futuyma, p. 123 of his Science on Trial (qtd. in http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy75.html):
Not mentioning that you are quoting someone else's quotation implies a different context (e.g., you could be committing the same quotation out of context as an author who'd been previously rebuked for it, or you may not know the context at all, and your audience should be [made] aware of that; citing an indirect source does exactly that, it lets the reader know that you don't have/haven't read the work that's quoted, just the quotation in question). That's why there are rules/guidelines for indirect citation. This is first year English with a rehash in third year science courses (when you're writing about science, not just doing it), at least in Florida.
Now... The part that appears as plagiarism? The part you have bolded aren't Futuyama's words, and thus aren't attributed at all and passed off as your own. Those words are Bob Murphy's. That's why down thread people are calling you a liar. Plagiarism is an unforgivable sin to some people.
I'm making no accusations, as I'm not invested in this conversation at all... just passing by. Cheers!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
...You are all related to monkeys.
The other intelligent designer...
And what made that?
The other intelligent designer...
And what made that?
The other intelligent designer...
Absolutely. Therefore, I'll watch for you to refer to it as "Intelligent Designers Theory" from now on. Or better yet, "Infinite Designers Theory."
Cheers.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Where are you persecuted? You keep saying that Christians are persecuted in this country. And yet, I don't see it. Jacksonville, Florida is full of churches. It's full of schools with prayer groups and Bible studies. It's also full of wide open public spaces where any man can stand and pray or even proselytize (within the rights of others not to be harassed under the definition of statute).
It's weird to see you come at it from both sides though -- refreshing even. Both your Jewish ex-wife and son and persecuted for their beliefs, and yet, so are you, a Protestant in a country chock-full of WASPs. There's no shortage of evidence that Muslims are also persecuted in this country. Where on earth are all these repressive heathens coming from?! They aren't part of the establishment, nor the government, nor largely the corporate power-elite. In fact, the non-religious and atheist* are such a tiny minority as to be laughable. (*describing atheism as the only religion that could be against all other largely monotheistic religions).
You are honestly convinced that tiny bands of libertarians are controlling the whole country based merely on the anecdotes of your own town.
It would seem to me, that you have a vested interest in secular public education. Do you want to undermine your sons religious education by subjecting him to prayer in Jesus' name? I can see that you'd rather turn him to your own religion, to save him from eternal damnation, but failing that I'd imagine he'd have a more enjoyable education at a private Jewish school, or a secular public school.
The fact you can't pray in Jesus' name at a public-school graduation does not limit your constitutional freedoms one whit.
Anyhow, the cult of victimization only belittles though who are actually victims of religious persecution (e.g., murdered Muslims in England, Jews in Poland, etc.).
(and as a humorous aside -- what's with these dress codes?! Shouldn't gangs have the right to free expression via jewelry and head-coverings? I can't believe schools would want to mitigate the violent tension between gangs.)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Please teach your comrades in Kansas about how "intelligent" design is pure bullshit. Knock some sense into them, even if they aren't Catholic. Do it for the sake of your nation's economy. After all, America needs to stay amongst the leaders in science if they wish to remain a superpower, rather than becoming just another ideological shitpile.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Now there are many debates on what that actually means and the mechanisms involved but for most fundamentalists it means that every word in the Bible is there because God wanted it there. Every word is literally the word of God.
Too bad God in his infinite wisdom couldn't have been less vague on the subject matter. At least he got it right with the Quaran... Oh wait...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If God used an mechanism such as Evolution to create divergent species, then God is not necessary. Evolution, as a process, is complete and dynamic enough to create diverent species.
I take the more Buddhist/Simulated Reality approach to god.
God makes more sense if you see it as the computer and reality is the program that it runs on. I don't see god as a programmer nor the program. Think as god as the matter and the motion... Or rather god as the quantum phyiscs.
Hrm... That doesn't make sense, but neither does reality.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Close, but not quite.
Actually, an idea can *never* not even in principle, be "proven" right. (unless you're talking maths, but that's not really an observational science)
You can prove a theory *wrong*, and if you after hundreds or thousands of experiments by lots of people haven't managed to prove it wrong, you confidence in the theory increases. However, the possibility always remains that someone will come tomorrow and show an experiment that proves the theory wrong.
For example, Newtonian mechanics where considered "correct" and supported by literally thousands of experiments over hundreds of years until Einstein came along and showed that actually, Newtonian mechanics are *wrong* it's just that for a special set of circumstances (namely low speed and low distances in relation to ligthspeed) they are a good approximation.
In science there are just two kinds of theories:
But that's true for literally *every* piece of knowledge you give the kids.
"This book contains information on gravity. Gravity has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book contains information on the second world war. The second world war has not been proven, and other theories exist."
"This book assumes that individual human beings exist. This has never been proven, and other theories exist."
Singling out *one* theory among thousands and including a special "warning" about it gives the impression that this theory is less supported than any of the others. Doing so on the basis that some religion wants it so is just nuts.
Your principle really does mean that if ANYONE ELSE has ever quoted the same passage, you have to also quote them. You and I both know that's wrong, so you can spare me the lecture.
c t+quotation
No It Doesn't. As the sibling points out you are either intentionally misstating my point, or you've just missed it again.
Go back to your freshman English teacher and ask him/her about citing indirect quotations and why it's important. I tried to explain it was about context, but whatever.
If you don't have a freshman English teacher, you can suffice with this webpage: http://www.google.com/search?q=citation+of+indire
Odds and ends: I think I even gave the caveat that you may not have indirectly quoted the page in question (maybe the zeal was in your eyes when you read "had you in fact copied this quotation from another site"); On Slashdot (with its aparent libertarian contingent), LewRockwell.com is hardly obscure; Additionally, in a conversational forum like this, I'm surprised anyone bothers to try to cite anything, haha other than sophism and the occasional arguement from authority ("See, everyone agrees I'm right," or "you're wrong because the right people agree with me!"); I recognize the irony of this paragraph following the former.
Anyhow, I wasn't making any accusations. You don't have to dignify this with a response. Cheers!
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Do you also advocate giving Holocast deniers a part in history class? How about flat-earthers in geology? Both of these views are just as "valid" as ID.
I'd like to make four points, that evolution is a deductive conclusion based on series of premises, that the deduction is true, and that ID attacks the premises not the deduction and they use inductiveness to do so. And I think the misunderstandings arises as such.
1) Evolution is a deductive premise.
If geologic changes result from slow continuous actions rather than sudden events, then Earth must be very old.
If very gradual and subtle causes persist over a long time frame, then substantial change can result
If there is variation within a species;
If these variation lead to reproductive advantage among certain types;
If these variations and advantages are inheritable;
Then, over such time frame; the distribution of that variation will shift to favor those traits that improve the survivability of the species.
*note this list may not be exhaustive but the point is, I think, made.
2) We have done this with domesticated livestock, pets, and food like corn for centuries. We can acknowledge that if the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. Evolution, unlike other science is inherently deductive. However, the premises like all other sciences must be proved inductively. If a premise is demonstrably absent, then the conclusion must be absent.
3) ID objects to the premises that there is sufficient body of evidence that supports the premises. The premises must be proven with science, which means inductiveness. Which means a large body of concurring evidence absent of exceptions must be assembled. ID makes several claims, including that this body is not sufficiently large i.e. we didn't arrive at quantum theory from two or three measurements neither should we except that ancestral species contained sufficient variation with only a few fossils either.
*note Off-topic: creationists object to the premise of sufficient time frame; not the logic of the deduction.
4) I think the disagreement and anger often comes from the question: "If we have not yet proven evolution, then to what theory do we default?" The three common answers I think are as follows: 1) God/doctrine or the need to say some intelligent entity must have it's own reason to have made these a certain way. 2) Reject God a priori; thus evolution is all we have and if it isn't proven yet it's better than nothing. 3) Say nothing we don't have enough info; therefore we can affirm only our need to know more.
For discusion to be logical, we should discuss are the body of premises and assumptions that enter and whether those are inductive or deductive, what criteria are we using to establish validity, and then are they valid.