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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!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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.
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...
Not "people who believe in God are stupid". I believe in God, and I'm not stupid. I am, however, vehemently opposed to this sham of a theory being compared with well-established principles of modern biology.
ID is not a theory. It is a fantasy. Behe's defense of ID amounts to the Chewbacca defense.
Anybody who attempts to position ID as scientific theory is a liar.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's making a point in favor of common sense. There's a fine distinction.
People who believe in god are not stupid but...
People who insist that their interpratation of god be mandatory reading in school are no different then the taliban.
People who believe that god created the earth in 7 days three thousand years ago are stupid.
I hope that makes is clear.
evil is as evil does
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.
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..."
" Why doesn't slashdot just create one article titled "People that believe in God are stupid" and have all ID discussion there?"
A belief in God isn't stupid. It's the wrong belief that ID is fit for the SCIENCE classroom when it's not a SCIENCE. ID is a Christian creation myth, wrapped in scientific sounding terms, and backed by some former scientists who put their belief in creationism higher than their obligation to educate future generations about the scientific method that has served humanity well the past few centuries.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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 think it's rare that Intelligent Designers are referred to as stupid. Intelligent Design is not good science, yet it's backers are constantly trying to push it into mainstream education. They have been told on numerous occasions that this is unnacceptable, yet they persist.
Are they stupid? No. Are they ignorant? No.
They've got an agenda is all. Evolution as a theory contradicts their view of the bible, so for self preservation they are attempting to discredit it. They seem to be doing a reasonably effective job at this in certain areas.
What most Slashdotters are angry about is using unscientific means to discredit science. Scientific theories are inherently fallible, with many holes that need filling by research and testing. ID theories are inherently unfallible where any discrepancy can be explained as intentional.
The general ill will Slashdotters hold towards Christianity is because of this, far too many Christians stay silent on this matter. A good many Christians have spoken out on this issue, but not enough. When moderates stay silent the voice of an organization becomes those shouting from the edges.
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.
So, do you think invisible pink unicorns exist? If you say no, you are no better than your alledged "believers". You say they don't exist, but you can't prove that they don't.
meh
Why doesn't slashdot just create one article titled "People that believe in God are stupid" and have all ID discussion there?
It just isn't a creation/evolution discussion without one dishonest creationist falsely linking acceptance of evolution with atheism.
Creationism/ID can't win on intellectual merits, so they have to resort to lying. Lying about what they are, lying about what evolution is and lying about what people who accept evolution believe and do not believe. The entire movement is founded upon lies.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
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.
Uh, free speech only applies to talking about government, doesn't it? I honestly don't think that free speech covers this..
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
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."
As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing. What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
I disagree with you entirely. Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theroy, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory, and as such it conforms to the standard for a scientifi theory. ID on the other hand is neither testable nor falsifiable, and therefore a lovely theory, but not a scientific theory. Whether ID should be taught in schools or not is not the discussion point, but whether ID should be taught along side scientific theories in science class.
By all means, Kansas, teach ID as much as you wish. In some social-study class or other where it can be taught along side of Astrology, Divination, tea-leaf reading and the theory of the Abominable Snowman. Just not in science class.
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.
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.
Because people who believe in God don't believe that ID should be taught as a science. Not all of them. Not even a majority.
If they called it "People who believe that ID is real science is stupid", then allowed all religious and non-religious people to poke fun at these idiots, then it'd be a bit better.
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?
Are you sure you and Dawkins agree on what is meant by artificial?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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.
Finally - someone reasonable :)
Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false? You said: "Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theory, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory...". I'm just wondering how you would go about doing that. Any suggestions?
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?
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
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.
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"
Wow. You must be smarter than all those dumb scientists out there. Glad you're here with you're condescening bemusement. Oh ... except it's full of bullshit.
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.
Wow, that's some nice bullshit there. It is, of course, not true. At all. It is, after all, bullshit.
Do you even know what speciation is? It's when a population of breedable organisms splits into two separate populations that cannot produce viable offspring with each other. Since you already accept that species do, in fact, change over time - what happens if two population of the same species are isolated from each other for a long time?
This - their genetic differences become so great that they cannot breed with each other. They are thus, by definition, two different species! Viola!
The evidence in the fossil AND genetic record is ubiquitous, and speciation can be easily induced in the laboratory by forcing two initially identical populations of yeast to rapidly mutate. Now, take your bullshit and crawl back into your hole.
Intelligent design doesn't make any predictions about the designer. For all we know, if there is an intelligence underlying the universe, that it could the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or maybe it's the Menbari concept from Babylon 5 that the universe itself is intelligent.
There is a lot of information in this universe; where did it come from? How do we know?
...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.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
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.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species.
Sophistry, again. How do you prove a given fossil is not half-way mutated? Oh, and if you'd like a living beastie, how about the duck-billed platypus?
The overall problem with your reasoning is that you're saying essentially: Since evolutionary theory can't be completely verified due to the absense of a working time machine (bidrectional), therefore any other theory that is not completely verifiable is also acceptable. Never mind that ID is 100% non-verifiable and is useless for precition, whereas evolutionary theory does have predictive value.
Remain calm! All is well!
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)
How about these? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html
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.
The core of Christianity and Islam is repetitive idolation and worship of a central human (or half-human) person. They are personality cults. Somehow they both manage to easily dismiss the claims of the other cult as nonsense even though they use almost exactly the same reasoning.
.... god" -- by adding that part, the statement maker is already dismissing tons of other deities and religions and implicitly making statements like "Allah does not exist", "Wodan does not exist", etc, etc.
It is normal these days to dismiss modern personality cults as nonsense and manipulation, yet somehow cults about 1500-2000 years old are not dismissed on the same basis?
The non-existence of something cannot be proven and thus I admit that it is too strong a statement. However, this falls in the same category as "Unicorns do not exist" and "Ghosts do not exist". While it cannot be 100% proven, it is still the more prudent statement than that of a follower of a personality cult who is inherently a lot more biased, given the system of infinite punishment and infinite rewards that person regards as reality.
You already sort of show the difference in your own comparison with the part "and he is
see a Text Widget
As a Christian, I allege that you are full of it and do not understand the idea of evolution yourself or are blinded by your support of ID such that you cannot see reason.
"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."
I'm sure the homo sapiens would be very displeased to hear your belief that they never existed, as it is quite apparent from the fossil record that they did and that they predate our modern homo sapiens sapien species. There is actually extensive evidence that macro-evolution can and does occur by the fossil record, which implies that those who question this concept are only reading selective parts of certain scientific papers or are only reading the papers of people who are already biased in favor of ID and are therefor exaggerating their claims in favor of their religious beliefs. All things considered, the people who are purporting Intelligent Design to be a legitimate and valid scientific hypothesis generally do not read (or instead make great efforts to ignore or forget) the parts of material which runs contrary to their religious beliefs. Those who favor ID typically have negative views of homosexuality, sexual liberation, the equality of women, among other things, when indeed the same book (the Bible) that is cited for these beliefs is cited in such a fashion that the citation is inconsistent with context.
Is it possible those proposing ID be an acceptable way of thinking are just ignoring the details of the text they are reading in favor of particular sentences or phrases which seem to agree with them? It would certainly seem likely to me that this is the case, as it is done all so typically with regards to religious canon by the very same people.
"This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution _isn't consistent with the scientific method_."
Oh, so something which is observable, testable and scientifically verifiable is not consistent with the scientific method, but assuming that an unseen deity whose existence cannot be proven by any scientific means whatsoever is responsible for the creation of the universe and the development of all life on earth is?
I'm not an atheist by any stretch of the imagination, but your position simply isn't tenable.
This is not a matter of faith or lack of faith in God. I believe in God. But I have difficulty believing that scientifically testable and verifiable fact can be false when compared with a hypothesis for which there is no scientific evidence whatsoever and the only thing which may imply that it is true is a single piece of religious canon whose Absolute validity cannot be determined. Until God comes down and says that everything in the Bible is true, it cannot be proven. And since the only evidence that that ever actually happened is stories which are in the Bible and oral legends, there is no evidence and therefor, any supposition that it is true is simply religious rhetoric.
Do you Gentoo?
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.
Full disclosure: I am a Christian and currently lean towards progressive creationism, but I do not by any means rule out evolution on religious grounds.
I agree here, macroevolution is not very scientific in my mind. On the other hand, Intelligent Design is certainly no better in that sense. I think the best way to go about it would be to teach neither theory extensively in a science class, and give all theories, from intelligent design to evolution to aquatic apes and aliens, thorough treatment in a separate "origins of life" class, which would be more philosophy than science, though the two obviously have significant overlap. This would also promote full discosure of the hole in evolution, something which my high school biology textbook neglected. It actually referred to the Miller-Urey Experiment, which was shown to be based on an inaccurate model of the earth's early atmosphere long before the textbook was published. I think students at least deserve to be told the truth about the evidence for and against evolution, whether or not any intelligent design is taught, and I think having a separate class on origins would encourage this by allowing more time for complete coverage of this subject.
You claim that "The evidence in the fossil AND genetic record is ubiquitous" for half-mutated organisms. Could you please provide me with some of this ubiquitous evidence? One link will do.
This is the third call for some "ubiquitous evidence" I've seen in the comments attaches to this article, and none has been provided.
It seems to me that, as it takes too much effort to find some "ubiquitous evidence", you're resorting to calling my request "bullshit".
Ashton
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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
Hah. I hadn't thought my sig would ever be so relevant.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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!
Quote: This - their genetic differences become so great that they cannot breed with each other. They are thus, by definition, two different species! Viola!
What about dogs and wolves? Horses and donkeys? Horses and zebras?
Either you're statement is incorrect or those aren't different species. They're still the same basic body type, for lack of a better term.
My house cats couldn't physically mate with a lion because of size, that's for sure.
No, your argument is a misrepresentation of what I said. I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact. Both (or neither) can be given as possible explanations for the origin of life. Of course, other theories would then need to be included for it to be fair at all.
"Sophistry, again. How do you prove a given fossil is not half-way mutated?"
All that needs to be shown is several fossils demonstrating gradual change from 1 species to another.
You don't need to prove that "a given fossil is not half-way mutated". One only needs to show that there are fossils either side of it mutation-wise.
Thanks for taking the time to think through your argument, as well. Many of the replies in this discussion have been by ACs who don't present any logic, just insults; yours is a breath of fresh air.
Ashton
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Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
If you want to advocate that type of philosophy class, great. Go for it. Just keep your (and everyone else's) religion out of the science classroom. Religion is not science. The two can coexist, but they cannot overlap. Teach about religion in a social studies, sociology, comparative religion, or philosophy class all you like. But do not put them forth as scientific theories. They are not, and by definition, cannot be.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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"
How about the Archaeopteryx, which was even discovered during Darwin's lifetime?
English is easier said than done.
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!
The sad thing is that the majority of Christians don't want ID taught as a _scientific_ theory.
The important point to note is that by your (and other evolutionists') reasoning, evolution isn't a _scientific_ theory, either. How would you, personally, design an experiment to falsify (or otherwise) evolution? If it can't be done, then evolution cannot be disproved, making it the same as ID. Neither are _scientific_ theories. Either mention both or mention neither - it's unfair to students to claim that evolution is a scientific theory (or worse, fact) when it doesn't meet your own standards for falsifiability.
Ashton
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What about the archaopteryx? Assuming this is what you mean by a half-mutated species, it is in many ways half-way between a dinosaur and a bird.
(I'm kidding. Just in case that wasn't obvious enough.)
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.
The archaeopteryx springs immediately to mind, as a link between dinosaurs and birds.
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.
I disagree. This is a perfectly feasible belief. It is not the simplest explanation for observable evidence and it is can not be falsified by a conceivable experiment[1], so does not count as science, but it is a perfectly valid belief.
You, I would imagine, believe that the universe was created several million years ago as a result of random chance. This belief is not proven - no science is. All science gives us is a set of reasonable hypotheses which are not contradicted by observable evidence. Science doesn't even go into the why - whether the universe came into being as a result of random chance, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn, is a matter for belief, not science. None of these beliefs is more scientific than any of the others - the only truly scientific belief here is an admission of ignorance.
[1] Those involving time machines are only admissible if accompanied by a theoretical framework in which time travel is practical.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
;-)
A distinction that only Creationists (or whatever they're calling themselves this year) make.
Nearly no reasonable person would claim that selective pressure over a long period of time can cause gradual changes to a species' DNA. [...] Also, it's the only process Darwin demonstrated did actually occur.
Darwin did no such thing. He published "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" in 1859 (30 years after his voyages on HMS Beagle), six years before Mendel's work on genetics (published in 1865), and a century before Watson and Crick determined the structure of DNA. Darwin was unaware of the underlying mechanism, but the process itself was so obvious to him that he wrote his book.
ID (different from creationism)
The only difference seems to be a disagreement in detail. Both posit a supernatual "creator" (or "designer") with no explanation as to where this creator/designer came from, and insist on supernatural explanations for events for which science has well-accepted natural explanations for. The extent to which they argue that those latter theories fail to explain said events, is simply evidence that they don't understand those explanations. It's like trying to teach simple arithmetic to some primitive tribesman: the concept isn't really that hard, but it's totally alien (and thus incomprehensible) to someone who grew up counting "one, two, many".
Of course, it's only certain brands of evangelical Christian (among Christians -- for all I know Moslem fundamentalists may have the same problem) that have this problem; the Catholic Church has accepted biological evolution as essentially correct, except that the human soul was specifically created by God. (After all, a God that can do that is perfectly capable of designing the process of evolution, micro, macro, or anything in between
-- Alastair
OK, and what are the two species that the Archaeopteryx is half-way between?
"Dinosaurs and birds" isn't good enough; you'll need to show fossil evidence of two species that are clearly similar to Archaeopteryx, but of which one has more bird-like features and one has more dinosaur-like features. Give the species of the dinosaur, if possible.
I realise that this is nearly impossible, which is why evolution should not be taught as a strictly _scientific_ theory. It's almost impossible to strictly prove it or falsify it under the scientific method, so how can it be called _scientific_?
Ashton
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Erm... what the heck are you talking about when you say "half-mutated"? You obviously don't know what the heck you are talking about. First off, all species are illusionary, there is no "perfect specimen", there is only the rainbow of closely related organisms. If there are sufficiently closely related, most of the time they are considered the same species. The problem is defining "sufficiently related".
If you mean "half-mutated" in by two specimens of the same species that have aquired sufficiently different physical traits, then look no further than Darwin. Read the origin of species for examples of "half-mutated" species: Darwin's finches.
Face it, Evolution and natural selection have been emirically tested for well over a hundred years. ID on the other hand, which is essentially Creationism repackaged, has gained almost non-existant support from the scientific community, and owes it origins to the Supreme Court striking down Creationism. ID in the science classroom, and given the same weight as evolution? If the fight were merit based alone, this arugment would have been over long ago. Why is it, then, that it is still around?
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Have a pregnant woman assemble the curriculum
I can't find the article through google, but i remember reading about the laws in some state where by definition, a pregnant woman was not considered to be in full control of her faculties, which led to her charges being dismissed. They used an argument of "diminished capacity" based on the satutes.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
There's no such thing as 'half-mutated.' That only makes sense if you're talking about trans-substantion from one species to another, like a fish turning into a dog. That's not evolution.
What we're talking about is constantly changing species that sometimes that sometimes branches off into different lines of change. We aren't desended from monkeys - if you go far enough back in genetic time, we are the exact same species as monkeys. At some point, we went our way and they went theirs.
I don't need a link, I'll give you an example of a divergent ancestry: Us, neanderthals, gorillas, apes, monkeys. Many species, all descended from a single common ancestor. The fossil record shows how all these species have divergent phenotypes arising from a single species; the genetic code shows that we all mutated from a common genetic base.
Half way mutated is very open to interpretation of course. However one example that I've always felt was fairly compelling are the feathered and flying dinosaurs. They've always come across as a fairly good bit of evidence to support the theory that some dinosaurs developed into what we call birds today. I do haev to wonder though. Since you're making a distinction between micro and macro evolution, how to you explain new species showing up in the fossil record at all? I mean it seems to just make sense that over time small changes are enough to result in something new. It's a much more compelling and scientific conclusion than "Well, a designer put them there then." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaurs
Never mind that ID is 100% non-verifiable and is useless for precition, whereas evolutionary theory does have predictive value.
Irrelevant, just like most received wisdom about the definition of science.
Suppose an Event A occurs, and a scientist predicts on that basis that an Event B is soon to follow. Event B does follow, so his prediction receives support. His explanation makes no other unambiguous predictions.
Now suppose a different scientist, knowing nothing about the first, arrives at the same explanation. The only difference is, he thinks of his explanation only after observing both events.
Is the explanation of the second scientist not science simply because it fails to make predictions, but only explains data?
Prediction CAN be a useful aspect of science (say, for engineering purposes), but it is not a necessary one.
"We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes"
Come again? There's been more than adequate observation of speciation and how the ID proponents get to continually say that there isn't simply blows my mind.
This whole discussion about ID in science is baffling. That it's even allowed to be considered speaks volumes about Joe and Jane Average's intelligence.
Here are some alarming numbers on Creationism (ID)/Evolution. Only 26% believing in evolution with 42% believing that humans have existed as we do now from our very inception.
Saying ID is appropriate for a Social Science or Philosophy class, shows great contempt for those subjects. ID is junk, it doesn't belong in any class. Philosophy, like science, is based on logical reasoning, hence ID is not appropriate. Social Sciences, likewise follow the scientific method to some extent, and are largely unrelated. The only place I could see an appropriate discussion of ID is in a Political Science class and then the focus would be on how it managed to garner such political support.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
How do you design an experiment to prove "macro" evolution? You don't. And you don't need to. You take proven assumptions (like this "micro" evolution stuff) and proven transformation rules and you lay out a logical argument. We can't prove a rock is 14,000 years old by carbon dating (or whatever method is applicable here) because we took a rock, measured it, waited 14,000 years, and measured it again. And repeated this experiment many times with a control group of other rocks. We took provable assertions and assembled a logical proof using testable rules that allows us to reasonably conclude that certain measurements indicate a rock is 14,000 years old. It's just like any other math or logic problem.
Actually, it's "Catholic" Christians that _don't_ have "this problem"; the Bible is clear that God created the physical bodies of humans from 'dust' and 'breathed life' into them. This would seem to conflict with evolution, so - for Christians to accept - that is certainly a weird interpretation of the Bible, assuming your claims are true - I wouldn't know, I'm not "Catholic" and haven't looked into it.
Ashton
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Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
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.
"That only makes sense if you're talking about trans-substantion from one species to another, like a fish turning into a dog. That's not evolution."
That sounds to me like you're disowning your own theory. Since that's likely how you believe humans came about, what do you call it then? You obviously have different terminology; "macro-evolution" seems to me to be a perfectly good label for it.
Ashton
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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?
The definition in the antecedent post was incomplete. If they're different species, they can't produce fertile offspring.
For example, when Kansas State Board of Education chairman Steve Abrams has sex with monkeys, I would not at all be surprised if offspring are occasionally conceived. And due to his views on abortion, they will of course be brought to term if at all possible. However, those sad little creatures will never produce children of their own, because Steve Abrams is a different species of monkey from those commonly available for fornication in Kansas.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
> 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
"So, do you think invisible pink unicorns exist?"
As there is no basis for that belief there is no reason to believe it so. This is exactly the position we all take. That is, without basis we generally disbelieve something to be true. If it's eighty degrees in the shade and you are relaxing on the beach and complain to your friends that you're feeling chilly, your friends probably won't believe you. You would have to provide some basis for them to react and take your statements seriously. As soon as you do, they will look for the rational explanation why you are chilly outside on the beach on a sunny day.
So of course we don't believe in invisible pink unicorns. There is no basis for such belief. The rational person would, however, change his mind about that belief should some convincing argument be provided. It is normal, however, to not believe something is true until a satisfying argument to believe it is true is provided.
Of course, it isn't difficult to construct an argument that suggests such beings don't likely exist. Such an argument might discuss what properties a physical object would need to be invisible, what biological properties it would have to have in order to be pink and have a single vertical horn. Further, we could discuss where such an animal would live, how large it might be, and given that it were sufficiently large why we haven't encountered such a being to date. This might all present a probablistic argument that such beings don't exist, at the very least, on this planet.
But, all of that really isn't relavant. There is a huge body of evidence that the earth is NOT three thousand years old and WAS NOT created, neither COULD it be created, in seven days. Hence, while it is reasonable to not believe in "invisible pink unicorns", it is not reasonable to believe in "young earth creationist" poppycock. Thus, there is clearly a difference between the disbeliever of unicorns and the believer of young earth creationism; the former is rational, the latter either ignorant, stupid, or dishonest, or some mix of all three.
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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.
But yes, in the genetic sense of the word, dogs and wolves are the same species. Horses and donkeys are not, because they don't produce viable offspring.
And if horses and zebras can produce offspring at all, then I totally want one.
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.
The explanation of the second scientist can be proven to predict event B given event A, so it's valid.
Prediction of an event does not necessarily mean prediction of the future - that's a strawman argument. You only need to say 'given theory X and event A, we can predict that event B will happen'. The fact that it has *already* happened is irrelevant to the argument (other than it lends weight to the theory).
The big diff between ID and RD (Intelligent and Random Design) is ID holds that a species will always remain that species (A Stupid Monkey will always be a Stupid Money even if he gets elected to Congress) Wait for it folks neither ID nor RD can be called Theories Both are MODELS!!
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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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Exactly; the problem I have with that is in the "logical" extension to "macro-evolution".
It's a bit like Newtonian gravitation versus Einsteinian gravitation: things may get different when the scale we're talking about changes. I'm not sure you can make that "logical" extension; after all, it doesn't work for something "simple" like gravity, so it may not work for something complex like life itself.
Your carbon-dating example is spurious; because what we can do is measure the half-life and show that it is a constant. If we show something to be a constant then yes, it is perfectly fair to make that simple extension to larger periods of time. However, we don't know that micro-evolution, a fact, can be extended: we don't know that things behave in the same way on larger scales. Something may act to discourage "macro-evolution"; the organism that first makes the jump from water to land will likely have a large disadvantage as it will only have small characteristics that make it capable of land-dwelling, and it may be safer for the species to stay in the water.
This is the kind of "other influence" we don't know doesn't occur, so we can't be certain in extending micro-evolution to macro-evolution.
Ashton
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Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
>Anybody who attempts to position ID as scientific theory is a liar.
Exactly what is with the strong feelings of hatrid towards ID? How objective are people when there are such strong emotions?
There are lots of "wrong" scientific theories out there no matter how you define "wrong". Peak oil, pyramids, bigfoot, what makes the stock market move, the composition of the earth's core. Take your pick but I don't see the same level of emotions.
From what I can tell people hate ID because of ID's backers personalities, not because of the scientific theory.
And the scary thing is that these are the same people who claim the ID backers are not being "objective".
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Irrelevant, indeed.
A theory not able to actually predict something is in any case useless and there is no point in teaching it to students (what for ?!?).
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Ahhh...the classic gaps-in-the-fossil-record complaint. The funny thing is, whenever scientists find a new fossil that fits into one of these gaps, the Creationists don't see that as evidence for evolution. On the contrary, now there are two gaps, instead of one.
which, thanks to his distinct style and rarity (thus increasing the value of a forgery passing itself as genuine), invites mucho imitations.
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You can't pick out an animal that is 'half-way' mutated - that idea is just idiotic. You want a hlf=way mutated animal? How about the Gorilla? Both humans and chimps evolved from gorrilas, and gorillas in-turn evolved from (well, I can't quite recall at this point, but) baboons (or something). You can't just say 'half-mutated' like such a thing exists. Organisms mutate, it's a fact. Over time these mutations change a selection of animals enough for them to be classified as a separate genus (ie: Homo erectus to Homo sapien) and eventually some mutations will lead to completly new species (ie: Gorillas to Humans).
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How about fossilized whale skeletons with vestigal legs? How about the CLEAR record of the mutations in horses that led to hooves. The fossil evidence of gradual mutation from one species to another is everywhere. You want the argument laid out for you? I can't do it better than these guys: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
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,
Now now, we all know that the platypus is just proof that whatever/whoever designed this whole muck-up that we call Earth has a sense of humor.
God is dead -- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is dead -- God
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Just so everyone knows, Baldrson is a known troll on kuro5hin.org
Man, and I though *I* didn't have a life...
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
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!
Evolution is indeed scientific! For starters evolution is based on objective evidence found in the world. ID is based on the idea that we "feel" that things look designed. (It's an adjusted teleological argument for crying out loud! It has the same flaws.) As for disproving evolution. Just finding a fossil that couldn't possibly exist in the current model alone would raise serious questions if not provide outright disproof. (Human skeleton in precambrian era would do that!) As we continue to study the fossil record and the genetic maps of creatures so far evidence continues to support the theory of evolution. It's quite possible that they could not! That's science my people! I mean how do you explain things like the ~98% genetic similarity between human beings and chimps. We obviously aren't chimps and chimps clearly aren't humans. However once again this FITS with the idea that we would have a common genetic ancestor.
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.
Horses and zebras can breed. Don't know how expensive they would be.
I'd like a horse like the one in The Wizard of Oz movie.
Another comment: people are insulting you because you haven't done your homework. It's like someone saying "calculus is a crock" without having basic algebra skills. Read some Dawkins. Scour the talkorigins.org site (they put forth some of the falsifications you are looking for). Evolution is science. Intelligent design is not becase you can't falsify the statement "life was created by an intelligent designer".
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.
You're welcome. But you're employing sophistry when you say because our current knowledge of the mechanics of DNA mutation cannot predict exactly when "macro-evolution" (do you mean speciation?) will occur, therefore a 100% faith based theory is equivalent to one that provides an accurate statistical prediction in short-life-spanned creatures, and can be used to produce repeatable results and explain the rate of fossil change over time.
Look, you're welcome to your faith, and should I see you proselytizing in the airport I wouldn't bother you (unless you get in my face like a Hairy Fishnut). But, this slashdot article is about the attempt to use the apparatus of Kansas government to force the teaching of a faith-based theory in science class, to the children of those who have no use for it. Even if no direct harm is done to the kids (such as making them ineligible for med school or life sciences research), the time given to the teaching of ID comes at the expense of something useful that could be taught.
You're welcome to screw up your own kids. Don't fuck with mine.
Remain calm! All is well!
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.
Scientific theory begins with an observation, and then creates a hypothesis to explain the observation. Darwin's Evolution theory tries to explain that we humans evolved from creatures that had traits similiar to ours that were passed down from offspring. To help explain this Natural Selection was introduced to show that some bad traits will occur and because of that, they will have a lesser chance of survival in the wild. The opposite is considered true as well, the better the traits the better chance of survival. You know you've heard this many times, but since you have taken the non-falsifiable path, it must be mentioned.
Newton also observed something too, and after many years of testing, the scientific theory of Gravity has been generally accepted as a law. Granted law and theory mean relatively the same thing in the science realm, it was and still is a theory. Can the law of gravity be falsified? Sure, just find a test that makes the tests invalid! (By the way, it is really damn hard to make a test that proves gravity is false.)
Same thing applies with evolution. We have collected evidence for a very long time, and, although incomplete, the evidence we have collected so far says that the observation recorded and explained by Darwin is correct. However, that does not mean that Evolution is guarenteed to be the explaination for the rest of eternity, it just means that: We have data, we're following his procedures, and according to his tests, his hypothesis is true. We're following scientific theory to the tick, so what if we haven't found a way to falsify it? Be a scientist and actually TRY to falsify it, rather than just claiming it is false.
Now the problem with ID is, it basically says "God did this, and this is why it is so", yet it provides absolutely no way of testing, nor anyway of falsifying it. According to almost every religion, god is always right, so if you say "god made it so", how can you falsify it? Also how can you test it? Where's the observation of when god decided it was going to be that way? Why did god do it that way? What was god thinking when the decision was made? For what purpose does this creation exist for? There are too many questions that cannot be answered, and absolutely no way of following scientific theory. Therefore: ID can't be considered scientific and cannot be taught in a science class.
No I am not religious, but I do believe in at least one god because there is no conclusive explaination to why the universe exists and why I am here.
[!] No, I can't see my comments. They are not worthy of +3 moderation.
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
This about.com article has a fairly good explanation of why evolution is considered falsifiable. As for a half-way mutated species, all species can be considered halfway mutated; evolution is continuous.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
A theory not able to actually predict something is in any case useless and there is no point in teaching it to students (what for ?!?).
We never know where our curiosity will lead. We could have said the same for any number of discoveries or theories at the time. Ignorance is also a weakness. If we don't explore facts, we open ourselves or our children to being told lies.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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
"I mean how do you explain things like the ~98% genetic similarity between human beings and chimps. We obviously aren't chimps and chimps clearly aren't humans. However once again this FITS with the idea that we would have a common genetic ancestor."
Or alternatively, it also "fits" with the idea that most of the genes, which we assume all have an effect of a species' phenotype, don't actually make a difference between two species. It may be that all the "similarities" in genes are to deal with very low-level stuff, for example respiration, which is a process that is virtually unchanged in most organisms.
Surely an intelligent designer would engage in modular code re-use where he/she/it could?
Your reason for your argument (that humans and apes share a common ancestor) is that it "FITS". How is that different to my argument, that we don't?
My point is that neither argument is logically superior - they both rely on interpretations of the facts.
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
And for some more concrete examples, see here.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
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!
How do you prove a given fossil is not half-way mutated?
More to the point, anyone who thinks that evolution predicts "half-way mutated species" doesn't understand the claims of the theory. There are no mutated species, just mutated genes. Once a gene persists in a population, it's no longer a mutation, but a variant. And, species do vary, yes? This is clear. The mechanism by which they have come to vary is evolution, according to science. Or, if it is "Intelligent Design," fine, but that is not science, it is magic by definition.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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.
Archaeopteryx nothing! If you want a really solid fossil trail of evolution, try horses. There is a very good (i.e. populous and dateable) trail of fossils showing the development of horses over time.
Hell, give me a little time and I can breed you some fruit flies without wings.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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
"But you're employing sophistry when you say because our current knowledge of the mechanics of DNA mutation cannot predict exactly when "macro-evolution" (do you mean speciation?) will occur, therefore a 100% faith based theory is equivalent to one that provides an accurate statistical prediction in short-life-spanned creatures, and can be used to produce repeatable results and explain the rate of fossil change over time."
Could you please provide a quote from one of my comments where I said something like that? It seems to me that you're fabricating things I said. I didn't say ID can make the accurate predictions that evolution routinely does. I don't disagree with the fact that the theory of evolution can make accurate predictions for short-life-spanned creatures. What I do disagree with is the assertion that evolution is a _scientific_ theory. As one (evolutionist) poster said earlier, ID and evolution are both MODELS.
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
Thank the FSM
Pastafarianism wins again!!
He just said that he wants to keep it out of the science classroom!!!!!!!!!!
You misread me my friend. I said that the similarity fits in line with the theory of evolution. It's not conclusive, however what evidence do you have to support intelligent design in the first place? I mean seriously, if you could provide any scientific evidence then you need to get down to Dover pronto because the defense really needs your help.
Yep, that's what I said. Where "this problem" is an apparent constitutional inability to understand evolution, the same way someone with an inability to count higher than two could understand that 2+2 != 5.
I wouldn't know, I'm not "Catholic" and haven't looked into it.
I just googled for "catholic church evolution" to verify what I'd heard from several different sources. www.catholic.com says:
That same site has this interesting take on the whole discussion:
So perhaps Darwin came up with and published his theory of evolution because he was divinely inspired to do so.
-- Alastair
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=-
You, on evolution: "We're following scientific theory to the tick, so what if we haven't found a way to falsify it?".
You, on ID: "According to almost every religion, god is always right, so if you say "god made it so", how can you falsify it?"
Why should ID be pressed to meet challenges (e.g., falsifiability) that evolution does not? This, to me, smacks of bias. You want ID advocates to show how ID is falsifiable, but of evolution, you say, "so what if we haven't found a way to falsify it?"
Different requirements for two models before you'll accept them == bias, in my mind.
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
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.
Isn't it, at a most basic level, a personal preference? There are several reasons why religions exist, and one of them is to explain what can't be explained by observation/experimentation (ie, science). The ancient Greeks invented a god to pull the sun across the sky, but now we know that the sun revolves around the earth (kidding folks..). Many cultures believed in a god who makes the rain come. Now we know it's a simple matter of water evaporating into the sky, and coming back down as rain.
Religion/faith offered the only explanations for these phenomenon in the past. Now, science explains them. Maybe in the future, science will explain, unequivocally, evolution, creation, and other things that people turn to religion to explain today.
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
LOL. I would have modded you funny.
what?
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. :-)
Actually, humans and gorrillas branched off from a common ancestor which is now extinct, so Gorrillas are not our ancestors. The common ancestor was apparently very close to a modern gorrilla though so it's barely a correction. Besides, your argument is still correct regardless.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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.
You claim equivalence of ID and evolution in this statement:
I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact. Both (or neither) can be given as possible explanations for the origin of life.
You also include a straw-man, "the origin of life". Evolutionary theory does not explain the existence of the universe either. So what? It is not directed towards origin of life or existence of the universe. That does not diminish its utility in explaining and predicting how species change over time. Once again, sophistry: Look, evolution doesn't explain X! Therefore it is just as faith-based as ID! (or you could call this Chewbacca science)
As one (evolutionist) poster said earlier, ID and evolution are both MODELS.
I did not write that quote, but since you cite it I will take it that you claim ID provides a "model". Ok, what does it model--what can I use it to model and make a prediction of when an event will occur?
Finally, would you please explain what you mean by "macro-evolution"? I don't want the goal-posts moved on me if I try to respond to anything you say about "macro-evolution". Is it speciation?
Remain calm! All is well!
We have never observed a Higg's Boson nor a graviton nor anything of the sort. I don't think this means that gravity isn't a scientific theory. And there are in fact paleontologists and biologists searching for and discovering more species everyday. Progress is constantly being made toward refining evolutionary theory. The soundness of evolutionary theory does not depend on finding evidence of every intermediate species ever to exist; this is a matter of precision. Are you proposing that we should believe that species like Archaeopteryx came from non-dinosaur-like animals and evolved into non-bird-like animals and that is is just random that it happens to possess intermediate characteristics of both? We know that Australopithecus afarensis had characteristics intermediate to those of modern day humans and great apes; I don't see how this points to humans coming from clay.
English is easier said than done.
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!!!
There is no distinction, except in the minds of creationists.
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?
For a creationist: micro-evolution means whatever evolution has been shown to occur and macro-evolution everything that has not been shown yet. In that sense the distinction is completely self-consistent and it is tautological that evolution has not shown macro-evolution to occur. But of course it's a logical scam. Try to give a rigorous definition of species, I dare you.
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.
What? Are you kidding? Don't have evidence? How about a long string of fossils showing gradual changes along -many- different lines of species? I guess your definition of substantial and mine differ. Here is my question: Why must evolution and what the Bible says be mutually exclusive. I have read the Bible and I have read biology text. I don't see significant disagreement. Here is my version:
God: "I created matter and in a giganic explosion atoms arranged themselves into larger and larger clumps because of gravity..."
Adam: "Wait, wait. What was matter again? Gravity?"
God: "Well, gravity is this force that makes all matter in the universe attract all other matter in the universe by means of..."
Adam: *eyes glazed over* "Uh, what?"
God: "Oh, nevermind. I separated the sky and the ground."
Adam: "Oh, cool. Well, how did me and all the animals end up here?"
God: "So, then I created DNA, and set up a system by which the creatures would assemble themselves and naturally fit into their environment."
Adam: "Say what?"
God: "Nevermind. I said it and it was so."
Adam: "Oh. Okay."
yeah, that's about it
What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
No, what needs to be understood is the difference between religion and science. There is no great debate in science about evolution - and this notion of "micro" and "macro" evolution exists only within god bothering circles... and largely there because they view species as these monolithic unchanging groups.
The entire concept of a species is a handy tool for labelling a creature, not an absolute rulebook for it's genetic configuration - speciation is a much more subtle and imprecise process than the "big switch" that christians seems so hooked up on.
At the end of the day, withdrawing science materials from Kansas will simply reinforce the view that their school system is all about producing inbred hicks for a tehocracy, rather than preparing children to play a part in a modern society.
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.
ID isn't a theory. A theory is a well tested hypothesis with actual proof supporting it. ID is just a hypothesis which cannot be tested and therefore can not be called anything near a theory. ID supporters like to generalize the meaning of theory to confuse people into thinking ID is reasonable. But in a scientific sense ID is a joke. Theories can be proven. They are not laws because they cannot be proven 100%. In science 99% isn't good enough to call something a law.
Importantly, these same people also throw everything into G-d's hands at every opportunity with the same gusto that children blame everything on someone else. Free will is the cornerstone of good versus evil as without it there can not be judgement of anything. G-d at no time says that we should be self-deceptive and pretend we are still in Eden.
The entire point of that story is that humankind has free will, has responsibility to look after itself and not G-d, and that means opening our eyes. Neither should we turn our back on G-d and faith, but having hollow rote belief in the Bible which has been edited by very much proveably fallible men over the millenia up until recent centuries is not faith. It is an excuse to not take responsibility for ourselves and G-d doesn't provide for such excuses. Free will is the rule and for our action we will be judged. This terrible knowledge and that which it incites our conscience to before our will is exercised in action is the cornerstone of being intelligent creatures before Him.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
akgoatley you've been corrected on these points mutliple times in this thread. Evolution is falsifiable - it would be as simple as finding human remains that can be dated back to the dinosaur era. No one has yet managed to do this, but that doesn't make it unfalsifiable.
ID is not falsifiable because it says that a supernatural being - a god or whatever you want to call it, created life. If this being is supernatural there is no way it can ever be detected by any scientifc observation, because science is only what can be known or observed.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
A theory being scientific does -not- mean that it has been proven true or false. It means that it can be proven true or false, and that it is based on empirical observations of the natural world. Evolution meets these criterion, it can be tested using the scientific method. That doesn't necessarily mean that such testing will be "easy"-the existence of very many things must be proven indirectly, human beings haven't visited Mars, but we know it exists. No human or their equipment has ever been anywhere near a black hole, but we can be pretty certain that they exist. We haven't quite gotten a thermometer to the sun yet, but we can make a pretty accurate extrapolation of its surface temperature from what we know of heat, mass, and gravity. The fact that something has not been directly observed does not by any means that evidence cannot exist for it.
Same thing here. For one, the main point (speciation) which would make macroevolution possible is observable and provable. This is evidenced by everything from Darwin's visits to the Galapagos, to the unique Australian species, to yeast cultures in laboratories. That is observational evidence, and that is the definition of science. Granted, the theory can't be said to be "proven", but no scientist worth a crap ever considers a theory proven beyond any improvement anyway-just evidenced well enough to use as a working model. Evolution is to that stage.
On the other hand, ID could at -best- be said to be based on "negative" evidence-I don't believe the theories as to how this occurred naturally so it must have been designed. It offers no testable predictions (as evolution offers speciation and that the fossil record will grow increasingly more complex, both of which are testable and have been proven). It offers no evidence, other then some old books which have been in the hands of some very corrupt organizations known to have manipulated the public through religious propaganda. That hardly qualifies as a counter-argument to the fossil record in my book.
Last but not least, intelligent design -requires- creationism. Why do I say this? Well, let's look at it logically.
Anything which can come into being through the application of conscious thought by utilizing natural processes can by definition occur naturally and by chance. Therefore, any proponent of ID who acknowledges that evolution occurred but claims it was "set in motion" tacitly acknowledges that evolution could've occurred naturally. That doesn't mean that such a thing is likely (a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters would take a very long time to make a meaningful sentence, let alone the complete works of Shakespeare), but if that "meaningful sentence" can take things from there and reproduce and evolve on its own, it's a lot more likely. Therefore, to state that ID negates even the possibility of evolution, one -must- argue that the "intelligent designer" possessed and used abilities -outside- of the normal laws of nature.
Now, here is why that is not, and cannot be, science-there is no EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE for the existence of such a designer. Absent empirical evidence, such "theories" aren't scientific theories at all. They are conjecture, or religion, or philosophy. Not that those things don't have their place. But that place is not in a science classroom.
In closing, here are the four essential steps of the scientific method, and why evolution passes where ID fails:
ID does pass this, it observes and describes the existence of life, as does evolution.
Evolution hypothesizes that life came from extremely simple forms of life which evolved through the processes of micro and macroevolution to more complex forms. This process is testable, falsifiable, and empirical.
ID doesn't really put forth a hypothesis, in the sense that such a hypothesis would have to be testable, falsifiable, and be
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
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.
1. Take one big ball of dirt. (5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms should do it) 2. Place ball 1AU from nearest M class star. 3. Add moon. 4. If life developes let cool for 4.5 Billion years. 5. If there is a single species of life on the ball of dirt then macro-evolution is false. ....
Search your logs like the web: splunk!
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.
>>This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no problem with it.
Actually the large majority of Christians (aka Roman Catholics) have no problem with macro evolution. It's official doctrine. It's based in the ancient Christian belief that the understanding the Universe is one of the best ways of understanding the God who created it. The idea that the workings of the world itself is as much a testament to God's will as the Bible. It's the minority of hardcore evangelicals (who somehow seem to have a strangehold on middle America) who prefer to believe that hard evidence must always give way to their fixed, particular interpretation of scripture.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
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.
There are lots of "wrong" scientific theories out there no matter how you define "wrong". Peak oil, pyramids, bigfoot, what makes the stock market move, the composition of the earth's core. Take your pick but I don't see the same level of emotions.
Which of these theories are children in danger of hearing in their "science" class rooms? If ID backers would get back in the closet with the alien pyramid builder theorists, nobody else would care.
"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.
Yeah, I knew about that - but i didn't want to go into such detail. I figured keeping it simple was the best idea :)
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
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
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
I'm sort of regurgitating some points brought up by Kenneth Miller that I saw on C-SPAN's coverage of a debate on evolution versus ID education at AEI. But he mentioned, among other things, one way in which the scientific method has been used to test evolution.
Most apes have 48 chromosomes. Humans have 46 chromosomes. Wholesale removal of a pair of chromosomes by mutation would almost certainly result in a nonviable organism. However, there is another possibility - that a mutation caused two chromosomes to fuse together into one (remember that the 46 human chromosomes are actually in 23 pairs). But this possibility presents the prediction that the characteristics of two chromosomes would be found sandwiched together in the human genome as one chromosome.
Since we now have the data from the Human Genome Project available, this prediction - stemming from the hypothesis that humans and modern apes have a common ancestor - can be tested. The ends of chromosomes consist of "telomeres", which are specialized and easily recognizable segments of DNA. By sequencing each chromosome, these telomeres can be detected. If two chromosomes were fused together end-to-end, there should be telomere sequences in the middle of a human chromosome.
Lo and behold, such a prediction was shown to be true - chromosome 2 contains the expected telomere sequences roughly in its center.
Now, this doesn't prove that humans and modern apes had a common ancestor. It does, however, lend additional evidence to that hypothesis. But that's how the scientific method works. You come up with a hypothesis, generate testable predictions based on that hypothesis, and then conduct experiments to test those predictions. The hypothesis is proven false when the testable predictions prove false. The more of these tests that the hypothesis survives, the more important it becomes as a theory worthy of acceptance into mainstream science - not as fact, but as our best current understanding of how something works.
On the other hand, ID produces no testable predictions of its own. Its survival is based on the false dichotomy between evolution and ID perpetuated by ID advocates - the claim that if evolution is tested to be false, then ID (nee creationism) must be true. This violates both basic logic and the scientific method - evolution and ID are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and in order for ID to be accepted as a scientific theory, it must produce testable predictions which, if proven false, would prove ID to be false as well. ID advocates raise no such testable predictions - all of their claims are actually tests of evolution, not of ID. Until ID can produce such predictions and can survive tests of those predictions, it cannot be regarded as a truly scientific theory.
Note that this isn't a matter of a lacking in the state of the art. Other scientific theories such as string theory can't currently be tested given today's technology, but they do produce predictions that, given sufficient advances in the state of the art, could be tested. ID doesn't even go that far.
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.
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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.
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
An interesting observation about Gods plural rather than God singular. Since there are many faiths with many gods which are attached to different cultures - can anyone point out which of these Gods is the God advocated in the ID theory who is responsible for our creation? Or is it asking too much for scientific methodology to distinguish which god is responsible for ID?
I get the feeling that ID is an interesting philosophical idea which suffers from lack of development. Give me a good idea about which god has implemented ID and a coherent explanation of why they should want to do such a thing and I might find it more appealing. For example the Christian god is reported to be interested in my faith and therefore would appear to be misrepresented if those people amongst us who are experts on the christian god spent an inordinate amount of effort pointing out physical proof that the god exists as the architect of ID.
Science and philosophy like church and state make uneasy bedfellows, they are related but it is culture which mediates the relationship, they are not the same thing.
It is a political question that has been raised. If you want to live in a theocracy like Iran then go ahead and teach ID in science class. Personally I would rather live in a secular society which tolerates many faiths and has to live with the awkward compromises that political processes go through in order to accomodate those faiths.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
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?
The irony of this is so thick you should be embarrassed. There is no reason or logic in ID. None. ID is nothing but a religious wish to brainwash more children into believing that a god actually, maybe, exists. It has absolutely no other purpse. ID cuts everything off at the knees and says "god did it". Within the view of ID, biological science comes to a stand still.
I'm sick of this nonsense. I'm going to call it as it is. Anyone that supports ID is an absolute moron.
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
"Half mutated" babies abound as resutls of the use of Agent Orange and Depleted Uranium, but I don't think that's what you were really looking for.
[quote] How about fossilized whale skeletons with vestigal legs? [/quote] YM pelvic bones, which whales today still have and use to breed.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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
This is amazing to watch. A nation is LOBOTOMIZING itself.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
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.
Somehow these two are not compatible:
;)
You can't pick out an animal that is 'half-way' mutated - that idea is just idiotic.
And:
Over time these mutations change a selection of animals enough for them to be classified as a separate genus (ie: Homo erectus to Homo sapien) and eventually some mutations will lead to completly new species (ie: Gorillas to Humans).
I take it you are talking about yourself in the first part?
How is it that we don't find more fossils for all of the states between species?
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
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.
"Prediction CAN be a useful aspect of science (say, for engineering purposes), but it is not a necessary one."
:).
It's sad that there are so many people posting to a geek site who do not understand the scientific method, the whole thing dissapears down a rabbit hole if you dont make and test predictions. The obvious answer to your senario is exactly the method by wich science moves forward. Science does not find absolute answers and never will (unless the ID types manage to get their own way). Science simply holds up the simplist and most complete explanations known to man, truth, as any scientist will tell you, belongs to the Gods
Scientists as a whole are not opposed to the teaching of ID but they are opposed to teaching it as science, as the GP post stated, "ID is 100% non-verifiable and is useless for precition". It is the same reasoning that ensures atheism is not taught as science.
To sum up, you can call ID anything you like, religion, philosophy, fiction, god of the gaps, debate by loophole.... Scientists are understandably pissed off because calling it science involves either...
a. Fibbing.
b. A redefinition of science that puts a religious trump card (sticker) back into the scientific method.
The dark age of Europe: A triumph of religion over reason.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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_.
It seems that by large the scientific community disagrees with you there. What is more, most christian churges disagree with you.
Also, putting underscores around the text you want people to believe is not making it more believable, especially when you do not give any argument for your statement whatsoever.
Maybe you should go talk to your ID believing fellows because it is them who cause most people to see ID the way they do. It is the people who are vocal about their belief in ID who come up with extremely far fetched examples of why there must be an intelligence involved in 'evolution'.
At any rate, ID is a belief, it is a religiously inspired 'explanation' of how species came to be. As such it has nothing whatsoever to do with science and does not belong in science classes. As part of religious and filosophical classes it is quite fine.
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
There are lots of "wrong" scientific theories out there no matter how you define "wrong". Peak oil, pyramids, bigfoot, what makes the stock market move, the composition of the earth's core. Take your pick but I don't see the same level of emotions.
When a group of people try to put forth bigfoot as fact in science classes then you'll see just as much outrage.
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.
>Which of these theories are children in danger of hearing in their "science" class rooms?
Isn't that what the science class is for? Bringing up strange and interesting ideas and applying scientific methods to them?
I had a science teacher that did address UFOs and other silly questions like "why aren't there superheros?". That was an excellent learning experience.
Exactly when should we allow others to start hearing things you/I/someone else disagrees with?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
More relevantly, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Allah, Jehova, Menbari, Plain Old God, or Steve Gutenberg could do the creating through...evolution! Is there somewhere in the bible that says:
God created everything by snapping his fingers and saying "abracadabra", and you must take that literally. It is not a metaphor for anything, nor a simplification for easy consumption by your currently simple understanding, even though in about 2000 years folks will start to understand in more detail how God did it. This paragraph is being presented to you in 263 languages, including some that don't exist yet, so that nothing can be lost in translation for thousands of years yet...
Why can't God use effective tools such as evolution? Is it necessary for God to imagine stuff and it suddenly, immediately (even on OUR time scale) pops into existance?
I find people on both major sides of this argument to have their minds so very closed.
However, as far as teaching it in school...it is a religion, just like every other religion, and should be taught in a class where other religions are taught. To teach it elsewhere would be teaching a specific religion as more or less important than others, which is a Very Bad Idea.
Science classes are where one is taught what mainstream scientists are doing, which includes evolution, the observational approach to determining the mechanics involved in creation.
That book was written 2000 years ago, by people from that time (people, BTW, who were not JC himself but his friends and friends' friends), for people who weren't even literate, let alone able to understand advanced concepts such as hygiene or evolution.
With the advancement of science, as well as the advancement of the intelligence and cognizance (sic?) of the general population, we are in a position to understand stuff better. Why must religion remain in the same state it was 2000 years ago, and not advance with the rest of society? And why must people (on both sides) believe that accepting science means rejecting religion?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
> 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.
>I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact.
h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3
Actually, species have been created in the lab (a type of californian seaworm and many new fruitfly species) and others have speciated in the wild under historical observation - flowers, rats, mice, others. Check out the talk.origins link below, they have plenty of cited examples of speciation. Natural Selection allows both accurate prediction and domestication - we wouldn't have dogs, brocolli or corn if "evolution" didn't work.
>All that needs to be shown is several fossils demonstrating gradual change from 1 species to another.
Very well. Please observe the change from Australopithecus to the various species of Homo, currently represented by H. Sapiens. The shades of variation are so slight through the fossil record, yet obviously showing a several million year span of evolution and change. Paleontologists will fight over whether a skull is Homo Ergaster or just a big-brained Habilis, but they will all agree that the fossils show structured, reasonable, natural changes that can be predicted by applying Natural Selection. There, fossils showing gradual, species-changing modification. Somewhere (probably at change to Homo?) the human lines lost chromosomes among other radical shifts. A modern H. sapiens could not breed with an Australopith, or no moreso than with a chimp. Unless you deny the actual existence of our ancestors, this shows both micro and macro evolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.
The link has an example of what I'm describing, I also recommend the excellent "Extinct Humans" for further reading.
Akgoatley, I'm not sure where you fit on the opinion section, this is not personal: I don't understand where the controversy is, honestly. Anyone that passed high school biology should understand the basic processes of life, including Natural Selection and modern evolutionary concepts. "It's only a theory" is a bullshit argument, that people buy this shows the dire lack of scientific literacy in this country. This is people trying to deny reality and using fairy tales to placate themselves. If you need God to get through the day, I don't hold it against you. Don't turn this country into a 3rd-world theocracy because you're scared to know things. "Evolution" is only the first thing these American Taliban are after- they also question plate tectonics, the physics light and I'm sure plenty of other scientific concepts. I know this, because as a child I thrived at a 7th-Day Adventist school, but what they claimed was science, was not.
Science and technology drive this world. We are roadkill if we try to deny this - shame on Kansas for trying to shackle their children with theocratic garbage. I definitely support the AAAS in putting the copyright screws to them - this is effective political conflict.
Josh
We need a first generation of pioneers.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
Actually, generalized evolutionary theory is used in arguments about the evolution of the physical universe after the first femto-second. Whenever you hear arguments about this particle would be stable in that environment, but as conditions changed it would decay into this other particle, you are dealing with an argument based on the general theory of evolution. Now it's true that we can't explain the time period earlier than the 1st femto second, and there's lots of arguments about the details of how things evolved from there and why, those arguments PRESUME that generalized evolutionary theory is valid. This is also involved in how we explain the boiling and evaporation (or freezing) of water. And practically everywhere else in science.
... not even stupid, but rather willfully blind. OTOH, this is rather unfair, as people frequently don't even notice that they are applying generalized evolutionary thinking in their arguments. (So the willfully is probably unfair. But that's the way it looks.)
It is prevalent to the point that when you deny it you appear
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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.
You made the connection yourself just now. So yes.
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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.
alright - I'll clarify: 'half-way mutated' doesn't make sense, it's either mutated or not. Do you know what we would call the animal that's the evolutionary middle man between the gorilla and the chimp? a Gorilla! If the animal isn't 'mutated' enough from animal 'x' to be called animal 'y' then it's STILL animal 'x'. If it could be called ANYTHING other than animal 'x' then it's not a 'middle man' it the 'end man' - a whole other animal. is that clearer?
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"In some social-study class or other where it can be taught along side of Astrology, Divination, tea-leaf reading and the theory of the Abominable Snowman. Just not in science class." No, that's a bit harsh. ID could be taught in a class that covers comparitive religion. For example they could also cover "mainstream" Christian teachings (Roman Catholic Church and a couple major Protestent sects as well) then they could cover maybe Hindu and American Indian creation stories too. It could actually be an interesting and usfull class there they show how each society makes up a creation story to fit thier culture. In fact this could even be taught in science. Yes real science with statistics and math and all that stuff. The root of this conflict is that for many peope science IS faith. They haven't a clue. They think science is just a collection of always changing facts that one most memorize and accept on faith.
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?
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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.
How about, say, the continuum of monkeys and apes, from the chimpanzee up to the great ape, and then humans? The larger and more human-like animals are populations that diverged at one point or another and "advanced" (for lack of a better term) towards homo sapiens. You can see this not only in their physical characteristics, but in their mental makeup as well. Several of the more highly evolved primates use tools in the wild.
And don't pull out that bullshit, "if they turned into humans, there wouldn't be any apes left" thing. Divergence occurs, in many cases, when a smallish population is cut off from interbreeding with the rest of the species at large and subjected to unusual pressures by natural selection. The rest of the species can continue just fine in the habitat in which they evolved, while the offshoot diverges enough to become a seperate species.
So how about it? You have living examples of many branches along the primate evolutionary tree, and a clear path of evolution based on physical characteristics and fossil evidence. You also have some more intermediate steps that didn't survive as distinct groups, such as the Lucy skeleton.
So... what's your answer to that?
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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.
This is a silly game - for every intermedite form produced you'll simply shoehorn it into one category of the other and say "but what is between those?". The world's supply of discoverable fossil's is very much finite, while you can keep splitting hairs indefinitely.
In practice Archeopteryx is between lizards and birds. Between lizards and Archeopteryx are therapod dinosaurs. Between early lizard like therapods and Archeopteryx are late more bird-like dromaeosaurids and between early dromaeosaurids like Troodons and Archeopteryx are various feathered dinosaurs, which includes fossils that simply had feathers, apparently for warmth, through to later fossils that actually had clearly flight adapted feathers.
Want to try something different? How about whale evolution? We can start with a land dwelling mammal that looked fairly dog like but had certain ear structures not found in other mammals that are more suitable for hearing underwater. Then there's ambulocetus which was similar, but in practice was rather akin to a mammalian crocodile, with back legs obviously adpated for swimming, the same ear structures as our first creature, and a nose structure, similar to a crocodile, that was ideal for breathing while immersed in shallow water. Next there are things like rodhocetus which is remarkably whale like, yet still posses back legs, and still has a nasal structure placng the nostrils toward the tip as in ambulocetus. There's aetiocetus which shows the transition from snout tip nostrils toward nostils at the top of the skulls as in modern whales. Then there's basilosaurus which is decidedly whale like, but lacking in a few modern whale features, and retaining distinct, but quite useless, hind limbs similar to those of rodhocetus.
You can find similar sets of forms for the development of horses, the development of snakes from lizards, and even for the ape to man path, among many others.
Oh, I'm sure you can parse those and say "but what's between that?", but I think for most people who are not being mindlessly dogmatic that represents fairly reasonable evidence of transitions from lizards to birds, or from land dwelling mammals to whales, an, if they bothered to do the extra research and reading, the development of horses, snakes and man.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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
Well then, it seems the IDers in academia, are the "atheist[s] in a bible thumping town".
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.
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.
If a concept can neither be proven or disproven through scientific method at any concievable point current or in the future, then it is not science and should not be taught as such. The existence of the $force that is molding evolution and is so far above us that we cannot see traces of its existence, is something that can neither be proven or disproven. In my opinion that is why it does not need to be taught in class rooms, it has nothing to do with science and everything to do with the act of faith required to believe there is a plan to this chaos we call existence. ymmv
Panel F, Relay #70
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.
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.
what sprang from horses that arre a different species?
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
I think you are barking up the wrong tree.
Talk to any systems engineer. (I am one, and I was talking about this ID to another that has designed satellites)
It takes 10's of thousands of hours to design a complex system. Intelligent purposeful, difficult design work where even one overlooked design error could render the whole device useless.
1. Life is much more complex than a satellite. (Why, because man has been trying to reverse engineer it for a long time, and still has only partial knowledge of how it works)
2. Matter tends towards disorder.
Take neattly lined up box of matches and drop them from 1m. The matches will have both lower potential energy, and more disorder.
Combine the extreem complexity of life, with a unvirse that tends toward disorder, and ID starts to make sense.
I read all the criticims about ID not being science, and I agree.
In a practical sense, the science of evolution has proved pretty useless. How often does a research science trying to cure cancer go and grab his origon of the species?
The point is Medical & Biological research do not depend on ID or Evolution. eg.If anything, the perception that somthing intelligent designed life is more of an advantage to biological researcher, because he can say, hey there is a well thought out system here, and my job is to reverse engineer it, rather than, hey all these random beneficial mutations have produced incresed order.
Its like the junk DNA thing.
Evolutionists say 'hey' we don't what all this junk is, so it must be leftovers from evolution.
An ID would say, hey everything has a purpose, we just need to do more scientific research to find out what it is.
So to say ID is against science is a lie. Against a small branch of science, then maybe yes.
46137
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.
The only reason they don't predict on the designer is so that they can claim it's science.
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
"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"
Speciation occurs when isolated pockets of a species become reproductive incompatible... boom, two seperate species rather than different breeds of the same species.
There are no mutated species, just mutated genes.
:)
This, my friend, is purely semantics. When I mutate a gene in yeast, I get a mutant strain back. The yeast are now mutants. I make mutations in genes that give mutant genes which give mutant yeast. So yes, there are mutated species just as there are mutated genes.
The mechanism by which they have come to vary is evolution, according to science.
The first point was semantics, this is just wrong. Genes don't varying by evolution. Genes varying by a number of mechanisms, spontaneous mutations, recombination, DNA strand breaks, etc etc etc. Evolution is the propagation of species with favorable mutations. Now we get into micro- and macro-evolution. Micro-evolution is the favorable selection of mutated genes within a species. Macro-evolution is the speciation based on many genetic mutations and an incompatibility for inter-mating between the new organism and the previous organism. Macro-evolution / Speciation is where the debate lies.
Or, if it is "Intelligent Design," fine, but that is not science, it is magic by definition.
Finally, there is no magic by definition. ID has a number of different manifestations, but none claim magic. ID claims that there is a designer, a master engineer. Think about this:
You have a box with 100 round magnets all separated on the inside. You then shake the box and look inside. You see that the magnets have come together in the shape of a house complete with miniature chairs, tables, and beds on the inside. Do you assume that you just happened to luckily shake the bag up (even if you did this 10,000+ times) or do you assume that after you shook it up that someone snuck in and arranged everything all nice and neatly?
Since science is, by definition, limited to materialism there is no way to postulate a creator and so the ONLY answer is that these species came about by chance. However, as fully functioning human beings we are not limited to strict materialism.
This will upset a lot of people, but some questions are out of the realm of science. Science is the proper tool for many questions and many problems, however there are a number of tools that science is not the answer for. An old boss of mine used to have a saying, "When you get a new hammer, everything looks like a nail." Now, molecular biology and genetics and biochemistry and all the tools we use to say that evolution is true are relatively new scientific fields. As such, we are pounding everything in sight and making all sorts of conclusions based on a very very very limited data set. We (scientists, I am one) are still making sense out of lots of things and it is way too premature to puff up our chests and claim that we have all the answers.
Sorry this got so long, at first I was only going to reply to your post but I think a lot of people forget about the limitations of science. Science itself is not "The Holy Grail" of knowledge. Science is a great tool and can tell us much about the world in which we live. Science, however, is not especially great at looking into the past because we have to base our understanding on a lot of assumptions. For example, has radioactive decay been constant for the last 5,000 years? How about the last 5 million years? We don't know this and so all assumptions based on these measurements are just that, assumptions. Be careful where you put your faith
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm ok with the teaching if ID as long as it's not solely Christan based. If we are really talking about teaching it "for the well rounded education of our children to see multiple sides", then we need to teach other religous beliefs about ID as well.
I'll take that one step further. Why don't you teach Evolution in Sunday school? Afterall, it IS about the well rounded educaiton of the children right?
How are the fossles of Apes, then Neandertals, then Humans not exactly what you are looking for? You see a slow gradual change there. Also, Cro-Magnon and the like. Not to mention the smaller intervening steps such as the differences within Humans?
The return argument I expect is that the various fossles are just micro-evolution. But there's a problem with that statement. It makes it impossible to satisfy your demand.
Because, if there is a distinct difference between say, Neandertals and Humans - you will claim there is no fossil on either side. When we show there is a fossle on either side, I'm betting you will claim those only demonstrate Micro-Evolution.
So, to have fossles close enough to fit criteria A (no huge jump) they also would fit (for you) negative criteria B (they are microevolution).
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
There is a fatal flaw in your logic--you are trying to define a term using 20th century definitions for terms written in the 18th century.
If you look at the essays concerning the 1st Amendment, you will find that it is *generally* agreed that this does not mean anything other than the government (federal, state or local) will not make any law that favors any ONE religion (or religious denomination) over another--and further that it will keep from making laws that aid any religion or denomination over another.
The so-called 'wall of separation' that was derived in the 1940's from a Supreme Court decision. The problem with this is that it comes from a LETTER written by then President Jefferson to a baptist group in CT when they wrote him to ask for intervention by the government in a religious matter. Basing a court decision on the constitutionality of a religious matter has caused the greatest rift in the US between believers and non-belivers that has ever been seen.
It cannot be said that our Founding Fathers were NOT religious--in fact they were. Jefferson was accosted on his way to church after being elected president and told that he should NOT be going . His response to the person was "No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir." Jefferson himself wrote many essays on his beliefs---as did Franklin, Madison, and many of the others who framed the Constitution. It is often argued that they weren't Christians, but they were Deists--acknowledging God in many differing ways. That may be true--in the sense of being Christian as we see it today--that is, one who acknowledges Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and the instrument of our Salvation---the Final Sacrifice demanded by God. I won't argue that point.
I live in Pennsylvania, near the town of Dover. They are currently embroiled in a bitter court case over Intelligent Design. In their case, it is a mere 4 line addendum read by the teacher telling students that evolution is only ONE theory of the origins of life; that there is documentable proof that it may be a flawed theory, and that another is explored in a textbook (Of Pandas and People) that may be found in the school library. That's it..they're not *teaching* creationism, nor advocating relgion. They're not even *forcing* anyone to read the other theory, merely pointing out the fact that it exists and pointing out that evolution may be a flawed theory. Intelligent Design is a valid theory---as valid as Evolution, because the Evolutionary Origin of Man requires as much of a 'leap of faith' to believe that we came from single-celled organisms.
Yes, I'm a Christian..but I also believe the evolution has a *place* in our creation. We certainly have 'evolved' to live longer, be taller, and other things than even our RECENT ancestors. In that respect, evolution is a truth to me. Also, as a Christian, I don't want a teacher in the public school indoctrinating my child into a particular belief system. That's my job. BUT...I do want them to present *all* of the evidence and let my child decide.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
That's it? "Half-way mutated", what ever that means? But you could just ask for a "1/4" and "3/4 mutated" species.
But if you want to see some examples of fossils that have turned up over the years, ones that share a great number of features of groups that are normally considered distinct, look up: _Acanthostega_, _Panderichthys_ and its fishy relatives, _Microraptor_, or _Ambulocetus_, none of which were well known until the last couple of decades -- i.e. they have turned up in places where there were formerly "gaps". I'm not providing any specific sites for them -- look them up yourself. The names are distinctive enough. You'll find creationist critiques of the conventional interpretation too. That'll provide balance.
So, if you ask for the "1/4" and "3/4" ones after you look at these, wait a couple of decades, and some of those may turn up too, as they always have. People critiquing evolutionary theory have been moving the goal posts like this ever since the 1850s. First it was "find me a transition between birds and reptiles", then _Archaeopteryx_ turned up. Then _Microraptor_ and a bunch of other feathered dinosaurs. Now, it is find me a transition between _Microraptor_ and other dinosaurs. Or make ever-more-stretched claims that these fossils are clearly one or the other "kind" of creature, eventhough you have to resort to minutae to distinguish them, and half the time the critics can't consistently decide which side a given fossil is on (e.g., in the case of _Archaeopteryx_ some anti-evolutionary creationists claim it is a dinosaur skeleton with feathers forged onto it, others as categorically claim it is a bird -- most scientists regard it as a bird, but a distinctly weird and transitional one by modern standards (teeth, long bony tail, claws on its wings, and other oddities) -- all relicts of its earlier ancestry).
Or find me a transition between fish and land vertebrates, then _Ichthyostega_ and _Acanthostega_ turn up, and people ask for still smaller increments of change between those (some of which do exist). Sheesh, these four-legged vertebrates were probably aquatic and couldn't even walk on land, and their skulls amazingly closely match the anatomy of slightly earlier fish like _Panderichthys_. Look only at the skull, and non-experts would have a very tough time telling which one was the "fish" and which was the "amphibian".
Yes, ultimately finding every single increment of change is predicted by evolutionary theory, IF the record is good enough, so the fossils might be expected to turn up someday; but it's a pity nobody notices that each time something IS found, the goal posts are moved by anti-evolutionary creationists to span ever tinier gaps. Ironically, that pattern of "shrinking gaps" matches what would be predicted as sampling improves. That's the test: that as we sample the fossil record, species regarded as distinct will get blurred together. Differences get smaller. And they do.
And, no, to forestall a common misunderstanding, even if species are changing with a punctuated equilibrium-type pattern, sometimes the tiny increments of change between those species do turn up too (but the record has to be exceptionally detailed).
The whole thing is like plotting a graph with just a few data points, and adding more and more points until a trend appears -- someone could always point to the space between two of the dots as an unbridgable "gap", all the while ignoring the ever more obvious trend as it builds up. Either that, or they could deny that the data points exist at all, or that the points are all mixed up, or some even more dubious claim (this is the situation where anti-evolutionary creationists start critiquing geology too).
what sprang from horses that arre a different species?
The simplest answer to your question: nothing yet. Hang around for a while and see.
Slightly longer answer: because horses are with us today, they're at the end of the chain of species, not the middle. I'm trying to come up with a non-insulting way to talk about the past vs. the present vs. the future and how since we're at the present, we shouldn't talk about the future as if it's the past... but I'm having a really hard time.
If you really understand even basic issues so poorly and you keep speaking up when your betters are having a discussion, you're going to sound like you learned logic and science (among other things) in Kansas. Best to keep your mouth shut.
Regards,
Ross
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)
Why do people still believe that there is no evidence for speciation? Dozens, if not hundreds, of observed speciation events have been published in peer reviewed journals for decades. If you for some reason disagree with the scientific methods used in proving that ALL of these speciation events did indeed occur, then you should put forward some evidence to support your claim. Of course, in addition to posting your wisdom here on /. you might also want to give those useless hacks at "Nature" and "Science" some advice on how to properly review articles.
On the other hand, it may simply be that you were unaware of these articles. That's certainly nothing to be ashamed of (everyone is ignorant about something or another), but let me leave you with one tidbit of knowledge: THIS IS EXACTLY WHY SCIENTISTS DON'T DEBATE ID PROPONENTS! Every time I (used to) get into a discussion with a creationist, I would find that he usually had a very, VERY dim grasp of the subject they were attempting to discuss with an air of authority. It gets real irritating real fast to have to explain why we don't need to know initial quantities of radioactive elements in order to properly determine that the earth is 4.5 Gyrs old, etc.
Here's a simple solution: phrase your statement differently. Instead of making an absurd claim like "there are no observed instances of speciation", just ask "Hey- this whole speciation thing. Is there any evidence for it?". You'll come off sounding less like an ignorant dogmatic Believer, and more like a curious newcomer. The person you're talking to will respect you more, and you'll have more productive conversations. Who knows- you might even learn something.
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.
There are generally two ways to react to ID proponents. The first is to attempt to talk to them on the level of rational, scientific debate (thus assuming that they are working on the same level). The second is to be more cynical and try to expose them as being religiously motivated.
The reasonable "let's pretend that ID proponents are actually scientists" approach
I agree with ID proponents that certain body parts and physiological mechanisms are so complicated that we simply don't understand the intricacies of exactly how they evolved. What I don't understand is why ID people seem to believe that this means that these mechanisms are "irreducibly complex". It seems like the first, most obvious mistake here is the equation of "we don't understand how this mechanism evolved right now" with "this mechanism COULDN'T have evolved". It's the God of the Gaps, pure and simple. Oops- "Designer of the Gaps". Sorry.
All this last point shows is that, at the very least, ID proponents are practicing flawed science. They're making unjustified leaps of logic in assuming that our ignorance of certain aspects of nature demonstrates ANYTHING beyond the fact that we're not omniscient. But there's a far more serious problem, one that I believe strikes at the very core of science itself- naturalism. All scientists look at the world and assume that all causes and effects are natural- that they follow rigorous
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.
The only reason they don't predict on the designer is so that they can claim it's science.
So SETI isn't science?
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.
From the post you're apparently citing:
I think the best way to go about it would be to teach neither theory extensively in a science class, and give all theories, from intelligent design to evolution to aquatic apes and aliens, thorough treatment in a separate "origins of life" class, which would be more philosophy than science, though the two obviously have significant overlap.
He stated that he wanted to keep -both- evolution -and- creationism out of science class. Keeping creation out makes sense-it's not science, as I showed. Evolution, however, is a scientific theory, and should be treated as such. ANY science teacher who teaches that ANY scientific theory is proven beyond doubt or improvement is doing a disservice to their students, questioning established theory is the very foundation of science. But the questioning to be done should be done through the scientific method, if you wish to call it science. It is no better to put evolution on the same level as religious belief in a philosophy class then it is to put creation on the level of evolution in a science class. Evolution belongs in the science class, religion belongs in a social studies or comparative religion class.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
What about living examples? Dogs would be a "half-way mutated spiecies" if I understand correctly what you intended with that phrase--not a species of it's own but not really wolves either.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
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.
Organisms decompose very quickly.Regardless, there are literally hundreds of thousands of transitional species and fossils. Study the damn science before you assert dumb ass claims that were made by your local lunatic religious person.
For some examples of living transitional species, look at dogs and wolves (which can be interbred), modern agriculture, and a few species of squirrels( On different sides of the Grand Canyon you'll find nearly identical squirrels, the difference being that on the side of the canyon that is higher, it is colder and you see that over time they've developed traits suited more for the climate and eventually became an individual species. Also if you take certain species of squirrels from say Pennsylvania and mate them with that same species from Ohio, they can mate fine, but try to mate it with a squirrel of the same species from California and it will most likely fail or be extremely hard to get to work because this species is on the verge of speciation where they form into two separate species that can no longer breed together.)
Anyone who claims that there is no evidence of transistional fossils or species is just plain and simple repeating non-sense, but no matter how much you say, it isn't true. Here is the known cladogram for just dinosauria, look at all transitions, and these are just the ones that have been found and proven, there are still large parts of the earth left to search, not to mention under the thousands of miles of ice at the poles which are currently unreachable but in the age of the dinosaurs were most liklely prolific with life. You kind find similar diagrams for *every* single species. When combined, it is huge, one of the biggest and best documented diagrams in all of man's history.
is a very truncated version of the cladogram for modern killer whales, the full cladogram contains significantly more detail. Please everyone stop spreading misinformation, this I.D. stuff is getting out of hand. The things I present here are just the beginning, actually look at the science in depth and realize what a well founded and proven theory evolution is.
Regards,
Steve
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
IANAP (I Am Not A Paleontologist), but hasn't there been significant evidence recently linking dinosaurs and birds?
The problem with "Intelligent Design" is that by definition the designer could not have arisen naturally. I suppose you could say that the I.D. who created life on earth was designed by another I.D., but at some point you reach the end of the chain, otherwise known as "God". At which point you've left science and have entered religion, and teaching religion is simply not appropriate in public schools.
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.
SETI is quite easily falsifiable, you either find ETI or you don't. ID however isn't, because even if someone designed humans, how did the designer come to? By another ID? Or evolution? If answer is ID, repeat the question ad nauseum.
Sorry, my tag for the cladogram for the killer whale got messed up, here it is.
Regards,
Steve
... than to just make stuff up!
SETI is using information theory to attempt to detect signs of intelligence in the universe. If such a signal is detected, it still won't mean that we are going to determine if the cause as little green men or big purple amazon women.
ID is using the same principle applied to biological systems. So if SETI is science, so is ID.
"No, your argument is a misrepresentation of what I said. I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact."
The problem is that there is no scientific theory that can absolutly proven true. That fact doesn't mean that all theories are equally valid or useful.
It's ironic that although ID is clearly being pushed by religious people, it could be 100% true in a godless universe with highly advanced aliens (Tom Cruise take note).
In addition, if evolution were proven 100% false it wouldn't be evidence that ID were true.
It seems fitting to me that those that are willing to accept a theory entirely without evidence are doing so under the flawed logic that it would prove their religious beliefs to be true.
Gods are called supernatural precisely because they are beyond natural law.
I guess faith is no longer enough, scientific support is required these days. Or perhaps I'm wrong on this last point, St. Thomas had to have proof too.
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!
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?
I should hope not. Evolutionary theory provides no mechanism for something to be "halfway" mutated. Note that all individual differences are due to mutation, so if you find one skull that is a bit larger or smaller than another skull of the same species, that is a mutational difference.
What gene sequencing has revealed is that there is really no difference at the genomic level between micro and macroevolution. All differences between species, as well as differences between individuals, result from exactly the same kind of changes at the genetic level--which happen to be exactly the kinds of changes produced by mutation.
For more details, see this site
Horse evolution for the family tree, or
Fossil horse photosfor the evidence.
It took me a few seconds to google "horse evolution" and find this. Assuming you're not just being difficult (and your use of the phrase 'halfway mutated' is tendentious -- like something 'knows' what it's mutating towards?) this is about as complete as you'd need. There are enough 'intermediate forms' here to prove the point, unless you're just being silly and want all the begats for a process spanning millions of years.
As another Christian, I can see where you are coming from. However, I believe that ID has no place in a science class, as it is not science , which is, by definition, falsifiable, which ID is not. It is a subject that belongs in a place such as a philosophy class, not science.
I am Spartacus
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!
o, your argument is a misrepresentation of what I said. I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact.
In science, the only true facts are individual observations. "I dropped the book and it fell to the floor" is an observation. "Objects fall when dropped" is a theory. All scientific generalizations and explanations are theories, potentially subject to revision by new data. This is true of evolution, just as it is true of gravitation. But that does not mean that all possible explanations are equal. We do not present the theory that the earth is at the center of the solar system on the same basis as the theory that the sun is at the center of the solar system. And we don't present fringe notions like ID on the same basis as a theory that is virtually universally accepted by biologists, such as natural selection.
Yo! Michael Padilla,
You ever heard of fair use?
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
SETI is using information theory to attempt to detect signs of intelligence in the universe. If such a signal is detected, it still won't mean that we are going to determine if the cause as little green men or big purple amazon women.
True.
But I'm not sure what you mean by science. If you mean a scientific theory, then yes, SETI is not a scientific theory, it's a practical application of other theories. If you mean a practical application that utilises scientific methods to verify it's data set, then yes, SETI is science. No, ID isn't. Why? Because according to ID proponents, life is too complex to have evolved, and therefore there has to be a ID'er. See? Nothing to investigate, they already have the answer. ID has no proof to support it, evolution has. Even if the theory of evolution isn't perfect (yet), that doesn't prove that ID is correct.
Is the explanation of the second scientist not science simply because it fails to make predictions, but only explains data?
Such retrodiction turns out to be easy and not particularly meaningful, particularly if your theory has a large number of adjustable parameters. For example, if you give me an X-Y plot with n points derived from some measurement, I can give you a "theory"--a polynomial equation--with n+1 parameters that perfectly "predicts" (passes through) those points, but very likely, if you give me one more point, it won't fall on the curve (because few things in nature are actually well described by polynomials). I can come up with a new polynomial to fit that point, but give me one more point and I'll probably be out of luck again. This is why the true test of a theory is the ability to predict something that you don't already know. For example, Darwin didn't know about genes or mutations, but he was able to predict that something of the sort had to exist--because his theory wouldn't work without them. So for example, "That phenomenon can be described by a polynomial equation" is not a scientific theory, because I can find a polynomial equation to perfectly fit any set of data. But "That phenomenon can be described by a polynomial equation of degree three" is potentially a scientific theory, because if I collect enough data, I should be able to prove it false, if it is false.
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.
You're not gonna believe this, but just because the Catholic Church says it's OK to believe in evolution doesn't mean that all Catholics do. From http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/sage/v6i8n.h tm :
"Despite [John Paul's affirmation of evolution], 40 percent of American Catholics in a 2001 Gallup poll said they believed that God created human life in the past 10,000 years."
So there, in all probablility, goes your majority.
one hundred twenty
is just enough characters
to write a haiku
Actually, generalized evolutionary theory is used in arguments about the evolution of the physical universe after the first femto-second. Whenever you hear arguments about this particle would be stable in that environment, but as conditions changed it would decay into this other particle, you are dealing with an argument based on the general theory of evolution.
There is really no relationship between what you are describing and the biological theory of evolution. The general concept of "evolution," meaning natural change, is an old, general concept, and substantially predates Darwin. It was generally accepted by most biologists, simply on the basis of observations, that life had evolved even before Darwin came along, and there were other theories--e.g. Lamarkian evolution--proposed to account for it. Darwin provided a mechanism--in which natural selection plays a prominent role--to explain for the observed evolution of life, and that mechanistic theory has stood up to over a hundred years of tests.
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.
A theory being scientific does -not- mean that it has been proven true or false. It means that it can be proven true or false
Minor correction: a scientific theory can never be proved true; it can only be proved false. That is why making falsifiable predictions is considered an absolute requirement for an idea to qualify as a scientific theory.
How would you, personally, design an experiment to falsify (or otherwise) evolution?
It need not be an *experiment*, though. There are plenty of things that could falsify evolution. If a newly discovered, sophisticated, thriving group of organisms was posessed of an entirely divergent cellular makeup, that would be a major problem for evolution. If a modern elephant were discovered at a suitably-ancient fossil depth, that would be a major problem. A pig giving birth to a duck would also be a major problem. And as we go down the line, a group of aliens showing up and saying "Hey! Guess what? We did this, and human beings were the master plan implanted into the pattern of nature!" would throw the idea of undirected evolution out the window.
Yes, the latter examples are a bit ridiculous, but the first two are well within the realm of possibility. One can see them happening. One can also see why they might be problematic to the idea that evolution got everything from there to here.
No such examples exist with intelligent design (short of God saying "Nah, I didn't really do the hands-on thing"). Any variation, any unexplained phenomena, can be chalked up to the mysterious whims of the potentially unnamed designer.
Thank you for that wonderful post. If this debate is to ever be resolved in the minds of the most of the public, we need more practicing Christians to stand up and tell the public that they can be both Christians and scientists. I'm afraid we atheists can talk, but our voices don't carry a lot of weight in many respects. Right now, we're facing the old problem that the extremists (Biblical literalists, in this case) have the loudest voices and so are generally as being the majority opinion for their group (Christians).
Actually, most Christians don't have a problem with macro-evolution, either. It's just fundie nutjobs like you that have a problem with it. And before you quote statistics about such-and-such percentage Christians thinking something, remember that there is this place called "outside the USA" where there is a decidedly different variety of Christians than you are probably used to.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The point is Medical & Biological research do not depend on ID or Evolution. eg.If anything, the perception that somthing intelligent designed life is more of an advantage to biological researcher, because he can say, hey there is a well thought out system here, and my job is to reverse engineer it, rather than, hey all these random beneficial mutations have produced incresed order.
As a biomedical research, I have to say that that is completely false. I use evolutionary theory all of the time to design and interpret experiments. I find it hard to imagine how one could think meaningfully about genetic data or comparative proteomics without knowledge of evolution. I would say that to a biologist, evolutionary theory is as fundamental as arithmetic is to an account. Virtually everything we do is informed by evolutionary theory.
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."
ID has been taught in Philosophy classes for hundreds of years. Philosophers call it the Argument from Design, and it is one of the standard arguments we discuss when considering arguments for and against the existence of God. It is certainly a logical (inductive) argument. It just isn't a scientific hypothesis.
Ahh. This is the sort of misinformation fluff that drives me nuts. This whole "theory vs fact" misinformation is the root of the problem. Those of us who studied, for instance, gas turbine theory wonder if someone out there actually thinks that gas turbines are just an unproven concept. Facts are not theories that were proven to be true. Why people think that I don't know. Perhaps they had bad science teachers. Perhaps poor media explanation, though that might be a chicken and egg thing.
There is really no such thing as a fact in science. Science is a methodology. It develops models of naturally occuring behaviour through testing hypotheses and their derived predictions against obseved phenomena. All scientific knowledge consists of models that are the most consistent with observed phenomena. That a model does not meet all observed phenomena does not make it invalid and to be thrown away. It means some areas of details of the model still require further understanding and development. "Theory" is a description of the principles behind the model, which is why, for instance, "gas turbine theory" doesn't refer to some people's crazy idea that gas turbines might exist. This whole "fact vs theory" is a hoax. It's made up. It doesn't exist.
"One only needs to show that there are fossils either side of it mutation-wise."
Again, poor understanding of the situation. All living beings, now or in the past, are in mutation. There seems to be this idea in some people's minds that evolution consists of a bunch of static species with well-defined boundaries that suddenly mutate into a different species (or something else). First, the exact differentiation of species is a product of man in an attempt to classify. While there are some clear differentiators, others are vague. Not everyone agrees where to draw boundaries. Second, the point of evolution is that no species is ever static. There is no before and after. There is no "half-mutated". There is just constantly changing. If changes in the environment happen more drastically over a short time, the evolutionary changes this envokes mike change faster, but is still isn't a sudden flip from one thing to another.
What I find the most humorous, and yet most annoying, is this picking on evolution as "controversial". It is only "controversial" to those who want something else to be used to describe how life got here the way it is. If they were truly being objective and picking on scientific theories (meaning princples behind a model, not meaning "guess"), why not pick on basic physic. Hell, we know Newtonian physics is wrong and yet keep teaching it in science class. Why? Because the model works for most practical applications the students will use it for. And it is simpler than relativity which has been shown to be a better model. However, we know relativity and quantum physics are incompatable, so both can't be right but both are the best working models for their respective applications. If indeed this isn't a religious driven objective, why is teaching evolution controversial and not basic physics?
The fact of the matter is, this is entirely driven by religious beliefs and by people who don't fully understand the reasoning or importance behind the separation of Church and State. You can dress it up in sheeps clothing, but it's still a wolf. I don't mean to come of as insulting, which I'm sure this does somewhat, but these principles have been understood for a long time and it is frustrating that people don't do their homework before opening their mouths. (I'm talking about Kansas and those behind ID, for instance, not anyone here. Everyonerequire a designer. The fact ID also fails to meet other basic requirements to fit the scientific method (testable, fals
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
SETI is not science. SETI is looking for evidence. SETI is the stage you get before you have science.
I swear, people need to think about what they're saying before they say it. SETI isn't science any more than determining the exact color of the sky is science, or looking behind the couch to see if your keys are there is science.
Science is a method that you apply, using observations, to predict things, and determine which prediction makes the most sense. There's a set of rules you follow, and a set of rules the community follows so other people can check the results, so that a general consensus builds up about 'true' predictions.
No individual part of that is science. Science is a process, a several step method to get 'true predictions', or at least as true as we can make them.
If you don't understand that, you need to stay the hell out of this discussion, no matter which side you're arguing.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Objectivity is the whole point, the ID's such strong passions have blinded them.
... time for lunch! The hate is coming from the ID side. We're not attacking ID, you're attacking evolution.
Let's say we all agree that ID should be tought in schools. Cool let's teach it. Let's teach it in math class. It's time for gym, go put on some sweat-shorts and a t-shirt and sit in that chair and read some Shakespeare.
ID is a RELIGIOUS topic, therefor it should be tought in religion.
Evolution is a SCIENTIFIC topic hence it's tought in science class.
See where I'm going with this?
If not maybe you need some help with your math, no no not in the English class, yes that's right, Math in the Math Class!
It's not an argument against ID, it's an argument against teaching it in the wrong classroom. If you wanted to teach ID during lunchtime everyone else would object to it as well, it's lunchtime
This is not about ID vs Evolution, this is about Math Class vs English Class!
*DrugCheese rants*
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
Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?
Find a t-rex fossil with rat bones in its stomach. Find human fossil remains in rocks that a geologist would tell you is 10 million years old. Find an actual trilobite swimming around.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You should say "as a Creationist". I know plenty of Christians who reject ID as pseudo-science, so I'm afraid trying to co-opt the word "Christian" to push a non-theory is just plain dishonest.
As to speciation, it has been observed. Now that you are aware that your world view is horse shit, I do hope you'll have the intellectual honesty to admit that you bought into lies by the likes of Michael Behe, who is at this time being made a fool of in court.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A theory not able to actually predict something is in any case useless and there is no point in teaching it to students (what for ?!?).
We never know where our curiosity will lead. We could have said the same for any number of discoveries or theories at the time. Ignorance is also a weakness. If we don't explore facts, we open ourselves or our children to being told lies.
A theory takes the form "If p then q." The "q" is the prediction part. You then create or observe "p", and "q" either happens or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you've falsified it. If it makes no prediction, you just have, "If p." Giving kids every conceivable "p" does them no good and certainly doesn't help them explore any facts.
Biological evolution is just a special case of general evolution. If you DON'T want to accept biological evolution, you need to make a special argument about why general evolution should not be applied in this special area. I've never heard a good, or even a less than laughably poor, argument for this. This doesn't prove such arguments don't exist, or can't be made, but it certainly shows that they aren't common.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
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
Who the FUCK said SETI was science, so I can beat their ass?
SETI itself?. A quote from their webpage: "SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)." They also provide convenient links under a "SCIENCE" heading.
SETI is not science. SETI is looking for evidence. SETI is the stage you get before you have science.
SETI is looking for evidence to support the theory (based partly on evolution and partly on the size of the universe) that life exists elsewhere.
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!"
ID isn't [science]. Why? Because according to ID proponents, life is too complex to have evolved, and therefore there has to be a ID'er. See? Nothing to investigate, they already have the answer.
That isn't true. "Life is too complex to have evolved" is a theory; ID research (primarily using information theory) is to try to show that this is the case. If they succeed in showing that the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection doesn't have the power to generate the complex information found in living things, then the search will be on for a mechanism that can do this.
ID has no proof to support it, evolution has.
And if ID can show what it is attempting to show, then Darwinian evolution will have to be scrapped in favor of something else.
Even if the theory of evolution isn't perfect (yet), that doesn't prove that ID is correct.
I don't know of anyone who claims that the imperfections in the theory of evolution prove the correctness of ID. The claim is that the problems with evolution should mean that a search for other answers should be allowed to take place. The flaws in evolution should be taught, and it should be legal to mention that there is a branch of science that is attempting to apply information theory to living things.
Is it?
I thought ID was...
"Life is very complicated. Too complicated for it to have just happened. Therefore it must have been designed."
SETI is looking for signals.
How are ID'ers looking for the designer?
1) It takes you thousands of hours for you to design a complex system. Wow. Impressive. We are trying to reveres engineer processes that have been going on for more than three billion years. And not one individual process, every time a bacteria/plant/fungus/animal reproduces, each of their offspring is a potential fork. That's a lot of forks over three billion plus years. That's a bit bigger of a project that reverse engineering a chip. We've only had the tools (molecular biology) to even begin working on the job for a few decades, and we are just now to the point where the technology allows us to map the genome of a individual from a species (let alone find all the normal variations within the population of that species). It will take quite some time to reverse engineer it fully. It's one hell of a lot bigger of a job than you will ever take on as a systems engineer.
2) The earth isn't a closed system. The sun adds an incredible amount of energy to the system every day. Overall disorder does increase. You just aren't looking at the whole system.
Oh, and evolution is incredibly useful in medical and biological research. I know. I do it for a living. A very large number of genes are conserved, with small modifications, all the way from yeast up through humans. You can use a yeast, fruit-fly, or mouse model system to explore the biology, and then apply what you have learned to the equivalent genes in humans. Looking at the genomes of species is a beautiful way to see the slow evolution of genes and biological processes, and extremely useful in research.
ID people try to inject it into science class, and it isn't a science. So yes, ID is against science.
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!!!
As a matter of fact, Darwin's theory of evolution is falsifiable. And here is one reason why it is false:
Darwinian evolution asserts that evolution occurs through the accumulation of minuscule random changes to the genome. If this were the case, there would be so many connecting species that the fossil record would be virtually a continuum.
What the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E shows, is that the fossil record is nothing like a continuum. Of the millions upon million of fossils which have been recovered, all of them fit nicely within a handful of phyla. Even fossils from Cambrian times already are separated into distinct phyla.
For Darwinian evolution to be true, the fossil record should resemble a conic section, starting from a point and spreading out evenly in all directions. There should literally be thousands upon thousands of connecting fossils which connect fossils to a whole host of predecessors and successors.
The real fossil record is nothing like that. Virtually fossils from the earliest times are segregated into phyla. Not only are there no connections between phyla, there are virtually no connections (links) supporting the major asserted jumps in evolution. Fishes eventually became amphibians, right? How many fossils support this conclusion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. A single questionable fossil is the only link between fish and amphibians.
Men evolved from primates, right? How many fossils support this assertion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. Less than a dozen fossils (fragments is a better term) support the assertion that primates evolved into men.
Evolutionists live in a fantasy world all their own where the lack of millions of connecting fossils is not an important issue. And the presence of a single questionable fossil establishes the "fact" that fishes evolved into amphibians. And less than a dozen fragments "proves" that primates evolved into man.
Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions stated that "that enterprise [of science within an established paradigm] seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies."
Evolutionists have fashioned for themselves a fantasy box in which they force nature into their inflexible fantasy, irrespective of the E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E. They are so scared that their precious box is about to split open that they can't even engage in rational discussions and acknowlegde the incredible weaknesses of their theory which is driving many to look more deeply and question (scientifically) all that is assumed to be true.
There is a scientific revolution coming, and the evolutionists are going to be on the wrong side of history.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Those "wrong" scientific theories you mention are not scientific theories. That's a big part of the problem here, the misunderstanding of what science is (and isn't) and what a theory is.
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!!!
But what about all the people who support Intelligent Design? Oh sorry... I must be new here.
I personally believe in something like ID, but I agree that it's not a provable theory and don't think it should be taught in schools. There are holes in the theory of evolution / abiogenesis, and ID is one possible way to fill in those. Perhaps science will eventually fill in all the holes and it will be obvious that there is no room for ID... until that day comes, I have no problem saying that I believe it is likely there is some sort of "intelligent designer."
And I am most definitely not a Christian Fundamentalist or anything of that nature. I'm not even a Christian, the closest you could get to labeling my religious beliefs would be to call me "Theistic Agnostic." So my saying I believe in something along the lines of ID is not the same as saying I believe in biblical creationism or the christian (or any other) view of God.
And FWIW, the reason I lean towards ID is essentially the "irreducible complexity" argument. I have not yet been convinced that current scientific theory can explain how something as complex as the human eye / optical nerve / etc. could evolve without "help." Again, I don't pretend to claim that this is a falsifiable theory or anything that should be taught to school-children, exactly because it's not science. And anyway, people who are prone to believe this kind of stuff will discover it on their own anyway, so not teaching it in school isn't depriving anybody of anything.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
>This is not about ID vs Evolution, this is about Math Class vs English Class!
Lets say that it this is about putting the correct subject in the correct classroom.
Is this what people really care about, considering all the problems with highschool these days? (Security, quality of teaching, student test scores, etc).
Is one part of one subject matter in one class being in the wrong "area" the biggest problem in education today? Would you feel so strongly or think that it is a big issue if a math teacher played a piano in the classroom a day each semester?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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.
"The so-called 'wall of separation' that was derived in the 1940's from a Supreme Court decision. The problem with this is that it comes from a LETTER written by then President Jefferson to a baptist group in CT when they wrote him to ask for intervention by the government in a religious matter."
... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State.
...
You make it sound like this interpretation is based on a single letter. It's actually based on numerous documents and precedents. Most importantly, the writings of Madison, who was co-chair of the committee that wrote the first amendment. It was his wording that was chosen. Jefferson really only inspired it.
Interestingly, though, both Jefferson and Madison actively looked for cases for SCOTUS that would be precedents on these issues. They hoped to enshrine a wall of seperation by example.
The obligatory long list of quotes:
Every new & successful example of a perfect separation between ecclesiastical and civil matters is of importance.
-- James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822
And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
-- James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822
The civil government
-- James Madison, 1819, Writings
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.
-- James Madison
The general government is proscribed from the interfering, in any manner whatsoever, in matters respecting religion
-- James Madison, 1790, Papers, 13:16
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative.
-- James Madison, "Essay on Monopolies"
And it goes on and on... There are simply volumes of opinions by many founders on the meaning of the first amendment. And it's consistantly stressed that religion (not just church, as the oft-quoted phrase says) and government should never have anything to do with one another, even in minor matters.
As far as the rift... first, it's not just between believers and nonbelievers. It's mostly between those who want to stay true to the intent and wording of the constitution (who are mostly Christians) and the group of Christians that aren't happy with their values being abstracted into laws and that want their beliefs officially and explicitly reflected in government institutions. I can only say that the latter group are playing a game that endangers all parties.
Second, I see your point. This has been such as source of conflict. But the founders wanted to avoid the bloodshed of European wars of religion. I think modern Europe is only free of so much conflict because there are so many atheists that nobody really cares enough about these things to start a fight. In comparison, we are so much more religious in the US. Perhaps we inherited the least violent and most religion friendly system. Perhaps, it could have been much worse? I'd be interested in your opinion.
I thought ID was... "Life is very complicated. Too complicated for it to have just happened. Therefore it must have been designed."
I'n not an ID expert, so take this for what it's worth. I think we all agree that "life is very complicated". However, from there, I think the IDist would say, "life is too complicated to have arisen by Darwinian processes. Furthermore, the kind of complexity found in living things is only found elsewhere in nature in things that are designed."
How are ID'ers looking for the designer?
As far as I know, they aren't. They are working on the mathematics of identifying design.
As someone who watches the battle on the sidelines, I find it interesting that everyone can agree that my watch, or my laptop, is designed. SETI thinks that they can detect intelligence in signals from space. I'm fascinated why it's practically illegal to ask in a science class if there are signs of design in living things. Can we mathematically describe the properties of things that are designed? If so, what happens when we apply those techniques to things we know are designed an things we know that aren't? Can we then ascribe any confidence to the results if these techniques are applied to living things? It seems to me that these are all valid scientific questions.
Biological evolution is just a special case of general evolution. If you DON'T want to accept biological evolution, you need to make a special argument about why general evolution should not be applied in this special area. I've never heard a good, or even a less than laughably poor, argument for this. This doesn't prove such arguments don't exist, or can't be made, but it certainly shows that they aren't common.
You won't find many people bothering to argue that apples are different than oranges, either.
There really is no theory of "general evolution" -- it is nothing more than a vague observation: lots of things change over time. The biological theory of evolution differs by including a mechanism that depends upon two crucial elements--hereditable variation and differential reproductive success. These are the core of the biological theory, and generally do not apply in realms other than biology.
We are nearly living in a theocracy already. We are being force fed by the media and schools a naturalist theology. Which is exactly what not teaching both sides of this argument. We are telling our kids that science has the answers, life is nothing more than meaningless random events, and we are here because of random chance alone. By not showing them that there is a controversy we are telling them that these things are absolutes and there is no room for discussion. You just cannot separate science from philosophy and ethics. It would be irresponsable to do so, just as it is irresponsable to not teach about the controversy surrounding evolution.
Another thing the The National Academies' National Research Council and the National Science Teachers Association don't give our kids enough credit. They think that this would confuse them, but they are sadly mistaken. Highschool age kids would trive on the controversy, and what better way for them to learn critical thinking. Use this as an opportunity to teach the process of looking at the evidence and refuting or validating the evidence.
Look, you guys come up with stuff like "Dark Matter" which is theoretical type of matter that does not conform in any way to what we know about matter. It's invisible to any form of detection that we have ever devised, and yet, it MUST be there. If that isn't meta-physical, I don't know what the heck is.
And yet, you poo-poo the idea of Intelligent Design, when you can point to primitive but real examples of "intelligent design" that we have done, right here on earth today. What about mice, altered from nature, to suit our research purposes? How is that not intelligent design.
A guy in an earlier post said, given enough time, he could breed wingless fruit flies. He meant this to be an example of evolution, but it isn't. It's an outside force acting on matter to produce something new.
These new fruit flies, if capable of such thoughts, would rightfully view this guy as their creator. With abilities far beyond their potential, abilities that would be far outside the realm of natural to them, they would rightfully describe this guy as a god.
Now a good many of you have no problem imagining a race of beings far advanced from humans. They could have come down here, seeded this planet with DNA, and created life here via intelligent design. Many of you would have no problem with that. But to make the relatively small leap of faith required to say that instead a race of beings, it was a single, eternal being, with abilities so far outside of what we can do and what we consider natural, that we should rightfully consider him a god is abhorrent to you.
I freely admit that my world view is governed by unproven, unprovable faith. For you to claim otherwise is hypocrisy and maybe even hubris.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
I worded that poorly, you're absolutely correct. Thanks for catching that.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
For the love of $DEITY, please stop saying "evolution is just a theory"!
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:
1. God created it.
2. We'll learn more as our technology advances. (I look forward to it)
3. We'll never know the whole truth. (The truth is unknowable?!)
1 and 3 are the same answer. The problem with these justifications for God is that you cannot eliminate the circular reasoning of God. God is an unnecessary
component for any origins discussion. It's equivalent to saying I don't know.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, each of which is falsifiable.
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?
Morphological intermediates, from the above site.
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.
Please don't tell me what I must do.
I think you misunderstood GP post. He wasn't "telling you what you must do." He was saying the bible does not have to be taken literally.
Yes, you've demonstrated that quite well by automatically assuming what I'm like.
Again, I think you are reading something into GP's comment. All he is saying is that there seem to be extremists on both sides of the issue, and they are very close-minded about the opposing viewpoint. A pretty fair assesment, I might add.
There are some truths that are eternal.
I agree that "some truths are eternal", but I don't agree with how you have used that statement to respond to GP's original comment of "Why must religion remain in the same state it was 2000 years ago, and not advance with the rest of society?". It makes you sound like a religious zealot, and quite frankly, makes everything you say suspect, no matter how well you articulate yourself.
Depends on how you define science, doesn't it? If by science you mean "the scientific method", then this doesn't mean rejecting religion. If by science you mean "the philosophy of naturalism", then the two will always be mortal enemies.
I think it's clear the GP was referring to the former.
"Why can't God use effective tools such as evolution?"
What does god add to that argument? If evolution is an effective tool that does the job without God's intervention then why does it need god to make use of it or invent it.
In my opinion, that's why god can't use evolution. If he used evolution, and the big bang, and whatever else science offers us, then it won't be long before bright young kids are asking, "so what does god do?".
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Read my post, and be sure to read my response which is a slight correction (One of my links got messed up).
Regards,
Steve
Jesus H. Christ in a handbasket are you ignorant.
The theory of evolution is just that, a theory. For the lazy, a link to the word's definition http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=theory. For the stupid, what this means is that the Theory of Evolution is the best scientific explaination that we as humans have devised based upon the evidence available to us.
Your claim of the "obvious lack" of "millions" of fossil records is ignorant at best (I call it disingenious). It is based on the supposition that all mutations beget viable forms of life, which is provably false.
Having a training in science, and having therefore worked and studied with scientists, I feel safe to say that informed, rational debate concerning the "origin of life" is what most of us want of our public schools. Sure there are holes in our current explainations or maybe even they are way off, but science, in the end, will rectify that. The arguments put forward by Creationists concerning Intelligent Design are akin to sprinkling faery dust over the Theory of Evolution and saying that fills in the gaps. This is patently unacceptable to a mind that wishes to know how we, as organisms, came about and operate. This is why "Evolutionists" reject the teaching of Intelligent Design along-side of Evolution--because it is not science, it is some mysticism piggy-backing on science to explain the deficiences in said scientific reasoning.
As to the Thomas Kuhn quotation; human nature being what it is, can you not fathom how an individual responisble for one or more lives may make the mistake of ignoring pure scientific reason and allow concerns for reputation, or one's livelyhood to cloud one's judgement? When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.
For all you ID'ers out there I pose this question (based upon my understanding of ID): if ID were proved to be true, not by the existence of a God or somesuch, but by the fact that all forms of life on this planet were seeded with genetic material from some extra-terrestrial agent (presumably intelligent life forms), would that be vindication of your "theory" or would it cause some religious indigestion and encourage some evangelicals to leap off of tall structures (we can hope!) ? And before you say "thats ridiculous, we aren't the spawn of aliens!" I would point you back to your own "theory". That the core genetic matieral of all life on this planet was seeded by aliens is as belivable and provable as if it were done by a "God".
You can be an atheist and still not want to succumb to some weird cross-over sheep disease -- AC
Exactly what is with the strong feelings of hatrid towards ID?
Think of the religion you find the most offensive or repulsive, and then imagine that the state is using your tax dollars to indoctrinate your children with it. For a lot of people that is enough reason to leave a country en masse and found a colony where everyone else shares their core beliefs or start burning effigies in the streets or whatever form of rebellion you fancy. So, instead here we have maybe something that is 1/100th as repulsive to some people but still smacks just a little of the government forcing a religion you don't believe in down your throat, and therefore you see angry posts on slashdot to that effect, rather than massive social upheaval or entire cities of people that believe in one version Christianity being slaughtered by one with a slightly different version and so on for hundreds of years until you're out of the dark ages.
It's a sensitive issue in other words.
And what about it? Ever since it was discovered, it has remained the duck-billed platypus! It hasn't changed.
If evolution is true, where is the human who walks out of the jungle saying, "My parents are apes, but I'm not, and I want to join the human race?"
Since recorded history, man has seen no species-changing evolution.
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
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.
"Fishes eventually became amphibians, right? How many fossils support this conclusion? Tens of thousands? Thousands? Hundreds? None of the above. A single questionable fossil is the only link between fish and amphibians."
Lungfish are a living example. Evolution is not a straight line and does not rest soley on the fossil record, that is why it is called an evolutionary tree, the vast majority of the branches are dead. Every single point you attempted to make has been adressed in the lirature, you may be able to see the "E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E" if you actually read it. Also it would be a good idea if you looked up the definition of "species".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
> 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.
For someone w/ "endoplasmic" as part of their username you sound like you don't know fuck about evolution.
u m
Punctuated Equilibrium -- read about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibri
Why is fossil evidence or the lack therof the definitive answer as to how things evolved? It takes a pretty specific location and timing for a death to result in a fossil, and even then soem organisms will decay before fossilization can occur. Bats are a common example, IIRC. They have tiny bones which tend to go away pretty quickly. And as far as half-mutation goes, that's not how it works (I'll keep comments about some people that live down the street and who look awfully darned similar to the gorillas at the zoo). There's a series of small steps eventually diverging over a very long period of time, not just one big step or two half-steps. There are several examples of that in sea life, which is also where fossilization tends to happen. Strong evidence that evolution happens is as close as a search for the bacteria which showed up with the ability to digest nylon - a man-made substance which didn't exist until the mid 20th century. Or maybe they had the ability all along, but the proteins involved aren't beneficial in any other way, and are pretty inefficient...
:)
My question for you, as one Christian to another, is why don't other Christians ever seem to make the jump that the Bible's "first seven days" may well be a metaphor? I mean, the Bible is *full* of friggin' metaphors - half of that stuff is not meant to be taken literally. Why does no one ever step back and think that, perhaps the whole "creation of the planet" thing is just another metaphor, created to help explain what happened between the Big Bang and the history around the time where "the stories" began, using terms that the common folk could understand? Personally, I'm partial to that viewpoint. I believe that there's a supernatureal force that we don't understand, and that things go better when people follow their concience - which is the underlying idea behind most religion (be good, die happy, and you'll always be that way). I even beleive that said force was around from the beginning, and may have guided evloution along. However, given that lots of religions just happen to involve "rules" which, conveniently, keep the commoners in their place while the few who "really understand" get to keep handing the rules out, I'm a bit skeptical of the likelyhood of there being any accuracy in the details related about how the world came to be. Heck, the Bible doesn't even *give* details - it's just a few paragraphs that lead into people crankin' out babies who started wars and brought about the "modern" world. Just look at any long-lived insestuous ruling order (Egypt, for one) for an example of how well everyone coming from the same parents works out - the Garden of Eden is almost *definitely* a metaphor.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure that both camps are actually relating the same story. I'll bet they could both see the forest if all those darned trees weren't in their way...
Actually, "Life is too complex to have evolved" is a hypothesis, as there is no evidence to back it up.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
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
Zebras.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"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.
I think most people'e problems with ID is that it is just plain non-sense being taught, where as those other theories that you mention are plausible can be tested, observed, or in the worst case at least studied to see if evidence and/or history supports your assertation. There is no such evidence in ID, its saying "You're theory has a little hole over there that doesn't completely solve the problem so instead its all wrong and you must just assume that everything magically came into existence against all natural law." (btw, i disagree about the "hole" mentioned, as I've studied evolution in both an academic environment and on personal time and any holes mentioned by ID advocates have always had answers, including the eye). I'm a Roman Catholic, I believe in God, but evolution *is* the way we were created, to anyone who has actually studied the science it makes sense just as the laws of gravity do. Please prove to me that Santa Claus doesn't exist (you can't), please prove to me that gravity will remain in affect 1 second from now so that if I drop a pen I can be certain it will fall. You can't disprove Santa, and you can't 100% prove gravity will still be in affect 1 second from now, but using a little common sense, observational evidence, and testing you can be pretty certain that Santa doesn't exist and the gravity will continue to be there. The evidence for evolution is just as strong, if not stronger, than that of gravity, look at the facts, take a class at your local college if you have to.
Regards,
Steve
....Macro-evolution is, as you point out, a theory, but it is a testable and falsifiable theory...
Macro or micro evolution isn't really the only issue. A bigger problem for evolution is how non-living atomic matter formed itself into the incredibly complex molecular structures, such as hemoglobin or chlorophyll, for example. What came first, the complex protein skeletons that make up the DNA code carriers or the code that makes the proteins which is stored in the DNA chains. The evolutionist answer to this is always the same. Time. More time than you can grasp - timespans so vast that anything is possible, even chance combinations of random chemicals to form the stunning complexities of reproducing life.
When measuring time, a clock is used. Radioactive decay of elements is commonly used as a clock to date the rocks that make up the crust of the Earth among other things. Radio carbon dating is often used for things that were once alive. These dating methods make the ASSUMPTION (faith) that the rate of these decays have remained constant. The decay of a pile of unstable atoms, such as radium or uranium is among other things governed by certain "constants", such as Planck's constant commonly appearing in equations as h. The time it takes for half of a pile of any particular element to decay is termed its half-life. By extrapolating the present decay rate it is possible to determine the "age" of the item that contains a particular combination of elements. But this only works if the decay rate is known over the entire time period in question.
New evidence and analysis of older data indicates that these rates have been vastly higher in ages past, as much as 10 billion times higher after the "big bang" and the beginning of time. Nobody knows yet for sure the mechanism behind these fundamental changes of certain "constants". Present theories posit that it has something to do with the basic nature of space-time itself, associated with the expansion of the Universe since the "big bang".
These new data indicate that the time available to form these incredibly complex molecules by any method we can imagine was very much shorter. Instead of billions or millions of years, the age of the Earth and its rocks so dated collapses into thousands.
There is nothing as constant in the Universe as change and there is no reason that anyone has come up with that mandates that some of these "constants" that govern atomic behaviors, such as radioactive decay rates should NOT change over periods of time that are long in comparison to a human lifetime.
All theory is gray
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?!
If they succeed in showing that the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection doesn't have the power to generate the complex information found in living things, then the search will be on for a mechanism that can do this.
No, the search won't "be on." They already have their answer, and it's right in the name of the freaking theory -- it was an Intelligence that did the Designing. No "mechanism," no investigation into what created the Intelligence or what it is. That's the answer they've presupposed and that's the only place that ID theory is willing to go.
Investigating whether information theory is compatible with the current state of evolutionary theory is a valid one, but the IDers aren't doing that. They're just trying to find some magical weak point that will cause all of evolution and secular science to fall apart and stop bothering them.
I'd be willing to bet that they're are some real scientists looking into the information theory aspect of genetic evolution right now -- and they probably think that ID is hogwash, as well.
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
"I disagree. This is a perfectly feasible belief."
Not by any definition of "feasable" that I know.
"It is not the simplest explanation for observable evidence and it is can not be falsified by a conceivable experiment[1], so does not count as science, but it is a perfectly valid belief."
This is a non sequitor. Since it's not possible to disprove a negative the whole sentence is nonsesical. What you are saying is that any belief that calls for negative proof is valid.
"You, I would imagine, believe that the universe was created several million years ago as a result of random chance. This belief is not proven - no science is. All science gives us is a set of reasonable hypotheses which are not contradicted by observable evidence. "
Wow a correct statement!.
"Science doesn't even go into the why - whether the universe came into being as a result of random chance, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or the Invisible Pink Unicorn, is a matter for belief, not science."
Ok.
"None of these beliefs is more scientific than any of the others - the only truly scientific belief here is an admission of ignorance."
How you arrive at this conclusion given your previous two sentences escapes me. Surely one of them is "more scientific" then the rest. You know like on sesame street. One of these doesn't belong here, one of these is just not the same. Are you seriously saying that flying spaghetti monster explanation is no more scientific then the currently accepted cosmological theories? Not even a little bit?
evil is as evil does
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.
Three strikes, your out!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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
I think we need to be very careful here to separate evolution (which was well-known before Darwin, and well-supported by the fossil record) from Darwin's proposal for the mechanism by which evolution occurs, i.e. natural selection. Further, it's worth noting that Darwin's original proposal is not precisely the same as the curent accepted model for natural selection - more recent information than was available to Darwin has improved our understanding of how natural selection operates.
Furthermore, the kind of complexity found in living things is only found elsewhere in nature in things that are designed.
The reality is that designed artifacts and living creatures have quite different "kinds of complexity". For starters, living creatures don't decompose into modular parts with well-defined functions in the same way as human-designed artifacts. Instead, biological systems tend to have "components" that contribute to the performance of multiple, overlapping functions, often as part of varying groups of other components depending on which function we're talking about (human skin, for example, is, in conjunction with other parts of the body, responsible for thermal control, structural integrity, sensory perception, environmental segregation, UV protection, and so on). Amusingly enough, the best way that we know of to develop multi-functional designs like that in engineering is through the use of "genetic algorithm" based optimization techniques, which emulate natural selection to find a combination of design parameters that perform well against some user-defined fitness criteria.
I think we all agree that "life is very complicated"
Don't be so sure about that. There's work by people such as John Warfield that makes a pretty good case for "complexity" having as much to do with the perception of the observer as it does with any intrinsic properties of the observed.
I find it interesting that everyone can agree that my watch, or my laptop, is designed.
I find it interesting too. Why do we not assume that they evolved? What is it about these artifacts that makes us certain that they were designed? Is it perhaps the fact that we already know they were designed by people? Or does it have something to do with the difference in "kind of complexity" that I describe above? Is that what makes designed artifacts so readily distinguished from living creatures?
If so, what happens when we apply those techniques to things we know are designed an things we know that aren't?
If the universe was created by an intelligent designer, then what is there that wasn't designed? How do you propose to test your criteria for deciding if something was designed or not if there is nothing that you can use to check for false positives? That's one of the fundamental problems with ID - the hypothesis itself makes testing for "design" essentially impossible.
>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.
.....How would you, personally, design an experiment to falsify (or otherwise) evolution?....
Has anybody EVER done ONE experiment to synthethize a biomolecule such as hemoglobin, chlorophyll, insulin or any of the other millions of incredibly complex molecules found in living things? The only way that this can be been done, if at all, is by starting out with compounds derived from things that were once part of a living creature. Nobody has EVER assembled even ONE such molecule from a pile of non-living atomic elements. Yet evolutionsists will have us believe that what has eluded the best efforts of our most brilliant and skilled scientists has happened by itself through random, statistical, totally unknown processes over vast spans of time. To me that takes MORE faith than to believe that someone of supreme skill and understanding of atomic forces carefully DESIGNED and assembled these incredibly complex molecular structures that form the basis of all living things.
All theory is gray
Your differentiation between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution" is artificial, and to admit it is basically to surrender the argument in favor of intelligent design peremptorily. What you are calling 'macro-evolution' can easily be described as the sum of many 'micro-evolution' events, taken over time; there is nothing to suggest that they are in any ways different processes.
However, this argument is a red herring to begin with, because whether evolution or Intelligent Design is falsifiable isn't the issue: the problem is that Intelligent Design doesn't offer an explanation for the origin of life. All it does is provide an explanation for human (and other Earthly) life, by attributing its origins, or at least evolutionary progress, to some outside agent. By not explaining the origin of this outside agent as well, it presents a chicken-and-egg problem. If some sort of 'intelligence' was required in order to 'design' the mammalian eye, than certainly this superior intelligence could not have arisen through evolution, as it must certainly be more complex even than we are; therefore it must have been designed by a yet superior intelligence, and so on and so forth.
This circularity problem is only solved -- rather conveniently in my mind, given the proponents of Intelligent Design: mostly Christians -- by a "god hypothesis," the invocation of some sort of ultimate, superior being for which there is no other evidence besides I.D. theory itself. Of course the I.D. theory which is currently being pushed stops just short of this declaration, but it is rather self-evident to any bright student, once you start going down the creationist path.
Intelligent Design isn't a bad theory because of falsifibility, it's a bad theory because it involves the creation of an outside agent to explain processes for which there are simpler, non-externally-dependent explanations, and then does nothing to explain the outside agent which it invokes. In general, where other theories have an internally and logically consistent process, Intelligent Design simply draws a question mark, shrugs, and with a wink and a nudge, points to the Bible.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
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.
.....We took provable assertions.....
How do you prove the assertions that the radio active decay rate has always been constant? That is the assertion all radioactivity dating is based on.
All theory is gray
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!
...Why did god do it that way? What was god thinking when the decision was made? ....
Why did God make the mass of the proton exactly 1836 times that of the electron? Why are the fundamental parameters and relationships as we observe them? If these were nor so, then we would not be here to observe them is the short answer. Science is not very good at anwering "why" or "when" questions. Experiments and observations mostly answer "how" questions and then we invent explanations, such as evolution, to try to answer the when questions of origins. We also try to find obervational support for our explanations and that is mostly unsuccessful.
Nobody has ever created a living cell from non-living material, yet even so we have learned a lot about cells and HOW they work. WHEN they first appeared and WHY is beyond experimental verification. When science addresses "how" things work, it is mostly on solid experimental and observational ground. The when and why of things begins to overlap in varying degrees into the realm of philosophy and religion. Maybe only the how of things should be taught in "science" classes and the when and why in philosophy.
All theory is gray
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.
I was flabbergasted at the above comment that suggests it is not possible to create molecules such as insulin, chlorophyll etc from basic atomic elements and that these can only be made from compounds found in living cells. I am afraid the level of education displayed by the above contributor is frighteningly low.
There is no difference between the atoms you find in a biological cell or the atoms you find in your TV set. Organic chemistry arose out of the realization that it was possible to make compounds found in living systems in the lab, Urea was the first to be done in 1828, many, many others have been synthesized since.
The main reason why I feel ID is gaining ground in the US is very poor level of education that we give to our population, as shockingly shown by the previous contributor.
....science is only what can be known or observed....
So then before electrons, electromagnetic radiation and so many other things that were unknown and unobservable were supernatural until we discovered how to measure them? We cannot observe God, therefore He doesn't exist until we can invent a God meter. Gravitons are postulated to exist, but we have never observed one yet. However we all experience the force of gravity. In the same way, we all experience life and conscitiousness because it comes from God.
All theory is gray
ID argues that this wouldn't be enough.
No they don't argue, they just state it as a fact, a premise. That because we don't currently understand how some things came to be that therefore these things must be too complicated to have occured naturally through a process of evolution.
The premise is a false one, that just because we do not have a full accounting of the evolution of things like the eye or butterfly wing or whatever that they must have just popped into existance through some unknown force.
Sure we now have the power to create new species by our own intelligent design through genetic engineering and have spent many thousands of years at least selectively breeding new species of domesticated animals and plants. And many animals that could be called intelligent have similar symbiotic relationships with other species and may have been said to have used their intelligence to influence the evolution of other species. But we are still talking about taking one species and selecting traits until it differentiates enough to become another species.
Intelligent design completely fails to be a rational or scietific thought when its central premise is that that which we currently do not understand must be too complicated to understand. And therefore the result of some higher intelligence.
And what I don't understand is why some self absorbed religious people are offended at the idea that God might have chosen evolution as a part of creation. Creation is a beautiful thing and to me it is pretty clear that evolution is a part of that creation.
Who the hell is going to tell God that he shouldn't let the Universe Design Itself?
It's interesting how evolution is almost a religion, in that its believers often resort to personal ridicule to defend their point of view.
Do realise you contradicted yourself.
In one sentance you said,
matter only tends toward disorder in the long tem.
Then you say
The universe has a few billion years to create a complicated system???
A Christian is a follower of Christ. Is that what you are?
46137
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...
Didn't you stay awake in science class?
There's a nice table on the left hand side of this page. You really ought to look at it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
And the irony of this game is a perfect fossil record, given the tumultuous history of plate techtonics, erosion, glacial eras, floods, all the factors that over millenia have twisted, cut, ground, subsumed and distorted the face of the earth, should properly be considered proof of a Loki-like Creator and nullify the fossil record as proof. A perfect fossil record would destroy the science of geology and is incoompatible with current science. I'ld go so far as to say an incomplete and imperfect fossil record should be considered a core tenant of evolution.
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. Evolutionary Biology is powerful enough to allow us to make all of the predictions needed to understand the number and types of species on our planet. Adding God, or Intelligent Design, into the picture does not increase the predictive power of Evolution. It just makes for a needlessly more complicated hypothesis that now can not be tested or proven. This would drive Evolution into no longer being science, much to the chagrin of the scientists who study it. This is what drives Religion into Conflict with Science. A conflict that scientists Do Not Want, but finding themselves forced into.
Playing the piano? Yes I feel strongly about it, it's math class, TEACH MATH. Maybe we can make an entire different class for playing the piano, we'll call it MUSIC class!
What are the problems with highschools these days? Wouldn't you consider science teachers teaching religion to be a major one? The janitor can teach sexual education then?
No the janitor mop mop mops all day long! THAT'S HIS JOB! Why try and make the latin teacher teach Billy how to do algebra in latin class?
With all the problems with our schools the last thing we want to do is dillute the subject matter.
Science: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation , and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
Name one experiment you can run on ID and get a positive or nagative result. It's not science. I'm not argueing its validity. I'm argueing the method ID people want it tought. Do not teach it in science class. Why argue this route? Becuase the ID people care more to discredit evolution then to teach their belief. You want to teach the alternative? Teach it in a theology class, what's so hard about that?
*DrugCheese rants*
It's not a "strong feeling", it's a scientific assertion. ID is creationism in a lab coat. Calling it a scientific theory is a lie.
If theories are proven wrong, then they are no longer scientific theories, are they?
I fundamentally (there's a fun word) object to the conflation of religious dogma (ID) with scientific theories. The reason ID is at issue, and not the other "theories" you talk about (your selection makes me question whether you understand what a "theory" is), is because fundamentalist Christians are trying to hijack science programs here in the United States, and everybody with two neurons to bang together thinks that's a pretty lousy idea.
I think that ID is an excellent topic to study in comparative religion classes, or in a class about marketing. It is NOT based on science.
Now, I don't assert that you can't believe in Intelligent Design and still do science. I am sure that there are some reputable scientists who also believe in the literal historicity of the Bible. As long as they don't use their faith to justify their scientific theories, there is no issue. Anybody who thinks that ID is science is lying to themselves.
Mr. Behe is not one of those people. He presupposes God, and puts that God into any situation Behe doesn't fully understand. That's a silly position for a scientist to take, and a pretty lousy theology too.
(BTW, Bigfoot is pretty shaky as scientific theories go. Just in case you were wondering.)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
A great post.
Why must religion remain in the same state it was 2000 years ago, and not advance with the rest of society?
I can fill that. There's absolutely no point to advance the religion. There is nothing wrong with Christianity, or Buddhism, or Daoism, or [world religion of your choice], except that they have never been tried.
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.
And what, exactly is the platypus a "living beastie" amalgam of?
According to the book of Genesis, when good created the world it was good. Before the first sin there was no death and therefore could not have been evolution before Adam and Eve. That is why you can't believe Genesis to be the word of God and believe in evolution at the same time.
Well, we have absolutely no way to know that half-life for carbon has always been constant: only that since we have been measuring it it has not changed within the precision of our measurements, and we extrapolate. The exact same thing can be said of all "constants": physicists come up all the time with new ways to measure everything from the value of the universal constant of gravitation in early times in the formation of the universe to the fine structure constant in the first millionth of a second of the universe. And they do measure such things all the time. Sure, these measurements do tend to give the same values all the time. That's why those numbers are called constants in the first place.
Testability of macro evolution will probably have to happen on the genetical level. Map genes, "damages" to genes (which are inherited) etc. I do not think the evidence of macro evolution will be found in fossils.
Saying ID is appropriate for a Social Science or Philosophy class, shows great contempt for those subjects. ID is junk, it doesn't belong in any class.
That's an absurd statement. A good bit of what we learn in school is what things some people believe in. Saying that ID doesn't belong at all in any form in our education system is the same as saying teaching people about Buddhism doesn't belong in our schools, or learning about religion an philosophy doesn't belong in schools. That would severly limit what is taught in school.
I'm not sure I have an answer to your first question - that's a viewpoint I've heard of several times.
A question for you: Could you elaborate on what of the Garden of Eden is a metaphor for?
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
Well, since you apparently know quite a bit on the subject, or would like to think you do, maybe next time you'll actually bother to offer up some of your evidence, instead of calling those who disagree with you "weak minded".
Now, as much as I dislike feeding trolls, your error is common enough that it demands being addressed.
The presence of "evidence" for something does not, by any means, make it scientific. Also, you are confusing "evidence" with "empirical evidence", and that is not a semantic quibble, there is a world of difference between the two. Empirical evidence means observational evidence from the real world. That can be sometimes esoteric, as in quantum theory, but even quantum theory makes testable and falsifiable predictions.
If the intelligent design folks want to disprove evolution, it already can be done, and they don't even need to advance a competing theory. Evolution makes several falsifiable predictions, such as speciation, natural selection, and increased complexity of organisms as the fossil record timeline marches on. These have been borne out by observation. All you have to do to disprove evolution is to prove any one of those predictions false.
What does not disprove anything is "negative evidence"-that is, "No one can explain how such a complex structure appeared naturally, so it MUST have been a god or gods." The fact that something is currently unexplained does not mean that a "god" had a hand in it-500 years ago, all manner of phenomena, from supernova stars to lightning storms were attributed to God/gods. And yet, now that we have advanced, we can explain those as natural phenomena, and are quite aware of the mechanisms by which they work (stellar decay and static electricity, respectively). The fact that a theory does not yet explain everything does show a need for further study, but it does not in itself disprove the theory. Experimental falsification of that theory's predictions will do that, if they produce a result not explained or predicted by the theory. Can you please point me to that experiment? If it exists, the Nobel Prize committee has made a significant oversight.
Until then, try to refrain from calling your opposition "weak minded"-it is an indication of a weak mind to need to resort to such tactics.
As to intelligent design being scientific, please refer to the post you responded to. ID fails to complete several steps required by the scientific method, including the making of falsifiable predictions which can be tested through experimentation. That does not make it bad or its believers idiots, as they have every right to believe as they choose. It does, however, factually, make the theory unscientific. Until such time as it can be shown that Intelligent Design -has- been formulated according to the scientific method, it isn't science.
Oh, and I don't know what science class you attended, but any decent science teacher will make very clear to the students that it is, by definition, possible to prove any scientific theory false. That's part of the method-the theory must make falsifiable predictions. Many theories, such as phlogiston, were proven false after centuries of use, and sometimes they seemed to explain things very well. But to allow anyone to come along, insert "God" at whatever point they like, and call it science, is a disservice to the students and the scientific community in general.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Yes, you're probably right. One thing I would worry about then is parallel mutation of genes, i.e., an organism mutating but not passing on this mutation past several generations, followed by a subsequent organism re-developing the mutation, could accidentally be classed as 'descendancy' (is that even a word? :) when the second was not actually descended from the first. It is a good point, though; gene mapping would likely provide more accurate evidence either way.
Ashton
(-(friend^2))^(1/2)
Incoming mod-bombing for having a different viewpoint, 2 o'clock! Heads up!
You do not prove its constancy, as you do not prove anything while you are doing science.
What you do is measure decay rate once and again and again, in different ways, at different locations, by different people; you consider what consequences the constancy of the decay might have and what consequences its non-constancy might have, and you think hard so as to come up with consequences of both which might be effectively measure, and you measure them; you sit down and think very, very hard about why would it be constant (or not) and what other theories you have evidence for hint at; thenyou go back to the lab and measure, measure, measure, and measure some more. You get your friends to measure for you. You get anonymous peers to check your measurements. You explain your procedures to the people that know of such things, and they in turn repeat the whole procedure. Then of course, you go back, and measure some more, and then think some more about consequences, and other theories, and from time to time you say "ok, let's think not", and try to come up with alternatives, and then you try to verify these in the lab, even though by now you do not expect them to be verified, but, yes, you insist. And so on and so forth.
As soon as you find something in nature which contradicts the consequences drawn from either hypothesis, you reject that hypothesis.
Well. People have been done that for a century or so. And guess what? Everything done so far is consistent with the hypothesis that decay rate is constant.
Do we know if it is constant? No.
Have we any reason to suspect it is not? Nope.
This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution _isn't consistent with the scientific method_.
And where is the science in ID? Though I've asked this a number of tymes I have yet to be told.
FaclonShould there be a Law?
The belief that because we dont understand everything so therefore there is a god is superstition - not science. Thats the way cave men thought when they created their deity's God may exist... but until science proves he exist - he belongs in religion. The only serious timing issues ive seen with Evolution have been presented by people who believe the speed of light isnt constant or that the pyramids were built by aliens
I don't think this is entirely fair. I think the idea of ID deserves a mention -- at least in the "current events" context. Being unaware of the "alternatives" is not what eduction is about (that's called brainwashing). Science class might even be the place -- this provides a good context to talk about what a "scientific theory" is, etc.
All in all, I think kids could benefit from learning about ID, just not in the way the ID supporters want. (If you want your kids to be taught ID as fact, why not send them to Catholic school?)
My other car is first.
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.
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
Electrons, electromagnetic radiation and gravity have never been 'unobservable' nor supernatural. They are directly observable by everyone, anywhere at any time - you are looking at electrons and electromagnetic radition right now as you read from your computer screen while feeling the force of gravity push you into your chair. God on the other hand (as defined as all-powerful and supernatural) is not observable, no matter how advanced out technology gets.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
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)
That's okay, I can't stand Phil Collins anyway.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
And this is how the Incompetent Design nitwits are winning this argument. They've managed to convince the general public that (1) there are two major sides (in reality, there is one major side and one very small but incredibly vocal side) and (2) that the Evilutionists(tm) have closed minds. A scientist's mind should be open but not so open that their brain falls out. Allowing Intervention Divine into science class falls into the "brain falling out" category.
There is no debate here. There is a propaaganda war being waged against science by a bunch of ignorant Christian fundamentalists, who are essentially no better and no worse than the Islamic fundamentalists. They are winning the propaganda war because they have too much money, because of the $300 billion charity given annually in America, $280 billion goes to domestic Christian charities.
And I'm not picking on you. I see from the rest of your comment that you don't support Inconvenient Dribble in the science class. What I'm commenting on is that the propaganda war has been so successful that even you are saying that "both sides" have "closed minds". There are not two sides. The scientists do not have closed minds for rejecting debunked non-science. But even rational people are starting to repeat the mantra of "both sides" have "closed minds". What did that German dude say about "repeat a lie often enough"?
We can see the whole development of horses from little deer-like creatures into everything from Shetland Ponies, to Arabian Stallions, to Zebras, to Donkeys (which can't produce fertile off-spring with a horse and so are a seperate species).
It's a very clear and dateable chain of development.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
A theory takes the form "If p then q." The "q" is the prediction part. You then create or observe "p", and "q" either happens or it doesn't. If it doesn't, you've falsified it. If it makes no prediction, you just have, "If p." Giving kids every conceivable "p" does them no good and certainly doesn't help them explore any facts.
By that rationale, there's no point in solving crimes or studying history because they don't predict the future. But if you read my post a little closer, I make two points you have ommitted from your reply. Firstly - we never know where our curiosity will lead us. In the example of the Theory of Evolution, it has turned out to be a great contribution to modern genetics. Secondly, ignorance of what has happened, opens the doors to false belief in things that didn't happen. Ignorance of science makes one prey for all sorts of weird ideas. In the case of the Theory of Evolution, it leaves space for example, for people to believe that different races have different assigned places and roles in the World. This is dangerous.
Of course, there is one flaw in what I've just said above, and that's where I conceded that Evolutionary Theory doesn't help us predict the future. In fact, I believe it can. For example, in the developed world, women are having fewer children and later in life and this correlates with education. Therefore there is currently an evolutionary pressure against women who are inclined or able to educate themselves. So we can predict there is a problem with the way things are going and look at ways of addressing that. Just as a very small example.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Not everyone who has problems with evolution is a young-earth creationist and ID is not creationism.
ID was invented by creationists for creationists. It is creationism dressed up in fancy words. The same logical flaws in creationism apply to ID. There's really nothing new in ID other than a well-financed campaign to legitimize it in the eyes of the less educated.
If ID were not creationism then the proponents of ID would first and foremost try to become established in the scientific community. They would concentrate on developing and refining their theory. If they made enough progress then it would naturally make its way into the classroom.
Unfortunately for everyone, ID is creationism. Proponents of ID are simply trying to push it into the classroom as quickly as possible, with as little scrutiny as possible. Why would any real scientist do this?
Not at all, because SETI is refutable (the base is that ETs are supposed to exist. As of today, with no proof of their existance, all we can say is that they don't).
ID is based of faith, not proofs, and bullshit arguments (which are mostly not, in fact, arguments) as well as the refutation of Darwin's theory which was actually replaced by more advanced ones a few years past Darwin's death.
ID is, as such, not refutable because it has no grounds, doesn't make any predictions (which is a requirement for a scientific theory), doesn't give any explanation of facts (which is also a requirement to call yourself "scientific theory") and therefore is nowhere close anything "scientific". In a word, ID is the same old creationist bullshit rehashed to make it less obvious.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
That is why you can't believe Genesis to be the word of God and believe in evolution at the same time.
It is known that Genesis contradicts itself. If people have no trouble believing that the literal word of God is contradictory then they should be able to take evolution in stride.
> Is the explanation of the second scientist not science simply because it fails to make predictions, but only explains data?
Yes.
It is a necessary one.
There was an experiment where they showed that ducks still have the genetics for teeth (they actually grew a duck with teeth to prove it - most wierd looking hehe). That's pretty strong evidence that they evolved from another species. Humans continually get back problems due to our frame comming from a bent-over shape - like a ape. There's tons of evidence that we evolved from another species.
How could it be falsified? Well if we found a large animal without any DNA, that would be most interesting. Or a DNA that is completely different from any other species - that would be hard to explain.
You keep mentioning that you just get insulted when you say your view. I don't find that surprising because you have said things that show you have clearly not listened to the debate. It's not really surprising that people choose to just give up and insult you.
That's actually a real scientific dilemma, and it's the dilemma that's causing string theory so much controversy. Now I'm not an actual physicist, and I'm just getting all this from "The Elegant Universe," so take it with an appropriate grain of salt. But anyway, string theory pretty much explains everything satisfactorily. It's basically the Grand Unification that we've all been hoping for. The problem is that the theorized particles (or not particles at all, but rather strings) are not even theoretically observable. Furthermore, it explains all observed phenomena but makes no disprovable predictions. As a result, a great number of serious scientists refuse to call it a theory. It's the same exact problem as you're talking about.
Um, we've seen plants change species all the time.
Any chance yo0u would provide a reference for your astonishing claim on the changes in decay rates and other constants?
I will only accept references from peer reviewed journals - quotes from religious demagogues do not count.
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
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
> As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing.
As a Christian, I don't find the fact that other Christians continue to support creationism or "ID" at all amusing. It makes those who have not yet come to Christ think that all Christians are soft in the head, and obscures the intrinsic truth of Christianity.
> What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
The line between the two is an arbitrary one defined for human convenience.
> Nearly no reasonable person would claim that selective pressure over a long period of
> time can cause gradual changes to a species' DNA.
I think that the scientific community at large contains many reasonable people, so that seems to contradict what you said. Of course, science isn't politics and numbers alone don't make the truth. However, the scientific community comes to its conclusions based on solid evidence.
> This is called micro-evolution, and in fact the large majority of Christians have no
> problem with it.
You are contradicting what you just said, but anyway, "long periods of time" on an evolutionary scale are the time frames for macroevolution. Microevolution takes a shorter amount of time.
> 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.
Biological species are defined arbitrarily as distinct groups of individuals which can interbreed. This is a single, quite arbitrary trait. However, you are right that it takes a long time for complete speciation to occur(far too long for experiments to be readily done) and so this cannot be easily tested in vivo.
> ID argues that this wouldn't be enough.
Unfortunately for that hypothesis, this is an additional complication which is not required to explain the evidence, and contradicts DNA evidence. The simpler hypothesis, applying evolution at all levels, performs just as well as the far more complex one.
> 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 completely untrue in the post-genomic era. The genomes of numerous species have been sequenced, and the relationships between the sequences can be studied. There is a high degree of synteny(conservation of genes and gene order) between the human and the mouse genomes. Since "there is more than one way to do it"(sorry for stealing your slogan, Larry), i.e. multiple ways to code for the same function, if each species was created individually, we would expect that they would have no more than 5% similarity of protein sequences, and very little synteny.
> This is the 'flaw' in evolution that IDers seek to have pointed out - macro-evolution
> _isn't consistent with the scientific method_.
This is utterly untrue. See above. ID is not 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.
I would, however, agree with you that ID and creationism are not fundamentalist Christian concepts. Fundamentalism means interpreting the scriptures and ignoring the traditions.
However, the only reason that a subset of all Christians believe in creationism/ID is b
X-Has-Sig: yes
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.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
What else would you think could come out of a bunch who think Christianity is way too hard and go for Christianity Lite? It's not Christian against athiest but ignorant enthusiasm against intellectualism. Intelligent design is ebonics for biology - it's way too hard to teach something useful that may do students some good in the future so the cop out is to teach something that makes those in charge feel good.
All this is to be expected when scientists are seen as the high priests of neopaganism by leaders of large fundamentalist groups.
I don't think thats true at all. If they screw up their kid thats one more murderer / rapist / thief / terrorist on your streets. Its another mal-peer for child to become associated with, that could corrupt your own. What people do to the next generation affects everyone around them directly.
The thing I don't understand about creationists is why have they picked on that one aspect of Science to get so pissy about. How about gravity? Aristotal was a pretty bright guy, and he was convinced that the reason birds flew was because that was their place in life (and that they contained more of the air element) and yet we still have no solid proof that gravity exists. We have models that are predictable but we don't know how it works. Why don't creationists try and get schools to teach that its Gods will that massive objects are attracted to each other? How about Radiation? We know that some objects release alpha particles, but we have no idea when it will happen. Why don't we teach that God made the particles appear? I don't get me started on Maths. The square root of -1! That makes 666 look positively saintly!
The Framers were right to keep church and state seperate. It the responsibility of the state to pass on all the knowledge that it has to its people. It is the responsibility of the churches to explain to people how that fits in with their religion. There needs to be some flexibilty. Evolution is our best theory so far, just like quantum theory or special relativity. We expect them to change because we know they arn't the complete theory of everything and its important that students understand this. In the same manner religious fundamentalists need to embrace a similar flexibility and understand that all of our religious texts are the word of God written down by man and that all men are faliable and encourage people to interpret their religious texts and look for the word of God within the words of men that died many hundreds of years ago, where their thoughts were framed by their experiences and knowledge of their day.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
this would answer a number of questions, such as: why is this planet so fucked up? or, why did steve gutenberg have a career?
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
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.
"Halfway mutated" - well, there are plenty of fossils showing transitional forms along evolutionary lines. Humans are the best-known (Cro-Magnon, for instance - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cro-Magnon) because we're most interested in our own species. Others are well-represented as well though - there's at least one proto-bird fossil which are feathered and have wings but can't use the wings to fly (current best guess is that they help over rough ground in the same way as chickens, for example, flap to go fast over the ground). There are at least two intermediate forms of cetacean (whale/dolphin ancestors) with vestigial legs, and whales themselves have vestigial legs evident in the skeleton.
Also, the micro/macro difference is less than you'd think. The old definition of species was anything that could breed with each other and produce viable young. Genetics has crushed that definition pretty thoroughly.
Obviously there are gaps in the fossil record. Remember, we're relying on something to just happen to die in the perfect conditions to preserve it. The chances of that are pretty low, so we don't get a huge number of good examples, but there are enough there that the hypothesis "things were always this way" is simply not a valid starting point.
Grab.
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.
He misspoke. We have found many ways to falisfy evolution. As was said earlier, a pre-cambrian homo sapien fossil would be an easy way. Another way is to simply observe and track all the species we can for a very, very long time. We're working on that, too. Falisifying evolution would be just as great of a scientific breakthrough as the original theory. What I'm sure he meant was that, so far, thousands of scientists have been unable to find any evidence that would allow them to falsify evolution. Nobody has come up with a better theory.
Does evolution explain EVERYTHING? Fuck no. But, so far, it's the best theory, it hasn't been falsified, and we haven't found any evidence that would refute it. All current evidence supports evolution. A lack of evidence supporting it further doesn't imply that it's been falsified, it merely means we haven't found all of the evidence. The current data set is overwhelmingly pro-evolution.
Most pro-ID people simply say God works through evolution. DNA is his programming language, and he is the one who effected all of the changes. This can exist with evolution, but it's not really a competing theory. It can compete with natural selection unless you say that natural selection and random mutations are god's method of effecting change. But then is this really a competing theory? Is it falsifiable? At that point you can take a random mutation and say "god did it." You can point to the environmental changes, radiation fucking with the atomic structure of DNA, anything, but you'll still get the "but yeah, that's HOW god did it. See? I'm right!" Which is fine, if that's how you want to interpret and explain the facts, I have no problem with it. I personally feel it's incorrect, but I can't prove that wrong. It's not falsifiable. It is a double standard on falsification, but it's on the ID side of the house. There is no evidence to falsify or support the ID claim. It would be impossible to do so, because we can, at the moment, only observe 3-dimensional interactions. By the very definition of god he would have to operate outside of the third dimension, and we could never observe whether or not HE was the one changing DNA, or whether HE was the one causing any of this. All we can do is point to the changes we see in our 3-dimensional world, point to what appears to be causing them, make theories about it, then observe it further and try to see if anything refutes our claim, and what other evidence supports it. Then thousands of other scientists take a look at all of the available data and try to repeat the expirement or observations on their own. If twenty different studies all show the same results, we can start saying "this looks like a good theory" and try to find more ways to test it. Most theories are eventually falsified as we gain a greater understanding of the world. Current research into quantum mechanics, string theory, etc., threatens to throw a lot of the other excellent theories out the window, but that's OK. That should be possible with all theories.
I know this is abused on slashdot, but let me make an analogy. When I was a child I observed that you could get quite a shock licking a 9-volt battery. I tried licking the + side of it, and this didn't happen. I licked the - side of it, and I didn't get shocked either. I liked them both at the same time, and all of a sudden I was shocked! Knowing nothing about how batteries worked, my theory was that the electricity in the battery only came out when you touched both + and - at the same time. This could be observed by putting it in any 9V-powered electronic device and plugging either the + or - terminal into the device. The device would only function with both terminals co
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
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
So what you are saying is that the Theory of Evolution is not in violation of the premise of Intelligent Design but that they can co-exist within the same scientific arena?
If that is the case, then could it be said that Intelligent Design is merely an expression that the process of evolution which leads to macro-evolutionary changes: fish to monkeys to humans... is not a process given entirely to chance but some overall guidance is being provided to the direction for that evolution and that guidance falls more closely to the hand of God than Chance.
Rather difficult to debate at that point for the existence of God depends upon Faith ( there was something on this by Douglas Adams that I found interesting ). Unfortunately Faith has never been identified as a scientific method, influence, or force. Furthermore it seems that what science has been able to develop so far has been largely independent of the religious orientation of the viewers.
Since the entire premise of Intillent Design is based on a non-scientific premise of Faith rather than observable facts which can be proven through repeated independent tests, I submit that Intillent Design can be neither proven nor disproven within the scientific community and as such, be included only as the basis of a footnote: Isn't remarkable that things have been able to evolve the way they have?.
To enforced a non-scientifically supported concept into the realm of science in America is pretty scarey. We, as a nation, are already in a heap of trouble trying to compete with the rest of the world, who is quickly catching up and passing us on many fronts. To dilude ourselves with this kind of debate merely ensures that we become the largest third world nation in record time.
"That isn't true. "Life is too complex to have evolved" is a theory; ID research (primarily using information theory) is to try to show that this is the case. If they succeed in showing that the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection doesn't have the power to generate the complex information found in living things, then the search will be on for a mechanism that can do this."
No, that's not a theory - it's an idea. From your description here it sounds like the sole reason for this research is to prove that the Darwinian mechanism is wrong which is fine because should this be achieved then indeed a new mechanism will be required.
Should ID be successful then it still will have got absolutely no where in justifying it's idea there must have been an intelligent creator, to do this requires the same kind of evidence and proof that the Darwinian theory of Evolution has achieved today which is never going to happen when the main thrust of ID is to point out flaws in existing theories without doing anything to advance evidence, scientific papers or proofs for the idea which it is espousing.
This being the case ID is in the same league as 1001 other ideas about alternative explanations for Evolution the only difference being the amount of funding and backing it receives from Christian organisations which those other theories do not benefit from.
Yes there are, I think Richard Dawkins has some essays on the real scientific work going in this area.
Jesus, do I have to disprove ANOTHER one of your theories?!
Ok, so your theory is that there is NO WAY the world could possibly have become the way it currently is without an intelligent designer to make it that way? That random chance would've never resulted in the present state of things.
I can disprove you with the Law Of Time, Cause and Effect, and "What If?". To begin with, the present is a result of the past. We can time travel back to the past, change a few things that'll affect the future, then go into the future, and, guess what? It'll still be the future! For whoever or whatever is living there, THAT will be the "amazing present". To reiterate, whatever happens in the past would, and always will be, the past. Whatever the present is, it will ALWAYS be the present. Until it becomes the past, of course. The more complex it is, the more amazed our simple minds are going to be.
I've often heard that "the Grand Canyon is such an amazing natural wonder, there's no way God couldn't have created it". The power of moving water is so amazing that there's no way a given ammount of water, with a certain force and other pre-existing conditions, COULDN'T have created the grand canyon over that much time. I'd be more amazed if water flowed over a surface for hundreds of thousands of years without changing a thing. Now, if Mt. Vesuvius floated 10 feet above ground, with nothing holding it up, I'd be fucking AMAZED. I would wonder how the hell God did that. I'd ask him to please share his technology with us so that we can make floating billboards without having to put those pesky poles up all over the place!
The fact that something amazes you DOES NOT show any evidence for design. The fact that things are the way they are (even though, no matter how things were, they'd still be "the way they are") is NOT evidence. It's not evidence in ANY form, and it's definitely not EMPIRICAL evidence. It's simply a statement that would ALWAYS be true; it's like saying "blue is blue".
Of course, the fact that you're either weakminded or a troll is evident in your attack on evolution as "just a theory". All science is just a theory. The theory of electromagnetism is JUST A THEORY. The "law" of gravity is really the theory of gravity. Actually, there are a LOT of theories on gravity. Newton had one, Einstein had more than one, and Tesla had a pretty nifty one too. Of course, nobody denies that jumping off of a large building without a parachute will result in your body impacting the ground; there's even video evidence of it. Nobody in the scientific community SERIOUSLY denies that evolution takes place. The current debate is over the specific details of it.
On top of that, intelligent design isn't even a THEORY (a working hypothesis that is considered probable based on experimental evidence or factual or conceptual analysis and is accepted as a basis for experimentation). It's not a SCIENTIFIC HYPOTHESIS. It's not even a HYPOTHESIS (prelude to a theory - A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.). It's a fucking ASSERTION, incapable of progressing to "hypothesis", let alone theory, because it does not meet the standards required. Then it'd still have to become an ACCEPTED THEORY before it'd be worth teaching in high schools.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
>>And why must people (on both sides) believe that accepting science means rejecting religion? Because religion it removes God from the equation as creator. The "God did it through evolution" arguement doesn't work because a god isn't needed for evolution. So what they do is accept only the things they want to by calling things "mutations" instead of evolution at work. They'll call cold viruses and bacterial infections mutations as well instead of accepting that that's what evolution is. It's the whole stupid fear of death thing which is stupid because we can't remember anything before age 5 iow our beginning so why worry about our end? HOW we die, now that's a valid fear and effects people regardless of religion.
Fossils of duck-billed platypus's look exactly the same as duck-billed platypus's today. Doesn't this indicate that it never actually evolved at all?
First off: thanks for the best, as in simple, succinct, and concrete, arguement against evolution I've, quite possibly, ever heard.
It's refreshing to hear a clear voice of reason over the muddled, presumptuous reasonings of, well... , many.
This is a keeper.
I agree that absolutely you can't say that God does or not exist, in the same way you can't say that Mermaids do or do not exist, however when people start making statements such as "If God does exist then x,y,z must be true and caused by God" then there are problems.
The correct position is to deal with God in the same way we deal with everything and assume that he doesn't exist until it is proven otherwise. For example it's perfectly possible that the floor will collapse where I am sitting in the next ten seconds and I will plunge into a 3 mile deep crater surfaced with sharp spikes and die but I am assuming this is not going to happen and I'm not taking any precautions or any action based on the chance it may happen.
There's a dragon in my garage. Can you prove it exists?
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice
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.
the author basically tries to reconcile the bible and big bang/evolutionary theory. im not taking any of it as certain, it was just an interesting read. when he gets to the part about the creation of man and evolution, he goes into where the hebrew translation could have allowed for there to have been many, many humans at the point adam and eve were "created" where basically he says god picked 2 of these early humans and gave them "souls" some several thousand years ago: hence the rise of civilization about that time: according to the author.
its interesting, not particularly compelling perhaps, but all sorts of people have different points of view on the subject. theres the very literal interpretation of genesis youre taking, and theres non-literal views that allow for evolution to be a part of gods plan.
im personally agnostic, and dont particularly care how we got here or why, but more what im having for dinner tonight.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
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
American Catholic Christians != Catholic Christians in general. Try asking that question in Europe.
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?
......Any chance yo0u would provide a reference for your astonishing claim on the changes in decay rates and other constants?......
_ ID=39733
g ht
When I first came across the idea that certain "fundamental" constants of the Universe might be variable, I discounted that. There are many articles concerning mounting evidence that the speed of light and related "constants" have changed, in some cases greatly over long periods of time. One of the best layman's summaries of this I have found is here:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE
You can use this article as a starting point of your own googling to whatever depth you wish to pursue this.
It leads to numerous other links and here is another one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_li
Of all the observations (also mentioned in the Worldnet article) piling up of this change being so, none is more clear and more devastating to current scientific dogma of immense ages of time than Williams Tift's discovery that the red shift is quantized. Below is an excerpt for one of the articles:
It would seem that one person can convince the scientific community if their arguments are good enough. It would be nice if this were the case, but I don't think human nature allows. Francis Bacon was unable to convince the scientistists of his time that the speed of light is finite. John Snow had mediocre success trying to convince the scientists of his time that germs caused disease rather than "miasma." Semmelweiss had practically no success trying to get doctors to wash their hands before delivering babies for pregnant mothers. Or, for a particularly telling example, consider Einstein's theory of relativity. Even TEN YEARS after he had proposed it, including what I think you will agree are rather good reasons, the scientific community refused to accept it. In 1921 when Einstein received the Nobel prize, relativity was not menationed at all! A more modern example is William Tift's work on quantization of red shift. Proposed and supported with evidence in 1977, it has been verified at least 4 times by separate scientists at Oxford, University of Arizona, Canadian National Research Center, and the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh. The last verification was in 2003, yet scientists still refuse to accept it.
In another 50 years, or hopefully sooner the theory of evolution, as presently taught as scientific "truth" will join the long list of discarded notions in the graveyard of dead scientific theories.
All theory is gray
Best summary yet. Kudos.
...Electrons, electromagnetic radiation....
My point was that they are observable today because we have developed technology to extend our senses. For the largest fraction of human existence they were NOT observable, but still existed all along. Just because we have not yet developed a "God meter" doesn't mean we never will nor that God doesn't exist.
All theory is gray
I meant my old high school textbooks.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
But evolution is not being taught as fact. It is being taught as science. Just as gravity, relativity, molecular biology and plate tectonics are.
In science, there is no "fact". There is only our best supported theory so far. And that's no small praise. It means that we have found nothing better, and not for lack of trying!
If intelligent design wants to be treated as equal to scientific theories, let it. Let it try to get articles accepted in peer reviewed journals. Let it try to argue its merits
.....Everything done so far is consistent with the hypothesis that decay rate is constant......
_ ID=39733
Yes, and on a cosmological or even human historical time scale, how long have we measuring or even known about such things?
There IS evidence that indicates that some so called constants are anything but constant over LONG periods of time, even only hundreds of years or thousands. You can use this article as a layman's starting point:
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE
It leads to links of more detailed and mathematically dense scientific articles you can wade through if you are so inclined. Googling the names of the scientists mentioned is a good way to begin to pursue this.
All theory is gray
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".
....suggests it is not possible to create molecules such as insulin, chlorophyll etc from basic atomic elements...
It is obviously possible, but its just that no human scientist has ever done it yet. These things exist, but nobody has EVER made such things from the basic elements of nature. These molecular structures contain hundreds or in some cases thousands of atoms in precise arrangements which have not been duplicated in any laboratory. That is a FACT!
All theory is gray
I've always seen it as a story, much like a television series with a fictional family. We've got the man who was created first (because that's how society at the time worked - man = important), and a woman "created from his rib". The created from him thing is showing that the wife is a "part of" the husband; that she needs to be respected and cared for because she's basically "from the same mold". Then there's the devil masquerading as a snake, tempting the good folks to break the law. They're happy and carefree - efectively in Heaven (some theologists beleive that Eden wasn't actually on Earth, but rather a place between Heaven and Earth) - prior to breaking the law, and then after they break the law they know fear and shame, are kicked out of Eden and an angel with a flaming sword prevents return access until Jesus is born etc. So, episode two's moral is "obey the law, or you'll be punished". It's also a convenient way to introduce the concept that people are inherently bad until they've received permission from the giver of religion to be accepted into heaven, but we'll let that slide for now. After they're expelled, the series continues with the birth of Cain, Abel, and Seth - along with several other more minor characters, including the two daughters who Cain and Abel marry. These provide a background for other stories about being willing to sacrifice everything for God, not being jealous, leaving for a better place without "looking back", etc.
Adam was supposed to have lived for 930 years or so, which in itself seems rather unexplainable withouth presuming that he's a metaphor for the "source" of human life in the middle east (which is often cited as the origin of humans who eventually migrated all over the place)...
"If God used an mechanism such as Evolution to create divergent species, then God is not necessary."
I hear this argument all the time and I have yet to hear it make logical sense.
P1. God used evolution to create divergent species.
C. God is not necessary.
Not only is the middle undistributed, it doesn't even exist?!
In any rational person's mind, there is much more to the question of the existence of God (e.g. the origin of ethics and morality, purposefulness in the universe, the nature of the soul) than supplying a mechanism for transforming biological mass from one form to the next.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
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?
God started the Big Bang. And He directed evolution, molding the world like a sculptor molds a statue. With God involved, mankind is not an accident; God created us on purpose, regardless of the exact way He did so. Otherwise, we are just a random cosmic accident, much like the duckbilled platypus.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The website above shows that there are literally thousands of transitional fossils and has links to images of these fossils. To say that there are no transistionary fossils is simply false.
the standard whale evolutionary path has been discredited, by evolutionists.
Really? Care to provide some references to that? Care to even describe how it was discredited? What exactly is the issue? Wikipedia isn't the best of sources, but it is usually up to date on the latest points, but they make no reference to criticism. There are plenty of other pages about whale origins, and their bibiolgraphies are reasonably up to date. Any searches on Google for "whale evolution discredited" or "cetacean evolution flawed" turns up nothing but creationist sites, and a wikipedia article about recapitulation theory (which is quite unrelated).
Just like the evolution of horses.
Couldn't find any details on that either - care to provide some decent references?
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.
And how, exactly, would you know a lot about the structures of the lungs of dinosaurs? Soft tissue doesn't get preserved. The best we've got is the strcuture of the rib cage and chest cavity which, even for dromaeosaurids was remarkably similar to birds? The best you could claim is that the lungs of modern reptiles and birds are too different - but then the general morphology of a crocodile and a chicken are very different yet we have many intermediate forms of various dinosaurs showing how that can work. It seems easy enough to believe that the lungs, and everything else, changed and adapted as well. What exactly is your firm foundation for believeing that dinosaurs didn't develop birdlike lungs?
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
There are many sequences showing gradual change over a long period of time - the classic example is the evolution of the horse from a species called Hyracotherium which looks rather like a small dog. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol. html for more info on this.
But "half mutated" is a rather meaningless concept.
If the principles behind his explanation apply only to A and B and not any future events then it is a lousy ad hoc explanation and it is not science.
"(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.
"We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes"
Until you provide a specific definition of what "substantial evdience" is, you're just another fundie troll looking to confuse people with slick logical fallacies.
Stick to obedience, thinking isn;t your strong suit.
Typical unsourced creationist claims.
p art1a.htm if anyone wants the detail on this.
You say there is only one fossil linking fish and amphibians. Absolute poppycock. Over a dozen "transitional" *species* between fish and amphibians have been identified from many hundreds of fossils. There are many other well understood transitions. There is an excellent introduction of this at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/
Your argument is also self-refuting. You claim that if evolution were correct then the fossil record would be a continuum. But you presumably accept "microevolution" even though there is no continuum of "micro-evolved" fossils. The answer is of course that the chance of an organism being fossilised, and then surviving millions of years of erosion and geological activity is is pretty damn small.
And as for a scientific revolution coming, it's a funny kind of scientific revolution that's driven by religious fundamentalists?
The scientific process has many parts. One of these is observation, aka, experiments. This must happen to some extent before there is any of the other steps involved at all. People must observe things falling to come up with gravity.
That doesn't mean dropping things is 'science'. It's science if you have a theory behind it and are making observations to confirm or deny that theory. It's even science if you are making observations trying to figure out a theory.
So it's possible to argue that SETI is part of the scientific process.
What SETI is not, however, is a scientific theory, as the person I was replying to was asserting. Despite what some people misunderstand 'science' as.
To be science, it has to complete the science method: observation, hypothesis, prediction, observe controlled circumstances (aka, experiments), go back to hypothesis if wrong and make a new one.
Why isn't SETI science?
Because, just like ID is missing missing all steps besides 'hypothesis', SETI is missing everything except 'observation'. This is a very large indication it's not science. Science needs to go through all those steps, preferably in order. (And the observation is more a philosophical point (other life must exist!) than an actual observation.)
It fails because there is no real 'theory' that life evolved elsewhere. It's nigh-impossible to have a theory about the repetition of a single event that we don't understand and haven't observed.
Evolution doesn't fall in that category, we've observed plenty of examples of it, but life starting does. So we can logically conclude that life, if it exists elsewhere, has evolved and will evolve in the future, but not give any odds whatsoever on life actually starting.
If you were a scientist and tried to use any 'theory' that there's extraterrestrial life as part of your own work, you'd be laughed out of the building. SETI is not science, SETI is speculation that scientists like to play with, and even use to get people interested in science, but I assure you they know the difference.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It may not be flamebait but it's certainly idiotic and as a result you are going on my foes list.
Yet implicit in all other theories is the statement: "Life was not created by an intelligent designer, but by ..."
You're just expecting too big of a jump in each generation. If you look for more subtle evolution you can find it even today. For example, I just met a man who said, "My parents are members of the Kansas School Board, but I'm not, and I want to join the human race." See! Evolution in action!
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Intelligent design doesn't depend on faith. In fact, it is logically deduced.
You begin with "I think therefore I am". The core of the argument lies in entropy. If things are constantly spiralling into a state of disorder (or high entropy), then how is it that there was enough order in the beginning to allow the creation of DNA? Or of an eyeball? Or of anything at all, really?
The intelligent design movement simply looks at the facts and says: "Hold on a second. There is CLEARLY too much order in the universe. There is EVIDENCE OF DESIGN." And so they look for a designer.
I encourage you to read "The Big Mystery". You can check out the whole of the argument here.
Thinkers exist, and you are thinking. Therefore, you exist. Your thoughts require the passage of time, and the outside world exists, and things have beginnings and endings. All events are caused. Entropy increases. The universe is winding down, breaking into a state of higher entropy...
In the end, you will realise that the universe isn't even able to sustain itself, and it could not have begun on it's own. It is entirely inadequite, in and of itself, to explain it's beginning.
Ah, but it isnt entirely random. The mutations might be random, upon what gets mutated. But the survival of the mutated is not random. You mutate, but then you have a 1/3 chance of it being advantageous, 1/3 chance of it being disadvantageous, 1/3 chance of it being unadvantageous. So we didnt randomly evolve, we advantageously evovled from a random seed.
For it to be truely random, the natural selection would also have to be entirely random, not favoring the advantageous, but favoring random chance on how to pass genes on. So, there is a guiding force, but its a natural one and its called 'Survival of the Fittest'.
I love to slaughter the english language.
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.
Sweet holy crap, someone who understands ID.
However, the only reason 'information theory' even got in there is that ID's specific examples kept getting torn to pieces by actual scientists. So they've turned out vague 'information theory'.
Information theory cannot, under any circumstances, tell you what information could arise via natural selection versa delibrate meddling. In fact, information theory doesn't even have a concept for those things. It can tell you what information is unlikely to be random, but the end result of evolution isn't random.
And science doesn't handwave things as 'too complex, therefore untrue'. Complexity is not an indication of truth. Science likes simple solutions, but didn't go 'Oh, quantum theory is too complex, so it's not true'.
Information theory has never been used as a argument against an actual physical theory. It just doesn't make any sense. If observations disagree with information theory, it's information theory that's going to get thrown out.
And incidentally an intelligent designer requires quite a bit of complexity. It's just moving it around. Proving that DNA is too complex either requires
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I am interested (really) in this reply. If possible, could you source your information so I can study it for myself.
Of course, considering the best way to see if he exists, as he's apparently stopped sending flaming bushes, would be to poke him with a sharp stick and see if he reacts. And perhaps it's best if we don't do that, just in case.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
"Why can't God use effective tools such as evolution"
Evolutionary science does not cover how it all started. Scientists acknowledge this. However evolution is extremely inefficient. Of course this 'god' could be carrying out an experiment to test the effectiveness of evolution versus other creation methods.
What we do know without any doubt is that there is no intelligent design by any perfect being. Such a being must by definition create a perfect design. Nature as it currently exists is seriously flawed.
The whole Jesus Christ story is nonsensical. If he was a god, then dying was no big deal. Hardly a big sacrifice. His father only gave up something if Jesus Christ is in fact now dead. And if he's dead you can't pray to him. The story has more plot holes than a Hollywood blockbuster.
Religion is by definition unchanging. The whole point is that it appeals to people who are desperate for some stable thing to which they can cling.
Of course, information theory doesn't work in the way that ID people seem to think it works, and it can't 'disprove' things happened 'naturally', as it has no concept of 'natural'. And on top of that, it's statistical.
Using information theory to disprove evolution is like using sociology to disprove that gay people exist.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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
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
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 Bible does imply that animals at the beginning are the same animals we have now, basically unchanged.
I've read much on both sides. It seems that whenever there is a fossil that shows characteristics of two animals, e.g. dinosaurs with bird characteristics, it gets declared as one or the other. On that basis we will never find any between-species fossils.
ID is attacked with good reason. Most of the time it is actually just creationism disguised so that its supporters don't look like fools.
We can say that if this was all started or created by some being that this being was not perfect because the results are not perfect. The human body alone as numerous flaws, all of which shouldn't exist if there was a perfect designer.
Firstly supporters of some sentient initiator need to clearly dissociate themselves from any belief or notion of a perfect being having been involved. They can't even consider the known universe as some sort of R&D experiment because the god referred to in the Bible knows all and therefore would know the ultimate outcome of any such experiment.
Secondly they have to vocally distance themselves from idiots who say things like "what good is half an eye?" as an argument against gradual development of various organic systems. Making such statements is tantamount to having MORON tattooed on your forehead.
I am amazed that people still try to resurrect the argument from design. I thought that David Hume pretty much destroyed that line of reasoning a couple of hundred years ago.
Do you assume that you just happened to luckily shake the bag up (even if you did this 10,000+ times) or do you assume that after you shook it up that someone snuck in and arranged everything all nice and neatly?If you assume the existence of this designer, what do you really know about him/her/them? How many times did the designer re-arrange things before it was done correctly? How do you know that you are looking at the final release and not an alpha or beta version? Why should you assume there was just one designer? Why could it not be a team or committee of designers? Perhaps the designer was just a dumb mechanic playing with some toys? How can you make any observations about the morality and intent about the designer if you can only see the results?
If you subscribe to ID, you must be able to respond to those objections. Further appeals to faith and religious texts simply are not adequate evidence to shore up the crumbling foundation on which the theory of ID is based.
Personally, I am quite in favour of pointing out that evolution is only a theory. I believe in Karl Popper's theory of knowledge and refutation. However, ID fails as a theory, so it cannot be considered as an alternative explanation to evolution.
ID should be discussed in philosophy classes. It does not appear to have any place in biology classes because it has nothing to do with biology.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
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
I realize that some of the timelines given for the the evolutionary period contradicts other sciences.
Please state what timeline in evolutionary period contradicts with 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.
Are you arguing that since evolution is imporbable to the point, that God will need to custom-make every single one of us? I will say that Evolution is still incomplete, that's the very reason its a theory. But without any other competing theories, it's the best we have. Also if Creationism is real, why is there no human fossile found alongside a dinosaur?
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
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.
Please tell me how believing we came from ooze that formed after two planets (where did they come from?)that collided is any less faith based then believing there is a God out there who planned and created us....Look at the world out there...look at its beauty and how things perfectly go together. Look at what people have done with the resources in nature....and it all happened by chance? What are the odds of that? Of the world spinning just right and being the exact distance from the sun that we need...that things just worked out that way...it is all very illogical...and just plain crazy...Believe what you want...but know that you are exercising faith just like the rest of us. People are picking at little things in a huge time line...what about the very beginning? Give me one theory, provable or not, that has no holes in it. One theory that explains where the very first stuff, living or not actually came from. According to evolution everything had to come from some where ....it could not simply always have been, like God, so
where and how did those first planets come to exist.
What caused life to began....if we are going to talk
about the origin of the species lets go all the way
back to the very beginning. I only know one theory
that explains it all and explains all the various
contingencies and that is I.D. Maybe it all needs to
simply be left out of the school system until it can
be proved..really proved. Leave the whole subject of
the beginning of life to parents to teach...or for
students to chose as electives when they are old
enough to make choices on what they want to learn more
about...why force any un-provable theory down any
child's throat?
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.
A crisp and rigorous definition of species is however necessary for any argument based on micro- and macro-evolution to hold water. We're still waiting for such a definition from the Creationist camp. In this particular case, why are killer whales and dolphins different species given that they apparently can interbreed? And please, make the definition quantative and general. I for one am not holding my breath to ever see such a falsifiable statement to come from that corner.
> If by science you mean "the scientific method", then this doesn't mean rejecting religion
Partially correct: It means that you must not bring religion into it at all, because religion is not testable/falsifiable. What wacky beliefs you practice at home is your own decision, but too many creationists hide behind the facade of ID to force their views of God on everyone's children. I'll concede that there may be an ID supporter who is not a creationist -- besides those who think the "creator" is an alien race -- but I have never met one.
Because your argument CAN'T be observed, tested or proved. Evolution can. It might not have been done yet, but there's at least the possibility that we will eventually find that 'missing link'. To prove ID, conclusively, the "intelligence" behind it all would have to tell us how they did it.
The problem I have with ID, as a (non-denominational) Christian, is that it's evil. You CANNOT prove that God exists without destroying the principal need to have faith that he exists. And let's be honest, ID is an attempt to 'suggest' that God did it - to raise a doubt, a question, to spark belief in those who might be on the fence. The mechanics of the universe (and evolution) are just as beautiful to someone with faith in God as they are to people who don't believe in God (Christian or otherwise) - which is THE POINT! God WANTS us to understand his creation whether or not we believe in him. You don't get it both ways. Science can be right, and you can choose to find the Glory of God in that or not - but you still HAVE to take *GOD*... on FAITH! Did you miss that part? Was it unclear? Was he, perhaps, kidding? Tell me, please, why would I need faith in God if I took your argument? And if you can answer that question, tell why would I want to believe in a God that couldn't put it all together seamlessly?
"This was exclusively in a context of a discussion on biological evolution. The end of that sentence, "for biological evolution to exist" was implied."
;-)
Can you restate the sentence then, because when I append that, I get an even less comprehensible assertion:
"If God used a mechanism such as evolution for divergent species to exist, then God is not necessary for biological evolution to exist."
"Adding an appeal to a divine power merely pushes back the questions by 1 level of abstraction."
Agreed, but it's hard to argue that level of abstraction doesn't exist whether you posit the existence of a creator or not. While ID may not be a sound theory, people who can reconcile their belief in God with the existence of evolution (and are, by definiton, not proponents of ID but of evolution) are not basing their belief on necessarily untenable positions. They are simply stating they have reasons, based on philosophy or personal experience, to believe that a divine will exists, and that it's existence is not incompatible with that of evolution.
"If and Intelligent Designer was necessary for anything as complex biological evolution to occur, what Intelligence designed the Intelligent Designer? Repeat ad infinitum."
A credible attack on ID, yes, but I didn't express a belief in ID, nor did the poster to whom you replied. As stated above, if they believe in evolution and a creator, then they do not believe per se in the vulgar version of ID you are now assailing.
"If you postulate the existence of the Intelligent Designer, as a God (or whatever), then there is no reason to then reduce the problem and postulate the existence of biological evolution."
Who are you to tell the designer how to do his work?
"The process of evolution is dynamic enough to give rise to intelligence without the need for design from intelligence."
Based on what? Your denial of "the next level" of abstraction? Perhaps you can justify the claim that intelligence is an ephemeral by-product of evolution.
"There are sufficient (and better) mechanisms for the origin of ethics and morality then postulating that they were granted, inspired, or created by a God."
Bring 'em on...
"Meaning in life (what I assume you mean by purposefulness in the universe, since that is the only thing I was able to get out of those words) is created by the person searching for meaning in their life."
Meaning in life is a fair way to individualize the notion of "purposefulness in the universe". That you can't comprehend a reference to purpose beyond individual purpose is perhaps a clue to your struggle with the notion of there being a broader one. (Yes, I'm taunting you now)
"And every conceptualization of soul that I have heard of either reduces to a subset of the mind, or was so in-substantially abstracted as to be unnecessary for any understanding about the nature of people."
Funny, every conceptualization of the mind that I have heard reduces to a subset of the soul...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
> In any rational person's mind, there is much more to the question of the existence of God [...] than supplying a mechanism for transforming biological mass from one form to the next
Can you explain why that is necessarily true? So if I believed that God "created" us/evolutionary processes and then abandoned us -- after all, he never did anything I asked, even when I was way-too-Christian -- I must be an inherently irrational person?
> Before the first sin there was no death and therefore could not have been evolution before Adam and Eve. That is why you can't believe Genesis to be the word of God and believe in evolution at the same time.
Before the first life there was no death and therefore could not have been death before Adam and Eve. That is why you can't believe in life and believe in death at the same time.
Your argument makes very little sense, unless you are saying that God could not have created evolution (change, chaos) after sin, or perhaps created it beforehand while protecting A&E from its effects? I'm not a Christian, but most Christians I know don't put such limits on the power of their God.
Finally, there is no magic by definition. ID has a number of different manifestations, but none claim magic. ID claims that there is a designer, a master engineer.
So ID doesn't claim magic, but it does claim there are magicians.
Science is a great tool and can tell us much about the world in which we live. Science, however, is not especially great at looking into the past because we have to base our understanding on a lot of assumptions.
<scorn>Are you suggesting that IDs faith in the existence of a master magician is somehow more plausible than assuming that radioactive decay been constant for the last 5 million years?</scorn> Stay away from my kids and keep your pseudo scientific Taliban nonsense out of the public schools!
FreeSpeech.org
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.
"Look, you guys come up with stuff like "Dark Matter" which is theoretical type of matter that does not conform in any way to what we know about matter. It's invisible to any form of detection that we have ever devised, and yet, it MUST be there. If that isn't meta-physical, I don't know what the heck is." Wow, that's is the dumbest statement I've seen in a while... of course dark mater is detectable - its detectable via it gravitational influence. That's why it got invoked in the first place! The problem is that most of it has not yet been detected by other means, so no one really know what the heck it is. "I freely admit that my world view is governed by unproven, unprovable faith. For you to claim otherwise is hypocrisy and maybe even hubris." Hmmm, and your arguments seem to be defined by uninformed, ignorant remarks. I think you need the hubris check around here.
> > Who the FUCK said SETI was science, so I can beat their ass?
> SETI itself?. A quote from their webpage: "SETI@home is a scientific experiment
Need to work on your reading comprehension. SETI is an EXPERIMENT. Do you not realize that "a scientific experiment" != "science?" An experiment is a single test, science is a method of obtaining information.
To make a strange analogy, I can do something LOVINGLY without being IN LOVE. I can do something SCIENTIFICALLY without it being SCIENCE.
Never understood how a church that teaches you that you're a worthless sinning bastard that has absolutely no control over your life has gotten so popular. Then again, haha, science teaches the same thing.
If you believe that you aren't a god, then you aren't.
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.
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. ;-)
> In a word, ID is the same old creationist bullshit rehashed to make it less obvious.
Hey, that's 11 words! And therefore, since one part of your argument was incorrect, that means the whole thing is incorrect. Or at least, that's the First Law of Dave's Scientific Method of Discrediting Science and Proving Intelligent Design!
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.
"Can you explain why that is necessarily true? So if I believed that God "created" us/evolutionary processes and then abandoned us -- after all, he never did anything I asked, even when I was way-too-Christian -- I must be an inherently irrational person"
You may or may not be irrational, but there is nothing in my statement that I can detect to lead you to that conclusion.
What I said was that rational people are interested in the existence of God for reasons other than explaining the morphological history of life forms, the implication being that people who characterize the question otherwise haven't gotten beyond the primitive "explanation of nature" myth notion of the divine.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
> how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?
Easy. The first step is to build a time machine...
"God started the Big Bang. And He directed evolution, molding the world like a sculptor molds a statue. With God involved, mankind is not an accident; God created us on purpose, regardless of the exact way He did so. Otherwise, we are just a random cosmic accident, much like the duckbilled platypus."
You mean the flying sphagetti monster molded the world like a big meatball, right?
Spare me the quaint religion lesson, I think you missed my point. God isn't necessary in your argument. If you accept the big bang and evolution then you don't need god. We ARE just a random cosmic accident, and despite how much it might offend you, the only meaning to life is to eat shit and screw...and post on slashdot.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Not too difficult: the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution is defined to depend on the hypothesis that evolution can occur within a species, but that it cannot create species. Without a rigorous definition of what constitutes a species, the distinction is void and meaningless. So what does constitute a species according to creationists? If it's the (biological) interbreeding thing, then it's provably untrue. Showing this is undergraduate stuff. So what is it?
The problem with that idea is survival of the fittest doesn't lead to intelligence. The most fit creatures at surviving are also among the least intelligent. Intelligence requires going against being the most fit to survive to a large extent. Look at Stephen Hawking - he's one of the most intelligent beings to ever come around, but he is also the least likely to ever survive... in the old days, the Spartans would have tossed him off a cliff. You can't explain humans with survival of the fittest.
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.
I'm not advocating that debate be stifled, the more debate the better. However I dont expect the golden ratio to assume a special position in a mathematics class, it belongs in an art class about architecture or painting. Similarly I do not expect philosophical interpretation to be sprinkled over science class. You mistake the absence of interpretive meaning in science class for some sort of heathen attack on religion, I content that its not like that at all. Science is about mechanism and you have to look to cultural subjects like literature, history, religion, social science to place interpretation and meaning on the information. For example we seperate english language classes from english literature because one is about mechanism and the other about our culture.
I suspect that what may be happening here is that people do not think that youngsters are being taught enough about christian culture during their education. I can see that this part of education may be constantly under attack because we live in multicultural societies and in bending over backwards to accomodate different points of view have diluted what many parents expect from education. Bear in mind the fact that many minority religions spend a lot of effort in making sure that their children learn about these things in seperate schooling built around their churches. Maybe its time for a sunday school revival.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
It's so unfortunate that when you die, you'll never even know how wrong you are, oh you'll probably see that long tunnel of light and all, just like the near death experiences people, as your systems start to shut down then pop... eternal nothingness, scared?
Darwinian evolutionary doctrine, because it is aimed at teaching an atheistic, amoral paradigm of society, is an important tool used by liberal-socialists to dismantle the social and political order upon which the Constitution was based in 1787.
-William Dembski
http://www.designinference.com/biosketch.htm
Clearly, there is more motivating this than scientific thought. There is the concern about not teaching about God, and perceived impact that will have on the morality of the nation. Do we teach what is scientifically correct, or what some think will give the best moral education? Science is survival for us, at this point. To play games with our science education puts us at risk.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life -- if you and your offspring would live. (Deuteronomy 30:19).
What would God have us do? Live, or die because we insist on ignorance, thinking it's what He wants?
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
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
How about gravity?
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.
I find it rather mind boggling that the entity that is supposedly the most involved and omnipresent around is so hard to detect that even its entire existence is in doubt. I really would like a powerful invisible friend, though...
see a Text Widget
These things have always been observable for all of human existence - just look around you, you are seeing electromagnetic radiation, you are seeing electrons and electricity (lightning) and you experience gravity all the time. None of this requires any technology to detect and all these things are part of the physical universe. They are not and never were supernatural, it just took us a long time to develop a scientific understanding of these things.
God is, by definition, supernatural since he/she/it created the univserse. Therefore god is outside the physical univserse and outside the scope of science and any theory concerned with the existence or not of god, or wether god created life or not is a religious theology that doesn't belong in a science classroom. Science says nothing about wether god does or does not exist, nor about wether god created life.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
this would answer a number of questions, such as: why is this planet so fucked up? or, why did steve gutenberg have a career?
Are you denying that Short Circuit was a good movie?
Live forever, or die trying.
"Of the world spinning just right and being the exact distance from the sun that we need...that things just worked out that way...it is all very illogical...and just plain crazy..."
... if the Earth was a barren rock, then life wouldn't have formed here. That's not exactly the kind of "point" you want to be using to demonstrate that the world must have been designed. It's almost as bad as asking why one plus one equals two. Such a magical coincidence! Surely God must have designed "one" so that if you take it and add it with another "one", you get "two"!
Think about that for a second. You're asking what the odds are that we, life, would form on a planet capable of supporting life rather than on some barren rock. Well
Here's a hint. The only thing special about this particular rock is that it happens to have the right circumstances for life to form. Thus, life formed.
I don't care one way or the other whether a God created the universe, but it seems profoundly stupid to say that that God couldn't create entirely natural laws under which life could come to be, and instead that He had to resort to post-creation tinkering. That's exactly what "Intelligent Design" claims.
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)
The chances of a mutation being advantageous are far less than 1/3. Additionally, if it is useful, it needs to be a dominant trait in order to pass it on, or you have to run into someone else who had the same mutation.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Your argument supposes that Evolution exists apart from God, and that GP implies that God merely uses this tool to direct the creation. I would argue that God created the entire universe, including any natural processes, including the bits of evolutionary theory that are actually true, so without God, there would be no evolution.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
As I study more and more, I have to question what is meant by death. The Bible speaks of death meaning different things, such as physical death and spiritual death. Humans being the only creatures with what we would call a soul, basically a spiritual life, lost their spiritual life after the original sin. They were then dead spiritually. They later died physically. Animals never were alive spiritually. If the Bible says there was no death before Adam and Eve sinned, could it have meant no spiritual death? No death among animals with a soul? I am not convinced that we properly understand what the words mean in the first two books of the Bible. I think it is important for Bible believers to understand the meaning of the Bible. This means studying the Bible, and studying science as well. Science is useful in that it studies the creation, which should be good news for people who believe in a creator. The only time science is bad is when it attempts to become a philosophy and tries to invent complex, unlikely scenarios to attempt to disprove belief systems.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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.
I agree. It is reasonable to look at the body of evidence and conclude that it's unlikely that such a being exists. It's even easier to consider any modern religion's notion of god as not existing as almost all religions impose contradictory properties on their deities.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
I think seeding of life from an alien intelligence would do a better job of explaining evolution the the current neo-Darwinian hypothesis.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Evolutionists have a habit of using the argument: 1) in nature we observer X; 2) X must have evolved; 3) therefore, X proves that the neo-Darwinian hypothesis of evolution is correct.
Circular logic at its best.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Yes, I know all about Punctuated Equilibrium. I think that is the first time in the history of science that a hypothesis was put forth to explain the LACK of evidence. Specifically, the glaring lack of intermediate fossils in the fossil record.
Facinating. I didn't know the non-existence of evidence could validate a hypothesis.
Now if you would, show me something that has E-V-I-D-E-N-C-E to back it up.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
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.
....Science says nothing about wether god does or does not exist, nor about wether god created life....
In that case science should restrict itself to experiments that explain how things work, but not try to come up with conjectured explanations of origins. In our everyday experience, complex things like airplanes cars and computers or even simple items, such as a pencil etc. don't arise apart from the input of the activity of mind -- human mind in these cases. Why then does science presume to conjecture that the incredibly more complex structures such as the eye or any other living thing came into being without the activity of some mind?
Leave the study of origins to philosphers and theologians since nobody can do an experiment today how any of the complex living things came to be. Even the exact composition of the Earth's atmosphere long before life came to be is pure conjecture. No scientist was around then to do any objective measurements. They make certain assumptions (faith) about such things but nobody really knows. Based on these assumptions and beliefs how things may have been the set up experiments and the draw conclusions. The Creator gave us a brief outline of what he did in Genesis and believing that by faith is at least as good as believing what the scientist's BELIEF is about how things came into existence. To me the Creators account is more credible since he was there and none of the scientists were witnesses. It is possible to reconstruct a car crash from skid marks and other evidence, but nothing beats a witness who saw it happen. If the testimony of the witness contradicts some of the supposed evidence, a choice has to be made, whether to believe the so called evidence or the eye witness. Myself, I'd be much more inclined to believe the witness.
All theory is gray
Yup: exactly as I thought so: all the physicists I've shown your link to laughed hard.
I did love this from the commentary by the article author:
The author's simplicity certainly does not detract from the mentioned physicist's work, but it most certainly does not add anything, either. And, well, thatmade me laugh.
So, in all, thanks for the link!
It is possible to reconstruct a car crash from skid marks and other evidence, but nothing beats a witness who saw it happen
And that's what science is all about - reconstructing the car crash from the skid marks and broken glass. This 'witness' you claim is nothing more than your personal religious belief and is no use to any kind of objective or scientific study. I could claim that our old friend the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe using his noodly appendages and I would be as correct as your are in saying that you think it was the christian god. Science seeks to be objective and produce evidence beyond subjective religious beliefs like these.
Also far from being engaged in producing nothing but 'conjecture' over the origins of things science actively seeks (and finds) real verifiable evidence to support hypotheses. Theories which are supported by nothing more than conjecture are left to religions to produce, as evidenced by their promotion of ID.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
I have nothing aginst teaching religious ideas in schools as religious ideas. But to teach them as a pseudo-science is wrong regardless of what cleass you teach them in.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
....Yup: exactly as I thought so: all the physicists I've shown your link to laughed hard.....
Exactly, but then a number of scientists who had revolutionary ideas in their time were laughed at by their peers, but in the end they had the last laugh, even though from the grave for some of them. The quantized redshift evidence by Dr. Tift and others and the evidence for the non-constancy of assumed constants call into serious doubt the unimaginably long time periods that are the cornerstone of the evolutionary dogma.
Strongly held beliefs, including scientific ones, do not fall easily even before the onslaught of repeated evidence calling such beliefs into question. It may yet take some time before the mountain of accummulating new evidence finally crushes the evolutionary dogma preached in today's classrooms. I'm not going to hold my breath, but the sooner that time comes, the better it will be for all of science, especially the study of origins.
All theory is gray
This if you have to ask, you should shut up attitude is the exact reason ID is even being considered. People are getting the wrong impresions from evolution and the way it is being presented when some are saying it is fact and making some of the same unproven claims as thier religous counter examples do. Because science supports this line of thought only satisfies those who are hardcore scientists or think they are. Then when someone asks about it, "shut up because your not as smart as those in the know" is the answer. Good job. People are not taking science for its face value and are interpreting what it is claiming as fact because "they aren't in the know". Even more people are seeing it as an attempt(asault) to discredit thier religion wich is why explanation to these problems/questions would actualy let them see were ID and creationism is a bad idea. I'm not saying it is your job to educate everyone but it isn't your job to prove the other sides point if that isn't what your intentions are. It may be i don't know. As of now, i still don't see were horses branched to or why it is evidence of macro evolution that proves it as fact.
Now I know what its like to be a lion in a hyena pack.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
That "gravitational influence" could be caused by any wild fantasy you could come up with. The fact is, no one knows why it happens and the concept of dark matter was INVENTED to try and explain it. No one has seen dark matter and it's only vague inference of proof it has is some computer models. Big deal, a computer model also worked out all the physics that allowed Mr. Incredible to battle a giant robot and it looked great. Still, it's no more real or proven that the tooth fairy. Until it is, just back of with your hard rhetoric. You are obviously unqualified to make judgments on what is dumb and what isn't.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
2. As for your supposedly impressive link: File Not Found
3. Micro-evolution has been observed by breeders before the time of Darwin. In fact, the (limited) changes that breeders could produce was one of Darwin's inspirations. There is no need for fossils in order to accept micro-evolution.
4. Even if only one organism in one billion fossilized, there would still be plenty of intermediate forms.
5. As Darwin himself noted in The Origin of Species, "The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on earth, [must] be truly enormous." Too bad he seems to have been wrong.
6. You know nothing about me. You have no idea whether I have a religious background or none at all.
7. Ad hominem attacks are the last resort of the weak minded. :)
8. Your behavior is perfectly in accord with that described by Thomas Kuhn. You really need to open your mind.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
We are heading down a path where it could be MUCH worse. We are rapidly getting to a point where believers in this country (of which I am one) could be forced to take their beliefs underground.
It is exceptionally difficult for members of religious groups to be allowed to gather and proclaim their faith openly--especially aspects of their faith that may be 'offensive' to others. For example--there is a Supreme Court case pending that would make it illegal for anyone (Christians included) to publicly denounce homosexual behavior ---even though most Christians believe it to be sin. Notice I said behavior. This is NOT denouncing homosexual orientation--many who are oriented to be sexually attracted to the same sex live their lives without giving in to the urge to behave this way---just as many heterosexuals resist the urge to behave as their orientation compels them to. One law that is being considered for this case is the current Canadian legislation that has caused more than one pastor to be arrested for the crime of 'hate speech' even though they are merely reflecting their belief in the Word of God which condmens homosexual behavior.
There are simply volumes of opinions by many founders on the meaning of the first amendment. And it's consistantly stressed that religion (not just church, as the oft-quoted phrase says) and government should never have anything to do with one another, even in minor matters.
While I believe that the intent of the founding fathers was to avoid the problems they had in Europe, and it's 'relgious wars', I do NOT see that they intended to remove relgion from either the Government, nor civilian life. One quote I mentioned in my original posting was given by Jefferson when he was President--the one in which he so eloquently stated that 'No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.. This quote glaringly shows that he certainly did not intend for their to be this 'Wall of Separation'. I would interject here that his comment could even be interpreted to mean that HE (at least) openly supported Christianity, and rejected other faiths--even Islam and Judaism.
Personally, I would prefer that the literal interpretation be applied--that congress shall make NO LAW regarding an establishment of relgion. This means stop making laws that interfere with the practice of my faith. My faith compels me to witness and testify---both to believers and non-believers alike. It also compels me to respect your privacy and not pursue you, if you choose not to hear, except in my own private prayer for you to turn toward God and Salvation. Sadly, many Christians do not realize that this is all part of 'loving your neighbor as yourself'---Christ gave us this as part of the 'Greatest Commandment' (often called 'The Golden Rule') and we need to understand exactly what is being said.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
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
What started the Big Bang? Science has never answered that question, and probably never will. Just how did intellegent (more or less) life evolve? Was it a one in a billion longshot, or was there a guiding hand behind it? Your statement that God isn't neccesary is just your opinion.
Also, if I were a grammer/puncuation nazi, I would be offended by your last sentence; I do NOT eat shit. I DO eat, AND shit (and occasionally screw).
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
http://cseg.blogspot.com/
Just start at the top and start working your way down.
A very short and simple (and cheap) book to get you started would be:
The Case Against Darwin: Why the Evidence Should Be Examined
(If you are not a religious/moral person, then just skip over the mushy parts.) The books he mentions in the text are good ones to follow up with.
As for specific sources about the fossil record, well, I should keep better track and I'm starting to. I think you will find this general argument in any book which looks at Darwinism with a critical eye.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
No! what I am saying is that it is illogical to believe that any planet anywhere had just the right cicumstances to support and then create life, by itself. It can't be proven and thus should not be taught to our kids, by the public school system any more then I.D. I don't believe that it is any more "profoundly stupid" to believe that a God created a universe, and everything in it, for a purpose, then to believe it all happened by chance.
Thanks for the info!
At the same time, getting laughed at does not make your idea revolutionary...
I'll be blunt: your comments make me sad.
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! :)
1. You are arguing against intelligent design as well as evolution, because Behe, Dembski and the other advocates of ID accept evolution as a general matter but argue that certain features are too complex to have arisen through unguided evolution. I'm not aware of any other explanation for the origin of life apart from creationism, but I'd be fascinated to hear what you believe.
h tml (you may need to remove extraneous spaces)
2. try http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.
3. You misunderstand. You claim that if macroevolution occured there would be a continuum of macroevolving fossils. You accept that microevolution occured. Therefore you must logically be claiming there is a continuum of microevolving fossils (whether there is a "need" for this or not). There is no such continuum. Therefore your assumptions as to fossilisation probability are incorrect.
4. Show me your math.
5. This is just the same arguement.
6. I've never come across anyone making your claims about evolution who isn't a religious fundamentalist of one stripe or other (with the possible exception of the Raelians). If your views are not driven by religious beliefs then congratulations on being the first secular creationist.
7. I made no ad hominem attack. You are contesting a well established area of science without citing a single source and it's reasonable for me to assume your motivations are religious rather than scientific. I'm happy to be corrected on this.
8. A paradigm shift requires a competing candidate theory with greater explanatory power to replace the current theory. You offer no such competing theory. Kuhn said that to reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. This is what you are doing.
how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?
Talkorigins' 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution not only lists many predictions and how they have been extensively tested and confirmed, but also explicitly explains exactly how each one could potentially have produced a falsification of macroevolution.
Most of that actually lists predictions and confirmations of the far broader/more powerful element of Common Decent, but since macroevolution is an inherent prerequisit for common decent any test (and potential falsification) of common decent is inherently a test (and potential falsification) of macroevolution.
You nore more need to witness an amoeba evolve into a bird to test evolution than you need to witness a cloud of gas condense into a star and go nova to test stellar models. Both make predictions about what we will see and what we will not see in the current universe. You take a telescope and look at additional stars, or you take a genetic sequencer and analize a newly discovered species, and you can check your observations against the predictions.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species.
There's no such thing as a "half way mutated" anything.
When any creature is alive, it is a fully formed, fully functional, and "most advanced version" of whatever it is. It looks almost exactly like it's parent, and it looks almost exactly like its children. However over the course of 10 million years something resembling a wolf can evolve into an almost modern whale. And if we could pop in and examine the earth at any point during that 10 million year period, there would always be populations of "ordinary species". Over time some features like legs would on average steadily shrink and other features will steadily expand, and some individual attributes would appear and spread through the population or dissapear from an individual and the absense would spread through the population.
If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?
If you are looking for something like whales with legs, or dinosaurs wth feathers, or birds with dinosar hands at the tips of their wings, sure. We have tons of transition sequences all over the place.
For a short page with a good picture of the whale sequence, look here. For a less graphic but far more extensive explanation of the evidences of the land mammal to whale sequences with extensives documentation and refferences, look here.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes,, his link is broken. He dropped the final L on .html.
Here's the link he mean to post. It well documents your erroneous claimed of a lack of transitions.
As for fossil links between phyla, well your's talking about the leven just after kindom, the split between single celled microorganisms. You're talking like 400+ million years ago. The fossil record OF COURSE becomes extremely sparse the farther back you go, especially when you go back multiple hundreds of millions of years. And the entire fossil record is nothing but one huge set of transitionals. Pick any fossil dated a hundred million years ago and any living animal on the same line and you'll find fossils from about 50 million years ago that have a set of features in between them. Whales are an excellent example, fiftyish million years ago there were distinct whales with legs. You also have a the nostrils half way up the skull (modern whale nostrils have migrated all the way up to create the blowhole). With birds the farther back you go the modern bird features dissappear and more and more dinosaur features show up.
And the fossil record evidence is insignifigant compared to the new and powerful genetic evidence. Genetic evidence lays out all of biology in the irrefutable tree format of common decent. And the tree that that genetic analysis reveals matches up perfectly with the relationships and lines of decent revealed by the fossil record.
Even if there were never any fossils at all, our development of genetic analysis alone would have prompted the explanation of evolution and the conclusive confirmation of evolution.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
"It is exceptionally difficult for members of religious groups to be allowed to gather and proclaim their faith openly--especially aspects of their faith that may be 'offensive' to others. For example--there is a Supreme Court case pending that would make it illegal for anyone (Christians included) to publicly denounce homosexual behavior ---even though most Christians believe it to be sin."
It has not been my experience that there is any difficulty proclaiming ones faith publicly in the United States. It's been my experience that usually when someone claims they had difficulty, they were trying to do something much more.
As for the law making it illegal for anyone to publicly denounce homosexual bahavior, I'm not familiar enough to say anything. I can't rail against it or put my reputation behind it until I've actaully read it. I do wonder if it is actually more specific, such as simply clarifying that, say, following homosexuals around and badgering them does count as harassment. I don't know. I can only say that if it really does broadly make denouncing homosexual bahavior illegal, then it is unconstitutional on several counts.
"While I believe that the intent of the founding fathers was to avoid the problems they had in Europe, and it's 'relgious wars', I do NOT see that they intended to remove relgion from either the Government, nor civilian life."
We agree on civilian life. Absolutely.
"One quote I mentioned in my original posting was given by Jefferson when he was President--the one in which he so eloquently stated that 'No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir.. This quote glaringly shows that he certainly did not intend for their to be this 'Wall of Separation'."
I don't know that he ever said that. When I quote a founder, I try to supply a reference so that any reader can find the quote in the origian material and see if it really exists and is true to the meaning in context. I did a quick google and only found people using this quote, but none supplying a reference. (I have just found that I need to be careful with founder quotes because so many have been invented. David Barton is an example of a prolific forger.) But I will give it the benefit of the doubt. Even though I don't know if this particular quote is true, I do know that there are several others (confirmed) that express a similar attude or belief about the imporance of religious belief in the general population.
But I don't think it implies what you think it does. Support of Christianity--even belief that it is necessary for the proper functioning of a nation--has no bearing on whethor it should mix with government.
You will find that the picture the founding fathers had was a bottom up model, where the people had the moral foundation of their religion and that guided them in their pick of representatives, which then put their values into law (those that which are within the bounds of allowable laws). They were explicit, though, that religion could have no more influence on governent than that (which is already massive influence).
It does follow that government and religion should mix. Further, you don't need to deduce his position on the "wall of seperation" when he explicitly gives it several times. There should be a tall and wide wall that is strongly guarded.
You need to understand that the wall is as much for the defense of Christianity as anything else! By leaving religion to its own sphere, as untouched by government as possible, religions are free to supply the moral foundation the founders believed necessary, while at the same time keeping the possibility of government/church corruption much less likely and leaving matters of faith to individual people, not the power of government.
I think they had a good idea. But even if you don't like what they did, that is what they did.
I was using 1/3 to add simplicity to the statement, sure there are tons of unknown factors, which consequently reduce the 1/3.
I love to slaughter the english language.
Intelligence resulted from carnivores and omnivores. Carnivores and omnivores needed to be smarter than the prey they were hunting who would create natural defenses to escape a brute-force attack. By becomming smarter, carnivores and omnivores could plan out an attack to turn a prey's strength into a weakness. When we evolved intelligence, we must have been so good at planning that our brute strength and any natural weapons we had were bred out, while the intelligence, which was key to our survival, continued to flourish.
I love to slaughter the english language.
Whoops! "It does follow that government and religion should mix." should read "It doesn't follow..."
What annoys me about fundamentalists is that they insist on God (or FSM) being as simple as they are.
God is God, why the hell would he think like some inbred white southern hick?
"What started the Big Bang?
My point isn't that we know the answer, only that adding god doesn't provide any information. One can then rephrase the question replacing the Big Bang with god. To say god has always existed and transcends time is equivalent to saying the pre big-bang universe always existed and transcends time. Any statement you make about god's involvement is equally correct without god's involvement. Thus, as I have already stated, god adds nothing to the statement. It just makes you feel better.
Seriously, this is a philosophy of religion 101 kind of question. Religious scholars don't resort to your kind of reasoning. You need a stronger argument than "we don't know, therefore it must be god".
"Science has never answered that question, and probably never will."
That's your opinion.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
A quick reply to you--I am at work and as such, don't have a lot of time.
While I agree with you--in essence that the founding fathers intended for Government to keep a 'hands off' policy regarding relgion, I don't see it as the reverse being true.
Unfortunately, this 'hands off' policy has not been faithfully followed. Examples are: Students are not permitted to pray in schools because schools are fearful that some parent might sue. Benedictions removed from graduation ceremonies because a court decides they are 'inappropriate in a public setting' because of the 'Wall of Separation'. Schools are only allowed to teach one 'theory' on the origins of life. Students not allowed to have after-school gatherings to discuss/celebrate their religions.. The list goes on and on. My son is a personal example. His mother (I am divorced) is raising him Reformed Judaism, and he is not permitted to wear his Yarmulke in school--both because it promotes a religion, and because they have a 'no hats' policy in keeping with 'anti gang' symbolism. He is not excused for absences for Temple activities on Holy Days, on the grounds that they have no control over absences that way, due to many differing beliefs. They even go so far as to ban crosses/crucifixes/other religious material on a 'no jewelry' ban (using the gang excuse again). How are his 'religious freedoms' being protected by the 'Wall of Separation' there?
By erecting the 'Wall' to protect relgion, we have actually created what is rapidly becoming an unsurmountable barrier to the practice of religion.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
"Students are not permitted to pray in schools because schools are fearful that some parent might sue."
They are allowed. The ruling was only that people of authority could not force or pressure prayer. Students are allowed to pray in school all they want.
"Schools are only allowed to teach one 'theory' on the origins of life."
It's simply the only one that is science.
"Students not allowed to have after-school gatherings to discuss/celebrate their religions.."
They are allowed and it's still quite common to do so. It's even common to have official Bible study groups as a school club. These have not been banned or ruled unconstitutional.
I'm sorry that I'm also rushed for time.
I did manage to squeeze in some quick research.
There are some simple rules recognized in the law about religious clubs in schools. If (a) the school receives federal funds or is a public secondary school and (b) the school allows any other clubs, then it must allow religious clubs.
In Garnett v. Renton School Dist. No. 403, a Federal Court of Appeals ruled that these rules must be complied with even if the state constitution says otherwise.
"Both (or neither) can be given as possible explanations for the origin of life."
Ok, I'm going to say this S-L-O-W-L-Y.
I am a science teacher. Neither I, nor my colleagues, nor anyone who follows my state's standards teaches that evolution explains the origin of life. IT DOES NOT, so why would I teach that?
Evolution is a method of explaining diversity, and for demonstrating how changes can occur in organisms. It is a method for explaining how organisms with certain traits are more successful.
The fact that YOU are trying to claim it explains the origin of life, and then using that as a reason to accept ID completely misses the point of what evolution is, and more importantly how it is taught.
Why is this important? Becuause ALL OF THE OTHER THEORIES fail in places evolution does not. It is, quites simply, the best at explaing what it explains, so much so that the alternatives seem farcical in comparison. ANd with all due respect, so do your counter examples. Had you bothered, you could have found information to refute your own arguments. The fact that you didn't even TRY suggest you're not interested in facts, only in your own conjecture.
So, please try to become enlightened about the topic before you continue making up convoluted, logically flawed arguments.
"It's invisible to any form of detection that we have ever devised, and yet, it MUST be there. If that isn't meta-physical, I don't know what the heck is."
You mean like atomic theory? It's only recently that we have gained the ability to see individual atoms. Hmm, I guess that atoms were metaphysical too.
But now they're not.
Had you even considered that example? Did you even KNOW about that example? Your post makes me believe you choose to stay scientifically ignorant on purpose.
"I freely admit that my world view is governed by unproven, unprovable faith. For you to claim otherwise is hypocrisy and maybe even hubris."
I agree, your world view is governed by a psychosis you choose to engage in, but it is a psychosis nonetheless. YOU call if faith, I call it what it is.
It's clear to anyone who reads your post that you've never bothered to actually learn about this subject. If you had, you'd see how ridiculous many of your claims are, and how easy they are proven false.
AND, I'm NOT your momma, so find you own links. It's not my job to make up for the brainwashing you've gotten from the church.
All species are "half-way mutated". Sample a species at any given point in time, and you're looking at a species that is midway between some previous version and some future version. Modern humans are "half-way mutated". In the past, we have some sort of ape creature, and in the future, we have something else that we don't yet know what is.
Find a person today that has a gene that protects him from HIV (which I understand has been reported), and you may be looking at a representative of Future Man: two generations down the line, all humans may have that gene.
sigs are hazardous to your health
There will always be parts of science that are unknown, and scientists who are probing those far edges of our knowledge. They will come up with hypotheses and even theories in an attempt to explain these phenomena, and they will invent names for them. Dark Matter is widely accepted as a part of science that is young, poorly understood, and wide open for more research.
Some day, we will figure out what it really is, what properties it really has, and how this affects all of our other theories about nature. Until then, we are quite content to live with some uncertainty on the matter.
(What we will not do, incidentally, is sit down and worship Dark Matter as some sort of divine revelation, write it in stone, encase it in titanium and declare that its sanctity must never be violated.)
Dark Matter is only a problem if you have some sort of compulsive need to feel that you always have an answer for everything. It seems to me that ID is a rather feeble attempt at regaining confidence in oneself after realising that scientific theories don't yet quite cover 100.00% of what is happening to life over time. After all, with ID, one can eventually convince oneself that one "understands" how life has come to be and I am sure such a delusion can be very comforting . . .
sigs are hazardous to your health
Well, you know, they have to start _somewhere_ . . .
sigs are hazardous to your health
There is nothing in science to preclude local decreases in entropy so long as they are accompanied by corresponding increases elsewhere. This is what DNA and life is - we continually burn enormous amounts of energy in order to maintain our order, and this burning consists of increasing the entropy of the world. This can go on for quite some time, so long as there are reasonably high-order sources of energy left for us to entrope (yeah, I know, verbing weirds language).
Apparantly, the universe must somehow have started with very low entropy (which is reasonable if all energy was originally organised into one single point) and we are now in the process of burning it all off until, eventually, all energy will be equally distributed across all space.
The laws of entropy specifically do NOT say that "there can be no order in the universe" nor do they say "there must be little order in the universe". Order is perfectly ok, even lots and lots of it is ok. It is the _direction of change_ in universal order that is covered.
sigs are hazardous to your health
Actually, the probability of this having happened is 100%
sigs are hazardous to your health
Your magnet examples demonstrates a deeply flawed understanding of evolution. This may be the basis of your current delusion.
A better experiment would be more like this: Take one million boxes with magnets inside them. Shake them. Inspect them all and discard any that show no progress whatsoever into becoming house-shaped. Of the remaining, duplicate them so that you again have one million boxes. In each of these boxes, make some small, random modification to the layout of the magnets. Inspect again, remove those that made the least progress towards a house shape, etc. Repeat this a million times. Chances are that eventually, the box interiors would evolve towards looking like houses.
sigs are hazardous to your health
.....I'll be blunt: your comments make me sad.....
It is indeed sad when scientists, the very ones who of all people should be open to new ideas supported by evidence, laugh and ridicule those who propose such ideas and the evidence supporting them. The BELIEF in the immense age of the earth is THE key cornerstone of the evolutionary dogma. If that gets demolished by the evidence these scientists have uncovered, the whole evolutionary edifice and many lifetime works of some scientists will coming crashing down into a heap of rubble. This wouldn't be the first time that long held beliefs in various sciences have crumbled to dust over the vehement protestation of the scientific establishment. So often it has been the voice proclaiming an unpopular truth in the wilderness that finally prevailed, usually after a long and bitter struggle.
New evidences of quantum physics were resisted at first even by Einstein. Einstein's theory of relativity was scoffed at. It took 50 years to finally get the fact that light speed is NOT infinitley fast to be accepted over Aristotelian belief that light took no time to travel. The evidence that disease was caused by germs was strenuously resisted by the biologists and medical establishment of the time. Spontaneous generation of flies and maggots, the phlogiston theories of fire and heat and on and on finally gave way to contrary evidence. Science and technology books become obsolete and outdated faster than any other class of human writings, other than perhaps yesterday's newspaper.
So, I agree with you. It is really sad that such dogged resistance to new truth is part of our human nature.
All theory is gray
While certain religious activities might be 'allowed' under your Garnet ruling, many school districts bend to pressure from groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State, or the ACLU and prohibit religious expression expressly. I know my son's school district does for a fact--it's in their handbook they send home to parents. I also know that BOTH school districts in the town where I live also expressly prohibit it. All three districts I know about have banned Young Life and FCA from not only meeting on school grounds but have actually banned them from even advertising.
Many districts, sadly, will bend to the pressure put on them by parents who do not wish their children exposed to religion at all. Groups like the ACLU or Americans United will often band with these parents and merely write a letter threatening legal action, and the school district will capitulate. Regardless of what higher courts have said, the school districts capitulate because they lack the funds to fight a case in court.
Yet, in this day and in this society, those of us who desire to 'profess freely and openly those principles' are frequently forbidden. Prayer is a principle, Fellowship with others who share one's belief is a principle, Reading of the Bible (or other relgious material, be it Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or other) is a principle. Yet time and time again we are denied this simple act. Why? all because of Jefferson's 'Wall'. The First Amendment was intended not to prohibit, but to sanction relgious expression, without fear of repercussion from authority for your beliefs. It was not intended to deny those beliefs to anyone, merely to allow beliefs without official sanction to any one belief alone.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
"No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man, and I, as chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example."
1800 Allegedly said {by Thomas Jefferson} to a friend when asked why he was attending church, as per an handwritten history in possession of the Library of Congress, "Washington Parish, Washingon City," by Rev. Ethan Allen
Here's the source..while it's not *documentable totally* as fact, it certainly could be true.
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the c
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.
Absolutely, good point - if there's no proof anything like a 'god' exists then anything claiming to know it's mind, who it's children were and what it wants is standing on very very shaky ground indeed.
"I'm going to show you a world without sin..." - Malcolm Reynolds
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.
Yes, those delusions are comforting. Like some mythical explosion that created all life devoid of moral responsibility perhaps?
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
Luckily you are not my "momma", or else your theory of evolution would be disproved.
Yeah, I guess I'm funny like that.
I think evolution is a fact. Darwin had some insights that were significant enough to establish a new paradigm. But in the rush to join the paradigm, some details of the hypothesis were poorly developed. Did you know that Darwin did not suggest that randomness was the source of variation in evolution? This was a novelty added by the neo-Dawinists in their "synthesis" of the 1940s. They would have done better to remain silent on the issue as Darwin did. This is one of the very key issues of evolution: from whence does this variety arise? Randomness, for a number of reasons, just doesn't cut it. And the current paradigm is preventing exploration into alternate theories. Therefore, I think the important thing to do right now is to expose the numerous weaknesses of the current theory.
You claim that if macroevolution occured there would be a continuum of macroevolving fossils.
What I mean to say is that the neo-Darwinist model predicts that the fossil record will be continuous. The fact that it is not so is one of the model's major weaknesses. Of course, the neo-Darwinists were so embarrassed by this, that by the 1980s, they came up with Punctuated Equilibrium -- one of the most heroic efforts to account for a lack of evidence. But even this is still a hypothetical. I think one would be hard pressed to assert that every evolutionary change occurred via Punctuated Equilibrium. And this could certainly never be proven.
Show me your math.
Well, the point is academic. The fossil record is not continuous. The Darwinists have acknowledged that fact. And they have "made up" for it by introducing the notion of Punctuated Equilibrium. It states that in small, isolated populations, random variations will have a greater lasting impact. But this still ignores the crux of the issue: Where does variation, even in small populations, come from? If it is randomness, then it is very guarded randomness. If there is too little randomness, then the variations just will disappear from the population. If there is too much, then you end up like the frogs in Minnesota -- with population that may not be able to reproduce. Small populations are unstable for this very reason. And this is a double edged sword. You could just as easily argue that Punctuated Equilibrium reduces variation because of the potential instability of small populations. For Punctuated Equilibrium to work, the randomness must occur within a narrow range which is not too much and not too little.
Recombinant DNA can explain some of this. But even this does not explain one thing: over the long course of macro-evolution, the genome has to be gradually built up. If you start with three cards, there is a certain number of hands that you can have at which point you have exhausted all possible variety for those cards. If you add a couple of new cards, then you can have greater variety. Recombinant DNA can help you exhaust the intrinsic variety of your current set of cards, but it does not increase the number of cards. It shuffles the deck, but does not add new cards. An important question then is: Where did all the cards come from? Darwinists are quick to point out the (micro) variation that recombination produces. But are at a loss to explain the gradual build up of the genome over the long course of macro-evolution. And without this, we would all still be amoebas with only three cards in our pods. Of course, there is the occasional random flipping of a single bit from cosmic rays. And certainly these "point mutations" could eventually add up. But even though point mutations have been observed in the laboratory, a point mutation which increases survival value by adding new information (as opposed to having a "shuffling" or suppressing effect) has never been scientifically observed. Maybe tomorrow.
congratulations on being the first secular creationist
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Have you heard the tail of two pandas? In China there are two panda bears: the Giant Panda and the Red Panda.
So they share a common ancestor, right? Wrong.
Biochemical studies have revealed that the Giant Panda is part of the bear family and the Red Panda is part of the raccoon family. And no, there aren't any other raccoons in China. They are otherwise exclusively from North America. As Desi would say: "You've got a lot of 'splaining to do!"
So I agree that biochemistry is where it's at.
On the other hand, if these were fossils, there would be no question of common descent.
This is a cautionary tale which should enjoin us to be quite conservative about the conclusions we can draw from fossils alone.
And also that the two trees don't always line up quite so perfectly.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
Do you have any idea how many hojillions of stars there probably are? Look into astronomy some time. Assuming galaxies are about the size of our own and that galactic clusters are about the size of ours ...
My point is that in this inordinately huge number of stars, surely at least one of them would happen to form in a way that would happen to lead to life.
As for why "Intelligent Design" should not be taught in schools, I don't have a problem with that so much as with the fact that it's being taught in a science class. That is absolutely the wrong place to teach anything resembling religion.
And finally, I'm guessing you didn't read my last statement properly. "Intelligent Design" is limiting God by saying that He had to nudge evolution along. That He couldn't create completely natural ways for all of this to happen.
So it's kind of taking the worst from both science and religion and mixing them into one big pseudoreligious whole. In essence, "God couldn't make a universe that could do this on its own, and science can't explain why!". Then, its proponents try to equate it with science when it doesn't stand up to even the lowest scientific standards.
There are so many better arguments that could be used than the ones which are. If you don't believe me, go read the FAQ at the talk.origins archive. There are some interesting points from all "sides" there.
I don't understand your arguments at all. You initially said there were no intermediates in the fossil record. This is clearly incorrect, and a few minutes with google will pick up dozens of counter-examples. This leaves you with two arguments:
a dd_information.
1. that the fossil record is not continuous. But neither Darwin nor anyone following him, has predicted that it would be, for the reasons outlined in my previous email. You have snipped my arguement that your own arguments are contradictory on this point.
2. that evolution in combination with mutation cannot create new information. This is an empty assertion unless you provide a rigorous definition of what you mean by "information", and then a physical or mathematical argument that it cannot be increased by (e.g.) mutation. The well resourced "Intelligent Design" people haven't even tried to do this. Even intuitively it is surely incorrect - if you accept the evolution of a wolf-like creature into the thousands of varieties of dog, are you really telling me this evolution involved no new information? It is also logically problematic - see http://www.evowiki.org/index.php/Mutations_don't_
You may not be a creationist but you seem to have picked up on their arguments with insufficient scepticism. The "information" argument in particular is pure pseudo-science, and it's a bit depressing that someone with a scientific or technical background can make it.
I'm sorry you find evolutionary theory boring. Darwin's claims were mind-blowing at the time, and many people find them impossibly mind-blowing today. I would urge you to delve into the vast and exciting literature on evolution mutation, and not just the pop-sci accounts of it. It would also be great if you could apply a fraction of the healthy scepticism you throw at mainstream science to the scientifically illiterate claims of the creationists about information and the fossil record.
So they share a common ancestor, right?
/bird / dinsaur branches of the tree. All we got correct on the tree is that they all have back bones (chordata), but we have humans branching off of fish and we have birds branching off of pandas.
... complete randomisation of our calssification of the last 24 million years of decent of everything... and the tree would be be statistically identical to zero point zero zero zero [insert several thousand zeroes] zero one percent.
Right, chuckle. About 24 million years ago the Giant Panda, the Red Panda, and dogs had a common ancestor.
But your point about Giant and Red pandas being more distant than they first appear is perfectly valid. If you're working strictly from fossils then it is important to look at a signifigant number of specimins and to build chains to establish a well supported relationships. In some areas we have extremely detailed maps with tons of sample points, and in other areas the fossil record is quite sparse. And despite and uncertainty or minor errors near the leaves of the tree, the over all tree structure is overwelming.
And also that the two trees don't always line up quite so perfectly.
In the last decade or so different methods attempting to mearure of the gravitational constant have ruled each other out by a margin of almost 1 percent. A serious contradiction.
And how "perfect" is our biology tree? Well lets assume we draw the tree correctly by kingdom and phylum, and then we completely RANDOMIZE everything below that. Randomize the class and order and family and genus and species levels of the tree. We draw the tree correctly to the level of molluscs and arthropods and chordates and the the other 32 phyla. For example just within chordata we completely randomize the human / panda / mice / fish / lizard / frog
Statistically, how close is that to the correct tree?
It is statisticaly identical to better than 40 decimal places! The tree as a whole would be correct within a margin of error of 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.
There are more than 10^40 ways you can draw a tree with just the 38 phyla as branches. If the new genetic analysis merely matched the prior classifications merely to the level of phyla... if the new genetic analysis had indeed placed primates branching off of amphibians and birds branching off of pandas... there is less than a 1-in-10^40 chance that the trees would have matched up even just to the level of phyla.
If some method mistakenly classifies Giant Pandas and Red Pandas as neighbor species in the same genus, well that method matched the correct tree through kingdom and phylum and class and order. Our analysis could be saturated with randomization of that level
The tree of common decent is rock solid and confirmed by multiple methods to an astronomical statistical certainty. Any errors and fluttering in the leaftips of the tree is a level of noise indistinguishable from zero. And remember... we've been getting nearly 1% conflicts in different experiments on the theory of gravity.
Judging by how well each theory is experimentally confirmed, evolution's tree of common decent is a "Law" and it's the theory of gravity that is being invalidated by serious experimental contradictions. Chuckle.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
Darwinian evolution asserts that evolution occurs through the accumulation of minuscule random changes to the genome. If this were the case, there would be so many connecting species that the fossil record would be virtually a continuum.
There is speculation that these random changes are caused by solar or comsic rays that have been known to flip DNA sequences around. (It's why they have Error Correction in computer chips and that you get cancer when standing around radioactive material for too long)
But still there is only a finite amount of these rays coming from the Sun and deep space so only a finite changes can happen to living organisms on Earth (even though that number is astronomical)
Secondly, only the mutations that lead to organisms producing more of itself will tend to continue or at least multiply more than those who die off.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It's so unfortunate that when you die, you'll never even know how wrong you are, oh you'll probably see that long tunnel of light and all, just like the near death experiences people, as your systems start to shut down then pop... eternal nothingness, scared?
I was hoping he'd get a more Buddhist/Hindo life after death experience... Come back born as a poor minority female who is a single mom.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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)
Well lets assume we draw the tree correctly by kingdom and phylum, and then we completely RANDOMIZE everything below that.
So you are saying that the five kingdoms are still at the top and the 35 phyla are properly placed in their kingdoms. But within each phylum, we take every "node" and completely randomize them. Well, there are two kinds of nodes: leaf nodes, which represent actual species, and "internal" nodes, which represent the various levels of classification. So I'm assuming that leaf nodes have to stay leaf nodes, but we are rearranging all of the internal nodes so that the node that now represents, say, genus homo might now be found directly under phylum chordata.
All we got correct on the tree is that they all have back bones (chordata), but we have humans branching off of fish and we have birds branching off of pandas.
So maybe you don't care about leaf nodes. I'm not sure how you end up with a meaningful tree, but go ahead.
Statistically, how close is that to the correct tree? It is statisticaly identical to better than 40 decimal places! The tree as a whole would be correct within a margin of error of 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.
Ok, now you've lost me. However you derived that number, and however impressive it may be mathematically, how can it be meaningful when we have humans branching off of fish? I would say that having the gravitational constant to within 1% is better science than having humans branching off of fish.
There are more than 10^40 ways you can draw a tree with just the 38 phyla as branches.
Are there 3 new phyla that I'm not aware of? So, you're saying that if I have 5 kingdoms, then there is 10^40 ways that the 35 phyla can be placed in those 5 kingdoms? Ok, for the sake of argument, let's say that's correct. But there are way way way more than 10^40 different ways that the 2 million known species could be placed in their kingdoms. So you have to compare that 10^40 with the totality of permutations in the whole tree for it to be at all meaningful.
If the new genetic analysis merely matched the prior classifications merely to the level of phyla... if the new genetic analysis had indeed placed primates branching off of amphibians and birds branching off of pandas... there is less than a 1-in-10^40 chance that the trees would have matched up even just to the level of phyla.
Hmm, I'm not sure I'm following this. Let's talk just about kingdoms and species. There is some huge astronomical number (way way way more than 10^40) that describes the number of ways that all species could be put into their kingdoms. That does not mean that if the new genetic analysis put all species in there correct kingdoms that you would have now accomplished something astronomically impossible that is more awesome than getting the gravitational constant right. It just means that the kingdom is imprinted in an easy-to-detect way.
The tree of common decent is rock solid and confirmed by multiple methods to an astronomical statistical certainty.
You'll have to show me the other methods. I'm not yet convinced.
Evolution is a fact. Darwinism is a joke.
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.
First let me put this in perspective. Imagine someone claims they have some sort of psychic powers. You give him a test. You ask him to predict die rolls and you run the test for a thousand rolls. Now assume he predicts the first 100 rolls perfectly, and then on the last 900 he falls back to random chance getting getting one in six right (150 of the last 900 correct at random). So in total he got 250 right and 750 wrong.
That test is a positive confirmation, and it has a statistical signifigance of about 1 in 10^78. Yes his answers on the later rolls were completely worthless noise, but the test itself is indisinguishable from perfect confirmation. The fact that he got 750 wrong out of 1000 does not change the fact that the test was a perfect confimation. It is effectively impossible to get the first hundred rolls right at random, the noise in the last 900 rolls does not change that fact. (In fact even if it wasn't the first 100 in a row correct plus 150 more at random, even if those 250 correct predictions were distributed randomly, it would still be a statistically overwhelming result of 450000000-to-1 odds against lucky guessing.)
We would have statistical proof indistinguishable from infinity that there is something *real* going on. The result is indistinguishable from a perfect positive. If the theory being tested is whether this guy is psychic, well this is overwhelming posive support for his theory... it conclusively rules out a random false positive. Of course you are always welcome to suggest alternate theories... but they would have to be alternate theories that can also account for this irrefutable positive result. For example another perfectly good theory is that this guy cheated somehow. A test with a hundred correct predictions in a row is irrefutably rules out any theory that does not explain that result, and it is overwhelming support for either the psychic or cheater theory.
The theory of evolution has irrefutable support. You can certainly propose an alternative to evolution, but it has to be an alternative that is also capable of explaining the huge quantity of irrefutable evidence. And much like in our psychic example, the only two known alternative theories amounts to saying someone cheated. One of the two "cheating" explanations is to say the scientists cheated... that they are all in some vast conspiracy and lying about all of the evidence. If the scientists aren't deliberately lying, well the only other known alternative theory to evolution that can explain all of the evidence is that God cheated. That theory that God planted false evidence exactly to trick us into believing evolution. And if God is deliberately lying to us, well then everything we see and everything we hear and everything we think and everything we remember may as well be a lie.
So either (1) evolution is correct or (2) all scientists are malicious and deliberately lying or (3) God is malicious and deliberately deceiving us. The second option is not only delusional parania, but it would be a result so vast as rule out any belief in anything anyone says anywhere in society. It would be a conspiracy so vast as to turn the planet into one big The Truman Show. The third option entirely undermines any perception of reality at all, it makes any discussion of anything entirely meaningless.
Getting back to the trees, the first thing to note is that each internal node represents a common ancestor. That internal node is a creature, and at one point it was itself a leaf. The arrangment of the internal branching is the relationships between the various leaves. Here is a good tree picture. For example note that bacteria branch directly off of the root, but snakes have 13 levels of branching from the root. The tree structure carries a huge amount of information on the relationships between the leaves. It gives bacteria a unique relationship to all of the other leaves, and it gives snakes an extremely rich set of relationships
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.